SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My finding? It is not.

Why don't you post this in General where BSs can give their input. That is the demographic you need to hear from.

Surely, someone here has done what I am seeking to do!

In my time reading and posting on here I have read several people who believe that can still have relationship with their AP. I was one of them.

I am not aware of anyone doing this successfully and the people I know who thought they could, have, over time realised the impossibility of saving their marriage and still being in contact with AP. I'm sure somewhere out there you could fine people who have worked like this, but I would imagine it is rare. You are not finding support for what you feel you need. The people responding to this post, including myself, post from experience and in most cases have felt and thought what you are feeling.

I wish you luck in your recovery

Unconventional,

I ask this question because I kind of recognize where you are.

I do believe it's possible for someone to maintain a relationship with an affair partner without it becoming romanticized or leading to another affair. I've seen it happen when affairs result in children, where continued contact is necessary.

But I also believe it's unwise to maintain a relationship with an affair partner unless circumstances necessitate it, such as when children are involved.

I wonder if the question of, "Can I build enough protective walls around the whiskey?" might be the wrong question. Maybe the question is, "Even if I can, is this something I should choose?"

But I'm not sure there are only two options: having your wife's approval to have this friendship or eventually becoming resentful.

Perhaps there's a third option: choosing to let go of the affair partner because maintaining the relationship is hurting your wife. Even if someone believes they could be completely safe with their affair partner, they can still decide that protecting their spouse from further pain is more important.

That doesn't mean letting go is easy. It doesn't mean the attachment wasn't real, or that ending contact wouldn't hurt. But there's a difference between acknowledging that something is difficult to lose and deciding that it therefore needs to remain part of your life.

Maybe part of the struggle here is that you're trying very hard to solve something that may ultimately need to be grieved.

I think our minds are really good at bargaining with ourselves when we're hurting. We look for reasons why we might not have to lose something we don't want to lose.

And maybe, in the end, it's just grief over the closing of a chapter. That grief doesn't necessarily mean letting go was the wrong choice. It may just mean that the choice was painful.

Bulcy and NotMyIdentity,

Thank you both for your excellent posts! NotMyIdentity, yours, especially, was written with callout-worthy compassion! I accept that you both eventually experienced a path as necessary in your lives that has not (yet?) seemed necessary (or tolerable) to me in my life. Part of me hopes I evolve to sharing your perspective. The considerably larger part of me dreads that potential future and is candidly uncharacteristically livid at the "disrespectful" minority view inside of me. The third path that NotMyIdentity has suggested is at least beautiful, albeit bittersweet—but not (I think) accessible to me (at least not yet), with me valuing my former affair partner and our once-relationship as immensely as I do (and with my wife the tense and truculent—nontender—way she still is these days). Granted, my behavior as an adulterer over these last many months has surely and deplorably been traumatic to my wife—but, objectively, a lot of my wife’s edge arose well before my affair, in the many years we grew apart. Maybe those observations and perceptions will change. Maybe not. Currently, it seems impossible for me voluntarily to eschew forever a renewed relationship with my once affair partner under any justification shy of absolute and unequivocal necessity for my wife and marriage—a standard that has not yet been satisfied persuasively to me. I continue to labor earnestly to uncover the role—if any—of emotional experiences in determining my practical obligations as a loving spouse.

I will not further attempt to fish in this sea for what—disappointingly—I evidently will never reel-in here. That stated, I ardently reject perceptions that what I dream of most would constitute further adultery, bigamy, polyamory, or even selfishness. Neither will I associate with groups that support such lifestyles. Loneliness will have to suffice as my only friend for a time. May God, time, and family bring you all further healing, peace, and love!

[This message edited by Unconventional at 4:34 PM, Thursday, August 27th]

Unconventional,

I understand. It may take some time, and perhaps this is presumptuous, but I think you understand that it’s already happening regardless of whether you’re ready or not.

The parts of you that are warring over why this can be a thing and why you need it to make logical sense for it not to be a thing are, I think, part of what allows you to keep holding on. Maybe that’s something you can’t fully accept yet.

I recognize that you no longer want to keep fishing because the answer you’re seeking isn’t going to be found here. But I would leave you with one last thought.

Does your wife requiring you to remain no contact have to make sense to you?

So much of what we feel can be irrational, let alone when it’s combined with infidelity. Maybe it’s enough that it makes sense to her.

Best of luck, Unconventional. I hope you choose to return in the future.

I have to keep this brief. What I write now surely will read as very abrupt. I experienced today as a "ton of bricks" also--and have been in tears most of the rest of the day. I still believe that there is no empirical or logically valid argument for the forsaking of a profoundly-valued friendship with a former affair partner alongside marital healing--but there are other kinds of proof. Both for better and for worse, I finally hit philosophical "pay dirt" as I wrestled over whether emotional or covenantal justifications for an obligation on a spouse could ever truly necessitate the forsaking of a profound sacrifice. I found what had been missing to complete an argument for "necessity" in a deep dive into the obligations of marriage as explained by the Roman Catholic Church in its Catechism. I mostly wanted to fail in the proof, but I felt ethically bound to try genuinely to connect the dots--and I ultimately "succeeded," in spite of myself. You may commence mocking me... now.

I still plan to work intensively on marital healing for the next 1-2 years and then ask my wife to let me contact my former affair partner to build a safe and bounded friendship. I still plan to layout my detailed marriage protection plans at that time. However, from everything my wife has said plus all of your shared experiences, it is likely that my request will be refused. I hope otherwise will be the case, but hope and expectation are obviously different concepts--and right now, they couldn't feel further apart. The only upside of this latest "breakthrough": The third path, described by NotMyIdentity, has now become attainable and sustainable for me. My wife's refusal to let me contact my former affair partner to build a safe and bounded friendship will no longer sentence me to resentment; only to anguishing and permanent loss--that I will have to try my best to bear with dignity.

Anyhow... for right now, I am still at "no contact" status while my marriage heals. In 1-2 years, if my wife still refuses me contact with *** to solicit friendship, I will--recognizing the necessity of this plan within my actual marriage--choose to relinquish my hope of ever reconciling with my former affair partner in friendship. Notably, I still believe that certain other marriages--including certain Catholic ones--could bear (and even potentially thrive alongside) an active friendship with a former affair partner.

In 1-2 years, if my wife still refuses me contact with *** to solicit friendship, I will ask a friend known to both my former affair partner and me to consider the following request and accompanying final message:

Instructions to Messenger

Please contact *** and, using your best judgment, determine whether receiving the enclosed message would likely benefit her or burden her needlessly. You may share the message or withhold it entirely, as you see fit, but please don’t alter the message. Afterward, tell me only whether you successfully reached her and made a choice over the message. Please, tell me nothing else. My purpose is neither to reopen communication nor to obtain information. I wish only to make the enclosed truth available to her if, in your judgment, doing so would be more likely to help than harm.

Message to ***

Dear ***, You mattered. You still matter. However, I have at last come to accept that I cannot return to your friendship. I have not reached that conclusion by ceasing to care about you. My acceptance does not mean that you were easily replaced or ever will be. I have not failed to wrestle with Hell and Heaven and search every last corner of my conscience for a path. One simply does not exist and cannot be manufactured. I am choosing to honor in love #####, the woman I chose long ago as my wife, and the life that she and I are building together. She deserves integrity, and we are healing. My grief over your lost company has been immense. Yet, none of that changes the gratitude I feel for what we shared, nor the significance you hold in my life. I don't deserve or seek anything from you--not even understanding or forgiveness. I only hope that, if you ever carried the burden of believing you were unimportant to me, you may finally set that burden down. As much as I care to know more about how life has treated you, I've asked our friend to tell me only that he reached you. With affection, gratitude, and final wishes for peace and health, @@@@@@@

[This message edited by Unconventional at 12:44 AM, Friday, August 28th]

Hi there Unconventional,

Welcome to SI. You wrote

I still believe that there is no empirical or logically valid argument for the forsaking of a profoundly-valued friendship with a former affair partner alongside marital healing--

Italics are mine and to my mind they are the flaw in your thinking. If you heal properly from this betrayal of your BS and your own integrity, future you will not profoundly value the relationship with the former AP and in fact when you come back and read this later, it will make you a bit sick to realize you thought this way.

I was deep in your way of thinking for the first 6 months after d-day. It took one of those signs from the universe to knock me off the fence and where I landed wasn't "I choose BS". It was that it wasn't a choice between BS and AP, it was a choice between mental health and not mental health. AP was never going to be a wholesome presence in my life, regardless of whether BS and I salvaged the marriage. I was either going to make it with BS or alone. AP had to go, permanently.

I know it is impossible for you to see it now, but AP was never your friend, and you weren't hers. You both used each other. You got something out of it, but at the cost of your integrity and at the cost of your wife's well-being. And if you continue to mentally yearn for a return to a relationship with AP, you will continue to do so at the expense of your wife's well being and your efforts for reconciliation. She deserves for you to be all-in if you want her to even try. If you can't be, let her go. Don't waste the next 1-2 years of her life. I also think you are drastically underestimating the time line for healing. At 2 years many BS are just hitting the anger phase.

If you want to reconcile, your best bet is to send AP a real NC letter. Not a flowery "you matter" letter, either. Short, to the point, with a clear statement that what was between you was wrong and your are choosing your marriage, don't ever contact again. It's permanently over. Let your BS read it, make sure she's good with the wording, and send it together. Then get rid of everything and anything you associate with AP. It'll take some time to detox and you should spend that time developing some new strategies for coping with difficult feelings. Strategies that are wholesome, instead of destructive to you and the people around you. Educate yourself as to the true nature of infidelity and how it impacts all parties involved.

Proceed with conviction and valor,

Sending clarity from this still EvolvingSoul.