Hi, I'm new & posted this to the just found out and just realized it would be more appropriate here. I'm 42 married 20 years, 3 great kids and just got separated (8/21/05). My wife and I had what I thought was a good marraige but I now realize she was hurting - stupid me. I strayed when she was distant from me (okay - it was incredibly stupid of me - received oral sex from 2 prostitutes). Now her heart has hardened and she says we may never be back together again. I am desperate to reunify our family. Hopefully we will - we did go to our first counseling session today but she still just gets irate when I tell her that I truly love her, which I truly truly do. Please pray for God to bring us back together (and for me to hold myself together when we talk, I used to be so unemotional and now can cry more than Hurricane Katrina's rain). Any ideas for how I can soften her heart?

Hi BillL,

So was your affair recent? Did your wife find out recently?(her finding out is called D-Day). Click the Toolkit in my sig and read that stuff. Not that what I wrote is just brilliant or anything, but the links to the other stuff can be very halpful. In the links is an e-book found at www.aftertheaffair.com that I found especially helpful in understanding what I had done and what I needed to prepare for to move forward.

Also, discussions here and reading and understanding the principles on this site is very helpful. There are other links to things you can read to help you out as well. As you post over time, you will find more things to read and learn.

If this is all recent, you can expect your wife to be very irate. Put yourself in her shoes. You would be irate too, I bet.

Try to remain calm and focused on rebuilding your marriage. Read, read, read. Talk about feelings and always hold on to hope. As you show your wife you are remorseful and as you make her #1 in your life things will have the best opportunity to get better.

Welcome to MB. We will check on you later.

patriot

Welcome to marriagebuilders. It is a great place to be under the circumstances.

Your wife is now going through one of the most HORRIBLE things that could happen to her. The love of her life (you), the one who made vows to honor and cherish her, has betrayed her. Until it has happened to you, you will never know the devastation.

Right now, you must tell her how sorry you are, how stupid you were, etc. And tell her over and over. Let her know that you will do ANYTHING to save the marriage.

Would she consider reading here? We could really help her through this.

Thanks for the ideas. My A's happened approximately 6 months ago and 1 year ago. Lousy ironic thing is that I had just bottomed out on that MLC idiocy. My BS can't even stand to hear me say that I am willing to do ANYTHING to save our family. I will try to get her to this site and I will tell her how stupid I was. Actually, as stupid as it is, I don't know that I have specifically told her I was stupid. Good idea. Again, thanks for the reply posts, you have no idea how it helped me start my day. Please pray for my marraige.

If you can get her to post here, or at least read principles here, that would be a good thing. If you want to open her up to the idea of recovery, and she sounds like she is fairly angry, the you are going to have to make sure your actions are telling her the right things.

If you really want to save your marriage, then you need to DO things that say that. Coming to this site. Scheduling a marriage counselor for your both. Answering her questions and being completely honest about things.

As much as I hate to say it, the only tools you have to work with are yourself and your actions. What I mean by that is you want her to give you another chance. You can't make her do that. You have to show her that giving you a second chance is what she wants to do.

Which means you could fail and she could leave you. So, the best thing you can do is to make sure you learn as much as you can about meeting her needs and proving your trustworthyness.

Keep posting, these things will come up.

BillL,

Prayers to help you, your family, your marriage offered up.

Patriot's guide will help you stay grounded and hopefully avoid LBs arising from frustration.

believer's advice to keep on telling your wife you'll do anything to save your marriage is sound. Most BSs would give anything to hear the words you're saying. Don't lose hope!

Did anyone write this idea yet? If your wife isn't ready to visit MB, maybe you could print out some pages and let her read them offline?

Sally