My husband had an affair with my younger (14 yrs younger- I am 37 yrs old) and only sister for almost a year. He wants me to put it all behind and try to fix the marriage, but I can't get over the pain and thoughts of them being together. He cannot understand my feelings of loss and resentment. He hates to see me cry. It's hard to really forgive him for what he's done to me and my family. I don't want to breakup my marriage, as I have two children (boy 7 and girl 3) but this situation has really torn me apart. I would like to know if anyone else has gone through something like this and if they were able to get through it (how?).

I have been married for 8 yrs. I have not been able to forgive my sister and haven't spoken to her since I confirmed the affair two months ago.

Eve
My situation in not like yours, I can't imagine the pain you are feeling. I am very sorry you find yourself here. You are in the right place, however. Many wise and seasoned veterans here. give them a chance to help you through this. Tour the website and read all the material regarding surviving an affair. So much great information here.

The journey is long, the road hard and rocky but there is and can be recovery in your future.

Hold on tight, the rollercoster ride has begun.....

eve
Welcome. Your WH has no clue of what he has done to you. Your feelings of pain and your thoughts of them together will stay with you for a very long time. Considering that you've experienced a double betrayal, you may feel more than most.

You just can't get over this. It doesn't happen. He's going to have to wake up and see the devastation he has caused even though he doesn't want to.

Unfortunately, he's going to have to have no contact with your sister for the rest of his life. Can you handle this?

When did you find out and how?

One thing to understand is that all A's are the same. The WS doesn't protect a weakness and allows someone other than their spouse to meet emotional needs even if it's wrong. One thing progresses to another and an A begins. You should get the book Surviving an Affair to understand all the dynamics involved.

Does your family know? They need to. And he needs to write an NC letter to her and YOU need to mail it to her. But that's just the beginning. To R this M, it will take extraordinary measures. Are you up for this? Do you want to R this M?

I'm so sorry for your pain. I do know there have been others on this forum where A's with family members have been involved and it is EXTREMELY difficult to R. Hopefully they will chime in.

So talk to us and tell us what has been going on since DDay.

Hello Eve,

There are many, many of us that have survived affairs involving family members...

You will receive some great help from the people here.

Read everything you can on this site, particularly The Basic Concepts, How to End an Affair, No Contact Letter and Love Busters.

Mrs.Flint and I were able to recover our marriage using the help on this site and received great help from the people here. They will help you, support you and correct you when you get on the wrong track.

The affair involved my brother and there are some unique challenges with this type of affair. We can tell you what works and what definitely doesn't...

You are not alone and you CAN come out of this with an even BETTER marriage than before the affair.

God bless.

Jim

My sympathies. I think that this is tougher than most affairs,although none is a picnic, in that your H has demonstrated a particularly severe form of depravity in doing this.
I think most BSs try to make sense of how their WS was capable of hurting thme so much. But, this must be even more difficult to understand.
I think the entire family needs to know and your H should be in therapy for a long time. He is very twisted.

You will need to be NC from your sister, as well as your WH.

Above is some very good advice. Yes, there is still hope for you, and yes it will be a lot of work (especially for him - for you it will involve a lot of patience for the extra time it takes you to heal).

If you recover there needs to be total NC with the AP's.

Your WH and OW/sister must have NC for the rest of their lives.
Even if you can forgive your sister, and I am not encouraging that you do so, there still must be NC forever between WH and OW.

Holidays, birthdays, anything where the families get together. They both can't be there. Not even to drop offor pick any one up at these functions. Just seeing each other at a distance is breaking NC.

Forgiving your sister wouldn't affect your need for NC. Even if you let go of all bitterness and right to vengeance, every time you see her you will trigger badly.

If she repents, you'll have eternity to spend together. In the meantime, keeping contact with her will gravely harm your attempts to recover your M.

Eve, I am so sorry for your situation.

The others are right about no contact. There can't be any contact with your sister again if you want to recover your marriage. Additionally, your whole family should know what has happened here so they will know not to include you both at family gatherings.

Your other female family members also need to know that your sister is dangerous to marriages so they can protect their marriages from her. If everyone knows what she and your H are capable of, then more ppl can watch them. EVeryone in the family should know about the affair, Eve. Everyone.

continued here

First, I am so sorry that you have to be here, especially with these added complications.

I am a FWW, and though our situation didn't involve a family member, there are some givens for all waywards:

1. He MUST do everything he can to come to grips with the horror of what he has done. Saying "I don't understand" doesn't cut it. He has to see what he has done to you and know tht HE is the one who did it

2. He has to repent - meaning own and take responsibility for what he did and have a true change of mind and heart. It isn't enough to say I'm sorry, though that is a start.

3. He needs to be completely honest about everything and answer every single question you may have

4. He needs to, with your guidanc and supervision, be honest about what he has done ith both your families

5. He can never have contact with your sister again

6. He needs to turn over all passwords, cell phone info, etc. to you. No secrets - ever

7. He needs to do whatever it takes to make you feel safe again, and that should include counseling for him with a counselor you approve

There will be others along who can really help you and talk to you about plan A and other things. I know you must feel unimaginale pain. I wish the best for you.

This is one of the hardest situations I can consider.

In my own family, my sister slept with her daughter's husband.


It eventually led to the divorce of the daughter and son-in-law.

Mother and daughter were estranged for a long time, now working on the recovery of their relationship, which is, for lack of better words, strained to say the least.

The daughter is one of four daughters. The other three all took sides. That led to a family pulled apart, with two of these girls vying to stand beside the BS, and one of them actually jumping in to try to win the love of her mom/OW, because this daughter always somehow felt like the odd one out, and this gave her the chance to be "special" to the mom/OW.


My siblings and I, well, we three stepped back and stood with the BS. None of us gave any support to our sister/OW. Not an ounce.

My dad wanted "everyone to get along". My mom issued a scathing judgement of my sister, and stood by the BS. To this day, my mom stands her ground on that.


My sister? Never apologized to the family - but did send a letter to everyone in an attempt to besmirch the son-in-law and make us all believe he "forced" her into the affair. Right. Her own accounting, which she included in the letter, made that accusation laughable! It was like she had an encounter with an alien being who had mind and body control or something. Oh, and plus, she was drunk...and...he started it anyway.


To make a long and ugly story short, the young couple did try to recover the marriage. They went to counseling. BW tried IC and they went to couple's counseling, and the WH also went to counseling on his own. BW could not get the image out of her head.

Family gatherings have been few and far between in the 13 years since then. BW and I have been in the same room with OW twice, with the bulk of the family. I have been to OW's house once. My mom and dad have been to OW's house that one time as well, and OW has visited mom and dad once.

That makes my sister having seen my mom and dad

one time

in thirteen years.

ONE TIME.


one time


and my mom is dying of cancer now.




What a price to pay.






A very high price to pay.

She devastated her relationship with her daughter. Her daughter's marriage. She does not see two of her grandchildren. She does not see her brothers and sisters. She has seen her own parents twice in thirteen years.



My advice?



Walk away from this man.


Save the relationship with your sister. My sister is now 62 years old, and we have only precious little time for her and my mom to recover what devastation she has brought to their relationship. In that time, they have to figure out what reconcilation they must do - and do it. Mom's time is not long, and their bitterness is.

On my mom's death, I know I will not only mourn her loss, but the loss of what my sister would have had in these past years. It has broken my heart to know that she purposely threw it all away, and has continued to do so - when she never had to. And it could all be repaired with a simple "I did the wrong thing" admission.

In all of this mess, somehow, save the relationship with your sister. People are not disposable. Somewhere down the line, remember that you CAN save relationships. You can.

And that it is often worth it.

"My advice?
Walk away from this man."

I second School Bus. He's so not worth it.
You will be the one paying for their sins for the rest of your life if you stay with him. I don't know how old your WH is, but your sister is still young (not that it justifies it)

Your WH had no business hooking up with her. It's beyond depravity and it is not the standard type of A where needs weren't being met. When a spouse sleeps with your sib, you can bet that your spouse has some very deep rooted anger/hatred issues toward you.

It is the most horrible form of emotional torture he or she can unleash on you. It is also a sign that there are some major dysfunctions within your own family unit.

Trust the folks at MB when they say NC is a must between AP's and OW. They aren't kidding. You might get to the place where you can see your sis and not trigger. But you can bet that if your WH and sis end up in each other's presence you will trigger horrifically.

Honestly, your WH doesn't even sound remorseful. He wants you to forget it and he hates to see you cry. That's a cruel jerk who doesn't care about the damage he's done to his wife and his children. Plus he doesn't care about the kids either. He literally has blown up his childrens' maternal side of their family.

There will be baby showers, weddings, graduations, funerals, holidays, birthdays, etc You will be outcast within your own family because of his actions. That, or you will have to eat crow and put on a happy face at the family functions OW is involved with. And what about your parents? If they get sick or pass away, you get to be alone in your grief or in the work of caregiver.

I have a dad with a terminal illness. My H does not go to my parents home (my sis owns a place next door to them). I go out to my parents' place with my crew of kids and do yard work/ maintenance because we do our darnedest to keep NC between my H and sis.

Oh, and I'll spend Thanks Giving with my children and H in my home. I'll take my kids out to my folks home on Fri or Sat to have dessert and share the "holiday". You can rest assured that there is nothing I would have liked more than to go and spend Thanks Giving Day with my H, kids, mom and dying dad. But no, my H's decision to violate his vows put an end to that. And I don't want to leave my H home and take the kids. (and yes, I have left my H at home and taken the kids for some holidays....one a Christmas)

I didn't ever expect to be facing something like this in my M. It is inherently the opposite of what M is about. Spouses are supposed to be together. Not do a dance to keep away from family members because of an A or sexual attraction.

And the situation I deal with is supposed to be only flirting and my H making a pass at my sis. My sis considered hooking up with my H. In the two of them considering such a terrible thing, I consider it done.

You can't imagine the loneliness and resentment that can build up. Even if your WH becomes the perfect spouse, he has irreparably done damage to you and the M by choosing to A with your sis. You can't fully put it to rest and move on because your family has been taken away from you by their selfish choices.

You need to expose this to your family. Hopefully your parents will be supportive of you. But even with their support, this will be most difficult to maneuver through. And reconciliation is impossible without a remorseful, supportive spouse who is willing to figure out his issues and acknowledge the damage done by his actions.

If you can get into counseling, even if just for yourself, please do so.

I hope you find peace through this.

Jewel

I know the last two posters counseled working on your relationship with your sis, along with leaving your husband, but you may want to seriously consider if you want to keep a sister in your life who was callous enough to mess around with your husband, the man who was presumably the love of your life before all this. It was mentioned that your husband had to have some deep-seated anger/hatred issues with you to betray you with your sister, but what about the feelings your sister had? You think she acted out of love towards you?

Whether you reconcile with your husband, or divorce him and marry someone else, you'll always be wary of having your sister around your husband. You always be aware in the back of your mind that she betrayed you this way once, and could do it again. You could never really trust her again. Think about that.

Thank you all for your replies and support. They have been very helpful.

We just returned from an appt with the MC (it's our third since DD-9.10.09). He gave us some advice as to where to go from here, since we are having so much difficulty moving forward.

My husband seemes receptive, but I think it will be hard for me to manage my emotions & thoughts because I just think constantly about the affair, my broken family, etc.. In any case, my H promised to be a better listener without pushing me to just "feel better" right away. I on the other hand, promised to make an effort to really work on our marriage rather than just dwell on what he did to me/family. We'll see how that goes for us.

I really wouldn't want to break-up my M, so I'll try everything before I decide to call it quits - if it comes to that. I really love my husband even though I feel so angry towards him. He says what he did was wrong and that he never wanted to hurt me like this. I try to believe him, but it's terribly hard.

My family knows about the EA. It was in fact with the help of my parents that I confirmed it. My sister has been married for almost 3 years and has a 2-yro daughter. Her husband knows, although I'm pretty sure he doesn't know the extent of their affair because she told him they only kissed. Of course, this is not the case as my H confessed to me they were together since Jan/09. We haven't told anyone outside our immediate family (he told his father)- it just seems so shameful.

NO!

PLEASE don't treat this as something to be hidden.

If you do, they will do it again.

Your family HAS to know EVERYTHING. ALL of them.

And if you don't stop all contact between him and her, for forever, you will spend the rest of your life in misery, and probably end up in a mental institution.

You should be MAD! Not ashamed.

PLEASE don't go down that path.

Eve, I would pick up the phone and call her H TODAY and give him all of the information about the affair. Everyone needs to know about it. Most importantly, your families should never see each other again if you want your marriage to survive. Your H should never see the OW again and she should never see him again. Otherwise, you are looking at an on-again, off again affair for years.

Her H needs to know everything about the affair. This is information about his life which he is entitled.




[/quote]

If they kissed, it's not an EA (emotional affair), it's a PA (physical affair). EAs seem to be hardest for women to get over, and PAs seem to be hardest for men to get over. In general.

Perhaps the following can help your WH understand why you can't just "get over it". It's called "Joseph's Letter" and it gets posted on these boards fairly frequently.




"To Whomever,

"I know you are feeling the pain of guilt and confusion. I understand that you wish all this never happened and that you wish it would just go away. I can even believe that you truly love me and that your indiscretion hurts you emotionally much the same way it hurts me. I understand your apprehension to me discovering little by little, everything that led up to your indiscretion, everything that happened that night, and everything that happened afterwards. I understand. No one wants to have a mistake or misjudgment thrown in his or her face repeatedly. No one wants to be forced to "look" at the thing that caused all their pain over and over again. I can actually see, that through your eyes, you are viewing this whole thing as something that just needs to go away, something that is over, that he/she doesn't mean anything to you, so why is it such a big issue? I can understand you wondering why I torture myself with this continuously, and thinking, doesn't he/she know by now that I love him/her? I can see how you can feel this way and how frustrating it must be. But for the remainder of this letter I'm going to ask you to view my reality through my eyes.

"You were there. There is no detail left out from your point of view. Like a puzzle, you have all the pieces and you are able to reconstruct them and be able to understand the whole picture, the whole message, or the whole meaning. You know exactly what that picture is and what it means to you and if it can effect your life and whether or not it continues to stir your feelings. You have the pieces, the tools, and the knowledge. You can move through your life with 100% of the picture you compiled. If you have any doubts, then at least you're carrying all the information in your mind and you can use it to derive conclusions or answers to your doubts or question. You carry all the "STUFF" to figure out OUR reality. There isn't really any information, or pieces to the puzzle that you don't have.

"Now let's enter my reality. Let's both agree that this affects our lives equally. The outcome no matter what it is will affect us both. Our future and our present circumstances are every bit as important to me as it is to you. So, why then is it okay for me to be left in the dark? Do I not deserve to know as much about the night that nearly destroyed our relationship as you do? Just like you, I am also able to discern the meaning of certain particulars and innuendoes of that night and just like you, I deserve to be given the opportunity to understand what nearly brought our relationship down. To assume that I can move forward and accept everything at face value is unrealistic and unless we stop thinking unrealistically I doubt our lives well ever "feel" complete. You have given me a puzzle. It is a 1000 piece puzzle and 400 random pieces are missing. You expect me to assemble the puzzle without the benefit of looking at the picture on the box. You expect me to be able to discern what I am looking at and to appreciate it in the same context as you. You want me to be as comfortable with what I see in the picture as you are. When I ask if there was a tree in such and such area of the picture you tell me don't worry about it, it's not important. When I ask whether there were any animals in my puzzle you say don't worry about it, it's not important. When I ask if there was a lake in that big empty spot in my puzzle you say, what's the difference, it's not important. Then later when I'm expected to "understand" the picture in my puzzle you fail to understand my disorientation and confusion. You expect me to feel the same way about the picture as you do but deny me the same view as you. When I express this problem you feel compelled to admonish me for not understanding it, for not seeing it the way you see it. You wonder why I can't just accept whatever you chose to describe to me about the picture and then be able to feel the same way you feel about it.

"So, you want me to be okay with everything. You think you deserve to know and I deserve to wonder. You may honestly feel that the whole picture, everything that happened is insignificant because in your heart you know it was a mistake and wish it never happened. But how can I know that? Faith? Because you told me so? Would you have faith if the tables were turned? Don't you understand that I want to believe you completely? But how can I? I can never know what is truly in your mind and heart. I can only observe you actions, and what information I have acquired and slowly, over time rebuild my faith in your feelings. I truly wish it were easier.

"So, there it is, as best as I can put it. That is why I ask questions. That is where my need to know is derived from. And that is why it is unfair for you to think that we can effectively move forward and unfair for you to accuse me of dwelling on the past. My need to know stems from my desire to hold our world together. It doesn't come from jealousy, it doesn't come from spitefulness, and it doesn't come from a desire to make you suffer. It comes from the fact that I love you. Why else would I put myself through this? Wouldn't it be easier for me to walk away? Wouldn't it be easier to consider our relationship a bad mistake in my life and to move on to better horizons? Of course it would, but I can't and the reason I can't is because I love you and that reason in itself makes all the difference in the world."

(end of Joseph's Letter)

Sadly, I understand that our families cannot see each other again.

My H says he has quit all communication with my S, but how can I really be sure? I have to just trust him, but I can't. This is really a tough issue for me bc he swears there is absolutely no contact, but a week after DD I read some of the emails he wrote begging her to keep the "friendship". He knows after reading MB that NC is absulutely necessary and he now maintains they don't keep in touch at all.

In regards to my brother-in-law...well, I'm afraid to tell him and (I know this will sound pathetic) make their situation worse. I wouldn't want them to split up bc it's me who tells him what my S should have said from the beginning. I feel it will also make matters (for my parents) even more tense than they already are. I know it's stupid to think like this, but I really would like my S to have a chance to "come clean" herself and try to R her M on her own. I have told -emailed- her several times to tell him, but I guess she is scared, to say the least.

>I have to just trust him,

Who says you have to just trust him?

Trust is EARNED, not given away like Halloween candy.

There hasn't been enough time for him to EARN your trust back yet.

>I'm afraid to tell him and (I know this will sound pathetic) make their situation worse.

Your telling him will not make their situation worse. SHE did that all by herself. You'd just be informing him ABOUT WHAT'S GOING ON IN HIS LIFE

My experiences reading here has shown that you must expose the PA to OMW, your parents and siblings, WH parents and siblings.

Holidays are coming up. You must not yield to family pressure and allow NC to be broken between OW and WH. Having the family know the truth will get them to understand why there must be NC.