My W has posted here. This is hard for me..I have never posted on an internet board before, but I'd like to learn more.

I recently had an EA with a coworker. I almost lost my family and put my W through a great deal of pain. I feel extremely guilty..bad that I let this happen. I know now that this can happen to anybody. I will be taking all the necessary steps so that this doesn't happen again.

I am very lucky that my wife is as strong as she is because she pulled me out of a fantasy that would have surely ruined me...I could not see it at the time.

We are now going to MC. I am getting IC and I'm listening to "His Needs Her Needs" and what a HELP! I would suggest those CD's to anybody. Very easy listening...very easy to follow...

I would love to hear any advice on how to continue rebuilding my marriage.

Welcome, and happy you are here posting. There is a lot of information here that can help you have a better marriage than before.

Are you having complete no contact with the other woman? I hope you aren't still working with her.

Welcome Mr. TBP

Harley recommends "No Contact For Life" of the two participants in an affair. Whenever there is contact, either direct or indirect, recovery efforts go right back to square one.

Since you work with the OW, are you going to quit your job, or move to another branch (Geo loc)?

Jo

Thanks for the quick replies. I did end up relocating. I now have 100% NC.

My wife got the NC advice here. I did lie and continue working with OW(which W is still pretty upset about), thinking I could distance myself but I couldn't.

You are so right...it is absolutely essential that the WS has NC whatsoever. This is the only way I came out of my fog. Thanks to this board my wife was able to help me. It was all a fantasy.

Oh, good - good job! Having NC is essential. When people still work with someone they had an affair with, it is very easy for it to start up again.

Have you answered all of your wife's questions over and over, and TRUTHFULLY?

Every time I see a truly repentant FWS here, IMHO it's very encouraging (rare event)!

Good job with the NC.

Also, while you're learning about the emotional needs, consider ways that you can change how you interact with other women in general in order to prevent any women other than your wife from ever again meeting one of your emotional needs.

What things were being said and done with the OW that you had presumed would be safe to do... until you found yourself getting too involved with her? Were you listening to her talk about her personal problems? Were the two of you going out to lunch together, telling yourselves that was OK because you were just friends/coworkers? Was there flirting and joking?

It is not merely this specific OW that will have to avoided, but also the seemingly harmless conversations and activities that you allowed with her will also have to be avoided with any woman besides your wife.

I wanted to thank everyone for the responses and sorry about not getting back to until now. Things have been crazy as you know...

Believer, it took me a while to answer them but I have in MC. Yes, I have been 100% truthful and it has been a big relief for me. I feel like we can finally build our marriage stronger than it was before.

Meremortal, thanks for your response...
To answer your questions, we did start off talking about personal problems. Yes, I was listening to her talk about her personal problems. Then it turned into flirting and joking. No, we did not go to lunch together (it was not possible due to the nature of the work environment).

I do realize there are boundaries that I need to be careful about not crossing. I never saw this coming and will be more mindful with future relationships.

I feel that now that my EN's are being met by my W that I am less suspebtible but I do need to keep my boundaries strong.
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me- FWH, 35
BW, 32
DD, 12
DS, 5
EA 2mos

Mr TBP,

It really is an asset to this community when a former wayward spouse shows up who is ready to explore the steps necessary to truly recover their marriage and avoid future heart ache.

Some of the extra-ordinary precautions that haven't been discussed yet include:

*Complete honesty and accountability for time, money and whereabouts. Communicate throughout the day with your wife. My H and I call it "pinging" and it helps you feel more connected.

*Open your life to her....all the rooms in your house as Dr. Harley would day. Make sure that she has access to all the ways you communicate with other people. Once you rebuild trust....she probably will hardly ever access these things....but in the beginning it's really important....and it's also important along the way if she feels uncomfortable or suspicious.

*Answer all of her questions. It's very painful when information "trickles" out over a long time....it's like having multiple d-days....and that compounds the problem.

*In addition to the Harley stuff.....the best book written to address workplace EA/PAs was written by the late great Shirley Glass "Not Just Friends". There are a wealth of guidelines that she offers to keep yourself from sliding down the "slippery slope" of affairs. She talks about how to have good marital boundaries that allow friendship....without it being dangerous to your marriage.

There's probably a some more....but that's a good start.

I'm so glad you've come.

star*

Mr TBP- I am also a WW spouse that is fighting for his life and Wife back. Im glad yours took the turn for the best!


For my intrest would you mind posting your story to us?


Possibly you could give me advice in my threads?


Im glad you signed up and are going down the right path.


I hope I take the path you did and my Wife forgives me.


Welcome to MB!

"I feel that now that my EN's are being met by my W that I am less suspebtible but I do need to keep my boundaries strong."

There are two factors regarding EN's that influence your susceptibility to adultery:

your EN's being met by your spouse

and

your not allowing any OW to meet your EN's

Just remember that your spouse meeing your EN's is only half of it; even if your spouse is willing/able to meet your EN's it's still risky to allow any OW to also do so.

MrTBP,

I am also a new FWW who came to this board, reading only for a while, and then posting a few weeks ago. My DH has been reading here for several months and had showed me a couple of threads throughout my fog, which did make an impact. But I still made excuses and justifications for what I was feeling, and didn't truly understand what he was going through. It took some pushing from the vets here, coupled with my DH finally saying he wanted a D, to get me to this point. I am very grateful to all of them, and I hope your experience here will be just as enlightening.

I have never been a member of an online board like this, either, and I don't really have any advice to offer. I just wanted to say welcome and you are in great hands with people like believer, MM, star, and resilient...and I'm sure many others will be along after the holidays!

Take care!!

Hello, Mr. TBP,
Welcome to Marriage Builders,

It is good to see you here. My FWH had a brief EA. Fortunately, I discovered it after the third week and he wrote a no contact letter a week later.

It took us by surprise and has created a very emotional year and a half for us. My FWH has had many opportunities for wayward behavior and had never acted on them before this incident.

It took a lot of soul searching to figure out how he could protect the marriage from this sort of thing.

We figured out that there were very specific behaviors that he needed to monitor. All of us should have general boundaries about behavior with a person of the opposite sex. But since he had an EA, even with general boundaries in place, he looked more closely at his behaviors.

For him, we figured out it was his romantic view of his youth that he had to be careful about. Also, his tendency to have many private thoughts and actions--just general run- of- the- mill stuff as well as daydreaming about his youth (replaying entire ball games in his mind, reliving dates and conversations with old girlfriends while changing the outcome of the dates within the daydream, etc.) He has stopped all this obsessing on his youth behavior.

He was not feeling "love" for the OW, but he was meeting her emotional needs, allowing her to meet his emotional needs, and keeping his daily contact with her a secret from me. It all culminated in her traveling to our area to meet with him--and him lying to me in order to meet up with her.

Anyway, I would like to congratulate you for coming out of the fog. It is also very commendable that you are posting here--not easy for you I'm sure to relive your behavior. I would just encourage you to look carefully at your specific situation and see how you think your boundaries need individualized attention. Best to you and TBP.

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Mr. TBP......

I too am glad you are here. I am sure it means a lot to your wife, if you stick around.

I just want to say a little about this.....



It is true that the lack of ENs being met causes unhappiness in the marriage. But I gotta tell ya, if lack of ENs being met were the cause of affairs, most of us BSs would have had 10 affairs by now. (Thanks RLT!)

I feel that you may be putting too much pressure on your wife. What if she is having a bad period and doesn't meet your ENs for a month or so? Your wife may always feel if she lets you down in any way, that you may have another affair.

It takes more than ENs to keep a marriage together. It takes integrity, honesty, and respect for your spouse.

Please make sure you do things for yourself that make you feel better about yourself, and don't always rely on your wife to make you feel good about yourself. I am definitely not saying that you're not doing this. I just want to caution you that true admiration comes from within and you cannot rely on your wife for your total happiness.

I hope I am explaining myself in a way that you can understand what I'm trying to say. If not, I will try again. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Again, glad you're here.

Zach,

Thanks for your post. I'm far from an expert. The people on this board sure are and they have given my wife and me great advice. I have a lot of learning to do myself.

If you want to know my story in detail, I'd be glad to share it with you. I think it is great that you are posting here, it shows maturity.

Everyone,

I have read through your responses and taken them to heart.

Thanks for listening and posting.