just a question. Is there ever getting past the pain of an affair when your XS remarries their AP?

I'm not there yet. I don't know for sure. However, I have seen more than one person on here mention that the affair-marriage didn't last long. That probably helps the pain of the BS.

I think I've read that Dr. Harley's experience has been that about 5% of marriages that come out of affairs last, but I couldn't find it on the website. I did some Googling and found another website that says 3-7% of affair marriages last.

Think about it - every time someone innocently asks the new couple how they met, they instantly feel guilt and shame for destroying a marriage and a family so they could be together. I couldn't live that way.

Nor could I.

Thinking back now to my first husband, who had PA's (this one is Cybersex EA's), he never married anyone, to this day has not remarried. (I left in 87)

Time. It talks time, regardless of who did what, when or how, time truly does heal all wounds. I think about him now, and do not remember the pain of the affairs so much as I just feel a sadness over the loss of the marriage. It truly does get better.

thank you kirby and No Stress i do appreciate you taking the time to respond.

I honestly wouldn't care at this point that he is getting married except that it is to HER. I would be happy if it was someone else... anyone else at this point. I feel triggered all over again.

No stress i thought 4 years of time had healed alot, but this news was traumatizing all over again. I have a few very close friends who keep an eye on their situation for the protection of my daughter. They keep the info to themselves unless it is something that would affect her or I in some way. The only told me as my daughter goes for visitation there tomo and were afraid she would come home all excited about it. They didn't want me to find out that way.

I am trying to process it the best i can, i just thought after all this time it wouldn't bother me as much as it did.

I have no hard data on this question, but I can speak from the evidence I've seen first hand. I know of three "affairages" personally (that in itself is a distressing statistic).

None of these couples I would hold up to be the poster children of happy marriages. The couples appear prematurely aged, angry and disassociated. And why not? Once the luster of the initial excitement of the illicit relationship has worn off, the couple has to live with the knowledge that their partner participated in lying, deceitful behavior. Who wants that in a spouse?

I spoke once with a man who had been married to his AP for nearly 25 years. He rarely appeared happy, and told me that he had to live with the knowledge of what he'd done to his ex-wife. What a burden to have to live with.

Waywards who never address their flaws and defects are doomed to have to live with them. You know the saying, "no matter where you go, there you are."

Fred the man you speak of ... if he had to leave with the burden of what he did to his xw then why did he even marry his AP? You may not have that answer but i am curious

4 years HAS healded a lot or you wouldn't be able to say that it wouldn't matter except the fact it's HER. Four years is not a lot of time when your heart has been ripped out, thrown to the curb and smashed by a few trash trucks.

Interesting thing about the ex's who marry the ones they cheated with. They have this never ending suspicion of their new spouses...

they will question...

every look...
every handshake...
every laugh or whisper or anything...

I for one, could not live like that.

Interesting question of Fred with that man he spoke of...why did he marry her. Some men/women grow a conscious. Likely, that is what happened here. Or it could be dependent upon what happened...

He could be the type who just needs a woman in his life, and his ex couldn't forgive, and the AP was better than being alone.

Just wild guesses here.

After the swath of destruction they've left in their wake - the devastated spouses and children, the broken families - most of the time, they can't *not* marry their affair partner.

I mean, the AP was so wonderful and such a soulmate that they were worth the huge pile of damage the affair caused. If APs don't marry, and don't live happily ever after, how will they ever show everybody that They Were Right and They Were Justified in wrecking at least one and possibly two familes so they could be together.

If they don't stay together, then what was all of that damage for?

STB4, this man has moved out of the area, and truth be told, I knew him only briefly. But my sense (based also on the suggestion that my dad married his AP) is that marrying one's AP is a mix between resignation and acceptance.

What I mean to say (and will probably not say it well), is that I think many waywards get some sense of realization of what they've done -- AFTER they've destroyed the family they created -- and then choose to "do the right thing" and marry the person they consorted and conspired with. In part, this assuages their guilt, and it also serves to convince themselves that the affair was "right" and "meant to be."

Late one evening a few years before he passed away, and after a particularly nasty spat with his second wife (who had run off boo-hooing to the bedroom), and somewhat in his cups, my father confessed to me that if he'd had it to do over again, he wouldn't have married the shrew.

So, I think it's a combination of guilt, shame, denial and self-justification that makes them do it. And it's what keeps them there long after they've "made it right."

Thank you fred. I do really enjoy reading your posts and this one in particular on a bad day has helped me. You have a lot of insight and it describes my xh to a tee.

P.S. This is the real reason why Mel Gibson was heard raging at his babymama in those tapes from last year. He wrecked his own long-time family - a wife and seven children - for this gold-digging bimbo. Bimbo could not possibly ever make up such a loss. When that finally started to sink in to Mel, that's what trigged the "buyer's remorse" that we heard on those insanely furious recordings.

Apparently this is another reason why affairages/affair relationships don't last - because the price paid versus value received is just way too high and the difference can never be made up.

thank's mulan. I do really appreciate your insight.

There are a few different aspects that bother me about this.... but i guess also after all this time i'm not sure why it still bothers me THIS much. I didn't think it would ijust assumed they would be getting married. It is just something i have to process.

My DD3 came home last night from her dad's all excited about how OW S7 was going to really be her brother. I told that was nice and put her to bed. I try really hard not to let anything show at this point but there is so much this innocent child has no idea about and all the lies that surround her. I am sooo afraid she is going to see all of this as normal and right.

That's why it's so important for you to explain this to her, in an age-appropriate way, so that she doesn't grow up to see all this as "normal and right". Your standing up for what is right is the only thing that will break this cycle - otherwise, you can look forward to her being in the same situation some day, either as BW or WW.

thanks mulan.... i completely agree.... i'm not sure how to put it age appropriate.... that's something i am trying to figure out.

I am not sure what you tell a 3 year old. I told my ds9 that his father was having sex with another woman--breaking God's law of adultery---and that I could not tolerate it and that is why we were getting a divorce.

thank you smilingwoman... my DD hasn't ever known her father to be a part of "our family" i have been divorced for a year and half and he moved out a month after she was born. i know when she is older that is what i would be telling her but for now i am at a loss.... do i let her get excited or do i tell her that their marriage is wrong?

I have a good friend who left her WH when she was pregnant. She never told him any of it was wrong---until he started to ask questions. I believe he was 5 or 6. She told him the truth. His bio dad wanted to be with OW (and he did marry her and have a child with her) instead of my friend and her son. He had been raised all along learning Bible truths about adultery and sin...so he 'got' it. He was raised by my friend's new husband...he adopted him eventually.

It is tough. (((STB4)))

thanks smiling... i have a feeling that is how my situation is going to go... at 3 she isn't going to get it.. Yet... but she will.... she is sooo smart. Sometimes too smart ;o)

Hey StrongerThanB4,

How is this going? This is something I'm sure I'll have to deal with in the future. Heck, I'm already trying to get a head start on processing it.

Hi MJ... i'm good... i don't want anyone to think all i do is mope around about this. It was a short setback for about two days but then... well soooo over it... sorta. I don't think either one of them will have the gonads to actually do anything and honestly as little as my DD talks about OW i don't think she is really involved with my DD.

She talks about the little boy, her dad, and his parents but hardly next to none mention of OW. I'm ok with that.

Other than that not much going on with me work and spending lots and lots of time with my DD. :o).

I'm sure if and when it gets finalized i will deal with it. In the mean time i just keep journaling away.