I know "Marriage Builders" advocates full disclosure after an affair. I understand why. But I have also heard some compelling arguements for keeping quiet. I am struggling with whether to tell my husband about my affair and would like input from others who've been in my (or his) shoes.

Some background: We have been married for 13 years and have two daughters, almost 3 and 6 years old. Looking back, I can't remember ever being deeply in love with my husband. We were really good friends, and I guess I thought that would be enough. Now I think I was a jerk and a fool.

Over the years, there were many clues that I had made a poor choice for myself. Just one example: Two years into the marriage, I moved 200 miles away to persue a career opportunity (with my husband's blessing). For the next year and a half, we only saw each other one day a week. Then a new career opportunity allowed me to come back home. The thing is: while I was gone, I didn't even miss him. It was like he was a casual friend and seeing him once a week was plenty. When we did see each other, we rarely had sex. In fact, we didn't have much sex before I moved away.

At first, common life goals and interests (career-career-career, travel, fun) kept us going. I think things really started to fall apart when we had kids. He became disillusioned with the responsibilities of middle age and fatherhood. He started complaining all the time, grew detached from me and short-tempered with the girls. He would sit around on weekends, drinking beer and watching sports, and ignoring us. We didn't agree on anything anymore. I pulled away, focusing first on being a mom, then on my career, and leaving little time or energy for him. He started watching porn instead of having sex with me, and I didn't even care. And please understand -- I'm not trying to blame him or justify what I did. Just trying to set the stage.

Anyway, after awhile, I started to feel dead inside -- no love, no sexual desire, not even the wonderful friendship that had first brought us together. And over the summer, I had an affair with a man I barely knew. It was all about the sex, but I built it up in my mind to mean more -- an emotional attachment. About six weeks ago, it ended very badly. He decided to break it off, I freaked out, he got really mean, etc. Now, it's totally over and we don't have mutual friends or business associates so I doubt I'll ever see him again.

About two weeks after that, I told my husband that I don't love him and don't think I ever did. But I didn't tell him about the affair. He asked if I wanted a divorce. I said I didn't know. We had a long talk. Bottom line: He has taken full responsibility for his contribution to our problems. We're now in marriage counseling, and he's made an amazing transformation. It's as if I shocked him out of a sullen, brooding trance. He now pays attention to me and has become a patient, attentive dad. Honestly, I didn't know he had it in him! He says he loves me, and is determined to make our marriage work, but he won't put up a fight if I ultimately decide I want to split-up. Amazingly, he seems happier and more alive -- in the game so to speak -- than he has in years.

After all this, I like him a lot better than I have in a long time, but I still don't have 'those feelings' for him. Is it too soon? Should I just give it more time? Or is it that you can't get back what you never had -- can't rekindle a fire that never before burned? Is there anyone out there who has kept an affair secret and successfully rebuilt your marriage? Or do I need to admit what I did in order to move on?

I'm so confused....

"I'm so confused"

no you're not confused ....

you simply resist doing what you know in your heart is the correct thing to do ....

this is not confusion ... this is evidence that your "Taker" is still in charge when it comes to how you plan to relate to your husband

You choose to avoid something that is bound to be very unpleasant even though it means continued dishonesty and deception toward your husband ....

just don't call it confusion .... call it something else ... like determination ....

Have you studied "Radical Honesty" in Harley's concepts yet?

radical honesty

You seem like you have a husband who would be dedicated to making your marriage better, which is all the more reason you need to tell him about the affair.

There are many people on here who kept it a secret for years and years and are suffering even more as now their spouses know and dealing with the fact that their spouse could them so well, and were those years all fake etc?

It's important that he know about it in order to PROPERLY fix your marriage...and it's important for you to not blame it on the state of our marriage, but what inside YOU allowed you to break your morals and have an affair, instead of doing things in the proper order...meaning, divorce - then new man. If the problems were as you said, then you should have sought out divorce first...but you didn't - have you figured out inside of you why?

You can get back those feelings, but you have to choose to. And it will take time.

It's only been 6 weeks since your last contact with your OM...this is not long. You are still - as we say on here "in the fog". In most cases - by about 2-4 months past NC, you will start to feel those feelings again, and remember the good times in the marriage - not just the bad times.

I had been CONVINCED my 6 year marriage was a mistake - I married to young, my H was married to me out of conveinence - i could barely remember one good moment. It was a build up of resentment and entitlement. And it was the fuel to my affair and feeling wanted.

But after my affair, as H and I healed, after a few months post - affair, I realized our marriage had NOT been like I thought it was - it was a state of mind I was in that allowed me to only see it that way. I suspect in your case it may be alot like that.

My personal advice as a FWW

1. Tell your husband everything
2. If your OM has contacted you at ALL in the past 6 weeks, make sure you and your H write a NC letter
3. Set yourself a goal - give the marriage a year to two years to get those feelings back, and activly work on YOURSELF and what you can change to contribute to the marriage...and if after that - you still feel you are in the wrong marriage - do it the right way.

Read my story and my recovery guide for FWW in my signature - they also may help you out.

And welcome to MB <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

SC, it will be impossible to develop an intimate relationship with someone based on fraud and deceit. That is a huge part of your problem there.

Secondly, it will take some time for your feelings to return/develop for your husband. Other WS' around here start feeling something for their BS as they withdraw from the OP. As you withdraw you will feel more and more for your H. Your marriage can recover and develop into something good if you both work hard at it, but honesty has to be the first step.

In order for your marriage to have any hope, though, your H must be told the truth about his life. Your marriage cannot recover as long as he is being deceived. This is information to which he has a right to know. Not telling him the truth about his life is compounding the crime by adding lying to the mix. The longer you withhold this from him, the more damage you do to your marriage, because he will view as time that you were deceiving him.


I have been here for years and have never heard a "compelling" argument, or even a rational argument, that justified deceit and fraud.


In summation, your H must be told, regardless of what you decide to do. He has a right to know the facts about his own life so he can decide for himself whether or not he wants to stay in the marriage. It is his right to make that choice.

Welcome. We understand your confusion. You are not the first to be in the situation you are. So, start learning so you can move to where you should be. This will be an on going discussion on here as you work through this...so let's get started by answering your questions:


Yes.


I have a question that may help me answer this. Are the two of you Christians...have you been saved? While I wait for the answer, let me say that there have been many in your shoes that have found love in their relationship where little existed before. At the very least, for your children, it would be best to try your best to find out.


You need to admit it. I know of a couple that my wife is friends with. This wife cheated on her husband about the time my wife was doing her thing. While I found out about my wife, this husband has never found out about my wife's friend's affair. She is supposedly now committed to the marriage and just wants that in the past.

But it is hurting them. You see, the BS ALWAYS knows somethign wasnt right. They may ignore or not see fully what has happened, but they know their wife or husband has been unfaithful on some level or another. So, without full disclosure, the BS runs around knowing they have been living some sort of lie, but cant put their finger on it. So, it inhibits them in their ability to trust their spouse (most would think the admission of an affair would do that...but actually hiding it causes worse trust issues). Secrecy and lies will doom a marriage everytime!

Added to that, by not telling your husband, you are saying you do not respect him. You are saying that he doesnt get a say in his life...what is really his life. By keeping parts of his life from him, he ends up making decisions based on something that isnt real. And if you really want an angry BS on your hands, just go a period of time where he is trying to improve your marriage, and then finds out it has all been a lie because he didnt have all the info. That will be 10x uglier than the blow-up from the affair if you had revealed it.

The basis of marriage is not trust, it is not happiness, it is not love. Those are products of a good marriage. But a good marriage has to have two things at its base in order to have those products: it must have truth and it must have commitment. These are the only two requirements.

So, if you want the love, the sex, the marriage you always wanted, then the two of you have to start with truth and move to commitment. Commitment to meet each others needs, even when you dont feel it. A commitment to your vows and to the life long relationship the two of you are building.

It sounds like your husband has woke up. And I know you dont want to stop that, if it is true. But nothing will kill this more if you end up going weeks or months and then he finds out the truth. The living a lie thing is one of the biggest blows to a BS.

It is better to come out, for him to understand how bad things have gotten and for him to understand that yo uare committed to building a new relationship with him that will move away from where the two of you have been.


Hope this helps.

In His arms.

Well, I hope that this post doesn't come across too harsh but I am one of those BS who didn't find out until more than 10 years after the AE. We are well into recovery now and even though we both know that we have a stronger and more loving marriage than ever before, my resentment that I deal with daily is not the A anymore, it is all the time (and pain) endured through the years that I did not know.

Going back about 11 years when the A was happening, I would bet that my FWW said exactly the same things you did in your posts. Even though she had a husband that loved her and two great kids, at some point it just wasn't enough and she got the entitlement attitude that ultimately resulted in the A. Although after a while the A died a natural death (she could no longer deal with the dual life and the OM all the sudden wasn't so attractive), she kept this secret inside for many years, including going through about six months of MC. Her rationale was that in addition to not wanting to hurt me more (should have thought about that when she was sneeking off to a hotel room) that it was in the past and as long as she committed to being a good wife again, everything was fine.

I knew all those years that something was seriously missing in our relationship. I never dreamed of an A because she would have been the last person that I would have expected. However, the next ten years of our R where an absolute rollercoaster. She continued to be dishonest with me about other things and looking back when we would get into arguments, she manipulated me knowing that she had a big ghost in her closet. Even though we had committed to our marriage primarly for our kids, we both knew that there was no relationship between us. I got to the point that I could no longer take it and wrote her a letter taking responsibility for all the things that I had done wrong in our marriage but pleading for her to get whatever skeletons kept creeping into our lives out in the open so that we could work through them.

That week was a heart wretching week. I had left for two days to think things through. Being pretty analytical, I figured it out that the only thing that could make the puzzle fit together is that she had something that she felt terribly guilty about that was in the past and that if we wanted to make our R work, we had to get it out in the open and let the chips fall where they may. I wrote her another letter telling her what my conclusions were and although scary, I pinpointed when our lives changed to the exact day.

Since D-Day, I lot of things have happened. I have been able to accept what has happened and forgive my FWW. We both recommitted to our M and have worked through the EN questionaires and make efforts every day to ensure that we meet the others EN's. We have adopted a policy of radical honesty and POJA. We have both seen IC's and MC's. We talk everyday and she answers any questions that I have regarding the A. I have provided a safe environment for her to be honest, no DJ's, no angry outbursts, just conversation and answers from her to help me continue to deal with what I would have told you before D-Day was the unthinkable. I have also talked to OMW and to OM. There are posts on here in other places that discuss why that was important for me to move forward.

The most disrepectful thing someone can do to a spouse in a M is to go outside the marriage to have their EN's met. The second most disrepectful thing is for that S to keep it a secret. We are all humans. It is not normal to be able to live two lives at the same time. If there is any conscience with the WS, they have to be able to compartmentalize their seperate lives and unfortunately this doesn't stop until after full disclosure occurs and the A has ended and the WS is out of the fog.

I doubt very seriously that you never loved your H when you got married. At some point, you made a decision that your needs superseded the needs of your S and your M and you had an affair with someone else. You have to own this affair and quit blaming the state of the marriage or your H for your poor choices. By the sound of your post, it looks like that your H has the potential to be everything that you want in a partner and is willing to try to salvage this marriage. Will he stay committed after you disclose? I don't know, that is his choice and his choice alone. If he doesn't you have no one to blame but yourself. If he does and you both follow MB principles you have the opportunity to have a marriage that is much more fulfilling that Pre-A and probably even moreso than either of you can imagine.

I sneak out of my office a couple of times a day just to go and see my wife for a few minutes. We can't wait to spend out time together. We talk about everything that is important in our lives and hold nothing back. If one of us is down, we are there to comfort them. This is what a marriage is supposed to be like. I would say that we are fully recovered except for one thing that I just can't work through yet. We had been married for 18 years when D-day came and it had been 10 or 11 years since the A had ended and NC had been established. Even though my FWW is absolutely honest about everything now, it is hard to work through all the lies that occurred before then. It is not just lies that kept the A secret for all those years. I honestly don't know what to believe about our marriage for 18 years. I know that I have what I want now, but have no idea how much of our early M was also a lie. Did she really love me when we were married at first? Probably but how do you know for sure. She is definately a different person now than she was before either when we first got married or when the A occurred. We have discussed the dishonesty a lot and how that contributed to our M not being able to fully recover until after D-Day. She told me, if you can lie about sleeping with another man, it is pretty easy to lie about spending $ 50 on buying a new purse. There is no such thing as partial honesty. You are either radically honest or you are not.

Your BS did not have a choice in the A. You took that choice on yourself. But he does have a choice in how he responds to the discovery of the A. If you don't tell him and he finds out later, any progress that you have made in rebuilding your M just went down the poophole. You will have to compartmentalize the secret and still have two different "yous". That takes energy. Energy that could be used to bring out the giver in you and hide the taker to meet his EN's. If he wants to stay in the marriage, he will see this as a wake up call and will find ways to meet your EN's. This is a rollercoaster ride to recovery and you both need all the energy you can muster. Keeping those secrets to yourself is a continued selfish act that is not conducive to committing to the marriage.

Nottoday...that is perfectly said!

In His arms.

I only skimmed over most of this.

Here is the truth.

By not telling your husband, you are only protecting you. He remains unprotected. He still has no idea what lies are standing behind him to trip him, because one day, it will happen. It always happens. Truth always finds a way to get out into the open.

And then he is going to look up at you from the ground with his broken whatever, and he is going to get a second dose of betrayal. First you screwed some other guy.

Second, you let him live a lie for so long and did not protect him with the truth.

You have to tell him and then deal with whatever comes about. May sound like it sucks, but you have a chance for a great marriage with the truth. You have no chance at a great marriage with lies.

It's your life. Frankly I hope you wise up. I did just what your talking about. I didn't tell. She found out. She got the second dose of betrayal.

And now I have shame, pain and remorse to deal with, which I would probably have anyway.

She has a greater ****** than I could have imagined. I know for a fact that she is worse off because of my continued lies than if I had given her the truth.

Again, your choice.

always sucks to tell people what I wish I would have done.

Nottoday said it oh so well. I did to my H what nottoday's FWW did to him. I justified for 10 years not telling my H. I had many "compelling" reasons, none of which are good enough to take my H's choice away from him. I robbed him of the ability to decide for himself. Plus the walls I had to put up to hide that part of my history killed any chance at true intimacy. Please tell your H the truth.

Wow, you guys are brutal around here! But kind, too. I appreciate it all, and I want to thank you all for taking the time to try to help me.

Not today and Patriot 92, your stories of the damage done by prolonged deceit -- from each side of the picture -- are particularly eye opening.

Dorry, your insights about state of mind versus reality of the marriage are great food for thought. Also, your questions about why I did it -- what inside ME rather than the state of my M allowed me to do something I knew was wrong -- will have me doing some serious soul searching, I suspect. I probably need some IC. No, I DEFINATELY do.

Mortarman, thank you for answering my specific questions. (To answer yours, no.)

All of you added something for me to ponder.

Okay, so I'm about 95% convinced that I MUST tell the truth if our marriage is to have a fighting chance. I think I was already coming to that conclusion on my own. During our last MC session, I couldn't even think of anything constructive to say because my mind kept focusing on my big lie. And I can already see that I've put up walls that could never come down as long as I'm hiding something. It will probably have to wait until this weekend since we work opposite schedules and have no time alone together during the week (I know, I know -- one thing at a time, okay guys?) I gotta tell you all, I'm terrified. The weekend I told him about my lack of feelings for him was so hard, I'm not looking forward to starting all over again.

Anyway, thank you all again. And thank you Mortarman for suggesting that you'll continue to be there for me. I suspect I'll need it and maybe someday I can repay the kindness by helping someone else.

Stay tuned... and please... keep the posts coming.

SC,

Glad you're leaning the direction of telling the truth. Pick up Harley's book His Needs Her Needs. It addresses specifically whether or not to tell and why.

My husband picked up the book in a doctor's waiting room and started reading it. He went on to buy a copy for himself, and it lead him to tell me about his affair that had been over for 4 years.

He remained in contact with his affair partner right up to the time he told me about his affair so technically while the physical sexual part was over, they were still in touch with each other.

The feelings deceit and guilt weighed heavily on him, and although recovery was difficult - he's so glad he did tell me.

We were actally in MC during his affair. It is surreal to think of it now, because at that time he wasn't being honest with the MC or me. We got nowhere in counseling. How could we?

With all the secrets out, you'll be amazed at the difference it will bring to your marriage. You've got a good suppoprt group started here. They'll help you through this!

I have a suggestion for how to approach this. Really either one of two ways. First of all, he is probably not expecting what he is going to hear. I would suggest that you start out telling him that you are very serious about rebuilding your marriage. As part of that process, you have read some information that you feel like is important to incorporate into the rebuilding process. I would print out the radical honesty policy and the Lovebusters and have him read both of them. Discuss them with him and then tell him that because you feel like that it is impossible to fully rebuild this marriage without have an RH policy that you have to tell him something that is very pertinent to the process and that you thought seriously about keeping the truth from him, but that you do want the marriage to work and that you know that it cannot until he knows the whole truth. Also tell him that you are ready to discuss whatever questions he has and that you hope that he will discuss this issue with you and give things some time before he makes any rash decisions. Then lay it out. Don't sugar coat it. Tell him you have been unfaithful but that the A is over and you want to do whatever it takes to help BOTH of you work through this. Then shut up and duck...lol, not really, sit back and let him take the direction. If it is impossible to tell him the truth straight up to his face, I suggest that you write him a letter. Again, frame the situation exactly the same just give him the letter after you have discussed LB's and RH policy. It would be best for you to be there when he reads the letter unless you expect him to be violent.

At an appropriate time, encourage him to come and register on this site. There are several who have been in his shoes and we probably can help him work through whatever feelings that he has. Particularly, posts by Mortarman, Bob Pure and Mr. Wonderings can be of a great help to him. All of these gave me support when I needed it most and knocked me back in line when I started taking a wrong turn.

I cannot guarantee you what will happen when you tell him. You M may be permanently over at that time but statistics tell you that most marriages do not end as a result of an A especially when there are kids involved and you have some history with each other. I can guarantee you two things. If you withhold this information, it will eat at you and your relationship like a cancer. The R can never be truly healed. Secondly, if he does decide to stay committed to the relationship after he knows the whole truth and you both work together, you can have a much stronger, more open relationship that is more fulfilling to both of you. The M will never be the same, but it doesn't necessarily have to be worse. It really can't get any worse than one partner shacking up with someone else for any reason or for any amount of time.

Hey gang,

The cat's out of the bag. Late yesterday afternoon, I had just finished reading the last post here, and had decided to stay up late and tell my husband the truth last night, when the phone rang. While I was on the phone, our friends came over a little earlier than expected to go trick-or-treating and my kids weren't even dressed-up in their costumes yet. In all the mayhem, I forgot to log off the computer (I know what you're thinking. No, I don't think I subconsciously wanted him to find out this way. I'm just a bona fide scatterbrain -- always have been).

Anyway, he got home from work while I was out with the girls trick-or-treating and he read everything written here. He put up a valiant front until our friends went home... put on a tv show for the girls... took me aside and held me in his arms and said, "I'm going to make this easy for you. I read the stuff you posted on MB. I know." The conversation that followed is somewhat of a blur.

As you advised NT, I answered all of his his questions. Yes, I think he's angry and hurt and disgusted with me, as he has every right to be. But he also has this incredible ability to see the big picture so to speak. He acknowledged the agony I've been going through keeping this horrible secret. He reasured me that one bad deed does not define a person (believe it or not, I do have some redeeming qualities). He said he had known there was a big piece of the puzzle missing, and that everything made a lot more sense now. He said it actually hurt more (or at least as much) reading the stuff about how I didn't miss him when I lived away from him, as it did learning about the affair. We talked a little bit about the idea of people re-writing their marriage history to suit their present purposes. He also said it bothered him a lot that I didn't have any intention of stopping the affair, but that it had only eneded because the OM did so. (I didn't know what to say to that -- any thoughts?)

Anyway, I can't tell you how glad I am that everything is out in the open. I know there will be a lot more questions and some difficult times ahead. But I also know this is the ONLY WAY. Our first two MC sessions were productive. We had addressed some of the issues going on in the marriage (ie his detatchment/disillusionment and my emotional/sexual coma. Also, our individual personalities and how they played into the situation). But once that stuff was out on the table, and I was still keeping this monster of a secret, last week's session was more-or-less worthless. All I could THINK about was my lie, and my feeble attempt to b-s my way through the session just didn't amount to anything. Fortunately, we had another session scheduled for this morning, and it was very productive.

The only thing that still makes my stomach hurt is that I now wonder if I'm even worthy of my husband's love. So much of the focus of all this so far has been on my EMs. I think it's high time I started paying attention to his!!! Ya think?

SC

[b]THAT , my dear little one, is not your concern !!!!!

Your wonderful H , who we all now adore by the way, is the ONLY one who is entitled to make that determination!

so there !!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

If he wants to love the freckles off your nose ... that is his concern ... and you can't do nuttin' 'bout it <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

I like your H already. Honesty. That is all you can say. Do not soften it but show through your actions from this day forward that you are changing. That you intend to be a FORMER WW.

You have mad a good start at recovery. You are relieved, and your husband is accepting this terrible blow with grace.

Do no focus on your worthiness for his love or his forgiveness. Focus on making yourself the wife you should have been all along. "Just compensation" is what Harley calls it. The past cannot be changed. Only the future is open to us.

As you can see by my signature line, my FWH has not taken this approach of "just compensation" --

Disregarded

SC,

Pep is right about your husband. I'm very impressed with him as well. It took courage to do what he did, and there are far worse ways of finding out that can cause tremendous damage to BSs.

I'm impressed with his ability to communicate so clearly right after finding out about your affair. That he could say what bothered him the MOST gives you an honest perspective from him.

Give him time and space to deal with his emotions. The emotional rollercoaster is really bad.

Something productive you can both do when you're ready are the EN and LB questionnaires.

SC, you need to become an expert on avoiding LBs...and SC's husband you too, when you're ready.

Reading HNHN, and Surviving an Affair will be helpful as you move forward. Glad to hear you have a good relationship with a counselor already.

SC, I know how good it must feel to have this out in the open. Those good feelings will help carry you as you deal with the fallout.

Glad you're both willing to do the work to save your marriage and family. You're already more fortunate than many of the posters you'll read about here.

I have done that before. Dont beat yourself up over it. And it may have been the best thing to have happened, as is evidenced by the rest of your posts.

This statement alone by your husband tells me that your marriage has a very bright future, should the two of you decide to commit to doing what needs to be done. I bet you are looking at that man with a little bit different eyes today, arent you? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

And dont trivialize this. While your husband is right and this doesnt define the person, this is a huge thing for a man to accept. So the anger and hurt will come and go. Do not be defensive when it comes. Just sit and listen. Dont offer excuses or reasons. Just listen and respond. He will need to work this out in his head. It will help the two of you out a lot if you are the one he can work it out with. Also, marriage counseling is in order ASAP! As Just Learnign told me once, recovery is NOT for amateurs. And as one who is goign through two years of recovery, I can tell you he was right. Call th Harleys...they are the best. If not, find a pro-marriage counselor (not all of them are pro-marriage). But do this right away. You have a small window of opportunity here. Get your husband to log on here as Mr. Cookie or something and let us fellow BSs talk to him. He may find that it will help to understand that the feelings he has is normal...and that he can have hope.

What did we tell you? A BS ALWAYS knows there is something up...even if it is over with. And that impedes true intimacy. By things making sense to him now (read: knowing the truth), he can now calm down and feel a lot better about his feelings and his decisions.

Read Surviving an Affair by Dr. harley. The main ncouple there got back together after the OM decided he didnt want the WW anymore. And the BH flelt the same way...didnt know if he wanted a wife back that was there only because the affair had ended by the OM. But their marriage thrived. So read the book!!

Feels good doesnt it? not the hurt and pain that your husband is going thru...I dont mean that. I mean the walls coming down, the finally being right, with doing right. It is almost cleansing, isnt it? Your husband may at times look at you as if you are dirtied by the affair. But the cleaning comes from you being open, honest, and committed.

Have your husband come here also. read up on everything on this web site about marriages, affairs, etc. Wha tmakes a good marriage isnt guess work...the Harley's have it down to a science. If you follow their lead, you will have a good relationship, you will be in love. It may not be easy at first...but it is very simple!!

Look, you made a mistake. But as Dorry outlines in her links, you do not have to be defined by your mistakes. You have a chance to be someone that you never would have been capable of being before. You have learned soem things that you would have only learned by coming this way. If you two can get this on track, and get that marriage that you want...I think in the end you will thank God for the adversities, as they have molded both of you and brought you to this point of awakening. Both of you need to get smart...so reading, MC and coming here will help tremendously! Also, both of you need to cut each other a break! While this stuff is very simple, it is not easy. There will be times of frustration, hurt and anger. You did not get to this point overnight. As I said before, honesty and commitment are what is needed thru this. The rest will come.

In His arms.

i'm in tears.

i read your story yesterday, just couldn't post... besides you were getting such good replies anyway.

you have much healing to do and the roller coaster has just begun but i am very happy for you and wish you the best.

Thanks Pep -- you crack me up.
Okay FF -- Where to start?

As I said in my last post, I fessed up last night. He was amazing. I called in sick to work (I ususally go to work at 3:00 a.m. and we were up quite late talking). We went to MC this morning. Then he went to work. I'm wondering what to expect when he comes home tonight. How to greet him.

Since he hasn't shown any real anger or much resentment yet, I'm wondering how long it's going to take for that bubble up. I also feel more optimistic about our potential future together than I have since all this began, and am eager to 'get cracking' (I want him to fill out the emotional needs questionaire right now!), but I don't want to rush him if he needs time to 'just be' and absorb the huge blow I've delt to him. Any suggestions? Thoughts?

Anyone want to tell me what it's like the first 24... 48... 72 hours after you've been told your S betrayed you? How I can best help, reasure, love him?

Thanks,
SC