How do you get over the fact that they had sex with someone else? I have such a hard time getting my mind out of it. He had one discression before this one and it did not involve sex. He has a sex addiction problem (past it had been mostly porn), and it lead to him having a sexual affair one weekend on a business trip. He says he felt pressured and that the sex was bad. But I have a hard time with that...I don't think I should ask more details about the sex because then the images will be in my mind forever but it is hard not wondering. How can I consider being sexual again with him without her in my mind?

I can't really speak from the PA experience, but my WW has had a few EA's where there was phone sex, cyber sex and "erotic pictures" sent. The pictures and the thoughts of her doing these things with another man bothered me for a while each time. I found that by focusing on our relationship, over time the thoughts of her sharing these things with OM went away with time. Every now and then a trigger will bring it back and for a while I get upset, but it usually passes.

In other words it will take time. Just focus on repairing your marriage and your relationship. Try to focus on the present and the future not the past and in time these thoughts/images will become less frequent.

This subject is the least of my worries right now.

I can count on my fingers the number of times we had sex since the birth of our youngest son (now 5). First her lack of desire was due to postpartum, then it was tied up with lack of self esteem and weight problems. On the blue moons when it would happen, there would be very little (no) participation from her. That was more hurtful to me than not doing it so I quit trying. Haven't had sex with her for probably a year.

You can imagine my hurt when I found out about a physical affair two weeks ago (going on for 6 months).

Can you give us a little more info? How long have you been married? Kids? What makes you think he has a sex addiction? Has he been tested for STD's? Please do not consider having sex with him until you can verify that both of you are clean.

We have been married 9 years, we have a 2 year old son and I am pregnant with our second child (due June 20th). I knew before we got married he struggled with porn but in the years that passed, it became a coping tool. He was exposed to porn around 11 and started using it to cope with emotions. When we were going through a rough patch, he had sex IM and oral sex with another women. No STDs...but he went to counseling and started attending SA meetings. His counselor was surprised it did not go further.

Over time we repaired our relationship and things were going very well. He did stop going to group and time went on. During that time he had some business challenges and working from home was a bad place for him. An opportunity to talk online with someone he knew from his past happened. She said she always had a crush on him and conversations went from there. While out of town, he met with her while tired and drunk. To were going to share a room (two beds) but when they were in bed, she climbed in and things progressed from there. There is more to the story but either way, they had sex twice. A condom was used and STD test taken by him. He told me about it and we had not had sex since the trip because I had a cold. Looking back he does see that a series of small very bad choices led up to this. Things with the OW have ended and there is no more contact.

He is going to counseling, SA meetings (and he agreed to never stop), we plan on starting couple counseling and I am planning on going to counseling too (I believe I need it). We share a bed but only to sleep.

It is still new...this all happened last month (from contact to sex to confession). I had felt sex has always been mine and no one else had been there, we were virgins on our wedding day. But I feel hurt that was taken from me. I have a hard time ever imagining going there again because she has been there. I know everything is new but we were in a good place in our marriage. Though talking about it, my head can see he never learned to cope with his emotions (his family did not allow any room for emotions) and he used porn to cope with good and bad emotions. Over time, for fear of people's response to the real him, he hid it more and more and lied to cover up who he was.

My head understands one thing but my heart is so hurt right now. It is hard to see recovery right now. Sometimes I just don't want to think about it, to imagine it never happened. I know that is bad. I try to figure out how we can get to a place where I can trust him again with my body and I have a hard time with that.

Wow...this is allot...does this help?