Until you show the same guilt, remorse and sympathy to your wife that you do the OW you are in a fog.

The OW was a willing participant in creating her pain.

Your wife was not.

She was the innocent victim.

All I see is you calling her weak, saying how unhappy you were in the marriage and whining over how horribly you hurt the OW.

Where is the guilt and remorse you feel for your WIFE? You know the lady you vowed to love and cherish? All I've seen is lip-service to her pain...

I do have remorse, it breaks my heart everytime I look into my wifes eyes and I know the pain I see is my doing, I hate myself for what I have done but how do I stop thoughts that come into my head??

I can control what I say, what I do and how I act but these thoughts that come into my head uninvited are out of my control. Believe me I do everything I can to stay busy, we have holidayed together, evenings out, walking, all the things we used to do and for the most of the time i'm ok but this last week has just been so hard to push these thoughts away.

I do show this remorse and guilt to my wife everyday, I'm not putting my wife down, I just need somewhere to offload these thoughts that are taking over my mind.

I am not sticking up for the other woman for the affair, I think I have covered that in other posts, this is about the thoughts in my head.

I have no doubt my wife is ok with the recovery and I think it is going well and I want it to stay that way, this is why I have come here.

Please don't bash me for this I am just trying to be honest.

Words spent agonizing and discussion of OW: 57.


Words spent on your WIFE'S pain: 33.

Until your wife is your focus you will not recover.

The mind is a powerful muscle. One YOU are in control of, not the other way around. The mind can be trained and conditioned. You are feeding your misery by dwelling on thoughts of OW.

She must be eliminated from your thoughts completely. YOU have the power here, not the random thoughts in your mind.

Read through this thread. It explains how the mind and memories work.

Take control of your brain.

Train it to think of your wife, not your OW.

Words of OW:0

Words of Wife: 100%

Thats what you're shooting for.

Here:

You sticking up for the OW.

She was a skank who dropped her panties for another woman's husband.



I'm not bashing you - I'm holding up a mirror to reflect your own thoughts back at you, live and in technicolor.

Why is it you don't like what you see?

Okay, the fact of the matter is, the OW is not your concern. You have to let go of that if you want to have any chance at all of saving your M. You have been married a long time. You have children together. You have a lot invested in this relationship, so you have many good reasons to try to save it. But that isn't going to happen if you spend all of your time thinking about the OW and worrying about how she's doing and feeling guilty over how much you hurt her.

I will repeat, YOU HAVE TO LET GO OF THAT!

The relationship you entered into with the OW was wrong. It never should have happened. You cannot spend your time and energy trying to right the wrongs you did to her. The best thing you can possibly do for her is to let her go and allow her the opportunity to get on with her life. You have nothing to offer her and she will be far better off without you.

What you need to do is put all of that energy into building a strong, happy, mutually-fulfilling marriage with your wife. She is the one that you made promises to. You took vows when you married her, and you've broken those vows, so there is a lot of work to do there. You aren't going to be able to do it if you spend your time belly-aching over the poor OW. I guarantee you, she will be fine.

Have you read any of Dr. Harley's books? I would suggest "Surviving an Affair," "His Needs, Her Needs," and "Fall in Love, Stay in Love." Order them and read them with your wife. Read all of the stuff on this site. Fill out the Emotional Needs questionnaire and learn what your needs are and what your wife's needs are and how you can go about fulfilling them. Spend a minimum of 15 hours (more for now, since your marriage needs a lot of work) of quality one-on-one time alone with your wife every week.

You can overcome these feelings, but you certainly can't do it while sitting around thinking about the OW.

Oh, and stop thinking about this as a choice between your wife and the OW. Whether your marriage survives this or not, you do not have a future with the OW. I believe the statistics show that only 5% of affairages (marriages that started out as affairs) survive. No matter what happens in your marriage, your affair was a relationship that was doomed from the very start.

Something I always do if there are "thoughts" that I do not want to have...such as the OM, or looking at another attractive male.

I literally yell or scream in my head (I know it sounds silly, but I do!) I usually say "I love wheels!" "I miss wheels!" after I scream this in my head, a great memory of my husband will pop up such as, a date, what he did for me the day before, the great S3X we had last night, etc!

And it works! Then the next time I see my husband I have my arms wide and open for a hug and lots of kisses!!

Also compliments help as well

Another thing you can do is through out the day think about 5 great things that your wife has done for you. Even if it's something small, as long as you appreciated it then it counts! It could be....

Cleaning
folding your laundry
Giving you a hug and a kiss before work
Writing a little love not and hiding it in your lunch
etc...

Thank you for this reply, it makes a lot of sense.

I will get the books and I will work on keeping the other woman out of my thoughts, I know that I have no future with the other woman, I knew that the day my wife found out and I saw the pain in her eyes.

As far as the thoughts go, it is very difficult to control fleeting thoughts or images that just pop into your mind, that is true. But you absolutely can control whether or not you choose to dwell on them. When one of these thoughts pop up, don't let your mind focus on it. Go do something else right away - read a book, take a walk with your wife, play a game. Do something, anything, that will keep you from fretting and lamenting over it. It really is that easy. I don't buy into the fact that people cannot control their thoughts. You absolutely decide what it is you are going to allow into your mind and how much time and energy you're going to spend dwelling on it.

You also may want to look at why these thoughts are troubling you now. Has there been some trigger in the last week that might have caused them. Even something as simple as seeing the OW's picture or name somewhere can trigger these thoughts and feelings. NC means eliminating all traces of the OW from your life completely - anything and everything that might remind you of her has to go. Have you done that?

Do "good" people have sex with marrried men????

Your OW had no characterists of a "good" person while schlepping around with YOU......that is a fact....

Still can't wrap your brain around that???

Try this one on for size.....

Imagine your wife doing all the things YOU did with another man........would you think of him as a "bad" person or just some "good" person who made a bad decision???......

As long as you continue to focus on the pain you caused OW, you will NEVER be the "good" husband your WIFE deserves........

Not2fun

Ps.....welcome to MB....call the Coaching Center above

This doesn't ring true based on how foggy you sound.

What steps have you taken to prevent the OW from ever contacting you again? Have you changed your phone # and email address? Have you closed your FB account? Have you gotten rid of any notes/cards/emails/pictures/reminders of OW? If not, you need to show them to your BETRAYED W and then discard of it immediately.

Something is keeping you stuck. You shouldn't be this fixated on OW after 4mos of NC.

I agree with SusieQ. Too foggy. There feels like there is some source of lingering contact delaying withdrawal. Facebook visits? Saved texts or emails? Maybe one of those little checkup texts?

Messedup, Wow, I'm only on page 2 and...this is helping me A LOT. I sure don't want to be as deep in this infamous "fog" as you are...this coming from someone in the midst of finding her way out. This whole site has been an incredible wake up call to me!

One foggy person to another, I don't even have sympathy for you worrying *that much* about the OW. The OW knew EXACTLY what she was doing. You're confusing me so much I'm starting to not like the OM in my story.

I'm sorry, you can't sympathize or empathize with her. She has parents?, friends?, siblings?, other available men who can do that for her.

Please read the following link and take steps to protect your M and your BW from any further pain and suffering.
Extraordinary Precautions

You CAN fall back in love with your BW ~ but not if you don't close the door shut tight on OW. THe above will help you do this.

When I read this I see an attempted marital recovery that includes a nudge-nudge, wink-wink back-up plan just in case. That will never work.

All contact with OW by her, you or your BW must end. All evidence of OW in your life must be purged with extreme prejudice.

Today would be a good start.

Messed-up,

Everything writer1 told you is spot-on.

When I first showed up on these boards a little over 11 months ago, it was 7 months after my affair ended. In a lot of respects, my wife and I have navigated the whole business of recovery about as well as anyone who was rooting for our marriage could've hoped.

But I had issues with paralyzing guilt over how I'd mistreated my wife during my affair, and I also felt & expressed regret over my OW's situation (unlike my marriage, hers did not survive). And I got beat up pretty good for that, and as I hung around the site, it didn't take me too long to understand why I got beat up.

The time to worry about OW's feelings was when you were making the decisions to go each successive step into an affair you knew was wrong. That time is past. Your wife deserves 100% of your free time, 100% of your brain-space.

Have you both read "Surviving an Affair"? This book may well have saved my marriage, and my wife & I consider ourselves very lucky that our marriage counselor put us onto it. If you've not read it, but you've got time to brood about the OW, then you're not properly making use of time God has granted you. Are you & your wife getting your 15 hours per week of undivided attention to one another?

Look: there were reasons that you put a ring on your wife's finger, and that she accepted it. OW was in your life for a season, and she made you feel admired & special & all that, and it may have felt like love & it may have felt right, but it was based on lies. The person she was then -- a person who'd interpose on your marriage, absolutely heedless & irrespective of your wife's feelings & the potential pain to your wife -- was not any kind of "good person" at that time. She was a grown-up who made her very own, very rotten & reprehensible choices (as you did), and she's grown-up enough to face the consequences on her own. When you get a little further past this, if you've got your eyes open, you'll begin to see this a little more clearly. Only 4 months into no-contact is still very early-on.

Hang around here. Ask questions. Discipline your thoughts away from OW by busying yourself with the right things & stepping up the focus on your wife. Remember, you gave her that ring for a reason.

I am not trying to defend the OW here, but I thought all sins were equal. Good people commit sins everyday. They are still good people. They may make mistakes, they may do some bad things, but that doesn't mean they are deemed bad for eternity. Saying that the OW had NO characteristics of a good person while in that affair...do you lose all aspects of your good characteristics with EVERY sin you commit? Nobody is perfect, good people say and do bad things.

Tom! Tell me sincerely that if your very own beloved wife were sleeping with another man, tell me sincerely that you would view him as a good person who happened to fall into error. with your wife. would you want to invite him over for coffee and talk about it? "sorry you had such a hard time resisting, man. happens to the best of us, buddy!"

Tom...not every debate needs a devil's advocate. this is elementary.

No, I would not want to invite them over for coffee or dinner and just talk. What I was saying is that it doesn't make them an evil person. It does not strip away all of the other possible good qualities that they have. Good people make mistakes, good people do wrong things. I am not saying that all people are that good, some people truly are bad/evil people. But good people do some wrong things. We all have our faults.
No, I would not want to sit down and just chat like they were a friend and I may not view them as the best person, but I would also have a biased view against them. I would probably only be focusing on that one thing they did. A person is made up of more than one action that they partake in. Other people would know them for different things.
Don't try and make it out like I would be fine hanging out and being friends with them...NO, don't put those words in my mouth.