SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Question to those who have reconciled or at least tried: how did you treat the affair with respect to how long you regard yourself as married? Did the counter go back to zero for you? Did you just keep going from your original wedding day? Or did you say that the time from when the affair began, like when when sexual boundaries were crossed, to when you somehow recommitted didn’t count?
I’m approaching 18 years since we exchanged vows. But my mind might be more comfortable thinking my marriage lasted 14 years. I know there is no right or wrong answer to this. I’m just curious how you all have thought about it.

It’s an interesting question. I will say verbally that we’ve been married 23 years if someone asks me, but the affair caused such a mental and emotional disruption to me that it’s hard for me to think about marriage in a symbolic or abstract sense, so I just look at it as the surface, countable number of years since we signed a marriage certificate. I feel like we’re together and we have a strong bond, but my old conception of our marrIage is shattered, and I haven’t wrapped my head around whatever the new version is. For some reason it’s easier to talk about a partnership or relationship or bond now. Marriage is that other thing we had, or that I thought we had, before his affair.

I have been married since the day I took vows. My husband choosing to carry on with a girlfriend does not erase that time. My marriage still existed. It was broken and unhealthy, but it was still a marriage and a relationship. The narrative that a marriage is a fraud or ends when one cheats never worked for me. That insinuates that the entirety of a marriage exists around sexual fidelity and I just never felt that way. At least in my marriage, there has always been more to it. Nuances that are unique to us that never ended. Perhaps that’s why we successfully reconciled. There was too much to lose. My mom gave me a plaque with a quote that says "when your roof leaks you don’t buy a new house, you mend the roof. The same can be true for a marriage". Don’t get me wrong, my husband was behaving like a complete asshole, but he mended himself so 🤷‍♀️, here we are. :)

I tend to agree with OnTheOtherSideOfHell. My marriage existed - I was faithful to it even if he chose not to be for 4 months. We had been married 16 years when he had the A. Just because that happened, that didn’t stop the clock for me. And when we decided to reconcile, I didn’t re-start the clock like this was a "new" marriage.

I'm too literal I suppose. I count from my wedding even though I'm in R.

One of the ways I stay in R is giving myself permission to change my mind though. I'm married but my duty to marriage is over. My vows "for better or worse, til death do us part" are as gone as her "forsake all others" and I'm not keen on the idea of a vow renewal.

[This message edited by This0is0Fine at 4:29 AM, Friday, March 24th]

I tend to agree with Grieving. When someone ask how long we’ve been married, I say "26 years". But my inclination is always to say "Thirteen happy years — 26 in total, but 13 were happy" - lol.

I count from my wedding day as well and from the day we started dating, so 30 years together, 20 years married. But these are mere facts. I don't feel proud of all the time we spent together any more or of our relationship. I don't celebrate, especially not my wedding anniversary, because I feel I would be celebrating my 20 years of love and fidelity and just half of that from him. I would love to celebrate 20 years of happy and fulfilling marriage, but I just don't have that, do I?

[This message edited by ZetaCephei at 10:06 AM, Friday, March 24th]

Question to those who have reconciled or at least tried: how did you treat the affair with respect to how long you regard yourself as married? Did the counter go back to zero for you? Did you just keep going from your original wedding day? Or did you say that the time from when the affair began, like when when sexual boundaries were crossed, to when you somehow recommitted didn’t count?

My answer has evolved a bit over time.

I never reset the counter back to zero, and currently I count every single day of the marriage.

The great days count, the good days count, the horror show of infidelity counts, my long recovery, and some solidly mundane days all count.

For a while, I subtracted some years off, but as OtherSideofHell mentioned, and I agree, I held up my end of the vows since day one.

I’m a student of history, and some societies tend to try to skip some history too. Dark Ages, war, famine, it all counts, it is ALL a part of human history. I’m one of those who thinks understanding the past is important for a chance at a better future. Same with my marriage. We had our Dark Ages or Hell Years, but we focus on what we learned from the horror show and so far, are building something better.

I tell people, "We’ve been happily married for 25 years…………of the thirty."

I’m a little surprised by the level of agreement here, not a common finding on this board

Part of me knows that numbers are arbitrary, they aren’t the really important stuff in life. But we also make big deals of milestones and we internally feel a sense of pride or accomplishment for achieving big round numbers. And I’ve also had to really wrestle internally to even come to a number of how long I count the affair as lasting. Part of me wanted to say it was shorter to minimize the horror, and another part of me completely rebelled against it. So my mind could only come to peace when I decided it was really 3 1/2 years. If we stay together, I feel like similarly I’ll need to put this question to bed. I’ll want to be proud of my 20th anniversary. And if we need to discount 4 years to honestly reflect that, then so be it. It would look ackward as all get out to those around us, especially those who don’t know, but that’s the least of my concerns.
I do appreciate people’s thoughts, it always helps me see if I’m crazy. Looks like this time I am

I struggle with the "I didn’t cheat" line of thinking. It only takes one to break the vows, I don’t think of sustaining a marriage as a one sided thing. She broke it, every bit of the spirit of the union was crushed as she bared her body and soul to that POS and lied to me to do it. For sure marriage is more than sex, but affairs go deeper than just sex. They are like a bizzaro world marriage that mirrors and degrades all the important and special parts of the real life marriage.

I do like the reference to history and not erasing the ugly parts of it. I’ll definitely be thinking about that.

And This0Is0Fine, I remember you talking about staying in an uncommitted state back in my JFO thread. I found it a very odd stance at the time, but time has given me eyes to see what you are saying. It’s hard not to look back and see that the idea that divorce is completely out of the question was a contributor to our disfunction. I can’t really imagine staying in a relationship with her for the rest of our lives just out of sheer promise if she were to revert to behavior that does not meet my needs and make me happy. But that is a big thing for me to consider given my Christian beliefs, I don’t really know what to do with that. Maybe a thread for another day.

It evolved for me.

Our wedding anniversary is about 9 months after d-day. In 2011, my W said she wanted to celebrate; I told her I didn't want to celebrate, and I didn't know if we had been M 9 months or 44 years.

(I also told her if she planned something and invited me, I'd go with her if I liked what she planned. She did. I did. We had a great time. She also bought me chocolates and flowers, which I very much enjoyed, much to my surprise. It was a big step in showing me she wanted to be with me.)

I was still uncertain about the length of our M in 2012 and 2013, but by 2014 I was comfortable with 47 being the only number that applied.

As a reader of Karen Horney, I stay away from pride. I've forgotten her point exactly, but she had a lot to say against pride. I see anniversaries as milestones for reflecting on and sharing joy. BSes have some very good reasons for not being joyful on their anniversaries, so I see very good reasons for not celebrating. If R succeeds, though, the anniversary may again be a day of joy.

When my WW crossed an entire gamut of boundaries, culminating in her choosing to give herself emotionally and physically to another man, she abrogated our marriage vows, nullified everything good, loving and kind that had previously existed between us, and de facto, destroyed our marriage. I feel that it's painfully relevant that she kept this all a secret from me, compartmentalized and secure in her secrecy for several decades, and for me, there only exists the old pre affair marriage, and the new version 2.0 marriage we are creating one step at a time. Everything else in between is a wasteland of deceit, lies and obfuscation. So although we are now old people, and we pledged exclusivity to each other in a church ceremony long, long ago, when asked. I don't hesitate to say we've been married six years.

We were married 22 years ago. We've been married for 22 years. Through the good, the bad, and the extremely ugly. 22 years.

I guess I'm in the minority here and also crazy? I don't celebrate our anniversary at all anymore period! In fact, today is our anniversary 33years. The day now only brings me sadness. If someone asks, obviously I tell them the exact number because legally, that is how long we have been Married. I used to be so proud of us. People would ask how many kids and I'd say 5, they would always show some sort of shock that they all had the same father... I am no longer proud of the number. I mean, just cause people are together for a long time, doesn't mean it's a good M. Looking back on our M I can see all the "leaky faucets, holes in the walls, missing roof shingles", that were never really addressed and that I simply lived with because hey, that's marriage right? Wrong. So, I don't look at my M before the A as great/good. I now see how I was emotionally abused and made small. I now see how I let this happen to me and how me beginning to find my voice pushed my WH to feel sorry for himself because he was no longer the center of my world. So yeah, fuck that M.

I don't doubt that he loved me, but he loved himself first.

Anyway,

My mom gave me a plaque with a quote that says "when your roof leaks you don’t buy a new house, you mend the roof. The same can be true for a marriage".

I get that, but don't we say on this site that although there were issues in the M (ie. the leaky roof), infidelity burns down the house? So, the house is gone, you do have to buy a new one. Whether that means R and moving on, rebuilding on a solid foundation under the burnt house, or D and moving on, relocating to a new lot.

Fournlau’s crazy club has another member. I am not sure I consider myself married anymore. I am just an ignorant participant to a sham lasting 20 years.

Fournalu

Yes, I have heard many say here that infidelity burns down the house and the marriage is over. I am sure many feel that way in their marriage , but I never did. My marriage never ended in my mind nor my husband’s mind even as he was cheating. It was battled and worn for sure, but it stayed intact. I understand others feel differently about their marriage and I respect that. I just push back on the absolutes being stated about anyone’s marriage. We are all a bunch of internet strangers with one common heartache yet each marriage whether infidelity exists or not is as unique as humans. We all have our own unique deal breakers, boundaries, needs, and expectations. What I want and need from a marriage I mostly received. Yes, fidelity was an expectation and need that I unknowingly did not have, but I do now. Therefore I can’t pretend that the other parts of the marriage I received and enjoyed did not exist. The narrative that my marriage was a sham, a lie, and ended the first time he cheated is just not my reality.

I’ll want to be proud of my 20th anniversary. And if we need to discount 4 years to honestly reflect that, then so be it. It would look ackward as all get out to those around us, especially those who don’t know, but that’s the least of my concerns.

Adjusting the number of years wouldn't work for me. My WH suggested something along those lines last year, for our 20th wedding anniversary, when I said I have no reason to celebrate, when 9+ of those years were a lie from his side and he suggested celebrating the good first 10 years we had in our marriage. But I already had my 10th anniversary 10 years ago and we had a really great time, even though, unbeknown to me, he was already in a full blown EA and days from starting to fuck her. And I don't think in 10 years I will be particularly interested in celebrating 20 years of (hopefully) good marriage, when in fact we will have the 30th anniversary. It would be too triggering. Maybe, if we manage to R, I will be proud of what we overcame, of our new relationship, of how strong all this has made me and of the man he will become and we can celebrate that. I wanted to be proud of our 20th anniversary as well, buf that ship has sailed.

[This message edited by ZetaCephei at 7:21 PM, Friday, March 24th]

Approaching 35 years. DDay was 16 years in.

Even though the first 16 years were Dysfunction Junction, we were married that whole time. Like fournlau and OTOSOH said, our marriage was a fixer-upper, but we did the work and we fixed it and we keep on doing the big maintenance jobs to make it a nice place to live. I'm gonna count all of the days. I lived them all and I earned them.

I wonder how waywards feel about this question. Do they feel as if they were married the entire marriage, even though they were having an affair(s)? I'd be interested in hearing some waywards respond..not from their BS telling us how they feel..but the waywards here answering directly.

I asked my husband this question. He said 22 years. So I asked,even when you were cheating? And I got the deer in the headlights look.

[This message edited by HellFire at 6:33 PM, Friday, March 24th]