WW was 34, OM was 10 years older.

D-day 1 was May 27, 2007. (Internet EA)
D-day 2 was Nov. 4, 2007. (POS OM moved in with sister in the next city)

He was 3 years younger and a player.

Reconciled on Feb 2, 2008.

>>>>>>>>"...but that was enough for me to throw my wedding ring in the pacific."


Tell me that you actually did this, and you aren't just being sarcastic...



tis the truth. it ws memorial day 01. we were at hole in the fence on at capo beach for a beach party with some friends. we went for a walk and she told me. i took off my ring and gave it a heave. told her she might as well do the same cause they mean nothing to me any more.

she didn't follow suit. she also gave me an exact replica on our anniv 12/8. you can see that oc was born on 12/20. new ring is in the safe and i have never put it on.

>>>>>All this being said, I agree that it can never be the same and it shouldn't. I am much more aware of how our interactions go, and still get the dreams of them together>>>>>

i agree whole heartidly. and i don't want the same marriage i had before the A. I want a better one. that one lead to lies and deceat.

and THAT is where the problem lies with my marriage today. w wants the old one back. i want something better, more passionate, more romantic, more attentive, more caring, more in touch.

You don't know how happy I am to hear that. Last week I took mine off after finally hearing the "whole truth" about WW's PA. she must have been keeping it in her car. She was leaving, and was in her car parked in the driveway. I was standing next to the car, and she gave me my ring.....I took it, turned around (while she was screaming...DON'T, DON'T...), and throw that thing as hard as I could. We live in a new neighbourhood with houses being built, and the next day some excavators came and graded the lot that it landed on. After my phone session with Jennifer, and some speaking with people here in this forum, I know now that my anger has been getting the better of me. But, I gotta tell ya, throwing that thing and hearing her cries was the most satisfaction I've had in 4 months (since I first suspected the affair).
WW has said that she wants to buy me a new one (and re-marry me again). I will accept the ring as a gift. I have stated that "I didn't throw the other one away...you did", and "I will not put the new one on...you're the only one who can".
Hopefully she understands the hidden meaning in my statement.

i have been dwelling on buying a new one for myself. nothing fancy just a simple plain band this time and start wearing it to see if it will help get the w out of her funk. if not then i would just put it away also.

about 1 yrs after d-day the church had a renew your vows service. we attended a very big church here and had quite a few friends that all stood up and renewed their vows. i did not. w did not. when my friends asked why my respose was that i want my w to lead the way there showing me that she is infact committed.

Just curious. Did your friend know about your marital problems? And, did your wife stand up?

yes they knew. i told them i wasn't ready. and no my w did not stand up. if she had i would have stood beside her

TMTS, it looks like your FWW's A ended the same as mine, she had kindof decided to end it and then found out that the OM was a POS, which really put the nail in the coffin. I have a question for you. Did your wife still go through withdrawals?

I took mine and pounded it flat with a hammer.

That didn't satisfy me so I took it and melted it along with a bunch of gold I have panned out of the streams up here in Dahlonega .

I have cast it into something special, a golden .45cal bullet, to remind me of the gunshot wound was nowhere as bad as the divorce.

Heck, at today's prices, that bullet could buy me a big screen LCD TV!

Mine, after 2 years of EA went out two times to spend the night with OM in his motor home and have sex. one before and one after our 45th aniversary. She was 64, OM about the same. If she does it again it is OVER!

She went through her withdrawl starting at Christmas time. Early Dec we had officially separated and she started looking for an appartment. We therefore spend Chrismas apart, and I spent a few extra days at my parents house. She had made plans to meet up with him but he stood her up more than once. We figure he met this new girl not long after my FWW telling him that she wanted to work on the marriage. From the time we separate they saw each ther once for lunch, and he brushed her off then too.

So she came to the reilization that her casanova was a dud, so she went through withdrawal over Jan. She had got herself in so deep that now she continued with her plan to move jsut to prove to herself that she could set it all up and make a go of it. Funny thing happened though, she started seeing that her lie would not be very much fun, becasue her friends on our street pretty much told her not to expect them to go visit and that they did not agree with what she was doing, her mom was very upset and told her so everytime the she could.

The last week before the move was not fun for anybody, she was realizing that she was loosing her whole past and everything that was associated with it.

I rarely wore my ring before the A. I just dont like to wear jewlerey of any kind. It was always a major problem for my wife which I ignored.

I put the ring on on D-day and have not taken it off since.

I've got a good question. How many of you were completely blindsided by your DW's A?

For me, I always felt like I was an above average husband. Our marriage and relationship was envied by friends and family. I considered my DW's happiness above my own. Trying to figure out how this happened is like trying to nail jello to a wall. I treated my DW with respect and never raised my voice with her. We rarily if ever fought about anything. Over the course of 10 years we had probably 10 fights where things actually got heated. I showed my DW tons of affection every single day. I told her I loved here multiple times every day. I called her a couple of times a day while she was at work just to see how she was doing. I supported her in the pursuit of her dreams. There was no running around with the guys or any of that stuff. If I was off work, I was at home with my family because that is where I wanted to be. We were best friends and shared everything. I considered myself to be like Mr. Mom. Cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, I did all of it. I was damn good at it too. Looking back at all this stuff and trying to force myself into understanding how my DW could overlook all that was GOOD in our life and marriage is unfathomable to me. I'll never understand why it wasn't enough for her to protect the most important thing in the world to me. Oh well, what you gonna do.

Want2Stay

I on the otherhand was a bad husband. I took my wife for granted. I did not consider her feelings much and did not value her as a person as I should have.

I knew she was unhappy. She screamed it from the rooftops. She begged me to go to counseling 2 years before the A began. I dismissed the idea and thought the problem was my wife had a vision of marriage which was not based on reality.

But, yes I was completely blown away by her affair. I took it for granted that no matter how unhappy she was my wife would never allow herself to have an affair.

Hey introvert, i was one of the guys rippin you for starting a gazillion threads!

Just wanted to let you know that i think this has turned into an excellent thread! -thanks.

Let me tell ya about being blindsided.

I went from having no idea, to seeing them naked in front of me in the time it took to open my front door.

I almost, ALMOST lost it completely and ended up on the evening news.

I've got to have at least mild PTSD, because when I try to recall the events of that day, some of my memories are fuzzy or missing entirely...I don't know if I could pick OM out of a lineup at this point...and I feel like I'm going to freak out.

betterorworse,

Thanks, I feel redeemed now lol.


W2S and BOW,

I was a combination of the both of you. I was home every night, cooking, cleaning, being supportive, not going out with the boys (ever)...but even with all that, I did not fill her EN's during the last 6 months or so before the A. I started a new job and was stressed and didn't want to really talk about things when I got home (no excuse, but that's what happened).

She says now that she wishes she would have slapped me upside the head and said "wake the [censored] up", but she didn't. Safe to say that I wish she would have too. A slap every friggin' morning for the rest of my life would have been easier to deal with than finding out my wife was telling me she loved me and calling OM at 7 am after she was awakened by the alarm clock that I set for her every morning. [censored] gutwrenching to think that that was going on right after I kissed her goodbye, and told her to "I love you...have a good day". I'm still shocked by that one.

Introvert, like most of us you are struggling with the symbolism of your wife’s actions,(as well as the actions themselves of course), Her reliance on the alarm clock that YOU set to further her affair seems especially cruel to you.

One thing I learned from the people on this board is that while these symbols represent extreme and deliberate cruelty to YOU they actually mean nothing to your WW.

To her an alarm clock was just an alarm clock. She wasn’t being "extra" cruel when she relied on it to meet OM. She didn’t care at all.

In my wife’s case she would meet the OM while I took OUR children to church! To me that seemed especially sick and twisted. To her it was just free time.

Maybe I will share that with her one day when the time is right. But for now I find it easier to heal if I can accept that she wasn’t looking for the most sick, twisted and hurtful way to carry out her affair. She didn’t care about me enough to do that, she just did whatever she could to get her next "fix" of OM.

pariah, where in the world is Dahlonega. Would it happen to be near Roseville, Ca. I am taking a trip at the end of august to see my oldest son and do a little panning with 13 yo dd. we had some fun on the american river panning at sutter's mill on a school field trip a couple of years ago. any help/advice us 2 beginners can get would be greatful.