Regret,
I think Kily's suggestion is excellent, and you have been hearing from some very good people with regard to advice. I thought I would discuss something you have said.
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I am so glad to read your message because I honestly do not know what good could come out of me telling. It is over and I have moved on with my life. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Well, you are not moving on with your life. You still have OM in your mind and as you said you still love him. If you are focussed enough on him to still love him, then your H is not receiving your full focus and attention. As for what good it could do, permit me to offer you some ideas.
1. Your H will know who he is married to (this is much more good than bad)
2. Your H will be allowed to make a very important decision( do I love this woman enough to forgive her, or did what she do run what I think a good marriage is). It is HIS decision not yours to make.
3. You clearly state that intimacy and affection were sorely lacking in your marriage and that is what you would really like to have. You may tell him this, but he won't appreciate the full gravity of your needs until he knows the consequences of NOT meeting them.
4. Clearly you two cannot and have not talked about your desire for more affection, intimacy, and emotional connection. You telling your H about the A will set in motion the deepest, most heart rending discussions of either of your lives. But out of that will come a new openness, a new sharing, and yes even a new respect for one another. At that point you both will find it much easier to share, communicate, help one another. THat is what is meant when you see people say here: "I don't condone the A, but because of it our marriage is much better." The A itself surely didn't make the A better, what made it better is how both parties handled it, came together and addressed their issues, and consciously made a decision to preserve the marriage and make it better.
5. Your H is the person who is supposed to be helping you through the biggest crisis of your life and your silence is cutting him out of a very major portion of his obligation as a spouse. You will find that if you continue to cut him out of this, you will find it easier to cut him out of other things. You won't tell him of other things that make you sad, because you fear getting into this issue.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Your H married you "for better or for worse", this is the worse. It will really hurt him to hear what you have to say, but you will very likely be surprised at his willingness to try and make the marriage work. You are cheating yourself of the opportunity to really know your H like you never have.
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I know this is probably going to sound horrible, but we have a really happy life and if I told him, I think he would be destroyed. I have thought a lot about telling and not telling and I always come to the conclusion that telling will only bring pain. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Telling will bring pain, but it often does bring many rewards. Some of them I have mentioned above. The problem you don't see and cannot see is that your NOT telling is bring you pain and him pain. Most men, indeed, most betrayed spouses that post here will tell you that they sensed something was wrong with their spouse, but they didn't know what to do about it. They often felt cut off from the spouse, and many thought they were losing their minds. Certainly while the A was going on, the spoue knows something is wrong. THey can feel it even if they cannot really understand what it is.
You can bring an end to that uncertainty. Now it may be true that your H is so fragil that he could not withstand the pain, but most can and do. Most that post here would much rather know where they were failing and work to make their WS happier and in love with them again.
They cannot do that if they are constantly being lied to, and you are still lying to your H when you tell him you are fine, that you are thinking about something or other, when it is OM you are thinking about, when you hurt so bad and have such self doubt that you don't enjoy your life which means he doesn't enjoy his either.
Regret, this is a subtle business you are in now, and the obvious answers rarely work. We all know that the "radical honesty" emphasized here is counter to your gut intuition, but so is much of the approach here. Why? Because it focuses on pragmatic issues and the basic cause and effect, not on what seems to be the least painful method.
Please do some reading. REad His Needs Her Needs, get some counseling, and then seriously consider telling your H. Several people that have posted here over the last few years have found that telling the spouse in the presence of a counselor or clergyman was the most effective and supporting way to tell their spouse.
Keep posting I am sure you will get many more answer, but as you keep posting I suspect you will begin to see a variety of things clearer.
God Bless,
JL
