Hello girl. welcome to the site. I am truly sorry that it is under these circumstances that you are here. You are here, though and you ahve valid questions.
I went through the same thing almost 3 years ago. In fact, 2 days from today will be the third anniversary of the first day she cheated on me, although it would not be until January 01 that I would find out for sure.
During that span of a couple of months, my wife had become distant and started arguments almost daily with me. It all came to a pinnacle on December 19th, Later, I found that to be the last time that she had sex with him. She came home late from work on that day and brought home take-out chicken home for dinner. I suspected nothing and even defended her to family and friends who told me that she was cheating. I told them that there was absolutely no way she would ever do that to me or anyone else.
After dinner, I asked her to come out onto the deck because we had to talk about whatever it was tht she was so angry with me about. We went outside, sat down, lit up a cigarette and said "What do you want to talk about?"
I told her that I was afraid that our marriage is all but over unless we do something to fix whatever problems we were having. She glared at me and told me that we needed to consider that it may be time to separate.
She told me that she never loved me the way I loved her, that she had hoped that she would have learned, but that she didn't and she really should have not married me in the first place. She told me that she did not care for the sex anymore and that it was just over.
As my emotions exploded into tears, she sat there, staring at me with zero emotion on her face and even reinforced it by saying "See, I should feel SOMETHING after devastating you like this, but I don't. It's over." She then began telling me every reason I was a complete sack of crap and completely unworthy of a second chance. She blamed everything on me and I took it. I got in my car and drove around crying all night long until 6am when she had to leave to go to work.
Over the next couple of weeks, I became a complete slave to her. I waited on her hand and foot. I catered to her every whim. I became a chump overnight. In return, she had to listen to me begging her to reconsider her position.
She wanted to go out to a singles bar with "the girls" on New Years Eve. I finally convinced her to go out with me. i spent every penny I had to take her to a jazz club that under normal circumstances, she would have loved. She was cold and standoffish all night.
On the hour ling drive home from the jazz club, I got a complete feeling that there was someone else, and I was going to find out. I took her phone as she slept, and long story short, I found the guy. I had his name, address, phone number, email address, knew where he worked and pulled up an image of his house on Google Earth, only to see her car in his driveway on the street level view.
The next morning, she wanted to talk to me (before she knew what I had found out) and asked me to read a letter that she wrote. It was a letter telling me that she had found someone else and that they were meant to be together, blah blah blah... I then proceeded to tell HER who he was and gave her details of the affair and the email messages she had been exchanging with him. I knew everything and I blindsided her with it. Tears erupted, apologies were made and the lies began.
It took me a total of 3 months to drag the truth out of her, but I finally was convinced that I got it all. There was shouting and begging. There was screaming and crying. There was a complete loss of control many times over. She begged for my forgiveness. She laid in the closet and cried for days at a time. It was horrible... To compound matters, she had to fess up to being pregnant, and it was a flip of the coin whether the baby was his or mine. Everything that COULD go wrong DID... MANY times over.
She is now jealous of me and constantly gets the idea that I am behaving inappropriately with others.
To answer your question... Old ghosts linger. They come around at the worst possible times. I have forgiven, but there is no forgetting. It affects me at times in ways I didn't see coming. I know that there are some things about our sexual regimen that she doesn't like that I do, so I just stopped asking. It is all done her way.
even though she tells me that she doesn't mind the things I want to do, her actions tell me differently.
I will never forget the things that happened. It will get worse for me soon, because anniversary dates seem to have a way to presenting themselves. there is a certain shirt that she wears that I hate (too bad because it really looks nice on her) because she was wearing it on Christmas morning that year. Christmas sucked royally for me that year, so when I see that shirt, that's all I can think about.
My daily life is pretty much back to normal and out marriage is good again, but no, i won't forget what happened. Yes, sometimes it affects my mood. Yes, sometimes I secretly get angry with her over it all over again. Those are the demons that will resurface, but will fade in intensity over time... but ONLY time will take care of them.
