SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I've been following this forum for a little under a year now and I'm noticing there seems to be a large difference between the traffic on the regular R forum verses the positive R thread.

I couldn't tell you the numbers, but it seems like there are way more people struggling through R than arriving at a place where they feel like they can post in the positive R thread.

What does this say about the chances of a positive reconciliation occurring?

Does anyone have the numbers on this? It seems like SI would be a great resource for numbers like this.

I think there are a number of positive threads in the regular R forum — I’ve started a few and participate whenever I can on positive updates. I think the positive updates don’t last as long or get as much traffic as someone struggling, which makes sense.

As someone who used to scroll through massive amounts of threads looking for any kind of good news, I can attest a lot of folks have made it back to better days and better relationships.

The thread atop the R forum isn’t set up to be conversational, just when some members find a moment to add to that single thread.

As far as the odds of happy R?

I don’t know, I’ve read dozens of various articles on stats I’ve seen over the last decade, some talk of 40 percent shot for couples where they both want to save the M, but that number doesn’t include the couples where one partner doesn’t help, nor does it include people who D right away.

My MC, who has been at the couples counseling thing for four decades, he puts it at a coin toss based on the people he helped over time. And he wasn’t there to tell us we would make it, because his M did not make it after infidelity. It was an exit affair where his ex left him and his daughter forever.

Books and stats, to me, didn’t matter anyway.

Only I can live my life.

I went after what I wanted.

Not just offering my wife a final chance, I have gone after the life I wanted too.

After infidelity, all my priorities and goals shifted.

I’m glad my wife took the gift of R serious.

I’m glad we finally figured out how to fight for each other instead of against each other.

What happens in any other marriage is irrelevant to yours. There are reasons why many marriages don’t survive an affair or infidelity.

My two cents is - it’s often not the affair but more that the cheater doesn’t do enough to heal the wound/trauma in the marriage and at some point, there’s nothing left to work with.

Sometimes it’s a quick end and other times, there’s nothing left marriage limps along. There was one poster recently who happily reconciled, only to have the H attend a high school reunion and come home and D his loving wife. The H was the cheater but she was certain they were past the affair and happy.

Point is, stats are just not a good indicator for your marriage. If I relied on stats, my chances of a happy marriage after dday2 of affair 2 would have been zilch. Even I wasn’t convinced we could R after the midlife crisis affair where he planned to D me.

Odds were against me. But we were able to survive it.

We are all more likely to post when we are struggling and feel like we could use help. I've probably posted nearly 100:1 other posts vs positive r stories.

Other than just underlining and putting green check marks beside everything in Oldwounds' post (though not his MC's story, which is f'd up), I'll say:

You can min-max this sentiment.

Min: there are no positive reconciliation stories, whatsoever because they all involve pain, betrayal, and the end of a relationship.

Max: every reconciliation story is as positive as it can be, because they are all successful. Whatever the pain and struggle, whatever the quality of the result, the only really meaningful statistic is success. Divorce/breakup stories are just that, not reconciliation stories.

"Only I can live my life." Man, that's gold. :salute:

Most people who achieve successful reconciliation move on from the site. We occasionally see someone stop by to say hello, but they tend to create their own post to increase visibility for any fellow old-timers. If they post in the positive stories thread, it may be overlooked.

I also think some of us in R are afraid to jinx it. Recovery isn't linear, and if you're in R long term, you probably had at least a few incidents where you hoped things were stabilizing, and then they got derailed. It's intimidating to post a positive story that might make you look foolish in retrospect.

Finally, I can't sugarcoat it: true reconciliation is rare. It requires persistent, consistent investment from both parties. It's more common than the thread would suggest, but I'm not sure it's common overall (and honestly, not everyone agrees on how "positive" is defined).

Think about it. If 2 people agree on what their relationship will be and work on their parts of creating and maintaining that relationship, why wouldn't the relationship become what they want it to be? If 2 partners do the work to R after an A, why wouldn't R succeed?

Life goes on. I like living it, not reporting about it.

I just realized we're in A season now. As usual for the last 8 years or so, I haven't remembered the A season until something I read on SI brings up the memory. I no longer remember the date the A started, though I could look it up. The emotional hit doesn't even reach the level of 'annoyance'. On August 16, 2011, I was a wreck. I'm very happy the reminder generates only a shrug. I'll post this in PRS.

Like many other BSes, positive stories of R helped keep me motivated in the months after d-day. At the same time, I knew I wasn't going to R unless I figured out for myself how to make my R work, and I had to motivate myself to do the necessary work.

That's why folks are saying Statistics simply do not apply to specific situations. If 50% of couples stay together after an A and 50% split (made up numbers), a specific individual is either 100% in the stay group OR 100% in the split group. An individual simply can't simultaneously be 50% stay AND 50% split, although individuals can switch from one group to another.

You can certainly make good use of the positive R stories, but staying in the R group is up to you and your WS, and you can't control your WS.

I think the vast majority of us who have R'ed would say: focus on your own healing. If you do your work, and your WS does hers, you'll make yourselves good candidates for R, and you'll prepare yourself to heal/(re)build/(re)create (use any word you want) the M you both want.

and I had to motivate myself to do the necessary work.

focus on your own healing. If you do your work, and your WS does hers, you'll make yourselves good candidates for R, and you'll prepare yourself to heal/(re)build/(re)create (use any word you want) the M you both want.

When I think of the work I need to do its usually something along the lines of:

Figuring out how to emotionally regulate.

Identifying and enforcing my boundaries.

Learning or being open to trust again. Myself and her.

Communicating authentically.

...

What am I missing?

What was your work?

So far I cannot wrap my brain around getting to a place that I could call "reconciled". Reconciliation feels to me like a lifelong process. My coworker who has been sober for many years describes herself as being "in recovery" and that resonated with me. I still think of WH and myself as being "in reconciliation". I often wonder how I will know when we are truly reconciled. Maybe it's one of those situations where you just know when you get there?

PurpleMoxie,

Since you have recently registered here at SI, we don’t know how long ago was the affair and Dday, etc.

Being 12 years from my H’s last affair, I can say that I didn’t feel reconciled until 3 years after Dday. It was a long slow process to get to a point where I believed we were no longer headed for D (though that was my thinking not his).

It was at that point where I felt comfortable that he wasn’t cheating. In 3 years from Dday I did not have any instances where I thought he was cheating.

Can you share how you feel now? Are you uncertain about your future as a married couple or anything that could provide insight?

I can share that it is a process to feel "reconciled". But it takes two committed partners to make the relationship or marriage work.

Figuring out how to emotionally regulate.

Fuck that ... all it does is slow down recovery. IMO, the number 1 job for the BS is to figure out/learn how to express the anger, grief, fear, shame, whatever that is in the BS's body - that is, the number 1 job is to process the pain out of one's body.

Identifying and enforcing my boundaries.

Yup

Learning or being open to trust again. Myself and her.

Well, fuck that, too - the WS has to earn back trust with 1000s of trust-building actions.

Communicating authentically.

IMO, I'd make that 'be authentic' even though there may be no difference between 'be authentic' and 'communicate authentically'.

What was your work?

As above.

*****

It took me 3.5-4 years to declare victory; I know one member considered herself R'ed the day she decided to R. We all get to decide when to go from R to M.

But M is still a lot of work, and it's the same work we did in R, IMO. That is, R was a process of identifying and resolving issues. M is a process of identifying and resolving issues. It's just that R required navigating day to day issues and issues that stemmed from the A. M is about, in part, day to day issues.

Reconciliation feels to me like a lifelong process

I’ve come to that exact conclusion. On the other hand, we all know what is parroted here is "full healing takes 2-5 years". Recently a "guide" here said it happens sometimes in one year. I keep asking for a single example of this, and…. crickets.

I can’t help but wonder what kind of disservice we do to recently betrayed when we (collectively) seem to whitewash all that’s involved in R, and how difficult, and relatively uncommon it is to EVER reach a point of complete healing. YES it has happened. NO, it’s not the "typical result". The "standard" advice given here seems to be more "if the both of you simply decide you want R, it can be yours as soon as you want, but it may take a few years".

The reality is markedly different. A lifelong process in all but the rarest of cases of R. Are we being intentionally disingenuous or just willfully ignorant?

Since you have recently registered here at SI, we don’t know how long ago was the affair and Dday, etc.

I posted here previously, under a different username. When I returned, I couldn't remember any of my previous info and no longer had access to the throwaway email I used previously. Dday 1 was 9 years ago, but I 'd say we spent the first 5 years in rugsweeping mode. I had initially bought into his unmet needs BS. It wasn't until I found SI that reconciliation truly began. At that point I began to push back against the TT and assert my needs for more info and communication.

Can you share how you feel now? Are you uncertain about your future as a married couple or anything that could provide insight?

After wasting years on R that wasn't authentic, we are at a healthier place. I received a big bombshell that I already knew in my heart and gut. I know we are staying together. I just feel like we are still in process.

But M is still a lot of work, and it's the same work we did in R, IMO. That is, R was a process of identifying and resolving issues. M is a process of identifying and resolving issues. It's just that R required navigating day to day issues and issues that stemmed from the A. M is about, in part, day to day issues.

This
But I still feel the need for check-ins and specifically checking on where each of us stand on various issues that we have struggled with in the past. That, to me, still feels like being in process. And on some level, I still feel like the fact that infidelity happened at all means that we will always pay extra attention to communication and healing.