Mulan,

Thank you. I loved your story.

AskMe,

I am living in a foreign country so I don't have access to those groups. I come here for support when I am going through a bad time.

lealas~

I know that sensation of being lost. It is his responsibility to make you feel safe again. I eventually realized in order for my wife to feel safe, I had to feel safe too if that makes any sense <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Remember, there is a BIG difference between forgiving and forgetting. You will find comfort in forgiving.

I use to hold resentment and anger until I could almost taste it. Each morning I would awake and feel both slithering back into my mind within minutes.


Your posts read like you two love each other. The best thing you can do, imho, is tell him exactly how you feel.

See, I ended up having a ONS, like an idiot, trying to fill this void I had after my wife's 6 mo PA. I thought it would help, but it surely didn't. I was more miserable than before. The only thing it really helped me at all with, was understanding my wife's POV. I felt unworthy of her. It was hard looking in her eyes knowing the pain I caused her. I didn't do it for revenge, but knowing first hand the pain a BS goes through, I think I'm worse the person for going out and committing adultery. I was so selfish. All WS are at some point. I never stopped loving her and I believe her now when she says she never stopped loving me.

Neither of us are serial cheaters and we both know that our marriage would never survive another instance of it.

To be perfectly honest, all the BS and WS pain my wife and I have experienced, I think is worth it now that we are still together. For the first month or two, I debated separation. Divorce. I was scared too just thinking about it. I felt lost.

It's very hard for a BS not to feel lost.

I don't think there is anything wrong with you.

I do however believe you should talk to him like you're talking in this thread though instead of hiding your feelings. I'm not saying anything at all about your character or morals, but if you keep bottling up feelings of resentment and hurt, you could find yourself in your own affair. That's how they happen more times than not.

faithinme,

How do you defeat the A?

I am trying to work through my feelings. I am just overwhelmed by their intensity some times, and then, when I fail to control them, I want to leave it all behind.

TogetherAlone,

The payoff is leaving the door open to escape if I can't take it anymore.

eldente,

We do love each other. When I am in his arms I feel that is where I belong, and I have a hard time picturing my life without him. BUT he cheated, with my ex-riend, so he doesn't deserve my love.

Also, if I may point out, if he is a good man then he most surely regrets as much as you resent and if that keeps happening then nothing good will come of it. I would say you would be better off divorced. From what I've read on this site, it is very pro-marriage, and even though my wife and I are together and doing fine after our infidelities, I can see how infidelity would be too great for some to overcome. It is the ultimate "deal buster". Still, even then, you have to forgive him for your own well-being at some point.

I can see why this makes it so hard to trust, it wasn't just your husband you lost trust in, it was also your friend that you lost trust in. For you there have been two people who have broken your trust. It just makes your fear greater to overcome, not impossible though.

Look at the fact he is with you and not her then. That means something.

My wife went to a dating website and "hooked up" with a stranger, then spent 6 months going to his house on weekends while I stayed home with our daughter. I thought she was going to visit old female college buddy.

At first, I was soooo resentful she would just pick a random stranger(she narrowed it down to the "safest" looking one) but then I began to wonder what if she'd picked one of my friends??(I have some friends who can't seem to NOT stare at her chest when talking to her)

Would that be worse?

How could it be??

I came to the conclusion it would be worse. Hopefully I will never have to find out for sure. We all have varying degrees of hurt to overcome, that is for sure.

eldente,

It is far worse when you are betrayed by two people you love and trust. Also the movies in my head are a lot more realistic.

AskMe,

I find myself screening my friends nowadays. Any attractive ones don't get anywhere near my H. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Yes, I do believe it would be far worse.


I spent several months staring at cell phone logs, looking at the holidays she called him on, wondering what went on during those long conversations. I eventually became more obsessed with the conversations than the mental porno flicks...

The first time they met, he asked her if I owned a gun.

Oh yea, I thought about how hard it would be to hide the body. Thinking about little details like avoiding any sandy spots near his house leaving tire tracks, stuff like that. Anger and resentment got the best of me. I found myself planning the murder of a stranger and how I was going to do my best to get away with it. It scared me I thought about it realistically like that. Weighing the probabilities of getting caught.

And here I am usually feeling bad about using ant traps...

See how twisted all this can make us?

I hope for your sake you can find peace somewhere in all of this.

It's normal to be occasionally overwhelmed by these feelings. I know I was!!

I made the mistake, affair after affair, of walking away from the fight though. I walked in a different direction than what you're considering. I didn't look the affair in the face. I didn't deal with the affair. I had enough pain and stress from just getting to the point that I could deal with it and inch forward that I didn't want to truly confront the recovery from it.

I kind of think of it like this:

My dear husband (I am remarried) had an extensive elbow surgery before I met him (Tommy Johns surgery). The surgery was neccesary and did what it was supposed to in terms of helping out the immediate situation.

He was supposed to go through physical therepy too though. He didn't like it too much. He'd gone throught he painful surgery and the healing process to the point that he wasn't constantly in pain, so he stopped. After all, he could still use his arm and it seemed better. Physical therapy was painful!! He didn't think it was so important and didn't want to put himself through that anymore.

Right? Wrong!

He stopped physical therepy before he should have and now he can't extend his arm all the way. He's about 30 degrees short of full extension.

I did the same thing with my ex's affairs. I got to where I could get by day by day but never went through the recovery process.

If you are still feeling resentment like you explained in your first post, if you are faking it for the sake of your husband, you are not DEALING with it. You are stopping short of giving both of you what you need to go forward.

I would say that recovery is how you defeat the affair. Right now the affair is running your marriage. It is dictating your trust and your intimacy. It is still in between you and your husband in the lack of open communication and resentment. You say your husband knows how you feel and that's why he is scared. But you also say you don't tell him all of it because there is no point. Don't make the assumption that shielding your husband from your feelings is doing him a favor. It is more likely doing YOU a favor than the other way around.

You said earlier that your trade off is keeping the door open.

I say your trade off is keeping it shut. It is scary to confront the affair. What might it show you about your husband? About yourself? What do you lose in the balance of your marriage?

I'm going to project a little bit my own personal situation here for you to think about. This may be completely off base, but after years of really looking at my own motivations in putting XH affairs aside, I realized this about myself:

I didn't put the affair completely away because I was always the winner as long as it was between us.

I was the better spouse. I was the moral compass. I won.

I didn't think I punished XH because look at me... I took him back and chose to forgive him.

But I resented him and each and every anniversary of every affair. I could wallow in my self pity while simultanously elevating myself as the faithful spouse. I had these feelings of unresolved anger but damn it HE was the cause, he was defective.

Granted, he made it easier to do those things with each additional affair. But it didn't make me a better person. It didn't enrich my marriage or my family. It created a bitter and fearful atmosphere for both of us.

It took me a long time to see that and look at myself in the mirror and see that. Then I had to forgive him. Really forgive. Forgive myself. And move on.

FIM

lealas - There isn't anything wrong with you - you have been betrayed and that IS painful. I never really understood what the word "devastation" meant until the day I was confronted with my H's affair and I will never be the same again. Does that mean that I can't improve and that we can't have a good marriage in spite of the affair? I don't think so, but it does mean it will never be the same -the innocence has been lost and it still hurts me with varying degrees of intensity. I wish I could offer you some advice, but I often feel like you. I hit these plateaus in recovery where I just feel numb and I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm probably going to he!! for all of the thoughts I have had about my H, MOW, and even God himself, but they come and go. I pray every day for full forgiveness so that I can let go of my resentment because I don't want to be a bitter old woman - as I'm sure you don't either. Guess I just wanted you to know that I think you are feeling normal (whatever that is) after a such a deep betrayal. I hope that you can work through these feelings and let your H back into your heart someday.

eldente,

I understand only too well how twisted all this has made me. I didn't think about killing her but I wouldn't have been sad if she had suddenly died. Nowadays, one of my favorite past-times is to plan my revenge against her. How sad!

I used to be a good person, I was proud of myself, and I haven't lost hope that I will be able to be that person again. I am afraid that if I stay in this toxic situation too long, I will lose myself, I will lose the little innocence I have left in me. I wonder if by trying to save my marriage, I'd be losing my soul.

faithinme,

I don't feel like a winner. Nobody won. My ex-friend was married, and she left a wonderful H in hopes of getting mine. They were divorcing last I heard. My H and I are dealing with the aftermath of the A, and it is not a pretty sight. I use the word "dealing" because I don't know which one to use. My H "endures" my attempts to deal with the A, but what he really wants is for me to forget it ever happened. Working on our marriage reminds him of his mistake. He doesn't want to be reminded. I have asked him to help me heal, and his answer was "I don't know what to do" then I told him "read about it, try to find out, go to MB website..." To this day, he has done none of it. He is just hoping that if he ignores it long enough it will go away.

I don't think I am a better person than my H. I think that our weaknesses are in different areas. I know I wasn't happy to discover what I was able to feel and do when I found out about the A, but I must acknowledge it must have been part of me all along.

Maybe my trade off is keeping the door to my heart shut and the door to the street open. The A showed me that I couldn't trust my H, that I didn't know my H, that he wasn't the good man I thought he was. I'd have preferred to live with the illusion that we were both good people. Maybe we would have been if the A hadn't happened.

I know I have to forgive him for my sake. Maybe I need to forgive myself as well. But I'm not anywhere close to being able to do that. I want to be happy, and don't want the pain and the resentment anymore. I tell myself that I must be a bad person because I can't let go and move on. So what choices do I have?

SpouseGuess,

Thank you, it always helps me to know that others experience the same feelings. I also feel that the innocence has been lost, and I am still mourning its death.

We do all go through this and experience pain and thoughts we never thought we would have. I imagined myself on deathrow after murdering OW and WS. (I ultimately decided that they weren't worth it.) I entertained sick fantasies of catching them and carrying it out. I tormented myself with the images of them together, it became an obsession. I would try varying techniques to eradicate the thoughts finally learning a technique that helped me. I would stop the thought midthought...become aware of it's power and stare it down so that is would soon disapate. I am not sure that I conveyed that very well but it worked for me.

At times I was reduced to a speck of sand or worse in the self esteem department. It does take time and work to make it. You have more than many do with a FWH who is sorry for what he did. But, he also has to face it and work through it so he understands how he allowed himself to engage in an A and what boundaries he needs in place to not allow the temptation again.

There is a home study MB course you can buy. That is what we worked through together. We set a regular scheduled time to work on it together. Harley also says that you should spend 15 hours giving each other undivided attention.

But, you don't have to do anything...you can DV. I have heard it said that you have to earn your DV by giving the marriage every effort to save it. Then, if it doesn't work then you won't forever have regrets and wonder if you could have done more. This is especially true if you have kids. I don't think I have read whether or not you do have children. Kids are almost always better off with an intact family. It would be very selfish of you to DV when you have a remorseful FWH.

Trix,

We don't have any kids. Right after D-day, I was sure I wanted a divorce, I was sure I was getting one...I was furious. A set of circumstances, some would call destiny or God's will, prevented me from carrying through with my plans to leave. After some months, I calmed down enough to start thinking again. And that is when I realized what you mentioned in your response, that if I was to move on without regrets, I had to give my marriage another chance (I think I secretly hoped it wasn't going to work out). That was an intellectual decision, based in what my reasoning was telling me was the right thing to do. The problem was, and still is, my heart that keeps telling me to leave, to start fresh.

I was thinking about your post last night and it reminded me of what I told a friend once. He had somewhat an opposite problem. He could not allow himself to be close in a relationship because of past trauma in his life. And so his wife was suffering because of his problem. So I said, you have a miserable marriage because you refuse to let go th fear of the past hurts. He said, yes. So I said, so you live constantly day to day living in misery, living in fear on the chance that something will happen. He said, yes.

My question was, Why not live life and enjoy it until something happens? If you are there in it anyway why not live life. It finally dawned on him that he was choosing misery each day on the possibility that something could happen, maybe happen to cause him pain. Well it could happen anyway, and it might not even happen. So why not just enjoy life until it does. Ever since then his life has changed for the better and his relationship with his wife has improved. Think about it. Is it worth every day of misery on the chance of something going bad? Or would it be better to enjoy life up until the point that something goes bad? I choose to enjoy life.