Affair Recovery Diary — April
This is part seventeen of my story of recovering from my wife’s affair and rebuilding our marriage. If you haven’t already, please start at the beginning with part one.
April 14
Today I met with my therapist and told her my foremost problem at the moment is accepting that I now have the full truth about my wife’s affair, that there’s not another shoe yet to drop. The “shoe” that most often crosses my mind is the possibility that my wife may still be lying about how far things went physically, and that they were in fact able to fully consummate things the night they were together.
My therapist suggested that I might be rushing things if I expect to feel any differently at this point, three months after the affair ended. Rebuilding trust is not easy or quick, she said. Full trust won’t come until after repeated reassurances, and I will still have some doubts for a while.
She asked me what worried me about the possibility that more remained to be revealed. I told her that, although it would hurt to learn more had happened, I was not afraid that I wouldn’t be able to deal with it. I’ve dealt with everything so far. My primary concern is what it could do to my wife if she’s still hiding something. If she left the door to dishonesty slightly ajar, could it swing wide open again at some point in the future?
My therapist told me that I shouldn’t worry about my wife’s thoughts and feelings because I can’t control them. I should focus on building the best foundation for our relationship going forward, and leave my wife to do the same herself.
The main takeaway from the session was that it’s not about what happened, it’s about what’s ahead of us. Until I can more fully trust that I have the whole story, my therapist told me I could try acting as if I don’t have doubts about the topic that most bothers me. I’m going to try that and see how it goes.
April 27
For almost two weeks, I’ve been trying to “act as if” I fully believe — or even know — that my wife has told me everything that happened with complete honesty. It has actually helped a lot, just to keep it out of my mind. After all, what’s the point in fretting about the unknowable? So far my therapist has not steered me wrong.
I’ve also stopped trying to rush full trust. My wife is currently out of town on a short business trip. She told me repeatedly before she left, “FaceTime me whenever you need to.” She didn’t want me to be nervous while she’s away. Last night, I FaceTimed her somewhat unexpectedly, after she had been in her hotel room for a couple of hours. If she had planned something with her former affair partner, they would have probably been together at this time.
But my wife answered immediately, and she showed me around the room, proving to me that no one was there with her. She didn’t mind, and did it without being asked. It seemed to make her feel better, too, to be able to reassure me that she’s in this with me, one hundred percent.
She’ll be on the way home soon, and I can’t wait to see her.
April 28
While my wife was out of town, I came across one of her high school yearbooks. Out of curiosity, I looked to see whether her affair partner, who was her high school sweetheart, had signed it. Near the back, I found a long message he had written. It was what you’d expect from a tenth grade boyfriend, but it contained some mildly interesting or somewhat confusing comments that I asked my wife about on the way home from picking her up at the airport. No big deal.
But during that conversation, I mentioned that she had said to me on the morning I first confronted her, “I’ve loved him since I was 14 years old.” She didn’t contradict or downplay that statement as we made our way home last night. The sentence has swirled in my head all night and into this morning.
That statement makes me feel like her betrayal, to some degree, didn’t just last for the couple of months that the affair was going on, but rather for our entire relationship. How would it make her feel if I told her that I have always loved my first serious girlfriend? Is that normal? Is it even that common?
I loved my first serious girlfriend. I won’t deny that. That first strong, romantic bond with someone else, those first physical expressions of that bond, the crazy teenage hormones… that’s powerful stuff, and those are experiences you don’t forget so easily.
But now I know how much deeper and more meaningful love can be, and I learned that from my relationship with my wife. Whatever remnants of old feelings I may have had were quickly washed away as my wife and I fell in love 25 years ago. My old girlfriends? I wished them the best — well, most of them, anyway — but they were in the past. They didn’t matter to me anymore. I didn’t love them anymore.
Is holding on to past loves a male/female difference thing? I don’t know. Maybe so, but even if it is, I can’t relate to it, and it hurts to think she always had those feelings for him.
April 29
Yesterday, after writing the entry above, I asked my wife about her “I’ve loved him since I was 14” statement. She explained that she had said it in the early moments after being caught in the affair, when she was still very confused about her feelings. She no longer feels like she loved him all along, and she emphasized that for the past three-and-a-half months, she has had zero feelings for him. She says her focus is one hundred percent on me.
I still think that during our entire relationship up to the affair, she had a borderline-inappropriate fixation on him, or at least on how things ended so abruptly with him. She admitted she would have occasional “what if” thoughts about him.
But, that’s all in the past. Those are feelings from our old, dead relationship, and we’re building a new one that’s stronger, better and more alive than ever.