OK, please bear with me as I have never done this type of thing before. I will try to make this as short as possible. Any help is gladly received.
I am a 36 yr old father of 3 wonderful kids. I have been married to my wife for 7 years and have been with her and only her for 10 years. I am in the military and have been for 15 years.
My marriage was not the greatest, but it wasn't awful either. I will never claim that I was the model husband or father, in fact I will say I was pretty terrible. My career and the men I led always came first. Not a good thing for a marriage.
I deployed to Iraq in Oct of 2004. In Dec 2004 I was wounded seriously enough to be sent back to the U.S. for treatment. Upon my return, to make a long story short, I found out my wife had an affair while I was gone. Her "lover" had even spent the night with her, sleeping in my bed on X-mas eve while I was in the hospital. He had spent alot of time at our house, sleeping with her in our bed. She spent most of her time avoiding me while I was in the hospital. She claimed that it was only an emotional affair only, that she did not have sex with him.
Again to make a long story short, my first reaction was to kick her out of the house and she could go live with him. I recanted and allowed her to stay. I contacted the chaplin and he stated that we should work it out and attend counseling with him. We are currently attending counseling and getting along, but the other night, I felt something was just not quite right, so despite all the excellent counsel the chaplin gave me, I drug the truth out of her and she had oral sex with this guy, at least that's all she admitted to.
Now I don't know what to do. I kinda already knew she had done more than what she stated, but when confronted with the truth, well that killed me. Now I can barely look at her. I have never had a high self esteem. I got my self esteem from my job. What little I did have is gone now. I feel ugly, stupid, you name it. She is making nice with me now after 2 weeks of counseling. She said last night that she wants to work things out, but she really hasn't done anything to show her commitment. I had to really fight just to get her to remove the guy's number off her cell phone.
There is alot more to this story. Suffice to say that I am really at a crossroads here. I love my wife, I always have, I just really screwed up the way I showed her. Part of me wants to work it out and forgive and forget, but another part is really hurt and angry and I want to get rid of her. I had entertained the notion of having a one night stand with someone just to level the playing field, but I can't bring myself to do it because I gave my word to her when we got married that I wouldn't do such a thing.
I really feel used, betrayed, hurt, angry, sickened and sad. I don't know what I should do. Any help woul be greatly appreciated. And as I said before there is alot more to this. Sorry for being so long winded. Thanks

U1,

I'm going to steal someone else's start here... welcome to the site and I'm very sorry to see that your hear.

That said, all that your going through right now is expected. This is a terrible thing that has happened to you and your marriage. Read everything that you can on these boards starting with the home page. There aren't many people here on the boards on the weekend but I'm sure you'll get the answers that you need.

So I guess the first thing you should focus on:

Settling your emotions and get ready for some hard work.

Find out what the problems were/are in your M that caused your Wife to have an affair.

Post and keep posting to get the help that you need.

Native

Undecided,

Sorry to have to make your acquaintance. I'm off to bed, but am sure you will get the appropriate responses. I'll leave you with some reading:

Start here

That will keep you going for a while. Sorry to have to say this but....Affairs are like icebergs, you may only be aware of the 10% of what really went on. Assume there was more. She didn't want to erase his name? Be vigilant regarding the further contact between them. Read about the no contact letters, DON'T make ultimatums about being out the door if you find further contact; you may be tested on that. Have a plan on what to do if you determine there is. All this should be available via the link I posted.

I wish I could do more. I don't envy what you will be going through over the next while even in a best case scenario. Good luck and keep asking questions, reading etc.

Hi U1,

sorry to hear that things are so bad for you right now, especially after everything you have been through workwise anyway. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

I'm in a somewhat similar situation right now only the other way around.
My WH has been in the Army now for 14 years and I always backed him up with everything, several deployments to Bosnia and Iraq etc.

Well, now after pcsing to the US he found himself a new family pretty fast and our children and I are still here in Germany while he is raising somebody elses children in the US.
We had agreed for me and the children to stay in Germany since we have a house over here and he always wanted to retire in Germany as well but...

However, if you would like to read more about our story you can do so in this thread:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=37;t=034347

I think you are still at the beginning of a long
and windy road <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="images/icons/confused.gif" /> but if you think your marriage is worth it then it is well worth a try.

I have been DBing for a while now and I will not give up and make it easy for the OW to create a new life with my WH and everything our marriage is standing for.

Keep your spirits high and give it some time, read a lot about this topic and try to be patient, time is on your side

Take care

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

Me 39
WH 34
OW 30
S10,D4
Married 11 years
WH met OW 12/2003
I found out from OW's girlfriend 6/6/2004