I ended my affair, for real, on every level. Something in my brain just snapped shut and it is so very over.

Married for 25 years, together for 35 (1st date @ 15), 3 kids. My affair started in March, H figured in out pretty quick, lots of drama, etc.

Nonetheless, he still wants to work it out which I find as mysterious as Stonehenge. Work things out with me? Why? I'm the lowest form of humanity -- men cheat on their wives, women cheat on their husbands AND their children. And being a good mother is the only thing that has ever much mattered to me.

So now I am faced with the prospect of trying to fix things without losing myself in the process. And losing my sense of self -- becoming essentially invisible in the marriage -- is the primary reason I had an affair to start with. I've read a lot about why women cheat, and in the end, at least in my case, I don't think it's rocket science. It didn't take much -- the other man was nice to me. My psychiatrist says I am like a puppy -- put out a bowl of warm milk for me and I'll love you forever.

H obviously now has the moral high ground and the emotional upper hand and I am terrified that I will return to my prior state of invisible doormat because I feel such guilt and shame. I can't go back there though -- I'll die, and I mean that quite literally.

How do I go about trying to fix this without losing myself in the process? I read a LOT on this forum about what the betrayed spouse should do but what is the adulteress to do? I've ended it and said I was sorry. I'm not ready to divulge all the gory details although I might be someday, preferably in the presence of a licensed therapist who is armed. And H hasn't indicated that he wants to know much of anything.

I haven't seen it said anywhere but let me tell all you BS's having an affair is absolutely exhausting, and, whatever it may look like from the outside, it is just not all that much fun. I am so tired, tired of lying, tired of worrying, tired of talking about the marriage, tired of me. I'm leaving in a few minutes to meet my H at a house we have in another state and I am trying to get the energy up to endure whatever he is about to serve up. I know he deserves to say whatever he needs to say, but it just isn't helpful. He can't possibly hate me more than I hate me. But bear in mind, I hated myself before I strayed. The three weeks after H left were possibly the most contented of my entire life because I could be me and he wasn't around to tell me all of the things that are wrong with me.

In my opinion, the only thing more damaging to a M than an affair is contempt.

I'm at the end of my rope. Please someone tell me how to protect myself while allowing him to vent.

Send your husband here. He needs the help. See, this post screams me! me! me! I'm a BS... so I think I'll just take a back seat on this one and let some of our FWS come and help YOU.

Yes; bring your husband here ASAP. And order the book Surviving an Affair, which can teach the two of you how to work it out.

Start reading:
How to Survive Infidelity (read all the links down the left hand side)
Basic Concepts (again, read all the links)

That may be true in your situation, but people who've actually researched many marriages and other devastating life events have found that an affair is more damaging than anything else it has ever been compared to, as judged by people who have experienced both. For example, having your spouse betray you was judged worse than the loss of a child, by people who had been through both, worse than the loss of a limb, worse than the death of a spouse, worse than several other traumas.

Cheating on your spouse hurts them worse than anything else you could possibly do to them, and worse than anything they could possibly do to themselves.

That's pretty easy to say when you've only experienced the one. I've experienced both and the affair is WAY worse.......bar none.....


So by this, am I too assume you only want help on how to protect YOU from the man whom you've just delivered a knife wound to his very heart and NOT on how to repair the pain you've inflicted or the marriage??......

You start at the beginning.....buy "Surviving An Affair" and call the coaching center......

Good luck......

Not2fun

That opening post sounds more like a pity party to me.

H want's to stay married!

Do You?

If you do, then what are YOU willing to bring to the table?

Wow....



See, I just cant talk to them when they are this Foggy.
It's like a trigger to me.

I don't post much here anymore. Unlike you, my wife (excuse me, my ex-wife) left our marriage to pursue her affair, and even when it died, continued to live in her own misery. I haven't seen a glimpse of her or heard a spoken word from her in months.

She can't find a way to bring herself back.

And I've traveled a long, painful path. I wouldn't take her back, now.

You have a chance. But you have to understand that the burden falls entirely on your shoulders to make that happen. That means no shirking on telling the details, if that's what your husband needs. It means doing all the "heavy lifting" to bring your marriage into recovery.

Your husband has the right to end the marriage at any time now. You dealt him that card. And the only way he isn't going to play it is if you show him he has a winning hand without it.

Good luck.

So true Fred! My WH dealt me this same hand on June 1st. This is absolutely the WORST pain I've ever felt in my entire life!!! Had he died instead of betraying me, the pain would be less...and yes I have thought that many times this past month.

I am trying to restore my marriage, yet my WH knows that I won't put up with this abuse ever again! I call it abuse because to me this was the worst thing he could have done to me~ever!

He isn't ready to answer all of my questions yet...some of my questions are about details & he can't see why that would help me in any way. He thinks it would hurt me more to know everything. I don't agree! If your husband asks you a question you must be an open book to him...from this day forward!

No more secrets! I am readying Surviving an Affair...I LOVE that book! Your husband needs to join this site & you two should stay off of each others posts. That way he can be fully honest & open about his feelings & get the feedback he needs from others on here without worrying about you seeing it.

I agree with all the posts on here. What are YOU willing to do for your BS now?

SW,

I'm not ready to divulge all the gory details...

It's important for you to be willing to do so WHEN and IF HE ASKS and be completely honest. Dishonesty got you where you are now, more dishonesty will not help.

God Bless
Gamma

I am a FWW, and I can tell you exactly what you need:

1. Humility - you made a conscious choice to do wrong, so you have no right to pick apart your H. You're right, he does have the moral high ground right now

2. Responsibility - Your A was your choice. I was invisible too. It stunk. But I had other options at my disposal. I chose to cheat. My H's lack of attention did not mitigate my responsibility.

3. Honesty - whether you feel like telling gory details is irrelevant. You H deserves to know, and if he asks, you tell. Period

4. Perspective - what you have done to your husband is the ultimate marital betrayal. There is nothing that compares.

5. Patience - it takes 2-5 years to really recover from an A. The first year is TOUGH. The BS is hurt and angry for a long time -- it is like grieving. If your H just found out that his child died, would your primary concern be how much emotion he may show or how soon he would get over it?

Another WW posted recently. Her post was about a paragraph. She stated what she had done, how it was inexcusable, and wanted to help her H. Your post was mostly about how you don't want to lose yourself and be invisible and how your A was your H's fault. If you are getting that from your psychiatrist, it's time for a new psychiatrist. I have bipolar disorder, so I have lots of experience with psychiatrists. One who spouts all that "self-entitlement" crud is not worth going to.

I know my post is harsh, and I am usually not that way. But the proper response when we rip our spouse to shreds should be abject horror, repentance, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to make things right.

I second the recommendation to read Surviving an Affair. I remember reading it with a big chip on my shoulder the summer of 2006. I was sitting at the pool, and less than halfway through I was crying, crushed over the choice I had so callously made.

The best remedy for a WS is a broken, softened heart.

Saddestwife,

First, welcome to MB. I hope it will help you. You said a lot of things that suggest you are really in the fog about all of this. So please permit me to probe a little bit to obtain a better understanding of what your goals really are. Before I start let me say what my general impression is from your post, then what I ask and point out will make more sense to you.

First impression is that you don�t really want to address what you have done, at least if it is going to cause you pain.

Second, you don�t seem to know what love is and how to go about doing it.

Third, You are blaming your H for your affair although you say by saying that you will have to lose yourself to fix the marriage.

Fourth, you say that you psych. Says you are �like a puppy� which is an interesting copout avoiding personal responsibility and ones vows.

So let�s talk abit about what you said Interesting statement don�t you think? You find it mysterious that your H loves you and you place the blame on your behavior of being �the lowest form of humanity�. Nice! If you truly were the lowest form then perhaps your behavior might be acceptable. As your H knows you are not, and we strongly suspect you are not, then you are left to realize you don�t have that excuse for what you have done.

So let�s start with the I�ve ended it and said I am sorry. Saying �I�m sorry� is not even the minimum entry fee into fixing this mess. It hardly counts for much, but it is necessary IF you are truly sorry, which from the first part and last part of this statement you really are not. You have lied and withheld information from your H and you plan to continue to do this, doesn�t sound like a repentant WS to me. What you should be doing in this order is:
1. Be very honest with your H.
2. Quit blaming others and the situation for your own lapse of good morals and failure to protect your boundaries.
3. Start to figure out your H�s needs and meet them. Figure out your own needs and communicate them to your H.
4. Your implication about the �armed� comment is not funny, and it indicates that you have a very low opinion of your H and his internal strength.

As for losing yourself, it would seem that a significant part of you ought to be lost, but what must be found is who you really are, what do you really stand for, and where are your boundaries. You have lost all of these things and you need to find them. Rebuilding a marriage is not about losing things as much as it is about adding things and changing perspectives about your life and your spouse. You may have read here, but the filter of your affair has clearly prevented you from understanding what you have read. Please go back and reread the articles here and obtain a copy of Surviving an Affair, SAA.

There is much more to say to you and a lot you can be doing to address this situation, but step one is YOU deciding if you want to remain married. If you don�t, then refrain from putting your H through the ringer of a false recovery.

Please think about this.

God Bless,

JL

I gather this thread is not meant for the betraying spouse. If anyone knows of a thread point me to it.

I ordered the books earlier this week.

It was never my intention to discount his pain. I recognize that an affair trumps everything.

I'm willing to tell him the details if he wants to hear but not if he is going to get violent again.

My short term thinking has been to do no more damage to him, me or our marriage. I came to this forum expecting some help on setting boundaries on what a productive discussion might look like. I get back "foggy" and "pity party" and I want to protect myself at his expense. Really? And you get to say that because you know so much about me? Or is it because you are mad that a cheating spouse had the nerve to post here looking for help?

What am I willing to do? Anything up to becoming suicidal again.

SW,

Actually, many here will agree, you do have to put your foot down and not tolerate abuse from you husband, tell him he can express any emotion he needs to in an intense but respectful way.

Many here understand too that you have two very difficult problems to solve at the same time.

Whatever you do do not try to justify the affair based on previous abuse in the marriage, this is a choice you made, the abuse is a choice he made, both crimes need to end.

God Bless
Gamma

I am a FWW, and I did respond. I missed the violence part - no, that is never acceptable. The reason your post struck me the way it did is that I read a lot of my wayward self in what you wrote. You will get some hard knocks here....but it is worth it if you want to save your marriage. It's like surgery to remove a horrible tumor. It's painful, it has to heal, but it has to be done.

Actually, there are quite a few former-waywards (myself included) here on this board. The reason you are getting a lot of flack from people is because your way of thinking is still very actively wayward. There's a lot of evidence to support this is what you have said:

1. "I am faced with the prospect of trying to fix things without losing myself in the process. And losing my sense of self -- becoming essentially invisible in the marriage -- is the primary reason I had an affair to start with."

This is a prime example of what foggy waywards do in order to justify their actions. They make excuses for doing what they have done by blaming their actions on their betrayed spouse. Here, you are clearly stating that the reason you had an affair is because you were invisible in your marriage. That's not the reason you had an affair at all. You had an affair because you had very poor boundaries in your marriage. Every marriage has problems, but that is no excuse for anyone to have an affair. If you want people to stop referring to you as "foggy" then stop making excuses for what you have done.

2. "H obviously now has the moral high ground and the emotional upper hand and I am terrified that I will return to my prior state of invisible doormat because I feel such guilt and shame. I can't go back there though -- I'll die, and I mean that quite literally."

Another blatant example of you blaming your H for your actions.

3. "How do I go about trying to fix this without losing myself in the process?"

Your statement here illustrates quite well that you are far more interested in not "losing yourself" (whatever that means) than you are in healing your marriage. Nowhere in your post do you express the slightest realization of the pain that your actions have caused your H. Everything in your post cries "me, me, me."

4. "I haven't seen it said anywhere but let me tell all you BS's having an affair is absolutely exhausting, and, whatever it may look like from the outside, it is just not all that much fun. I am so tired, tired of lying, tired of worrying, tired of talking about the marriage, tired of me."

This is like slapping the BS's in the face and minimizing their pain (which they did NOT choose) by telling them that your pain, as the WS (would you did freely choose) is so much worse. And you wonder why it is that so many of them are taking offense at your words.

It may not have been your intention to discount the pain of your BH or other BS's, but that's exactly what you did. There are plenty of people here who will be more than willing to help you, but first you need to stop blaming your BH for your actions and making excuses for what you have done. That's not going to get you anywhere.

A questions: You mention your H getting violent again? Is there a history of violence in your marriage? You also mention being suicidal. Have you attempted suicide in the past?

I'm very confused ... you started the thread, and people are giving you advice. I've been here several months and seen several marriages begin to recover and several not recover, and the advice you are getting is the advice that has helped many marriages recover. It's good advice.

It won't help you for people to just try to make you feel better. That won't help you feel better any more than the affair did. What do you want; more exhauston?

Please bring your husband here. He needs the help that can be obtained here.

So do you.

Please do the things people are suggesting. They know what will help and what won't.

Saddestwife,

I was a cheater. I betrayed my wife in autumn 2008. I got myself into an emotional affair with a married woman, and it became physical about half-way through. Yeah, I know all about how exhausting & stressful it is to live a double-life and deceitfully divide one's attentions & affection & time between a spouse and a lover. But ma'am, that was an exhaustion which I CHOSE. When you're as far past your affair as I am now, perhaps (I hope) you'll realize how self-pitiable it indeed sounds for you to complain about the results of your own choices. Now, listen up:

I first showed up on these boards 7 months after my affair ended. And there's a lot I could & can tell you from the standpoint of an adulterer who has recovered his marriage. But I'm gonna leave you with just a few thoughts for now:

- As lurioosi2 said: Humility. If you want to give your marriage a fair shake, you need to ooze with it. Your words indicate that you do not. Excuse me: Your husband has just had the one person who swore to protect him, whom he most expected to "have his back" when things get tough, and that person has just torn out his heart and spiked it to the dirt.

- Responsibility: So you had issues in your marriage? After 18 years of marriage, I'll ask you rhetorically, Who doesn't? Yet only one of you chose to have an affair. Own your choice. You weren't a "puppy," you were a person who made a whole string of choices. You liked the attention & compliments you got from this guy, and you made choices to let things proceed to each successive step, leading into his bed. I know, because I made the same choices. No one slipped anything into my drink, and no one held a gun to my head. At the core, I did it because I felt entitled & I was selfish. It was easier for me to enjoy the attentions of a woman who lavished attention on me, then to do the hard emotional spadework with my wife that could've shored up our marriage. Until you get to the point of grasping & acknowledging the depth of that selfishness, then you're going to be "in the fog", as they say on these boards.

Now, if you'd asked me several days after my affair ended, I'd have told you that I didn't look for an affair, that I only started out trying to offer a comforting ear to a friend who came to me complaining of issues in her marriage. But that missed the point; it wasn't my other woman's behavior that caused my affair, nor was it my wife's. It was my own conduct. I alone could've said no, and I failed. Learn from your failure and resolve never to repeat it.

Why don't you tell us what your husband is feeling & saying? You need to start living attuned to his feelings. Your posts have been mainly concerned with your own feelings. My early posts (lost to a server-crash in October 2009, unfortunately) were somewhat the same.

As has been recommended, do order the book "Surviving an Affair" asap. My wife & I consider ourselves fortunate that our marriage counselor assigned us to read it. Ideally, you and your husband will both read it asap. It will give you both lots of insight & some tools to rebuild your relationship and meet one another's emotional needs in a way that will make it less likely that this will ever happen again.

SW,

Interesting interpretation of what has been said to you

What you have not picked up is that all of us are parroting to you how your communications sounds to us AND none of us are your spouse. Imagine how he will hear what you are saying.

The purpose of most of our posts is to point out to you that you may "think" you know what you are saying but what you are saying is NOT going to help your situation. Now go back and reread all of our posts and you will see that many answered your questions and ALL pointed out how your post struck us. It wasn't very positively was it??

INterestingly you got the same responses from those that have been a BS, a WS and neither. This strongly suggests all of us are seeing something you are not.

As for you becoming suicidal, that is your choice but not one any of us recommend nor seek in your case. You control that as well and it is NOT a good tool for rebuilding a marriage, a life, or being a parent/friend. If you are feeling that seek HELP IMMEDIATELY, that is the best advice any of us can offer you on that point.

In case you haven't figured out, the main thing that must happen is that you learn to communicate with your H, hence all of our responses. If you try to communicate with him as you did here, you will sound "fogged up" and very insincere.

Pleae think about this.

God Bless,

JL

For someone who says they WANT help, insulting the ones you are asking isn't going to get you very far. Drop the weapons......you are like the woman drowning, calling for help, then you start shooting at the people trying to throw ya the life preserve.....

We say what we say because we KNOW. We have been where you and your H are. There is NOTHING you can say to us that we haven't heard before. NOTHING. Including the violence......

IF your H gets violent with you, call the police. Plain and simple. EAsy?? No, but there is no easy way out of the infidelity or a violent situation.

So are you REALLY ready for the help???

Not2fun