AnnaBelle -

Thank you for being respectful. I deserve any "lashings" and I will take all of the advice to heart.

Butterfly,
How much time are you spending w/ your H on a daily basis?
Have you read about "undivided attention"?
Why don't you report back re: what you think this might mean for you, in practical terms.

Ummm...I'm going to try my best not to be rude or sarcastic here, so bare with me.

Seriously??? Good lord, he lied to his wife and children, he stabbed them and your BH in the back, you lied to HIM and for some godforsaken reason you think he was a pillar of honesty during your A with him?!?!? Wake up, girl!

Butterfly, Go to the top of the page and click on Basic Concepts. Read all of it but pay specaila ttention to what Dr Harley says about radical honesty. It was dishonesty that got you into this mess, don't continue it. With holding truth is just as bad as lying.

God's Blessings,

Say

There will be some who disagree about this on this site but I will tell you why it's a GRAVE, and I do mean GRAVE mistake to tell your poor BH that you are "missing" the OM:

For one thing, you just blew a hole through your H's heart with a grenade, he is lying on the floor bleeding to death and you wanto to add to it by telling him you miss the person who handed you the grenade??? Bad choice, my friend.

For another thing, IF you do this, you will regret it with all of your being in time. Once you have said those words, you cannot take them back, no matter how badly they continue to haunt your BH.

And lastly...you are missing a FANTASY. A "make-believe" friend...OM was not "real"...he was a shell of a person pretending to be someone he is not...just as you were. I know you don't believe this now but you will in time, trust me.

The next time you feel the need to share with your BH that you are "missing" the OM, think about this: What is there to miss about a wolf in sheep's clothing?

say, if you are talking about her telling her poor distressed BH that she is missing the OM, then you are taking what Dr. H says about RH way out of context.

He does make a distinction between Radical Honesty and Brutal Honesty...this would definitely constitute Brutal Honesty; add to that the fact that it is all based on a big fat lie and you have a disaster waiting to happen if she tells her BH this.

Why not just rip open his wound again and poor some rubbing alcohol in it?

Hi Butterfly, welcome to Marriage Builders.

One of the best ways to recover your marriage is to create romantic love in your marriage. In addictions, a successful recovery is always based on replacing the addiction with something productive; in this case it would be a great marriage marriage. That is the key.

The fastest way to create a romantic marriage with your husband is to spend 20+ hours together weekly. I would refer you to this thread and ask that you and your H read it. Importance of Undivided Attention

I agree with marriedforever about being careful what you tell your H right now. Honesty should be approached in a way that does not harm your marriage, which is on life support right now. He is lying on the floor bleeding to death and it won't help to kick him in the stomach.

I also don't think you should even SAY you miss the OM. Saying it gives it more credence. It is like a recovering alcoholic pining away for booze. It doesn't help to entertain those negative thoughts. If an alcoholic talks like that at AA meetings, they tell him to shut up and LISTEN. I won't tell you to shut up, but I would suggest that you not entertain negative, unproductive thoughts. Rather, focus on recovery.

Can you bring your husband here so we can help him?

Butterfly ~

Here is a great post by Mr. Wondering on the concept of "affairing down". Please read it and apply it to your situation:


I could not possibly say it any better and it's incredibly, supremely TRUE, and across the board. There are no exceptions.

The sooner you accept and believe this, the sooner you can get to the much more important work of helping your mortally wounded BH.

You don't miss the OM. What you miss (read: "are currently still addicted to") are the dopamine & oxytocin highs that you got from your infatuation and from making the choice to allow this OM to meet key emotional needs of yours that you should've allowed your H to meet. It's not quite 'telling the truth' if your head's so fogged-up that you don't know what you're talking about.

Butterfly, when you feel down, you might want to tell your H something like "I am feeling down about the affair."

I completely agree with MF ~ if my H had told me while he was still high off of his affair "I miss OW", I would not have been able to take it. Not at all.

Thanks for your candid answers. You are doing the right things even though you probably don't "feel" it right now. Good on ending the affair. Good on NC and the NC letter. Good on full confession. Good on taking personal responsibility without scapegoating or excuses. All GOOD.

It IS a withdrawal. It's no different than an addict withdrawing from his/her drug-of-choice. Affair ARE ADDICTIONS. They are fueled by the exact same centers of the brain and neuro-chemicals (phenylethlyamine [PEA] being the primary) that give the addict a �high� (I am a medical doctor, btw, this isn�t pie-in-the-sky stuff here). In fact, Dr. Harley developed his �treatment� program by noticing the similarities in addictive behavior between drug users and marital-waywards. The first step is to remove the offending substance (the OM in this case). A painful but gradually-subsiding withdrawal period always follows. You are just beginning that phase�you�ve only been in NC for a week�and that is why you are so �emotionally chaotic� and pining-away-in-pain-for-OM. You are still addicted and just starting to withdraw. FIGHT THROUGH IT AND DO NOT BACKSLIDE! You can do it.


Excellent. You are way ahead of most waywards (most of them are still in denial, refuse NC, and rebel against scrutiny).


Good. Answer all questions your BH may ask with complete openness and honesty. It rebuilds trust and you should view anything he asks of you as an opportunity to prove yourself and help him regain trust and respect for you. Very good.


Excellent�your emotions (for the OM) WILL FADE with NC.


Excellent. You are off to a very good start. There are a few universally true concepts that most people don�t know about �love� and most WSs don�t want to hear about when they are in the throes of the addiction:

1. �Falling in love� is not love. It is infatuation and an emotional high caused by brain chemistry.
2. �Falling in love� with an affair-partner is far different that FIL with (�in the right way�) an eventual marital partner. The latter does not require secrecy, deception, betrayal, familial destruction, or selling out one�s standards and values. It is not based on pure fantasy, idealization, vulnerability, or a �search for happiness�. Affair-partners are not the wonderful people they seem during the affair�they are almost always users, manipulators, opportunists, and pathologic liars without any character to speak of.
3. True LOVE is a set of attitudes and actions�it is VOLUNTARY.
4. Real love is therefore a CHOICE, not a feeling.
5. Choosing positive attitudes and positive actions will inevitably result in positive feelings. Yes, by loving your husband you plant the seeds to �fall back in love� with him. Then your feelings are re-aligned with your values, standards, principles, family, and with the person of loyalty and character that you originally married.

To be quite clear, the kind of love that Marriage Builders creates is the FEELING of love. A passionate, romantic feeling AKIN to infatuation, except that it LASTS. THAT is the goal and the purpose of Marriage Builders, to fall in love; romantic, passionate LOVE. This is not like kissing your brother, in other words.

Romantic Love: Is it a Realistic Goal for Marriage Therapy?

Please understand that romantic affairs almost always start as a "friendship" with a neighbor, co-worker, someone from church or school or the gym or the dog-park, etc, etc. It's often very "innocent" for quite a while and gradually beomes inappropriate before going frankly-sexual.

Any "friendship" you initiate or maintain via secrecy or deception from your spouse is AN EMOTIONAL AFFAIR at the very least.

Any "friendship" in which you have ever said or done anything that you would not have said or done with your spouse standing right there, is AN EMOTIONAL AFFAIR at the very least.

I would go so far as to say (Policy of Extraordinary Precautions) that no married person should ever have any one-on-one, opposite-sex �friends� at all. Co-workers should be �strictly business� only in conversation. Socialize as couples only. The only friends of the opposite-sex a married person should ever maintain are A) his/her spouse and B) his/her relatives.

Mel,

I completely understand and agree. I'm trying to point out how/why the "in love feeling" is far different in the above situation than it is in the affair-scenario.

The WS is actively confusing and conflating the two. The affair "head-over-heels" addiction is never entered into the same way nor is it based on a realistic appraisal of who the OP truly is or what the relationship between the affair-partners actually represents.

Believe it. Trust me, I know, I'm a man, and a very sexual one at that. When I'm hanging out with my FWW's friends, the ones I am not attracted to, I'm fine with just saying, "Hi, how are you doing." Her more attractive ones, I have a hard time avoiding chatting them up. When a guy is attracted to a woman, he'll want to talk to her. A smooth guy will know how to start normal, "harmless" conversation. He'll rationalize is as just being nice, but deep down, he gets a rush talking to that woman and having her interested in what he has to say feeds his ego. He thinks, "see, this woman thinks I'm interesting even though my wife doesn't seem to show any interst." He'll keep talking to her and sharing more, but he'll rationalize it as just conversation, even though deep down he is fantasizing about having sex with that woman. He'll keep doing this and will eventually start developing feelings for the woman. He'll still talk to the woman that he knows he has feelings for because he rationalizes it's okay because the woman doesn't have any feelings for him. He'll keep meeting the woman's ENs for conversations until she starts having feelings for him. He'll start sensing she has feelings for him and will start turning up the flirting a notch until she eventually takes the bait.

That's how it happens. And it all started because the man was attracted to the woman and chose to ignore marital boundaries for the rush of pursuing this woman. Trust me, this was OM's mindset while he pursued you. This "friendship" was completely fake and based entirely on his attraction to you. If he were not attracted to you, this "friendship" would have never occurred. This didn't just "happen." OM deliberately cultivated this relationship and your lack of proper boundaries allowed it to escalate. It's an ugly truth isn't it?

We haven't been spending enough time together - obviously.

I think we are still trying to figure out how to spend the undivided attention time that we need. We both filled our lives with things to keep us busy so that we would feel fulfillment. Now we need to remove some of those activities or place them on the backburner to allow for ample time together.

I'm active in terms of physical training (running, biking, etc) and I think that I will need to limit some of those activiites or do some of them with my husband. I do believe that I will have to make some decisions to place the importance on my marriage rather than these activities. We also have some similar interests though that we can do while talking that might help.

* We do both enjoy biking (relaxing pace) so we can still talk.
* We are instituting a date night once a week without our daughter for us to just be together.
* We like to play board games (think Scrabble-like) that allow us to talk, be together, and yet not have other company.
* We still have to come up with other ideas but we are going to brainstorm together on those and try to come up with some.

I understand what you are all saying about how much this could hurt my husband. I can realize and admit that what I'm missing is not a reality, but a fantasy and something I wish were there.

My husband and I are growing together through this and I believe he is already very "in tune" with this emotional chaos that I'm in right now. I am trying to focus on understanding his emotions and thoughts instead of focusing on my own right now.

SDCW, I agree that the CIRCUMSTANCES are different, but the feelings are not. The feeling of romantic love that MB speaks of IS a head over heels "infatuation." But like you said, it is based on a realistic appraisal and is built to last, whereas an affair is NOT. I just want to make sure that she understands she can experience this passion in her MARRIAGE, but in her marriage, it will last. It has a future, unlike a sleazy affair.

We are working on this one. Thank you.


I understand and I am working on saying/actioning the positive rather than giving any credence to the negative, wrong thoughts or emotions.


Just curious on this....I've been advised her not to say things to him that I have typed in here. But now several of you have suggested I bring him here. How does that work? Bringing him here is saying those things I've been told not to say. Not bringing him here isn't fair to him because I believe that we could both learn alot from this forum and site articles. Do you see the dilemma here?