<small>[ December 03, 2004, 11:25 AM: Message edited by: New Girl ]</small>

Hi Adchic, i am very glad you found us!! well except i wish you did not have the need to find us. i have to run right now, but i will be back, i'm sure others will post to you too, but i wanted you to find a response ASAP.

what you have done so far, that is coming to the decision that you need to stop really is a very BIG first step. so congratulations are in order.

my biggest piece of advice to you is to stick around, and that might be hard sometimes because some posts might feel rather harsh to you. but keep in mind two things, pretty much everyone here has been or is currently very impacted by infidelity and how raw their pain is will influence their posts. and two: keep your goal in mind!!! if your goal is to stop cheating and improve your marriage, don't let anything stop you!!!

Congrats on having the courage to come here and seek help. That fact alone bodes well for your success.

First, stop calling him your lover.

Second, identify all the reasons for why you decided to conduct an affair and match them up with whatever shortcomings existed in your marriage. To help with this, find and print out two copies of the EN questionaire - one for you and one for your husband.

Third, confess your affair to your husband and depending on his reaction, ask him to participate in rebuilding your marriage. He may not be ready to work on the marriage for awhile.

While doing all this, cease all unnecessary contact with OM, inform his wife that the affair is over (you really believe his story that the affair has nothing to do with their marriage breakup?), and DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER to see him as a scum bag. What decent man would willingly disrupt a marriage?

Buy the book, Surviving AN Affair, available in the bookstore on this website or just about any on-line bookseller.

Keep reading and posting.

Welcome adchic.

The first thing you need to do, is to tell your husband what has been going on. All of it.

Then you need to send your lover a NC letter.

You probably will have to quit even though there will be a stiff penalty re: your income. That's just sort of the way it goes..if you had done something inappropriate at work would you expect not to be fired? Having to quit and start over is just one of the natural consequences that arise from having an affair with a coworker.

I will tell you this..that making a very real sacrifice will speak volumes to your H about your level of remorse and your commitment to ending this affair.

Something to think about.

It looks like the true difficulty you speak of..is that you would like to end it without having to pay the consequences for it. That probably will not happen.

I would recommend IC and MC to help you both through this..and to help avoid a situation such as this in the future.

You are doing the right thing by ending it..now finish the job and come clean. Make any and all of the necessary changes in your life.

I am not going to tell you that everything will be alright with your marriage..that your H will forgive you, and that if you just confess it will be graciously received..that may not happen. It is the statistically likely outcome..but I would be prepared for some very hurt and angry reactions from your H. It is the natural reaction to discovering that the person you love has betrayed you in the most awful and intimate manner possible.

My advice is that you not try to defend it..just apologise for it if you are able..and make no promises you do not fully intend to keep.

Good luck and keep us updated on how things are going for the two of you.

Noodle

Adchic,

How to stop A ? ... you answer it yourself NC. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

If you fail to do it you have to confess to your BH and get his help. If you can NC ... the timing of confession if your choice.

There is no chance for your M as long as OP present.

-rh-

I, too am in a time crunch, but wanted to jot off somethings to encourage and help you. I echo what everyone else here has said, and might just add a few things.

My H had an affair with a coworker and she decided to end it. I still didn't know what was going on when they were ending it. But, I do know that it was difficult, but that the OW was completely firm in having no contact with my husband. They did occasionally have to speak business, but it was never personal. Not even a pleasant hi in the hallway. My h said that she acted like she absolutely hated him.

I echo that you have to see your OP as what he is. He doesn't respect you at all, what he likes and respects and the reason he is with you is all about what it does for HIM. My husband said that the ow was a distraction from reality. It wasn't about her at all. It was a distraction! You have got to treat him like any contact with him will wreck your family. It might. If you don't end contact, it probably will. Do whatever it takes. I can't stress this enough. I agree that you have to take the consequences of your actions. You have to find a new job. Assume if you DON"T your marriage will fail. It will.

Also, the one thing that really saved our marriage was my husband's rock solid commitment to me (after d day) and his willingness to do ANYTHING I wanted done to make it right. He was a hurting unit, too. He felt a huge amount of pain and shame. But, he NEVER made it about him. At least that was his goal, some days were better than others.

You can do that for your husband. You can get over yourself and how bad this is for you, partially by refocusing on him. Should he be there to help and support you, absolutely, but we on this site have had to realize that the only emotions and actions we can deal with are our own. And we choose to focus on meeting the other person's needs because that initially is what preserves the marriage and the family. So, make it radically unfair and focus on him for a while. His world is about to fall apart.

He will probably not know how to react. You will have time to plan the best and most sensitive way to say this. He will not have that privilge and he will be dealing with a pain that is absolutely overwhelming beyond any rational reason. Give him the room and the grace and mercy to get some of that pain out if he needs to.

The biggest advice, don't feel sorry for yourself. Make it all about him. When you start thinking how hard it is for you, stop and replace it immediately with something positive your husband has done for you, something good about your marriage, or at the very least, how much pain your husband it in. Unfair? Yes. But, I really think that the selfish thinking is what led up to this.


The right thing is really hard, but I commend you for wanting to do it. I pray courage and strength for you for the road ahead. Stick around here. The people here will help, but do remember, we are all in pain and recovery. And don't keep 'trying' to end it. End it!! (my h's OW sent him an email simply saying. 'It's over. Can't live with the guilt.' Then she went on to pretend it never happened and that my h was the biggest a**hole on the planet. They never had any discussions about it. She simply never spoke a personal or civil word to him after that two sentence email. If she hadn't done that, he would have tried to 'stay friends' and we never would have made it. For that part of it, the fact that she ended it so immediately and abruptly was the one thing I am grateful for. Do the same thing.

Ditto what everyone else said. Start looking for a new job asap and live with the fact that you might not get paid as much. NC is key.

You might also try to check out the Reclamation board at SYMC. You need to ask permission to join, but it's a safe place for people trying to end their involvement in an affair and rebuild their marriage. Sometimes people at this site can be a little hostile toward WSs and FWSs. Over there it is a little less so.

Obviously one of you has to leave that workplace, that's the duh of the day.

However, I was able to completely avoid x-affair partner in the workplace, with a little effort, and anything work-related could be via email. So, that would be a start for you--minimize or eliminate contact at work.

If you stop that, (having stopped the sex, the sex is the drug in these cases) you're on your way to getting out. Anything you do to nurture the 'connection' is bad, bad, bad.

It's a question of 'just do it'. Do you want to be out of this self- and other-degrading situation? If so, how badly? Your actions will answer this question.

If you have faith, pray for the strength to do this. This type of temptation is, I believe, only manageable with God's help. This is the very thing God is here to help us with. I can say with certainty that if I had had then the faith that I have now, I never would have entered into an affair--would have sent him home to his wife with a few choice words to contemplate.

SYMC? Maybe I should send my WW there...

Arch,

Your on the right pasth just don't lose sight of the M at the end. My ww is on week one of nc and has yet sent her NC letter. She has her good days and her bad day's and Me as the H am very hurt and yet had the opportunity to really let my pain out because she makes it about her.

FL, you should post that to every new comer, great welcome, and heads up. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

Adchic,

No contact letter would be a great place to start.

You need to realize that the fantasy good bye doesn't exist. The lose ends, the closer, there is no way to end an A good. Please hear me on this, further contact with this man is nothing less than an affair.

You must tell your H. You must quit your job, or he must quit. You can't ever see this man again. Oh, yeah it might hurt, but you will get through the withdrawal.

God will forgive you, and your H might too, but there will still be consequences to your choice to have an A.

Your thinking the right things, now it is time to take action.

MB is a great site to help you rebuild your M. The best of luck.

KY

Thanks to everyone for their great advice and help.

It's going to be hard to tell my H. I can't even imagine his reaction.

You see this isn't the first time this has happened. I cheated on him within a year of our marriage. The short affair ended when my husband suspected something and came to my work told my boss and I was asked to resign.

I am glad that happened. I couldn't believe I had even done that. Our daughter was only 3 months old!

We have been married 3 years now and this is the second time it's happened. So what is wrong with me? I think the first time it happened I was going through some post partum...not to blame it on that. I was lacking a lot of help at home and really by myself a lot with the little one.

This time, I am not sure why it happened. It started out innocent, then some how the feelings came in and as some has said, I feel addicted.

The OM and I have attempted at stopping this several times, even in the early stages.

I know that no contact will be the only solution to truly ending this.

OK Adchic - you've got serious problems that may be beyond a garden variety affair and our ability to help.

I recommend you find a counselor or shrink pronto to figure out why, despite learning a lesson the first time, you so soon forgot.

Do you have self esteem issues? A history of depression? Is there anything in your past that would be a clue for this self destructive behavior?

Please, please, please seek help for the sake of your children and your husband - by doing so you'll be helping yourself.

Folks on this forum will support you if you're sincere about wanting to improve yourself and your family.

WAT

I applaud your efforts and your commitment..but I strongly advise that you seek IC..you are what is known as a serial adulterer..you have committed adultery twice in a three year marriage with two different men..something is badly misfiring, don't you agree?

Even 1 adultery this early in a M would signal character/personality issues..I think that it would greatly behoove you to get to the bottom of this behavior as it is likely to just keep happening until you uncover the source and destroy it.

Noodle

Adchic - look at the times noodle and I wrote our last posts. This means we were typing at the same time, arriving at the same advice independently.

I truly want help...sincerely. I am going to make an appointment today.

I knew that something had to be wrong with me. I don't understand it either. I don't believe I have self esteem problems. I feel very confident in myself.

I think my father may have cheated on my mother when we were kids. I don't know for sure, but I really believe he did. Could this be stemming from that? I know...talk to a counselor.

I just want to get this out of me whatever it is that's making me do this. And find out what's going on with me.

Good start.

Please rely on the good sense that is available on this forum. We are not doctors or counselors, but there's tremendous life experience here.

First order of business - seek your husband's support which will require you to come clean with him. Print out this post and show it to him. We can provide insight and support to him as well.

WAT

Hi Adchic,

glad you came back to see responses!!

i ditto the others, IC is definitley in order. as you can see from my signature line, i had multiple affairs too. i did not take care of it the first time, which occured while we were engaged, i did not take care of it the second time, about 5 yrs into the marriage and 15yrs into the marriage, i really went nuts, As with multiple people, one main person, 9 one-time only people (all met from internet) and then the worst of it, sexual interactions with a good friend of my H.

this time i'm taking care of it. this board, IC and a lot of spiritual / self help reading and A LOT of work, i.e. getting real with myself. for me, dealing with how childhood neglect as well as sexual abuse from my brother impacted me was the key.

my H did not know any of this until i confessed to one A (the main person from the internet) this past march and all the rest of it at the end of Oct (just one month ago).

set up that appointment and keep posting here too!!!

WAT, i'm not so sure telling her H everything right now is the right timing. i do believe it might be better for her to start IC and get to the bottom of her behavior before telling her H.

I do agree, immediate NC is manditory, depending on the work situation, this may or may not be able to happen without a job change. if extabilshing NC is not possible without telling her H what is up, then telling her H must occur right away, otherwise, having her understand herself will allow her to be able to deal with helping her H's deal with the news. Having both of them in crisis mode is not good. i am so much more capable of helping my H deal with all the additional news i had to tell him after i started figuring it all out.

again, this advice is ONLY if NC can be firmly established and she gets into IC to start working on this stuff. JMHO

Thanks Finallylearning. I think a lot of my problem is the decline in my spiritual life. Since my husband and I have been married we have slowly quit going to church, I don't even read my Bible any more, and when I pray I don't even feel like my prayers are being heard.

The reason I think this plays a role is because when my relationship with God was good, so was the relationship with my husband.

In past relationships, prior to marriage, I was totally faithful to people I was dating. In fact I dated a guy for almost 2 years and never once thought about cheating on him. He ended up cheating on me! I couldn't understand why someone would do that. I know we were just dating, but I still couldn't understand it.

Even now, with me on the other side it doesn't make sense as to why I am doing this to someone who I know cares and loves me very much.

although i have always believed in God, i never had a "personal" relationship with God. i never could figure out what that even looked like, let alone be a part of it. i wanted to, i really did. but inside, i felt God's love did not extend to me, i felt i was outside His scope, which is pretty contradictory to what the bible says, it says we are all God's children.

also, since we were posting at the same time, i wanted to be sure you saw my post about the timing of telling your H.