SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi SI,

I haven't posted in a while and always feel awkward about that...but am always deeply gratelful for the thoughtful responses shared here despite the posting gaps. Thank you, as always, in advance, for listening. I appreciate you.

I am still, 4 years out from a complicated DDay2, sorting deep seated areas of stuckness in terms of the sexual aspects of my wife's PA. I am thankful for significant progress here, and have had to go pretty far back into places where my very sexual identity and formation took place to try and unravel why, despite IC, consistent unwavering remorse from my WW, and the passage of ever increasing amounts of time, that I am still pretty stuck in terms of the sexual aspects of my wife's betrayal. One partuclar bear trap that I have not been able to find very much ink on in recovery literature is when the BS was a virgin at marriage so, obiviously has no other sexual partners other than their WS. I am finding this particulary mindbending in my own ongoing recovery. My wife is my only sexual partner. She was not a virgin when we married, we processed that "incongruence" during our dating/engagement and entered into our, what I thought would be, an exclusive sexual relationship upon marriage.

What I seem to be crashing up against at some level in recovering from her sexual betrayal during our marriage is, in addition to the betrayal itself, having zero point of reference of what it is even like (beyond the generalities of course) to have sexual experiences with another/other people. At best, even when sexual detail is asked for and received by the BS, we will never have it all, or even close to a comprehensive truth about the (affair in general as well) the sexual encounters our waywards have with their APs. So there is STILL, even with as much detail as a WS can remember and offer, a deep sense (for me at least) in which I feel a great deal of just being IN THE DARK about. And I think it's just an additional, volatile, toxin to then add, not only feeling in the dark about large parts of the affair and the sexual encounters therein, but also being in the dark about what even a baseline experience is like to simply have sexual encounters with another person AT ALL...just twists it exponentiually for me.

I anticiapte the counters to this somewhat...I mean...sex is sex, right? We're adults. We know how sex works etc. etc. I don't know why that doesn't work for me. I think it has soemthing to do with sex never really being "just sex" to me. To me, I would think, if you change the parnter, the sexual experience could/should/would change SIGNIFICANTLY. I don't knnow that experientailly though. I can only guess. So, my wife not only went and lived a secret chunk of life that I will never be able to really know or be a part of, she also had deeply intimate sexual experiences that I will never even be able to relate to,even at the most fundamental levels.

I'm not sure I am making sense at this point...usually a sign to start winding the post down.

I have often had the, admittedly bizarre (embarassing?) notion that, if I could be given an ULTRA HD account of every single interaction, conversation, date, meetup, and yes, masochistic as it sounds, sexual encounter where I could observe every single detail with as much clarity as possible... every single nuance, every facial expression, every twist of the hair, tilt of the head, smile, touch, voice inflection, choice of words...that I could somehow get totally free. Just EXACTLY how WAS my wife with him...on a date...in his car...at the mall...out to dinner......IN BED? That if I could somehow know this...there would be freedom for me. Just having the knowledge itself firsthand. My IC says this desire is about control. Feeling that knowledge would give me a sense of control over all of it. She's probably right...but I don't know. I just know it's how I feel.

Good Lord, I may have just threadjacked my own thread.

But I think it relates...I have this seemingly inordinately DEEP NEED to try and RELATE experientially to my wife's affair...especially the sexual dyanamics of it, and, because she is my only sexual partner...I can't even relate to what it is to share a sexual relationship with another person...let alone grasp the much deeper dyanmics present in an affair. I guess it just feels like I will never get my head and heart around it...and the "virgin problem", for me anyway, seems to exacerbate it. Tremendously.

After all of that word vomit...I guess I just want to ask...

Is there anyone out there who had a "virgin problem"to solve in your affair recovery. Was it even a problem? If so, how did you do it? What were some of the more stubborn obstacles if you did?

Even if you didn't have the virgin problem...I welcome all potential insights.

Thank you so much as always for your time and thoughtfulness in wrestling with me,

WH

Hi Wounded Healer,

This is the first post of yours I've read, so I am just going off what you've said here. I don't reply to other posts often because I don't feel like I have any good advice to offer really, I'm about 18 months out and still not doing great. I did relate to a lot of what you wrote, though my situation isn't exactly the same.

I've been with my WS since we were sixteen and we're now mid-thirties. When we were teenagers, we were on and off a lot and he would often go and sleep with other people during the times we were off. I did it once. My WS was my first, and aside from the one time I started dating someone else while we were broken up when I was eighteen, he's the only other person I've had sex with. We were apart for a few months in 2021 and he slept with someone then too, I did not.

I don't mean to thread jack btw, I'm just telling you a bit about my situation in the hope that it will help in some way. I've had a lot of problems with intimacy since the infidelity, which have only gotten worse lately. I've just recently had a revelation about why that is. My WS had a ONS with a girl who is twelve years younger than we are. I made him tell me every detail, because, like you, I felt I needed to know everything, no matter how much it hurt to hear. I agree that that is a form of trying to take control of the situation. Hearing the details helped in some ways, but not others. Like you, if I could watch it, I would, which sounds crazy, but it is a need to know everything.

So the revelation I've had recently, and I don't know if it will help in anyway, but I think the way I view sex with my WS has changed and I worry about the way he views sex, if he can so freely go and do it with someone else, someone he had just met and who was a lot younger. I view it as a bonding thing, it's very intimate, a way to show our love for each other, ultimately. I wouldn't do that with just anyone. I know some people would and I'm not judging, but because of the way I feel about it, I struggle with my partner seemingly not feeling the same way. Sex no longer feels intimate and personal, because he's done it with someone else very recently, and betrayed me to do it, risked losing his entire family for it. Sex feels like a very different thing now and I find it to be one of my biggest triggers lately.

I don't really have advice per se, I just wanted to let you know that I understand what you're saying and how you're feeling, and I hope someone else will come along with advice to help you through it.

Also, I'm so sorry that you're going through this. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, it has been a truly horrific experience. I say that because I often feel silly about how much I struggle with it, but it seems our reactions are completely normal to a very traumatising event that was not our fault. Wishing you the best with your healing journey.

I can see the issue here. Your imagination is the only thing you have when it comes to this and it has you imagining the worst.

she also had deeply intimate sexual experiences that I will never even be able to relate to,even at the most fundamental levels.

Can you explain to me what you mean here? It feels like this is the feeling you assigned. In my experience, my most deeply intimate sexual experiences have been with my husband, yet I also had an affair. I understand people’s experiences can vary widely but if my husband wrote this, I would strongly disagree with this. I was not wildly impressed with affair sex and deeply wish I never went out and had it. Sex for a lot of people is best when you feel emotionally safe and comfortable with the person. Those two things are not generally present in an affair.

If I am being honest, I think you should separate and you should go and have some experiences if you want to do that. Not as a retaliatory measure, but more of a way to get your mind wrappers around it. I do not know if it will help or hurt but I do not think this is a situation you can logically force your feelings to go a certain way. I think eventually you will be tired of trying to force yourself to be okay with it and divorce anyway. The biggest risk is if she goes and has experienced during that time I am not sure that will be well received by you.

Do you feel she cheated for the sex? A lot of women cheat for the perceived emotional pay offs, only to find they are never really there in an affair. The sex is more a transactional act to keep getting the pay off they are looking for.

...if I could be given an ULTRA HD account of every single interaction, conversation, date, meetup, and ... sexual encounter where I could observe every single detail with as much clarity as possible... that I could somehow get totally free.

IMO, you're lying to yourself. Nothing can free you from the fact that you've been betrayed.

*****

Besides....

What does 'free' mean to you?
How would you be different if you were free?
How would your life be different?
How would you and your life be different if your body count were the same as your W's?

*****

My reco is NOT to make yourself a madhatter. If you want to violate your M vows, don't - D first.

*****

IMO, R requires letting the WS get away with at least one betrayal.

IMO, a BS who Rs must be OK with not retaliating.

IMO, a BS who Rs must be or become comfortable with the truth that 2 wrongs do not make a right.

Hi Poet,

First, thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to put those thoughts together and share them. If you feel that you don't have much to offer...please don't feel that way. I totally resonate with the applicable parts of your story, and you articulate it very well. Thank you again.

I am glad to know I am not the only one who recognizes this (what feels outsized) need for extreme detail. Like, as you shared, if I could just see and hear...EXPERIENCE every single thing in full, living color, I could "make it stop". So, thank you for sharing that...it makes me feel less crazy and alone in that. I, like you, found the details a double edged sword...but ultimately worth it. For me the mystery of that entire time (the entire affair of course, but also, and especially the sexual encounters) was intolerable. The details I got made it...much less intolerable?...but carry a unique toxin all their own, don't they?

Also, like you, I think all of this just ends up going to back to the heart of, IDK, my "valuation?" of sex? It has never been even in the remotest sense a casual thing for me. I made a decision as a very young man for it to be that way. And maybe even "made a decision" isn't quite accurate as it seemed to just be innate in me...almost a purely intuitive "decision". It's really something, I recall distinctly feeling an intense "cocktail" of raw, for lack of better terms, emotion when, upon embarking on my first "real" girlfriend relationship, the first time I had a jealous response to other males showing interest in her (she did not reciprocate it for what it's worth) while she was my girlfriend. But when I let that thought/emotion exercise play out in my mind to where she would become physical with another guy...that "cocktail" of raw emotions (some combo of jealousy?, disgust?, rage?, humilation? sadness?) was overwhelming. I decided right at that moment that, in addition to sex just being kinda "sacred"I guess, intuitvely to me, that ALSO I did not want to put any of MY future partners through that cocktail down the line...the one of having to imagine me being sexual with someone else, even under "normal"/non-cheating circumstances. I had no idea at the time how rare? (odd?) that is. I thought at the time that there'd be lots of people who would reason that same way...even as I became aware of my peers NOT sharing that...I still figured there'd still be a significant representation of my shared views on it. It seemed so no-brainer reasonable to me. So, anyway, the bottom line is I placed a very high value on the non-casual/high meaningfulness arc of sex...AND, simultaneusly, the exclusivity of it. It's this combo, I think, that seems almost lethal to reconiling from sexual betrayal for me. IDK.

Wow...that was way longer than I anticipated....thank you again for sharing...and for your investment in this thread.

WH

[This message edited by Wounded Healer at 6:50 PM, Thursday, May 22nd]

I had the virgin problem. Virgin on my wedding night, my wife was not. I also viewed sex as sacred.

These things contributed to my betrayal pain. It seemed utterly unbelievable that she could be so casually disgraceful with something so precious to me. I suspect that mismatch contributed to our divorce.

Regarding the idea that if you had HD footage of every event that you’d be free, it’s not real. You’d be left wanting to know what thoughts and feelings were going on in her, where you were at each moment, what you were doing while they had sex, and a trillion other details that would still be left unknown. You have to accept that something precious burned to ash, and it cannot be brought back. Something new could be built, but the old is lost to entropy.

Hi Wounded Healer -

I can relate to your situation, but not really to your problem.

My WW and I started dating at 15, and were virgins when we got married at 22. No other partners until her affairs. So, it seems tragic to say that she has had more sex than I have.

I'm 20 years out from DDay, but I still carry lots of scars from the infidelity. I still think about her affairs every day. I won't go into the (multiple) affair details, but it was messy. I read your profile, and your case was messy too.

But, I never really got hung up on the "virgin problem". To me, the other key aspects of the betrayal were challenging enough - the loss of trust, violation of our marriage vows, etc. The sex part was just a by-product of the trappings of the affair.

One thing mentioned in SI is not to ask your WS any question where you may not be able to handle the answer. I'm also a "want to know everything" type of person, but I never wanted to know the intimate details of her PAs. I figured that there was no value in hearing that information - what would I do with it? How will knowing it help you? I think it's good that you learned the timelines, frequency, partner info, etc, but for me, knowing the specifics of the sex doesn't really add any value for me in understanding what happened and trying to move forward.

If I do find myself dwelling on the sex of the affair, I simply try to control the narrative in my head. Not by knowing the details of what happened, but the opposite actually. Make up your own version of what happened. For example, my WS mentioned that one of her APs couldn't work a condom properly, so I use that as support for thinking that their sex was nothing special. As hikingout mentioned, the sex part of the affair for most women is transactional. So, I think you should understand that, if your mind gets stuck on this. You have a deeper emotional connection to your WW than her affair partners, and your sex reflects that.

Also, please try to avoid testing the affair waters yourself, just to find out what sex is like with someone else. Unless you really want to end your marriage, the amount of additional damage this will do may be insurmountable. Right after my WW confessed to her affairs, she told me that I could have my own affair, as some sort of "equality" measure. I told her that I thought that was the worst idea ever.

Finally, not to end on a down note... But if sex is this sacred to you, then you may have to consider that her having sex with someone else is a deal-breaker for your marriage. That's your call completely, and no one would tell you that you are wrong for feeling that way. But FWIW, I always thought that an affair would be a deal-breaker for my marriage. And my wife told me before we got married, that if I had an affair, she would kill me.
Yet, we're still together 20 years post DDay.

Feel free to PM me if I can help.

I feel I should clarify my comment as to not have anyone wonder why I would recommend him having affairs. Especially since that was exactly what my husband did.

Everyone looks at what an affair is differently. Some believe if you are still married it’s an affair if you separate. I am just simply not of that belief, but hold space and respect for those who do.

When I say separate and have your own experiences, I mean have an above board conversation. You have been trying to deal with this aspect for four years. I think you are doing yourself a disservice because it doesn’t align with your values.

I do not think you should go have an affair, or betray your wife. I think you may need to come to terms with it without the forcing of the issue. And if it requires understanding what being with someone else is like then you separate and are free to see other people.

I would have probably said you are best to divorce but I sense that isn’t what you want at all and I realize that even a separation may not be what you want. But if you feel like you need to have experiences to understand intimacy with another that is the best solution to execute. Be above board and true to yourself.

Hi Hiking,

I know I have a tiny post count...but boy do I read...and your posts are always of high value and insight for me, so, thank you so much for joining this thread. I truly appreciate your thoughts.

Maybe my response to Poet clarified this some already, but I want to clarify even further as I think my origiinal post being a bit scatter-minded leaves room for this misunderstanding...so I'll say this plainly:

I don't have any real desire/need to experience sex with anyone else. I just am trying to articulate that it seems like it's just an added exponent to wrapping myself around my wife's PA. Like, not only can I not relate to sexually betraying someone, I can't even relate to sex AT ALL outside of my wife...let alone "betrayal sex". And really, as I parse this, bearing in mind some of what Sisoon probes me about in his response (which I will get to )...maybe I don't even know what I am trying to get at? As I sit here pondering this reply, maybe a more succinct thought enters the chat:

I think if I'd treated sex more casually from the jump, I would not be stuck here in this particular part of my wife's betrayal.

I'd know first hand if it's a big deal, if it's not a big deal, how it can vary and layer from partner to partner, circumstance to circumstance...it just seems like that body (no pun intended) of knowledge/experience would give me insight into the experience my WW had with her AP. And maybe that's it...I mean my wife and I have always been/were/are super close (duh, right?) and deeply intimate (not just sexually...but very much sexually) in our relationship. Since the moment we met, really, at 18. Shades of codependecy I'm sure, but not nearly all that way. Just really, naturally, ,intimately close. We GENUINELY adore each other's company. I know that has to sound crazy...like I'm sure evryone feels that way...and I am not saying that with any hint of superiority or anything, but I actually DO think we are at least at some level, unique in that. There's very little if much of anything at all we haven't experienced together or shared together. Even our individual interests and hobbies...we share the joy of those things we do independently, with each other. Who is likely the second most excited person on the planet if I go out and catch a 6 lb. bass? She is. When I get the misfire in the 'Vette figured out? Her. And vice versa. Honestly. And this affair, for the love, she lived a year, basically, "without me". It's really the only thing, IN 36 YEARS we've done completely disconnected from, totally apart, and "without" each other. So, there's a year of her life I only have second hand bits and pieces of, and to me, those bedroom scenes in her affair represent the deepest and farthest places of separation from her that I have ever been...and maybe, that are even possible? IDK.

And it just seems (thinking dangerously out loud here) that, at the very least, if I knew what sex with someone else was even like, that that light-years-away place she went, would seem, not quite so far away? But honestly, I don't know. This all starts, like Poet said, to feel a bit silly after while of really digging it out.

You asked me a question about intimacy, and even though I'm already word flooding here, I do want to answer it.

I mean, I am aware that sex can vary in degrees of intimacy, even in totally monogomous relationships (Again...my only frame of reference). You mention safety and comfort as, obviously, adding to it (intimacy) and that you have had the deepest intimate experiences with your husband as such. I get this. Actually, my wife says pretty much the exact same thing. Her affair sex?...no comparison intimacy wise. She is aware that she was used. "I was a piece of meat" were her exact words. You'd think that would go a long way to help settle it, right? I don't want to go too far into these weeds here, but this gets head spinning on a lot of levels pretty fast for me. I mean, for one, she multiple orgasmed with him. And I know my wife has to have a certain level of "comfort and safety" to do that. But..even way beyond that, for me, and maybe it's that sex "valuation" thing for me again, but I mean...simple nudity is intimate. Allowing someone to undress you, or allowing someone to watch you undress...intimate. The freaking Victoria's Secret messages on the ass of my wife's panties...intimate. My wife's unique shapes, colors, tastes, sounds...are all...intimate. Her kiss. Intimate. The surrender to allow him to position her, and reposition her to his liking..intimate. The ILY's during the encounters...intimate. The shower she took at his house...intimate. I could go on and on here...I mean, I know we're talking about sex, but if we want to go further a bit, the glass of wine over dinner with him...intimate. Riding in his car...intimate. So here's the thing...even if the overall summation of the sex was "bad" or "doesn't compare"...it is still EXPLODING with...intimacy.

You see, though, if I'd had dozens of more casual encounters with a small (or large!) stack of partners in my experience...would I "feel" all those things? Would I notice them? Would I care as much? Would each and every one of them carry less than the metric ton weights they seem to place on my chest right now? I'll never know. And I have no desire to do the things that would be needed to make the attempt to find out. And I DON'T regret the path that has led me to not knowing. I'm just thinking it is making my recovery...which we all can certainly attest to being nearly impossibly hard to begin with...even harder.

Thank you again Hiking. I truly appreciate your investment here.

WH

I don’t think having more sexual experience with others would remove your feelings personally.

My husband had a long ass affair with someone he saw multiple times a week. All the things you say are along the lines of what I think most people feel when they learn of the affair.

And it resonates what you are describing of your relationship. We have been together almost thirty years. We have always had a very sexual/passionate relationship. We have the thing, the chemistry, the needle in the haystack sort of thing in most ways.

My affair wasn’t about sex, it wasn’t about my husband, it was about how I felt about myself. And it surely didn’t get better by having an affair I am certain of that. I too was used. I did not have any orgasm during the affair, though I was with him a total of three nights and they were all in a row.

However, orgasms can be caused by other things besides having comfort or intimacy. There is the whole forbidden thing (adrenaline), the ability to be someone else, etc.

However, I hear you. I hear the wounding, the narrative and all the other things that are there. I believe in the what we resist persists. Have you ever thought about being okay with the fact you are not okay with it? I know that sounds dumb.

Allow me to explain. You love your wife, that is evident. You value your life together. You want these feelings to go away so you can go back to that. Well, unfortunately infidelity isn’t erasable by our mind and heart. Does your wife know why she had the affair? Has she made efforts to change those things?

So validate your feelings. There is nothing wrong with you about what you wrote. These are natural feelings and a lot of them I believe you would have even if you weren’t a virgin when you started up with her.

The pain you feel is because affairs happen is great marriages too, and then it’s hard to understand why there was anything else needed.. For us, it happened in a pretty great marriage. Nothing is ever perfect of course but as far as marriages go mine is/was pretty great. And that allowed the love to grow exponentially, the fall is from a higher place. Your wife broke promises to you. I have some suspicion that your focus on the sex is as to not focus on some of the other aspects such as those broken promises. She is your best friend you don’t want to be angry with her. You want it all to get back to what it was.

It’s not going to be that. It’s going to be something different now. But it doesn’t mean that it can’t get better. Acceptance is a part that we have to come to in order to cross the bridge over to start letting some of it go.

I think you may not be ready for acceptance. So to me the step before it is to not fight yourself on how you feel. The less you struggle against it the more things will start to flow again.

The other piece of the puzzle is really what is she doing to help you? What has she done for her recovery and work? She hopefully has done something, she is a repeat offender here. Maybe there is part of you that doesn’t want to let some parts go because she is not a safe partner for you.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:29 PM, Friday, May 23rd]

Hi Sisoon,

Like the others, I apprciate your voice here so much. Thank you for joining in this discussion.

I wanted to make super clear right off the bat, in case you have not read my previous replies in this thread, that I have zero desire, intention, temptation, or motivation whatsoever to do the RA/MH thing. At all. I didn't make that clear enough in my original message. I'm not lamenting my comparative sexual "inexperience" in an of itself, rather more just lamenting that it seems to add a rather unique and complex layer of thing to wade through on top of the standard (if there is such a thing?) reconciliation things we have to do necessary to surviving infidelity. I am sorry for the confusion.

Also...you are correct. I will never be free from the fact of being betrayed. When I think of freedom, I think, of course, being free from the that cocktail of still raw-ish emotion I feel in connection to it. That's just the thing. In my reply above to Poet, I describe the intense mix of emotions I felt as a very young man when, in a thought exercise brought on by other males showing overt attention to my then-girlfriend, I allowed myself to to go to a place in my mind where she took that bait and became, ultimately, sexual with them. It was an overwhemling feeling, I describe it as a cocktail becuase I STILL can't fully describe exactly what it is...some combination of revulsion and jealousy and disgrace and disgust and humilation and powelessness and rage and sadness and God only knows what else. The experience of that was so powerful for me that it played a major part in me committing myself to saving that part of me for my future spouse. I assumed the furture Mrs. WH would feel the same way if, wherever she was, she had to do that same thought exercise...and I didn't want to put any future Mrs. WH through that. I have had that same overwhelming feeling in precisely three seasons of my life. The first, I just described...a thought exercise during my first "real" relationship.
The second time was when I encountered that my future/now wife had not shared that view of sex...which we processed early on in our relationship. And third...learning of my wife's affair. The differnece between the third and the first two? The first two abated. The first, super quickly, it was just a thought exercise afterall, not a reality. The second, took a little bit, becuase it WAS reality, but it still, was dealt with and abated prior to marriage. The trouble with the third iteration? I feel it, at some level, nearly daily since discovering my wife's betrayals. Even after all this time. Even after years of IC, EMDR, and self work. It has not abated.

A super long, winding answer to your question about what freedom means to me. It means being free from this "cocktail" intruding upon my life on the most regular of basis'.

Maybe I need to also add here (Hiking questions this above) that my wife,fairly quickly became a "safe" partner after discovery for me. Due to my F'ed up timeline, the actual events from her infidelities were in the past long enough, that she was already proving, before I even knew about her affairs, to be safe again. getting back to the "her" I had always known. Since discovery, especially so. Zero issues with empathy, no stonewalling, trickle truth, full transparency, did, does, and will do and answer anything I ask her to in relation to all of it. Never excused it. She
is utterly ashamed of herself, and over the top grateful for the grace she has been given.

All of that to say, with this issue, it's not her...it's me.

Thank you again for all you do here and for your investment in this discussion,

WH

I think it's hard to articulate precisely without activating some sort of comment on retroactive jealousy, but it's as simple as it being "extra" unfair. You "followed the rules" front and back. You thought she would at least follow the back half, but even that turned out to be wrong.

She was not a virgin when we married, we processed that "incongruence" during our dating/engagement and entered into our, what I thought would be, an exclusive sexual relationship upon marriage.

I think you basically nailed it here.

Good evening,

I will not have the opportunity this evening to respond to the rest of these very thoughtful and helpful replies, but I have read them am sitting with them, and will respond soon.

Thank you all so much again,

WH

Hello Ink,

I've followed much of your story here and always feel a little weird when I have benefitted from observing someone's infidelity journey from a distance, without personally engaging it by posting into it. Yours is such a story. Your journey to your current resolve was helpful to me and I appreciate and thank you for living it on record here at SI.

Thank you for that observation that my obsessive need to know the fullest possible detail is pretty much impossible to satiate. I mean, cognitively I already recognize this, but it just helps to hear that, no matter how much information I have, it will never be enough...because that desire is coming from somewhere much deeper than just a "need to know"...likely my mind and heart STILL desperately trying to make sense of and find subsequent rest/peace in something that is, in the truest sense of the word...senseless. And it's that deeper thing that needs to keep being targeted and focused on.

Thank you also for your thoughts on the "Virginity Problem"...always glad to know I'm not alone in that...and to have affirmed to me that, yes, as it is for me, it was a uniquely added twist that contributed to the ultimate ending of your marriage.

I hope this isn't inappropriate to ask...and I know it's ultimately unfair for me to ask it, because you will only be able to project a potential answer...but I'm going to ask anyway.

Your wife was unable to, ultimately, find empathy/true remorse. How do imagine the "Virginity Problem" might have asserted itself in the presence of empathy/remorse? Could that "casual disgrace" of something so precious to you still possibly have been too much, even in the face of her being genuine? Again..unfair question I know...and even beyond that, I know I am the only one who can make that determination for myself, but still, I can't resist asking. Men in our position (with the Virginity Problem as it specifically relates to being sexually betrayed) seem so, anectdotally at least, RARE, I just have to ask.

Thanks so much again for your considerable contributions here.

WH

I hope I am not chiming in too much but I just want to make another observation.

In life, so much of our suffering is the narrative that we put around it. And I want to be careful here because I am not trying to invalidate your feelings. But feelings are spins offs of what narrative we assign to the situation.

Over the years I have found that certain narratives where there is something rare or uniques that makes our pain worse and harder to recover from, well, then guess what happens? It becomes harder to recover from.

And most infidelities have unique contexts even if on the outset it seems ordinary. It’s not ordinary to anyone who experiences it.

I am not saying your feelings are not valid about not being able to place yourself in the context of even being intimate with someone else. But the reality is every single person who gets cheated on is unable to place themselves in their ws’s shoes. That’s not to make you feel better because I know it doesn’t, it’s an attempt to go for a wider lens to the problem.

Speaking from my own experience I had an affair before my husband did. And many sexual partners before I met him. I was a bit adventurous more because I am an CSA (multiple instances by different people) and typically that either makes you promiscuous or frigid.

Even I could not understand a lot of big aspects of his affair. I felt robbed of being privy of all that happened between him and a woman I thought I knew fairly well. I had mind movies. I felt foolish, inept, undesirable, thrown away and all the feelings you say here. I imagined them laughing at me or making comments that it was time for "her" to come home. Which means to them I was an undeserving outcast that shouldn’t have every right to return from work to a home that I not only help pay for but painstakingly decorated and made it a functional place for our family. I wanted to know how her pubic hair was, if he liked how she tasted, what kinds of underwear she wore, did she ever bring lingerie, were their toys. I wanted to know the sounds he made, what he felt afterwards. I learned he kissed me many times shortly after she left. And I would fixate in one set of details until I grabbed onto another set. And sometimes I would forget a set and then remember them and go down the exact same rabbit hole again but maybe not as long that second time. It’s maddening.

No one could even guess the outrage I felt, especially knowing that I did things too. The feelings of not knowing what all that happened or was said in my own house by and to my own husband. That is because feelings are not logical things, it doesn’t really matter what we ourselves have experienced they still hit in some the same ways.

We all have the captivity to heal. We all have the capacity to choose. And at some point, choosing to heal means learning to stop the tortured rumination.

I want to illustrate to you the idea that fixating on a special aspect of the infidelity and the obvious obstacles involved will continue to make that feel unmovable to you. It will continue to feel unsurmountable. Some people hold onto it so they have a way to keep their vulnerability with their spouse away. A way to hold themselves separate because they can’t risk the type of pain again.

This is why I say sit with the idea that it’s okay not to be okay. Don’t think about how to get over it, or the outcome of your marriage. Just allow the feelings to exist and resist the urge to make them bigger or to continue to ruminate. Just keep reminding yourself, yep, completely natural to feel that way. And let it be. Because the feelings are stuck.

One thing that helped my rumination was the book "the power of now" by Eckhardt Tolle.

Another thing that might help is it doesn’t always matter how sorry a ws is or how reformed, it still may be a dealbreaker in which you never can get to. Fear of vulnerability with them again because they hurt you so bad. That is separate from whether you can heal from it. That’s about the outcome of your marriage rather than what narrative you choose to place on it moving forward.

Trying to talk yourself out of your natural reaction that comes from a mix of your beliefs, values, past experiences, etc is making it bigger. Have the natural reactions. I promise you, once you have allowed that, and even allowing some of those reactions to be experienced by her, they will start moving and dislodging. Your mental fixation of trying to overcome it is making us unsurmountable. The circumstances of being a virgin doesn’t have to be unsurmountable.

That’s not to say I am saying you will want to stay married. But you have been with her forty years. I think you are unlikely to divorce or separate at this point. (Not that you couldn’t or shouldn’t) So what this leaves you with 1)allow yourself to engage in the feelings without trying to change them 2) then start working on changing the narrative "I CAN heal from this despite..xyz and eventually 3) learn to change the channel in your head. I am not saying bury it, I am saying stop allowing the rumination.

When it comes to #3 remind yourself that you can’t change the past, find the mental payoffs for the rumination and replace them, and be mindful about how you use your creativity. meaning, start slowly replacing these thoughts with being in the present and doing things that are completely immersive will help start to regulate your nervous system.

[This message edited by hikingout at 5:18 PM, Friday, May 23rd]

Hi again Hiking,

Thanks again for your continued engagement with me on this. This specific issue feels like sort of an oddball-ish kinda topic/angle and I appreciate anyone willing to sit, even virtually, in the "oddity" of it with me for a bit. It just helps.

I appreciate your describing the necessarily flawed but awesomeness of your marriage with/without the infidelity. Along with this operating assumption that I would likely deal a lot better with all of this had I had a "lower", ir more casual valuation of sex, I have also thought, noting the irony, that I would also be dealing with this a lot better had my marriage been crappy, or even meh, prior to the betrayals. Ultimately all irrelevant, of course, but when you describe your marriage to me, I know that you know.

A couple of things fron your last post resonate with me. I have thought for some time now that I really have only one move available to me after having sorted all of this for years now...and you mentioned it specifically. Having to come to terms with being okay not being okay with it. You accurately intuit that I do love my wife, not blindly or accountlessly (as has been hinted at or even plainly stated to me by some posters here...even in my short post count), but because, with the exception of one year out of the 36 I have known her (and a tragic misguided lie of omission for a decade...not small things, I know) she was and is an absolutely amazing human being in all regards, but especially in her relationship with me, in all of its facets. It would, again, be wayyy easier, for me, and for the "outside world" even, to reconcile all this if this weren't true. But it just objectively is. How ironic that that fact actually makes it more complicated? Perhaps I digress...

But yes, I'm trying to arrive somewhere in the vicinity of "okay not being okay with this." You mention just kinda embracing the feelings...just feeling the feelings, which, of course, I get. But at the same time, isn't NOT feeling the feelings the ultimate goal here? Or is it more that, if I stop trying to make myself be okay with this, that that's what actually helps me be more okay with it? (starting to feel like Bill Murray in What about Bob here digging at all of this...Death Therapy anyone?) I got stuck here in IC too. This was part of the whole moving towards acceptance thing...which, again, I think you correctly intuit, that I haven't. I wrote a post last year (or before) about what on earth acceptance really means, with tons of great and insightful input...also, as mentioned, addressed in IC...but here I still am. What, more specifically if I may, does "being okay with not being okay with this" look and feel like to you? Again, thank you for this observation.

I'm also thinking about the question/suggestion that perhaps the sex is kind of an involuntarily red herring thing going on in me. I need to sit with this more, but it resonates. My initial thoughts are that yes, my best friend did in fact betray me, and I just STILL can't get myself around that notion. Perhaps the sex for me is just the ultimate, unavoidable, most pointed expression of that basic truth that I still, evidently, can't quite fathom yet.

I hope this last question isn't as odd as it feels, as I'm not totally sure what I'm seeking in asking it. And, it's unfair, as you will at best only be able to answer it second hand. But here goes...

Do you think the awesomeness of your marriage prior to your infidelity had a potentially exponential kind of effect on your husband's tragic response of choosing an affair of his own? Again, knowing full well, there are absolutely zero excuses, including being cheated on, to do it. But, if I may, your affair broke THE thing, the needle in a haystack you guys had. Do you think that heavily influenced his own tragic failure in that regard? Maybe at least part of why I ask this is because, in my own situation, that breaking opened up such an experience of maybe lostness and alienation from myself that was more disorienting than anything I even imagined could happen to me. I lost my mom at a fairly young adult age to a horrific car accident...it's the closest point of reference that I have for how uttetly bottom-dropping-out a life event can be. And sometimes I'm ashamed (for the sake of my amazing mother's life and memory) that that was comparative kindergarten to learning of my wife's betrayals. I can see how one could become so lost in that shell shocked-ness that they make horrible coping decisions they would never even approach making otherwise. Again, I don't even know what I'm looking for here...maybe that it's just, again, the needle in a haystack thing my wife and I had is just ANOTHER complicated land mine filled maze to navigate towards freedom from all of this. And I don't want, again, to come off as my betrayal being anything more than anyone else's...it just, feels like it has these weird combos in it that make it hard to find specific help and insight for sometimes.

Well, I managed to write another book of a post. Thank you again for reading it.

WH

Quick note!

Hiking, we cross posted in our most recent replies. I haven't read yours yet as I wanted to get this clarification out there ASAP so that you and others would consider that context if/as you read my latest entry.

Thank you!

WH

Thanks, I think your response was still fitting. I will work on the response because I think all I did the last post was expound on it. So it’s pretty much still the same conversation.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:56 PM, Friday, May 23rd]

Thanks also to MrPaws and TIF...

Your time and thoughts are appreciated!

WH

I

appreciate your describing the necessarily flawed but awesomeness of your marriage with/without the infidelity. Along with this operating assumption that I would likely deal a lot better with all of this had I had a "lower", ir more casual valuation of sex, I have also thought, noting the irony, that I would also be dealing with this a lot better had my marriage been crappy, or even meh, prior to the betrayals. Ultimately all irrelevant, of course, but when you describe your marriage to me, I know that you know.

I do know. I think anytime there is a big love in someone’s heart, then things can hurt worse for sure. It may not always be the quality of the marriage, as I think someone like Inkhulk had a big love in his heart even if his marriage hadn’t been all that he had hoped for. But when things really go well, things click, the compatibility is high and you have great interactions it’s jarring. But I also think that you can almost trim that into a reason to think healing will be harder. Thinking anything is harder is always going to mentally put these impossible benchmarks that are just out of reach.

And, it’s not because of the marriage that people cheat.

A couple of things fron your last post resonate with me. I have thought for some time now that I really have only one move available to me after having sorted all of this for years now...and you mentioned it specifically. Having to come to terms with being okay not being okay with it. You accurately intuit that I do love my wife, not blindly or accountlessly (as has been hinted at or even plainly stated to me by some posters here...even in my short post count), but because, with the exception of one year out of the 36 I have known her (and a tragic misguided lie of omission for a decade...not small things, I know) she was and is an absolutely amazing human being in all regards, but especially in her relationship with me, in all of its facets. It would, again, be wayyy easier, for me, and for the "outside world" even, to reconcile all this if this weren't true. But it just objectively is. How ironic that that fact actually makes it more complicated? Perhaps I digress...

But yes, I'm trying to arrive somewhere in the vicinity of "okay not being okay with this." You mention just kinda embracing the feelings...just feeling the feelings, which, of course, I get. But at the same time, isn't NOT feeling the feelings the ultimate goal here? Or is it more that, if I stop trying to make myself be okay with this, that that's what actually helps me be more okay with it? (starting to feel like Bill Murray in What about Bob here digging at all of this...Death Therapy anyone?) I got stuck here in IC too. This was part of the whole moving towards acceptance thing...which, again, I think you correctly intuit, that I haven't. I wrote a post last year (or before) about what on earth acceptance really means, with tons of great and insightful input...also, as mentioned, addressed in IC...but here I still am. What, more specifically if I may, does "being okay with not being okay with this" look and feel like to you? Again, thank you for this observation.

It’s the fact that when you have the feelings you are trying to solve them as if they are a problem.

In reality they are normal and natural feelings that if you allow yourself to let that dam bursts and just feel them instead of trying to logic away from them, they can’t process to leave the body.

I have some idea just from talking to you this much that you probably have held back some of it because you may have some fears. I don’t know what they are but I will share my experience and maybe it will help illustrate what I am trying to get at.

I am super uncomfortable with anger. I saw it growing up and I never wanted to be like my mom was. (And that’s complicated, I love my mom and I think she did her best but she was a very young mother with a lot of her own trauma) However, it’s a major step in our grief. And for me, I felt like if I let it out it would be ugly, and that my husband and I may not be able to come back from it. Also know I have been a people pleaser and a self abandonment kind of person so getting mad for myself was not possible. It held up my progress until I could really go there. It was very hard for me, I am probably one of the most jovial people on the planet. Once I could really express it and let it out, there was movement. It’s not an immediate cure, but once some of that was processed, I felt better.

I'm also thinking about the question/suggestion that perhaps the sex is kind of an involuntarily red herring thing going on in me.

I would not call this a red herring. I am sure it’s legitimately something that makes this harder. However, I think there are two things- one you keep trying to overcome it rather than just let it sit which makes it bigger because you are creating an internal struggle/cognitive dissonance. CD can be a big problem because we tend to start justifying and holding onto it more. And secondly, I think the more forefront thing is the value you put on sex rather than the virginity. What your wife did legitimately goes against more than just values of fidelity, but also adding the sanctity you see sex all on its own. She gave that to someone else AND demonstrated sex doesn’t mean to her what it does to you. Or probably sometimes thinking sex does mean to her what it does to you and she gave it to him because she valued him.

That last thing? She didn’t value him. If she had she would have done things the right way. Gotten a divorce so she would have been free to be with him for real. No, she used him as her side piece to make herself feel better- not just from the validation but by exercising the escapism she wanted. She took a vacation from her life.

It’s hard not to take that personally when you are supposed to be the center of her life. I think your wife likely wanted to feel like the center of her own life for that time period. (Could be she was experiencing aging, empty nest, burnout, or many things that have nothing to do with you or your marriage)

I need to sit with this more, but it resonates. My initial thoughts are that yes, my best friend did in fact betray me, and I just STILL can't get myself around that notion. Perhaps the sex for me is just the ultimate, unavoidable, most pointed expression of that basic truth that I still, evidently, can't quite fathom yet.

I do not know how it really is for men on that level. I have heard enough men say they feel like sex is how to bond with their significant other. And I think women find it bonding too, but I think it truly is a different thing. The fact you have chosen only to share that act with your wife, probably makes sculpted that value even more. So I won’t sit and try and reduce it to a bodily function, but I will say the value on sex in an affair is rarely described this way. She traded it for what she did value at the time- a way to escape whatever issues she was having within herself. Some people drink, use drugs, some people gamble, shop, some people have better coping and just get through it. Your value on it was highly not her value on it, but it doesn’t reduce the betrayal you feel.

I hope this last question isn't as odd as it feels, as I'm not totally sure what I'm seeking in asking it. And, it's unfair, as you will at best only be able to answer it second hand. But here goes...

Do you think the awesomeness of your marriage prior to your infidelity had a potentially exponential kind of effect on your husband's tragic response of choosing an affair of his own? Again, knowing full well, there are absolutely zero excuses, including being cheated on, to do it. But, if I may, your affair broke THE thing, the needle in a haystack you guys had. Do you think that heavily influenced his own tragic failure in that regard? Maybe at least part of why I ask this is because, in my own situation, that breaking opened up such an experience of maybe lostness and alienation from myself that was more disorienting than anything I even imagined could happen to me. I lost my mom at a fairly young adult age to a horrific car accident...it's the closest point of reference that I have for how uttetly bottom-dropping-out a life event can be. And sometimes I'm ashamed (for the sake of my amazing mother's life and memory) that that was comparative kindergarten to learning of my wife's betrayals. I can see how one could become so lost in that shell shocked-ness that they make horrible coping decisions they would never even approach making otherwise. Again, I don't even know what I'm looking for here...maybe that it's just, again, the needle in a haystack thing my wife and I had is just ANOTHER complicated land mine filled maze to navigate towards freedom from all of this. And I don't want, again, to come off as my betrayal being anything more than anyone else's...it just, feels like it has these weird combos in it that make it hard to find specific help and insight for sometimes.

Not a weird question, and I don’t really feel like I need to speculate because you can imagine this was a theme of many of the questions I wanted to know throughout our recovery, and ultimately our reconciliation.

I think a few things here. I acknowledge I was the source of his pain that he sought to escape from through his affair.

Second, I think fidelity is not something he values as much as other aspects of the marriage and definitely not in the way you value it. I mean, if I had said I want us to go have experiences with others he would have been down. Not an open relationship but situations in which we would both be present for and with boundaries. The betrayal and the fact he knows at the time of my affair I did want to end our marriage. His wounds are different than yours. He has been married previously and had other sexual partners so he isn’t a this is a scared act kind of guy.

Third, he had it in him to do it. Period. There are many betrayed men on here that would never have done it under any circumstance. Their pain is likely as deep as his if there were a way to measure it.

I am not sure if that answers your question? But he was just another ws who used bad coping to deal with internal pain. Would something else have happened that he couldn’t cope with and he had the opportunity? We will never know. It would have to be pretty bad and deep and that’s where I feel like my part of the accountability begins, but also where it ends. 8 months prior to his affair I had agreed to give him a great divorce settlement. I was amicable to him over all of it. He called it off. He chose to keep working on R, and we worked on it the entire 18 months of his affair.

There was much more lying, he had it with our employee in our house. Part of me thinks he had to go bigger somehow, like revenge. But, he went through therapy and we had Mc and all the exhausting conversations, if he had any of that he isn’t aware of it, I am convinced. It was more like he just had a run of the mill thing, but he worked from our house, had more freedoms during the day while I was working, and it just esculqtee and lasted longer than mine.

Well, I managed to write another book of a post. Thank you again for reading it.