I think I can help you with this one t2r...I've been through the very thing you are asking yourself.

I can tell you about my experience and let you draw from that...I won't guarantee yours will be the same.

As was mentioned earlier...I had my affair for the same reasons Bill Clinton did...because I could. I had opportunity and allowed myself to fall into a pattern of thinking that gave me permission to do it.

I think a common mistake most BS's and even WS's on here make is thinking the WS is seeking to "replace" the BS completely. That is true only in a small number of cases. There were MANY things I loved about my wife and my family...but the few things that I had issues with...admiration, respect, and SF had become big issues for us. I ultimately convinced myself that my wife was incapable of meeting these needs and having an affair with someone who did would be better than to continue to expect her to. Selfish? Absolutely, but my desperate and depressed mind allowed me no other viable alternatives. I was not mentally stable.

So, you see, I never stopped loving my wife. WE could argue all day on these boards about whether you can love two women at once...I happen to believe you can. I agonized over this very things for months until my IC help me entertain the idea that maybe I really did love them both. That was incredibly liberating. It let me understand that what I felt...was ok and real...that now I could deal with it more effectively. I could let myself grieve the loss of the OW. This MUST happen for you to ever let her go and for you to begin the process of forgiving yourself.

Recovering yourself is a process of choosing WHO you want to be and ensuring that you ACT in accordance with that choice. For most of us, being a WS would not have been a quality we would have chosen for ourselves.

We lost our integrity. We lost our vision of the person we wanted to be, making it that much easier to act differently from that vision. We became "fractured" at our core, without purpose or direction.

For me, the first step in regaining my integrity was understanding that I still had value as a human being. I am somewhat religious, so for me, it came by understanding that God was willing to offer me forgiveness even when I couldn't. If God was willing to forgive me, who am I to disagree with Him? I did not think this flippantly, but it was a humbling realization...that Jesus Christ died...DIED...that I, an adulterer, could be forgiven.

Think about that for a minute.

Once you forgive yourself, you are able to start holding your head up, acknowledging what you did, and address the consequences with character and integrity. Accepting forgiveness form God and yourself means that you are no longer free to wallow in your shame...you should GO and sin no more.

You are now FREE to live your life responsibly. You're free to look back at the person you had allowed yourself to become with compassion. Your are free to apply the lesson you learned to your new life.

Some of the BS's are no doubt saying "What were you doing for your BS through all of this?"

Doing "all of this" is what your BS needs the most. It is the ONLY way that you will ever be able to assure them that it will never happen again.

Will you ever be able to convince your W that she wasn't 2nd choice? I don't know. Maybe...maybe not. All you can really do at this point is act with integrity...and treat her like the first choice that she is from now on to the best of your ability. She going to have to work through a lot things inside herself about this.

Lastly, accept that your marriage has changed irrevocably. This process is not about recoving what you had. You can NEVER get that back. It's all about building something new at this point. It may also be about your W ending your marriage. You have to accept that she has that right to choose and respect it.

Low

The same question stated differently: When did you stop believing that honesty and love were synonymous?

...because the whole thing comes down to lying.

How many WS would do what they did if they KNEW their BS would find out the next day???? Even those WS in an active A where BS knows still hide and lie about their behavior.

....the lie allows the WS to do a false cost benefit analysis.

Cost--O pain, since BS wont know.
Benefit--I, I, I will get pleasure (in the form of admiration; conversation: SF whatever)

Lies also have a way of twisting ALL logic....like a hall of mirrors everything becomes distorted.

Answer for yourself:
How and Why did lying become an acceptable solution to your unhappiness/dissatisfaction?

And you will have the answer to your BS question (IMHO that is)<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

to all WS...how could you cheat on someone you say you love?

Now she tells me how lucky she is to have me and how much she loves me and all that good stuff

Makes me wonder sometimes what there's left worth fighting for.