Lost & feeling like crap

[ambad]

I am a man and the WS. I did let my BS know about the affair on 2/25 and since then its been a roller coaster. I had an A with my ex girlfriend from 25 yrs ago. I have been married for 18 yrs. I really love my wife, while i was having the A i was just thinking of having fun. It was all through emails. I never met OW in a long long time. However, we did call each other quite a bit (33 calls) in 3 months. We exchanged erotic emails. No physical contact of any sort. OW's husband caught her exchanging these mails and put an end to it.

 

I came out clean with my BS. All the emails were deleted, so could not show her any evidence of them. But gave BS the graphic detail about the emails. Since then, she has been totally confused. We started MC 2 weeks ago. As soon as we started MC, we were having sex. After each time, she would feel disgusted about having sex with me. She shuts down herself and takes her far away from me. Now we are deciding that we will not have any sex to ensure she does not feel disgusted. But I fear, she is going away from me. BS feels that she lost me to OW and does not want me back. Will I be ever able to get her back ?

 

What should I do ? Should I let her make a distance from me ? I have realized what i have done.

 

My emotions as a WS has gone crazy, I find myself crying @ work, @ home, in the car, feeling empty & lonely.

 

Are there anyone here who may have successfully reconciled ? what can i do to fix my adultery?

[ambad]

I revealed it on Feb 25th

[Athens]

I hope the best for you. My advice, be there, be caring, apologize a lot and remember she is in shock and hurting. Do not make this about you and your fears, make it about her and her pain. She is not in any position to soothe you, you need to be there for her. Good luck and I hope you do not pay the ultimate price for your mistake.

[CantgetoveritNY]

Hey man, I'm so sorry to see you suffering like this. I'm a BS but I think we have something in common. I went / am going through hell with my WS bc I feel I need her so much and this A has threatened that. She had an A so that means she might not want to be with me. I might not be able to forgive her. Whatever, I'm threatened with losing her as you are with your wife.

 

What gives me peace is when I can get to a place where if feel I will be ok no matter what. If I lose her, if I throw her out, if I keep her. Whatever happens I will be ok. I learned to be able to feel this way with the help of IC. If you can feel this way you will be more attractive to your wife and you will be more likely to work things out with her. But ironically you have to almost not care.

 

I'm still new to this and go in and out of being dependent upon my WS for my ability to feel like I'm going to be ok. It's hard. Good luck.

[Praying4Peace]

Why did you do it? What was missing in your life when you started the A? How was your sex life before then?

[Confused48]

First, I'd like to say that I really am glad you made the choice to be honest with your wife...I expect that conversation was a really difficult one, and I am proud for you that you were able to do it...not many can:)

 

I'm sympathetic to his situation. I feel for him. I hope he comes out alright. But really FS, you commend him for coming clean with his wife? He got caught! The other BS was going to blow him up! He confessed to mitigate the damage. His wife knows that. Lets not give him false hope that his wife will commend him for being honest. Better to fess up that he was caught red handed than to pretend that he nobly came clean. Honesty to the maximum degree is his best hope right now. Don't start sugar coating it, Mr. bad. Ask betrayed H. That is the kiss of death.

[Spark1111]

Why did you do it? What was missing in your life when you started the A? How was your sex life before then?

 

THIS! WHy did you do it? Why did you lob a grenade into your marriage by exchanging 33 phone calls and erotic emails?

 

How would you feel if you discovered this behavior, kept secret from you, by her and her old bf?

 

What would it take to restore your trust if the roles were reversed?

 

Read the link at the very top of this page entitled " What every WS Needs to Know"

[ambad]

It started as I would help this person in setting up a web business. One thing led to another and there was some flirting that happened initiated by OW, boom came erotic into it. Well I knew what I did, but did not understand the magnitude of pain for BS.

 

Well all am left now is with pain, guilt and remorse. Hoping my partner will accept me some day. thanks for supportive words. I wish every couple gets a mandatory lesson on Infidelity and its pain.

[ambad]

Also, I did send out a NC email 2 days ago, and finally made a NC call today in front of BS. Felt quite good.

[waterwoman]

Hi iambad,

 

btw no you aren't 'bad' IMO, you made a bad choice to have an affair but that's beside the point.

 

I was in your wife's position although IMO it was worse because he genuinely loved his ow at the time. It was an EA with elements of physical contact too but no actual sex.

 

All you can do is express by word and deed that you love her, you are remorseful, she means much much more to you than the OW and that it will never ever happen again. IC for you too to find out why you did it. Maybe for her as she will need to deal with being made to feel second best for a while. BS feel worthless and horrible after dday no matter how many times their WS tell them otherwise.

 

'How to help your spouse heal after you affair' is a good one to read. Also the classic 'Not just friends'. Surviving Infidelity is a good forum for recovering marriages.

 

Most importantly patience, love, committment and hope. I agreed to reconcile straight away, jumped through hoops to make everything OK, did most of the work and now... 9m down the line I am having second thoughts. Maybe it's better to do it the way your wife is - get the doubts out of the way first.

 

Good luck x

[BetrayedH]

You've gotten a lot of solid advice here. Some stuff in partiular I would like to second:

 

(1). Read the thread that has been mentioned and linked for you.

(2). Read the two books that were mentioned: How to Help My Spouse Heal From My Affair and Not Just Friends.

(3). Dig really deep as to 'why' you had this affair. If you haven't scheduled yourself for individual counseling yet, do it yesterday. Marriage Counseling is ok as long as it is your wife requesting it. Marriage Counselors have a tendency to try not to take sides. They try to discuss the state of the marriage and what both people can be doing, should be doing, or should have done. Rest assured, NOTHING your wife did merited this. If you had marital problems, you had a choice to either fix them or leave. She didn't get a vote and she was denied the opportunity to make informed choices about what to do. Your choice to have an affair makes little sense. Did it fix anything in your marriage? Not logical. Was it moral or ethical? Nope. I bet it was against your own standards. Was it healthy? It appears that it has rained destruction on your marriage. You dropped a nuke on it. So the question is, why would you make such an illogical, immoral, unethical, destructive choice that was against your own standards? It wasn't your marriage or your wife. It was something within you. Don't let your wife take the blame. This is why IC is more important than MC right now. Once you've done the heavy lifting to clean up from the nuke you've dropped, that's the time for both of you to work on making the marriage better. That said, some people manage to multi-task and do both IC and MC without blameshifting. Take ownership of making sure blameshifting doesn't happen. Find out why you chose to have an affair. This knowledge may help you avoid the use of this coping mechanism in the future and that will help her to begin to trust that she won't see a repeat performance.

(4). Absolutely, positively do NOT try to protect your wife by trickling the truth to her. Bare your soul. Be vulnerable. Rip the damn bandaid off. If you have held ANYTHING back, share it all with her immediately. It is my opinion that trickle-truth (so common we abbreviate it as TT around here) kills more marriages than the damn affairs themselves. You must understand that her ability to trust and believe in your honesty is paramount by far to any protection of her feelings. She's already broken; she can only start to heal if she thinks she has the truth and can come to grips with it. You need to be committed to an honest and authentic life from here on out. If you're going to the store for milk and bread and only mentioned the milk, you better call her up to tell her about the bread. If she catches you in one lie about anything, you are back to square one.

(5). Keep apologizing. Keep being affectionate. Keep telling her you love her. Be proactive. Be willing to discuss the affair; ask if she wants to discuss it or has questions. Make it easy for her to discuss it without fearing she will lose you. Keep saying that you will do whatever is necessary to help her heal and that you're not going anywhere. Never be defensive and don't even think about suggesting that she should be "over it" anytime in the next 5 years. You don't get to punch her in the face and complain about how long she bleeds on the carpet. Trust me, she wants to be over it 1000x more than you do. But she is stuck with it. You did the crime and she'll do the time. And the one person she should be able to lean on is the person that triggers her the most. You must be patient, loving, supporting, understanding and be proactive about it all.

 

You're going to have to get remarkably consistent about this. Successful reconciliations do happen. They take 2-5 years. Buckle in. The heavy lifting to show true remorse is your job. And thru it all, she will be trying to find the strength to forgive.

 

I don't mean to sound harsh. On the contrary, you've done a few things right and I see real hope here. It's just damn difficult and you should know it.

 

One other quick recommendation: go to survivinginfidelity.com and start a thread on "the wayward side" forum. There are a lot of very wise former waywards there that can help immensely.

 

Oh, as for sex. You must understand that she desperately wants to feel desired and wanted by you. She wants to have sex. While you meed to respect that it is a huge trigger for her and she suffers mind movies while doing it, she needs to know that she is desirable and wanted. Respect her wishes to avoid it but if she changes her mind (which is really common), don't let her feel rejection. She's on a rollercoaster of emotions. Expect it and roll with it. My $.02 anyway.

 

Good luck and keep posting.

[ambad]

Thanks all for your support. I want us to reconcile and will do any lifting it takes. I appreciate if anyone can tell me what is the heavy lifiting you guys talk about.

 

Is it good for me to answer my BS everytime she wants to talk about the A and OW ? As i feel it is pushing her into a negative mode all the time.

[ambad]

Agreed. I tell BS everything, nothing held back. My whereabouts, everything. I keep answering every of her question, participate everytime she has an outburst. By me talking everytime, i feel is taking a conversation from one hour to 4 hours, sometimes many more hours.

 

Most of the times i tell her (BS) that i made this huge mistake, and try to reassure that OW doesnt mean anything to me. Its all over. But she hides in the past as to why I did not think or feel like this before.

 

Just dont know what next.

[Journee]

Agreed. I tell BS everything, nothing held back. My whereabouts, everything. I keep answering every of her question, participate everytime she has an outburst. By me talking everytime, i feel is taking a conversation from one hour to 4 hours, sometimes many more hours.

 

Most of the times i tell her (BS) that i made this huge mistake, and try to reassure that OW doesnt mean anything to me. Its all over. But she hides in the past as to why I did not think or feel like this before.

 

Just dont know what next.

 

 

 

That's one of the most confusing aspects for a BS. How could she have meant nothing if the WS would hurt us so badly? It's like being told that the pain you feel as a BS is for nothing. There is no reason for our devastation. This may be one of the hardest things for your wife to make sense of. Help her.

 

Is there a reason you let this get to an inappropriate level ¿ ? Something missing with you or your marriage?

[ambad]

Life had gotten routine. I was in some bad company, lot of frustration at work. Frustration at home as BS expected perfect life. In the mean time, was trying to help OW as a friend. OW made a erotic move (email) no physical contact. It felt like a thrill. Did not think too much. OW was more like a toy that diverted my attention. Never cared for her. Have never felt like contacting OW.

[seren]

Hi Ambad, a lot of people who have A's never consider what will happen on D Day, a few think that reconciliation is a matter of coming clean, a few months of going over it and then everything slides into place, those of us who have reconciled can tell you that after infidelity touches a marriage, the marriage can never be as it was. For some, that is no bad thing, for most, we mourn what we thought was our reality, what we thought our marriage was and while we try to understand infidelity, we never truly do, simply because we never expected it to happen to us.

 

Trying to get your (general) head around how and why the person you love with all that you have chooses to step outside the marriage for whatever, hurts, which is such a small word for the sheer pain and hurt. Trying to not only understand it, while trying to forgive, live, get life back on track and all the while feel like you want to curl up into a ball and just forget it all, is dammed exhausting. On the one hand you love the WS, hate what they have done and want to just get on with life and on the other you (general) have to go over it again and again just to get it straight, to ask the same over and over so there are never any changes to what is being told and someplace in all that, the process of reconciliation takes place.

 

It isn't easy, being intimate can still happen without sex, being loving can still happen without making love. I imagine your wife's confidence is in the toilet, she might be asking herself why, what and how she could have been any different, did she do anything to 'make' you be unfaithful, and might feel tainted by the nature of the A, so much so that sex and making love will be the last thing she will feel ready for. Before that comes the rebuilding of trust, like, love, intimacy and most importantly, trust. If she needs to talk, then talk and listen and then talk some more. As time went on my H and I agreed that we wouldn't talk for longer than around 45 minutes, anything else was destructive, and afterwards we always hugged, we acknowledged if I was struggling, we acknowledged if I was angry, triggered or if he was hurt at what he had done. We looked at reconciliation as our battle to be won, rather than a fight.

 

Reinforce how much she means to you, show her that you love her, don't put all the blame on the OW, accept your part. Woo her, you will be starting a new marriage which will be hard and finally, never take anything for granted. There is no rule book, it can work, but be prepared for hard work. I wish you both all the best, come back to LS and talk it over, most of us have been through this.

[BetrayedH]

Agreed. I tell BS everything, nothing held back. My whereabouts, everything. I keep answering every of her question, participate everytime she has an outburst. By me talking everytime, i feel is taking a conversation from one hour to 4 hours, sometimes many more hours.

 

Most of the times i tell her (BS) that i made this huge mistake, and try to reassure that OW doesnt mean anything to me. Its all over. But she hides in the past as to why I did not think or feel like this before.

 

Just dont know what next.

 

What's next? Get used to this. It doesn't take weeks or months to get over this. It takes 2-5 years. I'm not kidding. Many say the second year is worse than the first. Know this, nobody wants her to be over it more than she does. You can't bust her lip open and complain about how long she bleeds on the carpet. Buckle in.

[Decorative]

You've gotten really great advice.

 

Here's another bit/ stop calling it a mistake.

 

A mistake is accidentally locking your car keys in your car. You made a choice.

 

Trust me on this- your betrayed wife will respect your sincerity more if you call it what what it was.

[BetrayedH]

I do give him kudos for being honest...some wayward spouses continue to lie and "gas light" their spouses, even though they are hearing the truth form-another source...this is a terrible thing to do, and can even make the betrayed spouse feel guilty for believing their wayward spouse could cheat, and can make them question their own sanity...I'm glad this poster didn't do that

 

Good point and I agree as well. While the level of angst created by the physical or emotional parts of an affair can bring to a BS may vary, it's almost universal for BS to have the most difficulty with the lies and deception. His best move is honesty, anytime he does it. And I agree that it's all too rare for a wayward to completely clean at all. I give him props for it.

 

But where I agree with Just A Poster is that the OP doesn't get credit for voluntary disclosure, which is a pretty critical factor for most BSs. Statistically it doubles the chances of reconciling. He disclosed because they were busted.