SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have a somewhat specific question for the people here who consider themselves securely attached.

Were you securely attached before the affair, and have you actually had what you would consider a successful reconciliation?

I ask because I keep noticing that a lot of the reconciliation resources seem to assume that the reconciling betrayed is insecure attach.

I am looking at specific challenges to reconciling from the perspective of a secure attach individual.

I was secure before my wife's affair. I had high self-esteem, trusted myself, trusted her, was comfortable with independence, and never had much fear around abandonment. I have also practiced mindfulness for more than 20 years.

The affair did not leave me believing that I am inadequate or that I cannot survive without my wife.

If anything, that creates a different problem.

I know I can leave.

I know I will be okay if I leave.

I do not need the marriage to prove my worth, and I do not need my wife to regulate me.

My wife is actually doing exceptionally well in reconciliation, particularly over the last month. She is doing serious work on herself, we are in structured therapy, and she is finally beginning to understand some of the deeper fearful-avoidant, shame, fawning, and escape dynamics that contributed to the affair.

So this is not a situation where I am contemplating leaving because she refuses to do the work.

The problem is that I am 19 months out, the relationship is objectively stable and connected, and I still feel unsettled.

My trust has barely returned.

I am not unhappy, but I am not particularly happy either.

My life sometimes feels like an ill-fitting suit. I can live in it. There is plenty that is good about my life. I still love my wife. But there is a persistent awareness that I would not have chosen this life if I had been given informed consent.

My nervous system frequently tells me to leave.

My heart and my brain tell me to stay.

What I am trying to understand is what this looks like specifically for people who started from secure attachment after years of remaining.

Did you eventually feel that staying was something you freely wanted, rather than something you had rationally decided was the best option?

Did the loss of agency and epistemic safety eventually become integrated into your life, or did you simply learn to live around it?

Most importantly, did you ever get back to being genuinely happy in the marriage?

I am particularly interested in hearing from people several years out who would describe themselves as securely attached before discovery and who believe their reconciliation was actually successful.

Not "we are still married."

I mean you genuinely like the life you ended up with and would still choose it today.

Does anyone here fit that description?

Little Monk --

Were you securely attached before the affair, and have you actually had what you would consider a successful reconciliation?

Among the early excuses my wife offered after confessing her A -- was that she didn't think I needed her.

She was right, and it was the only thing that made sense out of her other rationalizations to do what she chose to do.

By the time she confessed, our sons were young adults and we were financially secure.

Did the loss of agency and epistemic safety eventually become integrated into your life, or did you simply learn to live around it?

I would say if anything, I acquired more agency after the A.

Our M was distant before her confession, and the relationship felt more like a sense of obligation than anything else.

Infidelity breaks the deal.

It reminds me of those things I like about myself the most and also that the front door is always there if I need to use it one last time.

As to safety, that's generally an illusion in any part of life.

My safety is more like -- I know there isn't any emotional trauma that will end me.

I will be fine.

My safety also includes that I am awesome with or without a partner.

Are there things my wife does to make sure I feel good about my choice to stay? Absolutely.

The trust is hard earned through hundreds of consistent actions toward me and our relationship.

Ten years later, I am at peace and very happy with my wife and who she has become.

I'm happily married and it is a much better deal these days. We went after the M we both originally thought we had in the first place.

I couldn't ever recommend anyone stay unless they are building something worthy of oneself.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

Also Safety was probably the wrong word to use... more "trust" that she would do what it takes to protect us in the future.

Thank you.

I just noticed the 19-months time frame in your first post -- it is still pretty early in the healing process.

No need to rush it.

Your fight or flight brain is doing what it is supposed to do, keeping you on alert until your wife shows you more work.

It wasn't until year three that I started to believe the actions and changes my wife made.

First fully 'peaceful' year was year five, when my wife's changes were clearly permanent.

The agency is, you choose your life each and every new day.

Stay or go is always your call.

I have a somewhat specific question for the people here who consider themselves securely attached.

Were you securely attached before the affair, and have you actually had what you would consider a successful reconciliation?

I would argue I fit the bill. I was very secure before the affair and have a "secure" attachment type. That said, there is maybe some element of "dismissive-avoidant" to myself personally. Any of these sorts of grouping exercises ultimately misses that we are all individuals showing a spectrum or mix of behaviors from the categories.

I ask because I keep noticing that a lot of the reconciliation resources seem to assume that the reconciling betrayed is insecure attach.

I am looking at specific challenges to reconciling from the perspective of a secure attach individual.

I was secure before my wife's affair. I had high self-esteem, trusted myself, trusted her, was comfortable with independence, and never had much fear around abandonment. I have also practiced mindfulness for more than 20 years.

Same, and I still have high self esteem and we have restored trust (functionally). But trust 2.0 is not trust 1.0, implicit edition.

I don't fear abandonment at all. Mindfulness is a funny topic for me. At least previously, I didn't find it necessary because I don't tend to ruminate about the past or worry about the future. So I only recently needed to learn those tools to avoid rumination and worry brought on by the A. I rarely find myself using mindfulness tools and am close to my baseline.

The affair did not leave me believing that I am inadequate or that I cannot survive without my wife.

If anything, that creates a different problem.

I know I can leave.

I know I will be okay if I leave.

I do not need the marriage to prove my worth, and I do not need my wife to regulate me.

I used to be very proud of my marriage. Now I'm proud of being a good husband. Pride in the marriage was misplaced because you aren't responsible for your wife's behavior. So to some degree I have "permanently lost" pride in my marriage. But is that really a loss?

We will probably return to the idea of permanent losses in my reply.

My wife is actually doing exceptionally well in reconciliation, particularly over the last month. She is doing serious work on herself, we are in structured therapy, and she is finally beginning to understand some of the deeper fearful-avoidant, shame, fawning, and escape dynamics that contributed to the affair.

So this is not a situation where I am contemplating leaving because she refuses to do the work.

That's good, I didn't get that for the first year.

The problem is that I am 19 months out, the relationship is objectively stable and connected, and I still feel unsettled.

I think the PLOF is the PLOF and it's gonna PLOF. Feel free to read up on the "plain of lethal flatness". This is likely what you are experiencing. You are no longer constantly working on the A or something, and finally you get somewhere stable and you aren't working at the A but you aren't back to normal yet. That's very typical.

My trust has barely returned.

Trust is built through a series of actions. If you take my "bayesian" approach it takes 3 times as long to build up trust after a single betrayal. So you would need a large number of years to restore trust. What's sort of worse is the length of time you had trust prior to the betrayal makes it that much harder to ever achieve that level of trust again. I could link the thread but it's not really that important.

All I'm saying is it takes years for trust to be even close to functionally equivalent. Even then, the type of trust is no longer implicit, another permanent loss.

I am not unhappy, but I am not particularly happy either.

The next step for me after that was "happy and married but not happily married". I can say after a few years I have returned to happily married.

My life sometimes feels like an ill-fitting suit. I can live in it. There is plenty that is good about my life. I still love my wife. But there is a persistent awareness that I would not have chosen this life if I had been given informed consent.

My nervous system frequently tells me to leave.

My heart and my brain tell me to stay.

My nervous system hasn't told me to leave in a long time. My heart kept me in when my head wasn't even in it. I'm now "fully aligned" in staying. It's something I want and choose to be in every day. My daily experience in my marriage is not that it's something I continue to tolerate and work through for a happier future. But it definitely *was* at some point working towards a goal. And getting through the PLOF is like it's own sort of work toward the goal where the work is just going through it.

What I am trying to understand is what this looks like specifically for people who started from secure attachment after years of remaining.

Did you eventually feel that staying was something you freely wanted, rather than something you had rationally decided was the best option?

It took about 3 ish years to feel like it's what I "freely wanted" not what I was choosing as the least shitty option. It took another year or two to completely remove the "ill-fitting suit".

Did the loss of agency and epistemic safety eventually become integrated into your life, or did you simply learn to live around it?

We all live with epistemic uncertainty. Sometimes we don't register it correctly or explicitly. We sort of lose that opportunity following betrayal. So I learn to live with adequate uncertainty, not have complete implicit trust. This is likely a more durable mechanism anyway. I also grant *myself* epistemic uncertainty. If I at some point, change my mind. That I've made a terrible mistake, then I'm free to change my mind and leave. My previous frame of mind attached far more duty to marriage. Now I know I want it, because I'm free to leave if I don't.

Most importantly, did you ever get back to being genuinely happy in the marriage?

Yes, and like I said before, the progression was something like, Dday -> doing my best at R but not being ready to lose the M (1 year) -> asking for a divorce because I couldn't keep it up -> my wife actually working at R with me as a team (1 year)-> PLOF (1/2 year?) -> happy and married (2 years) -> happily married.

And from that level of progress it appears linear, but the reality is the progress is "non-linear". So on any given day in any given phase, I might be wildly optimistic, or totally depressed and upset at myself with my series of decisions leading me to this point in my life. But the trend is there.

I am particularly interested in hearing from people several years out who would describe themselves as securely attached before discovery and who believe their reconciliation was actually successful.

Not "we are still married."

I welcome you to read through my update threads. I am happily married.

https://my.survivinginfidelity.com/topics/666420/six-years-/

And if I did my housekeeping right, each thread should link back to the previous year.

I mean you genuinely like the life you ended up with and would still choose it today.

Does anyone here fit that description?

Yes, I genuinely like the life I ended up with and choose it every day. If you sent me back to DDay, I would like to think I would have made better decisions faster to get to where I am now with less pain. However, I don't think those shortcuts exist. I think I've done the best I can for the circumstances I've been presented.

I was secure before d-day almost 16 years ago, and I'm secure now. I've been secure for 12-13 years. (The first sex between W and ow might have been exactly 16 years ago today.) I'm happy, despite the ravages of age, and happily married.

W was in her A on our 43rd wedding anniversary in 2010. I didn't celebrate that date in 2011, 2012, or 2013. We were fully back together by 2014.

IMO, 19 months is your issue. The SI rule of thumb is 2-5 years to recover. Reconciling takes longer than 5 years for many of us. I think it's just too early for you to know if R will succeed.

When I joined SI, it was frequently said that R does not require forgiveness. I believed that then, and I still believe it.

IIRC, at about 30 months out, I raised the issue of my non-forgiveness in an MC session. Our MC shut me down. 'It's too early,' she said. I don't know exactly when it happened, but sometime between 3.5 and 4 years out I realized I no longer wanted revenge, and I no longer wanted my W to be punished.

Betrayal is an unforgivable action, but I decided my W was a forgivable person. You may decide the same WRT your W.

Patience, bro. Patience.

It took me at the 3 year mark from the discovery of the affair to make a decision to really heal myself.

I kept waiting to "feel better". Even though my H was doing everything possible — I still struggled. I felt "off" as though I wanted to be happy but at times I wasn’t.

So I started putting myself first and doing things for myself. My marriage was no longer my priority (nor was my H). I was.

I wasn’t being selfish. I was finally getting to a place where I was first, not everyone else.

I challenged myself to achieve certain goals. I started a business as a side hustle and had success. Unfortunately COVID stopped it but that was ok - I proved I could do it.

Since the affair (13 years ago) I can say I am very happy. My H changed (of his own free will) and we have a great relationship. I trust him and love him and try not to live in the past.

My H also knows I’m no longer a doormat and will walk out the door in a heartbeat. He knows there are no more chances and he can choose to leave at any time as well.

I’m good with him or without him.

I was very happy in our marriage prior to his affair and would not be afraid to be Divorced if it came to that.

I do think you need time to heal. I also think you will need to make a choice to R or D. You can choose to D if you just know you cannot accept the cheater and it has ruined the marriage permanently. Just because the cheater is doing everything possible to make amends means you have to remain married.

Sometimes an affair just destroys everything beyond repair.

Were you securely attached before the affair, and have you actually had what you would consider a successful reconciliation?

I have always known my worth . I would say our reconciliation is successful !

My trust has barely returned.

After 12 years most of the trust has come back except for blind trust. I can live with that . I KNEW something was off when my H had his A overseas...even though we were an ocean away. I wouldn't even entertain it when my GUT told me that he was having an A. I have learned to ALWAYS trust my GUT!!

Did you eventually feel that staying was something you freely wanted, rather than something you had rationally decided was the best option?

Honestly...it took me until year 3 after Dday before I took divorce off of the table. What worked for ME was getting a Plan B in place in case I felt I needed to leave. Once I had everything ready for me to LEAVE...I then felt I could focus on what it would take for me to STAY . Staying was both something I freely wanted and I felt it was the best option as well. IF my H proved to me he wasn't worthy of my staying...then I could easily walk away.

Did the loss of agency and epistemic safety eventually become integrated into your life, or did you simply learn to live around it?

I kind of had a little loss of agency in this case right after my H confessed...in a different way. For a little context...I had been married before and cheated on before. I did that STUPID pick-me-dance when I found out my 1st H cheated...and I WON...he came back. Only...I caught him with another adultery co-conspirator about 2 years later. He left me the next day. It wasn't until I started seriously dating the man who became my 2nd H that my 1st H decided that I was THE ONE . By then it was too little too late. I went for D with my 1st cheating H and R with my 2nd cheating H...and I have NO regrets with either decision .

Anyway...going back to when my 2nd H confessed. It was like I was watching a movie...my limbic system took control and I very matter-of-factly told my H that our M was over and calmly got up to leave the room. I told him he needed to call his adultery co-conspirator who lived in another country. The time difference would make it to where she would be asleep soon and I wanted him to make arrangements to be with her because WE WERE DONE. Needless to say...within an hour we were talking about R...and the rest is history .

I didn't live around anything. I had a mantra...I was going to OWN the A! There would be NOTHING that was going to keep ME from enjoying MY life . My M might not survive...but there was NO DOUBT that I would. I had lived through D before...I could do it again .

Most importantly, did you ever get back to being genuinely happy in the marriage?

Oh my gosh...YES ! That was what I wanted so much...hence my username . After a few years though I realized that I could get to "happy"...but it wasn't lasting. What DID last...what I REALLY wanted without realizing it...was PEACE . Once I reached peace...happiness stayed !

Just as most of us don't really KNOW what it feels like to be betrayed until we actually experience it...it is hard to describe how AWESOME it feels to be on the OTHER side of infidelity unless it is experienced ! As with ANY trauma...there can be times of sadness...just like when we think about the devastating day of September 11, 2001 . BUT...there's always a but ...the GOOD times we have NOW far outweigh the BAD times from before. NOW is what COUNTS .

I mean you genuinely like the life you ended up with and would still choose it today.

I don't know if there is anyone who would WANT the infidelity to be a part of their marital history...no matter how wonderful their life is today...I certainly don't. Our M did NOT get better because of my H's A though. His A was a symptom of something not working in our M. His A destroyed our M. EVERY A is a dealbreaker. PERIOD. We had to either make a NEW deal...or void the contract altogether. WE decided to work on our M...although he did do most of the work at first. My H was ALL IN on Dday and has never wavered since . I didn't get to that point for about 3 years...but once I was ALL IN...everything got better ! We honestly LOVE our Mv2.0 (marriage version 2.0) !! I have just gone through my 12th A season...and except for a few days that were sad...it was "just another day" for most of the season. I couldn't say that at 19 months out for sure!

You seem to have come a long way...along with your wife...that is always helpful . A trauma this bad takes that ugly four letter word to get through...TIME. You really don't want to rush through this...because it can come back to haunt you sometimes decades later as some who are on here have found. What you DO with your TIME is key...and you will learn what works best for YOU . Writing on here HELPED me immeasurably . Reading on here was a Godsend as well! Each of us heal in different ways...so take what you read on here that will HELP YOU...and leave the rest . We ALL want to help...but not every situation is the same.

There may be a few things you can research that may help you understand some of what you are going through right now. One is to look up the limbic system...or lizard brain. It is quite fascinating to read about and helped me to understand WHY I was so calm on Dday after hearing the devastating news when my H confessed to his A.

Another is to read about the "plain of lethal flatness". There is a small article about it in "The Healing Library". You can go to the "Articles" part then click on the "recovery / reconciliation" link. The article is listed in that link . My 2nd year of recovery was actually worst than the 1st year. The shock had worn off and I was left with what would happen next and did I really want to put up with this for the REST OF MY LIFE. Thankfully the POLF was written about a LOT on here at that time and I could tell this was something I was going through.