This is a question that's been bugging me for a while and I will admit I *still* don't have all the information from WS but here's a question:

Have you ever heard of hysterical bonding and/or the honeymoon phase of recovery going on WHILE the A was still going on? In my case, Dday of a sorts was end of Sept 05 with some more info coming out Dec 05. Honeymoon phase started in Sept 05, things went downhill around the holidays. I found out some more information in Dec 05 but have no reason to believe there was contact at that point. It was the results of some assessment/psychological evaluations and the information contained. Then more honeymoon/hysterical bonding beginning in Jan 06, MC started, all the way 'til May 06 when things went downhill between us again (this coincides a bit with his losing his job). Suspected something up all summer and finally, in Sept 06 hacked in and got my proof. Confronted and Dday was end of Sept. NC letter first of Oct. It was an EA (or so he says!) and they lived 2000 miles apart. C was attempted by the OP in Nov and WH told me about it. None after that as far as I know.

But how does a WS wind up in an intense honeymoon period AND conduct an affair--EA or PA? Or I wonder if the A started and stopped to coincide with the ups/downs of our relationship?

This is one reason I've told him I *have* to know all the timing and details. It's driving me nuts.

Ourhouse,
I hate to admit this but I think my H pretended I was the OW during his EA, especially in bedroom - not a nice thing huh! After DDay there was NC so I can't say we had honeymoon phase during EA. I imagine what you say could happen though, especially with a confused WS who doesn't know what he or she wants.

GG

Sometimes I wonder if mine did too. The weird thing about an EA that took place mostly on the computer is that I was able to confront him with his actual words. He said he loved her. He mentioned a timeline--something to do with waiting 4-5 more years 'til their kids were out of HS. Once I told him (when I'd already had access to his computer but hadn't told him and he was still denying everything) that I got the feeling he was comparing me to someone else and holding me up to her standards. He denied that and then told her about the conversation and said that he'd denied it but "of course it's true".

And so on. Ad nauseum. And I think they must have read the "affair script" from this website because practically everything they said to each other and he said to me came out of that script!

So finally, after Dday, I asked him about these things that he said. And all I got was some combination of: "they were just words on a computer screen. Something to say." "It sounded good at the time." "It came from my head, not my heart". Or my favorite: "I don't know". LOL

So several years later I am still spinning around on this and he's wondering why I haven't been able to get over it. He blamed it on his mental state at the time (he was on serious amounts of ADs and anti-anxieties because his life was falling apart). He said he thought "we were over". He's said alot, yet he's said nothing.

And I still can't reconcile that mad period of sexsexsexsex and loooooooong heartfelt talks, with the EA going on the entire time? I wish I really knew the timing of things.

Yeah, love the "I don't know." For my H it was MLC. He now pretends it never happened - how convenient for him, right. I don't know the full timeline either and I don't care because it is not going to change what happened and I prefer to focus on us now. Maybe your H should reread the Radical Honesty article. If knowing the timeline is something you need then he should be forthcoming with information.

GG

Boy, does this ever resonate with me. My H has said all of the things that you say here and while I am starting to feel like we are beginning to recover, I still cant reconcile this part of it all. The biggest reason my H has given me for his A was "I thought we were over" which is hard to understand seeing where 1. we were still married 2. I was trying my butt off 3. I was unaware there were problems.

In his mind though, as he explains it, he thought he had "lost" me already and OW was a substitute. I just dont get this at all.

My H also views the A period as kind of a temporary insanity. He cant really look back and explain his behavior as anything else.

I can also relate to the "It was just words" response that you state here. One week before d-day, my H had written a love letter of sorts to the OW. It was painful to read in ways that I cant begin to describe. However, my H maintains that he was relieved when the A ended, that it was more trouble than it was worth and he wasnt all that interested. Yet - here is this letter written that directly contradicts that. When I asked him about this, he replied that it was "only words" and that he knew exactly what to say to get the OW off his back as she had "asked" for a love letter.

Im left feeling like if my H is capable of doing this, Id be pretty foolish to think he couldnt or doesnt do it to me. I imagine that is how you feel as well.


I think you are questioning this time because you are trying to make sense out of your reality. How could he have acted like he was in love with you and do this? There are alot of answers to that but I think the most likely one was that he was addicted to the high of perceived love with the OW, the endorphine rush, and was trying to recreate that with you. I dont mean this in a way that he was putting forth effort into your R, I think its more of a junkie doing whatever they need to get a fix.

Its an unflattering take on your H, no doubt. It smacks of a particularly high level of self absorbtion but that is a common thread with WS, I think

WOW. . . this was going on with my WS and myself during the A. Ecspecially when I found out. Very very frequent SF and extremely intense! I think that I was convincing myself that I was in competition with her . . . a new found Prn (sorry) Star or something. New lingerie, lost weight, different hair and make-up etc etc etc. Plan A (which I only heard of last week) to the full extreme. I was feeling used but desperate and he was always holding me all night. In the morning I would wake up and pray that the day would bring new revelations . . . of love and hope for our M. But as an addict would do . . . he would race to the office and get on the phone and e-mail with her and I knew it. That's why the Space Alien analogy was sooooo dead on. Who would do that to someone they have been in a relationship with for nearly 20 years? Who was there for sickness, job loss, bringing children into the world etc etc etc.? It just didn't make any sense. I would cry and cry and cry all day long. He wouldn't make any promises about where we were heading. But SF. . . you betcha! Now I know that because the OW had no exposure yet (during that hysterical bonding time). . . that is why the confused state he was in. I read once that you can't really look back on all of that. The reason is the space alien thing . . . it doesn't and won't make logical sense. I'm finding that this site had helped me with the timeline of my pain and there is a name for everything! I never would have guessed a name for this . . . Hysterical Bonding! WOW that's amazing. Hope this insight helped because understanding is all you can do for yourself. My WS would never have been able to peg it like this site did!!!

It's not HB when there is an on going affair. HB is post affair where spouse's are trying to reconnect and heal.

What you are talking about is not HB but that when the affair is on the WS gets extra horney and has to bang everything as much as the WS can. Whether the OP or BS. Any port in a storm. This extra hornyness happens with some WS's, not most.

Are we married to the same guy? Wow.

There is in depth info on HB on a site called survivinginfidelity.com

My H bonding thing was more likely between the "off" phases of his A. Anyway, it makes sense in my situation to ME and that's all that matters. Anyway, my WS's A. was more on the computer and phone since they live on opposite sides of the country as well. Curious if you have ever seen the OW in person or pics?

She sent some graphic/porn-type pics to H during the EA. H told me that he saw them and (he says) flipped out a bit and deleted them immediately. I once saw a photo of a woman on his computer sitting by a pool and holding a drink. She didn't look very pretty (all his old girlfriends are drop-dead gorgeous. It's very intimidating! And she was an old girlfriend). I asked him about the photo and he said he had no clue what it was/who it was (the photo had been deleted by this point.)

At one point, I google-earthed her address and saw her house and pool and the pool was the same distinctive shape as the pool I remembered from the photo--

So I think that was her.

I've seen pictures of her older sister in H's HS yearbook. Sister was drop-dead gorgeous so I'm assuming the girlfriend was too and that the photo I saw was just not that flattering.

I've never met her. And until the EA, the only thing I knew about her was that they were friends in HS. He never mentioned dating in college, or again 6 years later, both on the rebound from other relationships--or that he was in love with her at that time but she dumped him.

I knew all about all his other major girlfriends though and have seen their pictures. This is one of the big things I can not reconcile about this EA--why he never told me the truth about her past role in his life.

My guess is he didnt tell you because he wasnt protecting his weaknesses. If he TOLD you about it, that door would have closed. By keeping it a secret, it would still be an option for him, if and when he wanted it.

For a year or more before my H's A began, my H and his OW would flirt with one another ( she was my friend). I was stupid and naive and didnt pick up on the signals but my H sure did. He could have told me that he KNEW she was coming on to him and sending out strong signals. He could have protected his weakness for having a woman want him. but he didnt. Why?

Because he knew if he told me, it would end.

And he didnt want it to end.

Interesting.

Probably explains why it also came out that they spoke to each other about once/twice a year from the time we were married (and most likely before)until about 3-4 years before he flew back for that HS reunion--about 13-14 years' worth! He claims she always called him at work and he also claims the conversations were always of the mundane "hey good to hear from you, how are you kids, etc." variety. Probably not far from the truth but I always doubted it anyway. He never came home from work and said "guess who called me today?" And when I asked him why he didn't, he said "I knew you didn't think much of her,so why start a fight?"

So on the surface, it *seems* to all fit together but I think your theory of not wanting to close that door is dead on. At one point, after he admitted to me he still had deep feelings, he said he just couldn't put it in the past. I had to ask him to leave for him to even say he'd try.

After D-day, he was all repentant, said he didn't trust her at all-especially after what happened in the preceeding months but I always worry that it's just more lip service and that he might always be prone to falling for her.

This insecure, jealous statement is from a woman who NEVER doubted her husband's fidelity, never was jealous, never worried about him during "boys weekend" or a night out with the guys. Even had his bachelor party 3 weeks after our wedding (we sort of eloped) and I didn't worry.

But his A changed all of that.

Hi OurHouse,

I had the experience of a honeymoon during the affair.

I first discovered the affair in March 2003. It was only about 6 weeks old by then, and because OW lives abroad they had only had sexual encounters 3 or 4 times at that stage. I know this because I have records of his travel.

I found an opened box of condoms in H's drawer. Not only had we not had sex in two years, there was no English writing on the box, so he had bought them abroad. H travelled for his job, mainly to Belgium twice a month, but elsewhere in Europe 2 or 3 times a year. We live in London.

After huge fights for about ten days, we decided to try again in the marriage, after admitting that we had both behaved horribly for years. I didn't try to find out who OW was, much less expose to her H and ask my H to change jobs. I had no idea what cake-eating was. I understood that in some cultures men have long-term mistresses and their wives just have to put up with that, but we're British! That's only normal for the upper classes here, not for people like us who grew up on social housing estates! I naively thought that H had chosen the affair because we were in crisis and I was emotionally unavailable to him, and that now that I was back he would naturally drop the affair.

I really had no idea about anything to do with affairs in those days.

Our sex life took off like a rocket after D Day. At first it was a little embarrassing doing those things again, and we had to learn how to get things right, but we went from a standing start from nought to four or five times week. We kept this up for most of the first year, to March 2004. Sex and everything else started to go downhill at that point. I know precisely when I first felt that H was losing interest in me; it was on a city break to Budapest that we took at exactly the one year point.

Unlike you, I have had great success in digging up details and knowing what went on between them and on what dates. A lot of this is due to the joys of electronic data, and some due to my contacting her H to expose, nearly 4 years after D Day 2003. Her H and I spoke for a few months during 2007, and he found out a lot through conversations with his wife and by getting her to show him my H's emails.

What I found out from these various methods staggered me.

I discovered that during the whole of that first year, and especially during the first few heady months, he did more than just keep up his new affair behind my back; he developed his affair into something that they described to each other as the deepest love. Of course, he used the 'just words" excuse to me when I told him that I had seen his text messages declaring love for her.

Among the staggering details was:

We went to Switzerland for a few days about six weeks into that recovery, when our sexual activity was still very new and frenzied. On that trip we had so much sex that at one point my H said, wryly, "parts of my body are becoming quite sore". Parts of mine were, too!

Now, at some point during confessions years later he told me that he had been to Portugal with her for a night.

A check of her employers' web site showed me that this took place four days or so after we got back from Switzerland, about seven weeks into our heady recovery. I know he didn't spend the day, night and next day with her in Portugal testing out his language skills on the locals.

I do know how he was physically capable of such activity; a little blue pill helped with that, but I cannot fathom how he was capable of giving the emotional intensity he showed both me and OW for that year.

I went through the same sexual honeymoon after the next several D Days (described by me on Pepperband's False Recovery thread).

I think that my H was turned on by my showing him that I loved him and was badly hurt by the affair. I think that he interpreted that hurt as jealousy, which there certainly was a lot of, and he liked that. He started his affair at the age of 52, and from that point on he has had a lot more sex than a lot of younger men regularly get, if what I read is true. He had us both on the same day on his 55th birthday! How many men have ever had a birthday present as good as that, never mind in their mid 50s?!

I am more than 8 years younger than H and OW is more than 9, and he seemed to get a big sexual boost from seeing us both "fight" for him. I think that he loved having two passionate women in bed and that for a significant period of the affair, each relationship reinforced the thrill of the other.

I thought that this was just us and our sick relationship! How nice it is to read that this has happened to other people here, and might even be considered normal! (Even though it's really awful that you've all been through it; you know what I mean. I'm really sorry that any of this has happened to you all, too.)