I am on the other side of a 4 year affair. I am the wayward spouse.

How long will this pain from withdrawl last

It could be as long as 6 months.

Have you confessed to your husband? OM's wife?

How long have you been in No Contact with your affair partner?

The pain will last as long as you remain dishonest with your husband.

I'll be honest, I will not tell now. I just want to get through this pain and get my marriage back. Maybe in the future sometime I will tell, but not now.

Being honest in your marriage helps you restore your emotional equilibrium.
Remaining dishonest prolongs your misery.

Don't you think your husband deserves to know why his wife has been in such a funk?
He's probably worried that he's done something to offend you.

That poor man .... I feel so sorry for your husband. The disrespect you show him by keeping him in the dark about his own life is just terrible.

Then your marriage will never recover and if it survives it will be a shell of a marriage. How sad.

J43,

How could Husband not know or at least feel some sense of unease with a 4year A in the background!!!

God Bless
NJ

I can understand what you are saying but this is not something my husband will handle well at all. I cannot face is fury although I know I deserve it.

I also believe that changing is the first step. But I realize that you all on this board only believe in telling the spouse the truth, even if it kills them. I don't believe in that, I think why cause more pain.

because I led two lives, I would try to end it and then gave up and went back to OM, It was mostly conversations on cell phone and bi weekly or monthly meetings for an hour or two. I became an excellent liar and very defendent on the affair and how it made me feel about myself. It has ended now, mutually. I know you do not understand and I can't expect anyone to. I wouldn't either. But I know what I can and cannot do and I cannot destroy my family, Yes I guess I am selfish.

J43,

At least get tested for STDs, even if you are infected it might not be too late to save your husband.

God Bless
NJ

If Husband has been distant from his adulterous wife and this has been going on for 4 years then the situation as it is has probably become completely normal to him. If the ended without H's knowledge, then the dynamics would change and then he would start getting suspicious - which is why honesty is important.

Fall also admits to having become an expert liar - she has had 4 years of practice.

But everything will make sense to H once he knows - which he will eventually whether or not his WW tells him.

Do what you must do.

P43,

My wifes friend has been feeling guilty for and affair for 15 years. My Mother thought of the lies she told me about every other time she saw me for 35 years until she revealed.

Lies are a life sentence.

NJ

I do not have any STD's. My affair was with one person and he is not infected with anything

I can understand you asking this,but how about some kind of encouragement to get through this and make a better life. Is there any of that out there?

P43,

And this OM was not simultaneously with his wife or other women.

NJ

Joan,

Like you, I was going to keep my A a secret from my DH after I ended it. It took me 15 months to finally realize I needed to tell him.

People are trying to save you time and energy wasted on trying to keep the secret. Keep reading around this site, not just the forum, and you will start to see why it really is important to tell.

Withdrawal will be quicker if you have no contact whatsoever with your OM. Even occasional, minor contact will keep you stuck in withdrawal.

The hardest thing for me to understand when I was going to keep the A secret was by doing so I was rebuilding my marriage on a pile of sand and the secret would always be between us. Once I realized I needed to tell him in order to build our marriage on a solid foundation I was able to completley move on from the A.

Something else I read after I had been keeping the secret for a while was when people find out years later they feel like their whole marriage from the time of the A to disclosure was a total sham.

Just some food for thought and certainly your choice.

LC

Thank you, but how did you do it and what happened when you told him

You can't make a better life based on lies and deceit. You must first come clean and build on a solid foundation instead of this rocky one.

You will not get encouragement for continuing to keep your husband in the dark about your affair. You will however get encouragement to do the right thing. Tell your husband.

You have already crushed him. He just doesn't know it yet.

Affairs have a way of showing themselves. Whether you tell him or not, he will eventually find out. Ask any WS on here that got caught. The majority got caught and it took them a while to win their spouses back. Some never did. The ones who confessed had a beter chance of saving their marriage.

Do you want to save yours or continue living this lie. This site has a lot of helpful plans to get your marriage on the right track.
You want someone to say that it is going to be alright, it will if you do the right thing.
The path you are on right now has a big dead end sign on it. Time to change paths

I wrote down everything I wanted to say to him with the intention of using it as a guide so I didn't forget anything I wanted to say. I told him I had something very difficult to share with him and we sat on the couch together. Once I pulled the paper out he told me he would rather read it himself. Once he finished reading it I told him I was sorry and he hugged me. He then said he needed a few minutes alone and went and sat at his computer.

I honestly believed he would leave me, but he didn't. He was hurt and he was angry. It took a while but together we worked through it all. I do not regret for a second telling my DH.

I have to cut it here, DH is waiting for me to watch a movie. I'll check back tomorrow.

LC

Lifechoice,

Thank you, you are the only person who has responded to me that has not tried to belittle me. I must say many of the people on this booard are rude and make you want to do the opposite of what they are telling me. But when you respond I can sense that you actually seem to care.

I do want to do the right thing and tell my husband, I feel like I need to wait until January because my son is getting married before the end of the year, I can't wreck this for him by destroying everything he believed in.

I know I should have thought of that before and I just want everyone to know that I feel very unhappy with myself and my choices and if I could do it all over again I would not do what I did. But it is very hard to know that ahead of time when your emotions are taking over and it consumes you. At that point you have no idea the hole you are digging for yourself, you only think about how good you feel when you are with the OM until the guilt consumes you and you can't stop crying and you know you have to change. I'm on this board, reaching out because I need help. I already know I did a terrible thing, people on the board do not have to tell me over and over again.

You are not a victim - not even on this thread. You have victimised OM'sW and your own husband by your actions.

You think you are being slammed? You ain't seen nothing. Your lack of compassion on your victims is breathtaking.

You think we are being mean? We have told you the FACTS. You cannot recover until you listen.

Ah, but there you are wrong. I am an FWW who had an 18 month A 6 years ago. The A ended, not mutually, the OM ended it. After six months my H found out. For the six months prior to him finding out I was always "just" on the verge of telling him but couldn't get the nerve. The week he found out, I was in such a guilty, drunk mess (from him not knowing) that I had made my mind up to tell him.

You've already destroyed your family and your marriage, they just don't know it yet.

Y'know what, I thought when my H found out he would send me packing. Y'know what, he completely surprised me by being determined to make our marriage work. Yes, he told our adult kids and yes, they were heartbroken but they watched us put ourselves back together and I'm as close to my kids as I ever have been.

The common "world" view is that it hurts someone to know the facts of their own life. To me it is far more hurtful for your H to be an unknowning mug in all this.

I am well aware you will probably become one more WS who comes to MB, doesn't like what they hear and then leaves because the truth is hard to handle. But, you found us, so why not be one of the WS's who gets it.

Can you really look your H in the face and pretend nothing's wrong? I bet he's not the stupid mug you take him for.

meaning Lifechoice

Point me to anywhere in my post where I belittled you. Blunt maybe, but I did not belittle you. Belittling would take on a whole new dimension.

Neither did anyone else belittle you. Truth is never always pretty or nice to hear. I didn't see where anyone was rude. They told you facts.
Remember..you are the one causing hurt to your family, they are the victims. People are actually telling you the truth to help you, not to be rude.

Don't tell your husband and let him find out on his own, you will definately see rude then. For your sake, I hope he doesn't find out before January.

JoanP,

You have been hearing from both sides of the street. It seems harsh, sort of closed minded doesn't it? We don't understand what you are thinking and going through. That may be true.

However, we do know a few things from years of reading and posting and that is you still want things YOUR way. You want that "independent" living occasioned by OM's presence in your life. That "independent" living will kill your marriage if it already has not.

Your H may know, he may not know. I would guess he suspects. I would guess he knows the marriage is not much really these days, because you have put your emotional efforts into OM, and not H. Your kids may have noticed a lack of attention from you.

What you don't see yet, is that other people do see. Hence the strong encouragement toward honesty. Your affair may kill your marriage, but I would bet good money it will be the lying and the deceit that really kills your H. He will have lost, he really has already lost the one person he trusts. You have no idea how bad that is.

Please read the articles on this site. Please listen to the Former Wayward Wives, FWW, on this site. They do have a clue. Listen to the folks that have been betrayed, they can offer you the perspective from your H's side of things. But, most of all listen to the folks that are encouraging you to start to live your life with honesty, compasssion, honor.

All of these things start with YOU. You have lied to yourself for over 4 years. You have lied to your H for over 4 years. You have crossed your own moral boundaries for over 4 years. You need to figure out why you did this, what did you tell yourself that made it alright to violate YOUR moral boundaries. Never mind the marriage vows, what about YOU.

You see I suspect you are a woman of principles and morals. I suspect that your behavior is not normal for you, although after 4 years it has pretty common behavior for you. You need to start all of this by being very honest with yourself. And then you need to be honest with your H.

You need to know why you really remained in this marriage. Was it simply to live off of your H while running around on him. Was it to maintain a facade for your children?

You will find that withdrawal will cease when YOUR perspective on this whole mess has changed. When it changes you will find that reading this thread will reveal no cruel remarks, no put downs, just basic honest advice. You will quite defending and start to actually reach out and grasp new information and approaches to things.

You have a long way to go. I understand that you want to wait until your son's wedding to tell your H. What are you going to tell your son and new daughter-in-law as they start their marriage? That cheating is alright as long as you don't get caught? Somehow I think if you found out your DIL was cheating on your son, you would be very very upset and have a hard time accepting her point of view.

Please keep posting, please do a lot of reading of Harley's articles, and please ask lots of questions.

God Bless,

JL

Even though the A may be over, do you still see OM if even by accident or have you been able to establish total NC?

Before I found out about FWW's A, I knew something was wrong. It created a lot of friction in the house. FWW was in such a state that she would hit the DDs with shoes at the drop of a hat. She was always on edge and angry. She was very distant toward me.

As a BS, I tell anyone that I would want to know the truth about my own life as one poster put it. I would hate anyone who knew and didn't tell me.

FWW wanted to tell me and almost did. I do believe it would have been easier on me if she had rather than the way I found out. The reason is it would have been easier to believe that she really wanted the marriage. Also not telling BH will make it very much easier to get back together with OM if you need a quick fix for the pain and suffering.

For your part, if you suffer from guilt over the A, it will eat you from the inside out so you will need to learn to differentiate pain of withdrawal from pain of guilt.

What is that about the truth shall set you free?

If you still see OM even as only an acquaintance or just bump into him by accident at Walmart, the withdrawal may last for a very long time which I think was your original question.

Joan,


I would like to make a suggestion to you. Reread your entire thread, but read it as if people are trying to help not attack. I didn't know about this board when I first ended my A, but ended up posting on a similar one. One of the first things I learned was when something upset me it was because it was true and quite often if I read it a couple times it seemed to sink in differently.

I totally understand wanting to do the opposite when feeling attacked. I think up to this point most are just giving facts, but it's easy to read it differently than they actually meant it because infidelity is an emotionally charged issue. You also have to understand they are on the same side of betrayal as your DH and they know first hand what it feels like to be lied to and betrayed.

Part of getting rid of the guilt is confessing. You will have to carry the guilt of the secret until you do. I had no guilt whatsoever during my A (aka major entitlement) and didn't have any guilt until after my DH and I started to get along. If you already have guilt, I hate to tell you, it's probably going to get worse.

I hope you stick around and keep reading all over this site, not just on the forums. Read Dr Harley's articles about infidelity. Dr Harley's How to survive infidelity articles

I also recommend the book "After the Affair" by Janis Abrahms Spring. What I liked about her book is it has separate sections for the betrayed and the wandering spouse.

LC

Thank you to everyone. I do see what you are all saying. I'm still not sure when and how to tell him. But I think I'm going to set up an appointment for couseling to help me sort through this. I do want honesty again and I want to change how I feel about my husband. I have to say I don't love him like I know he deserves. I want to get that back again. There is so much to fix in this relationship, I do not know where to begin. But I do know one thing, I want to stay free of the OM. The chances of running into him are slim so that is good.

Individual counseling is an excellent idea! Keep working on fixing yourself and all of this really will start to make sense.

I found journaling very helpful to work through feelings and it also helped me release a lot of the garbage that cames with the territory.

LC

Very Good JP43,

It is never easy coming clean about something so hurtful. Some do it in a public place like a restaurant or park. Most prefer to do it one on one at home, which I believe is the best way. This is a personal matter and should be dealt with as such.

No doubt he will be angry, devastated, lost and confused. However I do not doubt that he has suspicions and may be in denial.
You have been depositing love units into OM's love bank and have been neglecting your husband's. Therefore you feel closer to the OM because of the feelings you invested. You have to start doing more things with your husband. Dating again so to speak. I am very glad to hear you will stay no contact with OM. That is very essential for YOUR healing.

You may be surprised by his initial reaction. Some are furious, but afraid they may totally lose you.

That's how I felt. I was furious, hurt and thought I would be losing her. She assured me it was nothing I had done, but it was all her. I wound up leaving her because she wouldn't commit to me.
She cried and begged for me to come back, but I didn't want to go through betrayal and lies anymore.
I want your marriage to survive and being honest and staying No contact will help save it