I've messed up, an emotional affair I guess you would call it. The timing couldn’t be any worse either. My wife and I have been together for 8 years. We have not actually been legally married as time, money and other excuses have interfered. However we have both talked about marriage, and both of us or at least I believe that we are married. I believe we fall under the common law marriage laws in Colorado. We have one DS 5 together, she has a DD 11 who lives with us and loves me as her father. I also have 2 DS's from a previous relationship and they live with their mother.

In the past, probably 6 or more years ago, I was chatting with another person over instant messenger. Someone in another state and the contents of the conversations and the fact the conversations took place behind my wife's back offended and hurt her very much back then. We were able to put that in the past and my wife did forgive me for that mistake. Unfortunately I gone and made the same mistake again, this time with someone I’ve been intimate with in the distant past, before I met my wife. I stumbled across this person on classmates.com and contacted her on their messaging service. My wife found the contents of our conversations and again she was hurt by what was said. I am guilty of flirting with this person from my past.

My wife is of course a mess, considering she is 6 mos pregnant and I’ve gone and done this again. I can only try to imagine how much pain she must be in and I can understand why she says the trust in our relationship is gone. We have talked in the past and discussed that without trust our relationship is worthless. Well I have betrayed that trust and the foundation of our relationship is in shambles. My wife is considering taking time away from our relationship and at this time does not know if she can give me another chance. I don’t why I’ve allowed myself to let this happen again, but I am fully committed to do whatever it takes to make sure this never happens again and restore our relationship.

I found this website in the past when I was looking for ideas for building a loving relationship. I do love my wife. I understand why she is so angry and so upset. I want to do everything in my power to show her how sorry I am and how committed I am to make sure I never do anything like this again. I am somewhat familiar with the principles of this site. I have sent a no contact letter to the other person with the boundaries fully stating to stop contacting me and I requested that if I ever try to contact her again that she just deletes the messages.

I need to know for anyone that’s been a WS, what else do I need to do to try to win back my wife’s heart and trust.

Please help!

Welcome to MB, manutdfan.

Sorry I have no words of insight for you, but I just thought I'd say welcome, and you're in the *right* place.

Of course stopping with the IMs and becoming *transparent* are the first steps to earning your W's trust back.

I'll leave more commentary to the more experienced folks here, but you have my support for admitting there's a problem, and wanting to fix it and do the right thing by your wife and family.

JinGA

Welcome to MB!

You have messed up again. Yes, there is no way to disagree on that.

To save the marriage now you need to accomplish three tings

1) Establish permanent boundaries for your behavior towards other women.
2) Do everything to support your W through her pain. This takes time. Count on a 1.5 - 2 years major effort.
3) Establish permanent boundaries for your behavior towards other women.

Regarding 1 and 3: People will tell you that you need to identify which emotional needs (EN) your wife does not meet to give you this need to involve others.
Yes, there may be needs she does not meet. But your messing up is not her fault. It is your duty to protect her and your relationship. Work on meeting her needs, yes you should! And show her how to meet yours. But all that is WASTED ENERGY and WASTED TIME if you are not willing to protect the relationship.

Please do her a favor: If you are not willing to permanently alter your behavior towards other women, then split up now. Give her the best chance to find happiness elsewhere. If you don't change, then a life with you will always be a misery.

But, know there is a posibility to create a lowing relasionship even after a tsunami like this. But it will not happen unless YOU take full responsibility to do the hard work.

God bless your effort!