I may have been blinded by what I was doing at that time, so much so that I was not listening to anyone around me, not even myself. But I am back on the right track and working through these issues. I am not a bad person. I made some bad choices, and I know now that I hurt a lot of people in the process.

I will be spending a lot of time trying to make things right. Don't think that just because I ended the A that I think I'm cured now. I know I need to work on these issues, and hopefully my H will be willing to do this together. I believe that is why I find this one of the harder things to do because I did hurt him. Very much, and I know it will hurt him even more when I tell him.

NG,

I understand your fears and your worries, but YOU KNOW THAT YOU HAVE TO TELL HIM.

He (despite his prior failings in your M) HAS EVERY RIGHT to "kick you to curb" if he wants to--YOU cheated on HIM. Reconciliation is a GIFT he offers you, not your RIGHT. You forfeited your "rights" when you cheated. He may say things "in the heat of the moment" that he later reconsiders.

He WILL be hurt. He probably will be angry. This means HE CARES! Think about it...if he wasn't hurt by your A, that would mean that he didn't give a hoot about you or your M. Validate his feelings. Tell him you understand why he is hurt and upset and that he has every right to feel that way. Agree with him. Don't make excuses or rationalizations for why "this happenned". That is what got you into this mess and doing so now will make you look insincere and weasel-like.

If you do not tell him (completely, openly, honestly, humbly, remorsefully), I guarentee you are headed for D.

Your only chance to save and renew and improve your M is with honesty and repentance, come what may....

update?

You know that for some BH's this would be a good time to be told.
Specially if he has a four day weekend. Even if he has to call in sick Friday. Four days to settle down enough to get back to work next Monday.

Novembergirl - :happythanksgiving:

Did you tell him NG?

remember no matter what ... good people make bad choices ... you can win back your integrity no matter the outcome of your M.

Though I do hope both of you can talk through the issues and begin to understand where the mistakes began. Neither of you would want to repeat them.

hoping all is well with you and yours in the situation.

AW

Told him at lunch...Obviously was very upset. We're gonna try and talk tonight about it...I still don't know if I want to be with him though.

Your want is evidenced in your choices.

Are you choosing your marriage? Are you choosing him, your BH?

Feelings follow actions. So does desire.

LA

MrsZonie:

I have read many similar statements like this before from many posters. I simply MUST ask you (and other other WWs/formerWWs out there who have insight) this question:

How is it that you one day you "just don't love your H anymore" and "are convinced that I could never love him again"...and then later (probably after the A ends/is ending) you suddenly realize that you can/do "love him again"? WTF??

I know about the "fog" and may be I am just another 'stupid man', but CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THE HECK THIS IS POSSIBLE???

I have read many versions here of the story that you seek.

WS re writes history of the marriage to paint the BS as the bad spouse. Justifying the WS's decision to have an affair.

WS only see's the OP part time, easy for WS and OP to always show only their best side. No problems, no bills, new thrills. Affair is always fun.

Reality can not be blocked out or ignored forever. Whether the affair gets discovered, WS gets dumped by the OP, the WS gets bored with the OP. For one of many reasons the affair ends/ended.

The WS no longer has the need to paint their BS as bad spouse, and remembers the good things there and wants to reconnect with their BS.

I can give you another perspective. When I came here a year ago, I hated my husband. He had been ignoring my needs for 30 years. Not on purpose, he just had no idea, and I never told him. So I was contemplating leaving him as soon as D18 graduated. Then I found MB. I followed the rules, changed what I did, and slowly started to see the real person inside the image I had made of him. I still have problems, but I recognize my own part in the problems now. and I'm more tolerant of him - and compassionate - because of it.

Catperson:

Thanks for your reply. Problem is...most WSs do NOT find their way to MB and therefore do not gain that "new perspective".

Thanks for that. I heard the same things from my xWW--she "hated" me for ignoring her ENs. Like your H, it was not "on purpose" and I "had no idea"...it was simple, stupid neglect; I loved her completely but simply took for granted what we had and felt it would "always be".

Unlike yourself, my xWW continued to believe and assume it was intentional and that it meant I did not love her. She also intolerantly ignored her role in the process and only came to realize it (partly) later. Once someone skips off into the fog of wayward-ville, the fantasy substitues temporarily for the reality of actually dealing with issues between the 2 of you with mutual respect, openness, and forgiveness. I'm glad you found MB before you took that self-defeating and painful path.

Uh, I was talking about YOU, not your spouse. You will change your perspective if you start doing these things.

We talked a bit more last night on the phone. We're still going to go ahead with the seperation, but it's not going to be the end of us. We both agreed that we need to get to know each other all over again. I told him about the A, answered his q's honestly. That was so hard to do, but I feel loads better after doing it. He doesn't want me to move back in right now (not that I can blame him right?) and I'm not ready to move back in. But we are planning on talking a lot more, and I printed off that emotional needs form for both of us to do. Sooo, we'll see how it goes tomorrow when we go over the questionair...

I don't know what to think about this all at the moment. He's going along with all of this a lot differently than had I not had an A. Had I gone to him with a questionair before any of this happened, he would have told me he wasn't going to let some paper dictate how he should act. I guess I still resent him for threatening to kick me out every time things didn't go his way... He's not normally a forgiving person, so I'm still kind of waiting for the A to sink in to him. Thats when the Atomic bomb will go off.

Well, that DJ set aside for a moment - I'd like to offer you something to think about ... What makes a person capable of forgiving?

As you think about my question ... think about this too...


.... are YOU someone who has what it takes to be a person capable of forgiving?

Novembergirl's list of things that make HER a person capable of forgiving:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Great Job. You continue to do the RIGHT things. I am very proud of you!

NG,

Around our house we have two major Love Busters that we have to overcome all the time. They have been the same ones in play throughout our marriage and so you might think they should have been handled a long time ago.

But for the first 30+ years we were together we never really identified those types of things, we simply got mad at each other and wondered why.

For us, the two major LBs are my Angry Outbursts and her Independent Behavior.

If you think of the Love Bank as a bucket that you are trying to fill up by carrying a cup of water at a time to the bucket and dumping it in, once the bucket is full, doing things for each other and forgiving each other for transgressions becomes pretty easy. As long as that bucket stays full, marriage is pretty simple.

Early on in any relationship filling the bucket comes naturally because you are trying to make each other happy and wanting to do things for each other. But once married for a while, real life begins to intervene. We intend to pour water into the bucket but get sidetracked by life. Some of it gets spilled on the way. Things are sometimes so hectic that we forget to pour a cup full of water into the bucket entirely (meet the other's ENs) and even worse we also do stupid stuff that removes water from the bucket (Love Busters). The ones that do the most damage are the ones that get repeated over and over again, usually without thinking, which is really the problem, we don't think before we act.

So when my wife makes plans that effect me in some way without discussing it with me first or just assumes that I will go along with whatever she decides to do, it is like taking a gun and shooting holes in the bucket. She now has to put water in faster in order to keep it full. Now my reaction if the bucket is already a little low is to react to what I consider to be her uncaring attitude, since if she really cared, she would check with me before making plans, especially plans that effect me in some way.

So I get angry...

And if I let MY anger out (which I tend to do) and shout at her or make some hurtful comment or something else equally as stupid, I shoot a bunch of holes in HER bucket and now I have to work overtime just to maintain what level is already there.

This is why there are two parts to the equation. We must learn to meet each other's ENs but at the same time we must avoid LBs because no matter what we put in, anything that stops the deposits from accumulating is letting our love for each other die slowly and it becomes even harder to put back what is running out.

Now when you couple this with the normal overhead of maintaining a relationship it makes things even worse. The overhead is everyday stuff that gets in the way of romantic love like stress from having to pay the bills, jobs that take you away from each other, laundry that needs to be done and sometimes picked up from the floor beside the hamper instead of being IN the hamper, dirty dishes piled high every morning (or evening) and a bunch of other things that just get in the way.

The real problem comes from the way the two LBs feed off of each other. When my wife acts independently I feel threatened and my temper becomes shorter. Enough IB and I lose it and have an angry outburst. So now both of our LB$ have been depleted.

Unless at least one of us identifies what is going on and stops the cycle, it feeds off of itself endlessly until we can't even stand being in the same room with each other. It isn't something that can be overcome by flipping a switch, but it can be overcome and can be stopped by both of you identifying not only how to meet each other's ENs but stopping the LBs as well.

The reason I mention this cycle at all to you is that anger is not one of the primary emotional responses. It is in fact a secondary response that results from something else. Anger occurs when we feel something else first. It can be fear, hurt, or some other perceived threat. It is triggered by something else we sense that maybe we can't even identify.

Any dynamic in a relationship that has been going on for years can take a while to sort out but especially when one of the biggest LBs is AOs, it might (or might not) be related to another action since anger is normally a reaction to something else that happens first.

Identifying ENs is good, but Love Busters have to be identified as well. Any love buster can be bad for the relationship, but those that either of you feel as a love buster can be even more damaging since those are the things that empty your Love Bank faster than anything else.

And that is what makes the love die, not just lack of having our ENs met.

Make no mistake, his anger will come out over this. It might be six months from now (which is really common, BTW) or it might be next time you talk. He might still be evaluating the value of recovery versus ending the marriage since he was probably figuring out what to do with his life without you in it because of the direction things were headed before he found out about the affair. But he might also have been triggered into the fight mode rather than flight from a threat and is willing to fight for the marriage rather than letting it go and running from it. Anger will come out again when the threat is diminished at some point where he feels less threatened, but still feels the hurt. If this happens, it will be up to you to help him work through his hurts and fears in spite of his anger since at that point anger will mean he feels safe enough to be angry again.

Dang this gets complicated...

Mark