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Has anyone watched The Affair? I know I did it to myself but I just finished watching the first season and got a little triggered. I saw myself in Helen's character, when she said she didn't want to divorce her husband because she didn't know how to do life without him and how she misses him and still loves him. Six years later, when those who know about my husband's affair ask me how we're doing, I've realized that I started to answer indifferently. I no longer think about the before days and long for them. I've "moved on" in the sense that I've accepted what happened and this is the new relationship now.

I genuinely do love him but sometimes I feel like I am still here because I cannot see how he would not be part of my life. Like I can't get rid of him or unlove him. I go back to feeling like I wish he would've left me and chosen her like Noah chose Allison in the end.

In any case I just googled her and found a gofund me page she set up and I used the contact button to send her an anonymous nasty message (not about the affair, just random nastiness). She was married with three children at the time of the affair and apparently she is a single mom now and it gives me a little happiness that she is alone. Am I a horrible person?

No, I haven't seen the show, but a couple things you said really stood out to me as incredibly relatable.

I've wrestled with that feeling of being in my marriage still (my first DDay was March of 2022) in some measure simply because of fear of change. Like you, I can't unlove her. And I think it's more wrestling with this death of what was supposed to be and the future I had envisioned with her very much at the center of it for my life. Now I'm pretty sure I don't want that future, and it doesn't exist anymore anyway whether I stay or leave. That future now seems stained and less desirable, but the thought of it really not being my concern whatever she encounters in life (ups, downs, highs, lows, whatever) is just a weird and sad thought. It feels very permanent.

And I've definitely said multiple times, even directly to her, that if I could go back in time to 2019, 2020, and even parts of 2021 when she wanted to divorce me (to be with him, though I didn't know that at the time), I'd take her up on it and avoid everything that's ensued in a heartbeat. I think back to that pathetic man I was begging my cheating wife to stay and promising to be better and work through the issues, not knowing the real reason she wanted me out of her life so badly, and I wish I could go back in time and talk to him and let this version of me take over from there. But I don't ever think back to DDay and wish I had left then, because that woman seemed contrite and remorseful for what she'd done and desperately wanting to save us. I don't think I could've left that version of my WW without giving it a real try. But the body snatched alien version of her during the first couple years of the affair? Yeah, I could definitely leave that woman. And even now I find myself at times just wishing she'd cheat again and decide she didn't want the marriage and do the dirty work of leaving for me. There's a song by Morgan Wallen that recently came out called, "where'd that girl go" that speaks to me in a sense about this way. He's talking to a woman who's trying to rekindle the relationship with him, and remembering how she didn't want anything to do with him before and couldn't stand him and he was the worst thing in the world, and now that she's trying to be close he's like, "Where did that old girl go..." and I have similar thoughts.

And no, you're absolutely not a horrible person. I've cyber stalked AP a little bit and in the intravening years since discovery, his wife has stayed with him and they've had a child since then. And it boils my blood to think he gets to have a happy family after the bombs he threw into my family. He gets to move on and have a good life with the wife he was cheating on and finally got to be a father (something ww told me he always desperately wanted), and something inside me just wants to find a way to screw this whole thing up for him even knowing that ultimately would hurt his innocent wife and baby. I told the OBS, but apparently she still made the decisions she made to reconcile and ultimately start a family with him. I really hope he's getting zero sleep and the baby has colic and no sleep schedule at all. So no, you're definitely not a horrible person. You're a person, and we respond to deep betrayal and injustice how we respond to it, and it's not always just wishing the other person well.

I've never watched it because I just do not believe they can do justice to BS experiences. Besides, the WS's/ap's actions are much more interesting to watch, so I expect that's what they show more of. so the producers and broadcasters can fuck themselves. Also, W (fWS) can't watch dhows about infidelity.

As for seeing oneself in one of the evildoers, sure. No one is perfect. IMO we all have evil thoughts, but that's not any sort of crime.

Being happy that the ap is struggling, not a foul, IMO. Again, indifference naturally arrived at would probably be the response of an emotionally healthy person. I consider myself emotionally healthy (but not perfect! ), and I do not follow ow, but if I read she was struggling even now, I think I'd feel at least a little bit of satisfaction. As I say, not perfect.

I think it's great that you're questioning yourself. I hope you come up with the answer that you're not committing fouls here. Trauma does that to people. If you find something you don't like, change it.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:21 PM, Monday, July 14th]

I haven't watched it myself, but if anyone is interested in the subject matter, my fiancé and I just finished "Doctor Foster" on the BBC.

It's one of the most satisfying TV shows regarding an affair I've ever watched, told from the perspective of the betrayed wife.

What I will say is that while the first season does an exceptional job of painting a fairly realistic wayward spouse, complete with his rationalizations and "I'm not sure monogamy works" arguments, in the second season, the character is repainted as a balls-to-the-wall sociopathic cheater, which felt a little more reductive.

Overall though, it's highly recommended! There are only 10 episodes in total, so it's not too much of an investment.

I saw the entire series when it was originally broadcast. It was before my D-Day (although I had many suspicions) so it wasn’t as triggering for me as it would likely be now. I found the whole thing pretty disjointed and the need to "suspend belief" came up quite a bit. Still not sure why I hung in there until the end……One thing I DID like was how the show would show the same events from different perspectives with "memory bias". This expands more beyond just Noah and Helen in the following seasons. I felt I was in that show at times after D-Day with the different way my wife and I recalled events in our life. What is the "truth"? Her version, my version, something in between or something else entirely?

I genuinely do love him but sometimes I feel like I am still here because I cannot see how he would not be part of my life. Like I can't get rid of him or unlove him. I go back to feeling like I wish he would've left me and chosen her like Noah chose Allison in the end.

I’m not sure if you plan to keep watching but (slight spoiler alert), season one definitely isn’t "in the end" for Noah and Helen. It’s a very crazy ride and the final season jumps ahead to 2051.