My wife and I are in recovery from my infidelities. D-Day was a year ago. We are making very good strides -- thanks largely to Dr. Harley's concepts. (The guy's a genius!)

Lately, I have been very expressive of my affection towards my wife -- in letters, conversations, and romantic songs. I like the feeling and I feel like I am falling in love with her over and over again. I had been like this to her before but I admit I lost it along the way until I had my first affair. It was an EA/PA, and it was very intense. The OW and I also expressed affection towards each other through letters (e-mail) and songs.

This morning she asked me what the difference is between what I�m doing now with her and what I did with the OW during my affair. I was taken aback � mainly because I have been very authentic with my actions and never occurred to me to compare the two. I understand how she feels about it � she doesn�t see my actions towards her as something more special than what I did to the OW. She has a point. However, to me, what I�m feeling towards her is something more special. The emotions are very much the same because I felt the same way with the OW too. But this time around, what I feel for her is so much more special and meaningful to me but I am having difficulty explaining it to her.

Any sharing of the same experience and/or comment/advice is appreciated. Thanks.

I think she's not in love with you just yet. You're in love with her and committed to caring for her and spending the rest of your life with your wife, not anyone else. That's what's different.

Work on meeting her needs so she'll reach the romantic threshold, and she probably won't be thinking on these kind of questions.

You are on the right track. It just takes time. Don't be disrespectful of your wife's feelings. It takes a minimum of two years to recover. By the end of two years, I'd be willing to bet that your love toward her will be much more intense than now, making the affair emotions pale in comparison. Be patient. Being a betrayed spouse is an incredibly difficult experience.

Thank you. Immediately after D-Day, I must admit I was a "clock-watcher" with regards to her recovery. I learned fast not to put a timeline to it. I'm here for the long haul -- however long it takes to regain her trust back. She's actually very responsive to my efforts and I'm very happy about it. It's only during the "bad days" that her skepticism/distrust takes over.

Will she come here and speak to us? Is there anything in particular that is triggering her? Can you ask her to carefully think about that question and come here and answer?

Couple of quick thoughts, BML:

-- First, what are your wife's top emotional needs, today? Re: the "letters, conversations, and romantic songs," you said you like the feeling. So, maybe do yourself a a motivation-check, and ask yourself, are you doing these things for your wife, or are you doing them for you?

-- Second, I think the idea of not being the one & only is very hard for a BS, and the idea that a WS felt (even past-tense) "in love" with the AP is hard to take. I guess a BS may think that if one can dismiss the affair as having been mostly about sex & not love, then maybe it seems it'll be less awful to cope with; yet hearing from the WS that it was love forecloses that avenue of coping.

At some point in our recovery, my wife once wrote to me, "One of the hardest things for me is the idea of you actually loving her. Ugh! I would almost have prefered the idea of a prostitute to this!" (That's pretty much a verbatim quote, there, as best I can recall it after 4 & a half years or so.) So you see, it's no small thing that your wife is wrestling with here. And it sucks that there's nothing we can do to change how we felt in the past, doesn't it?

Re: words to help, about the best I can suggest is that love perseveres. Love sticks. I don't know your story or how & why the affair ended, or what you've done since then to help your wife feel safe with you again, but whatever love there was between you & the AP, bottom-line, it didn't stick.

But as you're finding out the hard way, words only go so far, especially when you do as I did & grind your own credibility into a worthless powder by having an affair in the first place. So that leaves you with actions, and that takes me back to my first thought about about making sure you're directing yourself toward your wife's current, most important needs, which may or may not necessarily coincide with your own emotional needs.

Whaddya think?

GloveOil -- my wife and I appreciate your inputs. You hit the proverbial nail on the head. She especially likes the fact that your comments come from a man's perspective and she hopes that they will resonate better with me. I couldn't agree more with your assessments. Patience, perseverance, faith, hope and love have been my watchwords since D-Day.

As far as her most important needs today, she's satisfied with what I'm doing for her. My Giver is very much in control right now so my own emotional needs are not dictating my actions. I am in the military and currently deployed so she understands the limited options our situation allows. In the meantime, we have been following Dr. Harley's concepts in ways that we can while physically separated. I am close to coming home and I look forward to putting those concepts into practice.

Ahhhh, being currently deployed explains a lot of this. How long before you're back? Will you two fix it so that you're never apart overnight when you get back?

BML, you know where to find me.

I don't post all that much anymore, but every once in awhile, someone stumbles in who was as big of a putz as I was back in '08; and of those guys, some of 'em are serious about trying to put things right. If you ever have questions, you can ask.