IMHO you should call the Harleys. This is not your 'normal' case of adultery; it's the start of serial adultery and definitely should be nipped in the bud. You might be able to find cheaper counseling but you can't afford to scrimp and end up with a counselor not familiar with MB principles.

Also, with serial adultery accountability is extra important. Are you totally willing to be accountable to your BH? Or will you be tempted to whine to those 'friends' that the accountability is 'jealousy', 'spying', 'controlling'?

I was married to a serial adulterer for 25 years. I find it very difficult to believe that you didn't have some previous adulteries that your BH has not yet found out about... I find it almost impossible to believe that you will not do it again... Either you are a serial adulterer (which is VERY hard to cure) or you are having some sort of midlife crisis?

Whatever is going on with you if you do not come completely clean with your BH your marriage most likely won't survive.

My advice to your BH is to observe and monitor you for an extended period of time before making a decision about staying with you. There are certain things you need to say and do regardless of whether or not your husband stays with you. Don't go into this with an attitude that you want to find out how little you can get away with doing in order to win him back. Don't expect ANYTHING from him until/if he is willing to trust again. And don't you dare expect him to suffer in silence - don't expect him to shield you from the consequences of YOUR selfish, immoral choices while he has no choice but to go through the emotional pain you caused.

I also think your adulteries should be exposed to family and friends. Your BH would be making a big mistake if he 'covered' for you in that way. Sometimes an adulterer can get away with justifying ONE adultery to family and friends by claiming it was 'unplanned', a mistake, circumstances, or by blaming the BS... In your case you're blaming your 'bad' friends... (IMHO their badness and therefore your ability to blame their influence, is precisely why you chose them as friends in the first place. I didn't buy that excuse for a nanosecond and I hope your husbadn doesn't either!) But serial adulterers who have been exposed usually lose most of their allies and have to deal with the fact that they have a problem that can't be blamed on the BS (or whatever excuse du joir...) My WH had 7 A's that I know of. He had lots of different excuses... he always promised he'd never do it again... he went through the motions of doing some of the things he'd promise for recovery...

He ended up becoming such a bad liar that our daughters starting calling him FIBonacci. And when I say 'bad liar' I mean he would make and break promises to his own daughters and then when confronted by them he'd try to gaslight them into believing they misunderstood him... or that he never made the promises - they just imagined it...or that he didn't beak the promises - they just imagined that he did... After a while I think he actually started believing his own lies - scary insane! You think you don't like yourself too much now? What you've been messing around with is dangerous stuff girl. Don't take even the slightest change. No lying, not even lies of ommission. Tell your BH EVERYTHING. Even if you think it's something that doesn't matter, or that he will never find out, or that would make him want ot leave you. Because it's not just your marriage that's at risk here but also your SANITY!

BTW, have you been tested for STD's?

atthis moment i consider myself unmarried and betrayed.
I think thungs have been allowed to go too far and it only hurts all the more and does more damage that i was there every step of the way screaming and crying and begging for her to wake up and stop destroying our family. So yeah i am making no decisions now, i owe my children that.


The constant premeditated ability to inflict cruelty on me is the real problem here, once she could do this all bets are really off. She was very much aware of my reactions to all this as she did it, in our priovate conversations about the actual events she paused several times during and througout, there may have been an element of impulsive behaviour but it was pusehd through over a long period of time. There is no place for me in her heasrt or she would not have done this to me and to our family. I firmly beleive if she truly loved me none of this would .

when she did the last act she knew w=full well what she was doing , she knew how the proximity to our attempts to fix things would destroy me.

I don't really want to hurt like this anymore, my life is a well of pain and anger that i cannot climb out of. i am not even 1/4 of the man i was 2 years ago and i am sick of it.
I have lost all faith in marriage, family, love and friendship. i want to run away and never see any of this again, i cannot stand my house anymore, everything in it is a trigger.

I cannopt escape the pain no matter whwre i run, not other women, not booze and drugs not escape. all just bring more pain.

I honestly feel as if in obth of my marriages now the very qualities i thought made me a good person have been used against me and given as the root cause of my betrayals.
i am the good guy, i stay home, i dont cheat, i dont go out with the guys, i am here everyday working for my family and my children, but all my loyalty, love, respect, trust, and freidnship has been tueend against me so that i look at these qwualities in myself and feel sickened. Why can't i be like the men who she wants, players, the type of men that would have run when she got pregnant not stayed and done the right thing, the kind of men i see chesting on thier wives now, the kind of men who never want commitment.

i thought all these qualities made me something better, but now i have come to see all my strong husband, lover and father qualities are actually a curse, that i cannot be respected if i am good. if i acted like these men that both of my wives seem to want over me i would not even be here to deal with this stuff. But my devotion, loyatly and respect and love is boring, so they pick shallow men who treast them like crap and not only want them over me but see them as better than me.

its a betrayal on so many levels i just feel no self worth any more or reason to be here, i am not appreciated for my qualities. i failed to provide defense in this with anything i had given, not 12 years of constant devotion not worshipnig the ground my wife walks on not giving every ounce of my life for my family, none of it meant anything.
everything in my life i held up as beautiful and wonderful is not a horrible poiisoned version of itself, i cannot even look at my kids without wanting to explode in pain.

i have totally failed once again and lost my family again.

I feel for you man......and remember this....its not YOU that brought this on.

Personally I think women get BORED with the good man sometimes.......they want excitement......and most of the time that means hooking up with an ******. Sorry about the language.......but Ive seen it too many times.

For example: My current wife said when she was younger she dismissed every nice guy in her life.....she didnt treat them very well. Prior to me......she married the biggest jerk that she ever dated. He was an ****** and cheated on her numerous times. He cheated on her prior to marriage. I asked her why she married this idiot and why she treated the nice guys like dirt. She said she really didnt know.....maybe he was a challenge (rolls eyes) and she thought she could change him a bit. She also said she learned from that mistake.

Anyhow, the problem definitely isnt you.....its your wife.

God Bless, and good luck!

i know the problem is with me. my husband doesn't deserve the ****** i have brought into our lives. he deserves only the best. he is such a wonderful husband and father. i want things to be the way they were before. i turned into this person i don't recognize anymore. people can change, can't they? i have a recovery plan and am willing to do all the work necessary to restore the trust, and love and help heal the pain.
as you can see the pain i have caused my husband has destroyed him. so much hurt, pain and anger. i can't bear to see him suffer like this. how do i help him now? what do i do to ease his pain? although my actions show the opposite i love my husband. i have been on a self destructive path for some time. i need help. i have serious self esteem issues, no self respect and don't know what has happened to my character. i hate this person i have become.
i want to change, i need to change. how did this happen?? i can try to rationalize reasons as to maybe why. but i don't want to make excuses for my behavior. bottom line is fro better for worse in sickness and in health until death... i am so ashamed- how could i have betrayed my H, my best friend- my love. this is ******!!!

vercswife, the way you change your self esteem is to behave in ESTEEMABLE WAYS. The way you learn to respect yourself is to behave respectably. Those are changes over which you have full control. So, in addition to earning HIS respect, you must earn back your own self respect. You don't need to know WHY you behaved in self destructive ways, you need to stop doing it. And when you start behaving in esteemable, respectable ways, you will have self esteem and self respect.

Here is a good article on forgiveness that might help you understand what it will take to earn forgiveness from your husband: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5042_qa.html

how do i rebuild respect for my husband? it is apparent from my actions that if i respected my husband i wouldn't have behaved the way i did. i am putting my husband threw ******.even with a plan i don't know how to console my H - he is suffering from all the pain i have caused him.

Did you read the article I linked in my last post? THAT is how you console your H. He will suffer for a long time, though.

yes i read the article about forgiveness. thank you. we are working on radical honesty, i am taking steps to avoid painful act again, thereis no contact with former OM, and just printed copies of emotional needs questionare, and implemeting policy of joint agreement. all things we did not do before after 1st A. my husband tried and showed me all this before but i hadn't faced up to what i had done. i had my friends telling me that i hadn't done anything wrong. no sex no problem. just phonecalls. i understand now. but the damage is done. had we had joint agreement wouldn't of had these poisonous people i called my friends in such close proximity to our lives.i forgot what it means to be married. abandoned and betrayed my husband- so very hard to deal with. it's all my fault.

VercsW,

Yup, most of it is your fault, some of it's your H he stayed too long, right?

So why don't you leave the fault stuff alone, quit wringing your hand, and take ONE positive step today, take another positive step tomorrow, and continue for say the rest of your life.

You blame low self-esteem, low self-confidence, your friends, etc. Your friends could not and cannot make you do what you don't want to do. Your H surely could not could he. You didn't want to stop and you didn't. Your self-confidence was actually quite high. Look at the data.

You expected your H to take the abuse you were dealing out, because you were confident he would not leave you and the family. I say that takes a heck of a lot of "self-confidence". I would also say your self-esteem was very high. You WHOLE focus was on yourself, and clearly you held yourself in high esteem or perhaps you might have listened to your H, counselors, etc. You did not. I would self-esteem is NOT the issue either.

You asked about respecting your H and correctly pointed out that you clearly did not respect him. You ask how you can learn to respect him. That dear lady is called perspective. My guess is that as you start this road one step at a time, and you start to focus on someone besides yourself you will in fact find that there are many things about your H that merit your respect. You could not seem them before, because you weren't looking. You were looking for excuses to do what you wanted.

VercsW, I don't know if your marriage can be saved or if it should be saved. But, if there is a chance YOU need to take responsibility for your behavior and that means not a million "I'm sorries", it means an honest and deep inspection of your morals, your bouandaries, what you deem to be important in life and your goals for your life.

I have been rather blunt with you and I did it to show that you are still making excuses for your behavior, rather than finding reasons, taking action to address them, and deciding what and how your life is to be. You set your goals for your life, what you stand for, what you value and many things will follow. Action, one step at a time each day, every day is required.

Do you know that the love you promised when you married was NOT a feeling? You did not promise to feel in love, your promised TO LOVE. That is a verb an action that you can take no matter how you feel. That is why you can make that vow when you marry. No one can promise how they will feel 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the road. But, they CAN promise how they will act toward their spouse.

In your world what wpi;d you acting in a loving manner toward your H mean? Think about that. It should be part of your plan.

I must go, but please think about these things.

God Bless,

JL

well to be fair she is showing a great effort to come to grips with this, howveer she has of course looked like this before although this seems slightly more sincere.

BUT in the last 2-3 days since the supposed final truth day of coming clean we have had 2 facts be concealed about the last physical affair. Facts which she not only knew i needed to know but facts that pretty much showed that she never stopped what she wa doing even after the worst had been done she had still contacted the guy again and opened an invitation for more. Pretty much the same stuff she has been doing all along, revealing half truths and hiding important relevant stuff that comes back to light and shatters all the trust again. Once again she talks on about understandingf the importance of truth and openess but she doesn't actually fully fdollow through with it.
She also tried to totally minmize her last most despicable event, actiually trying to tell herself that when she had made out with a man in a bar and taken his offer to go up to his hotel room that she wasn't going up there to have sex oh no, she didn't intend that. Just more self denial and inability to face what she is doing even this far after a pretty much ridiculously disgustingly obvious affair.

Nowehere in any of these affairs can i ever point to a single time she showed any actual remorse, she never stops it or reveals it on her own, never stops the contact on her own, never even closes the door but remains in contact and even leaves the door open for more.

I have looked so long and hard for any scrap of proof that she actually loved me or truly cared enough to stop doin this, to pull back and stop deliberatly hurting me.

Doesn't sound to me like your wife is truly being open and honest. Sounds to me like she gives you enough information to (hopefully) pacify you, while hiding as much as she can to protect you and herself from knowing and remembering what fully occurred.

It appears to me that the dishonesty and manipulation (and yes, this is manipulation) is still there, as it was during her affair. The only difference is her goal is now to keep you in place, and no longer to keep the affair alive.

This is a recipe for failed recovery. For only temporary pausing this cycle of infidelity that she is unable to avoid.

So did she always lie, or is it just since the affairs? Also how was she as a wife BEFORE the affairs?

no she never lied to me before the affairs.

I consider here the greatest wife any man could ask for, supermom, wonderful woman and everything i have always wanted and admired. I worship her.

she was great before and still great after, its just the lies, concealments and new upside down values system she has. She acts in direct opposition to her stated value system (she is religious)

I wonder if it was her friends who influenced her to change so much. It is so hard to see them become a person you never knew, or would want to know, for that matter. Anything else that happened in the marriage?

yes friends definatly, we have already established the major role in all this of two of them possibly 3.

marriage was awesome until all this, we both neglected our relationship with the kids and work and all.

I hope that she has dumped the "friends". Any friends of a married couple need to be friends of the marriage. I've always tried to surround myself with folks that support marriage. It really makes a difference.

How is everything going?

verc, we went through the same thing. I don't know what the heck happened to my W either. I don't post much any more but you can find our story if you search. You'll see that she had 2 EAs with short lived recoveries and finally a PA that was the last straw for me. It took an absolute crisis to start to turn things around. I don't know why she didn't respond to my 'plan A' efforts either. I felt and sometimes still feel a lot of the same things you do.

BUT, We've been recovering for 9 months now and things have been steadily improving. I don't want to declare "recovery" or assume anything but today we are 1000x happier than 9 months ago and our family is together and doing very well. Who knows what the future holds, I'm trying to just focusing on what I can control; myself. I hope the best for you, I know how you feel right now.

she is making an effort just with some stupid misteps. She is dealing well with my bad side over this well and I think doing the right thing so far.
I dare say I have hope although i fear that hope as a precursor to more pain.

i want to trust her again, she is a wonderful woman. mother and wife.

Thank you for your post. Sounds like a good plan. one positive step at a time. i am fighting to save our marriage. i have been on the wrong path making selfish decisions. i have been reflecting to find out the whys??
i don't want to make excuses about my emotional needs not being met....but after the kids we really have not put any effort into us. we have neglected our love and each other. also surrounded myself with friends whose philosophy "it's all about me". i no longer associate with those friends and will not let people whose morals and values are not like mine in my life and my families. i forgot that it is my family that is important not just my needs. i feel like i was going threw mid life crisis. old me is a giver. i give 200% of my self to my husband and children. just felt like no one was giving back. i made mistakes. but i realize now that my husband and children are most important. the holy sacrament of marriage is very important to me and i don not like seeing what i've done and become. this is not the person i want to be. i have the power to change and will.

Just being here and posting can help you change. It sounds like you were an excellent wife and mom at one time, so I'm very hopeful.

What did your husband mean about trying, but making stupid mistakes?

How is he doing at meeting your emotional needs now? Have you done the questionnaire?