I am new to this forum here.

Thanks for posting your story. It gives me a lot of insights of my husband's current state of mind. I found a lot of similarities in my H's case. He and his elementary schoolmate started an A in Sep 07. He said he still loves me and his family but he also loves her company and loves being with her. He said he knows the A is wrong that he is jeopardizing everything we have built in our 12 years of marriage. He had tried to break up with her twice but he failed in both attempts. He is still fence-sitting and trying to live two lives.

Your story opens me up to what have been going thru his mind. Thanks.

gracesylee,

Obviously, I'm not in any position to start giving advice yet, but I am glad that you were able to get some good out of this thread like I have. The only thing that I can say to you is that I hope both you and your husband have some solid support around you. My wife and I have been through family losses, financial troubles, career issues, and nothing has been even as remotely close to the emotional trauma that I have caused by this.

I would encourage your husband to get on this website though. The message boards can be problematic, because you'll roll through different posts that will cause him to only be more confused. As I'm sure you've found, there are success stories and horror stories. But, I can remember a year ago I got on this site and read some of Dr. Harley's Q & As about infidelity, and his stats were overwhelming about the likelihood of failure with the other woman. As you can see, I still wonder if I was the exception to all of those rules. But, I always told myself that was too great of a risk than to throw away what I had in my life. In many ways I'm fortunate that the other woman left me, because it allows no contact to be easier. But, no contact is an extraordinarily difficult time. I tried it at least 10 times in 2 1/2 years, and never lasted longer than a week. I don't know if I could have ever done it voluntarily without her basically telling me she was tired of waiting on me. I hope your husband is stronger than I am.

Good luck to you. Hopefully both of us will be on here in a few months sharing success stories with others that find themselves in the position we are in now.

Glad you can see this, because I LOL when I read it.

You might not think you are foggy still, and maybe much of it has cleared, but when you are truly no longer foggy you will see how illogical this is.

Keep posting here, and if you REALLY want to clear the rest of your fog away, go ahead and read about the pain that the BSs around here are in. That is a fast fog clearer.

Something that could cause this much heartache and pain to your wife could in no way, shape or form have been good, beautiful or "perfect".

Also, remember this...the OW STOLE something from your wife. She helped emotionally "rape" your W. Just because you were also involved does not make the OW less "bad" for doing this.

Would you still be feeling this way about someone who stole from or "raped" your wife? Because that is exactly what the OW has done.

LA,

I've been working with my IC on re-training how I think, and I'm really struggling with it. At first, whenever the other woman popped into my head my IC told me to think about how this situation was exactly what I had wanted. As I have said earlier, I always wanted the other woman to leave because I wanted to keep the affair secret. But, when it happened, I had to tell my wife because she thought I was dying. However, the problem with that method is that it only led me to re-analyze the foggy thoughts of whether or not the other woman leaving me is what I really wanted. So, it really would put me back into a place that I didn't need to be.

The next thing we tried was to come up with the worst image that I have of the other woman, and replace whatever thoughts I was having with this very unlikable image. That actually worked pretty well for a while. But, it ran into problems when I actually started missing spending time with her rather than simply missing her physically.

I also saw a picture of her a few weeks ago with a new guy that she's dating. I haven't had any contact, but I had the stupid idea of checking out an on-line profile of hers and saw her with a new guy. That is what really sent me backwards. Now, every thought I have is of her with another guy, and I'm really struggling to get past it. I think the big reason for that is that throughout the affair, most of the time my goal was simply to keep her from being with someone else rather than being with me. I know that basically proves that I didn't love this woman, but it still doesn't change what I perceived to be real for a long, long time. Like you said, my brain couldn't distinguish it.

I'm going to try the other suggestion of thinking of all of the pain that I have caused my wife. But, I knew I was causing my wife pain for years, and it still couldn't make me think straight. So, if anyone has any other ideas that have worked or any readings, then please let me know.

Thanks again for all of those that helped me in this topic.

I know this will probably cause some disagreement, and I don't know how important it really is. But, I don't blame the other woman for this in any way. She saw something that she wanted and she went for it. She hadn't committed to love, honor, and cherish someone. That was me that violated that trust. I was the one that had the responsibility to not act in this way, and I'm the one that is responsible for all of the hurt and pain that has resulted. I'm the only one to blame for all of this mess. I messed with the lives of 3 people for a very long time for no other reason than I wanted to have my cake and eat it too.

You are both to blame, equally and unequivocably. You may have broken your vows, but SHE went after something that was in a committed, SACRED marriage and did not care.

You must realize this. She is not innocent. She VOLUNTEERED for this, your BW did NOT. She had no options....they were taken from her, by you AND the OW.

E, Did you hold yourself out as a single fella to OW? To me, this is the only thing that could exonerate her from evil.
If she knew you were M, and entered an adulterous relationship with you, then SHAME on her. She had no problem damaging your child an W. Believe me when I say the pain suffered by a BS is as bad as losing a dear family member. When my Dad passed, the pain was horrendous. When My my "loving" H. has his EA, I thought I would surely die. The pain was not to be believed.

I see your OW is out with another fellow. You couldn't have meant that much to her, or she would be home pining for you.
Maybe it's just me, but that would make me feel sheepish.
Here you are, having trouble getting her out of your system, and she's just out livin' her life.

This woman was poison to you and your family. Visualize her as a package of "Rough on Rats" cause that is what she is.

Consider your BETRAYED wife's feelings as a dead rat that succumbed to OW and see how much yu would want to reinvest in her then. Sorry to be blunt, but your priorities are skewed, in my opinion. GF

E, I want to say also that I think your being here is admirable.
If you will just listen to the more learned folks here, you will go away with a marriage that dreams are made of.

I didn't have their advice when I went thru my trauma and I do wish I had.

Your wife is quite the lady for not having an audience with OW. I did call up the OW in my case and told her to cease and desist any further communication in future years. I promised to rock her would if she didn't and she believed me. In our case, this OW was an old flame who would come out of the woodwork from time to time. Goin on 25 yrs, so she did have it coming. That aside, your W has exhibited a lot of class and dignity, attributes your OW lacks, in my opinion. GF.

Ding ding ding ding!! WE HAVE A W-I-N-N-E-R!!!!

Yup, we found the problem...why your withdrawal has gone on for so long.

Stop doing this. Come here for accountability...you are deeply hurting yourself, your BW and your MARRIAGE by "checking up on" the OW.

Please, listen to me...you MUST STOP THIS. Your withdrawal will go MUCH faster, and your M will be really great MUCH faster is you stop this.

We were where you are just a year ago...NC has been in place for a year now and my FWH never had any withdrawal...but he has NEVER checked up on the OW.

We are doing pretty good now, considering where we have been and what we have gone through. You can do it too.

P.S. He doesn't even WANT to see or know what the OW is doing at this point. It makes him sick. He cannot stand to think about her or the A, AT ALL.

That is a far cry from "only" remembering the good stuff...where you are now...because NC has been in place for all of this time. Every time you check up on the OW, it is like NC has been broken.

That's why you are still in withdrawal. Please call your wife, a good friend who knows what is going on...ANYONE, when you feel the need to check up on her.

It's the only way, my friend....

LA,
Reading your post about choosing your thoughts during withdrawal was like having cold water splashed in my face. Thank you! As the WS, I want to add that the obsession and fantasy are part of the addiction as well. I find that when I'm feeling stressed out, my mind wanders into the A, just like an alcoholic goes to a drink to numb the pain. Our fantasies are just as addictive, and they are a form of deception that we can hold onto without anyone noticing. We can say, well, "there has been no contact", but our minds are still engaged in the deceit. I think the bible is right when Jesus said that a man who looks upon a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart.

Anyway, I wanted to thank you for splashing the water in my face. I find that when I shift my attention as you suggested in your post, I'm able to change my thinking.

MrsZ

Es,

I read your response and I don't understand. When you set your goal to recover your marriage, thinking of OW is NOT what you want. So when a thought begins, you cut it off...restating to yourself "This is not what I want".

Then you think of your BW...holding her image, sound of her voice, remembering her touch..."That's what I want."

You nailed a big reason for choosing to have A's...that's the solace of fantasy. Your HABIT of going to fantasy (read MrsZonie's post a few times...she gets it) is bang on. Pre-A...you had this habit, too...in different ways...we can have it with hobbies (attention to the extreme) comfort thoughts, scenarios...our imagination isn't our downfall...the use of it, if extreme, is.

Consider Gimble's formula "the embodiment of an affair is entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect." Which is why the BS's pain isn't prohibitive...we feel entitled through our pain, fueled by our nuturing our own resentment, and not respecting reality...until we don't even live in it.

Which is why getting how much our BS hurts seems to crash into us, stun us...we locked it out through entitlement...living tit for tat, giving to get. The fantasy way to love.

Did you tell BW when you say the picture of OW and new guy? Do you tell her each time you think of OW for more than 15 seconds? If you committed to doing that, do you believe you would dwell in OW thoughts...or would the knowledge you must immediately harm your BW with this knowledge be a deterent?

You had to go into deep self-deception to have your A. Coming out it is really tough...because when we deceive ourselves, we are no longer honest...takes practice...even when you don't feel like it.

Btw, I don't think I explained about the duration of thought. If you can catch your thought (for whatever you don't want) within the first 10 seconds and stop it...change your mind, literally, then your brain will not have time to also deliver the emotions with the thought...no punch...no flashback...nothing. If you don't...if you choose to follow the thought through (may tell yourself to understand more, figure something out--sign of self-deception)...then your brain will deliver the emotions associated with the thought.

You have THAT much control. Awareness is key to recovery. And you have two recoveries you're working on...marital and personal.

You will stop missing anything about the OW when you stop thinking of her. That's a fact. With practice, your brain will stop handing you automatics...eventually shade and protect you from them. OW wasn't real...she was fantasy...your BW is real...always was and will be. Breaking out of your own self-deception patterns is when you'll see this more and more.

Takes focus on your BW, your marriage, your personal recovery...and find the depth of betrayal to YOURSELF as well.

An affair is a crime with several victims...even the perps are...do your amends. You are purposefully stalling your own recovery...staying in withdrawal...by feeding your addiction and lying to yourself that you are not. Sound familiar?

Break out and break free. You can do it. It's a choice...a total one made of several tiny instant ones.

MrsZonie got the cold water...there's a false payoff in where we dwell in our thoughts...it's false...feels like a payoff...and it dogs our lives...until we find our real payoff.

Find your resentment trail...we create and maintain resentment...we do it...Cinderella (here on MB) quotes Harold Kraus in her sigline...WhoDat changed "vengeance" to "resentment" and gave me the key to myself. "Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die."

I was in love with my own resentment...and blamed others for it...enabled me to NOT feel their pain, not see reality of my own actions...and falsely feel strong, entitled, bold and righteous. In order to create and nuture my resentment, I had to focus on others...all over them...what they were doing and not doing TO ME. Rather than focusing on my choices, my actions, beliefs, thoughts and perceptions.

This formula was huge for me...because when I cut off resentment...did a resentment timeline for past ones and committed to not doing that which I would resent in the present...life changed pretty drastically. And doing this is an act of respect for myself, my relationships and my marriage.

Had to get to the bottom line where if others knew when I did something for them that I would resent, they would have not wanted me to do it.

So awareness and ownership were the path out of the fog...

Es, do you believe in tit for tat? Meaning, it's okay to hurt back when you feel hurt? Makes it even, just, right, fair? You may not want to come out of withdrawal...fantasy is like a deluding shortcut to fairness.

LA

I did not hold myself out as single. She knew from the day she met me.

I know. I don't have any pictures of the other woman, which is a good thing. So, through this process, I feel like I had been getting better. At first, I would go on-line to look at her profile and her pictures multiple times a day, then once a day. I had gotten to the point in about mid-to-late February that I didn't want to see her anymore. It just wasn't something that I had an interest in any longer -- to look at her. It was not even something that I had to consciously avoid doing most days. It got easier to avoid as time went on.

But, one night a few weeks ago, I had a dream about hanging out with her. I woke up at about 4 a.m. and I couldn't back to sleep or get her out of my mind. So, it was "Hey, I'll go take a look at her." Then her and her new guy smacked me across the face. I haven't been back since, although I've wanted to. I've had to consciously avoid doing it. But, the hurt that I felt from doing it that one time has kept me from doing it. That was definitely like a child touching a hot stove. I'm just hopeful that as time goes on, that image of her with someone else will go away and my desire to see her will continue to fade away. Actually, I need to get to the point of where I don't care if she's with someone else. The difficulty for me with that is my affair with her was largely to keep her from being involved with someone else. Most of the time, I knew I wanted to be with my wife, and I just wanted to keep the other woman from being with someone else. Its the whole cake and eating it too thing, I know.

The good news is that when I was with her, I thought she was probably one of the most attractive women I have ever seen. In the photographs that I've seen in the last 2 months, she has not even looked as remotely as attractive as I once that. I guess that's a good sign. I hope so. I at least tell myself that it is.

E, see now this is why I asked you if there had been ANY contact. This my dear IS contact. It set you backwards in your withdrawl. Do not under look up her myspace, flickr whatever you know she has out there. It will set you back to day one of your withdrawl.

She is single. You are married. She had as MUCH responsibility to NOT interfere in your M as you. Why? Because as a human being, a member of society you do not go after something just because you "want" it. You only pursue that which is available. The xOW in my situation honestly thought since SHE was my H's xg/f and since SHE was the one that ditched him to M someone else then SHE had every right to "take" him back when she so chose. It did not matter to her one bit that he was married and had children that would be devastated by all this. In her mind it was my job to just let him go. Try looking at this from that perspective which is how your BW is feeling.

Reality bites for the wayward, but it’s nothing even close to what it’s like for the betrayed. Sinking into fantasy and longing is a way to escape the hurt and pain that we’ve inflicted on our spouse and family. It’s an escape. It’s lazy thinking. It’s so easy to dwell on the other person, and although the thoughts may be melancholy and filled with longing, they also give you pleasure. Reality, on the other hand, is edgy, stark, and bleak. We’re forced to look at our failings, and it sucks. Reality can’t be controlled, but in our fantasy world, everything is under our control. There is no hurt or rejection in that place; the only time it hurts is when we wake and start feeling the sting of reality again. In the real world, we have to work, we have to empathize with our spouse as best as we can and stop feeding our obsessions. We pull out of ourselves and try to connect with real people, real problems, and real pain.

These boards have become my wake up call. I have to believe that reality at some point will be a happy place, but at first, it bites. I realize now that the only way to get to the good stuff is to snap out of the cozy warm obsession and let the real world smack you around for awhile. As you keep reading these posts, you’ll read over and over again how your betrayed spouse is feeling unimaginable pain. Maybe we can start there, by trying to connect with their anguish and reach outward.

MrsZ

I was afraid that was going to cause some confusion. Let me try to clear it up. The very first day after the affair began, I had the first thought of "How am I going to get out of this?" I can't tell you how many times I thought that over the course of all of that time. From the very first day, I knew the other woman held my career, my job, and my marriage in her hands. And like I've said, she was not above taking whatever steps she had to to keep me in her life. So, I always felt like for me to get out of this situation and have any chance of saving my marriage that the other woman would have to decide that she no longer wanted to be a part of my life. Please know that I'm not saying this is a proper thought or even an accurate one, but that's at least what my mind was telling me for all of that time. You guys know that your you don't think logically during this time. Basically, I was extremely addicted, felt like I couldn't get away, and didn't feel like the other woman would let me get away from her without tearing me down. She threatened to tell my wife, my employer, etc. on several occasions.

Like I've said, I was so addicted to her and I'm such a weak person that I would have never have been able to stay away from her anyway. But, I tried. I wanted to. I just didn't know how, and I didn't think I could live without her.

So, one of the things that we have tried is that whenever a thought of the other woman pops into my head, that I am supposed to think about how the current situation is what I have always wanted. I have the other woman out of my life, and I have an opportunity to repair my relationship with my wife. So, I am not supposed to think of the other woman as what I want, but the opportunity to save my marriage as something that I've always wanted.

Does that make more sense? I didn't do a very good job of explaining it the first time.

I get it. My H was much the same. He broke up with her and came back home but was so weak when she lured him back weeks later he was a goner. He just didn't bother to tell me that. Then she got pregnant. She held the pregnancy and her supposed "cancer" over his head for quite a while. Then she used the baby as bait. Later it was threats to tell me, which she followed through on. She thought if he would not leave me, she would force me to kick him out. Then when all those did not work she used the threat of suicide. Through all of this my H took the path of least resistance. He actually told me of one point when the OW and I were both happy for a few weeks and he figured he could keep going until he could no longer sustain both lives. He never, ever wanted to be the bad guy. Nearly 3 years down the road he realized she was never letting go. She was moving her own personal boundaries, her line in the sand if you will until she had no self respect left. At this point he knew had to stop. He HAD to be the one and he had to tell me the truth.

esm ~

Can I make another suggestion? Start another thread and begin asking questions on how you can help your wife begin to heal.

Also ask what you can do to help your MARRIAGE.

In order to stop dwelling on the OW, you need something productive to do with your mind and your time.

Your MARRIAGE is what you want now, so let's beging talking about that, and how to go about making it better than it's ever been...okey dokey???

I realize what I'm about to say is way beyond the context of an affair, but maybe it will help to understand what my thought process is like. I'm pretty sure I have OCD or ADD or ADHD or something like that. Not to make light of it in any way, but all of my friends have always joked with me about that. I don't think I have the actual disorder(s), but maybe some of the symptoms of those who do. I say that only as a way to respond to your advice, which I hope you know I have found to be incredibly helpful.

A 10-second thought for me is enormously long. It may only be once or twice a day when I think about the other woman for longer than 30 seconds at a time. That's definitely an improvement from early January, when she was always on my mind and this most recent setback has caused me to think of her more. But, when I talk about the other woman popping into my head. Its usually for a split second, and now I've tried to train myself to think about something else or to think about her in a negative light. But, we're talking about maybe a total of 10 seconds to have her pop into my mind, me kick her out of my mind, intentionally focus on thinking of something else, and then moving on to the next thought.

The problem is that this scenario can literally play itself out hundreds of times in a given day. So, I feel like I don't have control of what pops into my head, and then once it gets there I'm not great at getting it out of my head long-term. It will go away while I distract myself with something else, and as soon as I'm done, it pops back in. So, for example, if I'm working on something, responding to something in here for example, the other woman's image would never pop into my head. But, if I'm having down time, watching TV, driving to work, etc. I've got stuff bouncing around in my head like crazy. I'm a complete disaster in many ways. (I say that somewhat jokingly.)

My IC is making me see an MD to look into it. I just feel like my mind won't let these thoughts pop into my head if my wife and I can restore our marriage. Then I'll be thinking about her, unintentionally, hundreds of times a day. That's the way it used to be, and is starting to be that way again thankfully. For example, I just sent her an email a week ago out of the blue telling her that I love her. I used to do stuff like that all of the time, but probably haven't in 3-4 years.


I'm not sure what you mean by that. Can you help me out?