HG, I am a FWW as well as a BS three x's over! My H last year had a child with is AP. You say you had unprotected sex with the OM. Imagine if you had gotten pregnant or an STD. You put your H's life in jeopardy and yet you say You have not OWNED your own affair yet. You are still projecting blame. Unless you were raped OM did not make you do anything. The sooner you face yourself full on in that mirror the sooner your H will begin to trust you.

I would get another MC. That is crap! Yes ANYONE can have an A but that is why boundaries, radical honesty, protecting your heart and filling your mates EN's come in. That MC is not doing your marriage or your recovery any good by giving you justification for your A.

HG,

I’ve observed your story from afar and you have received some wonderful advice. Even better, I can tell you are listening by carefully considering every morsel. It is perhaps time that I offer you a suggestion that I think might go a long way to helping you restore some basic intimacies with your husband. It may not seem like it right now, but you will both soon discover that there is much to be grateful for. There is much hope for your relationship.

My gift to you is the gift of the power to help heal your husband. Although he will be the one to walk his lonely road it will be you who places the markers along the path that will ease his burden and show him the way back to you.

I’m sure that you were very surprised when your husband did not pack his bags and leave after discovering the affair. Do you know why he didn’t leave? He stayed and is staying still because when faced with loss of his wife he has discovered how deep his love is for you. In the face of your betrayal it is obvious that you have discovered the same thing. I can sometimes become a bit corny but that rediscovered love is a very beautiful thing. It is the common denominator that gives great promise towards building something that you both desperately desire, restoration of your marriage. You see if you both want the same thing then your success is already guaranteed. How you get there is what this post is all about.

Your husband’s anger has surfaced just as JL had predicted. He is primarily angry because it appears to him that you have played him for a fool. Worse, he feels that way because the person he loved more then anything in the world is responsible for delivering the worst possible betrayal. He is mad because he is in position that he has little control of. He is processing this information but in the end those simple facts do not change. He mistakenly took you and the marriage for granted and you did no less. There is, however, something that has profoundly changed. You have both discovered that there is much more to this marriage “thing” then simply walking down an aisle. It is really a partnership of the highest magnitude and like a garden it must be tended every day. However, it is not really work, it is fun and best of all, it is hugely rewarding. That is what awaits you.

In the beginning of this post I told you that I would give you a gift to help heal your husband. These forums are populated by wayward spouses and betrayed spouses many who have not only saved their marriages but have improved them. They are the kind of loves that books are written about. NONE of them have any more love for their spouse then the love that you share with your husband. They do, however have one thing that you do not have, and that is a plan. The best marriages recovered from infidelity because the formally wayward spouse had written a plan that allows the grieving spouse the knowledge and confidence to know that they are always on firm ground, protected and safe. It is a gift of comfort and one that ONLY you HG can give.

So what is this plan? How will it work?

In one of your earlier posts you talked about maintaining “transparency”. The idea of transparency is that your husband can see what is going on in your life. Your voluntary forfeiture of any privacy gives your husband a bird’s eye view into the activities of your daily life. This contributes to give him the confidence to always know that he is safe. It allows him to take a small breath.

As a further part of the plan you may consider to seize the initiative to always let him know what is going on in your life, a telephone call, an email or better yet, an unsolicited lunch date. No longer will he need to wonder what you are doing or what you are thinking, he will know because you will tell him. He takes a larger breath.

Finely, consider what paths lead you towards infidelity. At what point did you cross that fateful line of no return? I’ve read some of the reasons that you say contributed towards your bad decisions but I suggest to you that those decisions were merely consequences of conditions that were in motion much earlier. Consider how you relate to men and what you might have said or done to allow access to your private life. You see, when you permit someone access to discuss the important things in your private life you have crossed a line of intimacy that only your husband should have access to. Your greatest weaknesses to inviting an affair is allowing another person access to the things that are most important to you, particularly if they are the things your husband has not addressed. Your husband must be the conduit for such exchanges. Do this and he breathes deeper yet.

The gift that I have given to you will be the one that you give to your husband. Another affair CANNOT happen because the plan does not leave room for one. The plan is yours to author but this I will tell you, once launched it becomes a plan for life. It is not a thing that you sometimes do when you think things might be slipping. The worst thing you can do is to give your husband a breath of air only to latter withhold it.

HG, it takes a long time to fix a marriage. The road to recovery becomes easier with time. The restoration of trust begins to return as the months pass. You may both want things to progress more quickly but I assure that there are no shortcuts or magic words that will hasten your recovery, take a tip from one who’s tried.

Mr. G

All your other qualities and characteristics are intrinsically woven together along with everything else you represent including the betrayal your husband feels due to your infidelity. In other words, he must wonder, how could you, a person he so admires because of her other qualities and characteristics do something like this to the person they love most in the world. Therefore he feels he has nothing left. What more could there be after such revelation as infidelity?

All the questions unwanted. He no more wants to ask them than you want to answer them. All the triggers, all the pain lead directly back to your other qualities and characteristics which in turn lead back to what was such a big part of what he liked about you, and you took all that away.

So do you really understand his anger and his feelings regarding another man having you? If you did you wouldn't have had to ask that question about qualities and characeristics in the first place. At least you are to the point of trying to understand. That is a good thing.

faithful follower, I don't even want to think about an STD or getting pregnant. I have always been very protective of my health and my family's health. But you know what, that is where I say I was a bit naive. I always heard about STDs, etc., but I always thought that was so far away from ever affecting me. I was not the target audience for all those commercials about STDs...I have always been with my husband, I don't do drugs or anything like that...and then, this happened. I was not prepared for this and I didn’t really think about the consequences.

I do admit it was all MY fault. I could have established boundaries, I could have said no to the OM. He did not rape me or forced me to do anything. What I am saying is that he did use all the possible tactics men use to make me start falling in love with him and finally into agreeing to have sex. My contact with men had been very limited. I had no idea that men use all these tactics to sleep with women. I mean, you always listen to jokes and comments about it, but I never thought it could happen to me and while this was happening I didn’t realized that was what was going on. That is why I say I was naive and it hurts that he used me and that I was such an idiot and became so stupid and retarded all of a sudden. I stopped analyzing things in a logical and reasonable matter. Anyway, that is something that I feel as a woman, as an aside of the main issue of this situation which is main infidelity. And in terms of my infidelity, I am fully responsible for that. No one else is.

About the MC, what this person says is that she has seen cases about infidelity over and over again of people that you would have never think would do something like that. She means that even the good and religious people that love their partners make mistakes like these, and that is a reality, not a justification. But, yes, I do agree that boundaries, radical honesty and all those things are vital to prevent an affair.

I will comment on the other posts later.

HG,

It sounds like you are still obsessing about OM which, not unlike the A itself, is a way to escape your feelings about what is REALLY going on.

However, and I know this is hard for a BS to hear and understand, there is anger at the OP that a FWS must get through in order to heal.

HG, I once felt as you did about OM and continue to have thoughts such as you mentioned. My OM was a serial cheater, on his fourth PA (he also had an EA). He probably had more, but these are the ones he told me about.

He was also a liar... almost pathologically so.

I, like you, had only been with my H before OM. Therefore, I REALLY thought OM was special. I thought he was my "soulmate". When reality came crashing down and I saw OM for what he really was, I was absolutely devistated. And angry... VERY angry. The feelings are real and must be worked through... typically by yourself. There are several things that have helped me with this:

1. Writing all of my feelings out about OM and then throwing them away when I'm done (or typing something out on Word and not saving it when I'm done.)

2. Going to therapy and talking to my IC about it.

3. If I'm angry about a situation in particular, I rehash the situation, saying what I wish I could have said outloud to OM at the time, while punching my pillows (with H out of the house, of course.) I've found that doing this makes these obsessive thoughts go away forever.

4. Doing self-help and coping exercises. www.coping.org has many wonderful ones.

5. Focusing my energy on loving my H, even if I was too wrapped up in myself at the time. It helps not only you, but your H and the M as well.

I highly recommend taking the focus off of the "evil OM" and start working on yourself... get through your anger constructively, but focus on yourself and your own spiritual/emotional growth and your M will flourish as well.

I agree with Believer that you still sound a little foggy. To be honest, I avoided your thread at first because the "I am a FWW and I need support" sounded a little bit entitled to me. But I just read through your posts and some of your H's posts and I would like to help you out if I can. I've been where you are and I understand what you're going through. It's very, very hard but you can do it if you believe in both yourself and your M... you can do it!

Blessings,

Katie Mae

eldente, thanks for your comments, I do understand your point of view and I understand his anger. I was just saying that his comments made me wonder if that is all he ever liked about me. Could you marry someone just because of that? Doesn’t he find me attractive? Intelligent? Charming? That affects my self-esteem too. It makes me think that if I had been with another guy before marrying my H, he would not have married me because I have no other qualities that are good enough for a guy to marry me. And again, I do understand his anger and how it all ties together after I committed the infidelity, but it does not mean that I don’t think about what I am worth as a woman and as a person besides my sexual experience.

HG, I want you to check out this thread by my friend, Bob Pure. He had an exclusive sexual R with his FWW before her A. It may help you see your H's perspective on this. Calling FWS whos OP was the first S...w do you feel about losing exclusivity ?

Katie Mae, I am not obsessing about the OM. Instead I am focusing on my H on a day to day basis. The whole OM subject was brought up in the forum because I said that my H constantly reminds me of him by still asking so many details of what he said or did, and it does hurt to remember what I lived with this guy.

The OM is completely worthless and he had cheated on his W before they were married. The guy has only been married for less than a year. He is a liar too. He lied to me and to his W. God know what else he has done. But during the affair I saw him in a very different way. Now, like you Katie Mae, I see him for what he really is and that is devastating and of course I feel angry at him and at me, and any thought of him brings out all these horrible and complicated feelings.

I have written feelings about the OM in documents, I have talked to the counselor about it, I have thought about what I would hypothetically say to him in person, etc. I will read the exercises you suggested. Thanks. This is something that I have done on my own and I think I am doing good because at first I missed the guy and I never thought I could go on without talking to him, etc. But that phase happened a while ago, thank God.

As I said, except for these postings where I have been able to talk about what I think of the OM, that has not been the focus of my daily life. My focus is my H; however, as I said, I am constantly reminded about the OM almost every day by my H’s comments or questions. It is tough, but I have learned to not be affected by that. Katie, thanks a lot for sharing your experience. I can definitely identify with it.

Has it ever occured to you to tell your H what a scumbag OM is? I would love to hear from my WW that OM was a worthless peice of ****! Tell your H what you really think of OM now, it might help.

Eagle 15, that is a great suggestion and I have done that already, but I think I should repeat it again. The problem is that at first I did not see it that way and I even defended the OM saying he was a good person, etc. Even more recently, I told my husband that I thought he had not lied to me and that he was really in love with me. That made my H really mad. Now, as time has gone by, and I have analyzed this with a different mentality, I really believe he is a worthless piece of ******!!!

you are sooooooooo not thinking about this from the shoes of a woman who is willing to cheerfully do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to restore her CURRENT marriage to an awesomely wonderful place to be for the rest of your lives together...

for GAWDS sakes woman ~~~> move ahead

stop going backwards

pick up the MB tools

think about them

and apply the tools

they are GOOD

it does not matter what your husband is doing ... you have so much power to make this marriage ROCK ... I suggest you work on the marriage and stop trying to tear apart your husband's reasons for marrying you...

let's just assume he loves you and is nutz about you because you are so darn cute and fantastic

I am more than willing to assume that about you

Pep

So tell your H. Cook his favorite food for dinner, get dressed up a little, good bottle of wine, and let him know how you really feel about OM. I believe it will go a long way and maybe help turn a corner for both of you.

Good luck!

JL, I know I am not the victim here and I realize that. I am responsible for my actions, but again, I still believe that the OM was very disrespectful with me as a married woman and just as a woman in general. I do agree I made all those decisions that you mentioned. The OM was very convincing, but those were MY decisions and I had the control and the opportunity to stop that and I didn’t.

My H would agree with you on your conclusions about what I wrote to Papaof3, but I don’t think those are entirely correct. You see, a great part of the relationship with my H has been long distance. We have been together for almost 10 years (friends, dating, engaged, married). When we were in college, we spent the three months of summer away from each other for 4 consecutive years. Then, when I finished my master’s degree and came back home, we spent 2 years away from each other while we were engaged. We could not see each other frequently because we were more than a thousand miles away. I had learned to deal with the distance factor. I was alone and did feel really lonely at times during all those years.

I do understand where you are going with your arguments, and I guess what you will tell me is that I need to understand what happened to me if I had learned to deal with the distance factor. I have actually been alone now for a couple of days because my H is traveling, and I have no intentions of being unfaithful. Being alone is not the key thing here. Actually, the first time I was with the OM, my H was right here at home. I guess that something else had happened that made me so vulnerable to an affair. Probably it was not the distance per se, but something else had been shifted. Maybe it was the other way around, that I felt that way about the traveling because I was not feeling happy and comfortable in general.

Sometimes I think that there were a series of personal situations not related to the marriage that lead me to this. I have discussed this with my H and I have told him that this is an error that I made and I never meant to hurt him. This is something that happened to ME, and because of the nature of the mistake, he is the one that was affected the most.

I also think that these personal situations were having such an influence on my mind that together with the convincing power of the OM, I stopped being myself. My values, my vows, my analytical mind, the way I cared for my health and my body….nothing mattered at that moment in my twisted mind…I did not tell anything to myself to allow this to happen…I did not justify this in any way…I was kind of on an automatic mode. I don’t think my vows are merely guidelines; they are sacred and must be followed always.

I think that with the help of all you guys, I have learned that boundaries are key, and that it is part of my plan to protect my marriage from any future affair. I established no boundaries with the OM. Probably I had never been concerned with the importance of boundaries because I had never been approach in this manner by any other man while I was dating, engaged or married. I guess that this is an aspect where I failed miserably. I was not prepared for this and I was very naive in expressing feelings and discussing other topics with the OM. I really thought he was my friend and I didn’t see his intentions.

About the church, I really just missed church 1 Sunday (I go every Sunday to church). But by “abandoning” church I meant that I had a horrible sense of guilt and confusion about my religious believes and the commandments that are key to my catholic faith. I started questioning a lot of stuff, but I did pray a lot to God and the Virgin Mary asking to give me the strength to get out of the situation, to clear up my mind, and to help me not fall into temptation, etc…but it was so difficult to look up at the crucified Jesus up in the altar. I did not feel worthy of anything. So in a sense, I did not turn away, but the relationship I used to have with Jesus had changed dramatically in a matter of days and I didn’t know how to handle that well. I still think that he helped to get out of this (a little bit too late), but he provided me with the necessary strength to go and confess my sins to the priest and to look for additional guidance.

I guess when people are put into situations like these, it is when your faith gets strengthen, but it firsts get shaken a little bit. I remember when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, my faith was all shaken and I through my meditation and searching process I fortified my faith like never before. I think this is a process that I am going through again. I am fortifying other aspects of my faith and my understanding of what it all means from a different and new perspective.

Honeygirl, All I want to say is thanks for sticking around and taking this stuff like a trooper, if you apply this same energy to your M I think you will be successful.

All I wish was that my WW came out of the fog like you.

Could you take a moment and give me an idea how bad you were in the fog? Was the OM your soulmate? How deep in the fog did you go?

I would like to know so I could judge how deep my WW is.

Thanks

I may have missed it, but did you quit your job?

believer, I did not quit my job but I managed to work from home after talking to HR. This turned out really well because I get to keep my job, and I don't have to be physically near the OM which is what my H could not stand. I was also getting kind of uncomfortable knowing he was so close. He is in another building, but still I would see his car in the parking lot and there was always a chance that I saw him walking around or at cafeteria o something. So this remote arrangement is working well.

Anyway, I have been evaluating other things like moving temporarily, or going back to study, and stuff like that. But those are decisions that cannot be taken too fast. So we are slowly analyzing various options that could help change our environment.

So there is absolutely no contact, ever?

I would make the decision to save my marriage and do whatever makes your husband most comfortable.

exactly, there is no contact with the OM. I used to work with him on a project and that is how we met and got close, but that project is over now, so I do not need to contact him for any reason. I have a new set of projects that are not related to his area of expertise. there is another guy that is the main contact if I need to discuss any issues that may arise with the system that we worked together on.

I do agree on doing whatever it takes, and besides having achieved the opportunity to work remotely, I am also working on other plans for our future (moving, etc.).

Honeygirl,

I thank you for your responses. With your permission I would like to address a few things further.

You said
I suspect you still think that somehow you are "owed" respect by men and particularly men who are attracted to you. Being married does not earn you respect and neither does being a woman. I am sorry but those things are NOT protection and if they ever were it was in the days when an H could happily kill the OM and not go to jail.

Respect starts with you respecting yourself and yes we are talking about boundaries again. Respect starts when you earn it, demand it, and make sure your boundaries are in place, but most of all respect starts with yourself.

Your relationship with your H has not been the standard one, because of all of the dislocations. But, it is the one you two chose to have.

Please read this next statement and tell me what it really means
Now read it out loud to yourself and tell me how this statement makes you look to your H. You are just a victim of circumstances and although your "vows are scared and must be followed always." You did not in fact follow them.

I keep seeing evasions here. First it was the sneaky, dirty, disrespectful OM that made me do it. Next it is circumstances that made me do it. Next it is lack of boundaries that is the reason.

Honeygirl, those reasons are really selling to your H are they? They are NOT easing his mind are they? He is having trouble with this isn't he?

Honeygirl, you had the affair because you decided you wanted to. You DID give yourself permission to do this, your clothes did not just drift off. You are not going to get to the WHY until you admit what actually happened to yourself. You got something out of this affair. You need to face these things.

You are clearly a very intelligent woman. I doubt OM outsmarted you.

You see the last quote. If this is really true your H has no hope that you will be faithful to him, because all that happened to you was out of your control. That is what you are saying. You made no decisions, you did not tell yourself anything, you did not justify (suggesting that your morals were never considered, implying you don't have any, something I think is not true).

Do you see why you have a problem? You need to look deep inside and find out what you got out of the affair? Why was it attractive to you? What did you expect to happen when your H found out? So many questions.

The point I am trying to drive home, is that if you are truly a victim just floating along like flotsam on the sea, your H will have no ability to trust you, to work with you, or to influence you. That leaves him in a untenable situation. Further, it leaves you with no way to change or fix things about yourself.

It is your call, but please think further about this.

God Bless,

JL