SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Something like this?

Much closer. Maybe with a pen behind his ear or something though.

Really great post ChamomileTea.

Just a thought while out on a run: the opposite of the "pick me dance" doesn’t have to be the "fuck you rage".

CT: I could get a PhD in this subject and still not be able to string that together. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and insight.

The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

The opposite of the pick me dance is the 180.

I don't know how to post pics here but google "ink hulk" and there are some pretty cool ink drawings of the Hulk.

I don't have a tattoo but from what I understand color fades and can make the original look like shit. Black with shading can look super cool and hold its form.

-from a "I have no real life experience with this" fan

Great post, CT

I threw my wedding/engagement ring off a cliff in St. Martin. It was cathartic but I didn’t actually tell my husband I had done it for a few months. So he bought me a big beautiful diamond and then some accompanying diamond bands. Yeah me. Or not so much…. Anyway, whenever someone says what a beautiful ring that is I literally have to clench my jaw not to say, oh that is my affair doghouse ring. Sort of like when they say « oh my god you’ve lost so much weight, you look great! » and you’re thinking yeah, you should try it, get your husband to sleep with his secretary and you too can drop 40 lbs. Anyway, we discuss redoing our vows. i said I would need to see them on paper before I would agree. I have yet to be presented with said paper so I guess we are in limbo. Which is fine, I’m in no rush

Hey friends: things are going really badly right now, like could fall apart pretty easily. Not in the headspace to put all the details in, but any prayers would be appreciated.

Not in the headspace to put all the details in, but any prayers would be appreciated.

You got it. I am sorry things are not going well.

Praying for your whole family.
Take a breath.

Thinking of you InkHulk. Hope you're okay. We'll be here when you're ready.

We are here for you, sending prayers

Hi IH,

Praying for you brother.
Blessings,
FMWH

Wishing you and your family the best, InkHulk....

Sending prayers and strength

This shit is HARD. Pulling for you.

Prayers for you.

Hi IH,

I was thinking about and praying for you and the family today.
I hope that things are getting a little better for you,
FAWH

It's been a minute since you posted, InkHulk.

Just letting you know you are still in my thoughts, I can only hope things are going a little better. I suspect if they were, you'd be back here. As a fellow prolific poster, with some of the same analytical framings, I imagine you would find posting now to be very difficult, or even advised against by your lawyer. Whatever is going on, I'm sending strength.

So…….

I have no idea how long this post is going to end up. A lot has happened, not that much has changed, and I don’t know how much I want to talk about all of it. I guess we’ll see what happens here.

So in this timeframe we did celebrate our anniversary. Sorry if I should have given a trigger warning for some about that, but that is what I did. It was good. Nothing terribly extravagant, went to a nearby town, spent a night, explored, ate, drank, made love. It was a refreshing time. I think both of us expressed a degree of being tired of being stuck in the "atone" phase and that times like that give glimpses of the hope of a beautiful future together. So I told her that I was just going to send her my entire list of questions that has been building up that we’ve excruciatingly slow been working thru. I don’t know if it was a mistake or not, but it completely overwhelmed her. Flooded, dysregulated, totally mind fucked, all that. She despaired of all hope, shame shit storm category 5 (I think I’ll name this one Katrina), started talking like if I "made" her answer some of the questions that she would just resent me anyway. The word divorce was thrown around from both sides with more frequency and energy than ever before. It was sad and scary and that is when I put up my last post.
We had a MC session scheduled for the next day. I almost didn’t go, thinking we might as well save our money for lawyers rather than counselors. I did end up going, and I can’t remember exactly how things went in that room. But we came out still together and our MC had offered a compromise to comb thru my questions and remove any criticism and contempt from the language (my bad for letting it be in there), make it a little more approachable, and she was going to scrub sexually explicit questions (I honestly don’t want to argue about this here, I’ve got what I want under control, leave this alone).
Here is where the post becomes hardest to write, because I don’t know exactly how to convey this. I wrote long ago, maybe in my JFO thread, that my wife confessed after I had really searched out a way that I had significantly wronged her in our past. It was not a small thing. For a number of reasons I choose to not go into detail, but in the universe of our relationship, I am not blameless. I’ve meaningfully hurt this woman and I owe her an explanation for that just as she owes it to me for this. What I am not doing right now is saying some kind of moral equivalence or wrongs cancelling out. They don’t at all, we have to deal with all this shit piled on top of feces, coated in diarrhea. What I am saying is that in charting the path forward, patience and mutual understanding are called for. This is going to go over so badly on this forum, I don’t even know what to expect. But it’s my reality. And I have asked myself if I’m trying to climb Everest with a windbreaker and clunky knees, I don’t know the answer. But both of us want this, and that keeps me going.
So I have offered an olive branch. I feel somewhat nervous in doing it, talked to my IC about it today, he thought it was a pretty good step. I’ve offered to table some questions that delve into the sexting part of the relationship. I will see how I do and if I grow to the point that I no longer care about those questions, then they will pass into history (I don’t fucking want to hear about rugsweeping, leave it alone). And if they bother me into perpetuity, then after she has had a chance to work on sexual trauma issues I will ask them then.

So that is where we stand. Things have stabilized. We actually had some of the best sex of our lives just last night. I won’t stay just for that, but it was awesome. I’ve reviewed the list of questions that the MC worked over, changed a few things, and now it goes to my wife. Pray/hope/scream for us, I really want this to work.

I want to say thank you to everyone who posted and IM’d in my sabbatical. It genuinely moved me.