Do you think the length of time married before the A occurs helps the chances of recovery? Say, being married only 6 months versus 6 years?

Hi D4N,

For me, length of M and children involved made a difference in my attitude towards attempting recovery. Whether we are successful or not is still to be seen. Details in my sig line.

Ace

Yes, I think it matters.

We were married 17 years at the time of my wife's EA. While in the affair, she was deep in the fog, and had re-written our marital history so that "she hadn't been happy in years!".

Pure garbage. The reality was that she hadn't been happy in about a year...and that was almost entirely due to her own mistakes.

BUT...the 15+ years of wonderful marriage was a base for us to build from. She KNEW how good things could be between us...and had been for a very long time. It was a history that was (for her) very hard to consider giving up completely. Without that, recovery would have been a lot more difficult for us.

I think that if a spouse cheats in the first two years, that's really a very dangerous warning sign. That's when the marriage should still be in the "honeymoon" phase. If they're going to wander when its GOOD, what's going to happen when things REALLY get tough...when you've got four kids, bills out the wazoo, pulled in five directions at once, just getting into major responsibilities at work...

You get the idea.

Hi D4N,

Mrs. RIF had her first A 3 months after we were married... she had 8 more A's, all within the first 3 years of our M. She was 18 and I was 24 when we married.

For me, the only thing that kept me in the M was our daughter. I only knew about one A and I suspected a second A that she denied. Mrs. RIF confessed to the suspected A and to 7 others that I had no clue about in Dec 2000.

By this time, we'd been married for 14 years and had two additional girls. I was determined to work through our issues and keep our M together.

So to answer your question, I guess it depends... Some BS will decide to divorce if the A happens early in the M. I did not. Some BS decide to divorce even if there are decades of M when a WS strays... I don't think that its possible to determine a true "pattern" because every couple and every situation is different.

For me, I made the 'right' choice. Mrs. RIF and I worked through all of the A issues and what caused her to stray and we've learned how important it is to protect our M and we work on it daily (even while we're 7,000 miles apart)...

It is possible to rebuild a M after adultery, but it takes committment from BOTH spouses and lots of hard work to get there. There aren't any short cuts and there aren't any "quick" fixes. Rebuilding is a painful, hurtful, agonizing journey, but as long as both of you are committed and are willing to do the work, then you CAN rebuild your M.

Semper Fi,

RIF

dazed4now

in our situation, I'd say that it did help us to make a decision whether to stay in our marriage or get divorced.

My husbands affair happened shortly after our 20th Anniversary. We had almost 25 years of relationship to look back at and the majority of these years were filled with positive memories.

Years of positive memories give us the strength and power...........We had/have something to "hold on to".

Today is our 27th Anniversary and we've been together for 32 years..........when we look back, I'm happy to say that the majority of our relationship/marriage has been positive and brings plenty of fond memories.

My husbands affair and that part of our marriage was the worse time of our life..........it was the hardest time of our life and it was the most painfull experience of our life.....and yet our love and positive experiences always gave both of us, the strength, NOT to give up and run away.

hugs
bb