update

[Shai00]

I posted about my affair about a month ago. I got feed back as to books I should read to help healing for my husband and myself. I am struggling and I need help. My husband found out about my affair on June 8, 2015. After talking and eventually telling my husband everything, I felt that a load of bricks was lifted off my chest. I know people say all the time the grass is never greener on the other side. I see and understand that analogy very well. During my affair my personality changed. I became someone that I didn't realize and the dark place I was in until I was called out on my lies, deceit, and hurtful ways that I didn't care for others or their feelings. I was never that person before. I was a person that loved helping others, took pride in keeping the house clean, everything organized and being caught up on what all the kids had going on and I was a good wife (at one time). My husband and I are working very hard on our marriage. I make sure that I let him know constantly how truly sorry I am but I have started thinking why????? Why should he except my sorry. I hurt him, lied to him and made his life forever change. All while I'm hoping he excepts my apology because I never realized how much I loved him until I almost lost him. I cheated with his friend!!! Would I forgive him if he did that to me? He asked me that and I didn't have any answers because I was scared if I said one direct thing he would leave me. The things I have done to try and repair my marriage is that I have made priority over everything MY FAMILY. I make sure to tell and show my husband every day I love him, make sure dinner is cooked, house is always clean, laundry is always done. I want my husband to be comfortable and see how much I want my family. I can say I have learned many things through this and one lesson I have learned through watching my husbands heart break is that the mistakes I made will never be made again. I changed all contact that the OM could possibly have with me. If he would try and make contact I would hang up and call my husband immediately. I need help with knowing other ways to repair my marriage. I do not want to lose the man that I grew up with, had children with and built a life with. Please help!!!!!

[qubist]

I'm glad you learned a lesson. what are the steps that you and your H have taken so far to reconcile?

[Clay]

You need to get into counceling. This is not over and its not going to be over anytime soon so its best you get all the people that are GOOD around you to support you.

 

There is one thing you need to understand your husband will always have the right to walk away now. There is no time limit on this. The only thing you can and should expect is for him to work with you and on himself through all this. He is going to need the help to.

 

I do agree with your thinking there would be no way I would ever stay with a woman that cheated on me with my friend regardless if we had kids or not.

 

The fact he is still there should tell you he wants to try. You need to be open to him more than you have anyone else. You need to be accountable at all times with social media as well as going places.

 

 

He is going to need to feel 100% safe with you.

 

As to the friend if he contacts you then you need to be the one that leads the charge of blocking him further and calling the police if necessary.

 

Understand there is no guarantees on a relationship after this has taken place so if your all in on trying to save this then you better be all IN.

 

Good for you for trying to fix yourself.

 

C

[Shai00]

We have had marriage counseling. First I had it on my own with a lady and I didn't like how she was making things seem. I could tell she was trying to justify what i did and blame it on my husband being passive aggressive so I stopped seeing her. We just had marriage counseling together with a wonderful counselor. My husband and myself really liked him. If he ever has a question I let him know it is alright to ask me. I will be honest with him. We make time for each other. We have date night. I always want to be with him. I never want to leave him and when we are not together I find myself texting him all day. I am always scared when I don't get a response right away that he has decided he no longer wants to be with me. I make sure that I talk to him about everything and never hold anything back.

[BetrayedH]

One thing most BSs struggle mightily with is understanding "why." Unfortunately, you may never really be able to give him an answer that will satiate him.

 

However, I think making legitimate efforts into understanding why you chose this coping mechanism will make you more apt to avoid it in the future and, in turn, make your husband feel less apt to suffer a repeat performance.

 

This is why many people who advise on infidelity will push a wayward more to embrace individual counseling, rather than marriage counseling.

 

If you continue to work on dealing with whatever it was within you that allowed you to make the decisions to have an affair AND you focus on empathizing with your H, I think you have a decent chance of him continuing to give reconciliation a good effort. I encourage you to be proactive. Schedule appointments yourself. Volunteer to have affair-related conversations. Be a proactive partner with him on his recovery and be the champion of your own.

[bubbaganoosh]

It's good to know that your doing everything you can to prove yourself to your husband and I wish you the best of luck and hope your marriage can be repaired.

 

It's a shame that you couldn't see the red flags that were right in front of you and stopped it before it got so out of hand. The sad part is that you might have unloaded that pile of bricks you had on your chest but I hope you understand that your husband has been hit by a ton of bricks twice. Once by you, his wife and his so called friend.

 

That's a lot of hurt he's carrying with him. I do hope that both of you get outside help and it can be fixed.

[Shai00]

Thank you all for your responses. Bubba you are absolutely right. What was lifted off me hit my husband and he endured excessive pain that I hope I can heal. I know I can't take the pain away I just want him to know and see I love him and I am truly sorry.

[fellini]

It seems you are doing all the right things. But as a BS I'll tell you what I learned I needed my WW to show me to help me get past the fear and lack of trust:

 

Do not "act" or "behave" in excess of what he needs - don't go the extra mile - i.e. exaggerate your commitment to do more for him because, believe it or not, in the end he might read that the wrong way: that you are trying too hard, behaving in an unnatural way and that it will end. It made me feel uncomfortable being around my WW while she did all these "good" things for me to make me feel wanted. I didn't. I felt manipulated.

 

What I wanted to have was a realistic functioning partner in my marriage who did the right things NOT to make me feel better for the pain she had caused, but because she wanted to do them for herself.

 

I hope I have communicated the idea. I wanted a wife back, not a hoop jumper.

[drifter777]

I don't know you or your BH but I do know that after only 3 months he is still in a state of confused disbelief. He understands what you did and he knows he's hurting but, in addition, his whole world has been knocked out of orbit and it's going to take a while for him to get his emotional bearings straight. Here he is - the woman he loved, the person he trusted unconditionally - has betrayed him in the most painful, shameful way possible. No matter what you think of his current condition and state of mind you can rest assured he is suffering. He has mind movies of you having sex with OM that intrude into his thoughts at random, uncontrollable times. The horrible realization that he's not just having a bad dream is triggered by all sorts of things. Whenever he's at work or you are shopping the thought "how do I know where she REALLY is?" invades his mind.

 

Marriage counseling might be a safe place for him to get out some strong emotions and for you to answer any questions that he has about the affair, but right now he needs individual counseling more than anything. He needs support and you cannot give him what he needs right now.

 

My heart goes out to your BH and I urge you not to underestimate the pain he is in and how long and tough the journey is going to be for you to re-establish any level of trust.

[Marc878]

The real question is can he live with your betrayal long term? Many cant. Plus it's compounded by going on for almost 2 years!!! You ended up loving the OM more than your husband and kids. It only stopped because H found out. Look into your own heart as well. Can you ever get over the OM??? Words are the easy part. Actions no. Even now you know you are not over him. You can't love for 2 years and then magically end it.

 

Take a step back and decide if reconciliation is even in the cards.

 

Your H can never forget even if he forgives. Neither of you should waste time on this marriage unless you feel it's worth a try. Have either of you given this a thought?

 

I suspect it's done it's just hard to end it.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Marc878

[Artie Lang]

i'm not sure what it is that you are asking for. you seem to be doing alright. this is just gonna take time... you have to be patient.

 

does your husband still ask about your affair? does he display any negative behavior... have any outbursts?

 

in your previous thread, you stated that your family and this OM's family were intertwined through youth sports... do you guys "run into" this family still?

[m.snow]

keep with r continue counseling.

keep with NC absolute

hopefully you can let go of om

and continue to build on your family.

 

how is your 14 yr old doing?

how about the other kids the 13yo twins?

 

if the om ever contacts you, inform your husband and inform om's wife.

Edited September 24, 2015 by m.snow

[qubist]

Just wondering if you exposed A to OM's wife? You mentioned in your initial thread that H and OM were friends, how that affected him?

[Owl6118]

Shai, I would guess that more than any other single thing--other than this not having happened--to recover with you, you husband needs to know the answer to one question: "Who are you?"

 

And whether your marriage recovers or not, to offer him all the healing you can, and to offer yourself the chance to be a person of worth, you also need to know the answer to the same question.

 

So-- who are you, Shai?

 

In recovery from addiction, which is not the same as recovery from affairs but which has some similar soul-searing challenges at the core, this is called "taking a searching moral inventory."

 

It begins by stripping away your rationailzations and justifications, and looking at who you are as reveled by your behavior alone.

 

From your story--which I note in passing has a lot of gaps, a lot I suspect you know is relevant but you are not telling us--we actually do know some things about you.

 

You are a person who lies fluidly. You are a monstrously selfish person, in that you can and have chosen to betray and make unsafe your husband and children's lives to chase some temporary solace for whatever caused you turmoil. You are a person who medicates inner pain by acting out. You are a person with deeply impaired empathy.

 

That is who you are, or at least, who you were just a few weeks ago.

 

Do you want to continue to be that person?

 

If you want to have anyhope of chnage, you need to start asking questions, really hard questions, and answer them honestly.

 

How did you start to lie? How long ago? With what kind of lies--lies of omission, perhaps, or conceilment, long before active lies?

 

Why do you value people? Do you value them for empathy and kindness, or for their ability to tell you something that makes you feel better about yourself? When did this begin?

 

Do you show others your true self, or do you show them only that which you think will get them to like you or reassure you? How long have you behaved that way?

 

Do you trust people, or do you only feel safe if you can control their perception of you?

 

And a thousand others.

 

But who are you, really, Shai? And if you do not like who you are--what are you going to change inside you?

 

This is what you need to learn. And it is what your husband needs to see you learning.

 

 

 

I have profound faith in redemption. I beleive you can become a person of real worth. Many of the people I admire most and learn most from are people who have done terrible things to themselves or others, but have embraced the hard work of self-knowledge and change. And their past gevious mistakes now give them humility and compassion for others. Being such a person is within your grasp, too. But the road begins with looking precisely at whatever makes you most uncomfortable about yourself. If the answer to a question is too painful to look at straight--then that is exactly where you need to start looking and digging.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Owl6118

[sammy7111]

Has he talked about leaving u

[Owl6118]

Shai, I don't want to batter you with advice but there is one more thing I want to share with you. I want to take one moment from your post and walk throught it with you. It's this one.

 

"I cheated with his friend!!! Would I forgive him if he did that to me? He asked me that and I didn't have any answers because I was scared if I said one direct thing he would leave me."

 

There is so much you can learn from this one moment. What do you see here? I see several things.

 

Fear, yes. Anyone in your shoes would be afraid.

 

But I also see right in this moment a whole grab bag of negative coping skills.

 

There is selfishness, and impaired empathy: in this moment you felt only your own feelings, you were not trying to live with him in his.

 

There is a reflex to try to control the outcome: to withhold an honest reply becuase it may lead toward an outcome you don't want, regardless of whether that outcome is better for him, who you say you want to heal.

 

There is a willingness to wear a mask rather than show your true self and risk abandonment or rejection.

 

Shai, I say all this not to beat you up. Anyone who has betrayed him or herself and done things that are appalling in retrospect knows what you are feeling. I actually empathize with you.

 

But if you want to get better you have a ton of work to do, and no one can do it but you. If you want to be trustworthy, loving, unselfish, safe, you have to actually start being those things. Not modeling it, acting it, or simulating it, but rooting out what caused you to be someone very much not those things, and changing that.

 

You can't keep freezing, or controlling the outcome, or marinating in shame, or compartmentalizing (I became someone who wasn't me). No. You did not become someone else. You became you, this is who you are and, in the early days of recovery, who you STILL are. If you want to be different, it is up to you to do the work. But that includes, starting right now, to recognize and begin to GO AGAINST the grain of your current coping mechanisms. Becuase they are deep seated, they began long before your affair, and they are still at work now.

 

Good luck and good healing to you.

[harrybrown]

Be sure to give him space.

 

Just think if he did this to you, how would you feel, what would you want?

 

Do those things that you would want.

 

If you did some things with the OM that you did not do with your H, see if it would hurt him or help him.

 

You did give yourself to the OM and made your H feel like he is your second choice. Help him to make sure the OM gets outed.

 

If he did this to you, how could you trust anything that he says? He has huge load dumped on him. It is just happening to him.

 

He does not see the entire picture. If he would like it, give him a written timeline and diary of your A. Please tell him all the reasons why this happened. Was the OM more fun and more romantic and a better lover?

 

good luck.

[turnera]

Here is what I tell betrayed spouses to require of their 'former' cheating spouses. I tell them that if the cheater isn't willing to do these things, then the cheater is lying and is not truly remorseful. There aren't many things on this earth that are worse than cheating on your spouse, so the level of remorse should be similarly profound. If you're not willing to do these things, then one of two things is probably true - you're either not really all that sorry and you just want your 'good life' back, or you have deep-seated FOO issues that keep you from being willing to be vulnerable; if that's the case, you need to be in personal therapy, by yourself, for a very long time to come to grips with whatever FOO stuff is holding you back. At which point you should THEN be able to do the things on this list:

 

• timeline of every single detail; leave nothing out
  
• a written No Contact letter that you write to tell the OM that you will never contact him again and he is not to contact you again (I know you already ended it, but this is a psychological thing you need to do); your H will read it, approve it, and send it himself
  
• you go to your parents and his parents (I don't care how screwed up they are or whether they will care; do it), and tell them what you did, and ask for their forgiveness
  
• consistent, long-term therapy with your H for as long as he wants or needs to go, with no lip service from you
  
• either no passwords on any of your electronics hereonout or else he HAS all your passwords
  
• you hand over your electroncs any time he asks to see them, when he's needing some reassurance you're no longer cheating; again, with no lip service from you
  
• you research and book a polygraph test; he will come up with the questions he wants them to ask you; and you attend willingly - he HAS to see that you're now being 100% honest
  
• you find a way to spend 15 hours a week together rebuilding your relationship, away from kids/chores/work
  
• you offer to go to a lawyer and sign a postnup agreement stating that if you ever get caught cheating again, you walk away from the marriage, no arguments, with nothing
  

 

Give him this and you have a half-decent chance of saving your marriage.

 

Oh, and start being honest with him about everything. Even when he asks what you would have done if you were in his shoes, he needs to know that you'll answer him truthfully, rather than 'creating' the answer you think he wants to hear just so you don't get kicked out. Think about it.

[Shai00]

keep with r continue counseling.

keep with NC absolute

hopefully you can let go of om

and continue to build on your family.

 

how is your 14 yr old doing?

how about the other kids the 13yo twins?

 

if the om ever contacts you, inform your husband and inform om's wife.

 

 

I have completely let go of the OM. The only people I think about are my husband and children and how I can be better to them. I have realized they mean more to me than anyone or anything.

 

Our children are doing a lot better. We actually sold our house and moved back to our first house that we bought when we got married. It's a lot smaller and we all love it. During my affair I was not a good wife nor mother. Since, I am making a lot of changes to myself, been involved with everything the kids and my husband had going on. The kids attitudes are so much better, we have wonderful communication, spend a lot of time together, eat dinner as a family everynight and all their grades came up and have been A's and B's. I keep in contact with the kids teachers and made sure all homework has been completed. They are very happy and they feel and see my husband and I working together.

[Shai00]

Has he talked about leaving u

 

He has spoken about leaving me. In the first he most certainly considered divorce. He does let me know that it is still there. We have to take it day to day but in that day to day I show and apologize to him. I let him know it was my fault and I will work hard for my family. Do I want a divorce? Absolutely not! I know I should have thought about that while having an affair. I know my mistakes. I am a very selfish person who is digging down deep to find and destroy that person.

[Mr Mind of Shazam]

Good luck and you have a fine husband there. He's a better man than I. I would have given up on you and the marriage.

[m.snow]

(((((shai00))))))

 

I truly believe

 

your husband loves you deeply

and you love him that much too

 

he works hard to be a better husband to you.

and you are also working to be a better wife to him.

 

You have apologize much he knows that.

but i believe what he wants it to be seen through action.

and he is also going to do work on his side for the marriage and the family.

 

I think both you are on a path good reconciliation!

 

I pray & wish you and your family the best!

Edited September 28, 2015 by m.snow

[Marc878]

I have completely let go of the OM. The only people I think about are my husband and children and how I can be better to them. I have realized they mean more to me than anyone or anything.

 

Our children are doing a lot better. We actually sold our house and moved back to our first house that we bought when we got married. It's a lot smaller and we all love it. During my affair I was not a good wife nor mother. Since, I am making a lot of changes to myself, been involved with everything the kids and my husband had going on. The kids attitudes are so much better, we have wonderful communication, spend a lot of time together, eat dinner as a family everynight and all their grades came up and have been A's and B's. I keep in contact with the kids teachers and made sure all homework has been completed. They are very happy and they feel and see my husband and I working together.

 

Good for you. It's a very long road you're on. Some make it some don't. I hope for both of you its successful. Do not ever let your guard/boundaries down. You'll both have good/bad days. Expect that. You can never fully understand his position but you must try and be cognizant of his needs long term. At some point he must make up his mind to fully engage or end it.

 

There are some cases where 5-10 yrs later it just ends. I hope that doesn't happen. You will at some point get tired. Maybe get away for a couples weekend and do nothing. Recharge your batteries, etc.

 

Good luck to you both.

[turnera]

You asked for ways to repair your marriage and I gave you a comprehensive list of some important steps you could be taking to do so. Will you do/have you done any of them?

[Shai00]

Yes Turnera. We have actually made progess and spoke about all of the things you listed. My H is very much a researcher and we have and/or working on all the things you listed. Thank you for your input. It is very much appreciated.