You damage your family every day with your continued lies. Lies upon lies upon lies. Honesty is the solution to infidelity, not more lies. All of your talk of remorse is just that: TALK. TALK IS CHEAP.

Money talks and [censored] walks.

But here's the thing...you HAVEN'T ended anything with OM.

You've admitted that you've done this dance repeatedly in the past. There's nothing different about this time than any other time. Why would you expect the advice to be any different if nothing's changed in your circumstances?

WHY is telling your H not an option?!?!?!

I cannot understand this...please explain.

Tell OM hi for me the next time you talk to him because you are too much of a chickensh*t to tell your BH.

Why would we support you lying to your husband and following a plan of NC that we KNOW WILL NOT WORK?

You are not a FWW, you are just as wayward as when you first set foot in this forum. You continually rationalize and justify your position. If you don't listen to us, there's nothing we can do for you. Keep cheating on your husband until you lose him and your family. I can hear it now, "Daddy, why did you and mommy split."

"Honey, it's because you mother kept cheating on me with OM, kept lying about it, and couldn't help herself."

Do you want to avoid that conversation from happening? Then tell your husband.

firstimer, this is information about your husbands life to which he has a RIGHT TO KNOW. To withhold this from him is to keep him in a marriage based on a LIE. He is not your PET doggie, he deserves to know the full facts about his life so he can a) protect himself from you and b) decide his OWN future. To deny him that right is cruel and manipulative.

Dr. Harley -

"From my perspective, honesty is part of the solution to infidelity, and so I'll take honesty for whatever reason, even if it's to relieve a feeling of guilt and depression. The revelation of an affair is very hard on an unsuspecting spouse, of course, but at the same time, it's the first step toward marital reconciliation.

Most unfaithful spouses know that their affair is one of the most heartless acts they could ever inflict on their spouse. So one of their reasons to be dishonest is to protect their spouse from emotional pain. "Why add insult to injury," they reason. "What I did was wrong, but why put my spouse through needless pain by revealing this thoughtless act?" As is the case with bank robbers and murderers, unfaithful spouses don't think they will ever be discovered, and so they don't expect their unfaithfulness to hurt their spouse.

But I am one of the very few that advocate the revelation of affairs at all costs, even when the wayward spouse has no feelings of guilt or depression to overcome. I believe that honesty is so essential to the success of marriage, that hiding past infidelity makes a marriage dishonest, preventing emotional closeness and intimacy.

It isn't honesty that causes the pain, it's the affair. Honesty is simply revealing truth to the victim. Those who advocate dishonesty regarding infidelity assume that the truth will cause such irreparable harm, that it's in the best interest of a victimized spouse to go through life with the illusion of fidelity.

It's patronizing to think that a spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Anyone who assumes that their spouse cannot handle truth is being incredibly disrespectful, manipulative and in the final analysis, dangerous. How little you must think of your spouse when you try to protect him or her from the truth.

It's not only patronizing, but it's also false to assume that your spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Illusions do not make us happy, they cause us to wander through life, bumping into barriers that are invisible to us because of the illusion that is created. Truth, on the other hand, reveals those barriers, and sheds light on them so that we can see well enough to overcome them. The unsuspecting spouse of an unfaithful husband or wife wonders why their marriage is not more fulfilling and more intimate. Knowledge of an affair would make it clear why all efforts have failed.

After revealing an affair, your spouse will no longer trust you. But lack of trust does not ruin a marriage, it's the lack of care and protection that ruins marriages. Your spouse should not trust you, and the sooner your spouse realizes it, the better. "

Entire article at: Coping with Infidelity: Part 2
How Should Affairs End?http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5060_qa.html

You really did not come to the wrong place. Please realize you are being posted to by a lot of people that have been hurt very badly. but there are also those of us that are like you too. those that did the betraying. those that had the same struggle you are having now.

i know you will continue to be beaten up by those that insist you HAVE TO TELL AND RIGHT NOW. same thing happened to me too. i did eventually confess everything and it was manditory for me. even though i didn't think it was possible. but i certainly did not do it as fast as those around here wanted me to do it.

i don't have any magical answers, i just hate to see you run off and end up getting back in contact.

listen, just stay for now, focus on those post who are able to give you support without beating you over the head about confessing immediately.

i know this post won't be very popular by many but so be it.

what you need to do is get this squarelly into your head. OM IS NOT YOUR CONCERN ANYMORE. repeat that after me now and anytime you have thoughts of him.

and then stop and re-funnel that energy into coming up with something for you DH or family instead. think about what you will make for dinner for them tonight. think about tickling the kids if you have little ones, and yes, by all means, think about how life would change for everyone if divorce were to happen. you have to know that continued contact will eventually lead to upheval to your DH, and your children (do you have children?)

stay strong and please stick around and post. take what helps, leave the rest behind. there are many people here with lots of different styles. don't let the loudest styles win. you do not have to run off. ending contact even without confessing IS something to be proud of.

Firsttimer,

I gather that you are saying that you came here for support and encouragement, for strength to help you in this hard time. Is that correct?

If so, I think it can feel like you have come to the wrong place, as you have said. I felt/feel the same way, as I came here shortly after ending my EA as well, just a few weeks ago. From my perspective, it felt like some people were attacking me as well, judging me, and telling me that they had the "right" answers and that my answers, my statements, that I myself was wrong. That hurts, and I don't think it is helpful at all to invalidate people.

An EA, in my experience, can be a very powerful, satisfying, and "feel good" thing. There is a reason you go through withdrawal -- it is a time of mourning something that you have lost. Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of your actions, the OP was and still is very important to you I imagine.

Also, and some people will disagree which is ok, but I think that most everyone who has any kind of A does it for a reason. That is to say, I imagine that there were conditions present that fostered, encouraged, and/or allowed you to get into an A. Those same conditions were still present every time you tried to stop the A but ended up going back.

That is why I, and many of the others here from what I can gather, say that it is so important to tell your H. An A is not 100% completely your fault, or because you are such a bad person, or whatever else. I don't think that is ever the case. The decisions you made all along, each choice you made, at the time made sense to you IMO. I believe that they HAD to have made sense to you, otherwise you wouldn't have made them.

Now, to me it follows then that if they made sense to you back then, what is to stop them from making sense to you again, and soon? The conditions that existed when you made your choices to have an EA in the first place, and then to go back repeatedly after trying to quit, likely still exist IMO. Something, perhaps many things, are not working in your current M. Perhaps you have lost hope, something -- I can't pretend to sit here and tell you what it is/was, or what you have to do to fix it, only you can know that.

However, many people feel it is so important to tell your H because if you don't, how will the conditions that led to you having an A ever change? If you made a decision (and remember, I believe that all decisions made by people are the best ones that they can make at that point in time -- not "best" in the "right/wrong" sense, but they made the best sense to you) back then, and repeated that decision multiple times, I don't think that without significant changes in your circumstances you will make a different choice the next time around.

If you want your marriage and your family to work, you will have to make a choice to strongly work for it IMO. I also think that it is much easier, and safer, and more likely to succeed if everyone is involved in trying to make the relationship better. I think that you need to make it such that it makes the most sense to you to stay with your H and only your H. For some reason or another, in the past it didn't make the most sense to you to do that, and I don't think that that will change only because you want it to all by yourself -- or at least it would probably be much easier to bring about that change with your Hs help.

FL, one does not have to have been "hurt badly" to know that it is wrong to lie to one's spouse. That is not the reason she is getting strong responses here. The strong reactions are due to her cruelty and lack of real, demonstrated remorse.

She is like the drunk who swears off booze on Sunday morning and wants credit for getting on the wagon even though he really has done nothing. History has shown he will be back to drinking on Tuesday when the cravings set in. Waywards are JUST LIKE alcoholics in that their talk is cheap. They are professional liars who want credit for empty talk. That is what I see here, and that has nothing to do with any "pain" on my part or anyone elses.

If she does leave, it will not be because someone "ran her off," but because she was not validated for lying to her husband. And she shouldn't be. Nor should she be given any credit for empty talk.

AND those conditions, cirumstances, etc don't always start with and end with the BS not doing something....You are still justifying what you did.




WRONG!!! It is 100% her fault that she had an affair and 100 % your fault that you had an affair. Nothing anyone else did or said caused you to CHOOSE to have an affair. NOTHING!! You can justify, rationalize, be delusional all day long but it doesn't change that you CHOSE to have an affair. So, unless someone had a gun to your head she and you are 100% to blame for having an affair. Not the state of the marriage pre affair as it was likely both sides not doing what they needed to do, but the affair is all YOURS.

You sound foggy. How long have you been out of your EA?

I don't think that she is being "deliberately cruel"...but she IS being deliberately selfish.

She likely thinks that she doesn't want to tell her H because she "doesn't want to hurt him". As all of us who have been through this know, it's not telling him that will hurt him more than anything else.

And we know that this lie will eat at her for years to come. Living that lie is far more likely going to destroy her marriage than telling her H would. We know it. She doesn't want to admit it yet...even to herself. She's mentally justifying...EVEN TO HERSELF...that her reason for not telling her H is so that she doesn't hurt him.

The truth is, she doesn't want to face the consequences of her affair yet. She realizes that telling her H will have several affects. It will cause her affair to come 'out in the open'. That will almost always result in the TRUE end to the affair. She's still holding out on the hope that this can all be kept quiet...that the 'status quo' doesn't change. She's also not wanting to face the pain and hurt that she knows her husband will feel...and she'll be faced with the knowledge that she's caused that.


Firsttimer...please realize that no one here is telling you to do this out of some desire to hurt you. We're giving you the advice that you're getting because we KNOW that this is the BEST...pretty much the ONLY way that your marriage can recover. Its the ONLY surefire way to end the affair.

Right now, you have no accountability. You have no one to 'safegaurd you against yourself'. And that's why you keep failing at NC. If your H knew about the affair, he'd be 'watching you' to make sure it ended.

Do you REALLY have a desire to 'make things right'? If so...the ONLY way you can get there is to take this first, HUGE step. Tell your H. Otherwise, anything you do will just lead to the continuation of the affair. Make no mistake about it.

My H had and EA, and didn't tell me about it. I discovered it because, I knew something was amiss, and so does yur H.
If he had told me, I would have been more understanding.

Fact is, I found out, I had to suffer anguish, humiliation, low self esteem, all the feelings of inadequacy one could possibly think of. And, him, because of his cowardice, well
he went thru trial by fire, white hot fire. And it didn't have to be that way. It all boils down to the fact that he didn't trust me enough to tell me the truth.

He thought I would leave, that was his insecurity, is it yours?

Owl, here is another great Harley quote that I think is appropos:


Deliberate or not, the end result of deceit is cruel and can have devastating consequences. It is cruel to keep someone in a marriage based on a lie and expose them to STDs and/or finacial ruin. I don't think that most waywards lie to their spouses to protect the spouse, but rather to protect THEMSELVES from the consequences. They are not thinking of anyone except themselves. If they were concerned about protecting the spouse, they wouldn't have had an affair.

Amen, Dr H.!!

I am approaching this from the following angle (which is my angle, no one else's, and I don't propose that it is the right angle for anyone else):

1. Everyone is 100% responsible for the decisions and the choices they make.

2. All choices come from within the person, not from anyone or anything outside.

3. The choices that everyone makes are what they believe are the best choices available to them at the time that they make them.

4. Everyone makes sense all the time

Yes, it was my decision to allow myself down the path of having an EA. It was many many decisions all along the way, and I was 100% responsible for every one of those decisions. No one made me make those choices. I am not assigning blame to anyone else for my choices. I accept responsibility of my choices.

I believe, though, that I made those choices for a reason, and that at the time they made the most sense to me. I don't think that anyone lives in contradiction to themselves -- I don't even think that is possible.

I think that everyone makes choices based on all the information available to them; thousands, tens of thousands of factors play a role in every single little choice we make, yet they are the best choices that we can come up with at that time. I don't even think it is possible for someone to make a choice when they know and believe that there is a better choice available to them. It just doesn't follow.

But, I also don't think that anyone knows everything about everyone and everything. I don't think we even know everything about ourselves. There are gaps in our knowledge. Some of them because we have never been taught it, some of them because we have refused to learn it, some of them because we have been taught contradictory things.

I guess what I am driving at is that I believe that everyone has and will continue to make the decisions that make the most sense to them at the time that they make them. We are 100% responsible for them. We are also responsible to gather as much information as we can at all times, to do our best to understand other people (our partners above all!), and THAT I believe is where the rightness or wrongness comes in.

I had a feeling all along leading up to the EA, even for a long time before it, that something was not right in our M. However, I made no effort to discover what it was, much less how to make it right. Do I regret my choices? For sure. Do I blame anyone else for them? Of course not. I am also not accusing my W, or any other BS for causing A's in the least.

I just think that without a change in the situation, without a firm resolve to effect significant changes, that the same choices will be made in the future. I need help in gaining understanding to make better decisions, and I don't think that threats, fear, blame, and invalidation will help me or anyone else to gain in understanding.

My decisions make 100% sense to me, even if I don't know why that is. I think it is the same for everyone. Therefor I think that everyone's "sense" has to change in order for their decisions to change, and they only way that sense changes is to gain new insights, new knowledge, and do away with what caused those decisions made in the past that you now regret to make sense.

I think she is most likely concerned that if she tells her BH that the affair is still on that all H*LL will break loose. After all, she told him one other time last summer that she was involved in an EA. He took it pretty well and then reality hit and they went through some rough times.

Well, now she would have to say, honey, remember when we had that rough spell last year and you thought we got through it? Well we didn't because I just went deeper under cover with my EA and I have still been involved in it all year.

I'll bet her BH knows something is up and he is just eating the pain. I'm sorry, but that stinks. She wants us to be her cheering team to help keep her accountable. Then, when she needs her affair fix, she can just turn off her computer and go for it.

None of us want to be involved in that absurdity. But girl, you know that we will all be there for you and your BH if you can do what you know you need to do. Come clean, respect your H and your R by telling him what he deserves to know.

Long, I do think that most waywards rationalize and lie to themselves about their adultery in order to make it "make sense," as you say. They tell themselves and others LIES, rewrite history, demonize their spouse, etc. However, this is nothing more self delusion. They delude themselves into believing that adultery is acceptable.

Never should that delusion be "validated." That is called ENABLING. That would be a disservice and definitely "not helpful." True support comes from helping one see the truth, not in validating them in self destructive, immoral paths.

I realize that you just ended your affair 3 short weeks ago. Have you maintained your no contact? Are you here to LEARN?

This is where "rationalization and justification" come in.

Your choices don't always make sense. Sometimes, you make BAD decisions. Everyone does. The difference is...you learn to NOT make those same choices again.

You make it sound like the environment is responsible for your making bad choices. Not true. Here's why. My wife and I were BOTH living in that bad environment. She wasn't meeting my needs...nor was I meeting hers. We both tried...but didn't understand how. Didn't realize that OUR needs weren't the same as our spouse's needs.

I had plenty of of opportunity to "seek elsewhere". I probably had/have MORE opportunity to cheat than my wife does. I certainly have the ability to "get away with it" for a very very long time. I've been a professional sneak in my life. Paid to do so.

I chose not to. She chose to do so. Same circumstances...different CHOICE.

You sound very much like my wife shortly after HER EA. You're claiming to have accepted responsibility, but still push that it was the situation that made you cheat. I think this has a lot to do with how recently you've ended your affair more than anything else.

I'd be interested in seeing what your posts look like a year from now. I'd bet you quite a bit that if you stayed here for a year, you'd look back on your posts and CRINGE. Assuming that you stayein recovery that long, I'm betting you'd find yourself in a much different viewpoint than you have currently.

All of us are faced with 'situations'. HOW we deal with them is a result of our own internal choices. How we LEARN from them is equally important. You sound as though there there's still more to be learned from these lessons...no offense intended, just a simple observation.

Long,

Your beliefs would lead me to believe that you don't believe there are any moral or any other absolutes, black and white...only gray??? If you only see gray in everything you emabark upon then sure there is always a way to define "it" as whatever you choose it to be. However, if you believe in absolutes as I and many others do then making a choice in violation of that absolute no matter the rationalization, justification, delusion used to do so is still wrong and unjustifiable. Because we can convince our minds of one thing in no way changes the truth as it relates to absolutes.

Yes, I have maintained NC. I have changed my cell number, cancelled all email accounts that she knew about, erased all data on my computers that had anything to do with her, stopped playing the online game that we both played, etc.

I don't think that I came across clearly with the validation point. I am not validating the action, or even necessarily the choice, but I AM validating the person who made the choice, and that there had to have been reasons behind that choice.

Yes, I rewrote history in my head during the affair, it still hasn't all come back to me yet. I can tell you however that everything that was going on in my head, was indeed going on and was real to me. My subconcience knew that something was wrong though, as I was very very confused throughout the whole affair and the time leading up to it -- your brain doesn't easily forget things, even if you want it to. I couldn't stand the confusion, the stress, the pain of it anymore. A choice had to be made, and I chose to end the A and work with my W.

Every choice made is 100% up to that person to make, no one else. I believe that no one will make a choice that they do not want to make -- I don't even think it is possible. I believe the trick is to make a choice, the best one that you can, about something down the road. I chose to drop the A and work on my M. But I know that in order to do that, I will have to make continuous choices all along that will facilitate that goal. That is why I am saying that she (the original poster) would likely benefit from telling her H about the affair, for if she truly wants her M to work and to avoid making the same choices down the road, that she needs to create an environment where those choices will be the ones she wants to make.

No one will be able to threaten, shame, bludgeon, or otherwise force her to do it. She has to decide that for herself. Doing it because she feels she has to or has been forced somehow isn't free will at all. That isn't how God made us IMO.

Free will is the ultimate responsibility I believe, and God gave it to humans and humans alone. Not even angels have it. And I think that anytime that someone claims to know "the truth" in absolute terms and is desiring to force another person to see their truth, that they are not interested in free will at all.

If the OP is interested in making the choice to end the A and trying to make her M work, the best that any of us can do is relate to her our opinions and suggestions. Her decision will be hers alone, and all we can do is attempt to contribute to her knowledge and give her more options to choose from, and ways to try and bring those choices to bear in the best way possible. Still, they are her choices to make.

Again, we are not here to "validate" anything or anybody, we are here to discuss Marriage Builders principles and speak the truth. if you want to be validated, call your mommy.

And yes, there are always "reasons" for everything, with a wayward those "reasons" are always rationalizations and justifications, ie: BULLCRAP.

Long, I hope you are here to LEARN, because your posts reflect the very foggy mentality of a wayward spouse. I think you will find that you will get much more out of this forum if you listen and learn, and try to fix yourself first. You know how to have affairs, we know to RECOVER. If you want to recover, you might want to LISTEN instead of lecturing others who are recovered.

Melody,

"we are not here to "validate" anything or anybody"

you may not be here to validate anything or anybody, and that is fine, but i don't think you can speak for everyone else...