I'm new here and I hope you don't think I'm nuts, but I really don't know where else to turn. Here's my story. My wife and I have been married for 21 years. For the most part it has been a good marriage. We are best friends, companions, she is a wonderful mother to our children and to anyone you would ask, we have a perfect marriage. As many of you know I'm sure, outward appearances are often deceiving. While everything seems well and good, we have a skeleton in the closet so to speak.

We were high school sweethearts and dating for about 5 years before we married. About a year and half before we wed, she had an affair with my best friend. She lived in the same apartment complex as he did and one thing led to another. You know the rest of the story. I know "affair" seems like the wrong word. We weren't even married, but we were engaged. When it was over she told me what had happened and after some time we decided to go through with the wedding. If you have been through an affair you know about the questions it leaves in addition to the hurt. We spent far too much time discussing what happened. She always maintained that is was brief and "just happened". She never meant to hurt me. But she never would really give me any real answers to my questions.

After the affair and even more so after our wedding, things began to change between us. She seemed very disinterested in any physical contact with me. She refused to wear my favorite clothes. Even stopped kissing and holding hands. Needless to say my emotional needs were far from being met and when I tried to discuss this with her we often ended up fighting. Many times the old affair would come up. Sometime it would be me who brought it up with more unanswered questions. Sometimes it would be her wondering if she picked th right guy. Always I was left feeling unwanted, like she had settled for me or married me out of obligation. I know this seems very unhealthy, but I really love her and never even considered leaving. I love her as much now as ever. Sorry to be so long explaining myself. I am coming to a point.

Recently an old movie came on. One that reminded me of the affair. She had told me before that they had watched it together the first night they had had sex. My wife noticed I looked a little down and asked why? I asked to turn off the movie and when I explained why she dropped a real bomb on me. She had never watched this movie with him. Infact all the details she had told me about the affair were lies. She had decided more than 20 years ago not to tell me the truth about the affair. She said they were here memories, her secrets, and I didn't need to know them. She then decided to tell me the truth for the first time. As it turned out it wasn't brief, but lasted a whole summer. Whe I went home at night, he came over, sometimes at 2 or 3 on the morning. They went skinny dipping in the apartment pool, took long walks in the moonlight, and had sex in every variety of places. All the intimate fun and emotional closeness I had been begging for during the last 20 years, she had given to him with out hesitation. She said that she did marry me because she loved me, but that she needed that wild summer before she could settle down. After we married she said she felt ashamed of herself for behaving like she did and decided she was done with that type of passionate behavior, even toward me.

I keep asking myself, did the affair ever end? I've read that affairs are not really about sex but about secrets and deceit. I feel like she ahs protected the memory of her fling for 20 years. She has continued the lying for all that time. The man has long since moved away, but has she continued to have an affair with him in her mind. Has the emotional and physical neglect I have been feeling just been a part of her protecting her memories? I feel as though the affair has happened all over again. I do believe she is being honest with me now and that she is truely sorry for lying for all these years. She says she wants to make it up to me, but how do you get back 20 years of what could have been if only she had been honest sooner.

How do I forgive her? How do I get past this feeling that she never really wanted me to begin with? I'm torn apart inside.

Welcome to marriage builders. It is a good place to be under the circumstances.

How has she been as a wife for 20 years? I would look at all of her behavior towards you.

The passion of newlyweds always ends. That is normal.

As for the affair, that was nothing but a fantasy. It is unfortunate that she didn't tell you the truth from the start. But she probably thought she would lose you.

MrMoonlight,

For you the affair just happened...again. She does not understand this I am sure. I would strongly encourage you to read the articles about radical honesty on this site. I am sure you W does NOT understand what she has done to you. But, I am hoping that she is going to be good enough to listen to your feelings, your feelings of rejection (they weren't feelings were they?), and your sense of lose.

It is not surprising that you feel the whole 20 years was a lie. She won't feel this way, but much was held from you, including the decision to ever marry her. Would you have married her if you KNEW that for 20 years she would withhold herself from you? Would you have married her if you found out that your best friend was who she wanted to be with before the marriage?

I would strongly encourage you two to seek counseling with a pro-marriage counselor. She may think you will get over this quickly, but the reality is that it will take awhile and that may be measure in years.

She needs to hear you and your feelings and the two of you need some education on marriages and relationships. I think your W might benefit from the articles on this site as well.

Please seek counseling, getting through this alone will be very hard. The people here will help you AND your W if that is what you wish, but good one on one counseling will help both of you. She has just punched a lot of holes in this boat you call a marriage, and you both will need help in plugging all of the leaks.

Hang in there, do a lot of reading of Harley's articles, please post and ask questions, seriously consider bringing your W to this place as well. Your marriage can withstand this, but it will not happen over night.

God Bless,

JL

MrMoonlight,
Just to let you know I understand how you feel.

I found out in March 2006 our marriage was not what I knew it as for the previous 22years.

I felt I was living with & had loved a semi-stranger, almost as if a complete dual personality existed within my husband.

I have found it hard to let go & accept the 'good' we have & had.

My husband like your wife, unburdened himself & came totally honest, he said he felt a wieght had been lifted from him, that had shadowed him, that he had lived with a fear, guilt & shame for all those years which held him back, now that he knows I am not going to run he is being the most honest with himself & me he has ever been in his life.

As for the affairs, they were real to him at the time, as he has learned more, he has come to think of them as meaningless in real terms, that the other women could have been anybody, that it was not about the other women, or even me, it was about himself completely, how he felt about himself.

Just Learning sounds so wise.

I am sickened & saddened & even mad with myself, that it has taken this long for my husband to feel ok enough to let himself be vulnerable by telling his full truth.

Hunker down friend, this is an emotional mindfield for both of you. Know that your wife does want to be with you, she has free will too, & did chose to marry you, & has choosen you again & again for the last 20years.

I know it is hard, please believe her actions had nothing to do with you, or what you did or did not do, this was all about her & her choices & inability over the years to be honest with herself & you regarding her mistake of judgement she made.

I did feel emotionally & physically conned, abused, taken advantage of, robbed of choice, that I was always sincere & open hearted, that I gave my love with all of my being happily & willingly for our united happiness. I loved with a great desire for my husband to enjoy his life as much as I enjoyed mine.

I always sensed there was something not quiet tangible holding him back, we never really dug deep into what over the years, just kind of knew there might be a hurt from childhood or teenage years. & I thought digging would cause that hurt to resurface, I never understood that to heal hurts have to be examined for what they are in the bright of day & totally cleared out, I do now. (oh, the wisdom of age, huh <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> )

It was Secrets. Secrets kill intimacy - intimacy of knowing each other completely with no shadows or hidden knowlege.

I had no choice because I had no knowledge, well now I have the knowledge & the history, what real difference does it make? Huge...I have as a husband a man who wants more than anything to be believed, accepted, loved & trusted as he is TODAY - the honest, hurt, remorseful, loving (though not necessarily in a way that I feel loved or cherished), anxious to be ok with all of this & resume being the man in my life that I can be happy with.
I still have a choice everyday is a choice, I am free to make. Staying is a choice, supporting him is a choice, loving him is a choice, living well is a choice... on & on.

Sometimes I actually find myself forgetting the ugliness of it all & really enjoying our here & now time together.

MrsM has had 20years to overcome the emotional side of it, & has learned to stuff her negative feelings & get on with living, for you the info is so new & raw it is like it just happened when you found out.

Be careful MrMoonlight, I found for myself I got angry, when I got angry, it closed down that honest communication that my husband had started. He was afraid I'd throw it in his face anytime we'd get upset, & to an extent early on he was right.

Which he says made him regret being honest.

It seems sooooo unfair & it is.

As well as what Just Learning & Believer say, I would strongly suggest that your wife does love you because she is being sooooo honest with you even though it is ripping you it is a very very deep intimate honest that she would only share with you if she was confident of your love for her & she wanted to be sincere with you for the rest of your lives, embrace that when you can.

I found the Love Busters questionaire difficult to take on the first read, however it is a very worthwhile exercise, I would caution you to consider it in your pre-up-to-date-knowledge when you fill it in regarding your wife, it is a very harsh document for both parties.

The emotional needs questionaire is all about me, me, me, me or so it seems. I think it is for each spouse to let the other know precisely what they can do if they want you to feel happy or pleased about their company.

I am learning daily how to handle my own emotional turmoil.

I find reading success stories helpful too & the homepages on this site.

Best of wishes Shiela.

Your wife let go this affair a long long time ago.

The affair is over.

The truth about it is raw & new to you.

Your wife seems secure in your love for her & is being very honest because of that love you have for her.

Be honest about yourself with yourself & your wife.

While being honest remember do NOT hurt her, protect her & care for her.

Your marriage will be made way more intimate & stronger by this honesty, care & protection. It will take time.

Best wishes
Shiela.

I read this link:

3 years & counting - Pendragon's life

& thought it might be of comfort to you.

Thanks everyone for the encouraging posts. Its nice to know others have been where you are and gotten through it. You are right about the "choices". Both my wife and I have made many choices during the past 20+ years and we both need to take responsibility for them. You are also right thatsome choices might have been different if I had all the information back then. Would I have married her if I had known she would hold so much of herself back for 20 years? Having lived those years with her, I would not trade them away. As I said before for the most part we've had a good life together, but had I known ahead of time I might have chosen not to go through with the wedding in favor of persuing a more complete relationship. However, if I had done that my life would not be what it is today. Who knows what different outcome may have occured. I'll stick with may choice to marry her.

Another choice that may seem small now, but for me is huge is what to do about the old "best friend". We had been friends since grade school and were like brothers. Part of her dishonesty about the affair was to protect him. She didn't want me to know his part in it. She says she was afraid if I knew the whole story I would affect that friendship. Unfortuneatley the friendship was doomed by the affair. We barely spoke again after. Oddly enough in one of the last conversations we had he apologized for the affair. When I asked him what happened he gave the same story she had been telling virtually word for word. Turns out she had coached him to tell the same story so I would believe her more. His lie killed any chance of our restoring that friendship.

My choice not to continue that friendship cause me the loss of many of my other friends as well. Since they did not all know about the affair, the group continued to hang out together, just without me as I avoided him and tried to mend things with her. It may sem strange but I miss that old friend. If she or he had been honest years ago, maybe there would be something left of that friendship.

Its funny. The one thing I've wanted for all these years is to believe she really wanted to be with me. Now that she has decided to be completely honest with me I am beginning to believe she did choose me. That she did want to be with me all along and all those hurt feelings and insecurities over the years could have been avoided. It seems I finally have the thing I've always wanted and yet I don't feel happy. I feel an intense sense of loss. Loss for what might have been. Loss for the wonderful times we might have had if she had not held so much of herself back. I know I can't get those years back and I feel like its too late to travel some of the roads I thought we would have followed when we got married. We are well into our 40's now. Time is not so much on our side as it once was. I know most people don't end up where they though they would be when they were young, but we are so far from where I thought we would be I feel like we may have lost the opportunity to have even a taste of that life.

I don't want to leave the impression that I've had a miserable life. Its not that way at all. My wife is a really a very good person. We have a mostly wonderful marriage. I'm sure she didn't do what she did to hurt me and I'm sure if she could she would change the way she handled things. I see she is hurting as much as I am as we talk out these issues. She wants to move forward with the new and improved version of our relationship as much as I do. If anything, I am the one causing the hurt now. The sense of loss I am feeling about the past seems to keep me from seeing the things she is doing now, in the present. I feel silly saying that it seems like its too soon to just forgive and forget. After all the affair happened 20 years ago. But for me it seems like last week. And its not the affair that hurts, but the dishonesty withholding of herself that really only is beginning to be revealed that hurts. I guess I just need to trust her.

Mrmoonlight, it IS too soon to just forgive and forget, and as for your feeling of "losing" all that time, I can quite understand and relate to that - I remember going through exactly the same feeling when my wife told me about her A.

It's not only what's been revealed that's bothered me - it's the feeling I get at times that not all has been revealed; about her A and anything else that she might have done during our M. I want us to rebuild knowing that all secrets are out in the open between us, and I don't want to find myself years from now finding out something that should have been disclosed during this recovery period, because I know that probably would start the process all over again, and I'll find myself where you find yourself now.

My advice to you would be to try to ensure that it's all out in the open now - no more secrets. Then give yourself time to recover. If your W is truly interested in your M, she'll give you all the support you need. Good luck.

Mrmoonlight,

A few thoughts based on your most recent comments.

You said Have you told her this? Have you told her the feelings you have had in this paragraph from which I selected the last sentence? She needs to see inside you for a bit. It will help her see how to let you inside her.

You also said Was it the lie, or the betrayal, OR the combination of both? I am betting it is both. Don't spend any more time thinking about him. Oddly this has done you a huge favor, you thought you had a friend, but you did not. Imagine what else you might have trusted him with: investments, your family, your W again, your life, your deepest feelings, his advice... The list is endless and clearly he could not have been trusted with these things, give the sort of man he is/was. YOu have been saved a great deal of grief having someone like him OUT of your life. You should give thanks for that. It brings new meaning to the statement
You also stated
Are you really that far??? You are still young, trust me on this. I have many years on you and your W and I can say that your 50's and yes even 60's can be the best times of your life. It seems to me you need to sit down with your W and read her this paragraph word for word. Then ask her if she wanted or wants to be closer to your dream path. If so, does she have any ideas how to get there. Be open and honest with one another, use the POJA, discuss, plan, think, talk and I think you will find that you can make your lives something you both savor.

I would suggest to you, that you two have the opportunity to have the good times toward the end rather than the beginning, and often it is much better. It goes with the old saying "Youth is wasted on the young." Whatever you decide you both will savor and finally enjoy.

Finally you said
An affair is like a death in the family. Many things die as a consequence of affairs, and often new things are offered. The point is you need to go through the stages of grief, IF you are to fully recover. What you are describing is the first stage of grief, there will be others. Realize this and then realize that it takes time. You are not holding back recovery. You are setting the stage to build a new marriage. You must first properly grieve the old one. If you don't you will carry resentment and pain into the new one. You will NEVER forget what has happened, but what will happen is that the feelings associated with the memories will fade.

Please give yourself time to do this, and explain it to your W, or have her come here and we will explain it to her. Take your time, do some reading on grief and you will see that what you are feeling and doing is very normal and actualy theraputic. Avoid love busting your W, but give yourself time to fully heal. Neither of you will regret it if you do.

Talk, talk, talk, communicate, communicate, communicate and you will find that you two can have the marriage you have dreamed of.

Please think about this.

God Bless,

JL

Its really great to have found this forum and all your good advice. I guess what I really miss about my old friend is having someone to talk to about this problem. I'm reminded of a line from Crocodile Dundee. Someone is trying to explain to him that a "shrink" is someone to talk about your problems with and he says "Doesn't he have any mates?". For me the answer is no. When your lifelong best friend betrays you like that, it doesn't bode well for developing future close friendships. I find myself with no one to talk to but my wife and she is what I need to talk about. Finding this group of strangers with similar problems may be just what I need.

As for being too far down the wrong path to start over, I guess you are right. There is more time. But not everything can be a do over. Our relationship might certainly be richer than ever. I hope so. But the affair had other consequences I hadn't even realized until recently. Even my career choice was influenced. The path I was on before the affair was interwoven with my friend's path. We had planned to start a business together. After the affair. That path was cut off. Even staying in the same line of business seemed unappealing. My new "career" became trying to earn my wife's affections and put back together our love. I just never got back on that path again. Now I find myself a world away from my passion in a dead end job. I should be at the peak of my career. Its too hard now to think about starting over on that path. By the way my old friend did start that business and it thrives to this day. Sometimes I feel like he is living my life. After all, it was he who won my wife's affections leaving me feeling second best and now he is living my dream career in sunny California.

Reading over this I find myself feeling like a real loser. The affair was 20 years ago and in that time I have let that one summer redefine my whole life. My job, my friends, My relationship and self confidence all tied to one event all those years ago. Talking with my wife these past few weeks has really opened my eyes not only to how here behavior influenced my decisions, but how far my own choices have led me away from my passions. I need to put this behind me and begin moving forward before I lose everything I wanted in life. Maybe if I stop focusing on my relationship with my wife so much and work on something else, it will take a little of the pressure off us both and we can start enjoying each other more. Maybe if I persue my old passions or even something new, we will be able to rediscover what attracted us to each other to begin with. Sorry to ramble on. Like I said I need someone to share my feelings with.

Mrmoon,

What does your W say about all of this? Especially, your ruminations about lost job opportunities as such? Does she still have feelings for the OM? Does she regret how you have conducted your life? Does she give any indication of whether or not she is proud of you, or respects you.

You have not mentioned children. Do you have any? What are their ages?

MrML, live is a bunch of choices and it serves you no good to try to compare your life to someone elses because you don't see inside them, you don't know what it "cost" them, you don't know what makes them happy. Your "friend" and I use that word loosely, may also feel the loss of you in his life, or he may not. It matters not. You need to develop a life if that is what you want. You are not too late to change things.

I have a friend that switched from science to finance at 50, and now at 61 he is remarkably successful. He had the support of his W, their kids were on their own, and they took the "shot".

These things are before you, and they have little or nothing to do with your W's affair. What you would need now is your W's support, do you have that? Do you have her love? Has she changed how she interacts with you now? Are you seeing changes that make you think YOU are the one she really wanted to marry?

I know all is not peaches and cream, but you may have just found the reasons you need to step up your life.

Please think about this.

God Bless,

JL

I'm sorry to hear about this blow to your marriage.

I have one comment for you:



from the other thing you said, about you asking her for this sort of thing for 20 years.. sounds like there is still a huge unresolved issue in your marriage. She is still holding onto him, as "her passionate love". her ONLY passionate love, sounds like. but she "settled" for the stable, "marrying type" in you.

She'll deny it like crazy. but to my reading, it is clearly there.
You can resolve things, and get things back to "how they were" a year ago before you knew. Or.. you can use these revelations, to try to make your marriage better than it ever was.

Maybe a marriage counsellor can help you both, and see that there can be passion as well as stability.
best wishes to you both.