This is all so new to me that I don't know where to start. I just ended an A about a month ago. It was rather short-term. The friendship started in January and the PA started in March. We ended it at the end of April when he moved away. My DH had suspicions that there was something there. I did everything a WS does. I pulled away from him, lied about the relationship ("no honey, we're just friends"), etc. When the OM moved away we knew that the A had to end. I still went into a deep depression. I spoke continuously to my DH about wanting a divorce. I just wanted the chance to feel the things again that I had felt with the OM.

I have finally snapped out of it (though I still think often of the OM, miss him, and long to contact him). I admitted to my DH that OM and I had an EA. I told him that there was no PA. I am so scared to tell him the truth. I am not afraid of losing him, just afraid that if he knows the whole truth it will eat at him for the rest of our lives together. One would think that I would have thought of that before, but an A is so selfish and truly a separation from rational thought.

Anyhow, I am still eaten with guilt for what really did happen. My DH has been so accepting of the EA and we are working so well in moving forward. I just don't know where to go from here.

I'm new here too, have you read Surviving an Affair, that would really help, also there are many articles/postings about infidelity that may be helpful

Good luck

For your sanity and your H you need to come clean! By no means is your H ignore and in orde to rebuilt your marriage you need to be completely honest with him. A M is not built on secrets but on trust, how do you expect him to trust you again if he knows that you are not being honest with him. I also think it would be in your best interest if you sought out counseling, not only for yourself but for your M. It's the least that you and your H deserve!

I would first read all of the book SAA. I would make a plan on his response in both situations. Leaving or staying. Bringing him here could help!

Oh and good luck. I would have had no problem forgiving which includes forgetting what my husband had done, IF

#1- he came cleans and became transparently honest right away

#2- he had a lot of remorse for his actions

#3- he had a plan to make our marriage better than before

#4- he was willing to work on it.


I think for you H you need to be honest, but be honest and prepared to help each other. Recommitment to your marriage witht the help of your husband could be the exact thing that your marriage needs-

for you you will feel this passion again, but for the right person-your H a

For him, he will know that you will always be honest and truthful because you came clean.

Hopefully this will be the best start you can make.

Easier for me to say than you to do, but do you want a marriage built on lies?

This is one of the BIGGEST MISTAKES that WS's make in recovery, they withhold pertinent facts. It causes recovery to drag out for YEARS.

Please do not let this mistake stand another day or it will greatly delay your recovery. He needs to know it ALL NOW. He has a RIGHT TO KNOW. Your secrets will not only greatly impair your ability to establish trust and intimacy with him, but I promise you, he will SENSE YOU ARE WITHHOLDING. And he will have no peace until he gets out every little drib and drab. And every little drib and drab will be like a NEW D-DAY for him and you.

Every time he finds out you have withheld will feel like a FRESH BETRAYAL because he will know you were keeping secrets with the OM to which he was not PRIVY. That is a HUGE TRUSTBUSTER.

It is like dying a death of a thousand cuts. It is much better to get it all out in ONE FELL SWOOP so you can begin to recover.

If you want to make this easier on yourself and on him, go RIGHT NOW and tell him that you have withheld certain facts from him and want to tell him everything. Afterwards, offer to answer any and all questions anytime he wants to ask. JUST THIS GESTURE WILL GO VERY FAR IN RESTORING TRUST.

Don't hamper your recovery, badspouse. Your recovery will be like trying to a push a car up the hill with the parking brake on. Go tell the truth and get it all over with NOW; take the brake OFF.

Hi, badspouse...

Welcome to MarriageBuilders...you're getting solid advice from people who have lived infidelity. I've been on both sides of betrayal...and I know first hand the choice you have to make...

It's life changing.

You cannot control your BH's (betrayed husband) life. You are not the cause, control or cure for his thoughts, feelings and beliefs...though in your mind, you have been for awhile. Nor can he control yours. And you're not out of the fog yet from your A...because you miss OM, who was half the devastation your BH is experiencing...OM isn't real...he's a fantasy you made up to get a lot of feelings you enjoyed...and your BH is paying for your choice.

Truth is what connects us--sense we are all separate and equal...every human has those limits...and a power you haven't been using--your choice. Choosing to be completely honest right now is your only hope to being on the path to your own redemption. Why? Because you lied to yourself as much as your BH during your A...and before you choose to betray your vows and your family.

Choose complete truth to your BH...ask for marital counseling, individual counseling, read the books these posters have offered...and own what you did does wreck marriages, lives and souls...doesn't have to be for life. Your BH has choice, also...when you lie, you manipulate his choices, betraying him again, every time you open your mouth and do not speak truth.

Answer each of his questions truthfully, and you will stop the lies to yourself. You're worth it. Do not make your choices from fear...more self-betrayal and disrespect for other humans when you do that. Choose from love...which isn't a feeling you have--it is a choice you make. You choose to love your DH whether you were aware of it or not. When you choose to love by being honest, open, vulnerable and real, then you will not betray from fantasy again.

Choose wisely.

LA

I sought IC right after the A ended. I went to one session with a therapist (mostly needing help for the severe depression of losing OM). My therapist gave me the name of a MC but advised me that there are things that a spouse doesn't need to know. She also said that she didn't feel that our marriage was "viable".

That was all she had to say to break my heart. The doctors used that term with the child that I was carrying which we lost to a late-term miscarriage. Thinking of my marriage in those terms almost killed me...and to think that I would inflict that upon the union that I had once held so dear.

I think that were I in the same position (and I have been to an extent in that DH had an EA with a woman online while I was pregnant with our son), I can't say that I would have wanted to know.

I am so sorry to be struggling with this decision amongst those who are still so ripe with hurt due to the same crime I have committed. It seems the epitomy of irony. Nontheless, I didn't know where else to turn.

Thank you all so much for your support and words of wisdom.

What were her reasons for this statement? Is there ongoing abuse or addictions? You need to find a marriage-friendly counsellor. Ask your friends. Ask a minister.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi7100_counselor.html

Mrs. W8ing

badspouse... I hae been both your husbands and your shoes over our marriage, not exactly but I think I can speak to some of your feels and fears.

I may wrong with some of the things I say but there are plenty of people here that will correct me or provide better solutions once you start asking....

So I believe you have a very short window of opportunity here.
So once confronted with all my wrongs and after I accepted what I did was wrong and it was my choice... I had to make the biggest decision of my life.. would I stay an work on my marriage, not matter what my wife would do.

That is the question you hear it here a lot and its true, you don't control anyone but you. If you reflect and think that your marriage is worth it - you truely have to believe this. Then you need to put a plan together to save your marriage - no matter what your husband does - he has is own choices to make -and how you handle the next several months and years will determine if he choose you or not.

IC and MC are not all equal you need to find pro marriage ones and ones that you can connect with.

You need to "remember" all the details of the affair, both how it started and what happened. If you need to journal do so get it all together. Once you tell your husband the questions will come in waves and the waves will repeat themselves.

He will loose all trust for you - he will ask the same question 10 times to see if you say the same answer. You need to be prepared to be honest - if you lie you will get caught.

You really need to do a reverse Plan A you need to make yourselve the spouse your husband wants to stay with. You need to work on yourself.

This is something for the board to respond too to make sure its right - but since you seem to be out of the fog and own responsibility for your affair - I would yourself expose to people that would need to know and could help your marriage through the rought time. Your family your church your friends. Then you can ask your husband after you tell him if its alright for YOU to contact your MIL and FIL and tell them what you have done.

You need to take steps that will show him your remorsefull.

You also need to work on the why's of the affair, maybe you will find dark things maybe you will find that the marriage isn't viable but you also may find that you just didn't have your EN's met and you work with your husband through these months and years and you BOTH learn how to satisfy each other.

That is wher I am at I WILL work on myself so that oneday my wife will love me again, but that is her choice.

Stay strong and stay engaged

as long as you continue to withhold the truth about your physical affair from your H

you will continue to be emotionally
distant
protective
guarded

you cannot choose intimacy when you choose secrecy

your counselor is an [censored]

you don't sound like an [censored]
so perhaps you will choose intimacy?

Pep

This is terrible advice and your counselor is worthless. Any counselor who advocates deceit is a BAD counselor who does not understand marriage. This is information about your husband's life to which he has a RIGHT TO KNOW. To withhold this information is cruel and manipulative. And it will also prevent your marriage from recovering. Not that your C even cares about your marriage.

As you can see, many counselors are NOT pro-marriage and are not educated in marital recovery after an affair. Dr. Harley would reccommend radical honesty as the first step in marital recovery. And he is a TRAINED counselor who knows what he is talking about.

Here are the words of a qualified counselor who has a successful track record of saving marriages [unlike your counselor], Dr. Willard Harley:

"But I am one of the very few that advocate the revelation of affairs at all costs, even when the wayward spouse has no feelings of guilt or depression to overcome. I believe that honesty is so essential to the success of marriage, that hiding past infidelity makes a marriage dishonest, preventing emotional closeness and intimacy.

It isn't honesty that causes the pain, it's the affair. Honesty is simply revealing truth to the victim. Those who advocate dishonesty regarding infidelity assume that the truth will cause such irreparable harm, that it's in the best interest of a victimized spouse to go through life with the illusion of fidelity.

It's patronizing to think that a spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Anyone who assumes that their spouse cannot handle truth is being incredibly disrespectful, manipulative and in the final analysis, dangerous. How little you must think of your spouse when you try to protect him or her from the truth.

It's not only patronizing, but it's also false to assume that your spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Illusions do not make us happy, they cause us to wander through life, bumping into barriers that are invisible to us because of the illusion that is created. Truth, on the other hand, reveals those barriers, and sheds light on them so that we can see well enough to overcome them. The unsuspecting spouse of an unfaithful husband or wife wonders why their marriage is not more fulfilling and more intimate. Knowledge of an affair would make it clear why all efforts have failed. "

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5060_qa.html

Badspouse, I would first and foremost recommend you shop for another councellor. Perhaps you should interview the candidates on their views of rebuilding marriage after infidelity. You must find a pro marriage MC.

I know this is going to go against the flo here but I'm still not entirely sold on the total disclosure law. I am the BS and I'm not sure I need to know everything about details of past infidelities. It's more important to me that he acknowledge his responsibility in the breakdown of the marriage and be totally willing from this point on to be radically honest.

To me an EA is just a PA waiting to happen so the line has already been crossed in my book. We are all individuals and our own best judge of what we can handle in our own situations. Gather the experience and advice from this site (which btw is great stuff), and make your decision based on what's best for you and your family.

apl, what the BS does or doesn't know should be HIS choice. The WS should be willing to tell him whatever he wants to know. That is not a choice that anyone else can make for you. The WS is the least qualified person to make that decision for the BS.

Some BS' need to know ALL the details in order to recover; others need to know very few. However, the important thing is that the WS is WILLING to tell the BS whatever they need to know in order to recover.

In order for trust to be rebuilt, there can be NO SECRETS. Otherwise, the secrecy and deceit will preclude any recovery. So, the first step must always be radical honesty.

Badspouse,

Your original post asks questions about recovery - what to do now, how to move on. Start with Radical Honesty, and the Emotional Needs. And the advice you are getting comes from the RH - that is, you have to tell your husband about the physical part. How can he possibly make a lifelong decision to be with you, to recover a marriage, when he has only part of the information? When you look in his eyes, you will know your deceit. When he looks in your eyes, he won't know it, but he will be looking into the eyes of a woman who is continuing to lie to him every single day of his life. Ask yourself, "Would I want to be married to HIM if he were lying to ME every single day?" If the answer is no, then you need to give him the choice he deserves.

I say this because my FWH was in an A, and the only reason I found out is because I accidentally ran across some pics on his computer. Otherwise, I never would have known. He never would have told me. He would not have given me the choice to know, the choice to forgive or not, the choice to stay or not, the choice to love or not. This choice is mine to make. Six months later, this is one of the issues I still struggle with. If he had told me himself, and I had not caught him in the lie myself, things would have been much different. I see his desire to never tell me as a willingness to lie to me in perpetuity. A willingness to lie to me EVERY SINGLE DAY until one of us died. I don't call that a marriage. I don't know what you call it, but it isn't a marriage in my book. Strange that I would read the threads on lying today - I have been really struggling with this issue this past week. I just cannot get over the fact that he was planning on never telling me about his A, and just going on, la-la-la, like nothing ever happened. How could he look me in the eyes and lie like that? So that you understand from the BS point of view, it makes me question my own worth. If, after 30 years of marriage, I have so little value that I don't even deserve the truth so I can make a decision for myself, then I must be one sorry worthless individual. Why would he even want to stay with me at all. Yet he does, or so he says. But I digress. Anyway.

I want you to really think about not telling for a minute. Are you willing to kiss him every morning, tell him you love him, and know that you have lied about your fidelity once again that day? Are you willing to raise his children, nurse their colds, kiss him goodnight, and know that you lied to him still? When you are both old and looking back, will you regret your lies? Will your guilt from your physical affair eat you up first, or will the daily lying eat you up first? One will, eventually.

If you love your husband, you have to let him work through this situation, painful as it may be, and the only right way is with the whole truth.

If you build your future marriage on anything less than the truth, it is certain to fail. It's equivalent to trying to build a house on the slopes of an active volcano - you know it's going to blow, just not exactly when.

Schoolbus

spouse,

Learn from my story and you will see how bad the dishonesty is for your marriage.

Each time I discovered or she admitted to another detail it crushed me.

Finally a few weeks ago she was honest with me. The details were crushing to me and my ego.

You can read my story if you would like to search for it. I do not wish to revisit it.

Anyway the last few weeks have been the best I have had in the last three years.

I knew my wife was being dishonest and it hurt to even look at her because of it.

The foundation of my marriage is trust. I could not trust her knowing she lied to me and was still lying to me. I could tell her lies were eating her alive as well. Our marriage had no foundation.

I have a simple philosophy about this. If you are honest and it is too much for him to handle then he may leave. Those are the consequences of your actions that you need to live with. Shouldn't he know this sooner then later. He probably won't leave you but let him make the choice based on all of the information. When a WS lies they are trying to avoid the consequences of their actions. He has a right to know and you should tell him.

I know for me the day she started being honest is the day we started having a chance at a good marriage. No sooner then that. Now I have a foundation to build that good marriage on. Don't you want a good foundation to build the rest of your M on?

badspouse, i hope you are still reading.

i read something you posted on another person's thread:


just so you know, i am a FWW, i had a lot to confess, it was not easy, but i finally did. it was the right thing to do. it was the only thing i had left to give him, my honesty.

my marriage is healing.

don't you think you should give your DH the same gift he gave you in that letter. make yourself human to him.

honesty is the only way to have a true relationship with a person.

how are you doing?

apl

"Honesty and Openness is one of the ten most important emotional needs identified in marriage, which means that when it's met, it can trigger the feeling of love. But it's counterpart, dishonesty, is one of the five most destructive Love Busters. When spouses are dishonest, they destroy the love they have for each other."

This is one of the basic concepts of this websites. You keep offering the same advice from your perspective. Unfortunately there are many FWS or WS that visit this site and this message board. All they need is one person to say "radical honesty is not important" and they may cling to that as a reason for their dishonesty.

I don't understand why you would visit a website and a message board with a clear message that you disagree with. Their are plent around that will agree with your concept that keeping your head in the sand is the best course for recovery in your marriage.

What you are saying is counter productive. I take it personally because my wife's deception has really hurt our marriage. I feel a million times better knowing that my FWW can be honest with me. Plus your FWS is not being dishonest because you didn't ask.

Badspouse was asked and then lied. So if you think her BS does not deserve the truth then are you condoning lies as a bases of a healthy M.

I didn't mean to hijack this thread but Bad needs good advice and telling her it is ok not to be honest is wrong.

Are you saying that it would have been ok with you if your husband never admitted the A?

Bad again I am sorry for hijacking your thread to speak to apl.

I hope you have considered all of the good advice you have recieved about Radical Honesty and act accordingly. It can only help you grow as a couple. Take responsibility for what you did. Remember one thing though when you do decide to tell you are getting something heavy off of your chest. It will land squarly on your BS chest. Don't stop at honesty follow up helping your BS get it off of his chest as well.

hey badspouse, i'm still here for you...

how are YOU doing???

i hope you keep posting. i've been where you are now, i know how hard it is. but it does not have to stay that way. i'll keep looking for you.

Hurting. I'm sorry you were so disturbed by your perception of my post. There is no place in my post where I stated "radical honesty is not important". To clarify and restate I said it was MORE important to me that my H take responsiblity and accontability for his actions than for ME to know all the details of the A.

Again, IMO, everyone must seek what they feel they need to heal, some may need all the details and some may need less, this is personal. It does not however bypass the radical honesty policy about the A itself.

If you need a further explaination of my intent please post me personally.

I wish you well on your road to recovery.