My husband had an emotional affair with a Thai woman and I discovered it. He promised to stop all contact with her and wanted to work on our marriage. But 5 months later, he had a physical fight with her and had no choice but to tell me that he had actually continued the contact with her. During those 5 months, he would be hypersensitive to any of my questions and always over-reacted saying that I do not trust him and that I am being unreasonable. Simple questions would set him off.
After the fight, he again promised to stop all contact with her and his behaviour went back to prior to the affair. Now after 3 months, he suddenly had a crazy outburst when I asked him a simple question. He thinks that I do not trust him at all and that I should not be questioning him on anything and that I should be grateful that he chose to come back to me. Is this normal? I am so lost. I am trying very hard not to be suspicious and to trust him again but his sudden outburst has got me wondering.

Hi Pigs and welcome to MB. Not a great place to have to be but the best place to be in your present situation as there is help to be found here.

Above all trust your instincts! Many (maybe most) Waywards lie about their affairs and lie about ending them. Think drug addict doing whatever he needs to do to get his next fix.

So let's assume that contact has continued all along.

Have you read up the stuff on this site about what to do now? Do you know about the no contact (NC) letter that he has to write if he agrees to stop seeing her. Do you know about the policy of Radical Honesty where he agrees to be totally accountable for all his movements and communications and shows you everything? And tells you everything about the affair because believe me, you have only heard one tenth of the story so far.

Do you know about Plan A and Plan B?

Stick around, we can help you get through this. Give us more details on your family - how long you have been married, children etc.

Pigsinc - Is this normal? Yes it is, possibly because of two different reasons.

1. Your husband is "over" his affair and wants to "put it behind him." A fairly common response by a WS (Wayward Spouse) once they have ended an affair. But is due to a complete lack of understanding of just how totally devastating the betrayal of adultery is to the BS (Betrayed Spouse). They "think" that "since I've decided it's over you (the BS) should "just get over it" and we can move on. They do not understand that engaging in marital unfaithfulness is a simultaneous (and unilateral) decision on their part to end the marriage. "Guilt" concerning their infidelity MAY be there, but sincere remorse and repentance is not. Recovery should be done WITH a committed, trained, counselor who will be the one to guide both of you through the MANY problems that infidelity has caused. "Sweeping" it and the emotional damage "under the rug" will not work and will only keep a problem around that WILL surface later on.

2. Your husband is still in an affair. He MAY have "tried" to end it, but the strong, and often difficult to deal with, Withdrawal symptoms finally "convinced him" that he needed to contact her to "ease the pain of withdrawal." Once there has been recontact, the affair starts all over again.




You CANNOT trust him. That's the cold, hard, truth. He forfeited FOREVER the thing called "blind trust." "Blind trust" is what you GAVE him before and it sounds as though that is what you are trying to convince yourself to give him again. You can't.

Trust, following an affair, is EARNED by the WS. They, in an affair, have proven themselves to be untrustworthy and they only way for you to "trust him again" is with a lot of hard work and dedication to Recovering your marriage. It's called "Recovery" because the marriage is on life support and hanging by a "thread." That "thread" is in your hands, not his.

HAVING an affair was in his hands and he chose it WITHOUT consultation with you. Recovering, rather than agreeing to his previous decision to end the marriage (or at least end the Exclusiveness of marriage), is up to the Betrayed Spouse. It is dependent upon the actions of the Wayward Spouse. Those actions will, or will not, "support" your choice to attempt Recovery rather than to Divorce.




My guess, and that's all it is from the limited information you've shared, is that there has been recontact. He doesn't "get" the fact that your "infidelity and lie detector radar" has been permanently "switched on." He could lie to you BEFORE, when you where "blindly trusting" him. NOW you know he IS currently untrustworthy and you will not "just let things go."

His response leads me to believe that he is NOT repentant and sorrowful, at the best, and is back in contact with her to get his "withdrawal fix." This is the "most likely" scenario, in my humble opinion.

YOU need to do some serious "snooping" and either confirm or find no evidence at all that he is back in contact.

If he wants to remain married, you need to make Joint Marital Counseling with a trained counselor who is committed to saving marriages a REQUIREMENT of your agreeing to NOT divorce him.

He will likely chafe at that, perhaps even get angry, but it's not his call. RECOVERY is your call. He already made his choice concerning the 1st marriage with you. NOW the choice is yours to end the marriage as his actions indicated he wanted, or to agree to attempt to recover and build a new marriage. But the "old marriage" is already dead. Whether or not a new marriage can rise "Phoenix-like" from the ashes of the marital conflagration HE started will be dependent upon BOTH of you working hard at it. Not to scare you, but to give you the truth and the facts (which most newly Betrayed Spouses really crave even if they "fear" hearing it), the AVERAGE Recovery Timeframe to work through the issues and arrive at a Recovered Marriage is 2 YEARS. So if you and he really want to try recovery, buckle up for the "long haul," check your patience and endurance, and KNOW that recovery WILL have a lot of "ups and downs" along the way.

Keep posting. Lots of members on MB will try to help you as best they can.

God bless.

P.S. - "Grateful???"

HE should be grateful you have not yet kicked his sorry butt to the curb yet. Marital VOWS? Grateful that they were meaningless to him?

He can choose to try to attempt to recover your marriage, but only IF you choose to agree to do so. ACTIONS (like a choice to engage in marital infidelity) have CONSEQUENCES. It's the consequences for his actions that he wants to avoid by trying to MANIPULATE you (who DOES believe in the marital vows and the sanctity of marriage).

Grateful? These Wayward Spouses are still in fantasyland.

Grateful? His "fight" with the OW (Other Woman) should tell YOU that "all is not well" in adulteryland. IF he had a physical fight with her, you can BET THE FARM that he also had more "physical contact" with her.

Grateful? He has NO idea what emotional devastation HE has chosen to inflict on his wife. But he will, over time, begin to understand this or you will not be married. YOU don't want the "old him" back, do you?

Grateful? What a disrespectful judgment.


Should you believe him? Should you trust him?

Let's put it this way that might frame it more understandably:

In a pig's eye! When pigs fly! Pigs love a sty, but do you want to go roll around in it with them? Doesn't look so pretty from the outside, but pigs believe "their world" is all the truth there is. What are pigs good for? Bacon. Now that's a taste I can enjoy! Fire up the frying pan! Oink!

Do NOT be "afraid" that if you do or say something it will "drive him back to her arms." He already made that choice and didn't need you to "drive him."

God bless.

Of course he thinks that, because it is TRUE! You should NOT TRUST an untrustworthy person. That would be silly. So tell him he is right, you do not trust him and ask him what he is willing to do to earn your trust back?


You should be suspicious of an untrustworthy person. But he can change that if he changes his behavior. All of the conditions that made the affair possible should be CHANGED for example. He should account to you for all of his time and be completely open and transparent.

If he does not want to do those things, that means he is still hiding something from you. People who have nothing to hide, don't hide.

Here is what it will take to recover your marriage:

Requirements for Recovery from an Affair
Dr. Bill Harley

The plan I recommend for recovery after an affair is very specific. That's because I've found that even small deviations from that plan are usually disastrous. But when it's followed, it always works. The plan has two parts that must be implemented sequentially. The first part of the plan is for the unfaithful spouse to completely separate from the lover and eliminate the conditions that made the affair possible. The second part is for the couple to create a romantic relationship, using my Basic Concepts as a guide.

I'll describe these two parts to you in a little more detail.

The first step, complete separation from the lover and eliminating the conditions that made the affair possible, requires a complete understanding of the affair. All information regarding the affair must be revealed to the betrayed spouse, including the name of the lover, the conditions that made the affair possible (travel, internet, etc.), the details of what took place during the affair, all correspondence, and anything else that would shed light on the tragedy.

This information is important for two reasons: (1) it creates accountability and transparency, making it essentially impossible for the unfaithful spouse to continue the affair or begin a new one unnoticed, and (2) it creates trust for the betrayed spouse, providing evidence that the affair is over and a new one is unlikely to take its place. The nightmares you experience are likely to continue until you have the facts that
will lead to your assurance that your husband can be trusted.

An analysis of the betrayed spouse's childhood or emotional state of mind in an effort to discover why he or she would have an affair is distracting and unnecessary. It takes precious time away from finding the real solutions. I know why people have affairs: We are all wired for it. Given certain conditions, we would all do it. Given other conditions, however, none of us would do it. So the goal of the first step is to discover the conditions that made the affair possible and eliminate them.

After the first step is completed, the second step is to create a romantic relationship between you and your husband using my 10 Basic Concepts http://marriagebuilders.com/ca/to.cgi?l=qa080103bc
as your guide. While your relationship may be improving, it won't lead to a romantic relationship because you are not being transparent toward each other. Unspoken issues in a marital relationship lead to a superficiality that ruins romance.

Your nightmares are only the tip of the iceberg. They are but a small reflection of the suffering you experienced when you discovered your husband's affair, and the fear you have that the suffering will be repeated. You have no assurance that the affair is over because you don't even know who the other woman is. You are being asked to trust your husband, who has already proven to be untrustworthy. For all you know, he could be working with her, or you could be going to the same church, or she could be
your neighbor. And since he won't discuss the details of how the affair took place, you have no assurance that another affair will not take its place.

Infidelity is not something that can be swept under the rug. While those who have affairs want to forget about it and move on, those who are betrayed must take very specific steps before they can fully recover. In your case, those steps have not been taken, and as a result, your fear persists. I will send you a complimentary copy of my book, "Surviving an Affair," if you send me your address. It will describe these two steps to you and provide you with a roadmap toward full recovery. But the path will require full disclosure of all details.

Best wishes,

Willard F. Harley, Jr.