I have posted a letter I am sending to my wife. This is a letter of my feelings. Please Iknow its long but let me know if this is a correct step in my first stage of recovery,, all FWS please note any possible LB'S and talk to me about them.

Dearest Autumn,
I thought I would tell you some of my thoughts and feelings to you this morning. I feel it is better to tell them to you than just thinking about them.
It seems I have been trying to look toward the future of our marriage and not think about the past as much these past couple of days. Still I have my moments where I will sit in my office and cry about what has happened to us. Its like having half of your body pulled in two different directions. I love everything about you and allways have which is why I married you. What has happened has made me feel as if I am not good enough for you, as if I am inferior to Mike. It’s like “What did he have that I did not” “how did he make her feel better and happier than I did” This has also been my motivation to try to please you as much as I can, even though it is tough to do sometimes when I am hurting. I just never thought I could feel like this toward you. Its not hate for what you did its more like our love for each other was not strong enough to prevent it. I now tell myself “what is done is done” let it go. There is no way for me to explain to you these mixed emotions of giving you everything I possibly can and at the same time holding myself back for fear of being hurt again.
I have nothing but respect for you that you have looked at what is most important to you in your life and have committed yourself to me and to saving our marriage, it gives me strength in committing myself to you. They say when you truly love someone it can drive you close to being insane if it falls apart. Well,,,, I think we both know I have done some very insane things since discovering your affair. While I have acted crazy and done some insane things,, it all shows how much I love you! Some people say that I have reacted just as to be expected from someone who has been hurt by the person they love most in their life. Ofcoarse none of this has felt anything like natural to me.
Autumn do understand that the only reason for my actions is that I love you so much and it hurts to see that while I love you and our children that we are not incapable of hurting one another. I think we both have come to terms with how this happened,, My love and my belief in your love gave me and you a false since of security. That security has now been given a reality check. “We are not incapable of hurting each other” I realize this and this is the reason why I have to strongly express to you that I want to eliminate any chances of this happening again. My mind has shifted from “Autumn is strong enough to control her emotions” to “ I now know Autumn was not strong enough” It was the lifestyle we chose to live that caused all of this hurt, and the only way to prevent it from happening again is for us both to change. I have to change by committing myself more to you than I ever have, you have to change by knowing that me and the children are the #1 priority in your life. I believe you have already decided that we are. I know I have decided to put all of my every breath into you and our family. It is sad that it took something so devastating to make us realize this.
There will be hard times and great times ahead of us I know. We have to both help each other in our marriage. You understand that I love you and there is nothing stronger than true love. At the same time there are things we will have to change to prevent another heartache. When you feel the urge to be wild then take that feeling out on me, I know now that I will not feel the urge to do things separate from you. I know that you have secret attractions in other men that you wish I could be like sometimes wheather they are physical or emotional does not matter. We married because we are in love and no matter what little changes we might want to see in each other, it is clear that we are meant to be with each other for the rest of our lives.
I want to meet your every need emotionally and physically I want to know that I am everything you need in a lover, a father, a best friend, and a husband. It is this feeling that will help us to trust and to be happy with one another again.
We are very early into our marriage and have allready experienced the most painful situation that can possibly happen. I know sometimes you doubt my sincereity about how I truly feel about you. I know the reason you think this way is because you fully understand how bad I have been hurt. You ask yourself “How in the world will he ever fully love me after I have treated him like this?” “knowing that I have done this to him will he be able to not do it to me?” These thoughts you have are actually showing me that you do care for me. If you didn’t care about our marriage then you wouldn’t care about how I feel and what I am now capable of. I will not tell you that I will always be faithful to you, because I know that it can happen wheather it is you or me we are not perfect,, but I will promise you this there is no person who can make me feel the way you do. There is nothing anyone else can give me that you have not given, I have said out of hate that I can find someone who will be faithful,,, yea right I know now more than ever that there is no faithful person, faith is what you make of it. We abused our faith in each other, The same as I never thought this could happen I know you never thought this could happen. That is what we took advantage of. It is now a matter of realizing that there are tons of different people in this world and if we deny one another of even just one of our needs we will turn to someone else to get it. It is human nature the people that make us feel good we want to be with, the people that hurt us we want to be away from. I am through hurting you and I am through swallowing my true feelings on things that are just not going to work in our marriage. We went one way in our marriage and it was a bad call on both of our parts. While I was faithful to you by not being with someone else, I was still unfaithful to you by serving you up on the dinner table to every single man that could make you feel good. That is my mistake and you can know that it will never happen again. I felt I gave you freedom and relief gutting it out night after night and letting you get away. I know that I made a huge mistake wheather you wanted to go or not, I don’t want to change you I want you to be that fun partying person I fell in love with, but I know that when I fell in love with you I was always there. Do you want to know why you did what you did? You did what you did because you could. It took a long time for you to do it but we all can be weak and blinded by our emotions. I do forgive you my love. I know this is not something you wanted to happen. In the future know this,,, There is not and never will be anyone who loves you and feels about you the way I do. I am willing to look at my faults and say “Hey I messed up” Can I promise you that I will never mess up again? Can I promise you that you will not be placed in a situation where you once again may have to make a decision? NO I can not. Only you can make that ultimate decision but I can promise you I will do everything in my power to make you realize the right decision. Hopefully I can make you feel they way you once made me feel. That there is nothing in this world you would ever do to risk the man you love and the family we both have raised and come to cherish. That I give you everything!
Autumn, even now I know that you love me and I know that until this happened that you doubted my love for you. It has always been there I just made one bad decision I made the decision with the best of intentions but it set the stage for your affair.
I know you don’t like to talk a lot about this but we both have to understand how we got to where we are. If I just try to forget and not express how I feel sometimes to you then we are not rebuilding our marriage to protect us from this hurt in the future.
You are a fun loving person and a great mother but we both know you can be easily blinded when alchohol and separation from your husband comes into play. So we will only drink together and we will not separate the things we love to do. All of the fun times you had out at the bar you can have with me. I have a good time when I see that your having a good time. I don’t want to dictate your life or put you on a leash but there are certain things I will not abide by in our marriage I have told you about Penny,, yes I am going to throw her in here again,,, I know you love her she has been your best friend and cousin but she lives her life the exact opposite of how a good wife and mother should live,, yes its her life and I respect that, but just as I played a part in letting you go, she was the main one who put you in the position to ask me if you could go. Everything about her is exactly what I do not want in a wife, and you were not like her until you began to do separate activities with her. She is not you and you are not her. She has a busted up past and a child that is almost grown, a husband who is hardly ever around due to his job. That is what she wants! her marriage fits her lifestyle shes happy. This is not our marriage everything about us differs from her marriage. I know you want to have friends and I will not pick and choose them but its what you do with those friends that affects us,, just like me sitting around the house with Steven, you didn’t like it.
We are at the beginning stage of healing and repairing our love for one another but lets do it the way it has to be done so that we can keep each otheres love banks exploding with love deposits. Lets devote ourselves to what we truly hold precious in our lives and lets have fun doing it. It will take all the love deposits we have ever given each other and that’s what they are there for,,, for times like this. We have created something beautiful and something that will always bind us as long as we live but we can improve it or destroy it. I would love to improve it so we can go on as the Husband and Wife and Father and Mother we were meant to be!

With so much of my love,,, Your still devoted Husband

ERIC

Now, I don't know your situation, and I'm no expert. But here are my immediate thoughts:

Maybe this letter is more for you than for her, and is best kept that way. In the past two months I've written my wife a few long letters similar to yours. As soon as they were done I threw them in the fireplace, and I'm glad I did.

You may not be able to grab your wife and pull her back to you with gifts, words, promises, and expressions of love. Instead, SHOW her with your actions that you are working on yourself and are not a pathetic weeping fool. Don't show off how hurt you are, expecting her to feel so guilty that she can't bear to hurt you any longer and comes running back. It probably won't work. Knock off the desperate coaxing. She might be comparing life with you to a fantasy right now, and you need to come across in this comparison as a stunning man, not as a sad lump begging her to love you.

A warning: if you expect to weather this storm and go back to the same life you had before, you could wind up disappointed. Maybe there are things about your lifestyle that are unhealthy for your mind, body, and spirit, and this is a signal for you and your wife to leave some of them behind and seek a more rewarding future. If that's out of line then ignore it. And definitely don't add to your troubles by trying to change the way your wife wants to live.

If you decide to give her a version of this letter...

There's too much expression of your love. Do not beat her over the head with it. I'll bet you anything she knows you're nuts about her.

There's too much talk about how great it has been and will be. Talk is cheap, man.

You may want to be careful about telling her what she needs to do. Better to be a friend to her while she figures it out herself.

Try looking harder for your faults. You may not have looked hard enough. I know I didn't catch everything on the first pass.

My $.02

GC

Eric, go back and read Gray Clouds response again. It is very insightful. It's a bit too much crystal ball about how wonderful things are going to be. You can't predict your own future let alone hers. I wrote quite a few of these in the early days and am glad I kept them to myself.
This is a gradual process and I don't know that there is any proven way to speed it up. How bout just being the very best you can be, as GrayCloud suggested, and buy TIME. As more time passes and no damage gets done you gain a better perspective and can proceed more logically and less emotionally. Keep reading, praying and please be patient. It took a while to get to this point so it is natural for it to take a while to get back to where you want everything to be.

Eric,

I think graycloud is onto something - let this letter be for yourself. You are, according to your own words, in the first stage of recovery. Your wife is probably feeling depressed and maybe angry and trapped.

You tell her what she thinks and how she feels quite a bit in this missive. If she's grieving OM then she may be resentful that she had to give him up. Hearing you tell her how she feels and what she thinks may make her angry.

They say when you truly love someone it can drive you close to being insane if it falls apart. Well,,,, I think we both know I have done some very insane things since discovering your affair. While I have acted crazy and done some insane things,, it all shows how much I love you! To be completely honest, this made me anxious. It sounds like a wife beater saying "I only did it because I loved you". What "insane" things have you done?

I love everything about you and allways have which is why I married you. Do you really? Even the fact that she had an A? You love that she deceived you? Love the person, hate the act, sure - but to say you love everything about her probably isn't true. That's a LB.

My mind has shifted from “Autumn is strong enough to control her emotions” to “ I now know Autumn was not strong enough” Ouch! DJ alert!! How about your mind has shifted to "I asked too much of Autumn"?

I have to change by committing myself more to you than I ever have, you have to change by knowing that me and the children are the #1 priority in your life. This is a selfish demand. Don't tell her how she has to change.

You understand that I love you and there is nothing stronger than true love. You're telling her how she feels and what she thinks. How do you know she understands you love her? If she spent time with OM she may have felt unloved to a significant degree. The part about nothing being stronger than true love, well, if that were true we wouldn't have affairs and divorces, would we?

I know now that I will not feel the urge to do things separate from you. I don't see how this can possibly be true. If felt urges to act independently in the past, you will feel the same urges in the future. What needs to change is how you ACT when you feel these urges. How will you adress them? They won't magically go away.

That's enough of pointing out why you probably shouldn't actually send the letter.

You do have some very good things in there. You are trying to understand your W, you are admitting your own faults and that recovery of the M relies on you doing your part, too. You talk a lot about your feelings, which is a very good thing.

It's a good letter in that it shows you're thinking about what contributed to the state of your M before the A. You're examining your feelings. You show a determination to work on the problems, and you show an optimistic bent. These are all good things.

Keep reading up on love busters, and practice NOT telling her how she feels and what she should do. Practice instead saying "I feel...." a little bit more or making respectful requests or asking her opinion.

I thank you for your input,,, and you have some good points. I have separated from my wife a month ago and every day she begs me to come home she has done everything to indicate the affair ended when I listened to her tell him it was over on the phone,,, even the OM has called me and said my wife loves me more than anything in the world,, he and she both regret what happened and its over. Turtle,,, as far as insane things,,,, no im not a wife Beater,, let me see here are some example of behavior right after exposing her affair,,,, burned wedding pictures,,, went on some stupid quest to hurt OM,,,,kicked over her motorcycle,, those kinda things,, but no I have never hit any female,,, now when I kicked over her motorcycle she tried and did hit me a couple of times but a friend kept her from doing any damage. Oh I know I have LBd the heck out of her. All of these things I regret and Ididnt even know I could act so crazy but this is the first time I have ever experienced betrayal from my high school sweetheart and only woman ive known since. As far as me standing up and pretending to be this kinda guy who is not affected or is not hurt youll have to show me that one. I chose to leave because it was to much to be with her after something like this,, she did not kick me out and yes I have very secure tabs on her, Gps on her car and access to all phone calls made, in 2 months she has not made any attempt to be with OM. I am just trying to figure out a way I can go back and look at her with love and not with anger or bitterness. Ultimately I have 3 replies all saying maybe this letter is not best to send, I have to think that it probably is not a good idea to send it then.

Eric,

Okay, I feel a lot better. You know, one person's "insane and rowdy" is another person's "tame and mundane".

So, you're separated by your choice for a month now and your FWW is clearly repentant. There's been NC for two months.

If you want this M, I'd suggest:
Work hard on avoiding LBs
Move back home
Read Surviving An Affair with your wife and answer all the questions.
Think twice and speak once.

Keep posting here, this is a wonderful resource.