So the affair started up again in late fall.

Found the secret cell phone Saturday at 5, we met up with my parents and WH confessed everything to them. Came home Wh ran in and got the secret cell phone and broke it and drove me to a dumpster to throw it away. Sunday morning he changed his regular cell phone number.

We are going to meet with his mom and dad this week.

WH has problems and he has not been capable of fixing them. He says he wanted to get out but he didn't know how because he was afraid I would leave him. This doesn't make sense, he doesn't make sense. He created a lifestyle that he said made him miserable? He said that he hated her and him, that he wants more children with me. More not making sense.

He has to make sense of his life and his priorities and I am not going to be with someone who can't figure out how to make a priorty of family and God in their life.

I have no emotion or energy for this. WH appears desperate to do whatever I want. We did Retrouvaille before and he wants to know if I want to do it again. I told him I am going to go through RCA classes (to become Catholic again) he said wants to take the classes with me if that's OK.

He asked me if I still wanted him to do the Mankind Project. He is going to do research tonight to identify a what might be the most helpful type of program for him.

I am think I might set up an appointment with a priest to learn more about annulments.

If our family is going to be saved, well, I don't know if that is possible. I want my children to have a father that can be a role model. What do his actions tell me? That he repents if he gets caught.... that his pride is gone....

we have two children, lovely daughters that are 2 & 3.

What did your parents have to say about this new revelation?

I am sorry for your pain here.

oh crap

so sorry Loy

(( hugs ))

Pep

PS

I will NEVER forget

"That poop scared me."

what cute kids you have !!!

Pep

It sounds to me like your husband has some "issues". I would insist that he get some individual counseling.

So sad for you, Loy.

If you know my story at all, it did take a long while for my H to break away...

Willing to help in anyway that I can out here in cyberspace..

You are a wise woman and will do what you need to do...

I say, follow your gut...

My parents are very dissapointed in WH. They don't want me to sacrifice myself for him, my sanity, my hope, my cheerfulness. I have done everything to help him. If I decide to move on they are with me. If I decide to give my WH one more chance, they are with me. This also gives me accountability too, because if there is a last chance, this must be it. With my family behind me, it helps to make this the last chance. I owe WH nothing.

I did think it was important for WH to feel my father's dissapointment in him. Some kind of man to man thing that I don't think my H can get from his father.

We'll discover WH's mom reaction tonight. Because my WH has issues, I feel its crutial to make sure that his parents know what has transpired.

Yesterday I didn't want to go to my cousin's HS grad party. My mom said I should, when WH heard me give an excuse he said, let's go. It's important.

I find it very difficult to believe that WH, as he said, sees everything so clearly now. WH said that as long as he has today, he can get us to tomorrow.

Loy, I'm pretty sure you've come here to be talked into giving WH another chance.

Okay, here you go. I sincerely think if you give up now, you may be salvaging defeat from the arms of victory and that would be a shame. I've deliberately not read any of your old threads. I'm basing everything on just the words you've written here and they tell me your WH has had the fog ripped completely away. You've itemized several things he's done in the last two days to show his commitment. They weren't just words, they were actions. I think that's important.

Now...that having been said...there's no way you can continue limping along, hoping his new found momentum will continue. You and he need to immerse yourselves in the last 2/3 of SAA and he has to work hard to win your trust back. If there is any possibility of counseling from SH, I'd view it as an investment well worth the cost. If not, please get MC from a responsible, pro-marriage counselor familiar with the difficulties of infidelity in a marriage.

In short, I think you two can do this. It sounds like you won't even have to do all the heavy lifting. Hang in there, Loy. The good times may just be around the corner if you can tough it out another few months.

Longhorn:

You've been hanging around with me too long!

I usually say what you say.

I wholeheartedly agree with you.

Loy's H sounds like mine did when he FINALLY became REPENTANT..

Maybe some take longer than others...

It's a shame men have to face their addictions in such hurtful ways. And I know you said things don't make sense, and they never do. It seems impossible that a person could love his family and yet do the things they do. Yet that is what addictions are about, doing things which are contrary to what seems natural. It doesn't matter what the addiction is about sex, gambling, shopping, eating, drugs, alcohol, or anything else you want to put in the category. An addiction causes a person to do something typically they would not do, because they are trying to fix an emotion by medicating the emotion improperly. So when you have an out of balance emotion and you try to correct it with something so out of balance, then it's easy to see why a person can say I love you, and yet they did something so completely stupid and wrong. They were so messed up emotionally they didn't know which end was up in the first place.

I watching Dr. Phil the other day and he showed some good guidelines for determining whether to give the person a chance. I wish I had written all them down. But it boiled down to was the person genuinely repentant, willing to work on their problem, was this something they could overcome, was this a winnable battle, and if this reoccurred again could the spouse be strong enough to handle it one more time?

You know slips can happen and what you want is an accountable husband who will acknowledge the first slip. She called, I talked and I shouldn't have. At lease then it can be stopped before it gets too far. If you aren't strong enough to handle that, then you might want to consider whether it's worth moving forward.

Great post, Ask Me...

Steve Harley and my H definitely called MY H's Affair an ADDICTION.

So even to this day, my H insists how he has to stay away from her..won't even drive into her neighborhood without me in the car..wants to move away....

EXTRAORDINARY PRECAUTIONS...

Ok. I am here to say something.

A person will only be genuinely repentant if they desire to be that.

If not, they will remain a WS.

While an affair is somewhat of an addiction, it is a choice. We make choices every day what we can and won't do. It's a matter of what he feels he wants to do. Smashing a cellphone is an OUTER show of NC. It's not imho, a REAL show of NC.

NC is well...NC.

And my xh did same stuff. he pretended to repent. Sure did.

And I have something else to say here. some won't like it.

If my spouse had to "fight the affair addiction" so bad that the man couldn't even be able to successfully drive thru the ow's subdivision, same town, or have enough self control to NOT have extraordinary precautions, I'd seriously doubt the sincereness of the repent and the status of my marriage.

You see, I will never walk with my head looking behind me again. Can't do it. You'll run smack into something if you keep forever looking behind you, guarding your own back for fear your WS will have a "slip up" or some kind of "relapse" here. Come on folks! This is NOT CANCER...it is an affair. IT IS A CHOICE.

Let's just be honest here. The WS FEEL GOOD WHEN IN AN AFFAIR. It's not the same ol same ol. It's new. It's different. It strokes their ego. It makes their motors rev a little and when you're in a comfortable MATURE relationship, the motors rev, but not that fast and don't accelerate that fast either. It's the old "well if it feels good, do it" stuff that I believe happens over and over again. An affair is simply put, an ego and gonad fluffer to the max. That's it. Simple and not very pretty.

They do want that "feel good" vibe. And it is somewhat of an addiction. I believe it is one, but not something that couldn't be broken if their life depended on it. I see my xws. I see his choices. He is in total control of what he wants to do. And he has simply made the selfish and hedonistic choices to only do what makes darth happy and what feels good to darth and what makes darth's ego swell...ahem...if you get it.

We enable our WS here far too much imho by saying it's an incurable disease or horrid addiction. So much to the fact that there must be sooooo wild precautions taken so they don't "have a relapse" and find themselves suddenly in the op's house or bed. I am sorry...I DO NOT BUY RELAPSE. I DON'T BUY ANYTHING BUT ADDICTION TO SELF. ADDICTION TO FEELING GOOD. AND NOTHING IS WORTH WALKING THRU LIFE WITH YOUR HEAD BEHIND YOU...LOOKING WHERE YOU WERE...being frightened or scared and missing the best parts ahead b/c you might have a WS or an xWS who could possibly drive thru a subdivision and "blame the addiction" for behavior THE WS WOULD AND COULD MOST DEFINITELY PREVENT...if they CHOSE TO....

key word: CHOICE.

WS have a choice. They are NOT DEVOID OF SELF WILL OR SELF CONTROL. We must acknowledge they still have choices. They are still free human beings.

It is time we held them accountable. WE saw that when they do these things repeatedly it is NOT A REFLECTION OF US...if we do all we can do....if they are SERIAL OFFENDERS. It maybe is simply b/c they WANT TO DO THIS STUFF. THEY WANT TO HAVE THE ILLICIT DANGER GAME OF AN AFFAIR PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

My xh likes the feel of that danger game. It's what makes him feel alive. Needed. Whole. He can't function unless that tension is alive and well. Comfort? What the hades is comfort or a mature relationship? Doesn't exist in his world.

He does all these things....KNOWINGLY...he purposefully sets them up this way. It is how it is.

I want some BS whose WS are repeat and serial adulterers, to rethink their sitch. Set firm boundaries. Realize it's part addiction/part JUST WANTING TO FEEL GOOD and 100 percent BECAUSE THEY WANNA DO IT.

I can't even begin to tell you how HAPPY I am and how WONDERFUL my marriage is and how truly REPENTANT my H is. It would take me volumes to put this into words. The time spent fighting the addiction is miniscule,not even observant to the human eye, in comparison to our wonderful unforgettable moments daily and our plans for the future. I'm saying this not because of the need to prove this to you, Peachy. But I don't want others to believe that this can't happen. I KNOW WHAT I KNOW...I know how much he loves me..he evidences this to me..whenever he can..MY H IS WONDERFUL!!!



You are certainly welcome to your opinion. But, Dr. Harley himself says that the ADDICTION TO THIS OP is FOR LIFE..and that's why he says that he often counsels moving out of town..



I think initially having an A and even continuing the A early on is DEFINITELY by CHOICE because they want to do it. However, continuing an A when you want to stop and can't and when it is obviously destroying you and your family, it has DEFINITELY BECOME AN ADDICTION. And you are almost correct, IT IS AN ADDICTION TO THE FEELING that the OP gives....

I was once addicted to cigarettes..stopped smoking about 14 YEARS AGO...

Even after all this time, I continue to miss the PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE of smoking....watching the smoke coming out of my mouth..having something FUN to do while concentrating on something BORING..

So even though I felt like I would die from smoking, even though I hated the smell on my breath and clothes, even though I was concerned about the effect on my young children, I kept on smoking....

So even today when sipping a glass of wine, I say to myself: "It would be nice to have one cigarette..maybe just one..14 YEARS LATER....

What stops me ?..mostly THE PAIN THAT I ENDURED IN TRYING TO QUIT..I think that's a lot of what I see in MY HUSBAND. I can't speak for others. I get the sense that he does not want to ever be in that type of HE// HOLE again because he knows how hard it was to crawl out of it..

Sometimes I get the sense that HE CRAVES that FEELING she gave him/the affair gave him..Yes, the RUSH..the FEELING of ECSTACY..the RUSH from being in a NEW, FORBIDDEN RELATIONSHIP. I sense this. Then, I go about helping to recreate THAT sort of feeling for him. But, it's the FEELING that he once felt many, many years ago when he first fell in love with me.

I had stopped doing the things to help create that feeling even though it is me who REALLY KNOWS all the SECRETS. She didn't. And now, because I work on creating THAT FEELING again within this LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP of ours, he couldn't be HAPPIER and more GRATEFUL..that despite all the bad stuff that he did to me..that I could FORGIVE him..that's a large part of his renewed love for me now...

He says in many ways: YOU ARE SUCH A SPECIAL LADY TO HAVE WITHSTOOD ALL OF THIS...

And you know what I've learned?

I AM SPECIAL!!!

Sorry for being long-winded..this is stuff I've had on my mind and wanted to say....

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

I am truly happy Mimi that your marriage worked out. I want as many marriages to work out as I can for the good folks here.

But there are some WS who consciously cheat and do so b/c they just simply choose to. We can call it an addiction. We can say it is. I think it is a BEATABLE addiction. And where I honestly have my druthers is the FOR LIFE part.

I refuse to forever look behind me to have fear that my spouse will again cheat. If THE WS HEART IS FOREVER CHANGED AND THEY ARE NO LONGER A WS THEN THE DESIRE IS GONE TO CHEAT WTIH THAT PERSON.

For example...My xh is NO LONGER cheating with the 21 year old...have been told now it's another.

Wow. what does that mean? He's broken the cycle of the 21 year old he almost left his affair marriage for last year ...why? He wanted something else that felt good. Some WS here just are after that. Their ego's and something else to be stroked. They will wake up each day, eat a sensible breakfast maybe. Maybe even jog before or after work. Go into their place of business and put in a decent day's work. And STILL BE A WS. What I am saying is it is THEIR CHOICE in the end. My xh functions BASICALLY NORMAL outside his cheating abilities in the outside world. Some of them can and do.

Others are in true "addiction" mode and their entire lives fall to heck in a handbag when under the influence of OP.

But it's still the for life thing I get.

As a former BW, I can say enthusiastically that I'd NEVER ACCEPT A REMISSION. I ONLY WOULD ACCEPT A FULL RECOVERY KNOWING IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. It is a deal breaker for me. It is sad to walk thru life looking behind you. Never with your face ahead.

That's where I just plainly differ. I don't want a partial recovery so that I have to keep and become my WS keeper. I am not that. They're grown people. They should be able to CONTROL THEMSELVES.

That's key. Choice and now self control.

You're not recovered unless you can control negative choices and have true self control to be faithful.

these are my opinions.

my sister also was "addicted" to cigarettes. She was seriously dating a guy who was in med school. he's now related to me and has been for a decade incidentally.

He told her she COULD MAKE A CHOICE.

He would NOT MARRY OR LIVE WITH A WOMAN WHO SMOKED...who would knowingly cut their own life short for a killing smoke maching...what he calls ciggies.

So she had a choice.

SHE COULD CONTINUE TO DO THE THING SHE LIKED DOING..and it had benefits in her opinion...she had always been skinny...kept her from eating alot...and gave her a buzzy type feeling and energy...OR SHE COULD LOSE THE LOVE OF HER LIFE FOREVER.

SHE MADE A CHOICE to break the cycle.

It has been a life long choice. She has had NO REMISSION...only a recovery.

she gave up smoking. WILLINGLY AND ON HER OWN.

Now its 13 years later and two beautiful children and a loving family and marriage.

Peachy:

You are not understanding what I am saying..but that's OK.

I'm not at all my H's keeper. I am his teammate..his helper.

I help him with his problems and he helps me with mine.

We are in this TOGETHER.

I think we IN RECOVERY..not fully there yet..but IN RECOVERY..

BTW, you and your family are TOUGH.

I wanted to stop smoking MANY YEARS before I did.

Breaking that addiction was HE//.

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

I am getting it....I just see it another way ..

and I ADMIRE YOU TOO <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

You're both loving tough and that's cool.

I just went thru the mill and now that I am out on the other side...and my xh is still "out walkin' the streets" I am just seeing things a tad differently.

I want WS to take ownership of their affairs! To be repentant. To really take the time to heal. And to be brave enough and strong enough to NOT START IT UP on their own so a poor BS can have sanity and peace of mind should reconciliation be the choice...which I hope for most here is...

Sometimes girl...I just stop and breathe. I think to myself how in the heck did I live thru that? Why did I ever put up with one second of that in the first place? What MADE ME WANT TO PUT UP WITH HIS CRAP? What was good enough for me? Surely it was not that unrepentant WS xh I had...

I also see alot of passively abusive WS here imho. Sure do. They make the BS feel like they are on eggshells...and it's a daily struggle for some here to regain self esteem and confidence while still having to struggle and fight the affair.

I just don't wanna see "passing the buck" going on around here like the WS is some helpless little child who climbed up on the countertop and reached for cookie jar. The wittle rascal climbed all the way up, stuck hand in jar, ate a few cookies, and stuck hand back yet again only to say when CAUGHT...that he CAN'T GET DOWN AND DOESN'T WANT TO STOP EATING COOKIES.

They CAN help the cakeeating. They have to BE STRONG ENOUGH AND COMMITTED ENOUGH TO NOT EAT THE DARN CAKE ANYMORE. Instead we help them as they are addicts struggling...sure they have an addiction...BUT IT'S BREAKABLE. IT IS A BREAKABLE ONE. And they can help themselves too. If they choose or want to.

I think my xh's unrepentance and unwillingness to ever give up cakeeating can be summed up in one sentence. Sadly I see alot of WS like him hurting alot of BS here..

now remember this was ACTUALLY SAID IN COURT...judge just shook his head when my attorneys read it aloud. Entire courtroom and people just in the back gasped loudly in shock...

Darth: "I LIVED LIKE A ROCK STAR AND LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT."

That is the cakeeater's mantra. That is his goal. To love every minute of his life b/c IT IS HIS LIFE and he's happy that way.

We want so badly to fix somebody. To think they have some dread disease we can help cure. So we don our MB doc coats and go in and try to diagnose our problem. I know I did that b/c I want to think I can help everybody..hence my job. But I can't. It is so comforting to think we can help a WS. Or to think of them in terms of being "sick" or "addicted"...when sadly sometimes it is in reality a combo of a beatable addiction and them wanting to simply do it. When we think it is something a WS can control...our comfort zone and our peace is shattered. Why? It means some of this stuff is really out of our control.

Some WS will respond. Others won't. It's a fact. But I think there does need to be MORE CREDENCE and more emphasis given on somehow getting the WS to ACCCEPT AND OWN THEIR AFFAIR...and showing a bS how to distinguish between FAKE REPENTANCE AND REAL REPENTANCE.

loy,

I am so sorry.

((hugs)).

I pray that your WS is truely repentant this time.

Just wanted you to know we are here for you. Prayers your way.

Love in Christ,
Miss M

ps, my H was and is truely repentant. Life is good. And FWS has withstood(sp???) my many troubles as a result of his A. He is sooooo wonderful. hope your WS is getting to that point.

I'm looking at this quote and I have a problem with the statement. I can make the statement, but I can't control it. The only control is to say if it happens again is you are out of here. So in essence you are still looking over your shoulder for a problem. The WS is the only person in control and while they may say I'll never do it again, there is no guarantee.

It's why I said earlier the person who accepts the WS back into a marriage must be strong enough to be able to withstand the fact that there exists the possibility that a reoccurance of an affair could happen again. Will it? Maybe not, but it's always a possibility the BS needs to be strong enough to handle just in case.

I talk about addictions a lot. There are sexual addictions, but not all affairs are born out of sexual addictions. A sexual addiction creates affairs due to emotional problems. Affairs NOT due to sexual addiction are born out of ones desire to change something environmentally. An affair can become addictive in nature, but it's not the same as a sexual addiction.

In my case to tell you the extreme of a sexual addiction, in 2 years I had 19 PAs & 15 EAs . Looking back I'm not even sure how I did that and worked and had a family. But I was triggered by extreme circumstances that pushed me beyond my emotional limits. And looking back it seems like a dream that doesn't even seem real and parts of it I have even forgotten. I have to start writting down things to try and remember. So sexual addictions are real, just like other addictions they draw you in and hold you there until you learn how to break free. And it still trys to pull me back, but I have learned with counseling, and my support group, and accountability partners how to manager and stay free of the addiction. But it takes work. It would be easy for me to slip to other addictions if I weren't careful. A person who has an addiction is at risk for other addictions, whether it's sex, alcohol, gambling, eating, drugs, etc.