A 6 Month Reflection and Remorse

I joined SI in December 2024, not long after my BS discovered my three EAs. I was in a bad place and desperately needed help. I’m really grateful I found SI—it gave me access to information, helped me understand importance of writing timelines an telling the truth, and pushed me to dig into my real "whys." Even though I only posted a couple of times back in January, I’ve been more of a lurker since then. I especially found posts by Hiking Out to be incredibly helpful. After reading Pippin's post about how we use SI, I figured it was time to share a little update about my past six months.

In the early days after D-Day, I’ll be honest—I handled things terribly. I was stuck in TT and kept hiding things. It took reading others’ posts here for me to realize just how much damage that was doing. Even when I started being more honest, I had already done some pretty despicable things to cover up the truth.

One example: before D-Day, I had told my wife about a woman at work who hit on me—but I lied and said I shut it down immediately, when I actually kept flirting. A few weeks after D-Day, my wife found call logs to that woman and asked me to request copies of messages I had sent her. Instead of doing that, I secretly texted the OW asking her *not* to send them. I did come clean to my wife about what I had done around 10 minutes later and then properly asked the OW to send the messages. My wife later said that while the messages themselves were hurtful, what really crushed her was the extreme lengths I went to hide them.

The next day, I finally wrote out a full timeline and shared it. Looking back, there are so many things I did that were just plain cruel. For example, I overshared with a work colleague about every little fight or issue I was having with my wife. Those conversations weren’t sexual, but they definitely crossed a line, especially so soon after being caught texting APs. My lack of self-awareness back then still baffles me.

Since then, it’s been a rollercoaster. I joined a church, and both of us are in individual counselling. One thing I’ve discovered is how my past, especially childhood sexual abuse, damaged my self-worth and created this craving for external validation—particularly validation about my desirability and sexual appeal. Hiking Out recommended Brene Brown’s *Daring Greatly*, which I read, and it really helped me see how I use daydreaming as an escape. I also started meditating, which made me realize how little control I had over my impulses—even with things like snacks. I definitely relate to what Brene calls the "pu pu platter of addictions"—not one overwhelming addiction, but enough of different ones to raise concern.

These months have been the hardest of our lives. Yes, I have made progress. IC has helped me confront my whys and develop more self-awareness. I’m starting to see how I’ve weaponized victimhood, avoided hard emotions, and used fantasy to escape instead of face things head-on. I’ve tried to deal with triggers honestly and stop rug-sweeping. I’ve had tough conversations, even if I sometimes thought they were tougher than they actually were.

That said, I’ve stumbled too. For instance, I recently shared some info with my family without consulting my wife. My first instinct was to defend myself, but later I called my parents and reinforced boundaries.

These last few days have been especially hard because of strong triggers caused by something I haven’t shared with anyone besides my therapist and my BS. One of the APs—I took her to dinner and asked to kiss her, and while she said no and nothing physical happened, this was just weeks after my wife had lost a pregnancy. That was unforgivable, and I carry deep shame about it. My wife is now trying to get pregnant again, and I know it’s stirred up a lot of that old pain for her.

She’s said before that she doesn’t feel I show remorse. Her view is that I only bring up the affairs when something triggers it. I know I feel remorse, and I believe that changed behaviour is the best way to show it. But I understand now that remorse isn't just internal—it’s something that needs to be expressed, consistently and without prompting.

We haven’t made any final decisions about our marriage, so there’s no talk of MC yet. I’ve stayed committed to honesty, no-contact with all APs, and continuing the work. I know I’m not the ideal candidate for reconciliation—not yet anyway—but I’m trying to grow and stay consistent.

I’d really appreciate hearing your thoughts. What does remorse look like to you? How do you feel it and show it?

Thanks for reading.

3 comments posted: Thursday, May 29th, 2025

How to Get Unstuck... Help Needed

I am new here and this is just my second post so I will give some background. D-Day was a month ago. I had an EA with someone I met at an event which continued for 2 weeks. But I didn't tell her the whole truth: 2 previous EAs until two days ago when I decided to come clean. My BS was initially grateful I told her the truth, called it unselfish, but after processing it, she is completely broken as I cheated throughout our marriage. She has cancelled IC and doesn't want to do any more work to heal. I am so scared she is getting into depression. She told me she feels stuck as she can't leave and I finally understood what she means. It's not just financial security, which I have promised to provide indefinitely even if she leaves, but it is also the real sacrifice she made to be with me. I won't go into details but they are real, painful and now she feels like they are useless.

Help please: how do I help her get away from the feeling of being unstuck? Does this get better?

2 comments posted: Wednesday, January 29th, 2025

Why can't I stop lying?

My BP caught me about 4 weeks ago after having an emotional affair with someone I met at a conference. The affair lasted 2 weeks before my BP found the text messages. She asked me for the truth and I told her everything but not all at once, there was a lot of trickle truth, some on purpose, but some because I couldn't remember as I had deleted some of the communication. It was a terrible time and we briefly separated but after coming back together, we both started IC and it looked promising until today, when she went through my phone and saw I deleted messages with another person. We were able to get the messages after I wrote to the other person and while they were flirtatious and still wrong, they were not as explicit as the previous ones. Here is my problem though: I never volunteered the truth and in all these scenarios my BP is the one who caught me. To make it worse, for the incident today, I texted the person secretly on the side and asked her not to send those messages and deleted messages again but when my BP confronted me, I ended up telling her the truth. But only when she confronted me... And she says everything may have been forgivable if I just didn't text the other person to hide the messages.
Why can't I stop lying? Why do I keep telling half truths? It seems Everytime I want to tell the truth, something physically holds me back.

7 comments posted: Saturday, January 25th, 2025