Hi, It has been exactly 1 month since I discovered the one time PA. (If that is in fact true.) We have had 4 couples counseling sessions and things seem to be going well. WH is taking full responsibility and answering all my questions. Last night we spoke about why this all happened. We had a great marriage and he was perfectly happy in his marriage. He said that he and the OW were just looking for some excitement. They both knew that it would not go anywhere, but both had been married for a long time and was just looking for some excitement. Now, mind you when they had their "excitement" I had just been released from the hospital after back surgery. He picked quite a time for some excitement. It almost bothers me more that he was capable of doing this just for the thrill. How can I trust that he will never seek that thrill again? If one of his coworkers pays a little attention to him, how do I know he won't have that need again? I guess I am questioning, do I want to spend the rest of my life with someone who is capable of turning everything off and just having his needs met? He says he loves me and does not want the marriage to end, but I just don't know!!!!

If they were looking for excitement, why not just jump out of a plane??????????????

He wont do it again if he sets EP's in place and protects them.

Yes a sane thinking person not looking for shortcuts would find alternative heathier options to fill their needs rather than escape into an A. Not sure jumping out of a plane is necessarily sane but thats another discussion. Perhaps post A he and you both tune into what you needs are and how they can he met without destructive behavior.

How do you trust that ANY alcoholic wont do it again. They have the capacity to drink, they make a choice not to.

We all have the capacity (some more than others)
We all have the opporunity to (some more than others )
and yet we dont ALL have A's
Why is that ?
Beacuse we make a choice not to reslove what ever our issues are in an unhealthy manner.

So to answer your Q can your WH have an A again? - Yes .
Will he ??? - Thats the skills that he is going to have to learn from this recovery/counselling process and you will have to keep a close eye to see if he is putting the steps in place that will prevenet HIM from falling into his own trap.
You cant be his gate keeper you have to make sure he learns to watch his own door. When he starts doing that you will slowly start to exhale. Also once he realise that there are better choices he can make to resolve his needs if he still chooses destructive ways then he has not learned a darn thing then you have a choice to make.



BTW this sounds promising to me. Good step in the right direction.

A little background, please:
How long have you been married?
Any children?
Do you both work?
IMPORTANT: Does your WH and the OW still work together?

Lisa, your H cheated because he has weak boundaries around women. He probably flirts with them and has personal conversations with them. In the case of your husband, he should not even be SUPERVISING women because he abuses his authority to exploit his female subordinates for sex.

An extraordinary precaution in this case would be to remove the condition that led to his affair and that is to never supervise women again.

Did you ever tell the OWH what your H has done to him? Or he is still ignorant about the affair? Is this the same idiot "counselor" who advised LYING to the OWH?

LF,

By not telling the OWH you have allowed him to avoid facing the consequences of what he did to OWH and family. I don't know how your H can see OWH on the job and not feel extreme remorse.

God Bless
Gamma

MelodyLane and Gamma,

Yes, the OWH now knows the entire story. It is out and in the open. Not sure what that accomplished as they were no longer working together anyway. I am not concerned about the two of them anymore, as it appears that both parties want to stay in their marriage. What is most pressing to me, is the fact that they were both just looking for excitement, and no other reason. H says he loves me and that we have always had a good marriage but he was at a weak spot in his life. I worry about it happening again as there were no outward signs of trouble in the first place and my "idiot counselor" has not been able to address this for me.

Are you kidding me? You don't know what it accomplished by making sure the OWH knew what your H did to him? Did it "accomplish" anything for YOU to find out or would you have rather that everyone treated you the same way and LIED to you about the affair?

Have you considered finding a qualified counselor? Here is what Dr Harley says about why people have affairs:

requirement for recovery

Note the emphasis on "eliminating the conditions" that led to the affair. In your H's case, he cannot be trusted to supervise women because he abuses his authority by having affairs with his direct reports. That is a condition that should be eliminated.

Let me put this another way. If I get hit while playing chicken in the road, it doesn't really matter why I was playing chicken, but that I STOP playing chicken if I want to stop getting hit by cars.

It is the same with adultery. If I commit adultery under certain conditions, the solution is to eliminate that condition.

the solution is to get out of the road!

I agree with Mel. Wanting to know why is ok in the grieving stage of what has happened to you but serves no purpose beyond that. If you focus on why and never get a real answer (sometimes there isn't one), you cannot move on down the road to a better life. You get stuck. You end up as the headless chicken who plays with moving cars.

And usually why makes no sense at all to a betrayed in the early stages of learning. And quite often, the wayward initially explains why in broad terms that blames everyone but themselves as they try to unload guilt. Again, the wayward are themselves in the early stages and don't really understand enough to come up with something reasonable that focuses on their flaws instead of the flaws of others.

This is why Dr. Harley focuses on eliminating the conditions that allow an affair now and then moving forward, to change ourselves (only person we control) in a positive way. As you learn, down the road you can have your epiphany for why because you will have more information on which to base the reasons.

Larry

LF,

The reason it was right and proper to expose the affair, and the "good" it did?

There are lots of reasons!

1. The likelihood of your getting the full truth is raised by exposure to OWH. If OWH knows about the affair, he will also be probing for the truth, and this increases the chances that more information about the affair will come out. You can then utilize this resource (OWH) in the future, if need be, to verify anything your husband may tell you. Your husband now knows that other people know about his behavior, and the fact is that he fully realizes that you may very well contact OWH for verification of his information. This serves YOU as an ace in the hole.

2. Exposure is morally the correct thing to do, as OWH has the right to know the truth of his life, however painful, however difficult, however ugly. He has the right to the full and complete information regarding the state of his marriage, the behavior of his wife, and the risks of her sexual exploits to his health. Additionally, you do not know their marital history, and it is completely possible that this is NOT her first affair, and he has the right to this information as he may need to make legal or other arrangements to further protect himself and/or children.

3. Exposing the affair removes the secrecy of the affair partners' fantasy, and diminishes the luster of the encounter. By doing so, it reduces the chances of further encounters in some types of affairs, especially if the affair partners are not emotionally involved or if they do wish to continue in their marriages.

4. By exposing to OWH, you also now have another pair of eyes helping you to watch the two of them. He can watch her email and phone at his end, and you can watch at your end. This reduces the chances of the two of them contacting one another again - even if it is "just for closure".

5. Exposure to the spouse of the affair partner assists in making that person REAL. In many cases, the betrayed spouse might seem vague, or sort of a non-person, especially if that BS is not personally known to the affair partner. By exposing, the betrayed spouse is now a REAL PERSON, who has been hurt PERSONALLY by your husband. Your husband is now facing his behavior in a real way - he hurt YOU, and he also hurt another innocent party who has a face and a name. He disrupted another man's FAMILY - as well as his own - and your husband has to face the reality of THAT.


Exposure is important. This should not be lost on you, or on your husband. The fact that the OW is saving her marriage is not related to your exposing the affair. That is the decision of that couple -

focus on your own decisions
your own marriage
and understand that down the road, the exposure will have made YOUR HUSBAND a better person in the recovery process.

He will feel shame and remorse for doing what he did. This is part of his healing. Exposing his behavior will help him HEAL. Covering it up would only have allowed this to fester.


SB

LS,

To answer the other question - is the "reason" behind the affair important?

I think it is.

My husband and his OW had an affair that lasted several months, and the reason was the same as your husband's. My husband was looking for sexual excitement. OW is a swinger, and she and her husband have a very strange agreement about her open sex life.

Basically, OW is allowed to cheat. OWH somehow enjoys this (masochist?).
They make me sick.

Anyway, my H was at a point in his life where he was middle aged, feeling down on himself, and our SF was not as frequent as he wanted. Rather than discuss any of this with me, he took advantage of the opportunity that OW put before him - which was sex-for-the-sake-of-sex. He jumped right in, and despite what he says was remorse and regret from the very moment he decided to do this, he kept going back for more. It was exciting and dangerous and yet he felt horrible and guilty and could not figure out why he was nuking our marriage - knowing he was - yet he felt somehow trapped in his own web.

He thought that if I never found out, I would never be hurt.

I found out.

And his plan that I never would find out and never be hurt


went up in a mushroom cloud on d-day.


In some ways, his devastations might have been worse, because a few short weeks later, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. His surgery resulted in the inability to have sex for more than a year.

He calls that his karma.


For me, I went through what can only be described as he// under the mushroom cloud.

And I had to help this man who just stabbed me a thousand times over

recover from cancer

while I believed in my deepest heart

that he didn't even love me one ounce.



Somewhere in there, we found each other.


Somehow.


I would attribute to Marriage Builders the foundation of this new marriage.

To tell you that this recovery was easy would be a lie.
To tell you that I didn't want to leave a thousand times would be a lie.
To tell you that I didn't want to just pick up a baseball bat and slam everything around me about once a week or so - well, lie again.

But as time went by, the rollercoaster ride leveled out.

I think that if he loved the OW, or if she loved him, or if it was because he just did not love me, then, this whole thing would have been much harder for me. The approach to healing would have been harder. But you know what I learned here????? Most affairs really don't have anything to do with love, anyway. They really DON'T. You will come to learn that on Marriage Builders. I was shocked to learn that.


And now, here we are, four and a half years later.

Sometimes I still trigger. Like, when I see OW in the hardware store. But inside my mind I use the PA system in the store and I scream out, "Hazardous waste clean-up to aisle 7!" and move on.

Because this thing, for awhile, took over my life.

And in this I learned, yet again,


That the ONLY person in control of my life


IS ME.


Once I learned that again, I beat this thing.



Read everything on here. Follow the concepts. Live the concepts.

And make the conditions of your marriage recovery with your husband that he will walk through the exercises with you - answer all of your questions no matter how many times you ask the same one over and over and over - and over the next two or so years as you both come to figure things out


he takes 100% of the blame for his affair
and the two of you work hard to make the NEW marriage

everything you both want it to be.


Because it IS possible to have the marriage you want. And just one more thing:

The truth is, your husband does love you. Somewhere in there, he lost himself. Marriage Builders can help the two of you put this back together.


SB

Thank You Schoolbus.

Schoolbus,

What you wrote is so very helpful to me. I really needed to hear that tonight. I appreciate your post and you really made sense to me in a very compassionate way.

I am having a hard time right now finding my way. I don't even know myself sometimes. It is so comforting to know that eventually I will find my way again.

My H says he lost his way, but is already learning and growing. I hope this pain will lessen and we will be able to put our marriage back together.

Thank you again for your direction. I greatly appreciate it.

Lisa,

My DH says that OW "was nothing to him." He says even the sex was nothing. He went through zero obvious withdrwal. D-day was almost three years ago. I killed myself for months with the why of it. I truly believe now that even he didn't know why. I finally realized that what was really important was the how. That is what we worked on.

God's Blessings,

Say

Saynomore,

I know you are right and that I should not waste my energy on the why. It just totally blindsided me.

When you on your DH worked on your marriage, what did you do? I am not sure what we need to work on. He claims that he loves everything about our marriage and when we filled out the EQ we scored virtually the same in all areas.

This is why it is so hard, because we really did have something great and I just don't know what to fix.

Lisa,
I absolutely think it is vital that the WS accept 100% responsibility for the affair and also be able to acknowledge that it was weak boundaries that led to the A.

Once the WS can acknowledge they have that weakness, they will be able to understand the importance of following EPs to protect the M from another A.

Can you ask your H to work with you to come up with a list of EPs? Some of the things on the list should be:
*no discussion of personal problems w/another woman
*no one on one work lunches, outings, car rides, etc w/another woman without spouse present
*no emailing jokes, personal issues/feelings or about recreational activities with another woman
etc etc

If he looks back, your H should be able to see how he allowed OW to meet some of his ENs which is actually what lead to the "excitement" of seeing her.

Hang in there.

There's no reason why anyone in a marriage should cheat...yet as one member has stated...we all have the capacity and opportunity to cheat, yet not everyone does.

It's very important from day 1 to affair proof your marriage...open communication is key and staying in tune with your spouse's EN's is very important, b/c they can change as we grow in our marriage relationship...keeping SF exciting in a marriage is challenging...life gets in the way, but it has to be above everything else...

But again, affair proofing your marriage isn't a cure all...sex to some is like heroin to drug addicts...at first it's exciting, a great new feeling...a new high...some are lucky and can stop before it becomes a problem...others can't and it starts to control their lives.

Your husband first needs help...a well qualified therapist can help...b/c it's not that your hubby fell in love with the OW...he did this for the excitement of it...he's had a taste of the drug now, the excitement and the high...unless he understands WHY he let himself fall into temptation, he's prone to do it again, regardless of how many times he changes jobs and moves and regardless of how much effort you make to fill his love tank!

He has to be held accountable now for the rest of your marriage and I would recommend a support group for you and a group for him to hold him accountable...

While I think some people do nicely in a support group setting, I would encourage you to bring your H here, and learn from the articles here. Have you considered an MB weekend?

Dirigo96 and Marital Bliss,

We have been married for 21 years and he says this is the first time he had an A. He says that the reason it happend was a multitiude of things. He claims that it was not just the excitement, but that he just turned 45 and went to the Dr. and he weighed more than he ever had. He then started losing weight (45 lbs.) He is blaming this on a mid-life crisis. At the same time this was going on (4-6 weeks) I had back problems and could not walk and had to have emergency back surgery. (He says that has nothing to do with what happened, but the timing is something not to be ignored.) I would love to do a MB Weekend, but he may be reluctant as he is a very private person and HATES group settings. We have one son who is a teenager and knows we are having problems, but does not know the particulars.

I worry that he has had the taste for the excitement and eventually it will happen again, even though he seems to be so sorry for all that he has done. I am just not sure if I will be able to get past this! It has been a month and I seem to be having a hard time being receptive to saving the marriage. (This is not my personality. I am typically a very positive and forgiving person.) I know in my head that of all the people I should forgive in my life, it should be the man who has done more for me than anyone, but it is just so hard!!!!!! I don't want to find myself 2 years down the road in the same situation!

dirigo, with all due respect this is not Marriage Builders advice, this is your own personal agenda. He does not need to go to a "therapist" to find out why he cheats. Dr Harley, a clinical psychologist, can tell him for FREE right here:

Requirements for Recovery

NO CHARGE!! Just wanted to point out that the sign on the door is Marriage Builders.