questions

[reboot]

Do you love him?

[bish]

This is why I think more times than not....ALOT more times than not people should just divorce after one has cheated. The scar you left him with just cut too deep.

 

Even if you two did get back to some sort of normal married life...he will still be exiled to a life of reliving from time to time what you did to him.

 

I have to ask...how long has it been since he found out you cheated?

I'll say, in my opinion, to even start to see some sort of normal life again on his part may take a couple years.

 

And if you aren't willing to pay the piper for what you have done for a long while, then maybe divorce is for you.

 

I thought I didn't want to divorce...in the end, I just couldn't stay with a cheater. he may come to that realization too.

 

But you have to be willing to "kiss his a$$$" for a long...LONG time before he gets to that certain point. And that point is where he just simply no longer thinks about what you did all the time...he'll never forget, and visions in his head will come back to haunt him forever...but it may take a couple years for him to get over this for the most part.

 

has he hit the anger stage yet? If not...its coming...so brace yourself.

[bish]

Sweetie, you will NEVER fully understand what he's feeling, you can only just approximate it as best you can.

 

You're a woman, and he's a man.... and the difference between genders is more than just innies and outties. His brain is wired just a bit differently than yours and mine. His memory of events, the way he stores and recalls them, is different. You know, for him.. it's almost a visual thing where his imagination is so vivid, he might have stood there and WATCHED for all that.

 

It's not insurmountable though. He's probably going to "trigger" more often than a female might, and his triggers will be fairly intense. Ride 'em out. Don't internalize them. Offer him comfort and reassurance when he's in the midst of one. Don't forget, there's a bit of leftover biological programming to overcome. If you think about it, men protect their interests in the gene pool by keeping rivals away from their mate. There's something a bit primitive still at work here.

 

WOW LJ....are you sure you are not a man? You described it perfectly. I can't speak for all men, but this is the exact way I felt when it happened to me.

 

and yes, he will "trigger", and she needs to ride them out...otherwise she'll show him that he should just sit and take her betrayal, but she isn't willing to go through a rough time during the making amends period...which will be a long...LONG time.

[bish]

I came clean 6 months ago

 

6 months is nothing...it'll probably take 2 years at least for the visions in his head to fade away.

[daisydufas22]

Firstly, I believe you are sorry for what happened and I believe he is hurt and angry about what happened.

 

I would highly recommend counselling together.

 

I mean...... how long can you go on like this?

 

I am just saying counselling because they may give you some strategies to deal with this! They could give him some strategies too.

 

I would be worried if this continued like it is because it's a bit of a mess and the dynamics of your relationship have probably changed.

 

I am sorry.....I cannot offer any real help!

 

Would you both consider going to counselling together?

 

Hope you are both doing well and that your futures are filled with happiness and love.

[abeliever]

First of all welcome! (Really)

 

As for your thread well, I have to say you came off from the get go that your annoyed!?! So, it comes off that you are "annoyed" that you have to "continue" to do the work. When you probably think that you "done" enough and you think it should be over with already.

 

This is a very "common" feeling for CHEATERS! It is quite frankly ---irratating to me and I am sure a few others on here. Let me tell you what it feels like....(a way to explain it)

 

Have you ever had a day where everything is going great! I mean you woke up in a good mood, your having a fantastic hair day, your husband filled the gas tank before you drove the car and cleaned it out , your kid remembered their homework, your mother-n-law called said she is not coming to dinner tonight, you bought a lottery ticket and the feeling is just right-you know its your day, your boss comes into your office and gives you the promotion (that you worked your a$$ off for over 2 years) then you go to lunch and as you walk out of the building you get a call from your sister- your mother died you are stopped dead in your tracks!!

( sorry for the mother dying analagy but it needed to dire and grim!)

 

That hit in your gut, knocked you down and you just want to just DIE --- is this what your "happy" or "content" H felt??? Now, do you get it NOW??? I mean really, this is the most irratating thing about CHEATERS and their inability to not understand the emotional turmoil and the life altering feeling you get when the A is revealed.

 

I am not trying to be a bitch, but dammit, listen he loved you!!!! To some people it's wow I love you (like wow I am going to the store) or you get... I love you (my world is not the same without you in it I'm forever grateful we met) there are two types (ok many more really) but this is so hard for "cheaters" to understand.

 

I am just trying to get thru to you. If you use the words that you have used here it's no wonder why he is still not trusting you. But hey if your not in it FOR REAL, then leave him. Guess what? You really aren't doing him any good. He can find another W who won't do what you did and find another SO who would slit her wrists before cheating!

 

There are ones who cheat and ones who don't. Yes, people do make mistakes. But when you make the unspeakable mistake, then be more sensitive to the one YOU betrayed. Or if it continues to "annoy" you then just LEAVE. It does take time. For some its months, for others it could be a year or years. So whatever or however long it takes then YOU take it. It was YOUR actions not his that brought you here seeking help, right?

 

I do hope you two get the opportunity to work it out, I do. But you have a lot of work and he has a lot of healing still to do. You have to let him go thru it, just because the affair is over for you does not mean it's over for him in his head! And the betrayal, it's not just the A, it's also lying to cover it all up and the words from when you picked fights when nothing was really wrong (just so you didn't have to be intimate that night) if in fact you did this.

 

I am just saying, you will NEVER get it try as you might you can't. It's that simple.

 

Best of luck, hope my explaining helps.

abeliever

[blindsidedagain]

I hope abeliever has given you some perspective.

Let me add to it.

I learned 5 weeks ago that my worse half has been involved in a 6 month affair.

I cannot emphasize enough the pain I felt.

It was like nothing that I could imagine beforehand.

Like abelievers analogy of a mothers death is no joke.

I loved my mother very much and was very close to her.

I watched her take her last breath and told her how much I loved her.

My mothers death was not even close to the devastation I have felt about learning of the affair.

My world completely twisted on its side.

I have been out of work for 5 weeks.

I am on medications.

I obsess for hours and hours and hours on end.

And its not just the trust and the betrayal that destroy us, men including me have incredible difficult time with the sexual aspect.

She said that it wasn't about the sex.

My response is ....then why didn't you have sex once, realize it was wrong and return to your so called friendship with him.

Listen, you are not a man.

You don't know what we think like.

Excuse the following graphic explanation.

We imagine things like: penis size (length and width), positions, length of time of sex, how often, fast thrusting, slow thrusting, variable thrusting, hard thrusting, soft thrusting, was there oral for both parties, did my wife swallow, did she orgasm, did she scream, was she more responsive?

The cheated on person assumes the sex was better with the other man.

That is a very small part of what we think of and it is effing torture.

I am only 5 weeks into this and I am probably going to leave her.

 

Your post indicated that he did a lot of really nice romantic things for you and is trying.

It sounds like this is a struggle for you, and your history has shown that you may turn to another man (or this former lover) for support.

Do not do that to your man!!!!!!!!

[Darth Vader]

The thing you left out Lost, is the fact that you had this affair out of revenge, so you said! You must be completely truthful, because people here will not tolerate lying from you!

[LifesontheUp]

Yeah, This whole year and a half has been nothing but Drama, and I am sick of it...

I understand that I made a huge mistake, and had a terrible lapse in judgement, (I will not do it again, EVER! this was not the first married man that hit on me, I am not a whore, it's not like I haven't said no 1 million times compared to the ONCE I said yes!)

 

I know that I Hurt my husband by the actions I took and I am sorry (Now he needs to understand go away)

 

I know my relationship with MM was appealing because I wanted out of my marriage, take all the "emotion" out of this relationship (I mean write it on paper) the MM is not even close to someone I would date...

 

I am seriously looking for another job in another state and leaving all of this

Following what Darth wrote I had a look at your profile Lost4ever and didn't realise you have a lot of posts about the situation. This is one of your quotes from 2nd October, barely 7 weeks ago.

 

This one is from 3rd October:

 

"You keep saying that you don't like the feelings of guilt, to me that is very self centered. I'm sure your husband doesn't like all the feelings he's going through, either. That's harsh reality. "

 

maybe it is sef centered, but you know I guess the one who cheated goes through stages also. I am not stringing him along, I told him I cheated, I told him I do not want to be with him, I told him I made a mistake, it was very very wrong...and now it feels like he is guilt tripping me into staying...how many times do I have to tell him, it is over? Sure I'm a b*tch for falling out of love, but deal with it.

people do mean things to eachother all the time, you either deal with it and leave, or deal with it and stay....i already made that choice for him.

I didn't sign up for this cry baby / how could you ruin my lift/ bull crap... and I can not be the one to hold his hand while he gets a divorce...sorry, truth hurts

Not meaning to be nasty here but having read the other stuff, I'm beginning to see what I picked up in your post yesterday may be right. You are still coming across that you do not love him. In fact if you re-read what you wrote just a short while ago then you admitted it in a number of posts.

 

So I will ask. Do you love your husband? Is it through guilt you are staying with him? If you think you love him, what is it that you love about him? Are you doing this for him or for yourself?

 

No offence but if I was your husband I'd be very concerned about your motivation to be in this relationship at this moment in time.

[JustBreathe]

You cheated on him while you were separated and then continued to cheat for one year after you reconciled with your H and then expect him to be over it after 6 months. You need to be on your way despite his wanting to reconcile with you.

 

He will be hurt if you leave, yes, but he WILL get over you and move on eventually and be the happier for not having this chaos in his life. Having done this horrible thing, now have the courage to do what is right for HIM in this situation. Even if he does have issues, he does not need to be punished forever for those issues by staying with a woman who only stays with him because he wants her to. He needs a chance to rebuild his life.

 

You are not truly remorseful or sorry for what you did. You only know that to continue to cheat on your husband means pain for yourself. It is you, you are concerned with. You're sorry for yourself.

[stampdaddy]

can I ask, what happened with your affair partner? Did you end it or him? Do you miss him??

[stampdaddy]

Also, I am curious, what kind of relationship did you have with the OM? What did you talk about? Did you make "plans" or was it pretty much sexual?

[LakesideDream]

From a male view. I was married for 25 years. After 23.5 years I got the "I need space to find myself" speech. Being really dumb (and ignorant) I didn't understand what that meant. I actually believed her. Ended up she didn't want a divorce or seperation after all. Kids were 16-17, it wasn't her time. "We tried to work it out". Not a single argument in the next year and a half. It was great, romance, lots of sex, kids moved out to school etc, we relocated to another state to get a fresh start... then Boom, a year to the day after we oved, I got the speach again. It took 3 days for her to come clean about her long term affair (off and on for 23 years).

 

From that day on I didn't want anything to do with her. She moved in with her BF (who was getting a divorce from his 23 year marriage and 3 kids), and moved across the country with him. I became ill (diagnosed terminal) two years later. She flew across the country to visit. When she arrived.. I was sicker than a dog, and I'm told (no memories, fever) that I asked her out loud,in a hospital room full of people including our adult children, "what are you doing here? You are the last person I want to see" which caused her to break down. Do I care? Hell no, later I told her that I wouldn't pi55 on her if her hair was on fire.

 

A year later, she and her BF moved back to this state in a not to distant city. She claims I was (am?) bitter. I say she is disgusting, and I have no positive feelings for her, and am looking forward to never seeing her again. Every good memory I had for 25+ years was either destroyed or badly tainted. Again I'm bitter yea? No. I just don't want to be bothered.

 

What happened to make me feel that way? I spent a few weeks with visions swirling through my conscienceness of my then wife being penetrated by another man, holding him, loving him, fellating him, sharing every manner of intimacy. It was literally physically nausiating. Like many others here, I lost weight, 5+ pounds a week cause if I ate, I vomited. I didn't sleep because I had visions behind my eyelids that strained my ability to control myself. It doesen't take long for that kind of negetive reinforcement to change a person forever. Of course I could never tell her this. Telling her would make her much more powerful.. give her a big ego boost. No way then, no way ever.

 

I suggest that your husband is experiancing some of the same experiances I did. He may never be able to forget. He may never be able to forgive. He may be able to learn to live with his feelings.... maybe. If he can't, it's not his fault, or his responsibility, it's yours.

 

You are the one who enjoyed being penetrated, by a man outside your marriage. Don't make this his problem.

[heftysmurf]

I am at a month and a day and struggle every day with visions, nightmares, thoughts of my daughter finding out if this went on.

Every memory is tainted in a way. Did you dress nice for me or for him? Did you fight with me knowing she could get approval from her lover? What did you talk about when it came to me? What is the whole truth? Were their others? Did they laugh at his foolishness? How could you hurt someone so badly that you love? Was he better than me? Was I sexually bad? Are you minimizing things when what we really need is the WHOLE TRUTH.

HE LOVED YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD. He did nice things, called you, Spent time with you, MARRIED you, GAVE you children (???), and thought of you constantly.

Now he realizes you did not feel the same. That is a killer.

It is easy for a cheater. You know everything that went on. You can just move on. He is left with doubt over everything. Life was a lie.

Imagine if you had put the energy you used in your affair into your marriage? Where would you be now?

He should not give a damn about baggage from your childhood, your feelings, anything. All you needed to do was talk to him. That would have avoided everything. Avoiding such a simple jesture and YOU CAUSED ALL THIS PAIN.

I hate to be harsh but YOU DID THIS. Their is nothing that he could do that would ever justify your actions.

Think as if he was your brother or sister. Imagine if his whole family died? How would you act? How long would he or she be in pain? He will never be the same.

[cj1988]

After I read your prior posts, it is of my opinion you need to leave your H and let him find someone that can love him. You do not love him and it is obvious in every post you have.....I do not get you people. Do you think you are doing him a favor by staying in the relationship? Do him a favor and leave him, you do not love yourself either.....that is the worst part.

 

The battle you are having will never end, he loves you and you do not love him, I am your H and I will tell you now, it is KILLING him......I am now getting ready to leave my H whom I believe is YOU, because his selfish a-- will not do it, coward !

[stampdaddy]

Lost,

 

What ever happened to the OP? did you end it or did they? Or did it end at all? Did you love them? Do you miss them? I am curious to know.

 

Thanks and I hope you are doing OK