One Year Later
This is part twenty-six 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.
Last week, we passed the one-year anniversary of my wife’s night in a hotel room downtown with her former high school boyfriend.
The date landed on a very busy day for me. After a rough start, I was able to mostly stay focused on other things. The day wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, but it does feel good to be on the other side of it.
So here we are. We’ve made it one year since she began her affair. Soon we will pass one year since I found out about it and she told me it was over. Then, about a month after that, one year since she actually ended it. While these are first anniversaries of some of the most painful memories in my life, I can’t help but feel some pride, satisfaction and — most of all — happiness at the accomplishment.
We’re still together. Not only that, but we both agree that our relationship is far better than it was in the years leading up to the affair, and a good bit better than it’s ever been.
We’re not totally past the pain, and even anger sometimes, but there’s no doubt in either of our minds now. We’re in it one hundred percent. Neither of us is going anywhere. We know we’re going to be together until one of us leaves this earth. Some readers might think it’s naive to say we “know” that. “Things happen,” they’ll think. And yes, things will happen, but we now know how to deal with those things and move forward together. We now see the rewards if we do that, and know the price if we don’t.
But for the vast majority of relationships, things do happen after an affair. Things the couple can’t get past. Most relationships end after an affair. We’re beating those odds.
Why are so few couples successful in rebuilding a marriage after infidelity? I think there are many reasons, but in the end, it simply comes down to the two people involved.
Of course, first of all, both people have to want it. And I mean really want it. This past year has been tough. It has gotten progressively better, but we started out in a really low place full of pain, distrust, anger and resentment. All we really had left was love, but that was enough to start from.
And all along the climb up, we have encountered valleys. We’ve had fights, we’ve had freak-outs, we’ve had further revelations, we’ve had mood swings, we’ve had struggles. The climb has not been easy — at all — and if either one of us had not truly, deeply wanted our marriage to succeed, it wouldn’t have.
But I don’t think just wanting it is enough, unfortunately.
I think even among those couples who do both want to try to save their relationship, success depends to some degree on the types of people involved — both the cheater and the cheated-upon.
I believe the person who cheated is probably not often the kind of person who is able — or inclined — to accept the responsibility, and put in the immense effort required to rebuild. My wife has regularly had her nose rubbed in what she did for almost a year now. At first it was continually, as she witnessed my emotional agony, and listened to me expressing my unfiltered anger and sadness. Now it’s more infrequent, but whenever it comes up, she is reminded again of the pain and suffering she caused.
A lot of people run away from that, and I can understand why. It takes a ton of resilience to stay and weather those punches of guilt and shame. How many people have the humility to totally own up to doing something unequivocally wrong, and also the strength to be frequently reminded of what they did without being ground down and exhausted by it? Not many people are equipped do that, and among those who have cheated, probably even fewer. I greatly admire my wife for it. She truly amazes me every day.
And I have to take some credit, too, of course. I think part of the reason my wife has been able to do that is because she has seen all along that I desperately want to get past this. From day one, I have always wanted to forgive her. Not just gloss over it like it never happened, but process it in the healthiest way possible, sit in the pain when I need to, allow myself to feel the anger, but then… also allow it to dissipate, then get back up and move forward. Keep climbing the hill.
The second piece I wrote, just days after discovering her affair, was about how I knew everything would be okay. I knew then that we could — that we would — do this. I was so sure of it that I titled that chapter “Spoiler Alert.”
My optimism for a bright future with my wife has been one of the fuels that has powered us through this. If I had only wanted to wallow in my pain and have her feel sorry for me, or use my position of moral superiority in this regard to exert power over my wife, we wouldn’t be here.
So, what now? Am I finished writing on this topic on Medium? I hope so, because right now I feel like if I were to become inclined to write anything further, it would only be because we had encountered another major roadblock or personal failure along our path. I am confident that’s not going to happen.
But, I will leave all of this up on Medium. I hope people out there dealing with the aftermath of infidelity can read my story, follow our journey from the beginning, and see events, thoughts and feelings that they can relate to, and that it helps them make better decisions for themselves. Writing has helped me process a lot over the past year, but if reading what I wrote also helps someone out there, then that’s another good thing that has come out of this.
Over the course of the past several months, my wife and I have talked often about the possibility of her writing about what happened from her perspective. The idea was that we might put it all together as a back-and-forth “he said, she said” story of her affair, why it happened, and how we successfully recovered. Hearing both sides could help even more couples who were in a situation similar to ours. We thought we could even publish this as a book. I had looked and not found any books out there like the one I thought we could create.
I think now I know why.
For a couple to be successful in this process, they need to put their love and the health of their relationship first. And the extended timeline of writing a book about infidelity, and going over and over what happened and why, is simply counterproductive to the recovery process. Yes, fully understanding the causes and effects of the affair is essential. But it’s also essential to then leave it behind, as much as possible, and move on.
So, we have decided against writing the book, for our own individual wellbeing and that of our marriage. However, I did ask my wife whether she’d be willing to write one piece, one time, to post here. I asked her to re-read what I’d written, and write whatever she felt moved to write. I felt that would provide valuable perspective to readers here, and that it would give me some additional closure without rehashing everything we went through once again. She has agreed to do it.
So my next few posts will be what my wife wanted to say, in her own words, and that is probably how I’ll end my series here on Medium. It seems fitting to let her have the last word. After all, she started us on this extraordinarily difficult but ultimately rewarding journey, with all of its pain and joy, anger and forgiveness, fear and love.
To be sure, there were easier paths to where we are now. A year ago, I wouldn’t have chosen the path we took, but the destination we’re reaching now, together, is more wonderful than anything I could have imagined then. As my wife and I say to one another all the time: I’m glad we’re here.