"He is a lot taller than my husband."


Melody's right, come back when you're serious.

No, people don't recover this way. You are delusional if you think you can. You can't ever recover your marriage as long as it based on lies. You are dangerous to your husband until he knows the truth about his life.

Your affair is information about your husbands life that it being wrongfully withheld from him. He has right to know what you have done to him. You are dangerous to him and keeping this from him is cruel and manipulative. He may not choose to stay to married to a liar and a cheater and by decieving him, you are denying him the right to make decisions about his life. You are tricking him into staying married to you.

You changed your life and wrecked your career when you decided to put out in the workplace. That is a surefire career killer. Did you not ever hear the saying "never get your honey in the same place you get your money?"

Here's the thing, though, jf: it's not up to YOU. It's up to your VICTIM. You can believe all you want that you can stay away from OM and do your job. But what do you think will go through your husband's mind, every single day that you leave the house and head to work? "I wonder if she'll see him today. I wonder if they'll have lunch together. I wonder if they'll wink at each other as they pass in the hall.." Do you see where having to deal with this daily would be continued torture? Do you understand how hard this would be for him? Put yourself in your husband's shoes for a few minutes. Don't you see how selfish this line of thought is?

And even if your H were to agree, do you not see where leaving your job would be a huge step in letting him know that your marriage is your first priority, NOT your 'dream job'?

If she had called you a "flowerpot" would you have cared?
Probably not, because it is nowhere close to what you fear the most.
You fear she is correct, so you react with anger.



Take off those nasty, dirty shoes you are wearing.
No one wants to try them on.
Get new,clean shoes.


No one will love your wrong behaviors.
Your worst behavior is the lying.
The lying will ruin your life.

You also believed you could handle having two men, right?

I think she means she can tell the truth to her husband, if she wants to badly enough.

She can quit her job, if she wants to badly enough.

Your feelings are part of what got you into this mess. Why would you trust those?

Feelings are not truth.

You actually thought you could handle sleeping with two men. That is just NASTY!!!! Why do you think so little of yourself, your DH and your M to give your body away so easily to a man because he is taller than your DH? What gives you the right to put your DH into a M of three without his permission. Have you ever thought that he might not want to be sleeping with you knowing that you are exposing him to another man's "venom". It was so nasty in my mind to think that I had put my lips and other parts on my DH body knowing that some other woman could have done the same thing. I regurgitated so much for 1.5 years after D-Day that I developed an ulcer. The thought of sharing my DH and the thought of him doing what we do to another woman makes me sick.

Your DH will be sickened by your behavior as you should be sickened to know that you are giving something as precious as your body away to a man because he's taller than your DH and he excites you. Where is your pride and self respect? Why have you laid it down? I am in my late 40s and Lord knows I have met a few men that I literally had to avoid like the plague because they turned me on, but in twenty years of M, I can honestly still say that I can't even fathom sleeping with another man and coming home to my DH.

You need to quit your job, tell your DH (because he deserves to know) and find out how you allowed yourself to fall into an A. You have no right withholding information that you are sleeping with someone else from your DH. He never signed up for a three-some M.

Two things to add to what everyone else has posted:

#1 ~ As long as you work there, the A will continue. No question.
#2 ~ Your H WILL find out. It may be a few weeks or a year or more away, but it is coming.

Have you actually read Dr. Harley's basic concepts? I'm guessing not. You may want to start there. There are links to them at the top of the page.

One of the most basic concepts in dealing with an A is NC (No Contact). That means absolutely NO CONTACT at all with your affair partner, for life. This is not negotiable and there's no way around it.

If you continue to work with the OM, your marriage will never recover. It will almost certainly end. You may think your H will never find out what you've done and that you can just end the A and go on working with the OM and everything will be fine. You're wrong.

I thought I could end my A and keep going to school with the OM and everything would be fine. Guess what, I was wrong. I stayed in school, the A resumed (even after I told my H about it and decided that I wanted to end it and work on my M) and I ended up pregnant with the OM's baby. Now, my H and I are raising my OC. I went completely NC with the OM a year and a half ago, but Recovery has been a real struggle for me and my H, mostly because of the continued contact I had with the OM.

Don't think it can't happen to you. Don't think you're special or different or stronger than everyone else. You're not.

If you don't confess this A to your H immediately and quit your job and go completely NC with the OM, this will end disastrously. It always does.

You're going to get a ton of tough love here. There won't be any white washing of what you've done or what you need to do to fix it.

You need to understand that you have absolutely no clue right now of the enormity of the pain you're going to cause your H. The trauma of infidelity, on an emotional level, is the same as rape. That's not my opinion. That's Dr. H. Having been on the receiving end of it, I believe him.

So the idea that you can keep your job says that doing is is ok with YOU, but it will not be ok with your H. It will be nothing but torture for him.

Imagine, you tell him that you've had an affair with a man you work with. You tell him it's over and that you're going to continue to work there.

So, in the midst of recovering from this massive trauma you've caused him, he has to deal with the thoughts and worries of you going to work everyday and seeing this man you've betrayed him with that you readily admit you're attracted to.

Your H is going to have a hard enough time dealing with the mental images of what you've done and the betrayal. Continuing to work there is nothing but a continuous spit in the face to him.

If you want to save your marriage you're going to have to deal with the consequences, and they're not pretty.

Stop fooling yourself that it is. Look at the threads of both betrayed and waywards on this board. The attitude of waywards who come here is almost universal. They all get taken aback by the constant barrage of 2x4s they receive regarding the truth.

After a while, however, the fog starts to lift and they see the reality of what they've done. You are at the clueless stage right now.

Trust me, your H is going to go through absolute he11 over this. He'll quit eating, won't be able to sleep, and will cry like you never thought he could.

Prepare yourself. Staying at your job is not an option. Either he goes or you do, but either one has to happen if you want to have any hope at all of saving your marriage.

You will find that you do not have the willpower to end the A with the OM, and continue to work with him. I've been there before. Your affair partner is like heroin and you are the junkie. You will not be able to resist. That's just the way it is. A's are as bad as the worst drug addiction.

Understand this: you WILL be caught in the workplace. Do you want to be the one to break the news, or do you want it to be done by someone else?

Show a hint of character by telling your husband what you've done. Don't wait for someone else to tell him. Beg for his mercy and forgiveness. Transfer or resign from your job to get away from OM for life.

jfoler: You are probably shocked at the directness of the comments here. I have empathy for you in a way. Sometimes I think the direct approach on this board can be over the top....
It really isn't. Give the experts here a chance. I know it is a blast furnace. But let me also tell you that Melody Lane's comments to you were not intended to hurt you but rather to awaken you. Let me beg you to listen to her and others with expertise here. The very man you are involved with outside of your marriage is simply excitement. He may well be your boss (since he is ten years your senior)and you may have an attraction to his dynamics, his power and of course to your income stream. But he could be a co-worker.
Let me tell you a few things....
They are hard to tell because they force you to face certain things that you have avoided....
By doing what you are doing you have traded your own self respect for your income stream and for sex. Please connect the dots... IF this man who is not your husband is your boss, its simple. He is paying you for sex and what does that equate to?
It means he has no respect for you. If he is not your boss...
If he truly loved, cherished and adored you he would no more touch you sexually or interfere with your marriage than he would touch his own daughter. BUT, when he sees a nice, hard working piece of A** that gives herself to him he is simply adding to his trophy case. Its really that simple. You see you are not a man. You have no idea what our sex drive and sex attraction is. Did you know we can be aroused INVOLUNTARILY just based on seeing an attractive woman that we have no interest in? We can. The harsh truth is that your affair partner simply uses the same qualities that got him his job to get you. If he is in sales he can sell ice cubes to eskimos. If he is in management he can make people follow him or better yet charge in front of him up pork chop hill into impregnable machine gun nests. He feeds his ego on you while you actually demean yourself.
I think you are better than that JF. I suspect you are what you have described yourself to be. Confused, Addicted (and sex addiction is treatable if you are a sex addict versus just being addicted to one man), Conflicted and probably as miserable as the heroin addict waiting for the high of the next fix. But I am not you. Only you know you. Here is the problem.... You have gotten "used" to having your cake and eating it too. You may well love your husband or... you may not. I suspect you do love your husband. I loved and was absolutely in love with my wife for 12+ years yet I verbally abused her like clockwork about once every three months. And I lied to myself that I wasn't bad. It's still incredible to me that I did that to my wife. How could I lie to myself? But I did.
JF you are lying to yourself and you have been but you are also starting to realize it. I have tremendous empathy for you and your husband. I have none for this Other Man. He is not making love to you JF. He is deficating on you but he uses his male instrument instead of his rectum. He has no respect for you.
If he were doing your daughter (if you had one) at age 12 and he was 21 it would be no different. How would you feel then? This other man is the same as the Priest, Minister or Teacher that molests children entrusted to his care. I am telling you the truth JF. A man doing you when you are married is simply telling you that he doesn't give a da*n about you. He is saying that everything you hold dear in your personal life is unimportant. He is saying "HE" is important.
So beyond whomever you may be, you need to understand that this man is not a man at all. Sadly, he is a PREDATOR. A PREDATOR.
When I was growing up and began dating in high school my wonderful Dad several times sat down and said to me... "Its up to you S_ _ _ _ _. When a young girl feels love and affection she will throw caution to the winds because that is the way God made them. Its up to you to hold the line."
Well, its true. You cannot have an affair unless he wants to.
As for working with this man and stopping your affair.... Its an extraordinary long shot. Have you won any lotteries lately? Your husband probably senses what is going on even if he does not know. He may be in denial. But rest assured, I would have preferred that my wife blow my head off with my shotcun than have her affairs. In fact, I have wished it several times.
The people like Melody Lane here truly have become experts at helping marriages survive and then thrive. They may be overly harsh in your opinion. Sometimes maybe in mine. And there is a lot of latent anger in many, many of us. But your comments here touched me. If you were my wife....
Tell me, let me make my own decisions about my half of the marriage. Or simply divorce me. Do not make me a slave to your inability to love me properly.
Or... take this opportunity to get the support and help you need to one day be able to look at yourself in the mirror and realize that whatever failings and mistakes you have made, you can improve yourself.
No one can change the past. But you can change the future.
Can you keep your job and break it off and have this man there? Yes you can. You just can't stay married if that is what you choose.
You have perhaps three or four basic choices... remain a piece of used toilet tissue for ths other man and continue to p*ss on your husband, leave your husband and your marriage, Tell your husband what you have done and leave your job and learn how to lead a healthy and emotionally satisfying marriage with your husband if he decides to stay with you, allow this triangular relationship to strip you of your dignity and eventually your sanity and certainly your happiness by lying your way through the hard parts.

If you do nothing else JF, please stop lying to yourself. The people here will help you and support you with reckless abandon if you choose to save yourself and hopefully your marriage. I beg of you to trust me on this.
Offering a prayer for you and your husband.

Blessings
Hurtingturkey
me: BS 56
she:WW 49
hers: 22 & 18
mine: 30, 28
ours: 11

married: 13 years
D-day # 1 April 26, 2009
D-day # 2 January 31, 2010 (our anniversary)

WW continues to deny despite overwhelming evidence
WW in severe depression

Me recognized I was Verbally Abusive 10-22-09 and
actively reforming with a good track record since

Me no longer in love with my WW and that is a tragedy.
"its not the A, it's the fear that it will happen again
in the absence of an admission that is slowly killing me."
She no longer in love with me and that is a tragedy.
"its not your verbal abuse now, its the memory and fear that
it will happen again that makes me afraid."

COMMENT: VERBAL ABUSE on a repeated basis is the policeman with the rubber hose beating the suspect. INFIDELITY (EMOTIONAL OR PHYSICAL) is no different than pushing your spouse off a cliff and then turning a gun on yourself.
In either case... Nobody wins and everyone loses.

Quick question;

What, exactly, is this "dream job?" What profession is this, that with at least two years of experience, that you could not perform at another facility? For another company? In another city?

Eh?

Where did you get the idea that it was okay to treat your Betrayed Husband like a pet? Like a toy you keep around for your amusement when you want it?

Where did you get the idea that lying to your husband and manipulating him into living a completely fake life for YOUR fun and games was okay and clever and something YOU should feel smug and proud about?

"I felt I could handle having two men in my life."

The extreme selfishness of this statement, and the utter disregard of your own husband as a human being worthy of your care and respect, is just jaw-dropping.

When did your husband agree to this arrangement? If he didn't, you are acruel, selfish and cold-blooded manipulator of the first order.

Again: Where did you get the idea that it is somehow okay to use other human beings like this? And are you over it yet?

jfoller read this site thoroughly and in particular How affairs should end.
Your husband deserves no less than the truth so he can make an informed decision about his life. Reveal every detail to him that he asks for with HONESTY. You made your decision now let him make his. The lie you have lived is going to kill your Marriage in the Dark as much as it may in the Light.
Get ready for what will be the most traumatic experience for him that he has ever had in his life. Death, Rape or Murder of a loved one PAILS in comparison to Infidelity and Betrayal feelings. I know for a fact with experience.
Start looking for another job immediately. There is no alternative.
Im sorry for your choices but as a betrayed husband I really have no empathy for you unless you chose the right choice. Nor will many here.
I am no expert but many on here are. I struggle and work everyday to try and pick up the shambles of my Wifes actions.
The good news is if you do listen to these guys and adopt Dr Harley's system and he choses not to D you that your Husband can and will be the one you want to have passionate sex with.