...and go back in time and stop the affair, stop the infidelity before it even got started...would you do it?

Would you back up time to a point where the LBs started, where the ENs stopped being met, where communication broke down?

Would you erase days/months/years of your life to be able to go back and erase the pain of that affair?

Yes. No. Why?

Dnu,
I think I would go back to the time when I first had an intuition that something wasn't right - January of '06 I must have asked my FWH a million times "waht's wrong?" "is there someone else?" "why are you so distracted?"...if I would have pushed and snooped harder, I would have found the A in it's beginning stages. Granted, we're still in the very early stages of recovery,but we are communicating and meeting each others EN's so much better - maybe sometimes it takes a bomb going off in your life to make you stop and reprioritize.

Estefania

My FWW's first A occurred while she was studying overseas. There was absolutely no sign in her letters and calls that there was anything untoward going on her part. We were just in a serious relationship at that point though - not M'd yet. However, while away from me, it took her all of three weeks to get involved with someone else. I should have realized at that point she probably wasn't the right person for me, but then MB didn't exist back in those days, and there was no-one really to turn to for good advice.

If I could go back in time, I'd go back to that time when she left and basically end our R at that point.

If I could go back in time, I'd go back to before we were married. My M wasn't great - WstbxH was affectionless, demanding, rude and spent all of our money. He missed no opportunity to knock down my self esteem and expected me to be his bread winner, house cleaner, cook, gardener, care giver, - and berated me for failing at all of it. Despite it all, I managed to eke out a life I was satisfied with while remainin married to him. And what for - so he could cheat on ME??? I gave him 17 years of my life - the BEST 17 years of my life for infidelity??? Definitely if I could go back, I would erase those years completely!

Tabby1, in your case, yep, I'd be waiving that wand in a heartbeat. Sorry for your pain.

I think if i could go back in time and know what i know now i would not have amrried my H to begin with even though we had a lovely 20 years together.

The pain of betrayal is not worth the time we spent together.

Yep, I'd go back without a second thought in an instant. Alas, that's not possible, so I make the best of the hand I've been dealt.

Want2Stay

I would have gone back farther and stopped my own bad judgment in choosing this man for a H. I am glad it turned out all right, but it took a pound a flesh out of me that I could ill afford at the time.

Interesting question.

Since we are going back in time to change things implies that we go with all the knowledge we have gained these past months/years.

A few months ago I would have said I would go back in an instant to 2005 and made the necessary corrections to my behaviors and marriage.

Today……probably not. I would go back only to catch them in the act with pictures, expose massively, instantly and mercilessly, throw her out of my house, filed for divorce totally on my terms and begun my no contact with her for life 3-4 months early.

I also would bring the winning Power Ball numbers for the past 2-years and would have dropped a few grand in Vegas in 2008 on the Cardinals making the Super Bowl.

I'd go back to the beginning of my relationship with H and address all the I saw before and ignored. Once called out, if he didn't get why it was a and I saw no real change and growth in him, I would have moved on. The damage he has done to me may have been avoided if I had paid attention a long time ago. I kick myself for that.

No, I wouldn't go back. Although I have remorse for not being a better H and also for retaliating so hard, I wouldn't change it for the world. Yeah, it was a hard punch to the stomach, but I became a much stronger and well rounded person. I also got to buy things I would have never bought had I stayed married. I got to date people utilizing a lot more capital than I had when I was in my early twenties. A few romantic weekends here and there. The glamourous late night in downtown. Then to learn the lesson(with sort of a free pass if you will from everyone as I was just "getting over the A and the D") that all of that means nothing compared to your life and your family. So I head back to fWxW a thousand times the man I had been w/ great lessons learned. Nope, I'd leave it all as is. I think shaking off the betrayal is the hardest part, but I've always been a bounce back type of guy.

DUDE

Plan FU could have been fun.

Interesting replies. Keep them coming...

This is the woulda, coulda, shoulda topic.

Yes I would go back in time. Definitely. Those scenes play in my mind daily of what I should have done, seen, acted upon.

My biggest change I would make is the day WH came home and said a guy he worked with before called him about a great opportunity in Texas and wanted to know if he would be interested and WH said my wife would never move away from her family.

I should have said that day "your right, I won't move away from our family". But instead we started this adventure here and less than 2 years later it turned to hell.

Give me that wand. I want my real H back not the alien turd he has become.

The only thing that would stop me from going back are my two wonderful sons. I would relive everything to keep them. Other than that? I would go back in a heartbeat and never let myself get into this situation in the first place. What we have blooming now is wonderful but 27 years of rejection and pain and then finding out they were 27 years of him cheating on top of all of that is pretty darned convincing that I would never go back.

I will create something new out of the ashes of my life. There are a lot of ashes there, I ought to be able to do something spectacular with all of that!

If "IFs" and "BUTs" were CANDY and NUTS, we'd all have a marvelous Christmas...

Would I go back....HECK YEAH!!!

But only if I could know what I know now AND only if I (and FWH) could have all the MB'er concepts under my belt. Have my marriage started off with MB, I turnly believe that we would not have experienced the infidility on my H's part but also the bad marriage that both of us created

There's really no sense in going back unless I'm wiser and armed with the knowledge I have today.

I wouldn't change anything. I don't say that as some sort of supreme confidence in making the right choice. I say it because I'm alive, my wife's alive, my parent's and brothers and sisters are alive, I have a job, I'm healthy, I have food to eat and a home to sleep in, and so on and so on. None of those things are guaranteed. Which isn't to say their are no other paths that could provide those things, its just one never knows.

Never can understand what it is about the human condition that makes us think if we'd only gone that way instead of this way, that everything is better.

Absolutely, I would love to go back with all this knowledge, and do a re-do...

We'd be better in the EN's and not have LB issues, and we'd know that though we "couldn't afford dates," we truly couldn't afford to stop dating. I'd also have made some changes to how and how long we tried to conceive, because that (in retrospect) has probably not been a real big positive point, either. I'd have moved to where we are sooner, and cut off my toxic folks sooner... and made sure I had better support mechanisms... oh man, I got a whole list of regrets... but I don't regret marrying my H, I just want HIM back, FULLY. No more partially alien [censored]....oh, and if we're going Back To The Future, I'd have been there the night Whorita was discussed and made sure H didn't trot down her path.