SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’m new here so not well known. I have found people at SI to be warmly receptive, thought provoking , kind, and I must admit, rather direct. I like direct even those times when suggestions are not applicable, (Or at least I want to think they aren’t.) it still lets me know that there are wonderful people here giving me, with limited information, support.

So anyway, what’s in a name? I’m sure that everyone’s name selection is as varied as there are individuals here. It is hard, at least for me, to not try to find meaning in each name I see post or make comments. I simply can’t help but contemplate the meanings of names.

As to my name "Asterisk". It has two meanings, one early after D-day then replaced by the another one that exist to this day.

In the 1st two decades of our marriage, pre disclosure, I thought that I was the only character in my wife’s love story. Post D-day, I realized that I had been, for a year and a half, simply a footnote, written in tiny print at in the margins of her pages. I often ponder the question: "How it is I didn’t know that I had been replaced in my wife’s love story?"

3+ decades later I know that that description of the asterisk is no longer applicable. It was hard work for both of us and that work has been rewarded. I have no doubt that I’m my wife’s lover and I hers. That fact does not erase the asterisk, it simply shapeshifted. I have come to understand that, for me, there will always be that hated symbol that follows certain beliefs and statements I hold dear.

For example: I trust my wife. I have no doubt about her commitment to me and our marriage.*

But there it is, that black punch mark just after that period. So, one might ask, what does that mean? Well, I once had a blind faith type of trust. One that denied facts in favor of beliefs. That denial led me to be played a fool. I know that is harsh, but it is fact. And I’m okay with it.

So now, my trust is evidence based. That said, I refuse to play detective watching every move, email, text, or phone call my wife makes. But if, like last time, I’m given heads-up by friends, I won’t out right dismiss their warnings like I did last time. The trust is there but no longer naive. There will always be that damn asterisk following trust for my innocence was murdered.

Asterisk

I chose my screen name drunk on a boat on D-Day +1. I regretted it the next day, but just kept going with it, didn’t want to pay the fee to change it

It’s come to have deep significance to me now, a persona that let all that rage out thru the written word, very strangely apropos for a drunken selection.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 9:33 PM, Monday, July 14th]

I chose mine because I felt like everything I ever believed in was a lie, like I’d been living in some kind of altered reality—I just couldn’t grasp the concept that the person I thought I knew better than anyone could be capable of deceiving me for so long. Nothing felt real anymore.

Mine relates to my childhood.

I purposefully choose something that had nothing to do with infidelity as I am not, nor was ever defined by it or my trauma.

I’ve been here a lonnnggg time and over the years people will occasionally change their username-as IH said either because of regret or they have indeed survived and moved on from their initial reason for being here-yet still are connected.

[This message edited by AnnieOakley at 10:32 PM, Monday, July 14th]

In 7th grade (1979) a coach at school said I looked like Tanner from Bad News Bears. He and the rest of the team called me Tanner all 7th & 8th grade. It was a nickname that didn’t stick beyond middle school.

When I registered here I wanted a nickname my W didn’t know.

Mine relates to my happy place.

Self explanatory, I hope.

I used to be a people person, but then people ruined it.

Do I really have to explain?

Mine is Latin for "Survive" but it isn't meant as an imperative, it's more like subjunctive which indicates uncertainty - and that was just where I was and am still!

I used a random user name generator from another site, because I wanted to be anonymous. Now you have me wondering if someone has used the same and registered on that site. If so, I'm sorry for them to be associated with this account.

It wasn’t until my UH A that I finally woke up and realized I deserved to participate in life too! I had given everything to and for my family, gladly really- never realizing how as I did that year after year, I was disappearing.
I had to really start at scratch search for who I was, what did I like, and what did I want for my life moving forward.
Finally working on me
Now, it’s not a perfect journey and my kids will always come first, but I do want flowers, it’s okay if I choose where we eat sometimes, and taking an hour for myself is not selfish- they can figure it out.

Thanks Asterisk for explaining the asterisk, and for this posting. I had a hard time coming up with a name and, frankly, I’ve never been happy with the name I settled on. I was trying to express pretty much the same thing that you related. I trusted my wife with my heart and she broke it. I love her and trust her today, but the trust will never be the same as before. That innocence is lost. I was trying for a name that expressed the way I was forced accept that my fairy tale marriage never existed and to cope with the knowledge that the love of my life didn’t have the same feelings about me as I had for her.

My H was kicking me to the curb for the much younger OW.

She fully expected to become his second wife. This may name the First Wife.

And had they been together I was going to make sure she was never going to be my kids’ stepmother either. Ft

Brave Sir Robin is a character in Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- a coward who runs away from conflict, boldly issuing denials as he goes. It seemed appropriate for a newly joined WS.

I've explained it before but the main inspiration is the dog cartoon. I was in active denial when I got here, but I was sort of aware of the denial. Just using the 0 as a sort of space but...

The second meaning is a full sentence. This zero is zero fine. This (loser) is (not) fine.

I don't mind it being shorted to TIF. I still think of the dog comic whenever I'm on, haha.

When we we very young and very much in love, we choose a star to be our own, to represent our love, connection and devotion and to remind us of it every time we looked in the night sky. I used the name of that star or something connected to it as a username many times since then. Whan I joined here, I was such a mess, my brain didn't work at all and I could not think of anything new to use as a username, but I also didn't want to use something random. The ones I used before came to mind, but I didn't want our star connected to the pain, so I choose a star in the same constellation, the one that at the time to me seemed like nothing special, not the brightest, not the largest, just one of many, the zeta, because in that moment I felt as the last and least important person in his life and one of many as well.

[This message edited by ZetaCephei at 6:58 AM, Tuesday, July 15th]

My Screen-name? Well, I figured if my wife could have her mid-life crisis, then I'd have mine -- so I went out and found a 21 year old German with amazing curves (a white Porsche Carrera). She's a beauty, now 36, and just as pretty as the day we met.

As my wife confessed about her A with our family friend years later, I originally created my name thinking I was trying to heal from "old" wounds — but I was wrong.

Our brains don’t give us a discount on pain for something that happened to us years ago.

The pain happens in real time, and it may even be tougher to put reality back together for all the years beyond the A where we were sure our life was one thing, when it was something else altogether.

While it took me awhile to settle on a screen name, my screen name is straightforward. When I said to the therapist that I was such a "fool" to have found myself where I was, he said that I was really just "naively trusting". And I am definitely no longer naively trusting or trusting much at all.

[This message edited by NoLongerNaivelyTrusting at 5:44 PM, Tuesday, July 15th]