Need Help!

Im 45 years old and been married to my wife for 23 years. I have always bee faithful and crazy about her.
I went through a bad time mentally over the last 9 months. Depressed, too much time on my hands ( kinda retired from work ) I was resentful of my wife as well but i can see now it was all my doing.

I had a friendship with a younger girl and eventually had sex 1x. Just once.
I wasnt even attracted to her and i regret it with all my heart.

My wife found out and i lied about it because of shame, embarrassment, guilt, and i didnt want to hurt her anymore then i already did.

She says she gave me a few chances to work things out but i honestly dont remember. I wasnt myself and i was in a total fog.. For months.

Im doing all i can now to make things right with my wife but she says she cant live with the thought of my cheating in her mind.
Everytime i tried to talk with her she brings up the things i had done.

I love my wife with all my heart and i truly regret what Ive done to us.
I ended the friendship with the OW as well about 4 months ago. No contact and iam not even interested. Just want to get some advice on what i can do to make my wife trust me again and get through this terrible situation i have created.

Please help!

I appreciate it

Welcome to MB, tjg13.

Your signature line says that you are living apart and a divorce is planned, but your story does not mention this. Is that the case? How did that come about? Did your wife ask you to leave as soon as she found out about the affair, or was that after she found out you lied about it? What did you lie about? What stage has the divorce reached?

How did your wife find out about the affair, and the lies?

Who is this girl? Is she someone you work with, or someone you picked up in a bar, or what? Does she live anywhere near you? Is she married or in a relationship? Does her spouse know about the affair?

Do your kids and both your families know about the affair?

Welcome to MB.

Have you read "Surviving an Affair" yet? If not, get and read it?

Is your wife interested at all in recovering your marriage? Not all betrayed spouses are interested in staying married after an affair.

AM

We are still living together but sleeping in separate rooms.

Divorce is being talked about but nothing done yet.
I lied about the friendship i had and just kept making things worse after that.
The OW is single and doesn't live near me. I don't see her at all and would never run into her besides.
Our kids do know about the affair and my 21 year old won't talk to me.

Yes, I've read Surviving an Affair. Been reading this board a few days before posting.
My wife does not want to recover the marriage as of now because she is still extremely hurt and hating me for what I've done.

I truly regret this.

Thanks for any advice and help.

How did you meet OW then? What was the extent of your A (duration, EA/PA, etc.)? And have you now given your wife ALL the information pertaining to your A, or are you continuing to trickle truth her?

Would your wife come here and post her own thread?

And for starters, you need to STOP referring to this as a 'friendship' when it was an affair. It is incredibly insulting to your wife and children to downplay this bomb of mass destruction.

Tig,

Has your wife read "Surviving an Affair"?

Please answer the question about how your affair started? How did you meet OW? How did your wife find out about the affair? Are you still lying about the circumstances and extent of the affair?

Would your wife be willing to post on the forum? Would she be willing to enroll in the MB online program?

BTW, immediately after my H's affair, all three of our children wanted me to divorce H. I didn't do that. Today, they all have a great relationship with both of us and additionally are much more aware of the potential for affairs in marriage and how to prevent them.

AM

Agreed. This is very offensive to the betrayed spouse and children. What you had was a sleazy affair with a woman who didn't mind spreading her legs for a married man. Don't try to make it be something acceptable.

AM

I am going to press you for details of who this OW is, how you met her, how far from you she lives and what you lied about.

You see, the fact that you say this started as a friendship suggests that you were able to talk to her over a period of time. this wasn't just a hook-up with a stranger in a bar. If you had a friendship (which was really an emotional affair, and a precursor to the physical affair), you had a way of easily seeing this woman and communicating with her. I want to know those details if I am to help you win your wife back. If you can't demonstrate to me that this woman is nowhere near you, no wonder you can't reassure your wife that the affair was a single, out-of-character event that can never be repeated. If you won't be honest with me, a stranger who has no idea who you are, how you met this woman and kept up a relationship with her, I'm not surprised that your wife does not believe you have given her the full truth.

Trying to answer all the questions posted here.
Met OW at a shooting range. She is a LT in the army.
Became friends ( emotional affair ) by just talking about military stuff.
Wasnt physically attracted to her but more that we had a lot in common.
At that time, she lived about 40 miles from me.
Since I ended it. ( yes, I did ) she moved out of state.

I also called her with my wife present and told her that I love my wife and this was
All a bad mistake by me.

I changed my number but I had forgotten about my email and she contacted me a few times again and that stirred up this mess again.

I have not contacted her again since then as well. About 4 months now.
The whole emotional affair lasted about 8 months total but the OW was deployed
For 4 months of that time. So no physical contact.

I will ask my wife if she would post here.
I'm currently seeing a therapist and my wife has agreed to join me as well as go herself.
My wife found out through my cell records but I wasn't a very good lier and looking back, it was obvious.
I lied to her about the whole thing anyway. I was ashamed and mentally not myself. No excuse but that's the facts.
I have never even considered any other women then my wife.
I'm not even sure why I allowed this to happen.

Thank you for any help. I really want to make this Better.
I truly regret it.

That makes perfect sense so her triggered state is completely understandable. Have you since changed the email address so the OW can't reach you?

Most marriages don't ever recover from affairs. They might stay together, but they are a crippled version of the pre-affair marriage. When that happens, the resentment of the betrayed spouse grows and grows each passing year.

You won't resolve your marriage problems in therapy and that is actually a distraction from solving your problems.

You don't have to be like that if you will follow the steps in this program. The first thing you need to do is affair proof your marriage so your wife feels safe. The next step is to create a romantic, passionate marriage that is better than your pre-affair marriage. If those steps are not taken, your marriage will be terrible.

The book Surviving an Affair has the program we used in it. Here is the checklist of extraordinary precautions from SAA:

From Surviving an Affair, pg 66-67

The extraordinary precautions do more than end marriage-threatening affairs; they help a couple form the kind of relationship they always wanted.

These recommendations may seem rigid, unnecessarily confining, and even paranoid to those who have not been the victim of infidelity. But people like Sue and Jon, who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of an affair that spun out of control, can easily see their value. For the inconvenience of following my advice, Sue would have spared herself and Jon the very worst experience of their lives.


Checklist for How Affairs Should End

_____The unfaithful spouse should reveal information about the affair to the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should make a commitment to the betrayed spouse to never see or talk to the lover OP again.

_____The unfaithful spouse should write a letter to the lover OP ending the relationship and send it with the approval of the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from the lover OP:

_____Block potential communication with the lover OP (change e-mail address and home and cell phone numbers, and close all social networking accounts; have voice messages and mail monitored by the betrayed spouse).

_____Account for time (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

_____Account for money (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a complete account of all money spent).

_____Spend leisure time together.

_____Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

_____Avoid overnight separation.

_____Allow technical accountability.

_____ Expose affair to family members, clergy, and/or friends.

Thank you
I've just about covered all those points except relocating to
A diff state but I do have plans to do just that when my 14 yr old
Finishes high school

I changed all my email accts, cell.
All I've been doing for the last couple months is try
To talk to my wife and apologize just about everyday.
I feel like death for hurting her and my kids.
Nothing in the world is worth that again.
She is just very hurt and angry so I'm trying to
Say & do the right things now.
Avoid fighting but it's tough.

Tig,
One thing that stood out to me in your posts was when you referenced "I was ashamed and mentally not myself. No excuse but that's the facts"
Being mentally not yourself is NO REASON to begin an affair - I do see that you said it's "not an excuse just fact" but I see no reason for it to even play into this.
Now on saying that, how is your mental status now? Are you under th care of a doctor? Are you on any AD's?.

So you forgot about your email 'a few times?' If you forgot about your email, then wouldn't ONE TIME of contact be enough to remind you about your email, at which point you would inform your wife and immediately change your email?

If you want to recover, you need to OWN THIS. Acting like this, amongst other things, 'just happened' with no fault of your own, is not going to make your wife feel like you are being honest or that you are safe. Own the fact that you purposely left an obvious door open to the OW, and used it for contact multiple times.

Have you answered ALL your BW's questions about your A? The level of detail each BS desires is different, but you need to give your BW as much detail as she wants. If you think that you are protecting her by keeping any information from her, you are not. You are only protecting yourself and doing further damage.

Dr Harley suggests writing a timeline of the events of your affair, and giving that to your spouse. She can then use that timeline to ask questions.

If, due to the trickle truth you have already given her, your BW does not believe your version of the truth (I wouldn't), you can also offer to take a polygraph to verify your story. If you have indeed told her everything, this should be perceived as a great opportunity for you to prove that to her!

What the program does is help you create a happy marriage. If one is happy in the present, their minds don't tend to go to the tragedies of the past so that is why it is so imperative to create a happy marriage that is better than your pre-affair marriage. It doesn't sound like you have done that. But we can help you with this.

I gave access to my email to my wife and i hadnt checked it for a few days myself,
OW emailed, things went bad. I changed my email since then and OW, no one else except personal male friends have it. My wife has all passwords, codes, etc
Same with cell phone.

I have told my wife everything about the affair. Answered her questions, etc.
I have taken responsibility for my bad choices and actions. Fully. So yes, i owned it.

I dont do drugs or meds but i was emotionally weak and didnt want to talk to my wife about the things that were upsetting me at the time and i felt she wasnt there for me. I actually realize now i pushed her away and secluded myself so its only my fault as well.

I have never strayed from my wife in 22 years of marriage till now. I made bad choices that hurt all of us and Iam truly sorry for everything.
I just cant see throwing away 22 years of marriage even though i understand how she feels and the hurt Ive caused.
I would never allow anything like this to happen again but i dont know if my wife can get past all this.

Iam trying to do all the right things now and in fact, i see a positive coming out of this disaster if we can somehow work it out.

Have you been working on eliminating ALL your love busters and learning to meet her emotional needs? Recovery from an affair requires that the marriage is BETTER than the pre-A marriage. What are her complaints about you?

Yes, Ive been reading this board and doing my best on eliminating my love busters. Started working on meeting her emotional needs as well.

I want my marriage to be better then pre A marriage in so many ways. In fact, this has made me see all the things that i could have done better and I will do what it takes to make her feel right again. This has been hell. I thought 3 tours in Iraq & A-stan were bad but hurting my wife and my soul mate is far, far worse.

Thanks again to the members here who offered advice.
I really appreciate it.

BTW, Should i even bother to continue to see my therapist? cause the members here said it wont help and actually waste time.
I cant afford either of those options now.

For you to see a therapist at this point is a distraction. We all know why people have affairs - because of poor boundaries. Dr. Harley says that no one would have an affair under certain conditions, and everyone would have an affair under other conditions. The marriages that are safe are those in which both spouses create the conditions that make an affair virtually impossible.

Most therapists have no idea how to coach a couple into creating a really great marriage. My H and I spent many hours and a lot of money on marital therapy after my H's first affair. In the end, it did not create a safe nor a romantic marriage and the therapist was doing all she knew to do.

MB can help you and your wife create a romantic, passionate, and safe marriage. It takes two people but you can prime the pump by following the guidelines. I would start by listening to the radio program and reading all the articles on this website.

tig,

Will your wife agree to the online MB program? My H had an affair that was similar to yours, with a active duty soldier. He also had contact a few months after discovery of the affair and a lot of really horrible months.

You said that you are 45 and retired? Did you retire from the military? Do you have employment now? 45 is way too young for a man to not have work.

Have you read about lovebusters? Have you eliminated all lovebusters, i.e. for wayward the two big ones are dishonesty and independent behavior (having a secret second life)?


AM

Tig,
Understand that infidelity is the most painful thing a betrayed spouse will experience in his or her lifetime. So just know that it is going to take a long time for your wife's hurt and anger to subside, and it won't go away if you do not provide her with what Dr. Harley calls "just compensation."

You have taken many right steps in coming clean and owning this. But you need to understand your wife's feelings. I recommend you watch this video: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi6806_inf.html

Ask your wife to read the book "Surviving an Affair" with you. Within its a pages is a pathway out of the rubble of your broken marriage.

Listen to these clips. Beware of Bad Counselors

What are you seeing the therapist for?
If it is war related, like PTSD or you are having nightmares of war or having a hard time adjusting then certainly continue to go.

But if it is solely for your marriage, like a marriage therapist then your efforts would probably be best spent focusing on Dr. Harley's program.

Is the therapist a VA counselor?

Yes, i agree. It was a problem for me having too much free time on my hands.
Its not good for anyone IMO.
Been reading all the info on this site last few days.

So, what are her top emotional needs? Do you know them well enough to list 'em?

And you're right: Idle time is a vulnerability.
What are you doing to repurpose that time?

The problem is now.. my wife says its "too late" for that now.
Every time i try to meet those needs, tell her I'm sorry, i love you, walk away instead of fighting, she just drags up the past things I've done wrong again and again..

She is very cold and nasty now. I told her to post here but so far, nothing.
I truly am remorseful, sorry for ALL the things I've done, etc.
I can totally understand how hurt and angry she is now but what can i do if she is unwilling at this point to work things out?

Maybe you and the others have some advice?

Its destroying me. She says she can't even be around me anymore and we were always together just about everyday before this.

I was never out all night or stuff like that. I just went through a very bad emotional time mentally in the last 6-8 months and made very bad choices in that time.

When i started to have a lot of free time, all theses things from my past ( being abandoned by my mom, etc ) stuff like that all of a sudden came over me like a storm?? I have no idea why either? I resented my wife for not being there for me and i isolated myself from her. Pushed her away emotionally.
The OW whom i had the EA with, was just an escape i think from that pain i felt?

Not sure, but I've never done anything like that before nor was interested in any other woman but my wife. Never.

Our sex life was great, and i truly loved her with all my heart. I don't know why i started that EA with OW.


Hopefully some of you can help.


To the earlier poster, no, I don't have any PTSD but many of my team mates do. I know what thats like. Some of my buds are in bad shape mentally. Mostly cause of guilt i believe. I have a few in the wounded warrior program as well as a few other lesser known support groups.

Another poster asked me about Meds? I was taking ambien for awhile cause i couldn't sleep at all. I stopped recently ( about 4 months ago) I feel so alive now and this is all hitting me really hard.

Ive explained all these things to my wife but she just says its an excuse. She said she tried to work things out with me but i honestly don't remember it that way. She was just very angry and hurt all the time and i just avoided it and her.

I know thats a mistake but i can't take it back. I really am trying to apply the things I've learned on here.
The Love deposits / withdrawals.. Emotional needs as well recently.

Just seems like too little to late. IDK but we have 2 kids 21, and 14 I don't want to live without them nor do i want to be without my wife.
Hope some of you can see I'm very sincere.

But doesn't it take 2 to work things out??

Thanks again members.
I respect you all who reconciled and are in a better marriage cause of it.
Its def a hard task to accomplish.


t

How about writing Dr. Harley and having both you and your BW on the show together?

Email your questions to Joyce Harley at mbradio@marriagebuilders.com. When your email question is chosen to be answered on the radio show, you will be notified by email directing you to listen to the rebroadcast. If you would like to consider being a caller, include your telephone number. You will be called by us to explain the procedure to you. Every caller will receive a complementary book by Dr. Harley that addresses their question.

I will. Thank you.

You're welcome and let us know what they tell you.

Even if you are remorseful, it is your ACTIONS not your FEELINGS that will change how your wife feels about you now.

Twice now you have said that you 'totally understand' how she feels...but the reality is that you don't. As a mother, I can only imagine the pain of losing a child. But having never lost a child, I do not *really* 'totally understand' what thats like. Likewise, it is impossible for a WS to totally understand the pain that is caused by an A. You may be remorseful and come to terms with the damage it has caused, but you will never know the gut wrenching pain and agony. As a BS I would be insulted by you suggesting you do.


I continue to get a hint of you downplaying your A. For instance, now multiple times you have referred to your A as a friendship or EA, but in your original post you said you had sex with this woman. So this was not a friendship nor an EA, but a full fledged PA. An affair. Also you have multiple times said that this was the ONLY time you have done this, which comes across to me again as you downplaying the situation. Once is all it takes to cause destruction to your family.

I know you said you own this, but I read some things from your posts that as a BS I would be insulted by. I am trying to make you aware of this, so that you choose your words more carefully to your BW.


It really doesn't matter what we see. Your goal here is to pay just compensation to your wife after devastating her, not convince an anonymous group that you are sincere.

Dr Harley says that a WW does not necessarily need to show complete remorse for recovery to happen, but a WH generally needs to be 'hat in hand' for a BW to want to recover. You need to Plan A like never before, there are many men on this forum who have Plan A'd for a very long time and are experts at it who could be very valuable resources to you. Right now you cannot expect your wife to meet you half way, if she is talking about leaving then she will not do that. You need to lure her back by continuing to meet her needs and not commit LB's for as long as it takes to build her LB up for you again. Can you do that?

Also, the greatest way to repair a low LB is to spend time together, giving each other your undivided attention. Is this something she will do? Dr Harley recommends 15 hrs a week to maintain romantic love, but 20-25 hrs a week to restore romantic love. If she is willing, you would want to work toward the 20-25 hrs/wk of UA time.

Would you be able to schedule a trip with her, and would she go? This is a great way to kickstart spending a great deal of time together.

You didn't answer my question, tjg. I asked you what her needs are.

She's afraid of being vulnerable. She's angry and she's hurt, and all the more so because the hurt came from the one person in the world who she most expected to have her six covered. That doesn't get better in just 4 months.

One thing you can do is admit to yourself that you probably haven't realized the half of how hurt & angry she is. There are lots of layers of hurt & angry. You 'get' some of it; but it took me about 8 months to unpeel the onion enough to get down close to it, and closer to 2 years before I got about as far as there was to get.

So what? I was always an upstanding family man, home-for-dinner, good dad, hard worker, and the whole time I was in the affair, I slept by my wife's side every single night. Your affair was actually pretty garden-variety, not very different from a milliopn other affairs. Your having been a good guy prior to the affair, or during it, doesn't have any bearing on how much it hurts. Heck, maybe it makes it hurt more for her -- you set a high standard, and then you failed it, just like I did.

I'll give you a shortcut: You got selfish. Thats it. It's not a real satisfying explanation, but it's about as close to the truth as you can get. It wasn't because your mom abandoned you -- plenty of people whose parents abandoned them don't cheat on their spouses, so there's no point in suggesting mitigating circumstances. In fact, the act of suggesting mitigating circumstances is counterproductive. Can you guess why?

No need to guess -- I'll gve you another shortcut, tjg: It's because, when you suggest mitigating circumstances, that casts some of the blame for your infidelity outside you. That suggests to your wife that you probably remain susceptible to the caprice of events, and that you're not fuly owning it. It says to her, "He cheated because circumstances got bad, so if circumstances get bad again, he may cheat again." And that provides her with exactly zero reassurance for the future. Zilch.

So, what should you do? For starters, fully own it. Own the affair. Acknowledge that the one & only reason you did it was because you let yourself get selfish. Once you acknowledge that, you'll be in a better position to demonstrate -- with actions, not devalued words -- that you're recommitted to not letting it happen again. That may give you a beachhead from which you can start to help her feel emotionally-safe again with you. It will take more than 4 months, and more than 8. And there are no guarantees that she'll be on-board.

Yes, but: at this stage, you need to do the heavy lifting. There are no guarantees that she'll respond. Yes, eventually, you'll both need to be all-in, if you want to get to the goal of having a better marriage post-affair than you had pre-affair (and that need to be your goal, because the pre-affair marriage obviously wasn't strong enough). For now, the last thing you can afford to do is to make your efforts conditional upon reciprocity from her -- if you do, it will guarantee that your marriage won't make it.

I get really tired of the 'I was a good guy right up to doing the worst thing I could do' speech on these forums.

If you had been an out-all-night guy or an obvious sleaze your wife would have been just as hurt, but with something of a heads up to prepare her.

This way as well as the agony of betrayal you also get the sucker punch of shock. Of wondering how you did not know this about your own husband.

Your wife is being 'cold' because she can hardly move or think due to shock.

Also, she doesn't have to do, or be anything. She was betrayed she can waltz off to a divorce lawyer and never take your calls ever again. She has biblical cause for a divorce and it certainly a good cure for the pain. It's what I did and it surely works out very well when you can't see much action going on to save the marriage.

If she isn't going to cure her pain by leaving then you have to cure her pain with action. Not talking about 'remorse' -but doing it. And doing it without waiting for her to spoon feed you and become your recovery cheerleader.

She's in too much pain to give a crap about the fact you need encouragement.

So thank the stars Gloveoil is on your thread and ACT.

This.is the nutshell. Every time you tell her that stuff you can't control causes affairs she packs that mental suitcase some more.

The way to avoid affairs is to not have them. Don't spend time away from your wife. Don't have close friendships with women.