I am a new user to this site. Desparate to find support, I decided to give it a try and see if anyone is out there.

It has been 1 year since I found out about my husband's affair. There is not enough room for me to write about what happended and all my feelings attached to it. I am still married to my husband and we have an adorable 18 month old son, who we are head over heels in love with :o)

Obviously I am filled with resentment and overtaken by grief. I feel like I am grieving the death of a loved one,my idea of my marriage. But what I struggle with the most is how he has made me feel about my body and sense of self. He claims that I have let myself go, his reason for the affair. How am I suppose to process this?? please help! He tells me that he is not attracted to me. Am I realy suppose to believe that if I lose the 35 pounds...that his attractions for me would come flooding back like they were only 5 years ago????

Kater,

I just wanted to let you know that soon the vets will be around to give you some great support and advise. I also struggle with knowing how to let go all the pain and hurt, so you are not alone. There are a lot of great people on here!

HU

Welcome to Marriage Builders, kater. I'm sorry your circumstances are such that you've had to come here, but you've come to the right place.

I appreciate that your sitch seems long to you, but we do need a little more info so we can get a better idea of what you're dealing with:

How long have you been married?
Who is the OW (Other Woman)? Is she married? Does your WH (wayward husband) work with her?
How did the affair end?
Are they still in contact in any way?
What have the two of you done so far to heal your marriage?

Welcome.
Sorry you are here.

When your WH says you have let yourself go......he is telling you one of his five emotinal needs is an attractive spouse. You met that need for him in the past and you can do it again.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3300_needs.html

Working on that alone will not save the relationship but it is a piece of the plan. You try to figure out his top five emotional needs and meet them and in a marriage recovery (one where he has zero contact of any kind with OW), he learns how to meet your top five emotional needs.

Thanks for the responses so far. Here is a bit more info. I am 30 years old, my husband 31 and we have been married for 4 years and together for a total of 8 years. The other woman is of course younger 21!!! She was his co worker, she is not married. They do not work together anymore and do not see or talk to each other. I began to feel that something was up when I was pregnant. I saw an inappropriate text from her on his phone while I was on bedrest due to my high risk pregnancy. Believed his excuse and let it go. After my son was born (very traumatic...born 6wks early) I stayed home from work for 6 months. I got a feeling and started looking at phone records. hundreds of texts back and forth. I approached him and he obviously could not deny it. His story: they only kissed and saw each other at work. After I confronted him and asked what he was going to do he said "I don't know, I need time to think." which led to an argument of why he needed time. Long story short he came back to me and 2 separte times of saying he was not contacting her...he was lying!! Finally the last time, he really did stop. (how do I ever know for sure) We went to 6 counseling sessions together...it was there that I learned he was not attracted to me anymore. When we were engaged he did tell me before that I had gained some weight, but I brushed it off. So here I am feeling extremely ugly and feel like he blames the whole affair on me!!

I understand that attraction is one of his emotional needs....I guess I didn't think that he was so shallow though! I didn't know keeping up my teenager figure was a requirement for my marriage!! Obviously I am very mad. We had such a romantic fairy tale love story....what happened!!? My expectations of my marriage happened! I thought I married a man who would love me for who I am and who I became.

We do try to work on our marriage by talking about stuff and what we need, but i feel it always comes back to my body!! I have a very healthy sex drive and he does not....because I am fat in his eyes. I am frustrated and need things too! HELP. I love my husband regardless of all the horrible things he has done to me. I have divorced parents and vowed I would not put my children through what I have gone through as a child.

He is a great father!!!! Some days are wonderful together as a couple and some I feel lost in my own head trapped by the thoughts that wont stop.

Emotional needs are not about being shallow or not being shallow..that need is just there...it needs to be fulfilled...physical attraction is obviously his top need...so bluntly put you need to lose weight...obviously that's no excuse for his cheating but per harley's material i believe thats what you need to do

Hi kater, welcome to Marriage Builders. I am sorry you are in this position. Your husband has done you a great favor by being honest with you about his feelings. This gives you an opportunity to lose the weight so he can become attracted to you. Do you plan on losing this weight?

kater,

Consider for a moment that your husband never had an affair. I know this is asking for the world and beyond, but for the moment, let us imagine that you are asking for advice - and that an affair is NOT in your marital history.


Your husband has told you that your body is physically unattractive to him, and that he is not sexually attracted to you anymore. He has asked you to lose weight, because he would like to work on the marriage. He finds that he is looking at other women, he has sexual desire for them, and that he does not want to be in a position where he may be tempted to follow up on those sexual needs outside of the marriage. He wants for YOU to meet his sexual needs, and his needs for an attractive (to him) mate.


Would you find his request irrational?
Would his needs seem abnormal?
Would his approaching you in an adult manner, openly and honestly seem out of bounds?


I am here to tell you that his needs should be met within the marriage. Having an attractive spouse, one who reasonably meets your own definition (within reason, of course) of sexy and attractive, is a normal and healthy expectation within a marriage.

Let's face it - you likely enjoy it when your husband wears certain clothing, or certain cologne, or has his hair cut a certain way. We are all attracted to the way our spouse looks. We all have our preferences. Some rank this higher in importance, some rank it lower, but we all RANK IT IN THERE. It does not make anyone "shallow", rather, it makes us sexual creatures with the visual component which feeds that sexuality.


Right now, your husband has requested that you improve this component of your relationship.

This isn't an unusual request, nor an unreasonable request.

The issue - for you - is that you read this as a disrespectful judgement of you personally. His delivery of the request may have been disrespectful, I don't know about that because I wasn't there. The end result, however, remains that his request is not necessarily about "you" - but about HIS personal emotional needs, and about how you can help meet them.


I do want to help you in one more area. Your husband and you have turned the issue of the affair into something that looks more like how "YOU" somehow "made him have the affair" by not meeting his needs.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Your husband had the CHOICE to NOT have an affair. He instead chose to have the affair. You were not there, cheering him on to cheat on you. You did not "make him" have an affair. He chose to have an affair. He could have come to you, as a loving adult in a marital relationship, and discussed his needs with you. Instead, he CHOSE to go outside the marriage for what he found out was clearly NOT a solution to the marital issues.

YOU were not at fault for his affair. He owns it, 100%.

The state of the marriage at the time of the affair, you both own, 50/50. The affair - HE OWNS, all of it, in all of its disaster, and all the fallout, too.


You are in the right place for answers. Your husband and you will benefit from what you learn here.


SB

Have you been snooping to make sure there is no contact between them? Is the OW married?

Awesome post.

T/J

I've never gotten over how expertly you analyzed the letter from my cousin/OW to me. It is so spot on that I am AMAZED. I wish I knew you IRL.

Btw, she and her BW left town. She then left him. He got a divorce and custody of their baby. She is off being a total loser who rarely sees her child.

end t/j

t/j

SW: Glad the child is with someone worthy. Glad I helped.

kater, may I ask a delicate question? How tall are you, and how much do you weigh right now? How much did you weigh when you married your WH?

Kater, actually, the ability to "forgive" is not exactly what you're looking for.

Forgiveness is the conscious decision NOT to take retaliatory action in response to a negative action toward you by another. I believe you have already made those decisions, by deciding not to:

• call a lawyer and start divorce proceedings
• have a retaliatory affair
• call all your male relatives to beat the crap out of him

or anything similar.

Technically, then, you have already forgiven him.

What I get the impression you're looking for is for him to show remorse, and return to your marriage whole-heartedly. If you were sure of that, would you be content?

So, the first step is be absolutely sure this is no contact (NC) between WH and OW. If there remains any contact, his affection for "her" (his idealized version of the skank she really is) will torpedo any efforts you make to win his heart back. You need to verify and enforce NC without relying on any assurance/promise from WH.

GPS and VAR his car. Keylog his computer. Flexispy his cell. You must be 100% informed that he is NOT still actively involved with OW.

Start today.

Is his husband really upset with the weigh or is he using it to justify his actions?

You can start working on yourself but please read the book surviving an affair.
Do the EN questionaries with your husband.

Thank you all so much for you responses. I do snoop...the affair is over.

I do understand that "attraction to spouse" is one of my husband's emotional needs. As this is one of mine...to an extent. When he brought it up in the past, it was gentle and not harsh what so ever. And again when it was highlighted after the affair, it was still gentle. I do appreciate his delivery. Honesty is great, glad he told me, but just because one of the emotional needs is not meet, does not mean affairs can happen.

I am 5'10'' tall. I weight 200 lbs. I may be about 35 pounds overweight...but I am still very attractive. I do need to lose the weight and return to how I looked. And I will...

Is is possible to fullfill all of our spouses emotional needs?! I guess I'm still just struggling with how one of his emotional needs, is making me feel so horrible about myself. It has begun to mess up my own body image and I feel my self confidence decreasing. And yes, possibly this has been self imposed, but he has contributed to this a great deal. The way he has caused me to feel about myself....that is what I am not sure I can forgive.

I just thought that I was married to a man who stood by his wife, no matter what! Marriages have highs and lows...we all know that. There will be times in marriages where our emotional needs will not be met and will be tested. I thought I was with someone who stuck through it, was supportive, and faithful through the rough times.

The last 2 years of my life have been a rollar coaster. When I needed him the most...is when he was out with someone else and I didn't even know it. There were times before in our relationshihps that he did not meet most of my emotional needs...but I love him soooo much that it did not matter. I knew we would get through it together. Where was he when I needed that?

You have every right to expect him to be faithful, and there is no excuse for his affair. He had an affair because he has poor boundaries, period.

However, he also has every right to expect that you will meet his needs when you can. Sure, there are times when you can't [versus won't] and that does not bother most spouses. But what about when you can meet those needs and just WON'T? That is not fair to your spouse.

You should not punish your spouse for being honest with you about his displeasure about your weight. There is nothing to forgive about his telling you this, because he did nothing wrong. He is simply telling you that your weight is causing lovebank withdrawals. It is eroding the love he feels for you.

It is much like getting an overdraft notice from the bank. It is unpleasant to get the notices, but hearing it enables you to fix the problem. Do you want the bank to stop sending the notices? It is the same with complaints in marriage. If you don't hear the complaint, then you don't have the opportunity to correct the problem.

Keep in mind that a complaint is an irritation in a bad marriage but an opportunity for improvement in a good marriage.