?

How much time a week are you spending together ALONE with your husband? If you follow the program as outlined in Surviving an Affair, you can recover your marriage. Here is a good article about what it will take to recover from an affair:



No, he didn't. If he cared about you at all, he would not have had an affair with you. What he did with you is an aggregious sign of disrespect and lack of caring. He spit on you.

Is the OM married and if so, does his wife know what you have done?

I'm pretty sure that this is typical, actually, not different.

Good luck to you in trying to do the right thing!

I never been in your place but I have seen many waywards feeling this way. Specially on early recovery, withdrawal phase.

First NC is not only physical but mind also. You need to cease this. How ?. Thought stopping !. Right now you have no control over thinking of OM. It still comes. However you could have control of "playing the movie of fantasy" ... do not continue thinking how wonderful with OM in the past and do not add fantasy of your own. Stop and shift your focus on something else ... go and turn on tv, count backward from 1000 by 7, count all the changes that BH has made for you. anything that will not engage that thought.

Time will heal but it depend on what you do with it !.

-rh-

There must be total NC between the families.

Does the OMW know?

NoOne,
I was a cheater. My wife & I have worked very hard to pull our marriage out of the mess I created. I have some comments for you, and some questions as well, and hope to see your answers:

--How did to come to be that you had a best friend of the opposite sex, who was not your husband?
--How did you come to be acquainted with the other man?
--How & why did it come into the open, and how & why did it end?
--Besides you & your husband and the other couple, who else knows about your affair?

Not unique or different at all. There's this common misperception out there (among folks who don't know better - a misperception that I used to have, too) that most folks who have affairs start out from the get-go looking to get laid on the side, Tiger Woods-style. But that's usually NOT how it starts. It's more insidious. We work or do recreational things or volunteer side-by-side, with people for whom, at first acquaintance, we would never imagine ourselves breaking our marriage vows; but somewhere along the line, we allow something inside ourselves to shift, to allow ourselves to get our emotional needs filled, and then in surprisingly little time, it feels a lot like love, doesn't it? I've been there & done that. If you've done much reading of the Harley materials on this site, you'd appreciate that the emotional connections that we allow to develop are what paves the way in almost every instance for physical affairs. Your case isn't unique by any measure. It was a very common, garden-variety affair, and was not special, more poignant or more noble in any respect. Don't let yourself be deluded on that point.

Nope. He may have thought he loved you. The ego-boost of having someone confide in you, the thrill of having someone confess an attraction, the mere act of sharing laughs with someone who provides secret affirmations to you, combine to produce chemical rushes in the brain that are the same as people get from addictive drugs, no joke. It feels like "falling in love," so much so that it can be impossible to distinguish. But that's not "loving" -- that's merely getting a craving satisfied. There is a very real "addiction" aspect to an affair. That's why people speak about being in "withdrawal." You are in deep withdrawal. An alcoholic who allows himself to wallow in thoughts of a nice, stiff glass of bourbon all the time is going to have a harder time beating withdrawal than an alcoholic who disciplines his thoughts. It's the same way with an affair partner. There is a poster on this board who goes by "Mark1952" who has posted some thoughts on "managing memories and dealing with triggers." Look it up. It's not easy reading, but you need to see it -- if you are serious about saving your marriage; if you want to re-learn to love, and not just lurch from craving to craving.

-How old are you?
--How long married?
--When your husband gave you that ring and you said "Yes," did you AT THAT TIME believe you loved him?

You're not going to heal if you continue to wallow in this sort of indulgent, self-pity party. You think YOU hurt? How do you think your husband feels? Do you think your pain is worse than his? When I had my affair, I stuck a knife in my wife's heart, and it hurt her all the worse because I was the last person on earth who she would've expected to treat her that way. When I was having my affair, even though I hid it well, I lied to her, deceived her, and cheated her of energy and time and attention that I should've been giving to her. I didn't do ANY of that FOR her, I did it FOR ME, and I mentally rationalized it to myself with the oh-so-convenient, self-serving "justification" that I was doing it as an act of love, to "comfort" a poor, love-lorn woman whose own marriage was on the rocks. (Well, NO KIDDING! She was screwing other men, such as ME! No WONDER her marriage was on the rocks!) At the core, my affair was NOT about love -- it was about me and the OW making terribly selfish decisions, and mutually satisfying some very selfish wants of ours. It was selfishness, which I mistook for a kind of love. Every day since, up to & including today, I have been searingly conscious that I had an affair, but now -- 14 months after it ended -- I don't think of it as anything like love. Far from it.

You are going to have to get to this realization. You are going to have to confront the depths of your selfishness. Once you do that, you'll be able to realize that your OM was just as selfish as you in every way, and in ways that your husband was not. Then you'll be seeing clearly. Until then, you are, as they say here, "in the fog." Some people come to this realization more slowly than others. I didn't see things straight all at once either... I felt damned rotten about my affair from the get-go, but it took me quite a few months to gradually appreciate, in increments, my selfishness, and to appreciate, in retrospect, my OW's selfishness. Once you come to see this, you will understand that the OM didn't get info the affair for YOU either. He did it for his OWN, quite selfish reasons, you may be quite assured. In fact, I could've been your other man. MY OW thought I was the greatest. You should've heard her talk about how I "understood" her, how I "listened" to her, how "wonderful" I was. Yeah, except that a "wonderful" guy wouldn't have done the things I did to my wife, or to my OW's husband, in the process of carrying on my affair.

Pining for the OM at 6 months past the affair doesn't mean you're star-crossed soulmates whose unique & special love was torn apart by the cruel strictures of social convention. It doesn't mean that you can't climb out of this and feel great about your marriage. It just means you haven't been working hard enough at fixing yourself.

Enough of my preaching.
How can you get there, to these realizations? How can you reconnect with your husband?
--Have you read the book "Surviving An Affair"?
--Have you & your husband read it together?
--Have you done the Emotional Needs questionnaire?
--If not, why not?
--Or if so, what have you & your H learned about each other?

NOK


Well you may be sure, but I know better. See, I am not in love with "That guy," you are. And you are a partner in the adultery, so you want to gloss over things. So I know what is his mind as a guy better than you do.

Let me explain why I know.

Men who love a women do not cheat on them or cheat with them.

Men who have honor, integrity, ethics and all that stuff that real women want in a man (as opposed to fake women), don't cheat, lie or put up with that garbage.

And the only thing the two of you in common is that you are lying to each other and to yourselves. Don't ask me for the really tough description of what you are doing, that was the mild version.

You have been lurking and haven't read the basic concepts?

Hey, in spite of my negative comments, the fact is you are here and that means you are ready to grow up, own your consequences and try for a better life, or not, your choice.

Larry

Well, what did she expect, flowers? Sometimes they come back after they lick their wounds and discover consequences. Maybe I need a class on empathy. Ya' think?

Larry

Pep:

Wish I had thought to save her post. It was a classic fog ego trip. And you're right, waving the stupid sign she was carrying at BW who hang out here was just rotten. Reminded me of a visit to TOW a couple of years ago. Yeatch.

Larry

y'all are so mean....

Bite your tongue.

Jeez, and I took her seriously & thought she wanted help & shot 40 minutes on a Friday evening for that one... we poked her self-absorbtion a little and she took down her post & blew away like a busted balloon...

That must have been a tough pill to swallow. I guess believing it's true love makes all the actions of betrayal so much easier to justify. Sucks when that bubble gets burst and you have to take a long hard look at yourself.