I had a 6-7 month affair on my then pregnant wife. I was texting OW during our time at the hospital. Despite my desires to end the affair shortly after it started, I didn't.

My wife discovered the affair Monday. We have been on a roller coaster since, settling on what looks to be separation.

What now?

I want to keep this marriage...

I wanted to provide more context, but have a 6mo old who was hungry.

I know I have been more than an idiot and fool, but I want nothing more than to keep my family together.

I need help as I don't know what to do anymore.

Welcome to MB.

Who was this OW? Is she married?

Have you answered ALL your BW's questions about her affair?

Hi Jr,

Welcome to Marriage Builders. Not a fun place to find you need but the best place in the world to be, considering your circumstances. First, please read the thread at the top of this forum Start Here Read all the info on that thread and read all the links. It will help to explain some of the information & advice you'll be receiving.

And a few questions to get started..

Ages of you & your W and how long married? How many kids?
How long was the affair and how did you meet the OW?
How did your W discover the affair?
Have you been completely honest with her?
Are you & your W still living in the same home together?

jr, it's the weekend so the forums are kind of slow. Respond & answer those that post to you and you'll continue to get more help.

Hi, Jr.

Have you ended the affair and cut off all contact with the other woman?

Infidelity: What Every Couple Should Know:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi1001_infidelity0.html

How to Survive Infidelity (Q&A columns by Dr. Harley)

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/mb2.cfm?recno=4&sublink=33

jr, welcome. I don't want to be a mean person, but be clear on this: your wife is currently lying on the floor, bleeding and bruised from wounds inflicted by YOUR actions. I want you to understand that. You will never do anything worse to her than what you have done. It may well be the worst experience of her life. She's going to have to depend on YOU, the person who attacked her, to also help her heal. That's a lot to expect from someone who trusted you and had her trust destroyed.

I'm telling you this so you have a sense of what she is going through right now. You have a hard road ahead of you and you will need to be very committed to helping her heal if you want to heal your marriage. It is encouraging to me to see your remorse, and I hope that isn't a reflection of your new fatherhood, but a commitment to the woman who gave birth to your child.

If you are committed to recovery we will be your biggest supporters.

Will your wife come here to post? We can help her. Please tell her I'd like her to come.

I work with her. I spent several days answering any question, which just caused my wife to rage more.

Do you still work with her?

Ages of you & your W and how long married?
36 (me), 29 (her).

How many kids?
Two boys, 26mo & 6mo

How long was the affair and how did you meet the OW?
~6-7 months physical, another month or so emotional. We met at work.

How did your W discover the affair?
She found my text/emails aggregates on a laptop I left open at home. I had been struggling with how to end/communicate it (I even was working on setting up emotionally focused therapy). I hadn't ended it yet.


Have you been completely honest with her?
Ever since she discovered it, yes. She doesn't believe me, with good cause.

Are you & your W still living in the same home together?
Yes. I am living in the basement. My W considers that apropos since OW was brought here a couple of times and that is where we went.

Yes. Abruptly. I haven't even gone back to work, but have confided in a coworker to help ensure she and I are never alone. I go back Monday.

Is your OW married? Do you still work with her?

Thank you for your candor. I sent her a link. I do not know if she will visit. I will give this my all, but recognize it isn't up to me. I still love her and am 100% committed if she will give me the time of day.

She is recently divorced. Yes, I work with her. I am looking for a new job.

I need to reiterate/acknowledge a few points that are particularly painful for her... Texts while she was at the hospital, delivering our child.

Inviting OW into our home and to activities with our family. I was beyond selfish. No excuses. I want a chance to keep this family together, but I don't know ...

Nope. No "ifs" allowed. You're either 100% committed, or you're not. If you think you deserve the time of day from her right now, get over yourself. When guys willfully screw up like you & I willfully screwed up, getting over ourselves is Step #1. It's by no means sufficient, but it's absolutely necessary.

Change your phone numbers. All of them.

Change the address of any e-mail account that you used to communicate with her. If you used a secret account to communicate with her, close it. If you used a secret cell phone, drive over it with your car & drop it in a river.

Tell her the whole truth with no obfuscation, no shading, no bull****ting. She asks, you answer.

Quit the job. Don't go there again, don't see her again.

If you haven't done a no-contact letter (see models on this site), do it.

You're probably gonna need to look for a new house too, in order for your wife to be able to heal without being constantly triggered, although it may take her time to come around to that.

In addition to GO's excellent advice here is the NC letter.
How Affairs Should End


[from SAA, pg 58]

OW, I want you to know that out of respect and love for my wife and children, I have come to realize that I must never see or talk to you again. My relationship with you was a cruel indulgence that BS did not deserve. While I cannot completely repay BS for the pain I caused her, I will do my best to become the husband she has been missing. I care a great deal for my family and I would not want to do anything to risk their happiness. I will not make any further contact with you and I do not want you to make any contact with me. Please respect my desire to end our relationship.

Sincerely, XXXXX

Thank you for the good advice...

Any and all other suggestions welcome. I will work on this now.

Did you see GO's post about changing all your contact information?

What about quitting your job?

Have you written out a timeline for your BW?

Excellent radio clip where Dr. H talks about what a WH should do for his wife to give him another try after his affairs. He explains it like an addict.

Radio Clip on a WH on what to do to get back with his wife 3:50 mark

Tell us what you think.

My wife has asked that I not quit without something else as that may have additional financial impact. I have reached out to a close colleague and mentor, where I also confessed to him and asked that he be a part of any/all meetings that could include OW. He has full access to my calendar and it will be in my letter.

I am working on a timeline, but a lot of this is on her terms right now.

The real estate agent comes Wed.

The first step towards marital recovery is ending all contact with the affair partner for life.

You write that your wife doesn't want you to stop seeing the OW which can only enable the affair.

Do you want to save your marriage?

If you are unwilling to end contact with the OW you should have the decency to divorce your wife and move out of the marital home.

Your conduct is terrible.
Your wife was pregnant and you were texting OW from the hospital and now you write that you are unwilling to end contact.
You aren't serious about saving your marriage are you?

... I ended all communication with her. I haven't quit my job at my wife's request (that I find a new one first). I made arrangements to ensure a third party would be present at all times. I felt the tone change pretty substantially...

I mean the tone HERE...

jr.,

It is well that you're taking your wife's need for financial security into account.

I'm not gonna bust your chops for going back there this week, but it'd be preferable for you to take any sick-days or personal time-off days you might have & use 'em instead.

I realize people have to pay the mortgage & have health insurance. Just don't drag this out, because (as we've seen in other cases on this site), when wayward spouses have dragged out the process of separating from a job where there's ongoing contact with the affair partner, that's dirt in the wound, which acts as an infection & will keep your wife & your marriage from ever healing. Get a transfer, get a new job, but you've gotta get this dnoe pretty quickly.

Expect that there will be ups & downs in your wife's tone. She's on a huge emotional roller-coaster right now. Some days she'll be feeling ok, and some moments, she'll have a hard time even breathing.

You need to give her whatever she asks, be available to her, be ready to talk, be ready to give her space, just be available to her, without conditions or demands on your part.

It can get better over the long term, but it'll take a lot of effort on your part & some painful introspection for the two of you together.

I haven't been back. The only reason I haven't extended it to a leave of absence is that I don't feel I deserve any "vacation". I interviewed Wed for a job and am ACTIVELY looking.

She is an extremely angry phase right now. It looks and feels hopeless. I still don't want to give up my marriage, but from her perspective I already have and don't deserve anything. She told me she shared with an additional friend. I don't know if that - or reliving/relaying - is what has reopened the wound.

Nonetheless, I still want her and my family. I will give 100%, in everything.

Really struggling this morning as I have lost her for good by all accounts, and my best friend with whom I want to share hates me...

One second/minute/day, and I will keep on loving my boys as I may not be living with them very soon.

I am his wife. He told me to try this site, and here I find him seeking pity.

He has taken everything from me. My home is tainted, my cars, my furniture, memories, my birth experience and now he will get my babies part time.

How do I move forward? All I have is hate and anger in my heart. Especially for the other woman. She knew I existed, saw me pregnant at company events, held my baby, sent me a baby gift. She went to a family event with MY family. I felt sorry for her. And all the time she is sleeping with my husband. She is so disgusting. I do not think it is possible to forgive the levels of betrayal. He talked to her more than me, I saw the records. They talked about me. She planted seeds that I was lazy and spoiled for taking maternity leave. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the levels of deceit and lies that were told to hide this affair. He brought her into my home while my children slept and I was at work. They rented hotel rooms and left work early, while i fed, bathed and cared for my children.

He told her he loved her while next to me in the delivery room.

When she popped into his work picture, she was in going through a divorce. My exact words- I don't trust her, but I trust you completely.

I just want to know how to get rid of the anger and rage, it is consuming me. I want to move on with my life without being bitter. For the sake of my children. I don't want to be with him. I just need to know how to be whole again for my babies.

He deserves no sympathy. None.

I do not deserve sympathy... Your post is a fair response.

I hope you will not give up on the site, even if our marriage doesn't survive this.

HtBn, the responses are slow to come on the weekends but stay here for a bit and I promise you some Marriage Builders veterans will help you, support you and advise you...

What your husband has done to you is the worse thing he could have possibly done and the pain you're feeling is the worse pain you have ever felt. You have every right to divorce this man that has disrespected you, your family and the sanctity of your marriage but I would still suggest that you hang around long enough to talk to the veterans here...

I also gently suggest that you start a thread of your own. I'm very sorry that you've found yourself here under these circumstances...

Jr, accept all responsibility for your actions. There are zero excuses, ok?

This affair sounds like it lasted a total of around nine months and the other woman is recently divorced? It sounds like this affair has already caused one destroyed marriage. Is that accurate?

I don't have any sympathy for you. I do have sympathy for your two children and a young mother whom depended on you for strength and financial security..

I don't know if your marriage can be saved or not but you've found yourself in best place possible. Do not feel sorry for yourself, your wife is the one that is in excruciating pain and your selfishness is what caused it...now that the 2x4 is out of the way I suggest you write to Dr Harley ASAP,set up counseling with his son Steve. Write to Dr Harley today and tomorrow morning call the coaching center.

There is no excuse for what I have done. None.

I agree with your timeline as the "emotional affair" began a month or two earlier. We started talking as she moved out and was "struggling". I hope this doesn't sound like an excuse, but rather an honest self-observation wherein I need to work on a character flaw in myself. I have always been the type to "do too much" to try to help others out (unclear boundaries). I now recognize that this is a character flaw wherein I need to draw better boundaries; especially so that I can best demonstrate that as a parent by living it for my boys. I now know definitively that supporting her (OW) in any fashion was wrong. Being a married man, I had NO business "supporting" OW at the end of her failing marriage. None, whatsoever, no ifs, ands, or buts...

The other destroyed marriage was failing before I met OW. She separated ~Q3ish of 2013 (I don't know the exact date). Based on what I know today, I believe she was looking for a replacement as she had never been single for more than a couple of weeks (her words). Not an excuse, but an honest observation.

I am glad. I know my BW thinks I am here solely for this purpose. Rather, I am hoping and praying that I can find a way to keep my family intact. If I can't, then the only thing I can do to "man up" is to do everything possible to be a good father; and help my wife heal wherever, whenever, and however she will allow me to.

The only deserving sympathy here is just as you outlined above: "sympathy for your two children and a young mother whom depended on you for strength and financial security."


I will follow your advice. I am also seeing an individual therapist and we have a couples counselor.

Thank you for your time and comments.

-J

This is an excuse. TAKE the vacation time and find another job.
Your marriage has NO hope as long as you work with the OW. NONE. If you want your marriage, you will do what ever it takes to find another job.

Self reflection can be a good thing but I suggest you be very careful verbalizing it...ALL your thoughts, attention and actions are to be directed at helping your wife heal and that can take awhile...

Until a judge's gavel falls you still have a chance...if you haven't already, take a look at the links Marcos and Brainhurts have provided.

Immerse yourself in helping YOUR WIFE heal. Listen to these veterans.

Let me discuss with my wife. Their financial stability is what matters most. Please see prior post where I exposed the affair at work to a person I work with extensively to ensure I am not around OW.

HtBn,

Please start a thread of your own where we can advise you. We can help you find healing.

Let me quietly suggest that you may be the WORST judge of priorities and of what "matters most" on this thread.

If you continue to work with OW, your marriage will not recover.
You are headed for a divorce, which will make their financial situation even worse.

Take the vacation time and find a new job.

If you do not, I would advise your wife to kick you out and file for separation or divorce.

True.

It might seem like just semantics, but I don't love the term "character flaw" here. That makes it sound almost as if it's something innate, congenital -- as if you were born with it.

And the part about 'trying to do too much'? -- careful, dude. In the early days after my affair, I also spewed some so-called 'reasoning' along those lines. It makes it sound almost as if you're so altrusitic that you put yourself at heightened risk for an affair -- as if it was some sort of noble instinct or impulse on your part that just went wrong.

First, not much will make your wife more hopeless about recovery or more wary of giving you a 2nd chance than the idea that this is part of your character. And in a way, it's letting yourself off the hook too easily. It was not so much a character flaw, but rather, a whole series of selfish decisions & choices on your part.

If you're the type who tries to "do too much" for other women, it's not because you've had this irrepressible, inborn charitable urge or noble streak. It's because you were making choices to seek out affirmation/attention/admiration from these other women. Those things are key emotional needs for many guys, and as long as we stick to our spouses for having them met, that's OK. But any of us who start deciding to get them from people other than our spouses are choosing to go down a very dark & dangerous path whenever we choose it.

Whether it's choosing to lend a hand with moving some furniture, or choosing to lend an ear to someone who wants to complain about her marriage, to choose to do so doesn't stem from any altruistic bent of character. Quite the opposite. You were choosing to do things for the attention, for the thanks, for being well-thought-of, for the little ego-rush that comes from having someone unexpectedly rely on you as a confidant. You weren't trying to do too much. (Just like I wasn't trying to do too much when I continued listening to the woman who was one of my fellow singers on the church music team, when she started subtly complaining to me about her husband.) You were trying to see how far you could let the conversations go, to keep the shots of ego-booster coming. And shutting those conversations off was the minimum you needed to be trying to do in order to protect your marriage, to protect your wife's feelings. Yet you were trying to not shut those conversations off! (By the way, I'm whispering to you here, for emphasis.) Jr., don't you see that you were trying to do too little?

To say you were trying to do too much is like trying to lay a shine on a turd -- you can rub & rub all you want, but that sucker's never gonna shine. Don't ever say again, especially around your wife, that you think your affair was because you try to do too much.

The good news is, it's possible to stop making those wrong choices. You're onto realizing something important when you talk about boundaries. Yours sucked. Just like almost 5 years ago, for a few terrible months, mine sucked. Something I learned: You don't EVER tolerate another woman dishing to you about dissatisfactions in her marriage. Never, no, and N.F.W, my friend. If a conversation goes that way, you shut it the hell down -- if necessary, by turning around & running away. Any woman (single, or as in my case, married), other than maybe your mother, who starts spilling confidences to you about her marriage, is 100% trouble. And if you've been spending enough time alone with any woman such that she feels comfortable taking a flyer on sharing her personal problems with you, then your boundaries are already trodden-over.

The good news is, YOU are the one who chooses your boundaries, and chooses whether & how vigilantly to defend them. The bad news is, to realize this, you've had to plunk yourself & your wife into the hell that gets wreaked on a marriage when you let those boundaries go undefended, when you let someone else inside your marriage's perimeter wire.

And it'll be a long time before you GET how much it hurts. Someday if you stick around, maybe you can read about how my wife (who, in the course of her profession, has seen lots of infants die) wrote, comparing the feeling to the grief, bitterness & pain that parents feel upon the death of their child. I don't know if it's that way for everyone, but you'd do well to imagine that that's what you allowed to happen inside your wire.

Let the knowledge of this motivate you -- not to self-pity, but to actions that will serve to protect your wife's feelings & may possibly leave open the door to her someday choosing to gradually, in increments, allow herself to be emotionally vulnerable to you again.

I've walked in your shoes for a spell, jr. You got questions? Ask.

GloveOil,

Thanks for the well thought-out post. What I refer to as a character flaw is exactly what you describe; seeking out, by choice, affirmation, validation, etc.

I am working on being more conscientious of my thinking and rationalization. This helps.

Best,

JR

Glove,

Any additional insight, thoughts, or feelings around the steps, time, and anything else that might save this family and marriage?

I don't know if she will visit this forum again. My regret can never come close to filling the void and wound I have created. While I can't understand fully the magnitude of her pain, I am beginning to grasp that (that I will never fully understand).

Short version:
I did selfish and extremely painful things, including deception and worse for a long time.
I chose to hurt those I love - or should have consistently loved - the most
I am a fool... Period.
There are no excuses for MY choices
I took everything that was sacred and dear and stomped on it.
I love my wife and my family.
I haven't shown it.
I don't deserve any chances, but I hope that we can try.

Did you ever listen?

I would not worry too much about her willingness to visit the forum or not at this point. At this stage of the game, if you can make large enough, consistent enough love bank deposits, and protect her from withdrawals (love busters on your part, including risky behavior that fails to protect her from the trauma of an affair), then her feelings toward you may begin to change, and she may be willing to give you a chance to reconcile the marriage.

Repeatedly. I have a lot to do.

My complete focus right now...

Sorry if I missed your answer somewhere in the thread, but have you changed your contact info (phone #s and e-mail addresses) to ones that the OW doesn't know?

Do you understand that you cannot come into ANY contact AT ALL with OW without it endangering your M? You are literally taking any chance of recovery and squandering it with EACH and EVERY contact.

It does not matter that you have someone at work watching. Not only does continued contact keep the addictive feelings alive, it will be twisting the knife in your BW's back every time you go into work.

I would also advise your wife that my WxH also exposed himself at work and had people "watching" and the affair continued and he stayed foggy. This whole "a person at work will be watching" does not amount to much. Any contact = affair continues.

If you can take a leave of absense, TAKE it. Don't be foolish and take further risks with your M if you can avoid it.

He answered this with a "I ended contact" vague type of answer. But he had to be asked more than once, by you and then followed up by BH.



jr, you don't understand what NC means. NC means you leave the job and all ways that OW had access to you are changed and she is BLOCKED.

As of right now, you are still in contact. = NO marital recovery is possible until this changes.

jr, print this out and look at it EVERY time you think about going into work and coming into contact with this POS OW.

All of these feelings will be triggered and brought to the surface for your BW EVERY time you have contact. She will not be able to begin to heal.

NC is designed to not only end the affair but because ANY FURTHER CONTACT is incredibly cruel and disrespectful to your BW.

Aye, SusieQ. I asked unambiguously whether he'd changed his phone #s and e-mail addresses.
He hasn't addressed that question even vaguely. He has not yet begun to answer that question.
indeed.

Actions & steps will get you much farther & faster than words & feelings, jr.

Maybe you're off reading "Surviving An Affair" and making a list of extraordinary precautions & begining to carry them out. Maybe you're on the phone with your cellphone provider & your internet service provider to get your numbers & contact addresses changed to ones that the OW won't know. Maybe you're breaking your back to help your wife extra with your young children. Maybe you're starting to grasp the paralyzing fear you plunge your wife into every time you contemplate going back into a work environment where you'll be at peril of daily contact with the woman who's gone such a long way toward inconsiderately & indiscriminately shattering your wife's life as she knew it.

Or not, for all I know.

Have you written a letter to the OW explaining that you NEVER want any form of contact with her again?

You will find samples on this site, write on and give to your wife to mail. She gets to KNOW FOR CERTAIN that it is delivered.

You need to block every form of contact that OW had to you.
Change phone numbers, emails, address.

Read and understand the concepts here.