Like a complete stranger to me

[Cardinal64]

Hi.

 

Did anyone else see their wife/husband as becoming like a complete stranger to them once you uncovered their infidelity?

 

I moved out almost 4 months ago - due to my wife cheating on me.

Married over 7 years - together 8 1/2 - We have a 6 year old son together.

 

Since then she has become almost like a different person to me.

I find myself wondering where the woman I loved dearly and would have done anything for disappeared.

 

Maybe its just me.

 

Anyway thanks for any responses.

Cardinal64

[IfWishesWereHorses]

Yes and no. Yes in that he did become/seem like a complete stranger, not at all person that I had known and looked up to. And no, because in retrospect he had probably been that person all along, it was just hidden to me, or I couldn't/ didn't want to see it.

 

I also think that people who are starting over again tend to want to reinvent themselves. Don't know if that is all a part of the midlife crisis thing or if it is them running from/to something.

 

Can you give some examples of ways that she seems different to you.

[smartgirl]

Up until he had his A, my H was the most honest, ethical person I had ever known. During the involvement with the OW, he became a skilled liar and when not with me - like another person.

 

Over the last year, he has still not been able to completely be like he was before. In a lot of ways, he is as damaged as me. Our MC has just suggested anti-depressants for him and hopefully that will help.

 

You are undoubtedly seeing the decompression that takes place in a WS. One wise poster likened it to "the affair virus leaving your system." Along the way (especially with women) they try to justify their actions. Some believe it, and for some it is a defense mechanism.

 

Are you trying to reconcile?

[Cardinal64]

Hello again.

 

No we are not going to reconcile. The damage that has been done to our marriage is pretty much total. The lies, cheating and secrecy just got be too much for me.

But above all - the total disrespect for me as her husband. That is what really destroyed us.

 

In regards to how my wife - and I use the term loosely - has changed,

well the little bit of conversation we have focuses on our son, seemed colder attitude-wise and detached.

[Trialbyfire]

For me, it's the acceptance that the person I thought existed, doesn't. The affairs were eye-opening experiences for me. It's difficult to accept that one person is capable of fooling you and everyone around, including his own family and long-time friends. It's like they're not only narcisstic but also schizophrenic.

 

How do I accept that? How can I stop that anger? Anger at him for deliberately fooling me (at his own admission) into falling in love with him and anger at myself for believing years of lies. In his own strange way, he loved me the most that he's ever loved anyone else in his life.

[Wibble]

FWIW I think that accepting or declaring that your marriage is over, AND moving out has forced a new personality on your wife. Basically, during the affair she ran two seperate lives, reality - you, and fantasy - OM. By ditching her you have forced her to make the fantasy into reality, and to re-inforce that reality she has to make her behaviour within that fantasy into her real behaviour. I hope you see what I mean.

 

By way of justification for my theory, my own experience was very similar to yours. I moved out for a month after the true depth of my wife's affair became apparent. In that month she was able to live the fantasy of her "affair persona" as reality - "I am better off without you", "The kids will be fine without their dad"(!!)"We never should have married", "I have outgrown you" - these are typical words from someone still in their fantasy (it is often referred to as a "Fog").

 

After a month I had calmed down enough to identify my own priorities, and realised that living apart was never going to move things on. I moved back in, very much against her will, since I represented a reality that she did not want to accept. I have to say that I moved back in with a monster. Seperate bedrooms, seperate meals, virtually no conversation, and continued lies and deception. Gradually, however, over a period of 3 months, things began to change. Her "fog" began to clear and she began to realise what a huge mistake she had made, and that she was being offered a chance to put things right. The monster went back into its' cave, and the woman formerly known as my wife came back - wiser, more humble and very sorry.

 

It seems to me that your wife is marooned in the "fog". She cannot connect what is REALLY happening to her (separation, pending divorce) with what she THOUGHT was happening to her (bluebirds singing, everything beautiful, I am in love and loved), so she is putting up the best defence she has - twist the facts to fit what she wants reality to be. Since those "facts" involve painting you as a total bastard, that is why she is the way she is.

 

Now I can understand a healthy degree of scepticism about this theory - 2 years ago, if some stranger on the internet had told me that my wife would behave the way she subsequently did, I would have thought they were mad. But it really happened, almost like in a script. I read the book "Surviving An Affair", and it was like my wife was playing out each scenario. Uncanny.

 

So anyway. If you REALLY want your marriage to be over, then you need to let your wife realise this in no uncertain terms. She will need to re-connect with reality, and this will be a very, very difficult process. She will be a stranger for a long time. On the other hand, if you are able to swallow your (understandably bruised) pride, and feel there might be something to save, then buy the book, move back in and ride the storm. Your wife will recover much more quickly with reality staring her in the face every day.

 

If my experience is anything to go by, it will be no "Mills and Boon" fairytale romance, but I have observed that far too many people react far too quickly to these things - whilst still in their own "fog" of rage and pain - and live to regret their haste. Take your time, make sure that what you are doing is what you REALLY want to do. You may surprise yourself. Good luck.

[reservoirdog1]

That definitely happened to me. It didn't happen right away -- it was a gradual thing. After the initial shock wore off, came the growing realization that the wonderful, honest, loyal woman I'd been married to had been a fantasy, and that what was left after the fantasy was dispelled was a pale imitation of that fantasy.

 

It took two and a half years for me to completely let go of being angry at her, and nowadays when I interact with her, I can't see what I was so attracted to and clung to for so long. I don't reminisce about the marriage, so those memories seem like something from another life.

[Unforgetable77]

my H didn't seem like a complete stranger... he was a stranger he had an A with one of my closest friends a child was born out of that affair but me being the sucker that i am took him back. that was 2yrs ago i now have £ weeks left until i am finally rid of him

 

 

well at least i can hold my head high and say ive tried...... i couldn't stand the person he had become the man i had married had gone...i think he resented me for bursting his bubble, and yes as soon as his ass was through the door he was back with her so i ask my self did it ever stop!!

 

 

anyway i totally agree they do become strangers why what and when i'm sorry i don't know hang in there good luck xx

[CastingPearls]

Your post really struck a chord with me. I know exactly how it feels to have the person you thought you knew so well suddenly turn into a stranger. I wanted to shake him hard and say "What are you doing ! We have a life, we have a child, we have family, friends and a lifetime of shared experiences together !" Why would you give all that up for a person you barely know? He would just kind of smirk, like he had everything all figured out, and refuse to talk about it. Well, we're divorced now and it didn't work out for him with his girlfriend. And to top it off he came back to me, to complain about how unfair life is, how his girlfriend went back to her husband, how he lost half his retirement, how he hasn't been feeling well lately and didn't we still get along great? I just look at him in disbelief ...who is this whiney,selfish fool and could I have really been married to him for so many years? One thing about trouble in a marriage, you will either bond together more strongly, or all the illusions will get ripped away and you will see them as they really are. I think that when we were together, I felt that we had a really special and tight bond, and that made him dear to me, but I gave him credit for feelings he never really had.

[Guest]

Wow. Casting Pearls, the part in your post where you say you thought you had a special bond and you gave him credit for feelings he never had really resonated with me. I so understand that. Thinking thoughts and putting feelings in my head that I want to believe he feels but cannot express. Why do we make excuses for them and conjure up things in our heads for so long? Do we need them to love us that badly? I feel like I lived in this pink bubble for years and years. Our "relationship" was mostly in my own mind. He was never really an active participant.

 

After d-day, it hit me full force how much I had him wrong. I thought I knew him so intimately, but I didn't know him at all. It was like some strange unfeeling person had taken over his body and the person I knew for so long was gone. There were no illusions anymore.

 

My husband stayed in the fog for a very long time. He was horrible to me after d-day and I have never gotten over the resentment. We are still together but I do not know for how much longer. I don't feel the same way, don't see him in a good light anymore. I don't think he likes the reformed doormat version of me. He has said many times he wants everything to go back to how it was. Well I sure don't. Couldn't even if I tried.

[Djaba]

Hi Cardinal,

 

Very sorry to hear about your situation. Hang in there. You're doing the right thing by reaching out.

 

You've got some very good responses so far I think but I'll add my 2 cents. My ex-wife had an affair of more than a year after basically 2 years of marriage. We were living long-distance (by agreement) due to my work but had an explicit agreement of monogamy, at her insistence. I made clear that I would never have slept around even without it, but she wanted it explicit. (Sometimes people do protest too much. Word to the wise.)

 

Last September she called and admitted the affair but in a really twisted, manipulative way, and only after floating an elaborate, half-true cover story about an extended-family crisis that in her view meant we shouldn't be together. I've since learned from her mom, with whom I was very close and with whom I'm still in contact intermittently, that the basic premise is true (a cousin who made some very serious mistakes and was being threatened) but that the use to which my ex tried to put it (explaining that I would be in danger if I returned) was not. I was very close to her entire immediate family - mom, dad, brother - and was very much a part of the whole extended family's life: births, funerals, family gatherings, etc. Thankfully we didn't have kids.

 

Anyway, in the several months between the revelation and the ultimate divorce (which she didn't even have the guts to initiate although she clearly wanted out, at least at the time) I saw exactly the justification pattern noted above: you see the person gradually shifting more and more toward blaming, making excuses, as the uncertainty as to the impact of their actions fades and the pain they've caused comes clearly into focus. For many people, maybe most unfortunately, the guilt is too much and they don't have the ego-strength to carry it, so the psyche resorts to dirty tricks for survival; many people in such a situation honestly would melt down if they faced the truth, and the psyche acts like a thermostat, preventing the system from overheating. The end result is that the person seems like a stranger, often a quite hostile one. For the betrayed spouse, this feels like a form of torture.

 

While I took my marriage vows deadly seriously, I ultimately concluded that I couldn't responsibly continue to be married to her.

 

She seems now to be in the fog. I found out recently that she's gotten back together with the affair guy. He's a few years younger than her and seems very clearly like a user. It turned out she had been using a joint email account of ours that I never used to communicate with him, so of course I snooped, and essentially all of his messages to her were requests to do something for him couched in patronizing sweet-talk. She's largely estranged from her family now, who have even told her never to expect them to accept another partner of hers into their lives (too harsh, I know, but it's a gauge of how deeply they've been hurt by all of this). But she thinks she's "in love" with this "very nice man."

 

Anyway, sorry if that's all a bit long-winded, but I haven't been on the site for a while and it's actually good for me to write about this again after some time. I hope something here will be helpful. I think the bottom line is that the pattern you're seeing is unfortunately very real and even common. I know that doesn't make it much easier to take, but know that you're not alone.

 

Keep the faith,

 

John

[Letizia]

Don't any of you think it is possible for a married woman to actually fall in love with somebody else????

[mopar crazy]

Yep, my WH was a complete stranger to me too. The thing is, he was really, really nice! He would bring me lunch just out of the blue and sit and eat w/ me and our children. He never did that when we were together (we were separated at the time). He would usually come home for lunch and I would make him something but he never stopped to pick up lunch for the both of us. One Fridays he would go out to eat though. He actually seemed happy! WTF! He was either being nicey nice b/c he wanted to cover the A or it was b/c he was actually happy w/ the OW.

 

He would come over and mow the lawn w/o me asking him to and it was never like that b4. I always had to ask, then it turned into nagging. It was his responsibilty to take care of the lawn while I did the housework.

 

He started loosing some weight, dressing nicer, wearing cologne to work, things like that. I knew something was up but he claims it was b/c he got a promotion and had to start dressing better. Part of me beleived him, the other part didn't.

[mrmaximum]

Don't any of you think it is possible for a married woman to actually fall in love with somebody else????

 

It is possible, for men too, however this is what you give up when you are married, if you want your marriage to survive, then you give up the opportunities for LTR's elsewhere. That's what marriage means.

 

Well, my two cents, I hope I'm not intruding as it was with a girlfriend and not a wife. Yes she was detached, she would tell me certain things but would lie by omission, I would find things out later. There was a certain guy that made it obvious that he wanted her and I didn't want him around whatsoever!! There was even one instance where she had gone with him to a fun park (with some other friends too mind you) and I was left at home to watch her three kids. Didn't know that she had gone with him until AFTER. NICE.

Sex slowed down and then eventually stopped, she was always "Tired" and then whatever I wanted or needed didn't matter yet I had to swallow whatever she needed to do. There was indeed a time (I had actually gone down on one knee for this woman) that I wondered what the hell I had done wrong as nothing seemed to change the horrible tailspin our relationship was going through. Yes, I wondered what had happened to the woman I had fell in love with.

[SueBee3490]

I also had a boyfriend who cheated - not a husband. After finding out about my H cheating on me while we were dating, he turned into a different person too. I used to think he was the most laid-back, sweet, considerate guy I knew but after I found out, he became the most angry and short-tempered person I had ever met in my life! I couldn't believe the change. But looking back now, I think some of his actions were because he was becoming defensive. I was angry and crying or screaming (so I had become a different person too from the sweet, quiet, woman he knew) so he would react to my ranting in an angry way. Not that he didn't deserve it, because he did! One time, I checked his cell phone for some reason (don't remember why - but probably to see if he was getting calls from any other women!) - he had changed my name in his phonebook to b**ch. I thought then, who is this guy? He's not even someone I would look twice at if I knew then what I know now.