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Dropped her off at work in tears this morning after she wished me... us a happy anniversary and I was less than thrilled about it. I feel like shit.

I feel like shit, but I'm not putting on a mask or a front and pretending that this is still our special day. She wants it to be about the length of time we've been together, but it's so much more than that. It represents broken promises and broken vows to me. We both pledged our loyalty and faithfulness to each other on this day, 27 years ago, and I kept mine. She's the one who made the decisions that led to shattering those pledges and wrecking my world. Our world. Not me.

I'm still in shock and disbelief. I go from being happy that we're still together and that she snapped out of the spell she was under, to despair and devastation that it even happened to begin with. This is unquestionably the hardest thing I've ever been through. She wants to move forward, but I've barely even begun to heal from the trauma of it all.

Yup. BTDT. Not everybody feels the way you do, but a lot of us did.

The one consolation, IMO, is that knowing what you're feeling is one of the prerequisites for healing. Feeling the feelings lets them go. It looks like you're on a healing path.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:13 PM, Friday, June 6th]

I understand completely. The first affair that I actually caught my husband in started on our 7th wedding anniversary. He had to go out of town for a job, met a waitress that night and slept with her every night for the next week. Then he came home for a week and talked about her continuously, and had to go back to her town for another week. Of course they spent that week together! But, according to him, it was just because he was drinking, he blamed it all on the alcohol. Every wedding anniversary is a trigger for me, even 43 years later.

[This message edited by Melanie at 5:15 PM, Friday, June 6th]

@Sisoon. Thanks for the supportive words. I hope I'm on the right path. I feel like we are. She is very remorseful and is really going out of her way to make things up to me. She's called me from work three times now to say that she's sorry and that she loves me. I want this to be a special day, but I'm just really not feeling it. It hurts me that it hurts her, but I didn't ask for this. Thrust upon me and it's one of the worst things I've ever been through. She seems to be resigned to my state of mind right now. We may still go out and get some dinner, but that special day excitement just isn't there for me right now.

@Melanie, ouch. Just, ouch. Alcohol my ass. I hope that you didn't accept that, I'm pretty sure you probably didn't. Until this happened, I had no idea just how devastating an affair could be. Sorry you had to go through that.

Quite ironic that today actually is D-Day. Our wedding anniversary is on THE actual D-Day...

I am truly sorry you are going through this. I am sure others will be alone soon to post.

In the meantime I just wanted you to know you had been heard.

Exwh and I were married decades. If he had chosen to do the extremely hard work needed to be a safe partner (which he declined to do), I believe we would have had to have picked a new day to celebrate. The old would have been destroyed for me with the infidelity.

I do regret the fact I was so easily manipulated, but do now realize that he was skilled in this area (and had very little if any genuine empathy). What he did have a a great deal of concern for himself only and how he felt. Everyone’s situation is different , but this was my experience.

I suppose we do have a new day to celebrate. April 18th marks the end of a very long dry spell for us, and it does sort of represent a new beginning. That's actually not a horrible idea.

It just really sucks that I feel like 27 years was flushed down the toilet. A fair number of couples don't make it that long (my sister's on her 5th marriage ), and it was something I'd always been kind of proud of. We've been together for half of our lives.

I feel like shit, but I'm not putting on a mask or a front and pretending that this is still our special day. She wants it to be about the length of time we've been together, but it's so much more than that. It represents broken promises and broken vows to me. We both pledged our loyalty and faithfulness to each other on this day, 27 years ago, and I kept mine. She's the one who made the decisions that led to shattering those pledges and wrecking my world. Our world. Not me.

It just really sucks that I feel like 27 years was flushed down the toilet. A fair number of couples don't make it that long (my sister's on her 5th marriage shocked ), and it was something I'd always been kind of proud of. We've been together for half of our lives.

Anniversaries are one of the hardest things to navigate on this shitty journey IMO. I was one who found out about my wife’s multiple infidelities (details in my bio) many years after the fact. Even though we have been "married" on paper for 41 years, in reality, we didn’t make it ONE before she cheated. That went on for 20 years. She was in active affairs on our 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 14th, 15th & 16th anniversaries. Discussing their recent 20th anniversaries (both us and her final AP in March of 2004) at a work event was the beginning of her final affair.

So breaking the vows we made on that original day and sullying it multiple times over many years with active affairs, my wife has lit our "anniversary " on fire and taken a big old shit on top of it. She wanted to renew our vows (while still actively lying to me about her affairs) days after D-Day. I just laughed and said "why, they didn’t work the first time?"

I told my wife that day meant nothing but pain for me and I didn’t want to celebrate it any more. On what would have been our 40th, I reiterated that and she got me a "not an anniversary card" anyway. This past year she got me an anniversary card and said "Happy Anniversary" the minute I got up. I made a disgusted face and walked away. It is all part of her selfishness to rug sweep and pretend normal. I would be open to that day regaining some meaning or picking another meaningful day but she doesn’t put in the effort.

So I don’t care if she cries or feels bad about the day. She broke it and she won’t even try to fix it. Your first quote above is spot on and she needs to "own her shit". I also "get" the second comment about "a fair number of couples don’t make it that long". That was also a big epiphany for me. In reality, we "didn’t make it that long" either. Not even a year. It was a sham and I refuse to celebrate a sham.

OP, you feel what you feel and that’s OK. She did this……

ImaChump,

I was going to write a response to Pogre, but you wrote it for me.