Alot of you know my story, I won my wife back after an affair that lasted way longer than I had known. Now all is good, my wife is 100% back and being a wonderful wife. The problem is that I can't look at her the same way as I once did. I will never trust her again. I love her, but I am not me and I don't know if I will ever be me again. I told her I am thinking of moving out and she begged me to stay and try. I want to forget it all.

In your earlier post you said she seemed to get over things too quickly and hadn't displayed much guilt. Is that still the same?

I am no vet and have not done recovery, but is she earning your trust back? Are you following the recovery plan fully?

Sorry you are hurting

Chuck, have you used this program to create a romantic relationship? Have you implemented all the basic concepts? Because unless your marriage goes through recovery and makes a dramatic transformation, you will end up with a crippled version of the pre-affair marriage. When the romance is restored to the marriage and appropriate boundaries are implemented, the resentment about the affair fades. I can honestly say I never think about and have no feelings about it today. I have a happy, satisfying marriage, romantic marriage today.

And you should never trust her again. It is too much trust that leads to affairs. What your marriage needs, rather than trust, are strict boundaries that ensure another affair never happens again. Has she affair proofed your marriage?

Chuck,

Recovery is not for the faint of heart. It requires a great deal of effort from BOTH the BS and WS. It also takes 2-5 years of time, coupled with rigorous efforts in working a marital recovery program.

In my opinion, one of the greatest obstacles to recovery is often the BS's inability to work at building a new marriage. Often, indifference and/or resentment set in, hindering their ability to keep their eyes focusd forward. They often just want the marriage back that they had before the infidelity occured.

So where do you see yourself??

I see your still looking to trust?? Has your wife set up EP's that allow you to feel safe, or is there still alot of IB?

Chuck,


I would say that you are looking for a fantasy...what your wife did was to give you a real woman, faults and all.


Any woman you might choose, if you were to leave her and "start over with another wife" would have faults.


You just would not know what those might be. There is no perfect person, Chuck. This woman has asked you to work with her, to rebuild.

That takes time. Just as it would take time to do if you were to go out there, meet another woman, begin a relationship, figure out a new woman's emotional needs, meet them, build love, etc, etc, etc, etc.



You already love your wife. What you are grieving is the stain on the history.


Over time, that fades. You need to allow time for that to happen. Keep working the plan, because your rollercoaster ride is not over. You are just on yet another slow downslope. While the ride smooths out a bit, its not yet over.


SB

Chuck, exactly WHERE are you in the recovery process? Recovery does not happen by accident, it only happens by DESIGN. How much UA time did you spend together last week? Are you using the POJA? The PORH? Have you both eliminated lovebusters?

Its real important to your recovery to replace the bad marriage with a great marriage. Are you doing that?

I hurt so bad still, I don't know why. I still have nightmares about it and I am starting to think I have depression. That being said, I can't believe how right you guys are and how much I had forgotten. I will try to answer each post, but you guys have already helped me very much.

@Indie- She has shown guilt and she is working to earn my love and trust back.

@papabear- she has set up EPs and she has made herself as transparent as possible, I really do believe that you are right that I resent what she did so much and have shut down. I keep think I wish that I could just forget it all, which means that I want it back to the way it was before.

@schoolbus-maybe I do want a fantasy, my wife was my everything before the affair, and now I have trouble looking at her. I do love her and I have not even thought of another woman. You wrote that I am grieving the stain on the history, that hit me very deeply.

@melody- wow, I don't remember what happened or when. We have the books including the workbook, and for some reason we have not looked at them in forever. We need to get back to it, I think in the beginning it was hard for her to go through the book and we just forgot it. But that was then and I know that we can and should do it now, thank you very much! What if, one of my EN's is Honesty, how can I ever get that back with her?

In the grand scheme of things Im early in my recovery process. I think I had a bit of a jump start vs. you as my wife was remorseful, regretful and had zero disply of withdrawal immediately upon dday. I could make the argument (and I do on my thread) she was relieved at getting caught as the haze of her A and damage she was doing to her family and mostly herself blinded her.

So, I guess Im saying that I didnt have to face much of the Plan A stuff as I had a committed wife upon dday. We have worked diligently on all the things we were missing in our marriage and I can say Ive really gotten to be closer to her.

Heres the but, like you, I have a big problem even looking at her without contempt. I keep it inside, no yelling. I trust her implicitly today. She is as regretful as WW can be, I just know it. I keep tabs on her all day and do the monitoring and all.

BUT, what you wrote above is exactly what Im dealing with, Im not me either. I have trouble being happy. I really dont like socializing even with our best friends. Will moving out make things like this better? Im only 3 months in recovery, but Id have to say no. Destroying my kids lives would be a lot worse than anything she has done.

We have to deal with their collossal selfishness and suck it up.

A lot of the vets here will hate this and I once wrote it on my thread and got destroyed: we have that get out of jail card in our pocket for life, while you have children in your house I cant see you using yours or me using mine. When they are out, however, hopefully the anger and depression you and I are facing all day, everyday, will be over and our marriages will be peachy. If not, our wives have given us a ticket to ride. I told my wife this once in a tirade after dday and I wont ever repeat it. But, its out there which is good enough for me.

Now who's being selfish? Me. Being the bigger person here is hard. And, i will say this we have been working this program feverishly and I still have the identical thoughts you have. Good luck.


Added later: If you are not on an Anti-Depressant, get to the Dr. and see to it.

it is pretty amazing how alike we feel. Although when I read about all of the different things in an affair I am amazed how we all go through the same things.

Real easy. She practices honesty! here

Not to sound arguementative, but she is honest right now, as far as I know. But that is the problem, she told me it was over and I went through all of the pain of what I thought was withdraw. Only to find out later, and not from her, that the affair continued almost a year after DDay. She would have lied to me for the rest of my life, if I hadn't found out on my own from OM. So I don't know if I can ever trust her again.The truth is though that I want to, and if I could somehow tell myself to I would. It's like a battle with myself, I want to go on, but something holds me back. It's wierd though, because I think that if I left I would be the same. Just like mike said. I feel as though I am destined to be miserable for the rest of my life. I don't want to be that way. I want to be me again. Funny side note: does anyone remember the tv sitcom Mad About You? With Paul reiser and Helen Hunt, the last episode Helen told paul that she had kissed another man and they broke up series over. I have never watched another thing with Helen Hunt since then without saying something ignorant to helen hunt for cheating on paul. That series is years and years before my wifes affair.

Chuck, I think you are confusing honesty with trust. She should be honest. She should be historically honest, honest about her feelings, everything. But you should not trust her. Meeting the need for honesty is very different from trusting someone. Instead of trusting her, she should become so completely transparent and create such interdependence that it would be impossible to carry on a secret second life.

Trust is not good for marriages and that is not what this program prescribes. See if this Harley quote clears it up:

Coping with Infidelity: Part 4
Overcoming Resentment

I don't know Chuck after what you have just written. You go through all the hell of DDay and she tells you it was over. You both work on recovery and you later find out she continued with this sexual affair for a year more after you only found out because the OM contacted you. She clearly had no problem keeping it a secret from you forever. Seriously I do not know how you could ever believe anything she would ever tell you.

I think you were a big man to forgive her after D-Day and to work on your marriage. The fact that she would continue to do this behind your back for another year really brings into question why in the world would you still offer forgiveness again. If the roles were reversed do you honestly think she would be so accepting as you have been? You deserve better than this and I think this is why you are feeling the way you are right now. I wish you luck.

BryanP,

Do you have any MB supported/support to offer here? Every BS deserves better. You state the obvious.

What is your point in stating the obvious?

As counter-intuitive as it sounds (and it did to me too initially), this is SO TRUE--"blind trust" enables affairs and kills marriages. I "trusted" my xWW WAY, WAY TOO MUCH and paid the price with an affair and coverup that I was suckered into believeing for way too long. By then, the lies and emotional addiction have become so entrenched that they are very difficult to break and repudiate.

It is strict, verifiable boundaries that restore and maintain healthy marriages. This means that YOU should never expect or want to have or regain "blind trust" for her ever again. And it means that SHE should never expect or demand it again from you.

If she's truly and genuinely interested in a recovered marriage with you, then she should be voluntarily providing you with verification of her fidelity and should be looking upon it as an opportunity to earn back your respect & honor and not a burden or an intrusion.

How did you find out the first time?

How was WW able to continue the affair for a year after Dday?

Did you ask your WW to go NC with the OM?
Was there any activity such as work, hobby, neighbors to maintain contact?
Did you do things to verify NC such as VAR, GPS, phone bills, key logger, anything?

I know, right?

Bryan's been here over 10 years and there's nearly 2500 posts like this. He doesn't know a thing about MB and merely comes here to smash on people's hope.

I almost get the sense that he gets some satisfaction over giving discouraging "hopeless" posts and then coming back to read later to prove to himself (and others) that he was right when inevitably some marriages fail here. Thing is though...the marriage's were already a FAIL by the time they got here...with Dr. Harley's help and advice (which we try to deliver here with a ray of hope) marriages are resurrected from the scrapheap of despair. Calling a piece of crap...crap, isn't an accomplishment.

But, of course, I don't control who posts here and what they say so I just watch Bryan and hope to minimize whatever damage his words may cause by sharing my opinion. Unfortunately, posters new to our board don't know that he's coocoo for cocopuffs so I'm very glad to see another poster call him out.

Mr. Wondering

Exactly my sense as well! Always the same post slightly modified. Bizarro!

@the road- to answer your questions. My wife told me about the affair with a man from her work. She had said at the time that she loved him and didn't know if she loved me. He had been fired from his job which made it difficult for them to get together, but the affair happened basically during lunch at work. She then agreed to NC and MC(joke). I did check phone records and had a keylogger, but as I said everything happened at work.

Chuckt14,

I know awhile back you mentioned that W had cervical cancer, did that reduce her sex drive, or did you suspect she picked up HPV in an another affair which might have caused the cancer? Did she offer to take a polygraph.

God Bless
Gamma

Chuck,

How long ago was this A? Sorry if you stated earlier. Just want to get facts so that the vets here can help, which will be coming, OK?

Road is awesome.

Well I thought that the Cancer had reduced her sex drive until I found out she was having an affair. I honestly never suspected my wife of having an affair until after she told me. g Do I look back now and wonder is it possible that she had an affair that may have caused it? Absolutely, but at the time I did not. She has never offered to take a polygraph and I have not asked. I think at this point she would balk at the idea, but it would make an interesting question.

DDay for me was 11-3-08
She told me No Contact on 11-17-08
WW now says affair was really over in Aug 09
OM say Nov 09
I say they are both lyers so who knows and at this point what does it matter?
The entire time we were in MC, at $125 P.H. her 2 sessions per week me 2 sessions per week
At least I know that the MC is happy(crook)