MelodyLane,

He did show remorse. I think he had the A because he was unable to resist temptation and he unable to resist temptation because he is very selfish and thought only about how good it would make him feel, both physically (sex) and psychologically (ego boost), to have an A with a beautiful woman. She was my friend and the A lasted close to two months, so I was betrayed simultaneously by two people I trusted.

Thank you again Trix. You are right, I can learn and grow from this experience and I have, whether I wanted or not. But why should I stay in the marriage? Why not to take what I learn and move on? Recovery seems too risky.

AskMe,

Maybe I should look into becoming a nun. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Maybe becoming a nun might be a little extreme. I understand fears and how they control us. They can be so real, because they are formed from experiences in our lives. And things that have caused us great pain intensify our fears and lock them into our memories. It's why I have a fear of can lids in the trash because I was pushing down the trash one day and one almost cut my finger off. And now I don't push down the trash.

So you have a fear of trust that is going to follow you. The question is, do you keep trying to be in control, keep trying to manage that fear or let go? If you keep trying to control the fear, it will keep controling you, because it never lets go. You have to let go of it, for it to let go of you.

AskMe,

...but if let go of my fear of trust, wouldn't that make me vulnerable?

Maybe you need to go back and read Surviving an Affair. You seem so stuck. I have gone through lot of the feelings you have. It will be 3 years since the last D-day in December. I feel like we are recovered.

Early in recovery we went to the MB weekend and did the followup homework. Have you done any of these activities together?

Yes, that is called intimacy.

As a BS I can understand where you are coming from.

As a WS I know for FACT I will NEVER betray my wife again. I don't care if Charlize Theron parachuted down into my backyard naked and winking.

There are serial cheaters and then there are people who learn from their terrible mistakes.

If your husband is learning from his mistake you could be risking everything by "betting" on what happens in the future. There is no garuantee another person might not cheat on you.

I know my wife and I made mistakes, but our marraige will be stronger than before. Neither of us want our "old" marriage back.

Just my 2 cents.

Lealas

It sounds as if you have a trust 'model' that goes something like "If I'm an excellent wife, I will not be cheated on or let down." Clearly, this hasn't worked (as is the case for so many BSs!). The harsh truth is that you can be Spouse of the Century, and still get cheated on.

That model let you down because it didn't consider the possibility that your partner might cheat for reasons other than your failure to measure up. It didn't include an estimation of your partner's own weaknesses and selfishness.

This will be the case even in a new relationship. If you take that same trust predictor into another marriage, you will still have the same blind spots and denial mechanisms, and the chances are you'll get stung again.

You really need to look at the 'perfect' state of the marriage before d-day. It wasn't perfect, was it? You may have been doing all the right things, your H may have been telling you how wonderful the marriage was, but he was selfish, weak and cunning enough to cheat with your friend and deceive you. There must have been some signs you missed, some aspects of his character that you misinterpreted.

Whatever your H's failings, you can't scrape all the blame off onto him - which is what I think you're doing right now. Of course, the responsibility for cheating is all his - you can't take any blame for that. But the responsibility to see the marriage clearly is yours; you may not have had the tools to do so in the past, but you are absolutely going to have to acquire them now. For your own sake, you have to face up to your own weaknesses and work out what you need to fix in you. Even if you left your H, what would give you confidence that you could spot problems in any new 'perfect' marriage? If you tell yourself that you've just been unlucky, and a new man would not let you down as your H has, I think you may be doomed to repeat history.

It sounds to me as if you're trying to punish your H for your mistakes.

I know this sounds harsh, but I've stood exactly where you're standing now, with the badge of Perfect Wifehood sparkling on my chest, in the wreckage of a marriage where my H had cheated on me for seventeen years. I know exactly how hard it is to remodel your whole trust system, and how much heart-searching and anger it takes.

Be very clear where your own blame lies.

TA

Lealas,
Coming from the stand point of someone who's been through
husband having a A, then us going through a "recovery",and now being back in the situation of husband having another A,
I can add a couple of things here-

Prior to H's first A, I thought are marriage was very good and I considered myself to be a "very good" wife. We didn't
have any apparent problems and H had never expressed being unhappy about anything. When A ended, and H wanted to get
back together, I was so happy and excited, that we didn't really follow all the "rules" as far as recovery.
We never got to the bottom of things with WHY the A had
happened, or what we could do to prevent it ever happening again. I wanted to "forgive and forget", and thought I could do that, but would find myself feeling resentful and
angry, and I would sometimes bring up the A.
I'm sure H must have felt like he could never "get past it".

Now that WH has had another A, I still don't know what the cause. I know that we should have gone to counseling, and
really worked at finding a cause and solution to the problems. If you haven't done counseling, I would definitely recommend you do so, so that you can find out
why underlying issues might have caused the A, what BOTH
of your emotional needs are, what BOTH of you need to do
differently, and how to get past your resentment, hurt,
and anger. I expect it is a journey that will take some time,so you can't expect it to resolve right away.
Best wishes-
Slammed

A couple of things struck me in your post. They probably struck me because I can relate to your feelings as I had them myself.


After my ex's first affair this was my exact thinking. I failed to look at my own 'defective' traits though. I lost a great opportunity for personal growth by doing that. So much time and energy was put into HIS actions and traits...which I couldn't control...that I had no time or energy to empower or grow myself.


You can do that.


Okay. This part is gonna sound harsh. YOU ARE HURTING HIM. You are HURTING YOURSELF. In a later post here you say that your marriage before the affair was good. How good? About as good as your pretending to be right now to your husband?

There's no point in telling your husband? WHAT??????

Do you think your husband might have thought that at the time he was having an affair? I mean, heck, why share your deepest concerns with your partner! Why not let the resentment grow unbeknownst to him so he can't do anything about it?

One of the most common issues brought up by BS's here was that if only they had known their WS was unhappy, unfullfilled, needing more emotional needs met, etc etc that they would have moved heaven and earth to do it.

In a way, you ARE punishing your husband. You are keeping intimacy out of your marriage and helping to create an atmosphere in which trust is impossible.

I encourage you to talk openly with your husband about the resentment you are feeling. I don't think the feelings or the reactions you are having are abnormal by any means but if you have any hope of salvaging your marriage and HAVING A BETTER ONE THAN BEFORE, you need to find a way to navigate recovery and the emotional minefields that accompany it.

Best of luck to you!

FIM

Trix,

No, we haven't done any. My H just wants to forget and move on.

I do feel stuck. When I feel so much like leaving, I post here so you guys can tell me not to give up. I know my situation is not as bad as others but it still hurts so much. I just want to escape all the ugliness and the pain.

***Part of my problem is that I am in a rare situation. My marriage was very good before the A. In most cases, the marriage was not going too well when the A happen. That wasn't my case. I really don't see how the marriage could be better now than it was before.***

Actually, this situation is not as rare as you might think. In my WH's case, I believe that our very secure marriage made him tell himself that he was entitled to some time without me (and with someone else) since he had a great marriage and was obviously doing such a great job at being a husband. What could it possibly hurt?

But aside from that I think I can see where your fear is coming from:

I used to be a fearless horsewoman. I would, and could, ride anything that wasn't actively rearing up and falling over backwards. Sure, I'd fallen off plenty of times, but I always got right back on and it never shook me at all. I would just learn from it and keep on riding.

Then one day I took out a young and rather green mare. We rode in her familar arena, but the day was windy and a storm was blowing in. The ride seemed to be going fine. Then, when I cued her for a second canter, she simply vanished.

Vanished.

One moment I was sitting on this mare with her neck rising up in front of me, and the next her neck was several feet to the right and I was sitting on thin air. I hit the ground rolling, was not hurt, got up, caught the frightned and confused young mare, remounted, calmed her down, got the canter correctly this time, and then petted her and took her back to the barn.

And after that, I never rode that mare again without my knees shaking every time I put my foot in the stirrup. I have barely ridden her at all since then, and usually just at a walk.

What was different about that fall? None of the other falls had ever shaken me at all.

The difference was that this time there was NO warning. Every other time, I could look back and see what I did wrong, or what the horse's problem was, and there was always at least a few seconds of warning so that the rider can either correct the situation or bale out.

But not this time.

I was still an experienced rider and this was still a sweet-tempered and agreeable mare, but every time I ever rode her after that I was convinced that any second she would simply vanish out from under me again. I would never see it coming and there would be *nothing* I could do about it.

I was a good rider on a good horse, but she still vanished out from under me with no warning.

We had good marriages to good men, but our husbands simply vanished out from under us with no warning.

It's one thing to get some warning that a bad thing is about to happen, even if it's only a few seconds. That way, you maintain *some* control over the situation and can make *some* choices.

It's another to get totally blindsided in an instant and be left feeling utterly powerless and defenseless.

I know exactly how you feel.
Mulan

lealas I'm the wh who I have heard my wife talk about the ugliness and pain. Fortunately she keeps working through hers. She attends a support group at our church with other spouses who deal with their own hurts and issues. They deal with the fears, the forgiveness and everything else you have talked about. Have you thought about doing anything like that?

Thanks eldente. I just feel lost...and I miss the time (before the A) when I felt safe, when I knew the way.

I think you probably can get away from all the ugliness and pain.

You can't escape it though.

Both you and your husband need to look the affair and the fear in the face and defeat it.

I failed to do that numerous times during my first marriage and I will never know what would have happened had we not simply got to point where I could "deal" with the affair. My ex was a serial cheater and maybe nothing would have changed... except me. I wish I could get back all the months and years I harbored the resentment and nursed my own feeling of superiority and entitlement.

If nothing else, I would have freed myself of those chains and been able to give more of myself...to my children, to my friends and family and to me.

The resentment, anger, pain and loss of trust won't just disappear if you leave. They will linger on until you work through it.

Do it for you and your marriage.

(((hugs)))

FIM

TogetherAlone,

You are so right, there must have been signs I missed and aspects of his character that I misinterpreted. I do need to do some soul-searching. The worst of me came out on D-day and I don't like having those feelings inside of me.

But I don't think I am trying to punish him for my mistakes. As a matter of fact I haven't punished him at all. He just complains that I am not as patient with with as I used to be.

Slammed1,

We did go to counseling, but the counselor told us wew were doing just fine after a few sessions. Is it worth all the work? What if the same thing that happen to you (second A) happens to me? I don't have the strength to go through this again, I barely have the stregth now.

Lealas


This is punishing him. You are refusing to heal - ask yourself why?

What is your payoff for not healing?

TA

faithinme,

Thenks for your response. My H knows how I feel and that is why he is afraid I am going to leave. Unless I find a way to control my feelings, to work on my resentment, there is no point in telling him again because it's just going to make him feel more powerless.