To ask or allude to the hope of being forgiven is a selfish thought.
Ponder this one for a bit.

You are asking for it to be easier for you to see them.
You are thinking of your uncomfortableness, your awkwardness, your feelings of shame in their presence.

Now ponder how they are feeling ...... which one really counts in this situation?

Here again, the concern is how can it be easier for you.

My thinking is, how will they ever be able to look you in the eye?

Although the A took place years ago, that doesn't mean that your selfish thinking ended when the A did.
The core of your thinking is still there.

Keep reading and posting, it takes time to understand how you think, and how to get that fixed.

You can't know anything about the family's response. Let them dictate that to you. All you can do is be contrite and then follow their lead.

My 2 cents worth:

Bliss did a good job with the edit, I totally agree.

Vit said something important. It takes time to get a mental make over. Work at it.

Larry

mbliss,

This part that you changed to 'I ask for your forgiveness for this terrible wrong ....',
makes me quiver.
Maybe it's my own take on forgiveness, IDK since I still struggle with forgiving my own FWS.

This crisis is still new to this family, I can only assume that they are in shock and disbelief, let's throw anger in there too.
This damage will affect this family forever and possibly the next generation.
I don't believe that forgiveness should be on their plate right now, that's a big order to fill.

Had my WH asked for forgiveness so early in this process of healing, I likely would have clobbered him.
My reaction would have been from the raw hurt and anger.
I would have seen this as 'it's all about you .... again'.

Just like a BS should not forgive based on words from the FWS, but on actions, I think the family should be given the
same opportunity.

What do you think???

(I'm heading outside now, I'll be back later)

It does sound self-serving at first glance, I'll agree on that. I guess I look at forgiveness as a way of healing for the family.

How about this: "I hope in time that you will see my remorse through my actions and find it within yourselves to forgive this terrible decision that I made."

mbliss---GREAT job!!

Larry,

mbliss has done an excellent job on the edit. I'd only add something at the end about asking for their prayers & support.

One more thing----

BEFORE your counseling appointment,,be SURE to email the counseling center with a brief summary of your situation.. maybe even copy & paste your first post on this thread. If they know your past & the current problem prior to the call, it'll save precious expensive phone time!!

mbliss, I understand completely what you mean by healing through forgiveness and I get where you were heading with the change in wording.

Again I'm projecting my feelings into this by removing the forgiveness and replacing it with Nerlycrzy's suggestion, which I think is a good one.

Forgiveness is such a personal issue, who knows where the family stands on that.

With either version ..... it gives H6 and his BW some base of an apology to work from.

btw, mbliss your editing of the letter was really good, and thank you for considering my POV!


H6, I hope that you can see how the whole revamped letter, moves the focus from you, to the victims..... as it should be.

I want Do you "want" to apologize, or do you actually apologize? to apologize for having an affair. What I did was completley wrong and there is no excuse for what I have done. I apologize for MY affair. What I did was commpletely wrong, and there is no excues for what I have done.
I am totally committed to BW and working to repair our marriage. perfect I know that I have hurt BW so deeply and this will take time. I will tell you she is the most precious woman in the world and someone that I am truly blessed to have in my life. You might want to add something in here about your plans - exactly how you plan to bring about the recovery of the marriage. Tell them here that you have scheduled your therapy to begin, and something else you are doing. Whatever you write, be specific about at least two things you are doing RIGHT NOW to fix the marriage, because it will show current actions. It lends credence to your apology.
I am so sorry for the pain that I have caused you and the pain that will this will be for your family. Offer to answer any questions they have OPENLY AND HONESTLY, if they feel that it will help them in healing. Tell them that you are finished with living in secrecy.
I know that my affair is my deepest regret of my life and lieing to BW is my second. I promise you that I will never hurt BW ever again in my life. Add to this - tell them that you also understand that you can never completely make up for what you have done to her. Because the truth is, you can't.
I do hope with time that you will be able to look at me with forgiveness the next time you see me. perfect


You have some good bones to a letter here. Tweak it a little and send it.

I wanted to give you a little advice. I've been talking to your wife some.


She asked me about you. I've looked at your first post, and read the thread here.


What I have gleaned from the story of you and your wife's posts as well is that there is now distance between the two of you.

The distance is the result of your reluctance to tell your wife the truth - the whole truth - when she needed to hear it.


What I can see is that you are protective in nature.

That is hurting you. Delta needs something from you that requires you to drop that part of you. Drop your armor - the armor you wear for yourself, and the armor you use to defend Delta. It is in the interest of her own well-being that she needs you to tell her the most intimate part of what happened between you and her sister.

You are seeing this as something you need to hold onto, as it will be far to hurtful for Delta to hear, and it also embarrasses you, because it is your greatest failing.

You need to trust that Delta can see you as a broken man, still love you, and desire a return to the marriage. Every one of us here at MB has been on either one side of this situation or the other.

Once you were able to break away from this affair, you completely saw it for what it was, and you found yourself completely understanding that what you said and felt with the SIL was not what you thought it was. You had a sense of intimacy with her that turned out to be - fake - for lack of a better word. You only saw that later, and when you looked back at it you realized that you had betrayed your wife not only in emotion and sex, but you had also told things to SIL that were not true about your wife.

You had lied. To your wife, about your wife, to SIL, and to yourself. This indulgence, this affair, had dirtied your soul.


And telling your wife would be an exposure of yourself that would be devastating to you in way that might be more than just "knowing about the affair". It would be exposing a side of yourself that even YOU haven't forgiven YOURSELF for.

How, then, could your wife forgive you for it? - You have to trust that she will, that it can and will happen one day. She may be angry right now - but anger subsides and reconciliation can take place.


What you need to understand is that your wife needs to be inside your head. She needs to understand, to feel, to "hear" what you thought - about SIL, about yourself, about Delta - in order to try to grasp what happened in her world. Delta is trying to put her world back together. Only, the affair happened IN YOUR WORLD.

The answers lie in your ability to openly respond to Delta's questions, and allow yourself to trust her to reach a point where she has all the information she needs to make a decision. You have to make the world safe for Delta to feel that she has open access to the full truth - no matter how painful - and that you will willingly open yourself up wherever she needs to get that truth.

Allow Delta full access. This is the one time that your idea of protecting her means that you have NO ARMOR.

THAT is her protection. It seems counter-intuitive, but it is the best advice I can give you.


Schoolbus

Thanks for the advice. I have written the apology letter and my W has approved and we have sent the NC and apology letter today. It certainly feels good to be in such a different place with understanding how to protect my W and M because of MB. Thanks for all of the comments.

Thank you all so much for reviewing, editing, correcting and continuing to teach me. I especially appreciate your help with letting me know that it would be wrong to ask anything of my W family at this time. I am really learning that right now it really is up to me and my actions, not words, to begin the healing process.

Your advice is so dead on. Over the past few days I have truly come to realize what this A has meant to me and how it has affected my W.
I am not sure if I have hit bottom yet, but I think I may be getting there. Having my legs taken out from me and being on my knees has been a great start to understanding how this A affected me, as I never did understand it, I simply buried it in my life. As these emotions and feeling have come out I really have started to understand this process.
Wow, do I wish I had MB and the caring people behind it to help me earlier.
Your comments about opening up and allowing my W to get inside my head is exactly what I need to do. We did talk tonight and I am so relieved to have her help through this process.
Thanks for your truthful guidance. I really am looking forward to continuing to share my innermost feeling with my W.
Opening up to my wife and letting her see me in that place has been so helpful.

4 months after d-day and right before d-day#2, I thought my WH had hit bottom, I think he believed that was his bottom too.
Word of caution ..... keep trying to understand, and when you finally understand, don't forget it and bury it. If this has been a habit that you
are used to, it will be easy for you to revert back to that.

Take care of your BW, protect her with all you have within you, and then some.

Good luck in your own journey and that of your M.

mbliss and SB ... thanks for the tidbits on forgiveness, slowly I'm moving to the right lane.

HLFH,

The one thing that drove me crazy with my husband is what I called the "trickled effect".

He would tell me something ONLY if I asked the very specific question in the very exact way using the very exact words in the very exact question to get the very exact answer.

I wanted to kill him. (not in the literal sense, mind you)


I had to think of the question I wanted to ask as though I was an attorney cross-examining a criminal, and ask using the broadest terms possible!

For example, if I wanted to know about kissing or a specific type of kissing, I either had to already know the answer, or consider anything that I might never even dream of and wrap a question around anything humanly possible:

"Was there EVER, at any time in the human existence of mankind, a point in time when YOUR PHYSICAL BEING, that being your PHYSICAL BODY, specifically the ORAL CAVITY, including what we might call the lips, tongue, teeth, the swallowing mechanism, the tissue surrounding this ENTIRE area, the skin and musculature included, TOUCH (BEING DEFINED AS......"

You get the idea.


He got angry. He asked why I was acting that way, and asking the questions with this type of question.

I told him that this was the result of the trickle effect, and his avoidance of the questions - and his PROTECTING THE OTHER WOMAN.


He never thought of the issue of his failure to tell me the details as his PROTECTING THE OTHER WOMAN.

That is exactly what I thought of it as.


He said that he thought the details were a way to protect me from things too ugly and horrifying for his own mind to deal with, let alone polluting my heart with more of his filth and devastation.


I told him that it was protecting OW.


We made progress on that.

What you need to understand is that every detail that your spouse needs from you

and you fail to give willingly and openly


is something that you continue to share - as a secret and a bond with the OW.

If you have anything left of that secret and that bond with the OW, it will serve only as an ember in that fire that will ultimately burn your marriage to the ground.


Stomp out everything - make sure that if you feel even the smallest thing that you think Delta should know, might need to know, might want to know

tell her

do not "wait until later" or "until the timing is right" or "until you figure out a way to tell her".

Tell her now.

Because the delay does not work in your favor.


The trickle effect will kill your marriage.


SB

Thank you for the advice. Your posts have been so helpful in me being able to share specific details about my infidelity with my W. Over the last couple of days we have had many conversations about what the OW meant to me and what I was thinking and feeling. My W has wanted specific details about the A and we will continue to discuss this and the details of it.
One of my struggles with this is the way that I dealt with it 9 years ago. This was my darkest hour and I never ever went through any healing for this. I did bury it so deep, that many of the details, ie amount of phone calls, what the discussions were about, were they about negative things about my wife, etc., I just can not be specific in those details. One thing I can be sure of is that my W does know that my memory is not the best, this is not an excuse just trying to be honest about what my memory really is.
I am definitly sharing the details that I remember with her and will continue to do so. A big difference in this for me now is that I want to heal and I realize through MB that the only healing is through complete and absolute truth and trust. I want to heal our M and I so desperately seek to make my W and our M a safe, trustworthy and respectful place for her.
I am working through so many things in my life and with support from my W, I feel that we are on the right path.
Thank you MB.

That is good advice about the details. I will share with my W. I am making some good progress, albeit little steps, they feel good to do. I have completed and sent the apology letters to my W's family and great friends and have finished a draft of the apology letter to my children - What hard letters to write and send! My W has approved of the apology letter, Thanks to all of you at MB for your great advice!
Needless to say I would not be where I am in understanding without you. I start my coaching next week and am excited to begin the road.
And oh, how I have cried with my W. Wow, what a blessing to do that!

I know one of the struggles that my W and I will have is her doubt about me telling the truth. I know that I have caused all of the doubt in her mind. She fully trusted me and I have destroyed that.

I am curious if you have some good suggestions, books, articles or any type of building blocks for me to work on that will help us with this.

I do know that it, of course, will take time and I am not trying ot rush anything, but I would like to follow a good path and not wander aimlessly on my own.

The conversation between my W and I have been great. She has been able to share some of the Love Busters that I do. I do so desperately desire to work through our issues.