This will probaly be a little long, but it is complicated.
I have been married for 17 years and have 3 beautiful children.

Last year he deployed to Iraq, he came home for leave and was acting really different. I thought it was because he would only be home for a couple of weeks and didn't want to go through the sadness again of leaving.

He came home for good the Sunday before Thanksgiving. He wasn't being loving (in the bedroom). I asked him what was wrong and he said he was just trying to get use to being back home, but I knew there was more to it. We began building a new home and went to start picking items out for it. He was being quite and confessed to have had an affair the whole time he was in Iraq and that he didn't think he loved me anymore.
I asked him to leave but within a week he wanted to work things out, we even had a marriage counseling session. The conselor then went on vacation so our next appointment isn't until January 14.

I told him that he had to totally have no contact with the other woman and he assured me he had. I checked his cell phone and emails, there has not been any contact since he has been home, which has only been 3 weeks. He told me a couple of nights ago that he has no desire to be with me and is not in love with me anymore. He left today to go stay at his mom's.

I asked him if he wanted a divorce and he couldn't answer me. I asked him if he still would go to counseling and he said he didn't know. I am so hurt. I do not know what to do. I love him with all my heart and have been praying since I found out about the affair for God to restore our marriage.

Any advice will be great!

Sorry you're here.

Others will be along shortly.

Do you know who the other person is? Was she someone in his unit?

I'm sorry what you're going through. I'm kinda new here too, but in a very similar situation. My husband had a Facebook affair with a woman in his hometown while he was deployed. He didn't tell me I just found out recently. He came home for his last leave for two days and then went to his hometown for a wedding and to see his family supposedly; I believe this is when it became a physical affair. The night I was supposed to pick him up at the aitport he left a message on my phone saying he missed the flight. The next day another message saying he wasn't coming home at all, he wasn't going back to Iraq and that we were getting divorced. Didn't see him or hear from him. I got the papers a month later.

So, you aren't alone. I'm still trying, it is possible and this is the right place to be if you want to save your marriage

Was it someone there or someone stateside via the net? Can you find out? If so you can expose it. The pro's will be here soon.

LH, spouses don't leave their homes to "sort things out." I'd lay money on the fact that's he's still involved in the affair. Do you have any information on who the OW was? Your first task is to find out as much as you can. Ask him as many questions as you can, but refrain from being angry, judgmental or disrespectful. He will likely try to avoid answering any questions and will become angry and argumentative.

This is one sign that he's still actively involved. If not physically, he's still got attachment to the OW. Until you have enough information to open a can of WhupAzz on the A, you need to snoop, sneak, spy and otherwise become Sherlock Holmes. At the same time, you need to present your very best loving face to your WH. This is what's known as Plan A. You can find out more about Plan A & Plan B using this link.

At the same time, read everything you can using the links to the right of this page. And try to order the book "Surviving an Affair" by Dr. Willard Harley, the owner of this site. You might find the book at your local book store.

LH, I'm sorry you're here. But here is where you need to be if you want to save your marriage. I'm fond of saying this is the worst club in the world with some of the best people in it! Hang in there, and the veterans will soon come and cover you with their directions and advice.

A word of note: You are going to question some of these suggestions and protest others. DO NOT DO SO. The principles these people are using are TRIED AND PROVEN. The emotional turmoil of this situation causes everyone involved to think poorly -- you included. So, let the calmer heads of experience guide you. DO WHAT THEY SAY and you have a good chance of saving your marriage. FAIL, and you are simply work on Plan D[ivorce].

Good luck. And save your strength. You're going to need it.

The other woman was in his unit, but lives in another state. We live in TX and she is in NC. I check his email all the time and his cell phone and there has not been any contact. I am not stupid, I know he can have another email account and can call her from a payphone. He says he doesn't love her, that the affair was just an outcome of not loving me. When we went to counseling the one time the counselor said to not talk about the affair, but I did... a lot. I think that is what pushed him back to thinking he doesn't want me. I tried being loving, show affection, do everything with him, but things only got worse.

LH,

I am sorry this is happening to you. But this is the best place to be for your situation. There is really good advice here.

First, read everything on this site. Also, get ahold of Dr. Harley's books, "Surviving an Affair", "His Needs, Her Needs" and "Lovebusters". They are invaluable resources.

Is the OW married? If so, expose the affair to her H. If not, find out her family members and expose it to them. Also, expose the A to the command. Your H and OW cannot continue to serve in the same unit.

Don't believe anything your h tells you right now. People in affairs are all liars.

You said your H went to his mothers. Do you know this for sure? Does she live close by you?


AM

LH, I'm going to play amateur psychologist for a moment.

Your H was out of your sight, your arms, your caring and your attention for the duration of his deployment. Thus, he found himself getting his emotional needs (EN) met by OW. Not that it matters, but it sounds like your H was a bit lacking in the maturity department, as being deployed is a known separation factor. Yet he went and did not take any precautions to avoid getting involved with someone else.

So you have to ask yourself, is this truly the man you married? The man who swore above all to honor you, be faithful and true to you? Who then does an about-face to your marriage and children? What happened? You had 17 years together. Did you ever have any other signs he was not happy in the marriage?

I maintain that his behavior still smacks of a wayturd "in the fog." The "it's not about the OP, I just don't love you any more (and never did)" is right out of the wayturd's script book (who writes this crap, anyway?). It's pure out and out bullshizzle. Right now, I'd advise you to NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING HE SAYS. When he speaks, just imagine Charlie Brown's teacher (in the comic strip): Waaa, waaaa, waaa, waaaa...

You need to get yourself armed and dangerous. That's what this site and these people will help you do. LH, it's the weekend and many of the veterans don't hover here then. Please read as much as you can from the links to the right and wait for them to come to your aid. If there's anything that can be done to save your marriage, these folks will help you do it! Stay strong. Stay committed.

LH,

Fred is exactly right. Deployments place a huge stress on military marriages for the reasons he stated. A few months ago, there were some really good threads on the military forum. Unfortunately, most were wiped out last Oct when the website crashed.

AM

Yes, my husband explained how stressful it is and how he'd have crazy thoughts; but would always come back to thinking of us. I think the trouble started when his working buddies started telling him that all spouses at home cheat when the other deploys. He had already been so worried about that because his 2nd wife (of less than 3 months) had cheated when he was deployed to the Gulf War. That's when I think he started looking.

So what do I do now? I want to call him so bad, but I know I shouldn't. I know I need to give him time, but it is so hard. My children are so angry at him (all 3 are teenagers) and I want to ask him if hurting his children is worth all this.

Sorry that this is long winded, but I need some help getting over this situation before it eats me up and ruins all that I have.
I have been with my wife for 8 � years and married just 9 months. We got together whilst I was divorcing and she was just out of a long term relationship. She was 23 at the time and I was 9 years her senior with two kids aged 10 & 7. Cutting a story short, I got custody of the children for just over half the time and after massive amounts of indecision (took me six months to commit to my now wife) we moved in together and she became step mum (fantastically) to my kids. We then had two of our own now aged 3 & 6 and are considering adding to our numbers.
For the vast majority of our time together I have battled depression combined with too much booze and in reality treated her like [censored]. She comes from a very broken home and wished for security, but even though we were engaged and lived together I never truly committed and used to end the relationship on a fairly regular basis and even though she is truly beautiful made her feel like dirt. We got over a close family suicide (my father) soon after we got together , births, step kids, moving several times and career changes. She was and always has been truly wonderful as a Mum and Step Mum as well as a loyal and forgiving partner. I have called her names beyond what anyone should tolerate and could not have made her feel more insecure if I tried. No joint bank account only my name on the house etc etc. On top of that I used to holiday alone a lot and spent a month in rehab did very little with her and the kids and rarely involved myself in her side of the family.
I appreciate that I sound like the worst human being ever, but I truly loved and still love her and know that it was my own insecurities that lead to the whole control issue. I was unbearably controlling and mistrusting and was pretty intolerable for a great deal of our time together. She stuck in there though and stayed quiet such was her love for me.
So at a family party last Christmas (which, as usual, I did not attend) I rang her to ask her not to stay the night but this time she said that she would like to have a drink and not get the kids out of bed and bring them home when they were comfortable where they were. She never or rarely drank alcohol and in very small quantity if she did. I did my usual and reacted angrily, sent her a text or two basically calling her names and finishing (again) the relationship telling her that her bags were packed. She got extremely drunk in the company of people more her age and at the end of the night, apparently completely drunk, kissed a man who had shown her kindness all night as she had been devastated by my texts and call. He, it appears got a little over excited as all she wanted was just a kiss to comfort her and make her feel �loved� as she put it. He whipped his clothes off and basically like an excited puppy tried his hardest to have sex with her. She said no and managed to keep her pyjamas on (they had all got changed earlier in the evening as it was a family home, nothing strange in that) for the majority of the time but after trying to resist he managed to force her pyjamas down enough to enter her. At this point se pushed him off, he came back for more but she didn�t want it and thought the only way out was to give him a BJ as she finds it non giving of herself and unemotional. Seems odd, but I know this to be true. They were disturbed by a dog barking within seconds of the BJ starting, she then made excuses and went to bed immediately. Because he was a member of her extended step family she stayed in contact in a very minor way to ensure that there was no ill feeling or that anyone would have found out as it would have caused major embarrasement.
When she came back the next day from the party I immediately picked up on something being wrong. She stated that she had had enough of the insecurity of our relationship and was leaving me. I persuaded her to stay and give me a chance and she agreed, but was unsure whether it would change her mind. At this point I had no idea of the events of the party, but kind of suspected that there was more to the whole thing and questioned her to death even stating that I had tapped the phones at one point. She eventually after a month of questioning admitted to kissing this guy but stated that no more had happened and that she wanted it left there and was committed to repairing us and did not want to admit this fact as we had done such good work on our relationship and she felt at the time, during and after that it was a terrible drunken mistake that she regretted with all of her being. I forgave her as I had in effect thrown her into that arms of another, but asked her to take a lie detector test so that I knew I could trust her and continue the good work we were putting in. She reluctantly agreed to do it but the night before confessed to the above and another 3 minute misdemeanour within the first 6 months of our relationship. The first one did not involve anything other than kissing and she stopped it after a couple of minutes as it all felt wrong but said that it was at a time when I was still making my mind up about being with her and a guy at work showed her much nicer attention that I did and she gave in to his persuasive nature. They worked together for the next 6 years and nothing even happened again.
She passed the lie detector stating that she didn�t want sex at the Christmas party or any sort of relationship and basically all had now been told about everything that had happened from an infidelity point of view.
I questioned the two guys involved and the first confirmed exactly to the letter what my wife stated and the Christmas party guy basically said that she didn�t want anything else but he got a bit carried away although she didn�t stop him trying. His story differed slightly but only I would imagine because he was drunk too and therefore their recollections and/or interpretations would bound to be slightly different. He though he was onto a good thing, she was trying to think of a way out, so she says.

So, one would think at this point that we could draw a line under all of this and get on with life as she had been an angel for all but 5-10 minutes of our relationship, confessed eventually and passed a lie detector test to show me that she wanted to be truthful and regain my trust. On top of that she was still committed to working on our relationship and asked me to finally marry her, which I did.

However, I can�t seem to let the whole thing lie. I still question her and try to exaggerate what happened. I still try to get her to confess to more and have asked her over and over again to relive the events of the night in question and her story has never wavered. Yet I still continue to ask. She married me, she stayed with me, she tells me every day that she adores me and that the whole thing when it is brought up makes her feel physically sick and she is truly ashamed and that I was and always will be the only one for her, she was just lonely and wanted some affection as I was not giving it to her.

My question really is why can I not make this stop. I adore her, she adores me, we have a great life together and much happiness and the work we have done on our relationship is terrific over the last year and in many respects I cant imagine a better marriage, but this still keeps cropping up a year later. Why can I not see it for what it was, take the hit and get on with things. It is so destructive. She says often during these moments that the butterfly that comes back is yours forever, but I still feel like it could happen again and check her every move. I understand and appreciate my part in all of this. I know that had I not been an idiot none of this would have ever happened because this is not in her nature normally.
Is there anyone out there with some advice before I ruin everything that we have built by this constant reminding of bad times. Why can I not trust her ?

LH,

Have you started reading the information on this site? Have you found the books yet? Another good book is Dr. James Dobson's "Love Must be Tough".

Have you confirmed that your H is really at his mother's house? Does his mother know that he had an A while deployed?

My advice at this point is to get really smart about what you are dealing with here. Don't call him right now. Waywards are netouriously selfish and I doubt it calling him and asking him whether he cares if his children are mad at him will do anything other than to make you really mad at him.

AM

Be careful of using the phrase "you went looking" on a wayward. The wayward-script response is "It just happened; I didn't go looking for it" or something along those lines.

They didn't have in place good extraordinary precautions against an affair. They didn't spend enough time with their spouse. They didn't learn to meet their spouse's emotional needs or how to have their own met by their spouse. They didn't know how to protect their spouse from their own love busters, or communicate effectively when their spouse love-busted them. And most of all, they weren't willing to be honest with their spouse.

So of course in that kind of climate it "just happened".


Remember always that waywards re-write the marital history. You can have a good, loving marriage, and they will remember it as an abusive hell-hole. This is, apparently, a chapter in the wayward playbook built into the lizard-brain part of the human experience: make your prior experiences seem worse than they were in order to justify your current behavior.

Don't buy into it. Yes, you deserve 50% of the blame for the condition of the marriage PRIOR to the affair. Your spouse deserves 100% of the blame for the damage to the marriage as a RESULT of the affair.


Step 1: Go buy a copy of "Surviving An Affair" by Dr. Willard Harley and Dr. Jennifer Harley Chalmers. Seriously. Read it cover-to-cover. You will then understand why affairs start, why they continue, how they die, and most importantly how they SHOULD die if you want the best chance of recovering your marriage.

This kind of knowledge won't be easily gained from the forum. You're going to have "vets" chiming in who will clue you in as to what you should do, but the information won't be presented in a clear order, and you're going to have trouble distinguishing the good advice from the bad advice.

So buy "SAA". It is your playbook and your Bible for how to get through this affair with the best hope of recovering your marriage.

That said, SAA does not include one vital step that Dr. Harley is currently revising it to include: EXPOSURE of the affair. You're going to hear a lot about this from a lot of people as pretty much your only tool to actively work to bust up your husband's affair.

Here's why we think he hasn't actually stopped: your husband is not showing signs of having been wayward and currently going straight. He's acting like a practicing, active wayward who has a means of communication with his affair partner which you've not yet ferreted out. It's normal for every wayward to say that the affair is over every time you discover it.

Right now, you need information. You need to know if and how it is still going on.

You also need to come to a firm understanding of what Dr. Harley's "Plan A" is. Learn to meet his Emotional Needs while avoiding Love Busters of your own. Get some practice in stating the truth of the hurt his affair causes while still showing him that you can meet his needs and avoid hurting him.

So go buy a copy of SAA. As soon as you can. Right now is best.


If he is an active wayward, marriage counseling will typically make things worse, not better. The affair must end before marriage counseling can help. Most affairs die a natural death despite any efforts by the betrayed spouse to end it, and if you've done a good Plan A, you've laid the groundwork for your best chances of recovery.


Rest assured that, without "Extraordinary Precautions" in place to prevent contact, he's probably lying to you. Don't believe for a second that he has any incentive to tell you the complete truth about this. He's protecting himself right now.


If, in fact, he has not had contact with the other woman, then he's in "withdrawal" right now and his behavior is understandable in that context. Dr. Harley recommends spouses spend time together when a spouse is in withdrawal; even though the wayward who is withdrawing won't allow the betrayed spouse to deposit many Love Units in their Love Bank, it's still worthwhile to stay together regardless.


You need a plan for what YOU will do. Not for what HE will do, since you have no control over anybody else... and never have had such. But a plan for YOU, to make YOU a better spouse, to correct YOUR 50% of the difficulty your marriage was in.

Go buy Surviving An Affair and write down your plan. It won't be perfect, but you'll know what to do. And you can keep revising your plan as time goes on, so by the time you're in recovery, it looks perfect

Best of luck. Go start making a plan to win your husband back. You knew how to land him in the first place; remind him of the woman he married and why.

Well, I did call him and it didn't go well. He is staying at his mom's and his family do know about the A.

I asked him if the seperation would let to reconcilition or an end to our marriage. He said it is the end, he just doesn't love me. I asked him again about the OW, he said he hasn't talked to her but he does still has feelings for her. I said that if he has feelings for her how can he ever love me again and he said he can't.

Do I give up?? I have read Surviving an Affair and asked him to read it as well, but he didn't. I tried so hard these past 3 weeks not to talk about the affair or getting upset..but I did. He is the love of my life and I am at a lost at what to do....will he ever love me again? What do I do??

@bingo: You should start your own thread with this same information so that we can best help you. Burying your info in someone else's thread won't achieve the results you desire.

I am feeling the same way. I'm sorry I know it hurts so much.

The OW was meeting his emotional needs, that's why he has feelings for her.

Have you done plan A? I know it's very hard when he isn't there. Do you know his most important emotional neeeds?

I'm pretty new here and lost myself, but the Carrot and Stick thread explains Plan A very well. I'll bump the thread for you so you can read it.

I'm sure the experts will be on here soon with better advice.

lh:

Is your H in the service? Or nat. guard (no 2x4's guarders)

I am sure the military has quite a bit of info about deployment A's. You may be able to locate some information about this online too.

There are active duty (or married to) BS and WS here. I hope they can add from personal experience. I am so sorry this is happening to your family.

My dad was a Master Sargent and later a recruiter. Ma said he took boys and made them men. I imagine/remember he had a lot of counsel quite a few people re this.

MB is great, and I am not saying that you can not find all the help you need here, (and in the MB books)-

You sound like you have a good head on your shoulders. Carry on.

The UCMJ Article 134 covers adultery thoroughly. The maximum penalty is "Dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 1 year." Reporting the adultery to superiors is often the best exposure available for betrayed military spouses. The typical penalty is much lighter. Usually, the maximum penalty is reserved for those who persist despite warnings from superior officers, do so in ways that bring dishonor to the Service, and have higher rank or larger responsibilities that put them into the public eye.

Dr. Harley credits the armed forces and the airline industry for most of his income:


Leaving the military, if possible, may be the best decision your husband could possibly make to save your marriage.

He is in the reserves and is retiring from the Army in March.

I did try Plan A when he was home and I felt him pulling away everyday. This week was 3 weeks since he has had any contact with the OW. A friend of mine said that he is probaly missing her and that she was like an addiction. That convincing himself that he doesn't love me is his out to reconnect with her. Like I said earlier she lives in another state, so them seeing each other face to face is almost impossible.

I told him today that I don't beleive anything he says, that everything he has said up until now has been a lie. He still had a few things that she gave him and I asked him everyday if he had sent them back. His response was always "I hadn't thought about it" which I know now was bull. He was trying to hang on to her anyway he could.

I got really mad earlier and called him. I told him since HE is the one that wants out that HE needs to file for D. To think about the things he wants. He didn't take very much with him to his mom's, so I told him to come and get the rest of his clothes and to leave the keys to house. He really did not like that. As far as the items he wants, he kept saying we will talk about it later and I said our lawyers can talk, he didn't like that either.

I have decided to move to Plan B. I want my marriage to work out, that is my prayer. However I need to do what is best for myself and my children. I do want him to come home, but not until he really works to figure out what he really wants.

I always thought we had a good marriage, I was blind sided about his A and then telling me he doesn't love me anymore. I tried telling him that there has been times in our marriage that I felt the same way, but would never put our family through anything like this. I worked through my feelings and things always got better. He won't even give us a chance to try and work things out. I do know that is because he still has affection for the OW.

I thank you all for all the advice, especially from Fred. I am hanging on to hope and taking things one day at a time. My children have seen my last pity party, I am picking myself up and moving forward for them.