SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi SI,

I haven't posted in a while and always feel awkward about that...but am always deeply gratelful for the thoughtful responses shared here despite the posting gaps. Thank you, as always, in advance, for listening. I appreciate you.

I am still, 4 years out from a complicated DDay2, sorting deep seated areas of stuckness in terms of the sexual aspects of my wife's PA. I am thankful for significant progress here, and have had to go pretty far back into places where my very sexual identity and formation took place to try and unravel why, despite IC, consistent unwavering remorse from my WW, and the passage of ever increasing amounts of time, that I am still pretty stuck in terms of the sexual aspects of my wife's betrayal. One partuclar bear trap that I have not been able to find very much ink on in recovery literature is when the BS was a virgin at marriage so, obiviously has no other sexual partners other than their WS. I am finding this particulary mindbending in my own ongoing recovery. My wife is my only sexual partner. She was not a virgin when we married, we processed that "incongruence" during our dating/engagement and entered into our, what I thought would be, an exclusive sexual relationship upon marriage.

What I seem to be crashing up against at some level in recovering from her sexual betrayal during our marriage is, in addition to the betrayal itself, having zero point of reference of what it is even like (beyond the generalities of course) to have sexual experiences with another/other people. At best, even when sexual detail is asked for and received by the BS, we will never have it all, or even close to a comprehensive truth about the (affair in general as well) the sexual encounters our waywards have with their APs. So there is STILL, even with as much detail as a WS can remember and offer, a deep sense (for me at least) in which I feel a great deal of just being IN THE DARK about. And I think it's just an additional, volatile, toxin to then add, not only feeling in the dark about large parts of the affair and the sexual encounters therein, but also being in the dark about what even a baseline experience is like to simply have sexual encounters with another person AT ALL...just twists it exponentiually for me.

I anticiapte the counters to this somewhat...I mean...sex is sex, right? We're adults. We know how sex works etc. etc. I don't know why that doesn't work for me. I think it has soemthing to do with sex never really being "just sex" to me. To me, I would think, if you change the parnter, the sexual experience could/should/would change SIGNIFICANTLY. I don't knnow that experientailly though. I can only guess. So, my wife not only went and lived a secret chunk of life that I will never be able to really know or be a part of, she also had deeply intimate sexual experiences that I will never even be able to relate to,even at the most fundamental levels.

I'm not sure I am making sense at this point...usually a sign to start winding the post down.

I have often had the, admittedly bizarre (embarassing?) notion that, if I could be given an ULTRA HD account of every single interaction, conversation, date, meetup, and yes, masochistic as it sounds, sexual encounter where I could observe every single detail with as much clarity as possible... every single nuance, every facial expression, every twist of the hair, tilt of the head, smile, touch, voice inflection, choice of words...that I could somehow get totally free. Just EXACTLY how WAS my wife with him...on a date...in his car...at the mall...out to dinner......IN BED? That if I could somehow know this...there would be freedom for me. Just having the knowledge itself firsthand. My IC says this desire is about control. Feeling that knowledge would give me a sense of control over all of it. She's probably right...but I don't know. I just know it's how I feel.

Good Lord, I may have just threadjacked my own thread.

But I think it relates...I have this seemingly inordinately DEEP NEED to try and RELATE experientially to my wife's affair...especially the sexual dyanamics of it, and, because she is my only sexual partner...I can't even relate to what it is to share a sexual relationship with another person...let alone grasp the much deeper dyanmics present in an affair. I guess it just feels like I will never get my head and heart around it...and the "virgin problem", for me anyway, seems to exacerbate it. Tremendously.

After all of that word vomit...I guess I just want to ask...

Is there anyone out there who had a "virgin problem"to solve in your affair recovery. Was it even a problem? If so, how did you do it? What were some of the more stubborn obstacles if you did?

Even if you didn't have the virgin problem...I welcome all potential insights.

Thank you so much as always for your time and thoughtfulness in wrestling with me,

WH

Hi Wounded Healer,

This is the first post of yours I've read, so I am just going off what you've said here. I don't reply to other posts often because I don't feel like I have any good advice to offer really, I'm about 18 months out and still not doing great. I did relate to a lot of what you wrote, though my situation isn't exactly the same.

I've been with my WS since we were sixteen and we're now mid-thirties. When we were teenagers, we were on and off a lot and he would often go and sleep with other people during the times we were off. I did it once. My WS was my first, and aside from the one time I started dating someone else while we were broken up when I was eighteen, he's the only other person I've had sex with. We were apart for a few months in 2021 and he slept with someone then too, I did not.

I don't mean to thread jack btw, I'm just telling you a bit about my situation in the hope that it will help in some way. I've had a lot of problems with intimacy since the infidelity, which have only gotten worse lately. I've just recently had a revelation about why that is. My WS had a ONS with a girl who is twelve years younger than we are. I made him tell me every detail, because, like you, I felt I needed to know everything, no matter how much it hurt to hear. I agree that that is a form of trying to take control of the situation. Hearing the details helped in some ways, but not others. Like you, if I could watch it, I would, which sounds crazy, but it is a need to know everything.

So the revelation I've had recently, and I don't know if it will help in anyway, but I think the way I view sex with my WS has changed and I worry about the way he views sex, if he can so freely go and do it with someone else, someone he had just met and who was a lot younger. I view it as a bonding thing, it's very intimate, a way to show our love for each other, ultimately. I wouldn't do that with just anyone. I know some people would and I'm not judging, but because of the way I feel about it, I struggle with my partner seemingly not feeling the same way. Sex no longer feels intimate and personal, because he's done it with someone else very recently, and betrayed me to do it, risked losing his entire family for it. Sex feels like a very different thing now and I find it to be one of my biggest triggers lately.

I don't really have advice per se, I just wanted to let you know that I understand what you're saying and how you're feeling, and I hope someone else will come along with advice to help you through it.

Also, I'm so sorry that you're going through this. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, it has been a truly horrific experience. I say that because I often feel silly about how much I struggle with it, but it seems our reactions are completely normal to a very traumatising event that was not our fault. Wishing you the best with your healing journey.

I can see the issue here. Your imagination is the only thing you have when it comes to this and it has you imagining the worst.

she also had deeply intimate sexual experiences that I will never even be able to relate to,even at the most fundamental levels.

Can you explain to me what you mean here? It feels like this is the feeling you assigned. In my experience, my most deeply intimate sexual experiences have been with my husband, yet I also had an affair. I understand people’s experiences can vary widely but if my husband wrote this, I would strongly disagree with this. I was not wildly impressed with affair sex and deeply wish I never went out and had it. Sex for a lot of people is best when you feel emotionally safe and comfortable with the person. Those two things are not generally present in an affair.

If I am being honest, I think you should separate and you should go and have some experiences if you want to do that. Not as a retaliatory measure, but more of a way to get your mind wrappers around it. I do not know if it will help or hurt but I do not think this is a situation you can logically force your feelings to go a certain way. I think eventually you will be tired of trying to force yourself to be okay with it and divorce anyway. The biggest risk is if she goes and has experienced during that time I am not sure that will be well received by you.

Do you feel she cheated for the sex? A lot of women cheat for the perceived emotional pay offs, only to find they are never really there in an affair. The sex is more a transactional act to keep getting the pay off they are looking for.

...if I could be given an ULTRA HD account of every single interaction, conversation, date, meetup, and ... sexual encounter where I could observe every single detail with as much clarity as possible... that I could somehow get totally free.

IMO, you're lying to yourself. Nothing can free you from the fact that you've been betrayed.

*****

Besides....

What does 'free' mean to you?
How would you be different if you were free?
How would your life be different?
How would you and your life be different if your body count were the same as your W's?

*****

My reco is NOT to make yourself a madhatter. If you want to violate your M vows, don't - D first.

*****

IMO, R requires letting the WS get away with at least one betrayal.

IMO, a BS who Rs must be OK with not retaliating.

IMO, a BS who Rs must be or become comfortable with the truth that 2 wrongs do not make a right.

Hi Poet,

First, thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to put those thoughts together and share them. If you feel that you don't have much to offer...please don't feel that way. I totally resonate with the applicable parts of your story, and you articulate it very well. Thank you again.

I am glad to know I am not the only one who recognizes this (what feels outsized) need for extreme detail. Like, as you shared, if I could just see and hear...EXPERIENCE every single thing in full, living color, I could "make it stop". So, thank you for sharing that...it makes me feel less crazy and alone in that. I, like you, found the details a double edged sword...but ultimately worth it. For me the mystery of that entire time (the entire affair of course, but also, and especially the sexual encounters) was intolerable. The details I got made it...much less intolerable?...but carry a unique toxin all their own, don't they?

Also, like you, I think all of this just ends up going to back to the heart of, IDK, my "valuation?" of sex? It has never been even in the remotest sense a casual thing for me. I made a decision as a very young man for it to be that way. And maybe even "made a decision" isn't quite accurate as it seemed to just be innate in me...almost a purely intuitive "decision". It's really something, I recall distinctly feeling an intense "cocktail" of raw, for lack of better terms, emotion when, upon embarking on my first "real" girlfriend relationship, the first time I had a jealous response to other males showing interest in her (she did not reciprocate it for what it's worth) while she was my girlfriend. But when I let that thought/emotion exercise play out in my mind to where she would become physical with another guy...that "cocktail" of raw emotions (some combo of jealousy?, disgust?, rage?, humilation? sadness?) was overwhelming. I decided right at that moment that, in addition to sex just being kinda "sacred"I guess, intuitvely to me, that ALSO I did not want to put any of MY future partners through that cocktail down the line...the one of having to imagine me being sexual with someone else, even under "normal"/non-cheating circumstances. I had no idea at the time how rare? (odd?) that is. I thought at the time that there'd be lots of people who would reason that same way...even as I became aware of my peers NOT sharing that...I still figured there'd still be a significant representation of my shared views on it. It seemed so no-brainer reasonable to me. So, anyway, the bottom line is I placed a very high value on the non-casual/high meaningfulness arc of sex...AND, simultaneusly, the exclusivity of it. It's this combo, I think, that seems almost lethal to reconiling from sexual betrayal for me. IDK.

Wow...that was way longer than I anticipated....thank you again for sharing...and for your investment in this thread.

WH

[This message edited by Wounded Healer at 6:50 PM, Thursday, May 22nd]

I had the virgin problem. Virgin on my wedding night, my wife was not. I also viewed sex as sacred.

These things contributed to my betrayal pain. It seemed utterly unbelievable that she could be so casually disgraceful with something so precious to me. I suspect that mismatch contributed to our divorce.

Regarding the idea that if you had HD footage of every event that you’d be free, it’s not real. You’d be left wanting to know what thoughts and feelings were going on in her, where you were at each moment, what you were doing while they had sex, and a trillion other details that would still be left unknown. You have to accept that something precious burned to ash, and it cannot be brought back. Something new could be built, but the old is lost to entropy.

Hi Wounded Healer -

I can relate to your situation, but not really to your problem.

My WW and I started dating at 15, and were virgins when we got married at 22. No other partners until her affairs. So, it seems tragic to say that she has had more sex than I have.

I'm 20 years out from DDay, but I still carry lots of scars from the infidelity. I still think about her affairs every day. I won't go into the (multiple) affair details, but it was messy. I read your profile, and your case was messy too.

But, I never really got hung up on the "virgin problem". To me, the other key aspects of the betrayal were challenging enough - the loss of trust, violation of our marriage vows, etc. The sex part was just a by-product of the trappings of the affair.

One thing mentioned in SI is not to ask your WS any question where you may not be able to handle the answer. I'm also a "want to know everything" type of person, but I never wanted to know the intimate details of her PAs. I figured that there was no value in hearing that information - what would I do with it? How will knowing it help you? I think it's good that you learned the timelines, frequency, partner info, etc, but for me, knowing the specifics of the sex doesn't really add any value for me in understanding what happened and trying to move forward.

If I do find myself dwelling on the sex of the affair, I simply try to control the narrative in my head. Not by knowing the details of what happened, but the opposite actually. Make up your own version of what happened. For example, my WS mentioned that one of her APs couldn't work a condom properly, so I use that as support for thinking that their sex was nothing special. As hikingout mentioned, the sex part of the affair for most women is transactional. So, I think you should understand that, if your mind gets stuck on this. You have a deeper emotional connection to your WW than her affair partners, and your sex reflects that.

Also, please try to avoid testing the affair waters yourself, just to find out what sex is like with someone else. Unless you really want to end your marriage, the amount of additional damage this will do may be insurmountable. Right after my WW confessed to her affairs, she told me that I could have my own affair, as some sort of "equality" measure. I told her that I thought that was the worst idea ever.

Finally, not to end on a down note... But if sex is this sacred to you, then you may have to consider that her having sex with someone else is a deal-breaker for your marriage. That's your call completely, and no one would tell you that you are wrong for feeling that way. But FWIW, I always thought that an affair would be a deal-breaker for my marriage. And my wife told me before we got married, that if I had an affair, she would kill me.
Yet, we're still together 20 years post DDay.

Feel free to PM me if I can help.

I feel I should clarify my comment as to not have anyone wonder why I would recommend him having affairs. Especially since that was exactly what my husband did.

Everyone looks at what an affair is differently. Some believe if you are still married it’s an affair if you separate. I am just simply not of that belief, but hold space and respect for those who do.

When I say separate and have your own experiences, I mean have an above board conversation. You have been trying to deal with this aspect for four years. I think you are doing yourself a disservice because it doesn’t align with your values.

I do not think you should go have an affair, or betray your wife. I think you may need to come to terms with it without the forcing of the issue. And if it requires understanding what being with someone else is like then you separate and are free to see other people.

I would have probably said you are best to divorce but I sense that isn’t what you want at all and I realize that even a separation may not be what you want. But if you feel like you need to have experiences to understand intimacy with another that is the best solution to execute. Be above board and true to yourself.