This is a hard question, as a H and BS, I think I want to know everything but it may hurt too bad. I found out about my W eight month A one month ago, believe it included lunches, dinners and multiple PAs (incl several overnights) while I was deployed on my ship (I'm a mil officer). After discovery, my W was been very honest & repentant (as far as I can tell). When asked if the sex was good, and I know it was b/c I know what it takes for her, she said it wasn't real and doesn't want to hurt me w/ gory details. I think I don't want to know and just want to move forward but I still look back too much though. I'm out on the ship again until Apr, not sure if I want to dredge the past up when I return.

Me (BS) 40
W (WS) 37
M 14 years
2 Great kids

Thanks Pep and Mel. Love ya both too. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

Jen

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by KiwiJ.:
<strong> Patriot, it's sorta funny and I don't mean this disrespectfully but I can see EXACTLY where you are in your stage of recovery. Very, very early.

Take it from me, a completely recovered FWW - if the BS wants to know ANYTHING and everything you need to tell them. It doesn't hurt them - well, it does - but it's better than not knowing. Whole pieces of their lives are missing - you know the truth but they don't and they just want to make sense of it all.

The other thing you mentioned in another post was trust. I just don't get why a FWS (and I am one) would not do everything, absolutely everything to prove they are trustworthy. OK, so you feel like you're being checked up on - so what. My life and everything I do is STILL an open book to my H and it was from the first day after d-day.

I can imagine the shock to the BS, knowing the person they live with can carry on another life in secret. It's soul destroying. Building up trust again is the least thing you can do for your BS.

Jen </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">ok. You say I am very early in my recovery. You also say you are a fully recovered WS. Great. You have walked the path that I am walking and/or going to walk. Please share this information with me. Please explain the events on your walk to full recovery and what interesting and vital information I could derive from that. I would love for my wife to exit hell as quickly as possible. No need for her to be there any longer than she has to.

Patriot,

My A was over before my H found out. I didn't want it to be over so I was a horribly foggy withdrawing WS. But, I also knew that I had to regain my marriage even though I didn't know how.

When my H found out he was hurt, bewildered, devestated but he wasn't going to kick me out and he wasn't going to let me go.

I just knew I had to do everything to reconnect with my H and get back my 28 year marriage. So, I just did everything I could to make it easier for my H. If he wanted to know something, I told him, if he wanted to know where I was or what I was doing he knew. In fact I barely went out at all for about 3 months after d-day. He said he was never going to be my jailer and he hasn't been. But one night I was late picking up a dvd because I had to go to a store further away from our usual one. When I got home he had arrived home from work and I wasn't there. He was so upset.

It was from little things like that I knew I was going to have to be careful of how my actions were perceived for a long time.

We're 15 months past d-day. The only time the A comes up is when I tell him stories from MB. I also ran into the OM a few weeks ago but we're so recovered now that it was a minor blip for us. I told my H the minute I got home and we talked it through.

I think my point is, and what I did from day 1, is I never see myself as the victim and do whatever it takes to put my H's mind completely at ease. All I ever wanted to do was love my H again like I had for the previous 28 years and which I'd rewritten to say I'd never been happy. What an utter, utter crock.

Our recovery has not been easy. No one's ever is. I prefer to not even think about those early months. They were horrible for both of us.

Now we're "normal", happy and in love. That is what everyone strives for and it is so achievable but only if both parties put 100% into it.

Jen

<small>[ February 20, 2005, 11:29 PM: Message edited by: KiwiJ. ]</small>

patriot, your post is a good one but it's too late for me to answer to all of it..

Why do we want to know? Because it's a significant event that is deeply impacting our lives. You lived the affair so you don't have to get all the answers...you have them!! There's a very good analogy about a puzzle out there...if I can find it tomorrow, I'll post it. We want to know how you were able to process each event and proceed with the affair.

We don't like the "don't remember" part of things, even though personally, I do understand that. How could you NOT remember something that was so devastating and life changing to us? How rude and uncaring. It's like you do not care enough about us to remember each and every minute detail about what you did to hurt us so badly. When you "don't remember", it makes us feel even more insignificant and discarded.

I did not gather information to help me to decide to leave my husband. I just had to know. Ever satisfied? Not really...we still weren't THERE, so you could play us a movie and we'd still feel like we didn't know everything. I even get tired of talking about the A, but I still want to know more.

This has passed over a couple of years--but I that may be in part because we never moved into recovery. It was the beginning of the end for us.

Understand that I'm only speaking of myself here. Many BS don't want to know ANY details.

Patriot,
As a fellow WS, I can understand your discomfort in sharing uncomfortable details. If you are like me, it isn't fun to see the look of pain on your spouse's face when we do share, the wincing and grief...in fact it hurts. Mostly because it makes me face the true reality of what I did. I know we tell ourselves (and them) that knowing won't make them feel better, but I believe we don't usually want to share because we WS's would rather not feel that pain.

Sharing not only helps them piece together the chain of events, but it also helps us come to grips with the consequences of our actions - to face it now so it doesn't keep rearing it's ugly head in our psychic 10 years down the road in unhealthy ways. I try and tell myself feeling his pain will help me remember why I never want to do this again.

My rule has been to let my spouse tell me how much he wants to hear and what details. I try not to be deliberately blunt and hurtful, but I am honest. I usually start with "are you sure you want to know?" The answer is usually yes, but at least he's braced for it a little bit.

I know it's simpler to say "I said I'm sorry now let's move forward." But, we both needed to look back for just a bit and piece together exactly WTH happened and why. Then, maybe both sides are in a better place to start moving ahead.

But...I'm only six weeks into NC, so take my advice with a grain of salt. Just thought I'd share my strategy so far. I can say the questions have moved from gory specifics to what now seems more like "why did you do that?" and "what were you feeling when you did that?" I don't think we could get to this stage until we got through the gory specifics first.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by gentlsoul:
we WS's would rather not feel that pain.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">True.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> also helps us come to grips with the consequences of our actions</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">True.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> his pain will help me remember why I never want to do this again.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">My H said this very same thing.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">But...I'm only six weeks into NC, so take my advice with a grain of salt.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">This is the only part of your wonderful post I take issue with.

YOU may be only 6 weeks into the process .... but your words require NO "grain of salt". They should be swallowed whole.

VERY GOOD!

Pep

First, I wanted to say how very helpful this post is to me. Second, I wanted to bring it back to the top so that others who need it may receive vital information from it also.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and experience during this very stressful period in some of our lives.
I will be using alot of the words written here to use if I can ever get my H to talk about the A. In fact, I will be actually using the reasons give here to get him to open up.
Thanks everyone who responded to this post. It really is a helpful one to a BS.

Carnation

Noodle: YES, YES, 1000 times YES!

That's just it, our imagination is a million times worse than reality... seriously! And if you choose to hide something, than that must be the really juicy, scarey part, like the OP does X better than us...

WH does not like it, but he is honest w/ me about the details (as far as I know). Of course, I have to fish... but that is just how he is... he is not good just starting a dialogue, esp when he is uncomfortable w/ the topic.

Yes, it helps in some small way to know that he didn't orgasm the first time! It helps to hear he was thinking "don't look at her belly".... and it hurts to know that all this aside he went back and did it again and again. Couldn't have been that bad, huh?

Yes, it hurts like hell to know that he told her he loved her... but she said it first. It's a double edged sword, but the real is so much easier to deal w/ than the stuff I dream up in my head!

Word of advice, be brief, but be honest. She will eventually stop needing the answers all the time, but every now and then something will hit her and she will want to know... they are called triggers and they come out of the blue. You owe her this much.

patriot,

You have gotten some GREAT responses here, but there was one thing no one mentioned that I wanted to add. When my exH had his A, I asked him questions and wanted to know about some details--not because I wanted to hurt myself, but because something happened to me. Part of my intuition told me something was wrong, but I was told over and over again to not listen to my intuition. I was told that *I* was crazy...or *I* was making this all up in my head.

Then...suddenly...in one horrendous moment, I found out that my intuition had been right! All the things that my gut had told me WERE happening! But all the things that I believed in: home, family, marriage, loyalty, honesty, love, commitment, responsibility, duty, honor--all those things were like GONE! SHATTERED!!

I asked questions because I couldn't trust myself anymore. I couldn't trust my own perceptions. I was told my intuition was CRAZY and it was right. Things I thought were wrong, I was told were right. Things I believed in, were destroyed. My identity was not who I was. It was AWFUL.

I wanted to know what the OW looked like to know if it was a "she's your complete opposite" thing or if she was like me and I had a shot. I wanted to know what she said and how he felt because I wanted to know if there were some "magic words" to make him fall in love with me again (btw, there weren't). I wondered how someone I loved with my whole heart was snatched away by someone else. To me, I felt like I just could not trust my own perceptions, so I asked...and asked...and asked....to try to regain some direction in my life.

Now, patriot, in my instance my exH gave me the "you'll never let this go!" speech and the "It's over! Can't you see I've changed" speech and basically did not answer my questions. Everything I eventually found out, I discovered, and every time I discovered something it sent me BACK to abyss. If he had only been open and answered my questions, it would have meant SO MUCH. More than you can understand, and more than I can communicate. It would have meant something like, "I get it. I nuked your foundation. Now answering your questions is uncomfortable and painful for me, but I'm willing to do that to help you rebuild what I nuked."

Refusing to answer? Wanting to "get over it"? Well, as you can see, we are divorced now.


FNCJ

needed this back at top so it does not get burried. I need to print some of these. These responses are how I feel, but unable to get WW to talk of A at all. AS BS's we really do need to know things.

^

Well the night of D-Day I hit my FWW with a ton of questions that she answered very quick and truthfully. They were very painfull to hear, but I needed to here them. One question I answered she gave a no...never answer. Well about three weeks later she changed it to a "yes". Just by her lying about that one question she has made me wonder if all the others were answered truthfully. She knows she screwed up by that answer but said she didn't want to hurt me even more.

Here...I did the worst thing a S can do in a marriage....but let me fix that by lying a little more.

My husband is a serial adulterer.

Without a doubt the two affairs that hurt me the most were the ones which involved my WH and the OW telling me that their relationship was none of my business.

One of the OW told me, exact quote:
(WH's name) "and I have a very special friendship that's none of your F---ing business"!!! At the time WH and I were not separated, he was claling me about 5 times per day from work to tell me how much he loved me, and I was 2 1/2 months pregnant with a third child - PLANNED pregnancy.

That was my WH's 6th affair.
And the fact that my WH and the OW were telling me that whatever went on between them was none of my business hurt as much as the first 5 affairs put together.

Anytime I needed to talk about the affairs my WH (and his family) assumed I was just trying to "bring up the past and throw it in his face", was "refusing to forgive & forget", not trying to "move on", etc.

I guess they assumed because it made him feel bad to think or talk about it, therefore my only motive was to harrass him?

The truth is I really did need him to help me heal. His refusal to do so just hurt me even more.

I guess the question a wayward spouse has to ask themselves is are they willing to put as much into repairing the damage as they did into causing it?

Obviously my WH isn't willing to or capable of cleaning up the mess he made. So he (and his family) have decided that I am the one who destroyed the marriage because I failed to just shut-up & forget it ever happened.

My MIL just chanted:
"He said he's sorry, what more do you want?"
in reference to everything he did (verbal abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, lying, porn problem, adultery)