I discovered my wife had a four month affair/relationship with one of her co-workers. They were intimate during business travel, during working hours in hotels as well as in the guy’s car. All together they had a couple of dozen intimate encounters. The other guy is also married and was about to leave his wife (appears to be she has only 1-2 years to live) and he proposed my wife to marry her as soon as he could get his divorce in place. My wife was in a perfect emotional state of mind to respond to all his advances even when at that time I was working hard to reach out to her sensing she was slipping away.

I will spare you all with what I feel but I decided that I wanted to reconcile especially after I understood what may have caused the affair to begin with. We are now three weeks further; she left the guy; quit her job and agreed to move out of the area as we discovered that part of our lack of happiness was the way and place we were living in. So far all the decisions to end the affair and the course of actions taken have been her own decisions as she realized that there is no other way to rebuild the trust and friendship but to take some radical and decisive steps. I was stunned when she did that only a week after the affair was discovered with little or no involvement from my end. It is like the other guy never existed. This strengthens me on one hand but worries me at the same time as I was expecting her to withdraw and be depressed about leaving the other guy which she really loved and cared for. How can a person switch his emotional state of mind that fast? It is like she is relieved that I discovered they affair and that she can move on with her life without even thinking about the consequences and suffering me and our four year old boy have been going through. Can people switch so fast from an addictive relationship where they were spending at lease thirty hours each week together to a world where all that sensation was gone from one day to the other and move to their normal lives?

The commitment she shows to me is almost overwhelming. It is just like nothing has happened and she treats it as a bad dream which she will soon forget. She is again affectionate to me, shows she loves me and is very sensitive to my feelings. She is also very honest if I ask any questions about her affair. Through questioning I learned as to how they were engaging each other intimately, the lies, the deceptions and the thrill of building a future together. What I also learned was that they never used condoms (she lied about this in the beginning but voluntarily confessed that this was not true).

My question to all of you is how much should one know about what was happening inside the affair from an intimate point of view? How much should I ask and when should I stop asking? When is it time to move on and leave that part behind and work on recovery? My wife is very open and honest but each time I ask something I learn new details that shake my confidence as a man and husband wondering if I can ever get over it. I have less of a problem with the graphic nature of the relationship than with the lies and memories of the days I remember her coming home pretending that I was her hero after she has been with the other guy.

I want to forgive and forget but don’t know when to begin the healing process and how to start it.

Any veterans here that can give me some guidance?

Well it's a 2 edged sword. Really anything you want to know she should tell you BUT the more detail you get will increase the trauma during recovery.

Pretty much we all know what 2 adults "in love" with functioning sex organs get up to.

You are not the one who is facing this situation. There are lots of people who are in similar situation as you are. Some of you consider it as love lost, while some others consider it as a wake up call for reviewing one’s priorities in life.

You should not give up or dismiss the present feelings and experiences as your love left sour. Everyone will experience a natural feeling at some point in their life that leads you to query the current condition of your relationship with your special loved one.

So, I suggest you one thing that, don’t give up the love that you once cherished. Instead you need to put it upon yourself. Remember the happiest things and the things both of you spent and shared.

The things may be both bad or good ones and which have become most important milestones in your hand-to-hand journey through life.

After that start to reconsider the current situation you are in now. Also, check the activities that consume most of your time.

As a result, it will make you to understand the main concerns that you might have automatically set upon yourself. After that, try to readjust your relationship back to the previous path.


Self Help Zone

savion, what do you mean he is not the one facing this situation? The ONLY one, perhaps? You do understand that his wife has committed adultery, right?