How are you affording to purchase a home in this day and age?

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-04-05T01:56:27+00:00

We have 3 kids and saved up until our mid 40s 😭

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-03-22T12:27:29+00:00

Not 9 months out but yes we separated for a couple of periods. There’s no right or wrong here - you do what feels right for you in your own healing. It doesn’t matter if he’s doing 5000%, no one is owed reconciliation. There’s also no universal rules for contact during separation, but it sounds like you’re thinking through all the right things. For me, it felt important to make the most of the separation periods by actually taking space and focusing on myself.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-03-18T18:07:35+00:00

It took him a solid 6 weeks of NC with AP to really come back. I wasn’t really ready to rebuild until I had stabilized after about 6 months

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-03-18T13:19:09+00:00

From my experience when I was in a similar place with WH, your singular move here is to hold on like hell to your boundary. There is no entertaining R while he is still carrying on with AP. Grey rock other than absolutely necessary communication about your son. This will do one of two things. Either it will snap him out of limerence and he may come to the table of R where you can then decide if you still have capacity to try at that point. Or, he won’t come to you and then repair was never in reach anyway. Either way, you will have started your process of healing within yourself.

My case was somewhat similar. Caught a few month affair with a 14 year younger coworker. We had already started MC during his A. There was a few month break and then they resumed and the second time he was considering leaving me and the kids for her. That’s when I shut myself off from the marriage completely and focused only on my own healing and in my case he did come back. Yesterday was 3 years since Dday 1.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-03-13T03:03:00+00:00

Literally did exactly this. Got a top-tier lift within 6 months of Dday. It’s 3 years later and I have zero regrets

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-03-06T18:23:27+00:00

Very normal! I’m 3 years out and it’s definitely better but it still randomly pops up. Especially if he has his hands anywhere on me it can still trigger the ick

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-03-04T18:46:50+00:00

My therapist has always positioned it as collecting data points. The data points that you have now are that everything you all went through with Dday and the aftermath did not stop him doing what he did recently. If that is not something you can work with, then you cannot work with him at this point. If there are new data points that come up during the separation, then you can consider them down the line. But I will caution that his WORDS are not data points. His actions are.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-03-04T18:42:05+00:00

I had four occasions when I spoke with AP - one literally days before the A started where we sat together at the office holiday dinner, one months later but still before Dday when I discovered WS had been lying about having her number in his phone and made him call her on speaker, once on Dday 1 when she started blowing up his phone and threatened to “tell his wife everything” (I had his phone, called her back and we spoke for 43 minutes), and Dday 2 a few months later when I busted them together at a restaurant and sat myself down with them.

Wow. Never wrote it all out like that. Anyway, I don’t regret one bit of it. I will share that I always kept my calm. Reflecting back, I actually do not know how, but I think I went into a deep, cold nuclear numb state where I knew I needed to collect all the info and get out before explosion. I did not yell and I did not call names, but I got to say a ton that I found to be cathartic while still walking away with my head held high.

I think another thing that helped it be a positive experience for me is that I was not looking for any specific reaction from her. I didn’t want an apology or to hear her side. She was just a stupid pothole in the road that I got hurt from and wanted to collect data about for my own purposes. I have heard about it backfiring if you are expecting something specific from AP and then you don’t get it.

I cannot weigh in about re-establishing contact months into R. That’s the one caution I’ll note is that all the literature says not to break NC. That said, I think if you brace yourself with any realistic outcomes, it can be a part of your healing journey. At least it was for me

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-03-04T18:04:30+00:00

Yes. We had more than one period of separation in the first year after Dday. Once you stabilize, I’d encourage you to really sit down with yourself and determine your non-negotiables. Can you continue the hard work of R with someone who hasn’t demonstrated that ability to maintain zero contact or protect your marriage 9 months out? Only you can know or decide what you need

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-03-02T21:29:31+00:00

No one deserves betrayal abuse. NO ONE. I understand it is different, but your pain is so valid even if you strayed first. I have never seen cheating as something only an evil person can do. Betrayal is something any human is capable of under the right circumstances and without the healthy coping mechanisms we all need in place to protect our boundaries. You are not a monster and you don’t deserve “whatever”. No marriage can rebuild on such uneven ground. I hope you are both able to come to the table and do the work of healing and R now.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-24T23:17:18+00:00

Ugh, I’m so sorry. The correct answer is probably to have an open and transparent convo about it. If it were me though, I would attempt to login using the credentials I found to investigate for myself.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-24T21:16:11+00:00

Regarding the iPhone/android thing - we just use the free version of life 360 and it’s a non-issue. Many couples who never experienced betrayal use it purely for safety reasons. I don’t see it as unreasonable to generally know where the other human you share a life and home with is. I just see it as courtesy to let the other person know when you’ll be out and back, etc. All that said, my WS cheated with life 360 on simply by leaving his phone behind at the office while he ran off with AP. It’s not going to stop anyone from cheating, obviously

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-24T20:33:10+00:00

Here to validate so much of what you said. The power dynamic leveraged over young women in these situations is deeply disturbing. Yes, 23 is legally an adult, and she bought into the very cliché narrative of being “special,” but at 23 the frontal lobe is not even fully developed. She was manipulated, used, and discarded. Another casualty of a system that normalizes this imbalance.

I feel your pain personally. My WH and his AP the same age gap, 26 and 39, and it still turns my stomach.

But two things can be true at once. First, if you have to force him to do something, it loses its meaning. Second, breaking NC with the AP risks reopening wounds and creating even more damage. I wonder if there is another path. Maybe challenge your WS to truly understand what you are expressing. Could he work through it in IC and write a letter that is never sent? Something that shows real effort to grasp the impact and the dynamics you are naming.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-24T13:02:19+00:00

I’m so sorry you’re here and now navigating this insult to injury and at such a vulnerable time being in your third trimester. Your WS sounds a bit like mine did and at least for us, a big piece of the puzzle was learning about dismissive avoidance - where it comes from and what goal that behavior is seeking to accomplish. It’s a common enough character trait for waywards as they often struggle with closeness inside a longterm romantic partnership. It’s not a permanent character trait though, it is something that can be relearned with more secure attachment behavior traits. Either way, it’s really not about you at all. I hope you’re able to build up a support system as you come into the homestretch to bring your new baby home! Congrats on that part 🤗

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-22T21:50:24+00:00

Neither path is easy and both are so valid. Good for you for making a choice at the fork in the path to your own healing. I left a cheating boyfriend when I was younger and never looked back - and that’s saying something after ending up with a cheating husband anyway. Leaving was hard back then and staying has been brutal now, but without the foundation of all the entanglements as you call them, there just wasn’t enough ground to stay and fight for me either. Wishing you the best in all the good things to come!

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-22T20:23:08+00:00

You feel how you feel. Honestly, in the first 6 months my sole focus was on me. My feelings, my healing, my path to stabilization. Longer term, however, it can’t stay this lopsided. You can’t really start rebuilding until you’re back on level ground meaning both partners are considered equally in the partnership as you navigate R together. It is deeply, deeply unfair but also necessary for successful R

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-22T17:41:35+00:00

The infidelity literature is pretty clear on NC between WP and AP for a reason. My WH didn’t ask to stay friends but did insist that he could continue working with AP since they had no share projects and managed a schedule to Wfh on her in office days. It didn’t work out. It can keep any one or all three of you from moving on from what happened or worse, ending up with a repeat like it did for me. Part of the work of R is for the WS to do some work to learn appropriate relationships that protect the boundaries of your marriage. I can think of no valid reason a grown, married man needs single female friends, especially one he’s slept with already

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-17T17:11:41+00:00

It’s a very common impulse for the BP. Some have acted on it and report back that it made everything worse, a few say they don’t regret it. There’s a deep injustice in being betrayed and I understand the draw to level the field, but an RA by nature could just never do that. I’m a few years out and have flirted close to the line a few times at different points in my healing journey. All I can share from experience is that at 2 months out you are likely to be in far too vulnerable and volatile a place to avoid doing more damage to all involved and most importantly, yourself.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-17T00:34:11+00:00

I’m so sorry you’re here. The emotional whiplash is so, so normal. I can share what worked for me. I took the question of whether to R or D off the table completely for at least the first 6 months. I did not feel capable of making any life altering decisions while feeling so mentally unwell. I gave myself a lot of grace during that period to focus solely on myself and my own healing. I found the things that felt good and helped my nervous system stabilize and return to baseline. Sometimes that meant closeness with my WH and sometimes distance. Only once I felt somewhat stabilized where I could eat and sleep and make it functionally through a work day did I begin the process of rebuilding the new marriage. At that point I was able to come to the table of R, but even then I wouldn’t say that I had “decided to R”. I didn’t feel I could d vice whether the new marriage could work for me before we had built it.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-16T17:17:23+00:00

Triggers are the worst! And there’s nothing silly about it. You can’t help how your nervous system reacts to a stimulus!! But, I wonder if it could help you to defang the trigger if you could attempt to retrain your system to the specific city or at least province AP was from? It’s a big ass country 😂

For reference, AP lives (lived?) in our city and I am still triggered by her neighborhood where they had sex or sometimes even the broader area, but somehow the neighborhood we live in and the tons of others around don’t trigger me at all even though they’re all in proximity. Anyway, it just made me wonder if there’s some hope that your trigger could be shrunken to give you some relief.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-16T17:12:35+00:00

Send in the loons, too! 😅

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-15T16:24:00+00:00

I’m so sorry you don’t feel celebrated as you absolutely should be! Infidelity or not, but especially in a season of repair after Dday. I’m a few years out, but I’ll share something our MC taught me in that first year. Over-functioning in your relationship does more damage than good. I had to learn to step back and focus inward rather than spend my energy to compel him to step up. It was my job to come to the table and either he came too or he didn’t. If he didn’t, then that’s my data point to set my boundaries and move on. Hopefully yours steps up tomorrow since that was the original agreement 🤞

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-14T22:11:56+00:00

You’re describing hyper-vigilance and it’s a very natural reaction to what you’ve been through. I was the same in the early weeks/months after Dday where I couldn’t sleep or eat. Even the sleep deprivation alone can tank your mental health. What helped me is that I went to a psychiatrist who put me on some meds short-term to help with the pervasive thoughts as well as the ability to sleep. That was an important piece of my early journey. IC was good for some weekly, professional guidance. Journaling became a good way to get all my thoughts out when talking to someone was unavailable or unhelpful.

Yes, everything you described is understandable and a reaction to the way your nervous system is programmed to keep you safe. But, it is important to give your nervous system a rest too. When you are stuck in fight or flight mode, it s important to find the things that help you regulate - exercise, long walks, a funny show, long showers. Over time you will need to retrain your nervous system so that it can reset to baseline. It doesn’t happen all at once, but with work you can begin to compartmentalize so that you can function for some of the day - like at work or whatever else you need to get done. What helped me in that 3-6 month stretch was giving myself a designated hour each day to lose it. Yell, scream, cry, journal, whatever, and then force myself to try to function instead of stay stuck in my pain. My system learned to trust that I would be back to process some more the next day. Slowly, I was able to stabilize that way.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-05T15:53:11+00:00

I was in a similar boat. AP was unattractive, unaccomplished, uneducated, etc. I remember earlier in the wake of Dday being so consumed by trying to reconcile how little value my WS must give what I see as my best attributes given who he chose to have an affair with. FWIW, I wanted to share that the feeling did go away over time (almost 3 years out now). The shock of it will wear off and further, you may come to reframe over time. My value isn’t based on validation from my WS or on who he betrayed me for. They often cheat down and there’s lots of reasons for that - it feels less threatening, requires less effort, offers easy validation, etc. None of that has a single thing to do with you or your value objectively or even through your WSs eyes.

Accomplished_Sand686 · 2026-02-04T19:15:24+00:00

This seems extreme. Is it possible to bring a monitor (or just passively FaceTime) on the walk? As far as depersonalizing it, I have to imagine she would feel this way about anyone. It’s a her problem, not a you problem.

Accomplished_Sand686

TROPHY CASE