I gave away a part of me
Something that never should have happened
I made choices that hurt us
Choices that were wrong

My heart will break forever
My sorry's cannot heal
The hurt I chose to give you
The wrong that I have done

That part of me I can't get back
My regret so infinite
All the tears and sorry's in the world pale
Beside the dark my soul has become

What was I thinking?
What was going on?
That I could lose all common sense
To know I could lose you

And yet I chose to do it
To risk it anyway
To take your heart and break it
For my selfish thoughtless ways

Your forgiveness I am asking for
I know I don't deserve
How I came to be this person
I'm truly not even sure

What I know is that I love you
And I will make it up
If it takes me til my last breath
before you regain trust

Then that is what it takes
I deserve no more
I'm prepared to show you how
My heart is forever yours

1/25/12



I'm not a poet in any way, I have always been someone who writes when I need to get something off my chest.
This is the biggest thing I've ever had to get off my chest.

It is therapeutic, isn't it? Please post and tell us how you are doing.

It is very therapeutic for me.

I have been doing okay, doing much soul searching and trying to come to terms with how our lives have changed due to my actions.

My hubby and I are actually coming along in a positive manner. I believe we are going to be okay eventually. We have much to work on, however he knows I am sincere and working towards making our lives better.

He works long hours which isn't good, but he has done it for twenty years! I have pretty much BEGGED him to get a different job where he can be home more. It looks like that might happen in May or June. Please keep your fingers crossed for us!

We do have a solid foundation, I know we can do this!

Thank you for asking Celtic Voyager. I am still here and reading so much...I have also read my thread through AGAIN and again and I can definitely appreciate the wisdom that many of you have... What happened to me actually scares me now, that I did become addicted to the OM, a total stranger on the internet no less. SO STUPID!!!!!
When I look back on all that happened....wow, all the holidays I wasted this last year, it makes me cry. How I wish I could take it all back. I'm rambling now...I just wish so much it never happened.

Have you worked on EP's to keep yourself safe in the future?
I'm glad you're reading and hope you are learning too. One of the great things about this place is the work of figuring out how to recover is already done for us, we just need to do it. It is a great tool.

CV

CV,

Yes I am. There will NEVER be a next time. Now that my experience is behind me, I have learned a very valuable lesson. There have been many changes made and my hubby, so thankfully, is allowing me to show him that. I know we don't have much time alone together right now, but I am focusing on the right priorities again.

Thank God. I will never allow myself to go down that road again. And I am a believer, my kids all have Bible names. I was so lost and wallowing in the muck I created, I really didn't think I could be forgiven. I grieve for what I had in myself, my self respect and my husbands trust.

What are your EPs?

This is what we are working on:

Four Rules to Guide Marital Recovery

After you are through withdrawal from the addiction to your lover, your depression will have lifted and you will no longer feel a craving to talk to your lover. At that time you will be ready to put into place rules that will guide you and your husband toward a deep love for each other. After you have followed the rules for a while (six months to two years), you and your husband will be soul-mates.

These are the Four Rules to Guide Marital Recovery that you and your husband should follow to help you restore your love for eachother:

1. The Rule of Protection: Avoid being the cause of your spouse's unhappiness.

If you and your husband want to be in love with each other, you must build your Love Bank accounts. But before you build them, you must be sure there are no leaks in the Love Bank. It's pointless to deposit love units into a sieve, where every deposit is promptly withdrawn by a Love Buster. So you must make a special effort to plug up those leaks by committing yourselves to avoid being the cause of each other's unhappiness.

The most obvious things spouses do to ruin their love for each other is what I call Love Busters. They are angry outbursts, disrespectful judgments, annoying behavior, selfish demands and dishonesty. I describe these destructive habits in my basic concepts, but if you need special help learning how to avoid them, I suggest you read, Love Busters: Overcoming Habits that Destroy Romantic Love. This book will help you identify the Love Busters that keep emptying your Love Bank accounts, and show you how to stop inflicting them on each other.

Most of the Q&A columns I've posted on the Marriage Buildersﾮ web site focuses attention on the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). This policy protects both you and your husband from each other thoughtless decisions. Your affair was a blatant example of thoughtlessness on your part because you knew it would hurt your husband, but you went ahead and did it anyway. The Policy of Joint Agreement is a very important guide to helping you keep the Rule of Protection. That's because it helps you realize that anything you do that hurts your husband is off limits to you, regardless of how wonderful it makes you feel.

If you had followed the Policy of Joint Agreement, you would never have had an affair. But the Policy will also help you avoid hurting each other in a host of other ways, too. My book, Fall in Love, Stay in Love, can help you learn how to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement, and use it to negotiate agreements that are fair for both of you. Once you learn to negotiate with each other fairly, you will have learned how to follow the Rule of Protection.

2. The Rule of Care: Meet your spouse's most important emotional needs.

The way to deposit the most love units is to meet a person's most important emotional needs. Your lover did that when he wrote you all those e-mail letters because conversation was your most important emotional need. After one month of filling your Love Bank with thousands of love units that were e-mailed to you, you found him irresistible -- you were in love with him.

Conversation is not your only important emotional need. Affection, recreational companionship, admiration and sexual fulfillment may be some of the other important emotional needs that your lover met. Unless your husband eventually meets your must important needs as well as your lover met them, you will be frustrated and at risk for another affair.

Sometimes a spouse must learn to meet a need that he or she has never been very effective in meeting. Many of the spouses I've counseled have had to learn to be affectionate for the first time in their lives. They also have had to learn to be stimulating conversationalists and skilled lovers. They have had to learn to provide greater financial support, become more effective in their parenting skills and learn to become admiring instead of being critical. New habits that lead to need fulfillment can be learned by anyone. All it takes is a plan and willingness to follow it until expert level is achieved.

But your husband may already know how to meet your emotional needs. An important reason that you had an affair was that your husband's work schedule prevented him from giving you the attention you craved from him. When you and your husband agree to follow this second Rule to Recovery, his work schedule will no longer stand between you, because meeting your needs will become your husband's highest priority. All the needs that your lover was meeting for you will be met by your husband in the future.

If you need help identifying and learning how to meet each other's important emotional needs, I suggest you read, His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-proof Marriage. It describes the ten most important emotional needs for men and women, and how to become an expert at meeting those needs. When your husband has learned to meet your needs, he will be depositing so many love units that his account in your Love Bank will be overflowing. By then, you will be thoroughly convinced that leaving your lover to rebuild your marriage was the right decision to make.

3: The Rule of Time: Give your spouse your undivided attention.

You indicated in your letter that it was the lack of your spouse's attention that drove you into the arms of your lover. But it may have been more a lack of time than a lack of attention. As I already mentioned, your husband may already know how to meet your emotional needs, but unless he sets aside enough time to do it, all of his skill does you no good at all. It's the man who gives you time for undivided attention who will win your heart.

I suggest that you and your husband plan to spend at least 15 hours each week together, giving each other your undivided attention. Use that time to meet each other's emotional needs for affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment. I have found that if that amount of time is taken to meet emotional needs, you can spend the rest of your 100 waking hours each week doing just about anything you please, without any risk to your love for each other. But if you do not set aside that time, your good intentions will not buy you a single love unit.

Since most everything we do must be scheduled or we don't do it, I suggest you take about a half an hour each week (say, Sunday afternoon from 3:30 to 4:00) to schedule your time together for the next week. Get out your schedules and write each other into your appointment books. Once scheduled, don't let anything interfere with your time together.

I suggest spending the same days and times together every week because it's easier to remember than a new time each week. Besides, you can be better emotionally prepared to be with each other if you always know that Tuesday evening you will be together from 7 to 10.

I also suggest that you spend time together when you have plenty of energy. Don't give each other the leftovers, give each other the best of yourselves. That's why I generally rule out time together after 11:00 pm. For one thing, you need your sleep for the challenges of the next day, and for another, there are not too many people who are at their best that late at night.

Finally, I suggest that you spread your time out every week, giving each other at least one hour of undivided attention every day. I am generally opposed to cramming all of your time together into a marathon weekend of 15 hours, because undivided attention is required, and 15 hours of anything makes undivided attention almost impossible.

4. The Rule of Honesty: Be completely honest with your spouse.

We have already discussed honesty as an extraordinary precaution to prevent you from contacting your lover, so I won't say much more about it. But what you begin as an extraordinary precaution, must become the standard way you and your husband communicate with each other -- with openness and honesty.

You have not been honest with your husband. If you had been honest, you could never have had an affair. Your honesty is your husband's greatest protection because it lets him know what you are up to. It also helps you both make adjustments to each other. Instead of having an affair, you should have told him how unhappy you were with his negligence of you, and how you were falling in love with another man who would give you his time and attention. If you had ended the budding relationship then, and focused on getting more of your husband's undivided attention, you would not have put both of you through such an ordeal.

The Basic Concepts section of this web site contains a section entitled, "the Policy of Radical Honesty." It outlines precisely what the rule of honesty is. It's complete honesty. I want you to read it over very carefully, because it explains precisely how honest you and your husband are to be with each other.

But be careful not to let Love Busters ruin the purity and value of honesty. Keep anger, disrespect and demands out of your honest expression of facts and feelings. If you can do that, you will find your honesty will not only help you find solutions to your problems, but it will also draw you closer together, and help you become the soul-mates that you can be.

If you are willing to permanently end your relationship with your lover (never see or communicate with him again), get through withdrawal, and then you and your husband follow the Four Rules to Guide Marital Recovery, I guarantee you that you will have a great marriage. And I also guarantee you that neither of you will ever suffer through an affair again.

I'd like an answer to this.

I know it's still very early on, but my will and determination to make this work with my husband is greater than the 'addiction' I had for the OM.

I admit it hasn't been 100% easy, but I CAN do it! And I will NOT contact him.

My family is by far the most important part of my life.

Goldilocks, those are not extraordinary precautions, and they don't show an understanding of what causes affairs or how to prevent them. Have you read anything here about extraordinary precautions?

I'm not sure what else you mean?

Those won't cut it.

What's an Extraordinary Precaution (EP), Goldilocks?

I have been reading Markos. And working on WHY it happened.

UGH!!!

I will come back later, but I'm taking my son to a basketball game, we need to get ready to go.

Please help me understand more then... I really am trying to do the right thing.

I will answer your question to the best of my knowledge Prisca, just have to go right now...

Goldilocks, you need to get out of the Prayer forum and get back on the Surviving an Affair forum. Prayers are great, but God gave you arms, legs and a brain for a reason. YOU have to do the work.

Have you told your husband about this site yet?

I'll be waiting

Maybe you should answer in your old thread.

Yes, I have told him.

I will answer on my first thread.