What you might also need is a *plan*, a way that both of you agree to, to approach the sensitive issue of discussing details about the A, if and only if you believe that knowing those details is important to you. You MUST make it a "safe" environment to do so - calling her names and telling her to get out of the house isn't going to work.

What I did with my FWW is used the "15 Steps of Unfaithfullness" to put together a timeline of her A, and out of that exercise many questions were asked and answered on a day we set aside for that purpose. You can read the rest of that story in the "Recovery" forum. The approach we used worked fairly well.



All to be expected. I guess in my case it helped that I went through something similar with her before. It still hurt like crazy though, but I know we recovered to have a better relationship the last time - I'm hoping that this happens this time as well, though the prospects don't look as good as they did last time. It took years to recover though <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />.



All to be expected.



If both of you really feel that way, then things WILL work out. Again, I'm basing this on past experience - I'm not just blabbing. Don't expect it to work out overnight though - the pain of betrayal will take quite a long time to dissipate.

Yes we are both committed to making things work - I know I am and she tells me that she is. Today I also spoke with a counselor, I was really nervous on the phone, I guess that it's not easy to tell a stranger that your couple needs help because your wife has had an affair. In any case, at first I thought that I was going to go alone but he told me that the 'patient' is the 'couple' and that if my wife is committed to working things out then she will have to get over the embarassment of talking to a stranger. I called my wife, told her what he said, and she accepted to go with me. It will take a couple of weeks before we can make it there but at least we have a plan now and some actions to take. In some way it helps me to know that. I have never been to a counselor before - any things I should look out for?

Hi Asterix,

Try showing your wife this letter...

http://www.dearpeggy.com/com023.html

Im going to have my h read this, maybe he will talk honestly about his affairs and not just say they were friends.. in fact we need a topic on men and women being just friends

I showed my wife the letter that "I'm Natalie" passed along. She read it. At this point there is still a 'boundary' of details that she will not cross but she also understands my point of view, at least I think she does. Earlier this week when she shared some additional details with me at my request, I exploded out of anger, it was not a good scene, I basically terrorized her, and obviously this worked against her openness. It will take time I guess to know the whole story and at times I even wonder if I really want to know all the details. But I want to feel that it's my decision, not hers. A day like today I wonder if I will ever be able to go on with my life, I feel so betrayed and so insecure about myself. I really don't know how I will ever be able to trust her again when she goes on a business trip or even when she is at work. Will I have be suspicious, will I ever be able to put my guard down again? This is so incredibly difficult for me.

Wow, I wish I had read this before I posted mine, this is the closest to my situation, that I have read. I know exactly what you are going through, my husband has been very open, and tries to tell me whatever I ask, even if I ask over and over, and it's 3:00 in the am, I will pray for you and your wife, and hope you can get past this.

Well even though I promised my wife I would try not to ask any questions this weekend, I did. At first she was very defensive and told me that there were details that she did not want to share because it 'would serve no purpose', she followed with 'it's my decision not to share certain things'. I was saying things like 'it's my right to know', 'I should be the one who decides what I need ot know to get over this', etc. Eventually she told me everything I wanted to know - personally in some way I feel better but she feels terrible. She feels like I didn't respect her choice not to answer certain questions and forced her - maybe I pushed too hard, or maybe I pushed too early, but all the information is on the table now. I was very careful to stay calm and not show any strong emotions when she would tell me the answers. Every now and then she would look at me straight in the eyes, angered and annoyed, and would ask me 'why would you want to know that?'. But she sat there, next to me, face in her hands, and answered everything. I didn't want to get into the sexual details of the affair, i.e. the actual acts that were performed. At first part of me wanted to know everything but I thought about it and I feel that that part doesn't matter right now. In a way I made the choice not to ask about that and I told her up front. At the end I thank her for her honesty, it was not a pleasant discussion for us, even less for her, but I am glad that she didn't keep hiding those things from me. I would have always wondered if there was something even more terrible under all this that she hadn't told me yet - and I didn't want my imagination to get the best out of me - I didn't want to still be wondering 3 months or a year from now as to what really happened. Now I think I know. Afterwards I took her in my arms, she didn't really respond. She is shutting down right now.

Wow! I read your story and thought I was writing mine! Very similar. My wife just told me 3 days ago that she had an affair. It started 2 years ago and she is just telling me know, as part of some "clearing" she's doing. She wants to work things out but I can't even fathom the possibility of that at this stage.

Her affair was both sexual and emotional. She told me she slept with him 3 times. But I used my detective skills and found all his previous/ past phone numbers and searched her cell phone bills. It turns out she talked with him every day for 4 months and has had contact with him up until last December.

Now I've read on this website that most affairs are kept secret. Well, the affair was kept secret but he wasn't. I knew she was meeting with him, but as Dr.Harley says, I shouldn't have completely trusted her as I did. They were taking a self-employment program together. She was helping him with his work. He even came over and helped put in a storage cabinet at our house! I even talked with him on a few occasions. As I write this I think how could I have been so blind! I obviously wasn't meeting her needs. How could she so blatantly put him in my face and my life as a "friend" of hers when they were clearly more.........

I am struggling to cope. I told myself when I got married that this was a commitment that I would not break it with infidelity on my part. If I felt that way I would work it out or leave the marriage. I also told myself I would never accept it, for whatever reason. I never in a million year believed it would happen. We were supposed to be soulmates, evn though we had our intimacy problems that we, obviously, failed to improve upon.

We have a 4 year old and a 6 year old. We already had plans in the works to move to another city.

I need some suggestions from those that have been through something similar. Right now I am going through all those highs and lows. I want to be with her, and she does with me, but don't know if I'll ever get over this.....

asterix,

OK, you already know your previous reaction to her confessions was not a good thing. And it looks like you have done an excellent job rectifying that by making her feel loved and safe after the last discussion. Good!! You might think about writing your questions down on a piece of paper and making a specific day and time to discuss your marriage and the affair. This usually helps in a couple of ways. It gives you a set aside uninterupted TIME to talk, instead of several times a day. (If you're like me I thought about it 24/7 and had new questions every 5 min!!) It gives the FWS alittle breathing room, instead of constantly being onguard for the NEXT round of questions. It helps you to decide which questions are REALLY important to have answered. And it gives you the rest of the time to reconnect, to bond and to work on rebuilding!

Also, have you considered counseling with the Harleys? Check out the Marriage Builders Counseling and Coaching Center link for information. Rather expensive but I have never heard anyone here say it was a waste of time OR money! Every says great things about their help. Also she may be more receptive to counseling if she doesn't have to look directly at the counselor and can have a phone conversation instead. And I can assure you,, They ARE PRO-MARRIAGE!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Yes I do have new questions every 5 minutes and I know that it's a lot for her to face that barrage of new questions at every moment of the day or night: I ask her questions in the car, in bed, in the kitchen, while watching TV, just all the time - pretty much whenever they start boiling inside me. Your suggestions to make a specific time/day to ask a batch of questions sounds like a good idea. I will probably struggle with having enough patience to wait until that moment but it would indeed make things easier on her, at least I think so. The phone counseling may indeed be an option - we have a hard time scheduling appointment with a counselor any way because of our work schedules. I will look into it.

I am at a point now where the emotional involvement they had for each other during the affair is almost harder to handle than the physical element. I also mourn the life we had together and I know that it will never be the same again now. Best case scenario we would carry along the good memories, our experiences together, and of course our two beautiful children. But the rest will have to be reconstructed from scratch if we ever want to have any hope of being happy together again. Trust will need to be completely earned again, there will be no 'benefit of the doubt' anymore, no blind trust, at least not for a very long time - if ever. I will probably remain very suspicious of her friendships, long hours at work, or business trips. I really hope that I have it in me to move on but I am not always sure I do. Some days I am hopeful about our future, our days I am not.

Man - I am still haven't a hard time today - I can't seem to get anything done. I run in circles. I have just finished looking at the pictures I had of the last four years and tried to systematically delete all the ones that had the 'guy' on them. I have indeed know the guy for 4 years, he was a co-worker of my wife and came to my house a number of times with his family for parties. I just wanted to make sure that I didn't have to come across his face in the future. Sometimes I really wonder if I will ever be able to move on. The pain is so deep and so intense - can anyone ever live a normal life after something like this happen? It is even still difficult to accept the fact that my wife would do something like this, then lie, hide evidence, and keep this terrible secret from me for 7 months. I thought I knew her, she was a person whose integrity and honesty I would have never challenged. I felt that she was so much better than me in those things. Now I realize that she wasn't, it's tough...

She is also still disappointed that I would persist in asking her questions about the things that she didn't want to tell me. In a way she thinks that I didn't respect her wishes or boundaries - and obviously it doesn't make it comfortable for her to talk to me about those things, i.e. the what, when, and how of the affair. I really don't know what to say about that. I am in phase where I want everything to be on the table, all the issues to be articulated. I want to have an answer to my questions, regardless of what they are. I am curious and I wonder. The feelings she has right now about the questions that I ask, I see them as a form of collateral damage, a cost of doing business. I no longer want to have terrorizing burst of anger but I still want answers to my questions.

asterix,

Yes, I know you want it over with,,RIGHT NOW! You want it ALL out on the table so you can absorb it, understand, make decisions, stop the bleeding and heal. Somehow it doesn't seem to work that way. If you learn nothing else during this period, you WILL learn the meaning of PATIENCE!

Asterix, accept the fact you are NEVER going to understand. That's a given. There was no reason, no excuse to go outside the marriage when problems or the opportunity arose. Infidelity solves nothing and only adds to the problems. And you aren't going to find logic in the illogical,,sense in a senseless action. There may have been problems within the marital relationship that made her seek comfort or attention elsewhere but that is not an excuse.

Trust? No, it will be a longgg time before you will be able to trust her again. Blind trust was NEVER a good thing. We can't put our spouse on a pedestal and expect them to stay there indefinately without toppling. Even Dr Harley says --
The details. Make SURE you want them. If you do, I understand. I did. Do what I suggested earlier. Make that list. And at that set-aside time, assure her that the questions you ask will NOT be asked again when you receive answers. And realize this may take some time if and when she's able to answer them. I didn't get answers for a long time. One more hint--LISTEN! Listen to her answers. Allow her time to think, to fully reply to what you've asked. Don't interupt, ask new questions, finish her sentences for her. You'd be amazed what you can learn when you just LISTEN!

Opsss,,double post! How'd I do that? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Nerlycrzy,

Very good suggestions - thank you. I feel that I have a theory about some of the things that happened, I will ask her questions trying to prove my theories, and when her answers don't go that way, I will perseverate, insist, and drill, as if I was trying to convince her that I was right or that she wasn't truthful. Last night I woke her up at 1:00AM, printed some phone records, and was trying to prove to her that her depression in the months that followed the affair was because she missed him, not because the felt so ashamed about what happened as she told me. I was literally trying to convince her that she had been crazy about him, that he was still 'in her head', otherwise why would she have called him so many times. Not that I want her to be crazy about him but I feel that what she told me and her actions are in contradiction. In a way I am trying to tell her 'see, I proved that even now you are still lying to me'. Maybe those are just side effects of having your trust violated, you get paranoid, you think everything is a lie.

If I don't understand why it happened, and if she doesn't understand why it happened either (she tells me she still doesn't know), then how can we hope to reconstruct, how can we take the necessary steps to prevent it from happening again, how can we make sure that we are focusing on the root causes of the problem and not some side effect? Isn't understanding WHY it happened an important step in making sure it doesn't happen again? Is that the purpose of counseling, to find the WHY?

Trust will indeed be very difficult, I think that I will always have doubts. But at the same time what choices do I have? I cannot have her followed, I cannot be with her every single minute of every day, I cannot prevent her from going to work or having a cell phone, I cannot prevent her from developing new friendships - while I cannot trust, I have to trust. How have you handled this? Obviously I am hyper-sensitive to clues right now, I will probably keep scanning her cell phone records and she knows that. So part of me also thinks that she would be stupid to leave evidence any way.

Patience is definitely not one of my qualities - I want to have an answer to all my questions right away - but I realize that it doesn't work like that. To tell you the truth I think that she doesn't even have answers to all of them right now. When I get an "I don't know", I will often say "What do you mean you don't know?" as if she had answers to everything or just didn't want to tell me. I think she doesn't and is still trying to understand herself why it happened.

Can a couple truly recover from something like this even if they really love each other. Can there be love and a fulfilling relationship when there is no trust? How can you be comfortable and open yourself when you know you can get stabbed? How can one move on?

Hi Asterix,

You said...



What I got out of counselling was exactly that...an understanding of how my husband and our marriage got to the point where an affair was possible. He had to uncover what led him down that path (poor communication skills, family history) and we had to learn how to communicate our needs better and strengthen and protect the marriage (clear boundaries). The process involved individual as well as marital counselling.


Asterix, the truth is, your wife has shown herself to be untrustworthy. Now she needs to show she is worthy of your trust. That means she needs to be AN OPEN BOOK. She needs to welcome your checking on her. She needs to be where she says she's going to be and when and with whom she's going to be there. Everytime you catch her in a TRUTH (rather than a LIE), your trust in her will build a little more...until one day you don't have a need to check up on her anymore. Of course, it takes time and willing spirits from both of you.

Good luck, Asterix. I know how much this all hurts so so badly. One of the best pieces of advice I got was from my counsellor when I asked for "homework". She said, "Your homework is to have FUN together. Go out and do something you both enjoy. You deserve it!" All the fun memories we started to have began to replace all the terrible images and memories I had. So, Asterix, take a deep breath, give yourself a break and plan something really fun to do. You DESERVE it. And, oh yeah, keep up with the counselling, eh?

Cheers,
Natalie

asterix - you have come to the right place. All of these great people here will help you heal. The hurt and pain are unbearable. I read somewhere that the grief you experience over marital betrayal is worse than grieving a death of a loved one. There is nothing you can do about death, and nothing you do or did could have changed the outcome. The person you grieve for is gone.

Well, this is much worse. They're still here, and you don't know the real truth. But please know that grieving is a process. You will go through all the stages of grief. I highly recommend two books: "Affairs" by Emily Brown, and "After the Affair" by Janus Spring. Both you and your wife should read them.

You sound a lot like me - wanting it all to be solved and explained immediately. From my signature, you can see I've had a rough road. This last time, I immediately made an appointment with my physician and she prescribed some medication to help keep my emotions from getting the best of me so I could function through this very difficult time. I gotta tell you, it works great! I also let my boss at work know that I was having severe marital difficulties - some of my deadlines were released.

I, too, needed details. My H saw no point, didn't want me to hurt further. But you know what - when I finally got all the details, even (maybe especially) the physical ones, the images of my H with these women went away. They weren't any better than me. Issues in our marriage contributed, but it's something that just "happened" to him. We have to figure out why he let it. It's a ton of work.

I'm soooo glad that you and she are committed to working this out. The more you read and understand, with time, the hurt will fade. Counseling is a must right now.

take care - you have a lot of support on this site.

Last night was another long night. I had a bunch of questions in my head and I had to wake her up to talk about them. This is the second day in a row that I have to wake her up. This time something was different - even though she was not happy that I woke her up, she kept the conversation going and volunteered some information. I didn't have to drag every little bit of information out of her, and that felt good. She clarified and corrected a few things that she said to me before.

At this time my mind is perseverating on her feelings for him, not necessarily her feelings now (she tells me that she didn't love him, doesn't love him now, and doesn't want to be with him) but also about her feelings then, and her feelings and thoughts in the weeks and months after the affair when they were physically separated (we live in a different state than he does). I keep asking the same questions over and over again, sometimes trying to vary the way I ask them just in case the answer would be different. Questions like: "did you ever think about leaving me to be with him?", "did you miss him after that week?" (here she will usually tell me that she 'missed their friendship' but didn't miss him as a lover nor the affair that they had), "Did you want to get back with him after that week" (here she told me yesterday that at one point he had talk about meeting her at a professional conference, possibly in the hope of being intimate with her again, but she told me that she didn't want that to happen, that at that time she had already decided that she didn't want to live a double life - the conference never materialized so it didn't become an issue), "how much of your depression in the weeks and months after the affair was due to withdrawal from him?" (here again she tells me that she missed the "friend" but that she was incredibly ashamed, embarassed, and worthless about what she did and that was the core of her depression - she tells me that she was mourning us and what we had because she knew it could never be the same because of what she did - and that she lived in fear that I wouldn't want to be with her when it finally got out). My mind is going 100 miles an hour. She is doing the best she can to answer my questions but she doesn't have answers to everything. Sometimes she will tell me "I don't know", she tells me that she wasn't thinking clearly at the time and that she doesn't have a log of all the emotions and thoughts she had at the time, that her emotions were ambivalent also and haven't been sorted out.

Even though I tell her that I am committed to making things work out, I don't think that she is convinced of that. She knows that I am going through a roller-coaster of emotions and she doesn't know where I will end up, i.e. stay with her or separate. I told her that truth and honesty are out best medicines right now and that the only thing that could make me change my mind about staying with her is finding out that she is still deceiving me.

Man - it has been a rough ride since 2/11 when she first admitted it. I have completely exhausted by the process and so is she.

I just got off the phone with my wife and I still find myself probing into the sexual details of the affair. She will sometimes deny some of my theories but still refuses to share the details with me. That has been the case ever since she told me about the affair. Basically she tells me that she feels ashamed and uncomfortable telling me those things, and shuts me down when I cross a certain line. I go back and forth between wanting to know and not wanting to know. Part of me probably wants to know if he was a better lover than me or if she gave herself more to him than she does/did to me. There are obviously a lot of insecurities mixed in here, thinking that this happened because I was not good enough in some way - despite the fact that she denies that.

While there are still certain things that she doesn't know or doesn't know how to answer, I feel that there are still those facts there, like the sexual acts, that she knows about and that she keeps for herself. Knowing myself I think that I won't be able to let this go, I assume that I will keep trying until at some point I get the answers that I need. It will take time and maybe I will never know or maybe I will get tired of asking and will move on. In a way I feel that this is a battle of the wills right now. She feels that she doesn't have to share those 'details' with me because they would serve no purpose and are hurtful for her to talk about, on the other hand I have this feeling of 'entitlement', that I am entitled to know, as some form of compensation for what happened.

I am also getting the impression that my wife didn't initiate the affair (I have asked many questions on this point), just like in the case of 'twotimes', my wife let it happen, went along with it, and didn't stop it. This being said she clearly tells me that it's not an excuse and she is not shifting the blame, she accepts full responsibility for what happened. It doesn't make it easier for me to accept the facts but I wonder if prevention takes another form in this case, or is the question of 'who initiated?' completely irrelevant? In other words, are the steps that the cheating husband/wife take different in preventing future reoccurences depending on whether they were the initiator or not. This being said, I am wondering if this is still for me a form of denial - or maybe just trying to find some circumstances that make the pill easier to swallow and give me more hope for the future, in which case it would be more of a coping mechanism.

As a form of counseling my wife was also talking about the possibility of talking to a priest - does anyone have experience with this approach vs. another type of counselor?

Hello Asterix.

I only today read this thread because my H referred me to it due to the extreme similarities of the A, the feelings and responses/reactions that you and your WS are facing. I am a FWS and who visits these forums from time to time, especially when referred to by my H when he posts anything major about us.

All of the responses here seem to be from BS. Again that is the norm since I am certain that most of the visitors here are BS, not WS. I will try to offer you some insight into a FWS if only to give you some little comfort in knowing that your W is going through what other WS go through. I say this from reading other posts but in particular, from knowing my own feelings, responses, and reactions to my BS. He was as driven and determined as you are, if not more, in finding out the whys and the details of the A. You seem to be off to a good start in that you managed to get this information from her so early after D-Day. I was a bit more reluctant than that.

It is good that you have been able to make it safer for her to be more open with you. Your angry outbursts and reactions to anything that she has told you so far however still weighs heavily in her mind. This may be the one and only reason that she is unwilling to share further details with you. It is NOT because she wants to keep any details secret between her and the OM or is trying to keep good feelings about the A. Please know that she honestly does not want to hurt you any more. My H insisted on knowing details and as much as I objected because I also did not see what purpose it served and I did not want to expose him to any more hurt, I eventually shared the details with him, reluctantly, but only because he was able to convince me that he needed to hear this for his recovery and that I hurt him more by not sharing it. He says now (8 months since D-Day but less since revelation of details) that he does not regret asking and that it did help, but I still feel that he would have been better off not knowing some of the details. It is those details that haunt our recovery and provide "triggers" that make it that much more difficult to move forward. This is MY belief only. My H, along with many other BS will disagree. It is also my belief that BH seem to want to know these details more than BW but are less able to deal with it when they eventually find out. As someone advised before, make sure you really need to know these details. You have to know why you need to know these details and what difference does it make to you to know. I am not questioning you, I am simply advising you to question yourself before you regret insisting on knowing the details. Once you know, you have to live with it, and if your W thinks that she will be reminded of it by you for the rest of her life, she will hesitate to share it with you. Would you be willing to put it behind you once it comes out? Can you?

My H, like you, was the one who initiated accessing resources and materials to aid our recovery. I was not opposed to it, but I did not embrace it like he did. We actually did some major LBing when he insisted that I did not want to actively pursue our recovery.

Eight months into recovery and it has been a roller-coaster of emotions - from day to day. Does it get better? I'm not sure if "better" is the right word. Feelings jump from despair to elation to insecurity to hope...and it goes on. Up to this morning, my H questioned my committment to recovery. It is a long hard process but I am grateful for what I have learned so far in learning to communicate more effectively. I think this plays a big part in the recovery process.

I cannot yet advise you on the effects of professional counselling as we have not yet taken up that option.

Ooh, that's dangerous territory. You may find out something that you really don't like, like the OM being better at SF than you, or more endowed. Are you prepared for the worst answers?



You need to decide if you really need to know those details, and if so, you need to make the environment safe for your WW to share them, if she will (and she should, if you believe you need them for your recovery). Set aside a particular day for talking about the A - no more "surprise questions". Give an idea of what you want to talk about. Give her an idea of WHY you want to talk about it. No more angry outburts, disrespectful judgments, etc. And finally, realise that even continuously bringing up the A is love-busting. That might be difficult to avoid now, so early after D-Day, but bear that in mind for the future.



Yup, went through the same thing here. For me, knowing the truth helped, but it was difficult to pursuade my FWW that the truth was more important than anything else at that point.



Yup, same here. In fact, I *know* I wasn't "good enough" in the sack, and I still sometimes feel that I'm not good enough - period, based on how my FWW treats me during the recovery process (she says that she doesn't do it on purpose). However, in general, it's probably natural, particularly as, for the duration of the A, your R with her was not the most important thing in her life - as she risked it to feed the A addiction. But that's the key there - to recognize it as an addiction. Addicts do stupid, thoughtless things when feeding their addiction - something they only realize after they've recovered.



Again, we're very alike here. My FWW makes the process even more unbearable at times by changing some answers from "no" to "don't know", etc., then back again. It's a tough situation, particularly as what you likely most want from her at the moment is openness and honesty, and she just wants to forget everything, get over it and move on. All I can suggest is ask yourself WHY you want to ask particular questions, and if you have a reasonable answer to that, talk about it with your WW. And realise that answer that she gives today might be different to the answer gives tomorrow to the same question. And yes, when that happens whatever trust you have left in her is adversely affected. You might want to think about sticking to mainly "closed" questions, where answers should be definitive (e.g. "yes", or "no") and objective. Any questions about feelings or other subjective matter are likely to generate answers that will change over time.



By making the decision to not talk because it would "serve no purpose", she is actually making a disrespectful judgment against you. If you thought the same about the question, you wouldn't be asking it, right? She's basically suggesting to you that your opinion on the matter is irrelevant. On the other hand, you REALLY need to make sure that you're not asking the question simply to shame and embarrass her. Think before you ask.



It was the same story in my case, though I only came to feel that way after we discussed the details, and out of the details emerged a picture of the OM continuously pushing her boundaries until she gave in. But at the end of the day, she did make the decision to participate in the A.



Personally, I'm not sure. I think that if I discovered that my FWW actually intiated things, I think that I'd be a lot less inclined to work on R of our M. OTOH, if you'd asked me a year ago if I'd stay married to someone who cheated on me, I'd have given a definite NO as my answer.



The advice in the Harley books does not make any differentiation on that matter. Have you got a copy of "Surviving an Affair"?