Welcome to the club no one wants to be in, Lost_thought_space.

Three years ago I found out my wife of 20+ years was having affairs with men and women. It's been a journey across 1,000 days.

The one piece of advice I'd wished I'd learned earlier is that the anger, sadness, and disbelief never fully go away. Or at least for me they haven't, even though I've tried my damndest. I'm beginning to accept they may never go away, as this person was a massive part of my life and so it's only fitting this moment of loss leaves a scar.

That said, you're doing the right thing in focusing on what you can control. Enjoy therapy. Talk with friends. Meet new ones. Frame this as an opportunity to try life over, fresh.

Time does help create familiarity though. It makes the waves smaller and less devastating. What may have once stumbled me for a week is now a fleeting observation. Then on other days it is back in full force again. But accepting that this grieving process isn't in our control and being kind to yourself, whatever your experience is can help. We heal at our own pace.

Wishing you happiness on the road ahead.

I'm certainly glad that you've used this opportunity to create a fresh start for yourself after the devastation that's left in the wake of what you've experienced. But, I wish you wouldn't be so charitable to your wife & her "happiness." The idea that she just up & one day realized she is gay is inconceivable to me. Why? Because I've lived it. It's always been there for our SSA spouses, they were just too in denial & self-deceptive to confront it, & they've taken us down with them. I've lived almost a lifetime with my wife, & she's on the brink of blowing both out families apart because she's got to be "authentic." I wish it were that easy for the rest of us to just reinvent ourselves & throw off the "shackles" of vows, responsibilities, faith, & the rest of it. But, it really takes a narcissist to do that. Ordinary people wouldn't think of destroying everyone they love to indulge in their selfish desires. But that's what SSA spouses do. They leave only wreckage.

Mr. Stroodle,
Yes, you are all too right, it sucks. And, I am SO sorry for your suffering. 30 years gone on my end. A very similar story for my LW as yours in terms of family & faith history as well as her response to both. But, I'm beyond the charitable stage of things toward her. She's made my life a living hell for more than a year & all I've done is bargain, live in denial, & hope for something impossible. I love her deeply, but I can't do anything to "win" her back. She wants something I can't give her. Moreover, I don't believe what she now believes from a religious perspective. I can't fight with both hands tied behind my back.

Hi, in response to opening poster on the topic of processing the anger - 

Say you wake up one morning, you are aching and you have bruises on your chest then the first thing you will do is try to figure how they got there - not internal bleeding, that's good, you can see scratches on the skin.  Then you pick up the empty cup on the bedside table and remember how your night time drink tasted a bit odd and you sniff the residue, goodness there is an odd smell there, something in the drink, that would account for how you slept through the bruising.  Now you check your sleeping wife's hands - can see skin and blood under the nails and bruising on the knuckles.  Mystery solved.

How do you feel?  shock, bewilderment, disbelief and yet as you try and get out of bed you realise how much your chest is hurting and the anger starts pulsing, fear anger sadness cycle through you.  and you simply can't bear it, you wake up your wife, showing her your chest - why did you do this to me you ask, what she replies innocently, punch me in the chest you say indignantly and she replies but I didn't, yes you did you yell picking up one of her hands and showing it to her.  Oh she says, oh goodness, I don't think so.  Are you sure, I don't think that was me.  I got the marks on my hands moving rocks in garden.

omg.  some dogged little part of you puts that cup in your bag and later on that day you send it off for chemical analysis and sure enough there is a residue of sleeping pills in it.  Go on, confront her again.  I put a sleeping tablet into my cup she says, you must have switched the cups.  Didn't you taste the extra sugar?  well come to think of it it had been a bit sweet.  It isn't til you wake bolt upright at 3am that you think to ask well why didn't you notice your drink wasn't sweet enough?  Not enough though is it.  Not enough to put the blame at her door.  

What other explanation for the bruising on your chest is there.  Have you done it to yourself somehow, have you forgotten having a fight with someone, did the dog do it?  oh that's right, it was raining and no muddy paw prints no way the dog can take the blame.

Go through enough conversations like that one as I did and you end up wondering if your memory and reasoning could be at fault when it isn't.

If you are a reasonable person then you don't want to be angry with an innocent party.  The thing I came to is I can trust myself.  I can be confident that even when very angry I will still be okay and not irresponsible.

I picked up my clay.  There's something about it.  There I am more angry than I know what to do with, I felt like a block of stone, and yet the moment I pressed my thumb into the clay and it yielded so entirely so did I.  Spent the whole afternoon with my fingers in clay, very enjoyable it was too.

So anger is creative energy.  It wasn't long before I was building 3 foot high terracotta statues!