My husband told me last night that he had a short-lived affair 2 years ago....with our babysitter. I'm am so angry I just want to scream, throw and break stuff. Instead, all of the advice here is that I am supposed to respect HIM. WTF? I'm the one that was disrespected when he slept with her and now I'm the one that's supposed to be all nicey nicey? This BITES!

Why did he confess at this time?

Pep

Its the anger....deep breath and tell us more about the marriage, and whether you still want it or not.

He said that our relationship is at an all-time high after being together 13 years. The only black spot in the whole thing was this dirty little secret. He felt that unless he told me, our relationship would not be as great as it seemed to be.

Do you respect (not like) his choice of honesty at this time?

Pep

I do respect his honesty, though you are correct that I don't like it one little bit. Frankly, before this, our relationship was at an all-time high. We've been together for 13 years and married for 10. The last two years SINCE the affair have just gotten better, brought us closer than ever, and the last month has been the most incredible loving experience that I've ever had in my life. The fact that he told me while things were at a high was likely on purpose for him, but it was a real "fall off the mountain" experience for me and I'm increibly dazed and confused.

During the time when this went on, I was having severe depression and anxiety attacks. I was more than a little focused on trying to work through those emotional issues and he was feeling lonely because I could not give him what he needed. So he turned to our live-in babysitter.

Issues I'm having a hard time with:
* We have a live-in that's about to leave and another coming in about a month.
* I love my husband, but having a very difficult time trusting him, even though it happened two years ago.
* I feel like such a fool. The two of them kept this a secret from me for a long time. I even paid for a plane ticket for her to come this past February to a surprise party I gave for my husband's promotion. I was completely duped.
* My woman's intuition made me suspect this was going on, but I didn't persue it. I mentioned it several times to my husband, but he kept it quiet all this time.

Well

It's not really decision time, is it? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Give yourself time ... weeks or months ... before you make any decision about what you want to do

In the meantime, take excellent care of your health

get some MC (marriage counseling)

take some time off from "the talks" for some fun stuff

get exercise

start a journal

Pep

feeling foolish, i confessed when our marriage was finally on an up swing too.

i so badly wanted our relationship to be authentic.

and it wasn't.

and it couldn't be.

until i confessed.

the truth was the only true gift i could give him.

i'm not sure what else to say to you. you have every right to want nothing else to do with him. my hope, however, is that somehow you can work thru this.

ff,

I didn't find out about my H's infidelity (Thai brothel) until a year after it happened while filing some paperwork (the idiot charged it). I can attest to the fact that the delay in finding out didn't lessen my devastation one little bit!! Doesn't matter if it was one day, one year, one decade.....when d-day happens...IT's TODAY!!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

The question is what do you do now? It's not much consolation to know that your marriage is doing well <now>!!!...mine was in pretty good shape on d-day too...but that sure didn't last!!! It turned our lives upside down. It turned rebuilding back to zero!! It destroyed trust. It destroyed safety. It was terrible. I'm pretty sure I did scream and throw things. I definitely slapped him accross the face with a handful of "chicken sauce piquant" I was cooking for dinner...no lie <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />.

Ultimately.....the decisions I had to make were these:

*Did I want to throw away a marriage that had essentially already recovered from the bad times because I just discovered how bad it really was?? *arggggggggggghhhhh!!!*

*If I decided to go on....what steps did we need to make to reach REAL recovery (instead of sham I was living), and what conditions for the future needed to be in place to restore trust and create a better marriage?

*How to deal with my anger and forgiveness issues after realizing how much energy I had "wasted" on somebody who had "duped" me and taken advantage of me.

I sure know where you are. I wish I didn't. I do want to offer you some hope.....since my marriage has survived and thrived (four years past d-day). There is alot a stake here....and while you've been unaware of how bad things really were....you've rebuilt a loving relationship. I don't know if it would have mattered to me if my H had chosen to be honest to me instead of accidentally discovering the truth....but I suspect my devastation would not have been much different. Still....did it matter that we were back on track....yeah....I think it did. I think it matters to you too.

I wish there was a short cut. I'll tell you what helped me....but the bottom line is a big part of it was TIME....time to heal again....time to rebuild and re-invest. Time to put safeguards, more honesty, more accountability in place.

You know, You ought to be able to get help with your children without having to worry about this kind of thing....but I lived overseas where everybody had live-ins. I've seen your scenario repeated over and over....it introduces another woman into the house who fills needs....and I can't help but think that's a dangerous dynamic. I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't have the safety of trusting your husband....but how essential is a live-in? Are you away from your family so much that your family is at risk from more than just the babysitter?

((((((((((((((ff))))))))))))))))

I confronted the OW last night. Called her and said all the things I had been thinking I wanted to say including:

* how dare her f**k my husband
* how dare her break my trust when I invited her into my home
* that she should know better than to invite him into her room when she had no clothes on; that she should know that he was going to fall into bed with her.
* that she is no longer welcome in my home and she is no longer a member of my family (which I always considered her to be)
* that she should never contact him again

Now WS is more pissed at me than ever. He says I'm being abusive to him and her because of the things that I'm saying. How did I become the bad guy in all of this? I thought that I was the one that was the wronged party?

WS is so angry he's threatening to leave if I don't "stop abusing him." Swallowing my emotions...OMG, I can't believe that I'm even considering it. He says I'm being disrespectful. Maybe he's right. I feel entitled to say all of the things that I feel, but he says that they are too mean and that he deserves better since he "fessed up."

Thoughts?

His reaction is typical. You have a right and need to do/say those things. And you are absolutely correct in saying that this woman should never again in this life see or otherwise communicate with any member of your family.

-AD

He has had two years to process this. He has been able to work through whatever emotions - rationalization, justification, remorse, shame, guilt, and so on.

You, on the other hand, just found out about this and are starting at square one. Maybe point this out to him..?

FF,

You are right to feel the anger and resentment, after all you just found out. I do give your FWH (I assume he's a former WH) credit for his honesty - he probably could have held this in and never told but seems he wanted to remove this cloud over your M. He should be remorseful and understand your perspective.
My FWW didn't tell me years ago about a ONS and it renewed itself into a long A w/ the same OM. I wish she'd told me about the initial A, then we would have taken measures to prevent it's recurrance.
Don't make any rash decisions, it takes time and watch his actions.

V/r,
No way

"If you feel you must leave me because I am expressing my pain and outrage at your adultery, you are free to leave at any time."

Don't argue.

State the obvious calmly.

Pep

This is a classic letter ... applicable when your adulterous spouse is not willing to disclose the details of the affair ... but wants to recover the marriage ...

Here ya go!

"To Whomever,

"I know you are feeling the pain of guilt and confusion. I understand that you wish all this never happened and that you wish it would just go away. I can even believe that you truly love me and that your indiscretion hurts you emotionally much the same way it hurts me. I understand your apprehension to me discovering little by little, everything that led up to your indiscretion, everything that happened that night, and everything that happened afterwards. I understand. No one wants to have a mistake or misjudgment thrown in his or her face repeatedly. No one wants to be forced to "look" at the thing that caused all their pain over and over again. I can actually see, that through your eyes, you are viewing this whole thing as something that just needs to go away, something that is over, that he/she doesn't mean anything to you, so why is it such a big issue? I can understand you wondering why I torture myself with this continuously, and thinking, doesn't he/she know by now that I love him/her? I can see how you can feel this way and how frustrating it must be. But for the remainder of this letter I'm going to ask you to view my reality through my eyes.

"You were there. There is no detail left out from your point of view. Like a puzzle, you have all the pieces and you are able to reconstruct them and be able to understand the whole picture, the whole message, or the whole meaning. You know exactly what that picture is and what it means to you and if it can effect your life and whether or not it continues to stir your feelings. You have the pieces, the tools, and the knowledge. You can move through your life with 100% of the picture you compiled. If you have any doubts, then at least you're carrying all the information in your mind and you can use it to derive conclusions or answers to your doubts or question. You carry all the "STUFF" to figure out OUR reality. There isn't really any information, or pieces to the puzzle that you don't have.

"Now let's enter my reality. Let's both agree that this affects our lives equally. The outcome no matter what it is well affect us both. Our future and our present circumstances are every bit as important to me as it is to you. So, why then is it okay for me to be left in the dark? Do I not deserve to know as much about the night that nearly destroyed our relationship as you do? Just like you, I am also able to discern the meaning of certain particulars and innuendoes of that night and just like you, I deserve to be given the opportunity to understand what nearly brought our relationship down. To assume that I can move forward and accept everything at face value is unrealistic and unless we stop thinking unrealistically I doubt our lives well ever "feel" complete. You have given me a puzzle. It is a 1000 piece puzzle and 400 random pieces are missing. You expect me to assemble the puzzle without the benefit of looking at the picture on the box. You expect me to be able to discern what I am looking at and to appreciate it in the same context as you. You want me to be as comfortable with what I see in the picture as you are. When I ask if there was a tree in such and such area of the picture you tell me don't worry about it, it's not important. When I ask whether there were any animals in my puzzle you say don't worry about it, it's not important. When I ask if there was a lake in that big empty spot in my puzzle you say, what's the difference, it's not important. Then later when I'm expected to "understand" the picture in my puzzle you fail to understand my disorientation and confusion. You expect me to feel the same way about the picture as you do but deny me the same view as you. When I express this problem you feel compelled to admonish me for not understanding it, for not seeing it the way you see it. You wonder why I can't just accept whatever you chose to describe to me about the picture and then be able to feel the same way you feel about it.

"So, you want me to be okay with everything. You think you deserve to know and I deserve to wonder. You may honestly feel that the whole picture, everything that happened is insignificant because in your heart you know it was a mistake and wish it never happened. But how can I know that? Faith? Because you told me so? Would you have faith if the tables were turned? Don't you understand that I want to believe you completely? But how can I? I can never know what is truly in your mind and heart. I can only observe you actions, and what information I have acquired and slowly, over time rebuild my faith in your feelings. I truly wish it were easier.

"So, there it is, as best as I can put it. That is why I ask questions. That is where my need to know is derived from. And that is why it is unfair for you to think that we can effectively move forward and unfair for you to accuse me of dwelling on the past. My need to know stems from my desire to hold our world together. It doesn't come from jealousy, it doesn't come from spitefulness, and it doesn't come from a desire to make you suffer. It comes from the fact that I love you. Why else would I put myself through this? Wouldn't it be easier for me to walk away? Wouldn't it be easier to consider our relationship a bad mistake in my life and to move on to better horizons? Of course it would, but I can't and the reason I can't is because I love you and that reason in itself makes all the difference in the world."

(end of Joseph's Letter)

Is there a similar letter that one can send to the OM/W? This is an incredible letter and says everything I've been trying to say the last two days since I found all this out.

why did you want to contact her, ff?

Because I wanted to expose the lie to the light of day, let her know that she didn't get away with it, and tell her never to contact anyone in the family ever again.

ff, Harley recommends that the letter come from the wayward spouse. The letter should be written by him, approved by you and mailed by you. Here is a sample:

Dr. Harley?s (From SAA)

(OP), I want you to know that out of respect and love for my wife and children, I have come to realize that I must never see or talk with you again. My relationship with you was a cruel indulgence that (BS) did not deserve. While I cannot completely repay (BS) for the pain I have caused her, I will do my best to become the husband she?s been missing. I care a great deal for my family and I would not want to do anything to risk their happiness. I will not make any further contact with you and I do not want you to make any contact with me. Please respect my desire to end our relationship.
Sincerely,
(WS)

How can you give advice like this when you have no idea what she has been saying???

I know you are trying to help, but I disagree with you. By the way, I am the FWH (FWH for almost two years) in question here. My DW has every right to be angry with me and to tell me how she feels. Saying, "I am so angry with you because you..." is one thing. Rubbing my nose in what I did, describing in intimate detail what must have occurred, all in a sarcastic voice, meant to humiliate me is NOT okay. We are talking about the difference between having a right to a feeling and the right to express how you feel versus treating your life partner and the one you love respectfully.

Let's get something straight. This is a site for building marriages, not for advising people to verbally beat on the spouse who screwed up. Dr. Harley advises to put love points in the bank, not take them out. There is no way that being verbally abusive is acceptable in a marriage. If this site advocates that, then we need to run away from here as fast as we can.

Furthermore, I voluntarily confessed to this past affair because I love my wife. What she wants from me more than anything is to hold her, stroke her hair, and tell her it is going to all be okay. I want to give her that desperately. I can't if I have to have my guard up so that she doesn't rub my nose in this enormous guilt and sorrow that I feel and have told her about. She knows how bad I feel, I love her and want her to be happy, this pain that I have caused, all my fault, has reduced me to dirt to be walked on in my own view of myself. Rubbing my nose in it in a nasty way is unacceptable. That is a boundary I have set because it is detrimental to me and to our marriage.