I found out about the affair about 5 yrs ago. We have tried to make it work but I seem to remember the affair from time to time. How do I forget or how long should it take me to forget the affair.

readerbug, you will never forget the affair. What is happening in your marriage today as a result of the affair?

I have thought about this question a lot. If there was a way to forget about the affair, would I want to?

If I/we forgot about the affair maybe I (and my husband) would fall into the same patterns prior to the affair. Maybe we would start taking each other for granted again.

Remembering the affair is a stark reminder of where our relationship "WAS". The affair reminds me that I never again want my husband to think I don't care, that I don't love him. The affair makes me want to prove to him each and every day that I want us to grow old together, that he is the only man I want to be with. I think the affair reminds him that there is more to a relationship than his needs, that sometimes things are not always great, that being honest and open is better than living a lie.

The affair reminds us of what was, what was lacking, of actions that can destroy so many people. The affair keeps us working harder than we ever have in our marriage.

There are many events in our life that hurt. We learn from that hurt, we change ourselves from those experiences and hopefully become better people.

Do I wish the affair never happened? Sure I do. Yet, I wonder where we would be right now if it had not been for his affair. What would it of took for us to wake up and see where we were heading?

I will never forget his affair and how badly it hurt. It will always hurt. As sick and twisted as this may sound...it was a rude awakening, for both of us and it made US save our marriage. It was the turning point in our life, it was the one event that made us bare our souls to each other.

Nope, I never want to forget. Forgetting would make it possible to go back to the way things were.

Well put, MaggieG.

I, too, struggle with the proper place for my memories of my wife's affairs.

They can't be too prominent in my aging brain or I obsess about whether I can trust her again. They can't be too obscure that I forget that our marriage was once in jeopardy.

I can't wear it like "Look what you did to me!" and risk driving her away by constant reminders of the betrayal. I also can't wear it like "Look how much I love you and forgave you!" and risk driving her away through guilt.

Her first physical affair was over five years ago and I still think about it sometimes. I think about the condition of our marriage that allowed it to flourish and my culpability in creating that environment. I think about the warning signs I missed and those little things I should have paid attention to.

I sort of treat it like photographs. Some pictures you frame and hang on the wall as a constant reminder of the event. Some you put in an album so you can pull them out and relive the old time. Some you throw away to be forgotten forever. Others you throw in a box with all sorts of other pictures (my favorite method).

I don't think memories of the affair belong on the wall in a frame where you look at them everyday. I also don't think you throw them away for the reasons MaggieG cited. I think they belong somewhere between the photo album and the box under the bed. They are real, they matter, and you need to be able to remind yourself of what life was like before and during the affair to better appreciate life since.

At least that's my $.02.

I'm far from an expert. I think it's possible to "forgive" but not to "forget". Maybe over time, you think of it less and less. That is what I'm hoping for anyways. good luck to you.

While you may never 'forget' there is a way to minimize it o where you can handle it.

One way to is to do something together to get closure. The other thing is to have a way of identifying when you are having a flashback crisis and your Xws can help you.

Call Steve H for some ideas. It w/b worth it.

L.

"Forgive and Forget"

My wife and I struggle with this.

I have always taken the stance you outlined -- "I can forgive your actions, but I refuse to totally forget them. To forget them means I have to forget everything I've learned and all the growth I've made because of them."

She links forgiving and forgetting for obvious reasons -- if I could "forget" the affair, then she could "forget" the hurt and pain she has caused me.

I think, underneath it all, she resents what she views as emotional leverage in the marriage.

I, honestly, don't believe I have ever used it as leverage (e.g., "You owe me this because you slept with another man."). I think this has actually made it harder sometimes since she keeps waiting for me to drop that on her. I have no intention of doing so -- I recognize the damage it would cause.

ReaderBug -- that I think is important. You can't ever forget the affair, but you can forgive your spouse to the point that you won't hold resentment or entitlement over your marriage and relationship. They can only believe this after they have seen it over time -- you remember what happened and have made changes because of it, but you don't wear it like a badge that gets you special treatment.

We all wish we could go back in time and fix the problems before the affair happened, but we can't (if you can, I've got some times and dates and a shopping list for you). We have to live in the here and now.

I agree...the betrayed will never forget the affair. The pain was so deep and those memories of your spouse afflicting you with lies, harse words, physical & emotional abuse, uncaring actions and more will always be in your memories. There will be a time when those memories don't pop up in your head as much and then there will be those times when you will realize those memories are only there maybe once in a month or every 2 months. The affair will never be totally forgotten...it is like a stab to your body which creates a scar. The scar will always be there, which, will trigger your thoughts. Blessings.

I agree, neither the BS or the WS spouse will ever forget. I also believe that while it might be nice to be freed from the pain that the memory of the affair brings, it can work to both the BS and WS advantage to remember.

Remembering the affair also leads to remembering what led to the affair. Remembering the affair also brings, to a truly remorseful WS, the memory of how much pain they caused their BS.

If I could forget, then so could my FWH and then we might both fall back into the patterns of living that allowed the affair to take place. FWH might forget how much trouble the OW was from the very beginning, he might forget how he lived in fear every day that I would figure things out or OW would tell me and that my reaction would be to bannish him from my life forever.

If I could choose it, yes, I would choose that the affair never happened. But I don't choose to forget that it happened. I do choose to carry forward those lessons we both learned from the experience though.

Remembering still hurts, I think it always will, but what hurts more is the knowledge of how close we came to losing each other because of it. I hope that neither one of us ever forgets that, or ceases to fear it.

Who

I don't know about forgetting.

One of the things that have shaped me in my life as a person is usually the very, very good happy memories and the very, very bad memories. Some of the things in between are memorable but not as important.

I will never forget the days my son's were born. it just won't happen. I won't forget the day my FWW and I were married.

The human mind does not work that way. I rember to this day when I fell out of a tree and cracked my head on a rock. Spliting it open and needing stitches. LOL. I was only 5 years old.

I learned not to climb trees with rocks under them. That bad experience and the memories helped me not do stupid things later on.

Now the remembrance of the A can help shape our M in the same way. I remember and I probably always will. I can't imagine forgetting it. I can keep it in perspective and know that the problems we had that led to that I will avoid at all costs. I know forgiving will be easier if the FWW does the same.

I don't think it is something you can forget. My husbands affair was 3 years ago & I still feel the pain every day of my life. He thinks I should be over it by now but when you loose the trust like that or loose the bond you once have had, it is always going to be in your heart. Like someone said it is just a matter of dealing with it & working past the pain. For me it is really hard around the holidays becasue that's when everything fell apart in my life. I can only hope by making new memories in time the bad ones will slowly fade away.