This is my first post on the site, somewhere that I have only found the need for in the last 7 days. Over the last 2 months I have gradually found out that my beloved wife of 18 years has been having a torrid affair with a former work colleague. This has gone on for over 2 years despite both the parties having spouses and children and the fact that she had not worked with him since 1990! She contacted him through the Friends Re-United website here in the UK. Her Mother had died 8 months before the initial contact and she tells me that she was only e-mailing him for the first 5 months. The first meeting was at his insistence, and was secret.

The affair went into high gear and became physical soon after. At the same time my relationship with my wife started to deteriorate. Sex went from occasional but adventurous to very infrequent and cold. Arguments festered and there was almost no communication. I was deluding myself that the reason for all these problems was the university course that she was taking. I now see that it was a symptom of the undermining of my marriage. The endgame began, as do so many, with the sight of a text message from the OM. This was the thread that I pulled relentlessly to unravel the full, bitter truth. The final confirmation last week was the most bitter and personal blow that a man could suffer.

Since then I feel like I have been following a script devised by this web site. The devastation has been total and unbearable, the tears have fallen like rain and i have lost track of the number fo times that I have cried out in agony, trying to take away the pain that will not go. I have started to come to terms with this total upheaval of all I have ever known and believed on an intellectual level. It happened, these things do. But on an emotional level I am finding it so difficult to reconcile the person I thought I knew with the person who has done this to me. The betrayal and deception have left me emotionally flayed raw.

One of the few crumbs of comfort ( and they are few) is the reference I made to a script. My wife appears to be following one as well. If I accept that the affair really ended when I contacted his spouse then we are only 3 weeks into the post affair period. She has expressed her devastation at the end of the relationship (very difficult to listen to) and has moved on to examine the reasons for the affair. True to the experience of others she has started to re-write our history to help her justify our actions.

Apparently the 16 years before the affair were not too great, and anyway we got engaged under a cloud, too young and on the rebound. Apparently "the kids will be fine" because they are resilient - a piece of self deception that leaves me breathless. She could never discover with me the love that she and the OP had, and he could never feel as strongly for his wife as he felt for mine!! Overlaying all these comments is the constant assertion that they were truly in love and that they would be together if only it were not for the inconvenient fact that they are married to other people with whom they have a family.

So, in the light of the above, is she going through the post affair withdrawl symptoms, or am I the one in denial? I don't want to sound flippant, but I have seen other posters refer to their WS as "having their brains scrambled" in much the same way a drug addict does. Can this be true and is there anything I acn do to speed up the detox. process?

All caring comments gratefully received

I'm very new to this myself (just 3 weeks since DDay) but wanted to say I feel for you and your situation.

Your words... "I am finding it so difficult to reconcile the person I thought I knew with the person who has done this to me" really hit home for me

You will find much support and advice on this site. I've found it invaluable and it helps ground me when I feel the pain is starting to overwhelm me. Keep posting.

Dear Hurt,

I am so sorry to see yet another marriage hit with this. You are still in the front line of this pain and I know exactly how traumatizing it is. You write so elequently though! When I 1st put together the real truth, my words only came out as sobs and babble.

According to the posts from the "graduates" here at MB, your WS is following a classic script of the A. To her, it IS an addiction. Senseless "feel-good" stuff that destroys everyone around it. Is WS willing to see a MC and get to the bottom of it, and is she willing to help you heal from the devastation by revealing the whole truth and sticking to a NC rule?

Will she open up her life to you and give up privacy (since privacy and deceit afforded her the opportunity to carry out the A)?

You will feel bad for needing to check up on her. You'll grieve for days over the lost trust. It sucks, but it's normal.

God speed to your recovery. If I can be of any help, just let me know.

I've now been there- seen that. Just trying to survive at the moment.

Love, OPO

HH: I'm very sorry for your pain. The situation is unbelievably hard, especially at first. It's clear that she means a lot to you.

Like thousands of others, I've experienced the marital history rewriting. It isn't pretty to have so many good years devalued. But can you remember how she used to talk about your M? I'll bet a nickel it was very different than the rewritten version. Right now she is probably sincere, but please keep in mind that somewhere deep inside she remembers that it wasn't all crap.

You and I exposed at about the same time. Wife was extremely upset that I exposed. In the first two weeks she moved to the guest room, talked a lot with friends about whether to divorce me or not, and lived a more or less separate life. BUT it could be there may be the beginnings of a small upswing. My wish for you is that you see some sign of an upturn in the next few weeks.

My Dday was earlier; in my experience the pain won't go away for awhile, but over time it WILL become less constant and less harsh. Don't let yourself feel overwhelmed. Be kind, patient, loving and most of all strong; like many many others you can make it through this difficult time!

I'm a newbie - but please know that you will for sure get a ton of good advice from many experienced posters. Trust them, they are really wonderful generous people, and an incredible resource. Keep posting!

Thanks for all the supportive comments. The emotional pendulum is constantly pushing me from a state of almost total despair to insane optimism on an almost hourly basis.

To help provide a bit more background info: Regarding counselling, she has been to see counsellors twice in the last 12 months to help her end the affair. The advice seemed to be "let nature take it's course", so she is not too impressed that this route currently has anything to offer her.(She was unable to end the affair.) I, on the other hand, cannot shut up, and need to talk to all and sundry, so I am making my first solo visit to a counsellor on Thurs.

As regards her mental state - her father was killed in a car crash before she was born, leading to a lifelong extreme fear of death. Her mother never re-married, lived with depression for the rest of her days and died young of heart failure due to smoking. On top of all that my wife discovered 5 years ago that she has a congenitive heart arhythmia condition that may well cause premature heart failure. By this stage you are probably wondering how on earth we have made it this far at all!

In the 16 years before the A we have been through a war (I am ex-military), dislocation and long seperations due to the nature of the job, and the birth of 3 beautiful sons.

All of the above, coupled with the fact that the affair started only 8 months after the unexpected death of her mother, and the wife of the OM was pregnant at the time, leads me to believe that this was a vulnerable time for all concerned and the subsequent infidelity was an expression of temporary emotional problems.

Against that somewhat rosy assessment I have to acknowledge that the A went on for over 2 years. The temporary feelings should have died, but had been replaced by the strong emotions associated with the illicit nature of an A.

I am now in the ghastly position of living with someone who is uncertain whether or not she should be married at all, so strong are the emotions generated by this A. In my confident moments I am certain that she will come down from the euphoria of the A and realise the true nature of what she has. But when it starts to get dark, which it is starting to do here in England, I start to get wracked with doubts and insecurity. I feel very hurt by what she has done, but have never wavered from the conviction that we can work it out.

Am I naive, stupid or justified in my hopes?

No you are not naive or stupid. I think you are very justified in your hopes. But it will take some time. I can't remember seeing any thread here where the situation was resolved quickly. Time & patience. You'll be absorbing not only your own pain, but a lot of hers as well. The more of hers you can soak up - while still remaining gentle and loving - the better the chance for reconciliation.

I haven't been here long, but your wife's story is at least the fourth I've seen where her health may have played a part in the A. Mine too, to some extent. Feeling of mortality I guess. I would think that at some point your W should come to realize that, being mortal like all of us, she will want to make a statement with her life. And if she's like most people, that statement surely will be about fidelity, love, and caring rather than about infidelity or husband-switching.

To help other readers get more perspective, can you provide more detail re yr ages, kids, marital history, etc?

Hurt,

Please read the articles on this site about withdrawal and the evolution of affairs. The book Surviving an Affair will give you some great insight into this. She is definitely in to withdrawal and it can last for months so settle in for the long haul. I do hope that No Contact has been established as this will be crucial to the recovery of the marriage.

This disclosure is so new and raw that there is little you can do right now but endure and I think you must. If you feel the A is rekindling, please disclose the A to any and all. Affair seem to fail most often when the light of day is shined on them.

I would also advise you to move your post over to the General Questions section as it is much more active and you will receive a lot more advice.

Hang in there, and give this time. She is indeed on script and this script often leads to serious reevaluation of the marriage once she is out of the fog.

God Bless,

JL

"I love you but I'm not in love with you."
"We are true soulmates."
"I should have married her when I first knew her."
"We were meant to be together."
"Our marriage has been a long, huge mistake."
"She is the most wonderful, remarkable, caring person I have ever known."

These were just a few of the statements my H made about his "one true love" in the days following my discovery of his 2.5 year affair with a woman he had known in his youth and re-established contact with. Granted, there were problems in our 22 year marriage. Who doesn't have them? But it cut to the quick to hear things like this. For me, the 'soulmate' term is the worst thing to hear. Everytime I hear that word now I want to scream.

That was April of 2004. I hung in there and now my H is the most remorseful, apologetic man you would ever know. He cannot believe he ever did what he did. He often says to me the thing he regrets the most was what he said about the OW to me. And about what he turned our marriage into in his mind.

This all happened during his sudden unemployment and a true mid-life crises on his part. Was he in the fog? You bet he was, though he certainly would never admit it while in it. It took a long, long time for him to come back to reality -- the reality of him having a family that loved him (4 children), a wife that really wasn't so bad, and a life that really had meaning, value, love for him. His OW was a shot in the dark, filled with fantasy, and NOT REAL.

When I threatened to expose to the OW husband, the OW truly freaked out. That said to him that her feelings for him were tenuous at best, she did not want a divorce, and certainly didn't see a future together with him. Still, I have feelings that I need to get over concerning the whole affair too.

Our present and future together still requires work. But it is getting better.

Thanks for the support.

A brief summary:

I am 40, my wife is 41. We married 18 years ago having got engaged whilst she was pregnant. We chose to terminate the pregnancy early on, but it undeniably caused huge emotional aftershocks.

We never lived together before we were married, and I have always felt that we married in hope, and subsequently fell in love. Unconventional, possibly, but it really seemed to work.

We deliberately waited for the relationship to solidify before having children. Military life throws many trials at a relationship, and ours was no exception. We survived many traumas and mutually decided that we were ready for kids. The 3 boys were born in 1992, 1994 and 1997.

I left the military in 1996 after 12 years and am now in civilian aviation, a career that takes me away from home at least 12 nights a month.

The reason I have called this "I can't believe this has happened to me" is that I was SO happy until my mother-in-law died. I can remember putting the kids to bed and literally praying (I am not a religious man) that God would stop time to allow me to live in that stage of my life forever. I was a sentimental fool.

I don't think that I am being revisionist to date the beginning of my woes to the death of my M-in Law. It was a massive shock to my W, one that caused her to question the entire course of her life. I sincerely hope that this A is just her way of kicking back her heels.

The irony is that I feel she leads a more fulfilling life than I do! Ever since she has known me I have flown aeroplanes - that is what I do. She has had several jobs, finished working when the kids came along, has learnt the piano to a high level, goes horse riding, has taken a degree in Psychology, all sorts of stuff. Me? I just continue to fly aeroplanes, earning a living.

Anyway, pick the bones out of that lot, as we say over here. Maybe I have been living in a dreamworld all these years; the Titanic has finally hit the iceberg.

Thoughts?

Oh, yes.

Try and be the best person you can be.
Try not to Love Bust (tho some will probably sneak through).
And DON'T BE A DOORMAT (don't let her need to justify her affair make you do or say things to keep her with you.) The affair was HER CHOICE.

My take is -- yes, there were problems in the marriage. I was unhappy too. But I DIDN'T CHOOSE TO HAVE AN AFFAIR to make myself feel better. Simply, that would have been wrong.

We all make choices in life - some of them wise and some of them dumb. Having an A to make you feel better is just wrong. And weak.

Stay here at this site, please. You will learn a lot, and see that what is going on in your life DOES follow a script. If you can tough it out, you may find the rainbow again.

BBE

This is the first entry that I have made into this site. I found that my husband of 10 years has been having an affair with a young woman that has been pursuing him for at least 3 months. I believe that your situation sounds hopeful. My "perfect marriage" started unraveling at the end of July when I found numerous "restricted" calls on his phone that had all occured that day. My heart sank with what this could mean, and within a week the truth finally came out. I am pregnant with our second child. Our beautiful daughter is seven years old seems to be holding up, but I hate to see her pay for our problems. What sounds hopeful is that your wife is trying to make things work in what sounds like a very half-hearted way. My husband moved back into our house, by my request, about a week after he left. I was determined that I wouldn't allow this other person to destroy my family. He left when he told me that his "feelings just weren't coming back" a couple of weeks later. He said that he had not had contact with her since he moved back in, but immediately made contact when he left the second time. He doesn't say that he is "in love" with her, but says that he cares a lot about her. Maybe it is easier for your wife to excuse her actions by admitting that love caused her to do this. I'm sure it hurts to hear her say that, but it is no consolation to me to hear that he isn't willing to try to save our family for someone he is not even "in love" with.

I hope things get better for you. Things seem very surreal to me, and my mood goes from thinking I can handle this to falling to pieces, sometimes in the same day.

Good luck!

Hi HH

Welcome to MB. It is just the resource you will need right now. The next few months of your life are going to be ******. You will cry, not sleep, food will taste like sawdust and you will swing from disbelief to agony almost hourly some times.

I would stress three priorities:

1) Minimize any negative impact this will have on your children; Stay upbeat, do not say anything negative to them about your WS - plan distractions - outings.

2) Take care of you; Dr Harley recommends anti-depressants. I found acupuncture, exercise and great music helped immensely. Spending lots of time with friends who you can confide in - is absolutely necessary right now.

3) Recognize that your wife is really in a delusional state - she is living pure fantasy and has disconnected from reality - anything she says should be regarded as the rantings of an unmedicated psychotic. Don't lisen to any more of it than you can take. Your primary task right now is protecting the love you have for her. Lisening to her profess love for another will drain your love bank big time. Remember that while she now is on some kind of me high - eventually the woman you love will return to you. You just really need to believe that.

Buy Surviving an Affair - it is a must read. I am posting your original message on General Questions II with a call out to the vets who have coped and succeeded dealing with this kind of torture.

Keep strong. It gets better.

Cheers,

PB

My goodness this plan A business is very demanding. I have managed 2 days so far, but tonight had a bit of a mini LB. The feeling of betrayal sometimes overwhelms me and I start to feel like doormat.

I find myself wishing that she would want to cuddle me as much as she wants to cuddle the kids, and start to resent the total absence of affection. Any attempt to take an interest in her affaira is met with accusations of prying, she refuses to accept that I may have some issues with her "privacy" due to her past behaviour, hence the mini LB. I could see where the conversation was going so tried to distance myself, so further accusations of being argumentative.

Managed a nice talk earlier this evening, and I think that the difference in my feelings was generated by the glass of wine I consumed. One glass and I am a hyper-sensitive paranoid! Lay off the booze in plan A folks!!

Hi I am new user just signed on today. Long story short found out about my wifes A 3 weeks ago. Went thru all the usual pain anger and wanting to let her go. But perservered thru that feeling. The WS altough has admittedto all A and i feel is trullu sorry. But cannot control herself from contacting the OM. She has called him almost everyday except the weekend and contiuously lies contacting him until I see the phone records online. She is definitely in a fog she has said herself. I have tried to tell her that the "soulmate" thing is what every WS feels. She says that she has made such a deep emotional connection and they made plans on living happily ever after that she cant seem to stop thinking about him. I definety feel like a doormat. I have talked to the OM and he says its hard for both of them after getting so close. They say they will break it off slowly which I contest sincerely. She contacted him yesterday on my sons cell (I asked for her cell to keep from temptation) She caught me checking son cell records online and defended her privacy). I actually saw the records today found she had called him and they had talked on Friday and Monday. When I tell her that she has to NC the OM she says she tries but is failing. I know we cant go thru widhrawal until she stops calling him. I need help to convince her to stop contacting him......HELP!!!

Folks,

There is a huge difference between privacy and secrecy and your WS's need to be educated on this fact. Secrecy is something that you hide from your spouse, something you KNOW you don't want him to know. Privacy is based on respect and accomodations for comfort. For example, your W may prefer to go to the bathroom with the door closed. It is no secret what is going on, but common respect requires that you afford her the privacy to do so.

Affairs and the lying and cheating that goes on are not subject to the rules of privacy because they are secrets KEPT from another person.

Explain the difference to them and keep checking up on them until the PROVE they can be trusted. It is part of plan A.

God Bless,

JL

I agree with the above statements. There is no privacy or should be none when lieing and cheating are found out. For example, my wife writes very clearly in her logs (messenger chats to the OM.) that she is waiting for me to go to sleep and then she'll do stuff for him. He coaxes her, he just wants a fun time, and she gives in. But, throughout it she expresses concern of it being kept hidden from me. This is very clear evidence to me that she knows full well I wouldn't approve of it and that she is hiding it intentionally from me. It is at this point, all respect for privacy should be removed. I treated her like an adult when I found out a year ago. I explained to her how much it hurt me and there would be consequences if it happened again. I asked her flat out "do you feel this is wrong or that I should be offended by what you are doing?" Her answers were flat out no's to both questions, she didn't feel I should be offended at all. But she knows I disapprove so she intionally hides it knowing full well if it comes out in the open, things may hit the fan.

The more I think about it though... The more I realize how much I need to get out of this relationship and fast. IF she can rationalize what she does to a point of thinking that I should not take offense to her having virtual sex-- Live with another living guy, over a webcam, then she is not a woman I want to die loving into old age. No matter how much we may have in common.

Sure, I could have taken the webcam away, locked down her computer, etc. But, I feel that if I do that, I would be treating her as an adult and it wouldn't change anything in our relationship. She had to be the one to do this, to show she is taking action and responsability. I treated her as the adult she is, and left everything in place, I even mentioned a year ago that she could get rid of the webcam. She told me to take it, I said no, you have to do this. For a period it wasn't hooked up due to computer issues and I thought it was over. Boy was I wrong.

if you take the gun away from a soldier, are they no longer a soldier? If I would have enforced strict policies on my wife online, to stop her from cheating, would that have made her no longer cheat ever again? I find that hard to believe.

In short, I believe in giving responsability and accountability to the person as a respectible adult. If I have to treat them as a child, then I don't know if one is accomplishing anything. Maybe I'm wrong or incorrect. Maybe wars would end if we took explosives and guns away from everyone. (hmm. what about the dark ages... )

God, put adam and eve in the garden of eden with the tree of knowledge. .. . . . Did he have to do that. He knew would take it, he could have removed the tree from our presence to prevent what happened from happening. No, he told us there would be consequences, but left the tree there. Our spouses are accountable and responsible for their actions, taking their ability to cheat away does not make them non-cheaters, anymore than taking the tree from adam and eve's presence makes humans no longer be sinners.

sorry, I think I'm entering the anger state at my wife. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

This whole business of secrecy vs. privacy is one of the major triggers for the feelings of betrayal and regret that come over me in waves. I can now see them as relapses, but they are very difficult to deal with in the presence of the WS or the children.

I only really appreciated last night the true depth of my loss of trust in her. It hit me like ton of bricks when I realised that the words she was using I had heard a thousand times before re. privacy. Our mini LB was the result of me trying to explain that she should realise that her claims of a right to privacy was one of the behaviours that had enabled her to conduct an affair for so long.

Another feeling that returns in uncontrollable waves is that of betrayal. I have obviously spent a lot of time reviewing the last 2 years of my life, looking for clues as to what was going on - boy are they obvious now! But underneath that is the memory of all the times that I thought were good - family walks in the hills, special meals out together, hers and my 40th birthday, the list goes on. Even typing them here brings tears to my eye.

I cannot help feeling that these were ALL bogus, that her thoughts were elsewhere at the time and that I was living with someone totally disconnected from her family. The truly insidious and awesomely destructive power of an extra-marital affair lies in these details. The complete undermining of a marital bond. I am stunned at the enormity of the loss, and I can see why recovery takes so long. Though I am in plan A, and taking a day at a time, the length of the journey before me is very intimidating.

I suppose once the cycle of emotional need and fulfillment between the WS and her OM is broken, when she comes a little more "on side" then the effort will be shared between us, so things will get a little easier. That day cannot come soon enough.

Love to all, and thanks for your sage advice. This place has been a lifeline!!

HH: Those feelings of betrayal and despair have a certain attraction. But you know they are not good for you. You are too smart to wallow in them. Sure the feelings come around sometimes, but always try to put them aside, and be patient and upbeat, in order to make yourself more attractive to your WW.

Over time I think you'll find that those aches you have been choking down become less intense and less frequent. You can do this, but it will take work and time. It's totally unfair that you have to be the one being strong and doing the work, but that's the way it is. You can do this!

Update time folks, and time for a little advice if poss.

I have very good comms with the spouse of the OM, and she has his nuts in a vice! She has told me that they have made a phone call and an e-mail to each other in the last 7 days. OM is continuing to keep his distance from my WS, but she is grasping at straws within these communications to persuade herself that some sort of relationship can be maintained. Hence Qustion 1:

Should I request that the rejection be more forceful, or will this simply make her mental state worse?

Secondly, I have spoken to OM and he has, as revealed earlier, come down to earth rather harder and faster than my WS. He says that he "can't quite believe the affair happened", and when I threw at him some of the lines that he had given my WS, his words were "I don't want to discuss it". In the course of a conversation with my WS yesterday she stated "I have had an affair with X and now he has left me, I need time to think about things". I immediately, but sensitively, pointed out that she was never there for him to leave, if he had left anybody it was his own wife, as she had thrown him out. WS and OM were never "together" for him to leave her. I then revealed the conversation that I had had with OM the previous day and the feelings he expressed about the A. Silence.

Today I started to draw parallels between A withdrawl and drug withdrawl, highlighting some of her more extreme beliefs about her relationship as evidence of her delusional state. She of course denied everything, but my 2nd question is:

Am I pushing too hard? I see the need to break the emotional cycle with the OM as crucial to any progress, but am I going about it the right way?

Thanks for all thoughts and advice.

Well plenty has happened since I last updated you 24 hours ago. The spouse of the OM and I have a very open line of communication. I e-mailed her to express concerns about the behaviour of the WS re. continuing to attempt contact. She rang me back to express similar concerns and mentioned in passing that it was similar to 15 years ago for her. I asked her what she meant, and she explained that, at the time, she and OM were BF/GF and he went through a period of time of not contacting her and being evasive about his movements. He subsequently confirmed that an affair had taken place! In 1990!

This of course put a whole different light on my wife's decision to find him through a reunion website, and hence the entire subsequent affair.

I went steely calm, told her what I knew, packed a bag and left. It was the easiest thing I have done so far in this painful time of my life. Resolution seems a lifetime away.