Dear Convienant:<BR>Even though your wife is having the affair, still it takes two to have a marriage and you cannot fully blame yourself for everything. We all have a part in the marriage that we are in. You can blame yourself for your part, but, don' blame yourself for her having the affair. That was her choice. Just like my husband's choice. I don't blame myself totally. I have a part ot play in it, but, not fully. Don't be so hard on yourself. Did you talk to your wife about it? Does she want the marriage to work? What is happenning with you? I would like to know so I can at least try to help you out in anyway. I am sorry for the hurt that you are going through. I can feel your hurt and anger,etc... It's just not fun going day to day with these feelings of resentment, anger, etc...Did you try going for counseling? How about the both of you? Is she willing???? Just want to know about you.. Please write, letme know..Take care.

Thoughtful:<BR>Ooopss, you did post your email to me. Will email you soon...thanks, Katya

Katya,<BR>I don't know if someone's already recommended this book to you or not... When I first started on this forum back in March--just days before discovering my H's affair--a wonderful woman named Holly Ann recommended that I read "Love Must Be Tough" by Dobson. I bought the book, but believe it or not I just started reading it now! (I read a lot of other stuff though--including Harley's Surviving an Affair--terrific book). One of the things that kept me from reading it is that Dobson is religious. Back then I was still keeping God as arm's length, but a Retrouvaille weekend brought me back to him/her. I'm not finished reading it yet, but it is excellent so far--I think you should check it out. I wish you the best... (Holly Ann, I miss you. Hope you're lurking out there!).

Dear MaryBB:<BR>Thank you for responding and giving me the name of the book. I have heard of it and Dobson, I think he is a Dr., has some good books out. I have seen his books in a christian bookstore. I read all kinds of books, as long as I can learn from them, I will read them. I will definetly check this one out. <BR>thank you,<BR>

Hi Kayata,<P>I'm sorry I did not see your post in reply to mine and answer your questions. Here is a little of my story, but you can do a search on my most recent posts and find out a little more. The OM and I happen to work together. His wife travels quite a bit and is gone from home and he happens to live close to our office. I hate to admit that we went there several times on our lunch hour, but even when that was not possible, we met in other places almost every day. It was an emotional affair that turned physical and then because we both felt so much guilt we stopped the physical part. OM moved out of his house and was separated for 5 months. Just two weekends ago he move back home to prove to her it would not work. I realized that it is time for us to both get on with our lives and wished to stop all contact. We made it for a while like this and I think I was beginning to get on the right track, even though the feelings for my husband have been numb for so long, they do not come back overnight. Then out of the blue OM calls me and wants to know how I am doing, tells me how painful it is, how much he misses me and loves me. WHAM!!! This throws me for a loop. I am trying so hard to do the right thing. I know what I should do, but the feelings for my husband are not there. I am like Airheart and several others on the board that fight the urge constantly to keep from calling him. All I can say is I wish you luck, but do not doubt what can happen in a short period of time. And even if it is a phone affair, contact and enjoying conversations frequently with OW are not a good idea. This leads to more. That is what happened with me.

Dear Susan:<BR>Thank you for your story and gave me some insight as to what the ow thinks and feels. Yeah, there is always that possibility, this is why (if you read my other post, "what I did to the ow"), I had to get rid of her so we can move on with our lives and try to repair our marriage. I know that there is always a chance. But he knows that if he starts this all over again and I find out, then that will be the end of our marriage. Does your husband know about this affair? Does his wife know about the affair? I just wonder if she ever approached you and what you thought of that. I am very curious because that is exactly what I had done (read my other post). I guess that's how things start and I guess it's just so easy to fall into the emotional affair first, especially since the marriage is already having problems. Do you still love your husband. My husband told me that he loves me but is not in love with me. Do you think that you could love or fall in love with your husband again? I know I have alot of questions, but your post is an interesting one since you are the ow. Hope you respond. Thanks.

Katya:<P>Funny thing, my wife has told me the same thing about loving me but not being "in" love with me. I'm not certain what that means. To her it means that she doesn't mind doing the dishes and laundry and cleaning the house, but she just doesn't have that feeling for sex anymore. <P>I almost fell into an emotional affair with one of my W best friends. She has incurable illness, I lent support, provided a shoulder to lean on and cry on, etc... and soon we were 'wanting' to talk all the time and then 'needing' to talk all the time, etc...<P>This was all about a year or so after my W told me she had developed a "Special" bond with her dead cousin's widower. She swore it wasn;t sexual it was just a "special" bond. She just happened to mention it at the same time as the "I love you but I'm not "IN" love with you" statement. So I guess I had been feeling a bit vulnerable and insecure and my W friend saw that and gave me the pats on the head that made me feel extra good. I guess I started looking forward to the OW visits, but soon the visits became strained so we began talking on the phone. <P>One day she professed her love and devotion, etc. and I should have stopped it right there but I didn't. I just let it go on because the little pats on the head, the innocent hugs and kisses were feeling too good. The my W found out how OW felt about me and everything went BOOM! She took her stuff and moved in with her "Special" Bond fellow (still insisted it was non-sexual) and she began planning a new future. I told OW that this was getting way out of hand and I wanted W back. OW told me she was sorry she had made trouble for me considering she was already secretly involved with a much older MM with whom she had been having a sexual affair for a very long time. Surprise to me.... <P>I asked my W to come back and she did but most of her being is still somewhere else. I have asked her to tell me what she wants to do and how we should handle it but she doesn't respond very well. I finally demanded to have an answer to the question "Are you going to stay" and her response, finally, was "What choice do I have"? Well, I don't want her to stay just because she thinks she has no choice. But I figure she will stay around long enough to have a chance at working things out. I cut off all communications with the OW one full year ago and I beleive my W cut off her communications with her "Special" Bond about nine months ago. But she still won't tell me what she wants to do about our marriage. <P>She expresses a tremendous amount of hurt and pain at what she sees as my betrayal of her, but she won't understand that she failed to meet some of my most important needs for a long time before anything happened. We talk a lot but it doesn't seem to have a long term affect. In fact, sometimes it just seems to set us back. She won't have sex with me because she doesn't have that "feeling". She does everything a good little W is supposed to do except for that one thing. When she talks about love making and sex she always says things like "I used to 'give' you this or that and I did this and that 'for' you. She makes it sound like it was all one sided and such a sacrifice to have to "perform" for her H. I thought I was 'giving' something too. I guess not. <P>So I've told her that we can't continue like this. If she can't be a complete W then maybe the only course of action is divorce. She still will not respond, So we continue in some sore of limbo. <P>Why can't we just have the courage to say "YES, I'll stay" or "NO, I'm leaving" and get the suspense over with. I have been trying real hard to make up for whatever she thinks I did wrong. She even says I have been way too nice and she admits that she has been less than a good and dutiful W. I keep telling her she's always been a good W and I just need to have some affection from her because I love her very much and I'm "in" love with her. I don't know the difference between the two. <P>I think people say the love you because they care for you as a person, but they say they are "in" love with you to refer to what might be better termed "lust" (not that there is anything wrong with lust, mind you)so what's wrong with combining the two? Do we really need to ge those "butterflies" in our tummy every time we look at each other? Does a W need those butterflies before she can make love to her H? Why did we ever lose the ability to get those butterflies in the first place, and why can't we get it back? Seems that sometimes those OW or OM can bring them back to you from time to time, so they are not lost they have just been misplaced for a while.<P>Anyway, I'm still trying to make sense of it all. Maybe someone out there has a clue<P>Flip<p>[This message has been edited by flipper (edited October 05, 1999).]

Dear Flipper:<BR>Well, you explained your progression really well. But, you stated that you ALMOST fell into an emotional affair...guess what..sounds like you did fall into an emotional affair. I somehow don't believe that she (your w)did not have an affair with the other guy, whether it was emotional or physical. I have seen this much too often and being a woman have done it once in my past where: some women will be with another man and then when they find out that their partner is having an affair with someone else then they flip out. The affair that they had or are having somehow does not even matter. They will never even admit to the affair but will be the first to slam the partner/husband when they find out he is cheating. It's like they would say, "How could he do this to me"? When in reality, she really cheated on herself by not confessing the truth about herself. To get rid of the guilt, it is so much easier to put blame on the other partner and disregard our own faults of the same thing. I don't know if you understand what I am saying. She might be, subconsciously, upset with herself for: (1) ever having the affair (2) for letting the marriage go negative enough for you to have the affair. If she moved in with the "Special" bond fellow, then it makes it easier for her to continue what she was doing in the first place without having to admit anything...because afterall, you (to her) are the one that had the affair, so why should she not move in with whoever she wants. As far as her staying...I ran into the same exact problem. I kept asking my h if he wanted to go on like this and whether he wanted a separation or divorce...he said he wanted the marriage. Yet, there was never any improvement..it just stayed the same..stale. Even going to the counseling, still nothing changed. In the last 2 months, I kept talking to him and even asked him if he was seeing anyone or had an interest in anyone. He completely denied it. I asked for honesty. I got lies. Until last week, I found what I found on the email of his. Then all hell broke lose. (I have another post of "what I did to the ow). Anyway, it wasn't until then that I was furious and angry and told him that he needed to decide what he wanted to do...if he wanted to stay in this marriage with me then he had to give 110% into themarriage and I wouldn't take anything less. If he decided to stay with her, then i would go and file for divorce the next day. I wasn't playing. I was serious because I don't have the rest of my life to be made of a fool of and I don't want to spend the rest of my life with someone who is treating me less than they should. So, he decided to stay and has been working on it. As far as the "I'm not in love with you"...Well, I guess I can put it like this..If your in love with someone, you want to share everything with them, be with them, talk with them, go places with them..When you just love someone and are not in love with them then there is no emotional connection, really don't enjoy being with them, or talking to them, don't care for them as much or what they do or don't do. Take for instance, I feel the same about my H and don't really know if I can get it back. If I was in love with him, all this mess that our marriage is in since last week, I would have been a basket case. I would have lost all this weight in a week and would have been crying and carrying on..just a mess because my love for him would be so intense.It's like you would die for the other person. But, I feel differently than I did when I first married him. I would have done anything for him. He was mylife, my love, my everything. I thought about him, wanted him in everyway, missed him, needed him, would do so many things for him. Now, I don't care as much what he particularily does. This is why when I found out about his affair, I cried for about a day and carried on for 2 days and now I'm over it. I can sleep at night. I don't particularily want to spend time with him, because I don't love him like that anymore. Why do I stay? I want to save our marriage and try. We have 2 small children and if I don't try, then I will always regret not trying on my part. The love may come back but I just don't know. I don't particularily like the person that he has become and don't know if he could change that. All I know right now is that if things ever go back to the way they were or if he decides to cheat again or be with her or whoever else, I am gone. So, I hope that explains the difference. Oh about the butterflys. Well, when you first meet someone, everything is so new, so wonderful,so heavenly that you find yourself on a high with butterflys whirling around the wind. UNTIL, time goes by, time goes by, and by and then little by little you start to find out things that you really don't like about the other person and/or the negative things start to come out in the marriage and starts going sour. Then it gets to a point where the negative has taken over the positive and then the butterflys are lost, the high is lost, the newness is lost...etc. So, that's where the butterflys go. But, I suppose they can be found somewhere in time with alot of work. I just don't know for me, because there is alot of negativety I am carrying on my part and I suppose with my H also. Your right, the butterflys are just misplaced. I don't know...did I answer your questions??

Dear Flipper:<BR>I just read a post that was posted today that you would enjoy reading and might answer your questions about love and in-love. The post is: "how long" by Willy. He feels that he is out of love and what does that mean? Read on. Hope that helps.

KATYA:<P>Thanks for your insightful post. Sorry I don't get on here as often as I should. You guys certainly have provided me with a lot of valuable food for thought. <P>What amazes me with all of this is that by the sounds of us here in the forum, we are all pretty good, well meaning people. How did we ever find ourselves in such messses. <P>Anyway, thanks. <P>Flip

Dear Flipper:<BR>Good question and I thought the same thing. Probably is because we are the ones seeking the answers to the problems in our marriage and really want to make it work, whereas, our partners are not doing the same and not really trying. So, I guess this is why we all sound so good and really helpful and wanting to do what it takes. Unfortunetly, it's not like that with our partners, thus, bringing us to this forum. If our partners felt the same way, I suppose we would not be here to be posting and looking for the help we are seeking. All of us are good people in search for something better in our marriage. No one is more or less of a person because they have messed up in the past. What makes us different and become that better person within ourselves is the seeking of the knowledge and striving to find those answers that would bring self-fulfillment and richness to our hearts and marriages.

Dear Flipper:<BR>Good question and I thought the same thing. Probably is because we are the ones seeking the answers to the problems in our marriage and really want to make it work, whereas, our partners are not doing the same and not really trying. So, I guess this is why we all sound so good and really helpful and wanting to do what it takes. Unfortunetly, it's not like that with our partners, thus, bringing us to this forum. If our partners felt the same way, I suppose we would not be here to be posting and looking for the help we are seeking. All of us are good people in search for something better in our marriage. No one is more or less of a person because they have messed up in the past. What makes us different and become that better person within ourselves is the seeking of the knowledge and striving to find those answers that would bring self-fulfillment and richness to our hearts and marriages.

Dear DCW:<BR>Yes, it is a redflag and since the incident about the ow, that I found out last week about, he has been trying. We are going to a therapist and this week we are having a 2 hour session with her. So, I am looking forward to going. It's tough, but for now, the ow is out of the picture and we are concentrating on our marriage...for now.