I HAVE BEEN MARRIED FOR 7 YEARS. AFTER 4 YEARS I HAD AN AFFAIR THAT LASTED ABOUT A MONTH WITH MY HUSBAND'S BEST FRIEND. I TOLD HIM ABOUT IT AND IT TOOK HIM ABOUT A YEAR TO GET OVER IT AND HE REALLY DIDN'T GET OVER IT THEN ABOUT 10 MONTHS AGO I MET SOMEONE ONLINE WE HAD AN AFFAIR. I LEFT MY HUSBAND, THEN ABOUT 3 MONTHS AGO I ENDED THE AFFAIR AND MY HUSBAND AND I GOT BACK TOGETHER HE SAID HE COULD START OVER NEVER BRING UP THE PAST. WELL HE HASN'T LET THE PAST GO AND HE'S DEPPRESSEED ALL THE TIME WE FIGHT JUST LIKE BEFOR, AFTER THE FIRST TIME. I CAN'T DEAL WITH IT ANYMORE. PLEASE HELP I NEED SOME ADVICE

I would strongly urge you to read the Harley books 'Surviving an affair' 'His needs her needs' and 'Love busters'. And also start counseling with a marriage counselor as soon as possible because it is pretty evident that you and your husband do not have the tools and gameplan to heal your marriage by yourselves.<p>What your husband is going thru (resentment,depression and anger)is very typical of a betrayed spouse, especially since you betrayed him twice. And it's also very typical for you as a wayward spouse to try to forget about what you did and to move on as soon as possible. The problem is that you and your husband can not rebuild the marriage with his way and your way of dealing with the affair. It is for this reason that I urge you once more to seek professional help.<p>I'm going to tell you some things that you may not like but I feel that they are important enough for you to read them. First you betrayed your marital vows by having an affair not once but twice with two different men in the 7 years you've been married, and unless you know the reason why you had these affairs, your marriage has as much as a snowball's chance in h*** of recovering. You have not proven to be a person that can be trusted (would you trust your husband if the roles were reversed?). And second, even if you were to leave your husband and divorce him, your issues of infidelity will accompany you into your next relationship with the same results as your first one. So running away will not solve your problem with infidelity.<p>And your husband has to decide once and for all if he is truly serious in wanting to be married to you. If he is, then it is his duty to stop bringing up the past and using it to hurt you, the woman he loves. It is nothing but abuse on his part. And just like you, he can not run away because his hurt will poison any future relationship he might have with another woman. He needs to want to be healed from the emotional injury your affairs have caused him, in order for him to be a loving husband to you. <p>I hope that you stay on this board because it not only is a great place to vent your feelings but because of all the practical advise from people that have been in your shoes. It's worth it.<p>Joe<p>[ May 18, 2002: Message edited by: TooMuchCoffeeMan ]</p>

I agree with everything toomuchcoffeeman said. [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img]

Dawn are you still with us?<p>Joe

Dawn:<p>TMCM's made all the important points. I would add one more. your husband took you back. He deserves a lot of credit for doing so after what you've done to him. He loves you. That love may sustain you both yet. But do what TMCM has suggested. Read all you can from this site and from any of the numerous books people on this forum can recommend to you. GET COUNSELING! First and foremost, you need to do this!<p>Good luck to you and your loving husband.

I agree with everything that has been said in that you need to understand why you are unfaithful to your husband and expect him to be loving and kind without bringing up the past.
First, your would have to a have great lack of respect toward your husband to totally humiliate him by having an affair with his best friend which is of course a double betrayal. You destroyed him to his core. You then engage in another affair and expect him to just let him get over it
How do you think you would feel and handle it if it was your husband that had an affair with your best friend and continued later to have another affair. Would you just let it go and accept it.
I think down deep you have great anger to do what you did to your husband. If you do not get into counseling and understand your humiliating actions towards your husband then I doubt there will be much much hope. I wish you luck.

THANKS FOR ALL THE INFO HELPED ME TO UNDERSTAND WHERE HE'S COMING FROM WE PLAN TO GO TO A MARRIAGE RENEWAL WEEKEND THROUGH OUR CHURCH, CALLED HIS NEEDS, HER NEEDS BASED ON HIS NEEDS HER NEEDS: BUILDING AN AFFAIR-PROOF MARRIAGE BY DR. WILLARD F HARLEY, JR. OH ONE MORE THING THE 2nd AFFAIR THAT I HAD WAS NOTHING MORE THAN TALKING AND MEETING WITH THIS OTHER PERSON, BUT STILL LOOKED APON AS AN AFFAIR(THROUGH MY HUSBAND'S EYES) BUT I DO KNOW THAT IT WAS STILL WRONG. THANKS,
DAWN
KEEP THE RESPONSE'S COMING

How can you ever expect him to get over this when you repeat the actions. You have no idea of the pain and damage to a person's self esteem when you do this type of thing. You have a serious problem, that if you cannot get control, you should get out of the marriage. Since he continues to take you back, you need to go to therapy first and find out what is worng with your thought patterns that you can so easily toss your marriage vows and someone elses feelings out the window, when you become self centered around yourself. That is not normal!!! After you learn what a marriage is and what the vows of a marriage are meant to be, and also understand what it is about yourself that allows you to react to these feelings, you can start therapy with him on the marriage.

Dawn<p>Acknowledging that your affair(s) were wrong is a step in the right direction. And so is you and your husband's going to your church's marriage renewal weekend based on the Harley books.<p>On this forum there are people that are going thru the betrayal step ,like your husband, and quite naturally their comments towards you will be highly critical of your behavior. They are not mean spirited people, their intention is to help you by making you see the damage you've caused by having your affair(s) and so take their comments in the spirit that they are given. They are very kind people and more so with a wayward spouse that is remorseful for the pain s/he has caused.<p>Dawn, I don't know how old you are but it really doesn't matter because in order to help heal your marriage you need PATIENCE and lots of it with your husband's pain. One way is to avoid what are called 'love busters' which are 'selfish demands''angry outbursts''disrespectful judgements' which are the love killers of any relationship. I urge you and your husband to read the book 'Love busters' because it will give you all the details on what they are along with case samples of each one of them, and also the other Harley books 'Surviving an affair' and 'His needs Her needs'. These books will give you hope and make you realize that your marriage can become better than it was IF BOTH YOU AND YOUR HUSBAND ARE COMMITTED IN USING THE PRINCIPLES OF MARITAL RECOVERY IN THEM.<p>Good luck on the marriage renewal weekend and God bless. Keep us posted.<p>Joe<p>[ May 20, 2002: Message edited by: TooMuchCoffeeMan ]</p>

DAWNMDOZA,<p>You've gotten good input here so I will not repeat it all. <p>How do you handle your H? Your H will have a zillion questions related to the affairs. He will have a need to discuss them at length for a long time. He will have anger to express towards your actions. You listen to his express his anger and answer all of his questions. The trick is to learn to do this in a way that neither of you are love busting.<p>You are only 3 months post your second affair. That's a drop in the bucket in the time it takes a BS to recover from an affair. In the best case it takes 2-5 years... yes YEARS, to recovery. I'm about 13 months post d-day. Thoughts of my H's affairs are still ever-present in my mind. They deminish with time, but it takes a long time.<p>Your repeat affair will only serve to make your H's recovery time even longer. As the WS, it's your reponsibility to help him heal from your actions. One of the most important things you will need to do is to is to 'affair proof yourself'. How are you going to do this? How are you going to convince your H that you will never have another affair?<p>This is an important step.<p>And tell me, what is the point of never bringing up the past? Burying the affairs will only cause more problems in your relationship. To fully recover your marriage you and your H will need to be able to discuss your affairs, their roots, etc. so that you can affair proof your marriage.<p>[ May 20, 2002: Message edited by: zorweb ]</p>

WELL I'VE LET MY HUSBAND READ ALL THE REPLYS THAT YOU ALL HAVE WRITTEN TO ME, I'TS HELPED A LITTLE. ANYWAY THINGS ARE GOING GOOD SO FAR THIS WEEK. HOPE IT STAYS THAT WAY GOING TO THE MARRIAGE RETREAT IN THE MIDDLE OF JUNE. THANKS,
DAWN

Dawn:<p>Get you and your H into Cing as soon as you can, too. Don't wait for the church weekend. <p>Good for you, showing your H this forum. You care and are willing to learn. I wish my W were more like that! [img]images/icons/wink.gif" border="0[/img]

WELL LAST NIGHT WE WENT TO ONE OF OUR MARRIED COULPLE FRIENDS HOME (THAT THEY JUST BOUGHT )SPENT ALL NIGHT IN THE HOT TUB DRINKING CHAMPAIGN TALKING AND HAD A GREAT TIME WE HAVE 3 CHILDREN 10 YEAR OLD GRL, 6 YEAR OLD GRL, AND 4 YEAR OLD BOY. SO NEVER REALLY GET TO SPEND MUCH TIME ALONE, THAT'S ALOT OF OUR PROBLEM. THIS WEEK-END IS MY OLDEST DAUGHTER'S B-DAY SO WE PLAN TO SPEND SAT-MONDAY THERE SWIMMING AND DOING LOTS OF FUN STUFF. SO IT WILL BE FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY. WE ARE TRYING TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER EVEN IF IT'S JUST GOING TO THE STORE BY OURSELVES. TRYING TO FIND THE US AGAIN,JUST ABOUT THERE. EVREYTHINGS GOING GREAT. WELL I THINK PART OF MY PROBLEM IS THAT I WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED BY MY FATHER FROM AGE 4-16. SO MAYBE THAT'S WHY I HURT AND DO SELF-DESTRUCTIVE THINGS? NOT SURE BUT I'M SURE IT GOT SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT. I'M 27 MY HUSBAND 37. 10 YEARS APART. I GOT MARRIED WHEN I WAS 17 FOR THE FIRST TIME LASTED 10 MONTHE THEN MET MY PRESENT HUSBAND MARRIED RIGHT AFTER MY DIVORCE. SO I AT ONE POINT I FELT THAT I'VE BEEN TIED DOWN ALL MY LIFE.
DAWN

Sorry, but he can't let go of it because it wasn't properly worked through. You have to realize that by being with his best friend, you betrayed your wedding vows and destroyed his trust. My H's affair was also with the woman I thought was my best friend, think again. <p>He is NOT going to get 'over it' until you realize what you did, and do everything you can to make it better. If you haven't gone to counseling, either individually or together, it will be almost impossible to recover from this.<p>As far as being tied down, you willingly married him right? Marriage is a commitment. When you break those vows, it takes a lot of hard work to restore that trust. It took me about 18 mos after what I thought was an EA only, only to find out last summer (6 years later) that it was sexual, including in MY BED which has broken my heart. You have to realize that your husband is dealing not only with your betrayal, but that of his friend also.<p>He should not be asked to 'get over it and not bring it up anymore.' That's selfish and unrealistic on your part. Please go to findarticles.com and read "Shattered Vows" and you'll see why he hasn't healed. Have him read the article too and he'll see that his feelings are very justified and he NEEDS to talk about it to recover.<p>I also strongly recommend the book Torn Asunder, it was the best one we found after my H's affair. My counselor liked it so much she started using it in her practice.<p>Dr. Phil says that once you've had an affair and driven the car off of the road into the ditch, it's up to YOU to do anything you can to make things right. Complaining to him that he's not getting over it fast enough won't help. You obviously didn't work on the original problem either in yourself or the marriage as you had a 2nd affair. And you may have a 3rd if you don't do the work now to repair the damage. Good luck

well it's been about a week since i last wrote, everything's going ok. we are talking alot more now looking forward to the marriage retreat. still a lot of hurt feelings for both of us. he feels that i am just trying to make him belive that i have changed and want to be with only him. and still thinks that there was sex involved with the 2nd affair witch there wasn't. (the internet affair) but we did meet in person and talked. i can't say or do anything to make him believe that it didn't get to that point. i guess i't will take time but i'm not sure he'll ever believe me. today is our oldest daughter's 10th birthday. we had a great time this week-end our talks are getting better,not fighting as much anymore how long that will last? i'm not sure but we'll see.
dawn

Dawn,<p>It is good to see that you are working to make your marriage better. I wish you well.<p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>WELL I THINK PART OF MY PROBLEM IS THAT I WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED BY MY FATHER FROM AGE 4-16. SO MAYBE THAT'S WHY I HURT AND DO SELF-DESTRUCTIVE THINGS? <hr></blockquote><p>My DIL who does VERY self-destructive things has been involved in an affair which she worked very hard to carry out. She was sexually abused for about the same span of time as you. The man was a relative, but not her father. Her counselor made it very clear that until she deals with the scars from the SA, she will not be able to have healthy relationships because she is not coming to terms with deeply personal issues. <p>Have you been through counseling to deal with your SA? From what I have learned, that is essential. Heal yourself, then heal your marriage. A good book that was recommended to me by a victim of SA is The Wounded Heart. I am reading it to help me understand where my DIL is coming from.<p>Good luck, Estes<p>[ May 28, 2002: Message edited by: Estes49 ]</p>

Dawn-
Nice to note that things are progressing well between your H and you during the past week.
You must accept the fact that it was you who brought down the house. So it will take long time to rebuild. Because, rebuilding process also includes removal of debris besides new construction. You can not construct till the debris are cleared. So you have to be patient.
I am a WS in my marriage of 26 years. I can very well feel the pain and sorrows my BS is going through for the past one year since the discovery. It is very difficult for BS to accept that the WS has changed for better. It is a lack of confidence stuff. As much as I wish, she will overcome my betrayal, I think it is easier said than done.
Therefore, I am taking this in right stride. I would also request you to do likewise.
Remember most things heal with time, therefore, allow time to heal your BS' wound and your's too.
Wishing you both all the best and happy matrimony.
Ash
WS-53, BS-52.
Married - 26 Years.
D-24 & S-22.
D/Date: 5/01.
PA - in 81 & 89 ( casual) <img src="graemlins/teary.gif" border="0" alt="[Teary]" />

Dawn-
Nice to note that things are progressing well between your H and you during the past week.
You must accept the fact that it was you who brought down the house. So it will take long time to rebuild. Because, rebuilding process also includes removal of debris besides new construction. You can not construct till the debris are cleared. So you have to be patient.
I am a WS in my marriage of 26 years. I can very well feel the pain and sorrows my BS is going through for the past one year since the discovery. It is very difficult for BS to accept that the WS has changed for better. It is a lack of confidence stuff. As much as I wish, she will overcome my betrayal, I think it is easier said than done.
Therefore, I am taking this in right stride. I would also request you to do likewise.
Remember most things heal with time, therefore, allow time to heal your BS' wound and your's too.
Wishing you both all the best and happy matrimony.
Ash
WS-53, BS-52.
Married - 26 Years.
D-24 & S-22.
D/Date: 5/01.
PA - in 81 & 89 ( casual) [img]images/icons/blush.gif" border="0[/img]

Dawn-
Nice to note that things are progressing well between your H and you during the past week.
You must accept the fact that it was you who brought down the house. So it will take long time to rebuild. Because, rebuilding process also includes removal of debris besides new construction. You can not construct till the debris are cleared. So you have to be patient.
I am a WS in my marriage of 26 years. I can very well feel the pain and sorrows my BS is going through for the past one year since the discovery. It is very difficult for BS to accept that the WS has changed for better. It is a lack of confidence stuff. As much as I wish, she will overcome my betrayal, I think it is easier said than done.
Therefore, I am taking this in right stride. I would also request you to do likewise.
Remember most things heal with time, therefore, allow time to heal your BS' wound and your's too.
Wishing you both all the best and happy matrimony.
Ash
WS-53, BS-52.
Married - 26 Years.
D-24 & S-22.
D/Date: 5/01.
PA - in 81 & 89 ( casual) [img]images/icons/blush.gif" border="0[/img]

well everything seemed to be going good but as usual just when you think your headed in the right direction the walls come crashing in on you. well he started on me tonight, it started with the phone ringing, he answerd and it was a man's voice on the other line, he said sorry i've called the wrong number. well i knew who it was. it was my little sister's boyfriend(was on caller id) (my lil sister lives with us) her boyfriend works where i use to work. so naturally my husband thought it was one of the many men from my old job, that he thinks i slept with. which is so wrong. i can't stand when he implies these things. ( he is all but calling me a slut) so once again we've taken 5 steps forward and now 10 steps back. will this ever end???? then he gets on the computer hoping to find some trace of me communicating with om. which is not going on, couldn't find anything, so he says he thinks i cleared everything. all i find myself doing is praying for the strenght to deal with the backward motion we seem to be always taking. and it should be forward. sorry for the length i had to vent.
bad night [img]images/icons/frown.gif" border="0[/img]
dawn