hey all... this board was a great discovery and i look forward to reading one/some of dr harley's book(s)... this might be a long rant, so i apologize in advance if you dare take in on and read along... i just have been feeling the need to get some things out there--even if it just is cyberspace!
about three months ago my live-in girlfriend (and at one time--perhaps still--future wife) cheated on me while away from home for a month. we had been having some problems before she left--basically, i was seriously depressed and stressed (we're both graduate students) and shut her out emotionally and, now i realize, met almost none of her emotional needs. she claims to have tried to talk to me several times--including over the phone while she was away before the affair happened--but i don't remember hearing anything explicitly from her that expressed--in real language that i could understand--how bad things were for her and how unhappy she was.
while away, she met someone who made her feel special, interesting, intelligent, beautiful... like the center of the universe essentially. which is exactly how our relationship started (don't they all?!?!). they spent about two weeks or so together and slept together two or three times... i suspected another man while she was still out there, but i didn't know for sure until she came home and we talked... she said when she got back and we talked that perhaps she wasn't as ready as she had thought to end our relationship, but if we were to try and stay together and work it out then we needed to do it with all the chips on the table. that's when she told me about the affair...
as far as i can tell, she's done all the right things--typically without me asking--that's required to save a relationship after an affair, but we still struggle sometimes... she was always willing to talk about it when i brought it up, she answered all my questions as best she could, and she tries to understand how much i've been struggling with what happened. one night i came home and she told me she had talked to the other guy and basically told him that she was going to try and work things out with me and that she couldn't ever be in touch with him again...
since she's been back, we've had some incredibly good and incredibly difficult conversations and everything else that's come from her time away has been incredibly positive and amazingly good for our relationship, which i feel is now more solid than ever. i just struggle with that one part of it--why did she have to sleep with someone else for all this to come up?! all she had to do was talk to me--or leave me for a little while until we could work things out... but she betrayed that trust and went outside the relationship to try and find that excitement--that "vacation-like" feeling (that's how she described being away--like a vacation--(and i question from what? reality?!?!)) with someone else. i take full responsibility for the leading role i played in creating the unhealthy emotional situation within our relationship prior to her being away, but there's no way i would ever excuse or rationalize her decision... like i said, things are so much better now, but every once in a while the affair comes up... she's incredibly guilty and full of regret. every time i talk about it (and one of the biggest things i've been trying to do is talk to her--and be honest with her--because in the past i was so closed off emotionally and intellectualy...) she brow beats herself about how she's an awful person and she can't believe that she did it... that i deserve someone better... that every life she touches she destroys (she apparently really hurt the other guy too--kind of blew in and blew out of his life, then told him she could never speak to him or see him again. i know it sucks to be hurt, but he knew the story going in and he still pursued her--and allowed her to pursue him--so, i guess i don't feel too sorry for him.) she sees how much it's shaken me, how much i still don't trust her completely and she just feels like crap. my family also loves her and thinks that she's an amazing presence in my life, which she is, but she hears them say how good she is for me and how much i needed to find a woman like her and she feels so undeserving and pretty much like a fraud (my family knows we were having serious trouble while she was away, but they don't know about the infidelity).
as for my part, i made the decision to forgive, but the forgetting part is really hard. i haven't been able to completely let go of my resentment yet... i know i wasn't really behaving well and being the best partner, like i was previously--and can be--but i just can't believe that she would've done something like that--especially because we had talked about it--a lot. her brother and sister-in-law both had affairs and she told me so many times how adamantly she despised infidelity and that no matter how bad things were, it was never justified--you either had to work it out or get out... having an affair was supposed to never be an option. yet she made it one--with me... never in any of her past relationships, which were, at times, fraught with just as much trouble as ours was prior to her trip... it's also been hard because, like i said, things are great now--we're finally making progress--real progress--on all the issues that plagued our relationship prior to her trip and we both feel as though we're repairing and rebuilding a very solid foundation, but when i hear from her how much she loves me and how amazing i am--how i'm one in a million, a real catch, a rare find, an incredible combination of all the things she looks for in a partner--all i can think about is, well if i'm so f'ing fantastic, why did you totally crush me and toss me to the side while you played with, laughed with, and slept with another man? the thing that really gets me--and we've talked about all this--is that it seems like in her eyes, while she was away, i--and our relationship--wasn't even worth a conversation. she said she tried to talk to me and express her concerns about our relationship and that she was thinking about ending it, but that i was really cranky on the phone and so she just gave up... and then totally shut me out and started fooling around with this other guy. it's so hard for me to reconcile all the positive things she says (she's very expressive and very good about telling me what's on her mind--as long as it's the "good" stuff) with the way she behaved and treated me--and our relationship...
so i guess i just worry that, as much good as has come of this--and my belief that it will only make our relationship stronger, we may get stuck here... her in her guilt and regret (i worry that she's not doing anything to help "process" or "deal with" the affair other than think about it--a lot--and beat herself up) and me in my inability to forget and a small tinge of resentment...
i know that in comparison to some long lived, drawn-out affairs our situation seems almost a best case scenario in a worse case kind of event... but i think the fundamental feelings of shock, betrayal, dishonesty, etc are very real and very much now a part of our relationship's story... i guess the question is how do we continue to make good on an awful, awful time in our relationship??? i'd be just as much a fool to leave her as she was to leave me while she was away... this is very much worth saving--and we both feel that way--but it doesn't make these really raw emotions any easier to fold into the present--and future--of who we are and what our relationship is made of...
anyway... sorry about the rant. thanks for listening.
