SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

For those who chose to stay with their WS and were in reconciliation, how long was it before you didn't talk about the A as much (if ever)?

My WH had a month long affair that ended when I found out from a friend what he was up to. Since D-Day (16 months) , he has been doing all the right things and I am settled in my decision to stay. Obviously I still have days where I look at him and think 'what a selfish dick' and hate on him for a bit. Then there are other days it can get me down to the point I do question my decision. Lately though I have been trying to work through these feelings more on my own and don't bring it up with WH as I feel it seems like such a long time ago now. I know the recovery period is meant to be 2-5 years but it honestly feels 'silly' for bringing up the details at this point with him as there is nothing new.

Thoughts / experiences? Do you think I am just rug sweeping kind of?

Whilst I am not there yet - I can just go with - everyone's healing journey is their own.

You cant exactly put time frames on it, as it comes down to your processing, your healing, your acceptance, and then them being consistent with actions etc

I am headed towards 9-years after dday — I’ll still bring it up as needed. I just don’t need to very much. There are some things that trigger harder than others, but I usually keep it to myself, but again, I’ll share if I need to.

The answer is really up to you.

Somewhere in year one or two, we set up a time. A few minutes after dinner and if I had questions or issues, I brought them up at that point and that was it. It kept a lot of our day focused on each other and building back the M. Somewhere along the way, I never had any after dinner A stuff issues.

The window for complete recovery was fairly accurate, the 2-5 years. First two were the toughest, year 3 we knew we both wanted to do the work and 4-5 were about making the M the way we needed it to be.

I would say at about 5 years into R I brought it up rarely. First three years into R I brought it up often.

First year was almost every day.

If you have all your questions answered, it seems natural that the discussions would be reducing. You’re moving toward introspection and trying to reestablish some kind of "normal" day to day life. It’s going to come up. Ebb and flow.

But it never really disappears.

We are very similar in our timelines. I’m 15 months past Dday and my WH had a 3 month PA with a married POS coworker. I am confident and feel it in my soul that I know everything I need to know / or as close as I can ever possibly know about his A.

His A has been throughly talked about, investigated and validated over the first year … the pieces of the puzzle fit for me and at this point in time I don’t have or see a "need" to bring up the A and the details in a full blown daily discussion anymore. I haven’t had any new questions in several months and the same ol questions I’ve asked a million times I get the same ol answer - which is reassuring and has helped calm my nervous system.

I think an A’s duration has a lot to do with A discussions … the longer an A, the longer and messier the timeline will be (right?). Generally, there will be much more details to have to comb through if it’s a LTA. I completely understand why people who discover say a LTA, vs. a 3 month A would most likely need years to process and unpack that level of betrayal.

Everybody’s road to recovery will be different no matter what the "rule of thumb" might be. While my WH and I don’t talk about the A in terms of the details and the timeline much, it comes up in other ways now then it did in the first year. We both think about the A daily, but it’s no longer this throbbing pain in my side. Affair Talk these days looks more like … "how could you think doing that would be a good idea"? … "how nice of you to just throw your family away like a bunch of trash!" … "congratulations on being a big POS!" Not helpful I know, but I guess this is my way of making sure he knows I haven’t "forgotten" and that he’s not forgiven (hopefully one day).

To sum up my ramble, our A discussions are in essence still present, however, we’ve successfully conquered the timeline and details and have evolved to a place of attempting R and putting as much of a focus on this step as he’s able and I’m able … trying to move forward, but not forgetting why we take 1 step forward and 2 steps back in the process.

Just remember there is no right or wrong way to go about getting out of infidelity. I resonate with you and it seems completely reasonable to me.

Webbit,

Is it his A you’d like to talk about?

Or is it his love you’d like to talk about?

If it’s the A, but you think you already have all the answers, then maybe beating him up some more isn’t helpful.

If it’s his love you’re wondering about, never stop bringing that up.

Sometime in the 2nd year I started asking myself, 'What's the positive outcome of asking this question?' If I had a positive outcome, I asked. Otherwise, I realized some feeling needed attending to, and that's what I did.

For example, if I realized the purpose of my question was to shame my W, I also realized I was angry, and I went straight to dealing with that.