Hi guys-it's been a crazy weekend. I've read so much, alot of it makes so much sense. I think that means I'm beginning to heal. I do feel like I'm grieving the A, it's hard to admit. I read over the weekend-when you think of OM, just remember-he's not your husband, you're not his wife. That helped, and made me calm. Also, he's like an ex-boyfriend. You don't call ex-boyfriends, do you? Another light bulb moment. I've just got to build a bridge and get over it. I read peaceandlove's post. I cried for myself, and for her pain. She's stuck, and can't move on with her life. I was stuck for 7 weeks, I couldn't move on. Today I feel alittle stronger-one day at a time-NC. I love my H, and my kids. Our M does have a strong base. Guess what? I can't tell H about A. He would kick me out-we've discussed this, reguarding other people. I wonder if the problems lie with me, and not him. When I look back, H has never changed. I did. Maybe I have to figure out why I said ok to the A.H loves me the best he can. ANYWAY, I'm here to fix me, and M. And I know that I still have feelings for OM. I won't let those feelings run my life, like they did in the past. He's not my husband! I'm not his wife!

jetgirl, I don't know you're story. Your post caught my eye this morning. I just wanted to comment on what you said about your H would kick you out if he knew about the A.

First off I am the BS. I have always hated A's. My H and I had many discussions about it because there have been 3 in his family which caused much pain, not to mention other people we know who have been effected by A's. He shared my views, but I felt stronger than him in my disgust. I always told him if he was going to have an A, just tell me and we'll end the M. He KNEW I hated the lying and sneaking around. He knew I'd kick him out if he did this.

Well here I am. I didn't kick him out even though he put me and him through hell this past year. I am as surprised as he is by my reaction. So I'm telling you not to make assumptions about how your H will react. I would hate the thought that H's A would have ended without me ever having known about it. I know there would always be something between us if he didn't come clean. If we recover at least we will not have secrets between us. Good luck! CV

Hey, at least be honest in your posting. It's not that you "can't" tell your H of your A.
No, the truth is you just "Won't"! Quite a difference.

Guess what? That's OK. Its your life and just like making your choice to have an A, the choice to be honest and open is yours to make as well. Just know up front and in advance that continuing to hide this most awful of secrets will be an albatross around the neck of your M. ALWAYS!

It WILL cause a wall to build BETWEEN the 2 of you. You will forever have a seperation that can Never be bridged Unless and Until you be an adult and come clean. Please don't claim you want to use the MB'ers principles to rebuild your M, and then just disregard one of its foundations: Radical Honesty. By not doing what is necessary, at worst you are putting yourself at risk for another A. (I know, I know you NEVER will again. But isn't that what your past self would have said about having one in the first place??) And at best your setting yourself up to continue to have a unsatisfying M (because your "Secret" demands that you can NEVER be truly YOU with your H). Their can be NO intimacy,Until you can have the safety and security to be open and honest.

Secrets, dishonesty, and lies are what got you where you are now. Do you want to continue down this path, or try something different? Or are you happy and content where you are now?

Nevertheless, with all that said, you will of course make your own decisions. Since you are here, I suspect that you are sincere in wanting to save your M and even to make it better. Unfortunately, many people are sincere.....But Sincerely Wrong. No one is questioning your intent, just your plan of action.

If years down the road your M has ended or is not where you'd like it to be, you can most likely point to this reason (a secret A) and at least have the answer as to why that is. I wish what your planning to do would work out, but it's highly unlikely. However, it is your life and your choice.
In any case, good luck and keep trying. (If this is a bit crabby, blame it on Monday morning.)

<small>[ April 19, 2004, 12:02 PM: Message edited by: top rope ]</small>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I can't tell H about A. He would kick me out-we've discussed this, reguarding other people. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Oh boy...you can't tell your H about the affair because you are afraid he will kick you out?? What if he finds out about it later on? Then what? My H and I always had this discussion. I always told him if he ever wanted to get out of the marriage then just cheat on me...well, guess what? here I am...I am still here fighting for my marriage and my H is here too fighting for it. Dont assume what your husband will do unless you ahve walked in his shoes. He may have said that, but once reality hits you in the face, you dont know what you will do. Being a BS, I know I would much rather hear about my H affair from HIM not someone else..

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">H loves me the best he can.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Is this good enough for you? The best he can? The love can always get better with the right tools...and you have them...let your husband use them too...

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">ANYWAY, I'm here to fix me, and M. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">How can you fix the marriage if you are the only one working on it? In order for recovery to begin, you must include your H..and as long as he doesn't think anything is broken, he is not going to fix it. I would suggest you tell him about your A NOW.

There are many people on here in your shoes right now. FinallyLearning just recetnly told her H about her A...I would suggest you find her posts and read them.

We are here to help you thru this and if you husband decides to join us we will help him thru this as well. I wish you the best of luck...

Jetgirl,
I sincerely hope that you have not put the idea of being honest with your H out of you mind forever. It is a mistake that will stay with you as long as you and your H remain together.

Do NOT believe that your H will absolutely kick you out if you are honest. What is said regarding other marriages or "what if's" are not reality. When you decide to be honest with your H, you will be rebuilding a bridge that you can cross over together.

Until then, good luck with your personal journey, I pray that you will choose at some time to bring your H along with you and begin to honestly rebuild your relationship.

Plan of action? HMMM, I never thought of that. I just take it one day at a time. Honestly, I feel alittle weak right now, like I want to call OM. What good would it do. None, but make me feel like an idiot. As far as my H goes, I still feel that I won't tell him. I got myself into this mess, I have to get out of it. He's innocent, he's who he is. If I choose to stay married, then don't I have to deal with it? But first things first, I have to stay with NC. When I think about how things are with OM, it disturbs me. He ended it first, so I was rejected. The last time I was rejected was 1983! I wonder how I would feel if I did the rejecting. Then I would have the power, not him. Ahh, I know-I do have the power over my actions-it's the addiction to him I'm weak over now. I know I'm rambling, but I gotta get it out.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I got myself into this mess, I have to get out of it. He's innocent, he's who he is. If I choose to stay married, then don't I have to deal with it? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">OK, I am the BS...I too was innocent, and I am who I am...but I KNOW there were problems in the marriage to begin with and now I am changing them. There were problems in your marriage as well, but right now you are choosing to ignore them...If there weren't problems then why did you go out and have the A to begin with? If your H is so perfect, then why wouldn't you choose to stay married to him? Dont you see, you both have problems and you both need to address them together! It is not fair to your H to not tel him. Believe me, he will feel more betrayed later on down the line if he finds out about this rather than if you tell him now! You are choosing not to tell him cuz you dont want to deal with the pain and suffereing that will come along with it....It is much easier to work on the marriage together than to do it alone. Believe me!

Jetgirl,
You are obviously not at the point that you want to hear any advice that follows MB principles. I understand that it is early in your walk here and hope that you will decide to read the advice that caring people have taken the time to give you and contemplate it.

You are correct in saying that your H was innocent in this, He does not know that he is involved in an unfaithful marriage and that you are rebuilding your life without allowing him to participate.

I won't bother to reply any further, when you are ready to be honest, you will begin to move forward. It's your call.

Hi JetGirl,

Please don't make one of the mistakes my wayward husband keeps repeating: assuming you can control the damage with lies and secrecy.

If you do not confess the affair to your husband, you will not respect yourself, your husband, or your marriage enough for full recovery and a fulfilling marriage to have a chance. As long as you have this secret you feel you can't share with your husband, you will not feel accepted, loved, safe. As Mom said, he could find out some other way... then it will be even more likely that he will leave you - BECAUSE of your dishonesty in hiding the affair.

IMO I suspect you are doing what my husband prefers to do... You don't want to have to deal with the consequences of the affair, you want recovery to be easier on yourself, you don't want more embarrassment and shame. It's understandable for you to feel that way, especially with all that you are going through emotionally already. BUT it's still the wrong thing to do - no question about it. AND trying to keep such a secret will ultimately erode any chance of a truly satisfying marriage with your husband.

Build a bridge... but build a bridge for you and your husband to connect on with honesty, respect, and love... there will be no magical bridge you can build to avoid your responsibility to be honest with your husband. As one of the posters so wisely pointed out, you cannot really follow Marriage Builders principles to work on your marriage while so blatantly disregarding one of the key principles - radical honesty.

Your husband has a right to know and a right to decide for himself. What if revealing the affair would give him the realization and motivation to work on the marriage? What if hiding the truth from him would guarantee his complacency? Also, you will always know the truth and even if he does start working on the marriage you will always be thinking, 'but he would have left me if he knew the truth'. So how can you ever feel accepted and loved by him no matter how much he loves you? Why even bother working on the marriage if you insist on crippling any chance for true emotional intimacy and devotion?

IMO it would be wrong to use the safety of your marriage to help you get over the OM, without really giving your marriage or your husband the knowledge and tools necessary to have a chance at satisfying you.

I have told my husband many times that (as long as I'm still hs wife - the divorce isn't final) whatever he's done I will stand by him through recovery (as long as he follows ALL the necessary steps to recovery). And if I didn't love him that much, THEN and only then, would he be right in keeping things from me. BUT it would also then be true that I wouldn't deserve him - if I wouldn't be willing to stand by him and help repair the damage of the affair.

You have a serious problem that will not get better as long as it's kept secret. Yes, revealing that problem will cause an immediate increase in your pain and will be extremely upsetting for your husband. But if you can't/won't tell him the truth then you may as well just tell him you want a divorce. And even then, you at least owe it to him to tell him why you would be giving up on the marriage with no apparent reason from his perspective.

The other posters here will help you get through this - but not around this. Maybe your husband won't help you get through this... but you have no right to use him to try to help yourself get over the OM while making sure he has no real chance to prove he will stand by you.

<small>[ April 20, 2004, 06:37 PM: Message edited by: meremortal ]</small>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I can't tell H about A. He would kick me out </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Doesn't your H have the right to make this decision HIMSELF?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by jetgirl:
<strong> As far as my H goes, I still feel that I won't tell him. I got myself into this mess, I have to get out of it. He's innocent, he's who he is. If I choose to stay married, then don't I have to deal with it? </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Please reconsider. My W hid her A from me for 7 long years. During that time we adopted children and made "life decisions." Now that I know about the A, dealing with the 7 years of lies is MUCH harder than dealing with the A.

In our case, my W reached a point where she was ready to divorce me because I was such a terrible husband. I'm not perfect, but she now realizes that much of our marriage difficulty over the last 7 years has been due to her "holding things in" and not being 100% open and honest with me. In other words, she was trying to "deal with" the issue on her own because she "got herself into this mess." The bottom line is that without my participation, we could never properly heal our M.

In other words, your H does not have to know about the A for your lies to destroy the M. Would it be better he left you now, or later when you are older and more bitter about your M (due to what happens between now and then while you are deceiving him). For me, it is clear that I would rather my W had come clean immediately and spared BOTH of us the pain of 7 years' worth of a struggling M that has left many scars.

BTW, I also used to think that I would literally walk out the door and never look back if my W had an A. As a BS, I understand now that you really never know until your are faced with the reality.

Good luck!

Todd

Jet girl,
You claim you want to go about saving and restoring your M, by yourself and on your own.
How can a 2 person interdependent project be tackled by one? By definition, marriage is not something you can do alone.

Here's a question for you. In your M, are you a spouse who tried to do all the "work" in your relationship?
Did you try this until you were an emotional wreck and then fell into your A?
If you did anything close to this, then why do you think that somehow YOU doing all the work and bearing all the burden will work this time? Does that make sense to you?

If your taking this approach out of guilt or a false sense of protecting your H, then STOP. IF (and this is a BIG IF) the A is really and truly OVER , then you are doing much more damage by hiding it from him then not. Will it be hard to face up too? OF course! But all you are doing now is exercising short term gain for long term pain. Believe me it will be much worse for him (and you) WHEN he finds this out later on. Why??
Because the lies told After an A is over are even more painful and damaging, then the lies told during the A. I guess it has to due with the fact that a BS can at least intellectually understand the need to lie while the A is ongoing. But we never understand the point of lying to us once there is nothing more to protect.

So remember that Everything that you do from the time the A ended until your H finds out (from you or someone else) will be looked upon by him, as deceptive and false. So why work so hard by yourself for something that will get you no credit by Anyone in the end?

You are still in withdrawl so much of this info. is falling on deaf ears. I get that. Just sometimes certain posts catch my attention and I just want to scream "Don't make the same mistakes we made"!

Lastly, I just wanted to commend you for getting a revelation for yourself that hopefully will make the NC easier to handle. Your "light bulb" moment of realizing that you and the OM were never married and never would be is great. Any thing that brings clarity (no matter how small) is a posotive step in the right direction if it makes you see your life how it really is. Keep the light bulb moments coming and you'll have a chance. However, getting your H involved in improving your M is the BEST option you have. In fact, its the only one that will insure success. Take care.

Of course this is just IMO. If its for you take it, if not, well then......... maybe it is for someone.

Our M does have a strong base.
Hmm? Maybe not too strong though, eh?
You don't trust your husband enought to tell him you betrayed him.

Guess what? I can't tell H about A. He would kick me out-we've discussed this, reguarding other people.
And 90% of the people who say this do NOT kick out the spouse when it happens.
Also, until it DOES happen, one has NO IDEA of what it is really like and what it stirs up inside.

<small>[ April 19, 2004, 01:06 PM: Message edited by: Chris -CA123 ]</small>

Jetgirl,

I always had this same saying. If you cheated on me we are done. I am in Plan B now, hoping he will come home someday. It is different when you are going through it then what you think. Chris is absolutely right. I always thought I would just kick him out and be done with him. For some reason it doesn't work that way. You see the wrong you have done in your marriage to make the A possible as a BS and you are willing to work on it if you really love that person. Good Luck!

HINY

Couple of thoughts: Meremortal has a great post just a few messages above here. Be sure to read this several times. I get something new everytime I read it.

Todd is correct in that the longer it goes on the harder it is for the BS to reconcile with the lies and deceit.

As for myself, I always thought if I ever caught/found out that my spouse was cheating on me that I'd kill her or at the very least dump her. Surprised myself that were working on it.

Jetgirl: Don't shortchange your H by not telling him if you want to really work on your M. It WILL probably be one of the hardest things you'll ever do in your life. Before you tell him, be sure to read up on as much of Harleys stuff here that you can. Get the books, and read them (SAA, HNHN, etc.) That might be how you break it to him. Good luck and we'll be praying for you.

Recovering H,

I don't know how you could stand to read that post from me more than once with all those typos LOL. And the sad thing is I DO go back and try to find and fix mistakes before posting.

No doubt more annoying than a spouse borrowing socks LOL (which I was guilty of BTW - wonder if my WS complains about that to the OW as one of his justifications for leaving me? More likely he lets her wear his socks and it's one of the things he thinks is cute... about HER...)

BTW, if anyone knows how I can go back and edit my posts to fix the typos, please tell me.

<small>[ April 20, 2004, 06:32 PM: Message edited by: meremortal ]</small>

Hi mm.
At the top of your post is an animation of a paper and pencil.

Just click on that and you can change anything in your message...Even delete it!

Then click on 'edit post' and voila!
Sincerely, Julie

Guess what? I can't tell H about A. He would kick me out-we've discussed this, reguarding other people. I wonder if the problems lie with me, and not him.

<img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

Yes, the problem lies with you...

remember my first post to you?

I posted to you about what were your life-guiding principles...

The problem lies with you... you are a conflict avoider.

Conflict avoiders NEVER have satisfying marriages ... because the REAL stuff never gets resolved.

If you choose to never tell your H .... you cannot ever wear the badge of honor / honesty as a wife. You cannot lecture your kids on honesty.

If you don't confess .... you will live your life as a conflict avoider, and be miserable. You will have low self-esteem because you cannot respect your own integrity.

Being honest is scary, isn't it?

Not being honest is worse.

Pep

PS ... I really like the title of your thread "Build A Bridge And Get Over It"

Just make sure the bridge you build is one where you become an honest woman ... a woman of courage and integrity.

<small>[ April 20, 2004, 04:01 PM: Message edited by: Pepperband ]</small>

Here is something to think about jetgirl......

You pluck up the courage to tell him about the affair and he say's "Well now I have something to tell you, I had an affair also some time ago".

This is a hyperthetical of course, but what I am saying is how would you feel?

You would be devistated, you would be crying your eyes out and asking him "How could you keep this from me?".

Jetgirl, take 5 minutes and think about how you would feel NOT KNOWING.

Good luck.

If you are going to build a bridge make sure it is stable enough to hold the weight of 2 people.