Wow.
The physiacl symptoms are awful aren't they?
I really, really feel for you.
I had the same experience with my WH, in that, I read the books, I suggested counselling, I arranged dates, I initiated conversations.
I think a lot of this has to do with this "fog" that WS seem to get caught in. That mixed with guilt, shame, missing the OP, frustration, withdrwal, boredom etc etc.
My H thought that it was enough to just be at home.
It is only now a year later when he just wrote to the OW
(they still work together) that he has finally acknowledged he is not "rid of her" or his feelings, and needs to go to counselling and find out some home truths that he has been hiding from.
You mentioned your journal. I found it very cathartic to writye one, and although I can completely understand you wanting your W to know how you feel, do you think that she is really taking it in? Read some of the "fog" stuff on this site. You might be better off keeping it to share with her when she is ready to really read it and understand.
I am getting a kind of twisted pleasure in H emotionally downloading on me at present (endless letters of regret and pledging eternal love) and keeping my journal private. I'm biding my time until he is "ready" and not trapped in hyper emotion, depression and fog.
Keep going, keep smiling for the kids and yourself.
kate

I find the signoff so relevant, especially in desperate times. As I struggle with mental torments & endless questions, I embrace the above for strength to live day by day.

endofworld

Me BS,
Married 16 yrs to WH, together 20 yrs
A 2 yr
EA Jan06,
3 kids , DSS 14, 11, 2

Endofworld – This is indeed a very powerful statement and so incredibly applicable to what we go through as BS. I often repeat it to myself and it has helped.

bay_window_van – In my case I believe that my W has been out of the “fog” for quite some time. First, right after the PA, the OM moved to another state (I didn't have to deal with the 'working together' situation which I think would have made it a lot more difficult). They did maintain phone contacts for a period of time but then established NC almost 4 months before she finally admitted to the A. My W tells me that her “feelings” for the OM faded very quickly after the end of the PA and that she doesn’t miss him at all anymore (she apparently never missed the ‘physical’ aspect of their relationship but missed the ‘friendship and companionship’ after the PA ended). However she indeed came out of this A “damaged”, feeling a lot of shame, guilt, and worthlessness. She is very mad at herself for what happened and is extremely remorseful. We are working diligently towards R, it’s not easy every day, but we have made some progress since D-Day. The MC has helped us tremendously.

These threads are my journal. I also find it very therapeutic to articulate my feelings in the written form, with the added benefit of getting other’s feedback and suggestions. My W knows that I am involved in this discussion group but she hasn’t read any of my posts. With the guidance from MC, I think that I have done a better job at expressing my feelings to my W. She knows that I am hurting and overall I believe that she ‘takes it in’. Actually she has been a great source of support for me since D-Day and as I have said before, given the circumstances, I think that I couldn’t ask for much better.

Hi, hope you don't mind if I jump in with a suggestion. I think I read that you have younger children. Does your wife work ourside the home? I know what worked for me was to have a set amount of time to work on the relationship and connection without sex. One month, no sex even after cuddling, kissing or making out. It might alleviate the pressure she feels to have sex but at the same time allow for some physical bonding.

The key here is not to ever, ever ask for it during the set abstaining time. It would only take once to blow the whole sense of security for her.

Would it be helpful for you to step up the pace with your contribution around the home and with the kids so she could relax a little more? This also would have to come sincerely without the cost of sex. I found it extremely helpful to my overall sense of priority in the relationship.

I'm sorry this is not extactly what you may have been hoping to hear, but as a W in the situation (although I am not a WW) I really think it sounds like she needs this space without pressure.

Good luck

Apl – All suggestions are welcome, thanks for contributing your thoughts. My W does indeed work outside the home; she actually has a very heavy work schedule.

The “abstinence period” is an interesting idea. My first reaction is that it may be a bit drastic in my case and I don’t think that my current situation requires it quite yet. However there is something to be said about “closeness for the sake of closeness” and not necessarily as a prelude to SF. There might indeed be a certain reluctance to cuddle or kiss if she feels that I would automatically assume that we would have SF. Here I hope that we can clarify these expectations through better communications at first rather than by scheduling periods of abstinence. For instance if my W could tell me, “look, I would like to cuddle but I am not interested in SF tonight” – that would work for me, in a way it would manage my expectations.

Well this is actually an area where my W doesn’t have to do much at all: I clean, I cook, I bathe the kids, I play with the kids a lot, I pay the bills, etc – I am a rare breed of H that actually handles the bulk of the housework, despite the fact that I work a full-time job. This is the example that I have always seen growing up and I have always emulated it at home. The only thing she usually handles is the laundry, but even that it’s only on rare occasions since we have someone else do it for most of the year. So this is an area where I really can’t do much more, my W barely has to lift a finger the way it is.

I have so many “doubts” these days:

• Was the OM a better lover than me?
• Will she have another A some time in the future?
• Will she ever be really happy with me?
• Does she think about him when we make love?
• Does she wish that I was more like him (physically)?
• Will I ever be able to live one day without thinking about the A?
• Does she still think about him, does she still miss him?
• Am I too much of a nice guy? Am I letting her get away with murder? Does that make me 'weak'?

The strange part is that I already have answers to most of those questions but I still wonder… So many insecurities.

My 2 cents:

• Was the OM a better lover than me?
Doesn't matter anymore. She chose you. She wants your M to recover and be strong. Make it your goal to be an excellent lover....get some books! ;-)

• Will she have another A some time in the future?
Possible, but unlikely given her remorse. Put your energy and attention and intention on the positive. Affair proof your M by staying aware of and meeting all her needs.

• Will she ever be really happy with me?
Yes!

• Does she think about him when we make love?
Don't even go there. Make sure you are focusing 100% on her when you make love.

• Does she wish that I was more like him (physically)?
Doesn't matter anymore. She chose you. She wants your M to recover and be strong.

• Will I ever be able to live one day without thinking about the A?
Yes! And then one week, one month, one year. Others here tell me this is true, but I have yet to experience it myself.

• Does she still think about him, does she still miss him?
Ask her. I think she'll say "seldom" and "no".

• Am I too much of a nice guy? Am I letting her get away with murder? Does that make me 'weak'?
No. You are not weak. What you have done takes incredible love, commitment and strength. A weaker man would have walked out the door.

Intention – thanks for your “2 cents”. I think that your comments are probably in line with my FWW’s thinking along those lines. But for some reason, she could keep telling me the same things over and over again and it seems that I would always doubt her.

This weekend was average for me. Saturday I think that we did pretty well and we had a good day. Nothing out of the ordinary really but we were pleasant and fairly affectionate with each other. Sunday was a different story. For some reason I starting the day by making some snide remarks (related to the A) that she really didn’t appreciate. In the afternoon we went for a long walk and I started triggering like crazy.

First she received a page on her cell phone from some unknown number. I dialed the number and got a generic voice mail message without a name. I just know that it was another cell phone number. I looked up the area code and it was from somewhere in Oklahoma – we don’t know anyone in that state. I paged the number back and called the number several times but nobody picked up. I asked my W about it and she told me that she didn’t know the number. She also said that she had received a number of wrong number calls over the last few weeks. I started worrying that maybe it was a code between my W and the OM – he sends her a page from some fictitious number and she knows to call him back. My W confirmed that she had been in NC with the OM for several months now and that if he ever tried to contact her again she would let me know immediately – as we have agreed. I believe her but that number still threw me for a spin.

Later during the walk she starts talking about the houses that we see and what she would like our future house to be like. As she speaks those words I start getting sad because I wonder if we will indeed have a future together. I worry that maybe we will move on but some day when I least expect it she will pull the rug from underneath my feet again with another A. I started to share those concerns with her and she started to get upset (“Does that mean that we cannot talk about the future anymore?”, etc.). From that point on the rest of the walk got worse. I asked her if she ever thought about him anymore, if she thought I was ‘weak’ or a ‘lesser man’ for wanting an R, if she thought of me as a ‘door mat’, etc. At one point she just said that she didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

A few weeks ago I spent about 30 minutes in her office at work. I was waiting for her to go to MC and it gave me a chance to check her PC. I immediately found out (through Internet history) that she had looked up the OM’s web site. I confronted her about this and she admitted it. She said that when I sent the NC email to the OM (and copied her on it) she saw that I had used an email address for him that she didn’t know. She was supposedly “curious” and used that domain name to check out where he worked. When I asked her why she did this, she just said that she was “curious”. I was so angry and so jealous that she did that. I asked her if she ever look up the web site of my company and she said no, so I asked her why she was “curious” about him and not curious about me, she couldn’t answer that. She told me that she just didn’t think that looking up his web site was a big deal… That come up again in our discussions yesterday but I didn’t get anything else out of her.

Later on I found her laying down in the bed, obviously upset and drained by our discussions. I tried to hold her hand but she wouldn’t take it. Later in the evening she told me that she wasn’t feeling too well, she looked like a ghost, very sad. I gave her a hug and then we watched a movie with the kids. At night she gave me a kiss and we fell asleep. She told me that she was very disappointed about Sunday because she had really hoped that we could have a good day together. This morning she came next to me in bed and cuddle a little bit before she had to get up for work.

This morning I really don’t know how I feel about all this. Sometimes I feel that we will never be able to wash the “stain” from this A from our lives and that it will always be there reminding us of how “common” our M is. It is so difficult for me to accept that my W would engage in something like this with an OM – what does it say about me? What does it say about how she feels for me, her love for me, her respect for me and for us? I wonder if I will ever be happy with her again.

I feel the same way - I am not sure how anyone ever gets over this - looks like they do, but how? And should we really even want to?

Sometimes I tell myself that my M is bigger than the A, that there is enough left, enough good things to counteract the terrible mistake that she made. Then other times I feel that irreparable damage has been done, the foundation has been shaken, and now it’s just a matter of time before the whole thing comes crumbling down. Maybe time will help, maybe one day this will all just be a bad memory, but today it is still difficult for me to be optimistic.

Through MC and our daily interactions we are trying to fix our ‘marital’ problems, but I also wonder when, if at all, her own ‘personal’ problems (i.e. those who led to her decision to have an A) will be addressed. Can we truly ‘affair-proof’ our M if those are not addressed?

I know exactly where you are coming from. There are basically 2 sides to it, I guess: what WW's did "to" us by having A and what we did "to" WW's that made them vulnerable to it.

It seems to me that to have recovery, both have to be addressed and corrected to the extent possible. I am just not sure either can be corrected enough.

So far (6 sessions) the MC seems to have focused either on “me” or on “us”, but never on “her” (i.e. why did you decide to have an A?). It is almost as if the A was implied by some of the issues that we were having before the A, even though my W actually never blamed it on any of that or on me. I would even go as far as wondering if MC hasn’t given my W an “excuse” for the A – before MC she just couldn’t justify it, she could only tell me that she made a terrible mistake and that she hated herself for it. Now it seems that the MC, by focusing on the problems that we were having before the A, has provided a justification for the A – she is no longer the ‘bad guy’ but maybe just a victim of circumstances – and I am as responsible as she is for what happened. Note that none of this has been said explicitly but it’s becoming my perception of where MC is going. I wonder if we will ever cover what my W has to change not to have another A. I was thinking about bringing up that in MC tomorrow night.

Asterix,

Ask your MC about this. Don't guess. Express your misgivings about this to him/her. You are not many months out Asterix and you will be on the rollercoaster for quite awhile yet. It is normal. This is hard on your W because she is soooo far ahead of you right now. She was done with the A long before you found out. She made her decisions and the main was that she wanted you. This will sound odd, but you need to encourage her to hang in there, that you are trying but you are far behind her in all of this, and you have many doubts about yourself.

Really, if you read your last few posts the main issue, as it usually is, is about YOURSELF and how you can be what she needs. You fear that you were doing all you could and it was not good enough. There are no more dishes to wash, no more household chores to do, your job pays what it pays, you don't know what to give to make the marriage stronger.

You were right to express your feelings to her. I am sure they hurt her, and I hope you don't in the habit of doing this to hurt her. But, your feelings are reality and you are about where you should be.

I would suggest that given where she is that perhaps she may benefit from coming here now.

Hang in the Asterix, and don't forget to encourage your W that you are trying and that your goal is a good marriage with her. Ask her to have patience with you.

God Bless,

JL

I had to decide that my M was bigger than the A. With ten years history and three kids, I basically just decided that life without my FWW was not conceivable for me. Once I made that decision, recovery could really begin.

Yes I have told her many times before that she has a 7 month lead time on me and that it will take some time for me to catch up. I also tell her that we come to this from very different angles. She has made her decision to spend the rest of her life with me and she “knows” that it will never happen again. As for me I doubt all these things, I have doubts about the current state of her feelings for the OM, I have doubts as to what the A meant for her, and I have doubts about her ability to avoid another A in the future. Last but not least I have doubts about myself, my ability to cope, my ability to get over this, my ability to live the rest of my life with a W who cheated. And while I am struggling with my own insecurities, she is struggling with feelings of guilt, shame, and worthlessness.

She will deny it but sometimes I feel that she is getting impatient with me, tired of discussing the topic of the A or anything related to it, and she just wishes that we could focus on the present and future. She tells me that she rarely thinks about the A, she tries not to, and I am the one who makes her think about A when I bring up the topic.


The only additional thing I could do is be affectionate and “nice” to her. My mood swings and my resentment are making those feelings very unstable. It’s creating some distance between us as she never knows how I will react when she gets close.

Last night for instance I wanted to be distant, nice but distant. I was maybe using some reverse psychology, thinking that if I became the ‘distancer’, maybe she would become the ‘pursuer’ and I wouldn’t have to be the one who appears ‘needy’ for affection. I didn't call her during the day, didn't page her, didn't send her any emails. In the evening, when she got home, she felt that distance right away and later on sat down with me and asked me if everything was ok. She was sensing that something was different; she was wondering if something had happened, she was worried. The night before last, and last night, I didn’t initiate any ‘intimacy’ and neither did she. We held hands, cuddled a little bit but that was it. Tonight we have another MC session. We may go to dinner together before hand. I think that I just want to be 'pursued', I want the attention, I want her to chase me, to try to make me fall in love with her again. I wish that she was actively trying to do that, actively trying to seduce me, to show me that she is a great W, that she is ready to do anything to win me back. She is nice and she is affectionate but sometimes I feel that she is not trying hard enough, almost as if she took me for granted already, as if she already knew that I was not going anywhere.


I will suggest it but I don’t know if she will have the opportunity to do so.


Thanks for the encouragement.

I feel the same way. I met my W when I was 18, she was 17. We dated for over 5 years before we got married. A significant portion of this ‘dating’ was long distance (we were living on different continents) but we would get together over holidays, spend the summers together, send each other tons of love letters, and call each other all the time (this was all before the Internet). We also lived together for one year before getting married. These years of dating were intense, passionate, and difficult at times, but by far the best years of my life and an incredible source of wonderful memories. We have been married for almost 13 years now and we have two wonderful children. We have accomplished so much together and won so many battles. In many ways I look at our story as a wonderful love story, challenging and unique, something that I “was” so proud of, a story I loved to tell when someone asked us how we met. Now with the “stain of the A”, I feel that our story has lost a lot of its appeal, the A made it ‘common’, it has spoiled my love story. But still this is my past, I have spent over half of my life with this woman in my life, half of my life in love with her. We have two incredible children, whose happiness is by far my most important priority. We also have a bright and prosperous future ahead of time, a future in which we have both invested heavily. I just don’t know what to do. Should we learn our lessons, and move on? Should I let this A derail my life? Is this A a sign that things are no longer as they were and my only chance at happiness is to find another mate, start another life while I am still young enough to do it? Can I conceive separation and divorce? Can I conceive living without my W and share custody of my children? If I am not able to conceive those things does that mean that there will never be consequences to what she did, that I would let her ‘get away with it’ now, and maybe let her get away with it in the future – all just because I can’t conceive life without her? Does that make me ‘co-dependent’, a doormat? I just don’t know what to do.

Maybe your image of a "perfect marriage" was false. Instead of thinking that the A has made it "common", perhaps you could see it as having been the catalyst that shattered the false image of a perfect marriage. What you have now is real - painful, hurtful, wonderful, inspiring, difficult - but real. Nobody can learn from a perfect situation. It is from the hardships that we build character and learn from each other. So many people here have learned from you and have been encouraged by your openness. I know I have.

Intention – thanks for your kind words, I am glad to read that my story has been of benefit to you and possibly others.

After I wrote my last post I did think that the A was indeed a test, a test that my M and my W have passed so far: we are still together, working on R, and my W chose me. Obviously the test results are not all in yet (ask me in 20 years) but at least it shows that the M has been strong enough to survive the initial blow. Of course I wish that my W would have passed the test of ‘temptation’ but she didn’t. “Errare humanum est” …and she is no exception. That reality check is a tough one. Not that I thought that she was perfect but I just didn’t think that she was capable of adultery (sorry if you think that this term is too ‘religiously’ loaded). As you can see, there are still some elements of ‘shock’ even two months post D-Day.

I do feel that I am indeed still facing a decision point: 1) learn our lessons, count my blessings, hope for the best, and continue investing in the M or 2) give up on this M because it’s no longer picture-perfect and seek D. Although it is still virtually impossible for me to conceive (2) and its consequences on my family, I am still hesitant to fully engage on (1). I am somewhere in between, in limbo, keeping my guard up, hesitating, testing the waters, checking the facts… While this “middle ground” is probably a normal place to be at this time, I also know that it’s not a comfortable place, nor a viable long-term place to be. Time for another quote (not in Latin this time): I will have to “****** or get off the pot” sooner or later!

Asterix - I think that is a decision that all of us have to make - that is all BS's (and maybe even WS's to a certain, but very different extent).

Like you, I can't imagine or conceive D either. Also like you, however, I am not totally engaged in your "option 1".

I think you correctly point out that you can't go on like this forever. So I guess the question is at what point do you have to "****** or get off the pot".

It does seem to me that neither you nor I are far enough into this to make the decision yet. But I don't know. You could also maybe take the approach that it's one of those things that "when you know, you know".

Surely that happens at some point, because living like this sure sucks.