SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

How do you survive the crushing grief?

Not just the grief of infidelity.

The crushing grief of having forgiven, only to discover it never stopped.

Of having lived honestly, wholeheartedly, with love and integrity while building a family, believing you were walking through life together.

Of having faced life’s biggest challenges… difficult childbirth, raising a child with special needs, watching a parent battle cancer and come back from near death, working hard, sacrificing, loving, trusting… only to discover that through all of it your partner was a serial cheater.

The grief of realizing the life you believed you were living was never fully real.

The grief of having your heart broken, your trust shattered, and your faith in people fundamentally shaken.

The grief of wondering if you will ever know what it feels like to be held, loved, and completely safe with another human being. To trust someone without fear. To rest.

I feel like I’ve lost more than my marriage. I’ve lost my sense of meaning, of safety, of what was real.

For those who have lived through this kind of devastation… how did you survive the crushing grief? How did you find meaning again when it felt like everything you believed in had been taken from you?

Ah yes!

It checks out almost word by word let’s say 80-90% is if not identical, very similar. Even the events.

You need surrender sister.
And it’s not in a defeatist way, it’s in a victorious state of surrender.

Means make peace with the understanding that you can’t control the integrity of a person you love or loved.

Even if they are good deep inside.
Even if they have potential.

You can’t help someone who can’t even truly love themselves.

They need to make that step, it’s an easy one, but for a twisted and broken ego it’s a titanic battle to just take that first step ( for it will ultimately kill that ego and the ego does not want to die).

Surrender to a fight that you can’t even start, not because you’re incapable of winning, you likely are, but because it doesn’t belong to your world. It’s their inner world and they allow no one in, not even their true self. It’s the kingdom of ego and it doesn’t even exist, just a sick fantasy, a mirage of drugged dreams.

Surrender that and embrace you. You will find inner love and that will heal it all.
And the glow you get will be something that other see and even your wayward will feel awe for.

Not that it matters, you will need no validation anymore whatsoever.

And that’s what peace looks like

how did you survive the crushing grief?

One day at a time. There is no short cut thru grief. Feel it, process it, trust yourself to be strong enough and wise enough to navigate it.

How did you find meaning again when it felt like everything you believed in had been taken from you?

It’s like coming home to your house burned to the ground. If a friend had such misfortune, what would you say to them? Grieve it, survive the hard days, and when you are ready start building again. Your cheating partner is not the meaning in your life, he is not your purpose. He was meant to add to it, he has chosen to subtract in devastating ways. But you as a miraculous creation, a spark of light and consciousness, you are vastly more important than any relationship you’ve ever been in. The implosion is wicked painful, we know. But you remain. Heal and dream again.

I am 27 months out from D-Day and even though I have seen a lot of change in my wife, at this point I just find it impossible to ever implicitly trust her with my heart again. I think I will forever hold back a small piece of me because I now know that she is capable of setting aside her moral convictions for selfish reasons regardless of who gets hurt

Do I think she would ever do something like this again? No. Do I think she is capable of doing it? Yes

The reality is there is no guarantee that a spouse will not have an affair. It's a possibility from day one through every single day of a relationship regardless of how good or bad the relationship is

It's a naive fantasy to believe that the spouse is incapable of having an affair. We believe this because we've not been given reason to not but once we are you can never go back for now you fully understand what he / she is really capable of

Neva:

I am uniquely qualified to empathize and sympathize with your post. See my join date and my profile.

I could have written your eloquent post and I have been navigating stormy waters since late April on a number of fronts. I really did not need this chronic, recurring and heartbreaking complication. Some days I am more wrecked and I recover slowly through my own efforts on other days.

I can't speak for you here, but faith and purpose are preserving me now. My adult child depends on me and I want peace in my life. I am looking to the sunrise and WS can follow me or stay in the shadows.

I really hope for peace and joy in the future for you. You truly deserve it. I have tried to meet my difficult circumstances with grace in the past and fight for myself and my child and I wish it all for you as it seems that you have been doing this too. We have acted with honor or done our best to do so.

[This message edited by larkspur at 4:47 PM, Wednesday, July 8th]

I survived the grief as everyone does - one day at a time, a long slow process of healing that involved sharing my burden with close friends, family, and a therapist. It got a lot easier after I made the decision to divorce and I wasn't fighting myself internally every day.

As for finding meaning, safety, and reestablishing reality, those were more deliberate steps. I moved into a small place and made it my own, reclaiming colors and styles that I had given up during the marriage. I started saying yes to social events and going to theaters by myself and learning to travel with single friends. I decided that I would continue to implicitly trust the people close to me who hadn't betrayed me rather than letting STBWX's behavior color my attitudes toward everyone. I continued to do therapy until the day came when I felt like I could truthfully say, "I'm doing well."

It was a journey of years, one that I'm still on. There are still moments when the grief and anger rise up inside me, but the more I make my life my own - one that I'm satisfied with - the faster I can let go of those feelings. I don't expect the grief to ever go away. To lose 30 years of marriage and history, to lose the family and future I worked hard for ... it's heavy, and even if STBWX is not someone I want to be married to, I think I'll always be sad about that loss. But I've made peace with that because I know I'm building a new future as best as I can.