I am new to this board. I just found out about my husband's 6 month affair with a woman at work. We have been married for almost 16 years and have a beautiful son. I just have one question and I did not see this posted anywhere and wanted to ask. I am in individual counseling right now for myself and i was told he would have to grieve the loss of the relationship before we can start to restore our marriage.

Well I asked some questions from my reading and I asked him if he was grieving and I explained why I asked him this and if he felt he needed time to grieve. I felt I was nice when I asked him this and explained we have to have open and honest communication.

Well he said he doesnt feel like is he grieving and he doesnt think that is really the problem. He is having a hard time dealing with his shame and guilt and how he hurt me and our son according to him. He feels right now we are just "muddling" thru this until we can figure out what is wrong with him.

my question is if he isnt grieving does this mean he isnt done with this woman or that his feelings did not go as deep as i thought they were?

any thoughts on this would be great and on the grieving process they have to go thru?

Everyone is different.

Usually, there is a withdrawal period while the WS detaches from the OP.

It is possible that your H was not very emotionally attached to the OW, I think this is more common with WHs than it is with WWs. Generally, a WS is not very engaged in recovery while actively wayward or in withdrawal, so it sounds like it is possible your H is telling the truth.

I think that for men infidelity is often more about sex, and it is seemingly easier and more common for men to separate sex from emotional attachment.

I agree with tyk,

I'm not sure that all WH go through a mourning period as much as a "return from the fog."

A couple of questions: How long ago did he end the A? When did he tell you after that? It may be that he already went through the grieving process without you and may not even be aware of it.

I know my FWH has a hard time naming the things that he feels, but I think he is probably pretty typical in the range of emotions he goes through.

IMO don't hold too much stock in the idea that everyone must go through EVERY step the same way to truly be recovering. I think that there are some things that MUST happen (like NC and the four rules) but the way that people deal with the recovery from an A on an emotional level may be all over the board. I think it's a roller coaster for all involved...the main difference is that the WS decided to get on the ride while the BS didn't get the choice.

He said the physical stopped in December and the rest was just talk, makes me think emotional. But he has come clean with some stuff that they were making plans for after the divorce. Sometimes its like i get the impression he is trying to protect her, he says he is trying to avoid a big fight.

But now he is back to I dont know what i want, what is wrong with me, how did i end up like this etc. He wonders why do i have all these emotions? Well its like he is battling within himself. Sometimes he will say i dont know what i want and he even said i cant find peace with you. then the next minute he acts loving and caring towards me and my feelings and what i am thinking. I feel like i am being manipulated. oh and i found a text from the ow at 12.14 am asking if he was up. he hides his phone now he says he doesnt want me to see if she text cause it makes me mad. yes it does. it just makes him look suspicious by how he is acting and the things he is saying.

When I get mad he says stuff like see you dont trust me. Well I am sorry I dont trust him and that will take time to rebuild. I told him he is presenting the picture to me that he doesnt want this to work out between us. He just says I dont know what i want. He sometimes will get mad, everyone just expects us to work this out, well what if we dont.

I feel like right now he wants his cake and to eat it to. Am i being paranoid or do i have reason to worry?

If she is STILL texting him at 12:00 in the morning and he is STILL hiding his phone and he is STILL lying to you, the affair is STILL on... physical or not.

Have you exposed his affair to the people that count? Is OW married? You need to kill the affair and no contact AT ALL needs to established before you can truly recover.

Please consider posting your story on General Questions as it gets a lot more traffic.

(((Lovelady))) You are not alone. We've been where you are right now. Read up on Plan A and as much as you can on this site. Keep posting.

LoveLady,

He is not grieving......because the affair is not over. As long as there is contact of ANY kind....the affair is ongoing and the risk for full relapse is a constant threat you need to be aware of. Wayward spouses who are truly interested in rebuilding their marriages....don't hide their phones and don't get texts in the middle of night with intimate inquiries. They don't go to work everyday with their mistress and expect their wives to be happy or their marriages to heal.

Some of the conditions for reconciliation must be honesty, openess and accountability. Please do not move forward without them or you cannot battle infidelity. You can't control what your husband does, but you can completely control your willingness to tolerate it.

Is this woman married? Does her husband know?

You'll get alot of advice from us amateurs here....but I urge you to give the Harley's a call. They can help your husband understand the steps needed better than anything or anybody else.

Well, I can only give my experience on the subject, as much as that may help.

I am new here as well. My WW ended her 2-month affair with OM just 2 weeks ago. Before that, she had told me twice that her and OM had ended it, only to turn out not to be true. (She said she had sincerely tried, but just couldn't stay away from OM. However, once when she had been telling me it had been over over the course of a week, she had just slept with the guy the day before).

As I said, she had twice told me it was over, and twice I discovering it wasn't. During those periods, she would give me off-hand comments, such as "Whew! I'm glad that's all behind us now, and we can start rebuilding our marriage." Ironically, she had just slept with the guy the day before. After the second time, I had to lay down an ultimatum. If she wanted to salvage our marriage (of 23 years) and our relationship, she had to cease all contact with OM. She had to agree to a "trust but verify" policy - show me her cell phone records, etc. (And this is before I read basically the same thing here at MB on Ending an Affair). She agreed, and almost immediately, literally overnight, since her and OM talked on the phone 2-3 times a day for one or more hours, she went into a deep depression. After two weeks, she's improved some, but I still catch her in deep sadness, which has convinced me that she has ended it.

So, unless it was just a casual, physical relationship your husband was having, I would be doubtful that his affair is truely over if he isn't going through some sort of withdrawl, depression or sadness. Just MHO. The only way I can think of to find out the depth of his feelings is to find out where they thought they were going. My WW and OM very quickly began talking about wedding plans (she recently confessed to me), even though neither she nor I had talked about divorce, and she wouldn't even have grounds for such unless I agreed. You may be able to tell how deep his feelings were by the frequency which your WH was in contact with OW. If they had slept together several times a week, and talked on the phone several times daily, like my WW, then, it was deep, and he should be greiving a lot more than what you portray.

Hope this helps.

he is trying to say it only happened one time but they talked on the phone almost everynight that he was away from me. he left in january because i told him if he could not give her up then he needed to go. he left me and our 12 year old son. i dont believe him because i found a garage door opener in his car and i saw a text where she wanted to know when he could get his stuff from her house. he says it was stuff she bought him but i just dont believe him because also now the garage door opener is gone.

this woman is not married and never has been. I did inform her that she was the reason i left him and the reason i made him leave. i have also told her about consulting an attorney and her getting drawn into this. but she wont care. i just feel wh lead her on. he said plans were being made for after our divorce but he said its not like i think. ok so what am i suppose to think.

now he has started this again i dont know what i want and i just want to be happy. he is only concerned about his happiness and not about me or our son. he is going to counseling and our counselors that we see on our own correspond because they do co-counseling together and were going to ours. but now my counselor feels until he is willing to invest himself more then co-counseling will not help. she said what is happening now is he has an addiction and some of the things i do and say threaten his addiction. my counselor said she doesnt believe its about this woman anymore she believes its an addiction now. wh has had trouble in the past with pornography and now he just went to the next step. she said this woman just keeps feeding his addiction and he is also torn. she said he could be going thru withdrawal symptoms because of how he is acting. she said some of the things i told her he has done are addictive behavior. he is very depressed and down and he does take some small steps with me. there are times he gets so depressed he wants it all to end.

there are times he seems like he wants this and there are other times he gets angry and mad about our marriage. my counselor thinks he is torn. half of him wants to be with me and restore our marriage and the other half doesnt. So she said he could be going thru withdrawal but i dont know.

update - talked to wh and he is depressed alot and he is down and right now all he wants to do is find happiness again. he cant tell me much of anything. i did get him to admit he feels torn part of him wants to be at home and work our marriage and family out. He wouldnt really talk about the other part. He just said "thats why i took the ow out of the picture." so i think he is grieving and he just doesnt understand it. he is seeking God more and he wants to find God's will for his life. He did say the whole time this was going on he felt guilty.

i asked him if he wanted out of our marriage and he doesnt know. so i suggested this. i told him he is grieving and right now he needs to do this and if he needs me to be there then he needs to come to me and tell me. i said because i just dont know when i should be there for him. i said otherwise i will leave him alone and let him grieve and then once he is thru this then if he comes to me and says he wants to work our marriage out then we can try co-counseling.

he says he doesnt see the ow unless he has to and thats only at work. he says anytime she sends him a text he does delete it and thats why he leaves his phone off and in the car is so he isnt tempted.

so now im trying to concentrate on me and our son and worry about our happiness and our life.

any other advice would be greatly appreciated.