Katie, I hope this doesn't come off sounding negative because the bottom line is it is good you have chosen to stop your affair.
3 of the 11 years of your marriage you were living a lie and having an affair with this married man.
Could it be that the thrill was wearing off and it just wasn't FUN anymore so you wanted to stop meeting him, you wanted out?
What if someone would have discovered your affair and told your husband about halfway through? (Or if one of your friends that you had confided in, decided they should inform your husband and let him have a say in his life?)
Would you have been able to have stopped the affair immediately or would you have wanted to continue as you did.
Or would it have put you into a big withdrawal if you had had to make the 'choice' before you were ready to make that choice?
It seems to make a big difference in the FWS, if they had come to the decision, over time, to stop the affair versus 'getting caught'.
It really doesn't make any difference at all in the long run. Here is the thing I think you are missing, IWRA. Plan A can have the effect of ruining the affair and taking all of the "thrill" out of it before it dies a natural death if undiscovered. It
hastens it's death by ruining the affair. Reality is the enemy of affairs and this is what Plan A injects into the affair. That happens through exposure and other consequences.
The affair is no longer "thrilling" when the secrecy is removed and other people are watching. Affairs are no longer "thrilling" when faced with the REALITY of losing a marriage and family to a silly fantasy. It is no longer "thrilling" when faced with public humiliation and disgrace in the divorce courts. Plan A RUINS the affair, in other words and can make the necessary sacrifice much too costly.
So, its no longer a matter of a "choice" between a cute little fantasy and my marriage, but a choice between a nightmare and my marriage.
It is also important to remember that most betrayed spouses would not tolerate the continuation of the affair for long, because continuation would result in the complete loss of love for the WS, which would spell the end of the marriage.
