Hi CIM, I am glad you came back and posted. Let me make my comments within your post for clarity purposes. I am sorta in the same boat you are except a mirror image.




See it works like this;

1. YOU are NOT to blame for what happened. Your husband and sister did the deed.
2. The weight of forgiveness depends on what they do, NOT what YOU do. You did nothing wrong.
3. Retribution is the first step. What has your husband done and what has your sister done for RETRIBUTION? What have THEY done to make up for the DOUBLE betrayal, if anything?

Oh, I am so sorry doesn't cut it. Those two are accountable for what they did not just to YOU, but also to the FAMILY(s) involved. They betrayed not only YOU, they betrayed the families involved.

Now let me tell you what is going on in my own family.

My wife will not see the OM, EVER! No Contact is exactly that, NO CONTACT. He has no invitation to ANY family events, period.

I will say that the OM has gone from justification to "Oh, my God, what did I do," which means that at some point in time, I will have something to do with him, but not yet.

Your sister has a lot to be forgiven for. What she did reveals a total lack of ethics, morals or care for you and the family, simply put, she is not a nice person by any measure. People change in time and it may be that eventually, if she is lucky, she may become a human being.

Your husband is in the same category. He is a complete jerk for doing sisters. This is a popular theme in sex novels because it is a fantasy of some males. The reality is what you face rather than the fantasy of fiction. You may or may not be able to forgive him, but any forgiveness MUST be based on what he does, not what he says.

Your husband and sister should be banned from contact for life, in my opinion.

Your family should be told that your husband and sister committed adultery.

Again, this mess is none of your doing. To save your own sanity, you have to take steps to protect yourself from the continued drama and trauma of having to deal with the whole sordid mess over and over and over.

In my opinion, you need professional help. And the best help you can get is from the Harley's. A couple of sessions with Steve or Jennifer can really put you on the road to mental recovery as you need to be.

See, I detect in your words and how you have structured your sentences that you are in a terrible mental conflict with yourself. That road does not lead to a happy life and it can even lead to illness, both physical and mental.

You need help.

Just remember one thing. YOU didn't start the mess, they did. And the responsibility for cleaning up the mess as much as it can be cleaned up, is THEIR problem, not yours. So long as you try to make it YOUR problem, it is going to make you sick because you have no power over WHAT THEY did and continue to do.

All the best.

Larry

Flint:


I can help you with your wife's mental situation, I think. But I will only do so on your thread, not CIM's. I have lived your story, in a somewhat different way. Start a thread, I will be glad to give you some ideas which would be materially different from my suggestions to CIM.

Larry

Hmm ... my husband made a move on my sister while I was pregnant. She did not let him have sex with her, but she did allow him to kiss her.

She never bothered telling me about this until all his affair stuff came out and he took a polygraph. She still denies having kissed him.

I have minimal contact with her. I don't like being in the same room with the both of them.

I agree with those who say that not all marriages should be salvagable, especially where there are no children involved.

caught,

There must be NC for life.
Your parents and other siblings must be exposed.
Your family must be told about NC, and how it will impact the whole family.

This means that you can not be an aunt to your sister's children, or her to your's.
There will be a rift in your family that can never be repaired. It will be as you never had this sister and you will have to miss out on many family celebrations because of NC.

It's one thing to forgive a WH after he bangs an OW. Then when a WH bangs not a OW but your best friend. Then when a WH goes past your BF and bangs your sister.

Your WH has shown that he is the lowest of the low. Why recover with him? Is your self esteem that low?

You have no children together yet. Your young enough to remarry and start a family with someone that deserves you. Recovery with your WH will keep you family torn apart in the worst way forever.

How are you going to tell your children why they can't play with all off the cousins but only some. How are you going to tell your children that yes everyone is going to grandma's for holidays but they can not.

Best course for you is to dump WH. And, still expose your sister to the family.

You are going to lose to much. Is this not reason enough to divorce your WH and save your life.

If that is not enough motivation. Then try this one on for size.

Your choice to keep WH will cause your children to lose to much.

If you will not act in your best interests, your families best interests, then act in the best interests of your future children.

CIM

One other thing. You want to repair your relationship with your husband and your sister. Thus you are taking on the burden of finding a reset button.

There isn't one.

This is too emotionally damaging to fix. There is NO reset button in life. I do understand that as a woman, you tend to want to make internal changes to yourself to deal with adversity. That won't work here because what they did was no part of who you are.

Sorry, what you want isn't going to happen, not and have you perserve your sanity.

Larry