The short version of my story is as follows. Last summer I had an affair with a guy with whom we worked together as business partners. We didn't have daily contact, not even weekly, since he lived abroad. I have a family and he has a family. In the end of summer I confessed to my husband that I was having an affair. At that point I sort of ended it, too, because I wanted to give our marriage a chance. We didn't communicate with each other, I mean my affair partner, anymore in a romantic way, but the thing was that we have unfinished projects, we thought that this "only professional level of communication" works well. But it obviously didn't. The old flame started again couple of months ago. About which I didn't spill a word to my husband. Since then we were having quite good times with my husband, we confessed each other our past misdeeds, also talked a lot, he was completely honest with me, and I was always partly dishonest with him. I guess over the 15 years marriage we never talked as much we did now. I admit that I had problems of stopping this affair for good. I don't know what I was thinking. Now, when my husband found out that we were still meeting each other and communicating over e-mails, I wrote a short note to my lover which I was supposed to do last summer: that I will put an end to this affair and asked him not to contact me anymore. I also deleted all my private e-mail accounts. I want my marriage to start working again, I want to love my husband again and get rid of everything which reminds me of my affair. I realise, and my husband told me that, too, that this time I need to have a better plan to get it work. But I don't have a good plan. My husband is a good guy, and I want to struggle my way back to him. Altogether, I'm tired of the affair, the sneaking around, double-life hurts. I would appreciate some good advice how to restore trust when I have betrayed him twice over the short period of time.

Niitse,

It's late, so I'll give you the short answer:

*Apologize, deeply and often to your husband. You have inflicted more pain on him than you will ever know.

*Read the material in the links on the home page here.

*Get the books His Needs Her Needs, Love Busters and Surviving An Affair and read them with your husband. DO the exercises and APPLY the principles--religiously.

*THINK about why you would do such a thing, not once, but twice. Humbly share that truth about yourself with your husband, and make a list of the extraordinary precautions you will take to protect him, you, and your marriage from this kind of destruction in the future.

*Keep posting here, and do not try to justify your affair. The folks here will call you on it, although if you are sincere, they will help you use the Marriage Builders program to heal your husband, yourself and your marriage.

It will take a long time and a LOT of work, so roll up your sleeves.

And send your husband here too. He needs all the help he can get.

Right Here Waiting

niitse

NC means total NC. This is why we scream the affair partners can not even work together. One must leave the company. If the AP's live next door or close or in a small town there can't be NC you would need to move. If the OP lives in a favorite vacation area or where you have a second home, that place can no longer be a place where you can go to.

You have not been the first WW to slip with NC. It's good that you have closed secret emails. You need to get new phone numbers, new email, expose the OMW.

As to work you must leave this job today. If you can't then you must expose at work telling why you must have 100% NC with the OM.

As for being partly honest you need to tell your BH the full truth this evening.

Did it go PA or remain EA? If it didn't, at least when you admit to it with your husband, he may be able to have some solace in the fact that you didn't take it that far. And Road is right. You must confess to your husband, everything.

Hi all.

I am husband of Niitse. I thought that I would like to clarify some aspects of the situation because some of the questions can be answered by me.

The confessed misdeeds my wife refers above contain also a PA that I had some years ago. So I am not the only victim here.

I have been reading MB forum and many other materials by Peggy Vaughan, Harleys etc since the last summer when my wife made confession. We have read HNHN together and filled the questionnaires.

I thought recovery went well but some months ago got again the famous "gut feeling". I have been actually monitoring her emails long time so these private accounts weren't actually private.

Well, snooping "paid off" few days ago when I found concrete proof about the ongoing affair. I did then what I should have been done last summer already - exposure (OMW included). And then confronted my wife. Which alltogether leaded her here.

Where will things go now, I really don't know because I do not want to live through the withdrawal hell again. But I do feel much better now compared to the first discovery. Partly because I know the truth and partly because I am not afraid of the future anymore.

You have a greater chance of recovering this marriage if you will call the Harley's and set up some phone coaching appointments.

Link for coaching center


Please call them. I have used many different counselors through the years, none offered the depth of help my wife and I received with the Harley's.

Here's the problem. No Contact (NC) was never established and withdrawal never took place during that time either.
In reality, the affair was still active emotionally because the fantasy never ever ended due to continuous contact. Again there was no withdrawal that took place during that time.


The book "Surviving an Affair" is a must for both of you. It will help you understand how to begin PROTECTING one another.

Each of you are responsible for protecting the other, and it's obvious that you have not been doing this!

Have either of you read any of the books by the Dr. Harley?

recon6mo

"No Contact (NC) was never established and withdrawal never took place during that time either.
In reality, the affair was still active emotionally because the fantasy never ever ended due to continuous contact. Again there was no withdrawal that took place during that time."

Exactly.

"As to work you must leave this job today. If you can't then you must expose at work telling why you must have 100% NC with the OM."

What about your WW not working with/at the same company as the OM?

What about exposure at work?

These were required then. They were not done and the affair restarted. You have been reading here and know that you can not avoid doing these things. If you want your WW to stop banging the OM.

niitse,

You need to do whatever you can to reassure your BH that you're sincere about ending this affair and protecting the marriage. Here are some ideas but really you and your H need to sit down and POJA these things. You'll have ideas of your own.

Change cell phones whenever he asks you to
Put a GPS tracker on the car
Put a key logger on your computer(s)
Counsel with the Harleys
Offer to move to another town
Get rid of any affair memorabilia
Get tested for STDs

recon,

So good to see you here, and to see you have your head together. Exposure was necessary, and you've done that. Your wife seems to get that the affair did her more harm than good, and is hopefully ripe for a turnaround.

The information contained in the MB program is your best shot at learning how to recover from the damage you have inflicted on each other. If you both commit to it, you can have the marriage you intended on your wedding day.

We will support you in that endeavor, as others helped us. It DOES work.

Right Here Waiting

There has been almost a week from this exposure. I did close my private accounts, stopped visiting Messenger, I explained to my other colleagues that if they want to reach me they'd use the phone. I have only talked to my husband about the whole situation, even cut off one of our mutual friends. The problem here is that on the day of exposure he also exposed this to our friends, the female part of this is one of my best friends. I do feel utterly ashamed and don't want to have any contact with her (or him) right now, and I also don't have much power to think HOW should I talk to them.
I feel kind of panicked, I'm afraid that my husband will eventually walk away. I'm still thinking of how to proceed. I do have some ideas, I have read those materials before, but not as much as my husband did, on which he accused me that I had always many reasons not to read them. One of them was that I didn't have time. The bitter truth is that as being bossed around all my life by my bossy father, I don't like to be bossed around. The whole situation last time was me doing something which someone else tells me to. But as I was labelled as involved party and him as betrayed, I really didn't want to read them that much at all. I felt that there was nothing much for me, all the articles/books/stories seemed to circle around betrayed party. I'm not saying that these materials were useless altogether, I'm fully aware that if I had only been in NC with my lover, I would have got the message from those materials better than I allowed myself to do. I DID get some really good ideas from those materials, but the whole situation was so twisted that I did not have any REAL and HONEST ground to implement them, because I was practically lying to my husband for very long time and at the same time.
Anyway, I would like to convince my husband that there is still hope for us, and still hope for myself to become a better person. I would like to thank a person called rightherewaiting, who asked me to think why would I do such a thing again. And talking to my husband the other day, we sort of concluded that that this time I need to figure out what kind of a person I am and what goes on inside me. But altogether I have already started to feel that there is hope for myself, that I can do it, and as hopeless as it seems for our marriage, I do kind of feel that my husband also feels some shreds of hope.

You sure make a lot of excuses for why you do what you do wrong.

How about asking your H to be your accountablility partner? Every time you use another excuse, he can step in and say NO! You need to learn a NEW habit - being responsible.

As for your friends, the NUMBER ONE way to get past being a wayward is total humility. Ask for forgiveness. Admit your faults. Ask your friends to HELP you keep on track, keep an eye out for you, because you never want to be that person again. Once you do that, you won't have any trouble facing them again.

Boy no kidding. I am gonna re-read that for about the 5th time because I still can't make heads or tails of it.

I wonder, how did you feel when your H did this to you? Did it hurt? Did you wonder if it would hurt him if/when he found out you were banging the OM?

I know, maybe you were just still mad and he wasn't fixing things the way you wanted so you did it to get back at him, or maybe felt you/he deserved it?

SWW

I'm sorry for those excuses, I still try to figure out why me as a person would ever do such a thing. It wasn't payback, I just didn't care as much he has so far.
Found one old, but seemingly a good book about how to train yourself to change. My first goal in this process is to say goodbye to lying, the thing which I've done a lot, this is the thing which has been easy for me to do since the childhood, and for that, I think, I need to analyse myself first. To look at the mirror and realise that I really have been an horrible person, is not much of a sight, you know.
My husband has been very supportive the last week, and I'm not so alone in this as it felt at first. And I do appreciate the support from this forum. I keep going and working on myself and our relationship.

Niitse,

Sound a bit like my wife, she was taught at an early age to lie to keep the peace in the house, appearances were everything.

So she never told her mother about the women she saw her father with, nor her fathers constant lies about EVERYTHING, nor when her brothers wife brought her boyfriend to our house, nor when her brother-in law was trying to grope her. Had these indiscretions been revealed immediately it would have saved a great deal of pain latter on.

I think she struggles with her former set of ethics now that she is a Christian, but still feels the need to cover up.

NJ

I think the main reason people lie is to ensure that someone doesn't leave them or hate them. If you go forward realizing that is just your own filter talking, that you can trust people, it might get easier.