Does this analogy help?
You go to a bar and you are drunk. You offer a ride home to a person. You both know you are drunk. You don't know this person's family. You get into a car crash and the other person dies. You feel no remorse for the pain caused to this person's family?

Do I feel remorse for the pain I caused the other family???

My answer to that would still be no. The pain caused to her family is her burden not mine. Just as the damage I have done to my marriage is my burden.

I will admit part of the anger I am starting to feel towards her also plays into the idea of having no remorse towards her family. But my mind is clear on that topic.

I think you do care what people here think/say. The reason you do is because you love your wife and as strong willed as you can be you are open to learning why you had an A and what it has done to your BW. I think it is a good thing that you keep coming here even if you disagree with some people.

Now I do have a question that I am hoping someone can help me with.

That question is how to address the root cause of my willingness to have an affair.

See being in IT I always look for the root cause of a system failure. In this case the failure is staying loyal to my marriage. From the MB concepts and other reading I have figured out my root cause was my wife not meeting certain EN's (sf is not one of them) for years before the affair. From doing the questionnaires I still meet her and always made effort to do so. But the needs my OP was meeting are now not being meet at all, I have communicated that to my wife. Because I do want to setup boundaries and to take care of the problems that caused the issues in the first place. But those needs are still there and not being meet.

I know this all sounds selfish but I am being honest that those needs have to be meet or I am still vulnerable to straying. Let me tell you straying for 3+ years does change you outlook on things. So please don't give me the answers of morals, you promised, vows etc.... those concepts (obviously) mean little to me. So I need help on trying to get needs like affection (top need) meet, so that I am not vulnerable.

See I don't know any longer if this is true.

One of the quotes someone made on a different thread was long the lines of if you are staying for the kids make the marriage better for them. I will be honest that right now my daughter is the driving factor in me staying. The logistics of a divorce are difficult but not impossible, but the damage to my child is something else.

That idea struck home some I want to make things better to want to stay. Believe me I am trying everything I can find to help. If I can fall in love with my wife again bonus, if I can just become content that works also.

Of course you don't know if this is true. You are still in what is called a fog. You have to decide if you want to try to work on your marriage. If you do then you go 100% and do everything you can to recover your relationship with your wife. The best case, you fall back in love. Worst case, you told her the truth and you tried to make things work as best as you can.

BTW there is a difference between loving your wife and being in love with your wife. I think you may be uncertain that you are in love with your wife. That being said, do you love your wife?

Well, one thing, don't expect those things to be met by your wife any time soon, I would bet.

And second. You can't talk about how to improve your marriage WITHOUT talking about promises, morals etc. And if these things mean NOTHING to you, well, marriage isn't for anyone. Marriage is FULL of stuff that you need to do that are important ONLY because of promises and morals.

Just the way I see it. Approaching a relationship between two emotional, feeling human beings with the same approach you would have to a machine is gonna prove to be an exercise in futility.

You know a friend asked me this very question.

I would say I don't love my wife like a husband should. Yes I love my wife as a companion I care about and as the mother of my child but nothing past that.

That statement is based on the fact I put so much emotional effort into the OW for so long that my love (romantic type) shifted from my wife to the OW. I do look at my wife differently now then I did long ago, which for me is causing problems.

gabagool:
You maybe right, that is one thing I am struggling with right now. The more and more I come out of the fog the more and more I realize what is missing and had been compensated for by the OW. Which is the reason I cannot rely on morals, promises etc... I already know if given the right set of circumstances I can stray. So trying to change circumstances to avoid that outcome has become something I am trying to do.

But you maybe right marriage is not for everyone and I honestly may not be the with the right person for marriage.

Sorry, no easy answer for you IT guy.

You are/were morally corrupt.

That's where you have to change.

See, it's your base programming. Sorry, no BUG fix for you.

You need to re-write the code entirely.

Hu,

In IT terms...the state of your system (the marriage) might have been pre-A a little sluggish, frustrating, seemingly unrewarding and functioning...you chose to hammer it with a trojan which annihilated your vows, your wife and the marriage.

Why did you choose to have an affair? Only you know...the formula Gimble shared:

An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect.

You know your own ingredients...see, it's not from your BW not meeting your ENs...it's from you choosing to create resentment from your ENs not being met, piled up repeatedly into entitlement...all through a lack of respect for yourself, your BW and the marriage.

See if that fits...because you cut out a lot of love deposits BW was making in meeting your ENs when over time, meeting your ENs so you could feel it required her doing certain things, in a certain way, when you wanted her to...like I said earlier...like trying to make a love deposit in a carnival game...you rigged it.

Resentment can do that...WhoDat said Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. And I just heard Joseph Fiennes say that line in a movie over the weekend. (Quoting all my sources.)



Now you've got some long time withdrawal to get all the way through...you didn't go NC until June 1st or mid-June, did you? For a three year A, I would think at the minimum at least six months of withdrawal...because the A didn't self-destruct on its own power, did it? OW's H found out and she ended it, correct? That means you gotta know you have some fog you're filtering information through which you cannot detect fully...rely on that. It's real. You've practiced deception (I repeat myself) for a long time, moment to moment for more than a thousand days. Whew. Please accept you're not going to be thinking straight, resentment and entitlement free for awhile yet...with bright times of clarity in between.

If your top EN is admiration...then that's an EN not going to be met for quite awhile, neither by you within yourself or by your BW...because understanding the depth of your deception will overwhelm both of you, again and again, for quite some time.

Nothing your BW could have done would have warranted your A. Nothing. Period. You did it and she could not deserve it no matter how treated you. Nor did you deserve it...and you did it to yourself, too.

Start there and figure out the permissions you've had within yourself to do and do back to others if you think they deserve it. Find out if you've lived on the earning love and punishment belief throughout your marriage, and if you now choose to believe love is a verb, and you choose to love your BW, and choose to act from your love, not dependent on her response...and then you will experience loving feelings.

You focus on her ENs which you didn't meet for three years, really...because had she known from the start of your A of it, then she wouldn't have allowed a single EN to be met, would she?...false deposits evaporate with DDay...now you meet them...part of the redemption you may desire...for you hacked at something that could not merit in anyway your blade.

You talked and behaved yourself into something you cannot undo, ever. You did not take extraordinary precautions, practice radical honesty, the rule of protection, spend the time with your BW in Undivided Attention, nor POJA with her...and now, you can...and experience a marriage which will blow your mind...

Also, because of your past deception on MB, please ask your BW to do this for the marriage...to register and post under her own name, on her own thread, to continue your commitment to radical honesty...own all you did, why you did it, and why and how you won't do it again, 'k?

Btw, please carefully consider how your BW met your ENs fully...and it was you who was not also meeting them in yourself...so you went out and found a flimsy mirror, someone to fake meet them to in your very fake relationship...all based in fantasy...

Sounds nasty of me...truly very honest and sincere...OW wasn't real in any way...your BW is real...your real partner, whom you treated as an enemy as you were an enemy of your marriage...and when it hits you that your wife was real all along, and how the A wasn't...then you'll grasp the undeserved grace your BW is offering right now...and may not later...she may change her mind...so fight hard now...and I think you know this already...why you kept reading...searching...asking yourself.

Affection, in part, is acceptance...physically, it accepts you, the whole of you, as you are...and again, the practiced rejection you did for three years will block this for awhile...affection in words, actions, too...will be hard to handle for quite awhile. I think it's where what you do to heal your BW, act transparently as you are (in all ways) now, follow the rules of marriage, stay honest and answer her questions, are acts of acceptance of what you did...so her affection (which is within her staying present right now, not ending the marriage) can get through.

In an A, all the burden to meet all your needs is in fantasy...learn how you stopped meeting your own ENs pre-A, too...how you focused on lack when you actually lived in abundance.

LA

Wrong. You still don't get it. You keep harping on the fact that you are an "IT" professional as if that implies you have some irrefutable logic ingrained into your being.

But your wife not meeting ENs is not the root cause of your inability to remain faithful. It is the root cause of your unhappiness in your marriage. There are many different ways to deal with that unhappiness, some healthy, some not. Your inability to remain faithful was a conscious selection, by you, of an unhealthy option to resolve that unhappiness.

The root cause does not lie in unmet needs. It lies somewhere in a flawed decision making process or latent sense of selfishness/entitlement.

If you tell yourself that unmet needs results in infidelity, you are putting the burden of your faithfulness squarely on your wife.

Look elsewhere.

Was this the thread that you referenced about kids? It has some pretty diverse points of view in it.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2113167#Post2113167

Hu:

I'm glad you came back.

I'm even happier that you told your wife.

Your list of things your starting to realize?

Well, that list will get longer the more your OW fades into the rear view mirror.

There is a reason you married your W.
There is a reason you never left her for the "perfect" OW.
There is a reason you structured your life is such a way that you could find all the time in the world to be with the OW and not spend that time on your M.

And it had nothing to do with your W not meeting your EN's.

That may have created a bad marriage. But it was your decision to fall into the arms of OW. You didn't ask for your W's permission to do it did you?

Your W was a good woman. That's why you married her.
She IS the reason you never left for OW.
And sneaking around is what do when you are married to a good woman.

Because I was ALL THAT. I have 1.5 years more of that life than you do.

Do you want to stay for your daughter? That's an excellent reason.
Don't want to pay for or go thru the pain of a divorce? That's and excellent reason too. You might still go thru it, but it's a good reason to stay together.

Now. Look up some posts from tst. HE lists the Extraordinary Precautions (EP's) that he had to live his life by to prevent himself from getting into another A. The only ONE who can prevent you from falling into another Affair is YOU.

Your W can stop meeting your EN's. But the solution isn't another A.

Had I not been introduced to MB a couple of days before D-Day, I WOULD be divorced now. I learned things from the website, then the books, and we then went to the MB weekend. All of that helped Flamingo and I find a way to a better relationship and M.

And there is NO WAY you can tell me that your BS was worse than my W. Because she wasn't.

The solution to your waywardness is in YOU. Can I cheat again on my W? Certainly. But I now know where the boundaries ARE. I KNOW where I used to lift an eyebrow, and sense that a woman "might" be interested in something more. If it wasn't the OW that I did find, it would have probably been another one before long. That is NO LONGER the case. The radar is still there, but it isn't transmitting, and I talk to Flamingo about potential threats. (I.e., women who might be a threat to our M. I let her KNOW)

MB changed me in ways I could never understand before. That's why I won't have another A. That's WHY I continue to post. That's WHY you stay here and lurk. It's pulling YOU in the direction that YOU know you need to follow.

One foot in front of the other. Your TOO close to the blast site now, but just keep walking. The burns and the singed hair will start to heal, but you MUST walk the rest of the way.

One day, it will be 1 month past D-day. Then it will be two. And if you really work it, one day you will notice it has been a year. And you realize how far you came. And wonder WHY you took so long to get HERE.

LG

LovingAnyway, andrew3 and lousygolfer:

Thank you for your responses they are giving me a lot to think about. In directions I had not thought to go.

LovingAnyway:

Can you explain this more? Because I don't follow it.

"Btw, please carefully consider how your BW met your ENs fully...and it was you who was not also meeting them in yourself...so you went out and found a flimsy mirror, someone to fake meet them to in your very fake relationship...all based in fantasy.."


Overall I know the circumstances that lead up to me being willing to have the affair. It is a specific set of circumstances. You all hit the note on the entitlement that I had not though of. That is very true. That entitlement combined with two other factors does set the stage.

As for my wife posting here, not going to happen. I have asked. It if for a specific set of reasons.
1) She does not want to talk about our problems to strangers on the internet. She is not comfortable talking to her friends about it so she is not going to post.
2) She was very put off by the overall tone of a lot of the posts here. The open hostility made her not interested in the least. She made a comment that some of those folks sound like religious nuts.

I will keep trying but not going to promise anything about my wife showing up here.

Well no, you are not vulnerable to straying at all. Surely you have learned something from your mistakes and have placed protective boundaries in place so you don't repeat that stupidity?

Secondly, your wife has just been dealt the biggest blow of her life. She is on the floor bleeding. Would you be kind enough to allow her to stop BLEEDING OUT before she services your SF needs? Or would that be too much to ask?

And lastly, I do not believe you told your wife the truth because a) you are entirely too fogged out and b) you have absolutely no regard for her pain. So, I don't believe it.

And I won't believe it and won't until she comes here [HERSELF] and convinces us.

I REST MY CASE. This is pure de' hu7668 fogbabble. :RollieEyes:

Well a couple of things to you, since you are one person I choose to ignore.

1) SF is NOT one of my needs, learn to read. Affection for me means a bit more then just sex.

2) Oh I am honest with myself I could still stray. Have learned what triggers it yes, being willing to stop those triggers not so sure yet. But the circumstances are very specific and currently do not exist.

3) You MelodyLane are one of the reason my wife will NOT come here. So looks like she will not be convincing you anytime soon.

So on ignore you go.

This is a hu7668 sentiment. I don't doubt that you sincerely want to keep her away, I think we both know why.

hu, your posts don't ring true. Just like the last time you LIED about being your wife, you are attributing your fogged out personal opinions to your wife. These are YOUR own opinions that you have expressed here.

Oh what you and others consider constructive 2x4's she finds stupid and unnecessary. Wants no part of it.

So claim fogbabble all you want, but I see more and more people posting the same thing my wife thinks.

How interesting! She has the EXACT SAME THOUGHTS AS YOU! You are cosmic twins! What a coincidence!