Please help me. Are there any resources out there available to help the partner that cheated? When I search for help, I find so many things directed towards the partner who was cheated on, but nothing specifically for those of us who messed up.

The guilt is eating me alive. My husband was aware of my affair from the beginning but he didn't want me to move out because he wanted to make our marriage work. I came to my senses and I have completely ended my relationship with the other man.

I can't live with the guilt. It's been almost 6 months now and I feel worse by the day. I can't believe I hurt my husband like that. I can't get over what an evil person I am to have done something like that. I think of suicide every waking hour of every day.

It's so wrong. He forgives me for hurting him so bad. He offers me comfort and says he wants me to be happy again. It is SO WRONG that he is trying to offer me comfort after what I did to him!!!!!

Is there any book or anything I can read that will help? I can't go on like this. I can't quit crying and my stomach hurts continually. I want to wake up from this nightmare but I know I won't. I just need some encouragement or something.

Please go see a doctor TODAY and get on anti-depressants. They take 3-6 weeks to begin working so you really cannot wait another minute.

I am sorry you are hurting so badly...your best bet to start feeling better is to achieve "just compensation" for your affair ~ read up on the MB Basic Concepts HERE and begin implementing them into your M.

It will probably also help if you sit down and write out your list of EPs (Extraordinary Precautions) to give to your H. These are concrete things you can do to prove to both yourself and your H that you are going to take ACTION in order to make up for the pain you have caused.

((((Allie)))

Hi Allie! Welcome to Marriage Builders. Dr Harley addresses this issue here:

here

Allie - welcome to Marriage Builders. This place is both for the betrayed and the betrayer. There are quite a few women here who were just like you and had affairs. They have managed to use Marriage Builders to rebuild their marriages.

This IS the place for you.

Some preliminary info:
How old are you and your H?
How long married?
Children?
Who was your affair partner? How did you meet?
How long did the affair go on?
Has No Contact been established? Do you see the OM at all?
Was the OM married? If so, does his wife know?

Now - as to guilt. It is right that you feel guilty because you have done something very wrong. However, you should not be punished for this for the rest of your life - by you or your husband. What you need is a PLAN OF ACTION to help you repair the damage that has been caused and rebuild your marriage. That is where Marriage Builders comes in.

I would recommend you get the books Surviving an Affair, Love Busters and His Needs, Her Needs. They will guide you through the steps of overcoming the affair and provide you with tools to ensure it never happens again.

A little bit on Just Compensation - which I think can help you:

You can rebuild this marriage but it will take time, love, and patience. You will need:

1. Complete Openness and Honesty with your husband along with full Transparency - no secrets.
2. Complete No Contact with your affair partner

Can you bring your husband here, as well? This place could be a big help to BOTH of you.

Readthis

Some basic info on dealing with an affair.

Welcome, I'm glad you are here. Please stick around.

I would also add that guilt and shame is a good thing and suggest you embrace it rather than run from it. It is simply your conscience's warning signal that you are in violation. If you didn't feel guilt, you would likely be a sociopath.

Your guilt is a GIFT from your conscience.

That guilt serves several good purposes: it serves as a signal to stop the bad behavior, helps us avoid such bad behavior in the future and propels us into action to right that wrong.

For example, if I steal money from the bank, my sense of guilt drives me to pay the money back to restore my honor. I view guilt as a GIFT, not something to run away from.

We don't have medical insurance and I feel guilty spending his money after what I did to him. Thanks for the link...I'm going to check it out right away. And thanks for caring. I have never talked about this to anybody and I'm so scared of nasty remarks even though I deserve it...I just can't handle it right now.

Thank you. I appreciate it so much.

Allie -

Welcome to Marriage Builders. You have come to the right place to restore your marriage. There are other posters here that were the wayward spouse that you can read and learn from. And you shouldn't get too many nasty remarks considering you feel repentant and are willing to work on correcting your mistakes. Listen to everything the vets tell you and follow their advice to the "T". The MB program is life-changing if you follow the steps.

I'm glad you are here!

aBetterMe

Thank you so much. I'll be getting those books. To answer your questions:
How old are you and your H?
I am 30; he is 34
How long married?
10 years in June
Children?
3; ages 6, 5, and 1.5
Who was your affair partner? How did you meet?
A guy I met online. How embarrassing to admit.
How long did the affair go on?
Approx. 6 months; we "saw" each other 3 times
Has No Contact been established? Do you see the OM at all?
We had no contact for over 3 months; I haven't seen him for 5 months. He text me the other day...I guess I was hoping he would just go away. I told him I'm not doing that anymore.
Was the OM married? If so, does his wife know?
He was single.

Thanks for your input. Much appreciated right now!!

Thank you. I'm glad I found this...I hope it will help. Something's got to give soon.

Allie: You need to send the OM a formal NC (No Contact) letter. Tell him that you are devoted to working on your marriage and that you never want to have any contact with him again for the rest of your life. Have your H approve the letter before you send it. There are examples of NC letter on this site.

You are in all likelihood feeling this way because you have not yet established extraordinary precautions (such as eliminating all contact with the OM). Every time you have contact (even seeing his picture or his name will do it) it triggers your guilt all over again. You will never be able to heal yourself or your M until you remove the OM from your life completely. Block him on your phone, email, whatever. Get a new number or a new email if you have to. If you met on Facebook or some other social networking site, get rid of your account altogether. Give your H all of your passwords and become an open book.

You can get through this. This site can help you find a way.

That makes so much sense. Things have been much worse(emotionally) since his text the other day. I will definitely do the letter...I'm willing to do ANYTHING to help repair the damage I have done. It was naive to think that it would just go away...I had lost his phone number and we haven't been Facebook friends for months and haven't emailed. There has been no contact of any form since May and to me, it was over. I'm ready to do anything to ensure that it truly is over.

Yes - a No Contact letter is essential.

Also - change your numbers and email addys. Make it impossible for him to get a hold of you.

Every time he contacts you your recovery is set back to the beginning.

A doctor may have samples he can give you to get you started...I doubt your H would mind you spending money if it would help both of you out tremendously.

Hi Allie and welcome,

I am a FWW, and what I have learned that helped me not feel this way are..

Setting new boundaries
Setting new EP's
Letting my husband know where I am at 24 hours a day
Apologizing to his and my family (although I decided to do a face to face apology to his family when ever I see them again.)
Blocking all of the OM's #'s, email, fb, yes there where more then 1 OM
Meeting my husbands EN's to the T
Reading self help books, one I just ordered is called "Healing the Pain body" excited to read that one

Sometimes I do feel horrible on what I did to wheels, but then I feel grateful that he found this site and gave me a second chance. I love him with all my heart and now that I have new boundaries and EP's I will NEVER EVER do that again.

I agree on getting some anti-depression drugs.

Good luck.

You are in the best place!

This is crucial, do this today.

Both my FWH and I felt so much better after he did this.

Hi Allie, and welcome. You are in a great place to help you deal with your infidelity. As a previous poster suggested, I second the advice about having your betrayed husband (BH) post on here.

You are getting great input, especially regarding no contact (NC) and extraordinary precautions (EPs). Those will both help alleviate some of the guilt over what you have done. However, if there are things you are still doing, NC and EPs will not get rid of the guilt.

Have you been entirely open and honest with your BH about the details of your infidelity? Who, what, where - whatever your BH needs to know. Have you omitted any info that you think may be relevant to him or his healing? Is he operating under false information at all in his knowledge of what happened? (Edited to add: while he is ultimately the only one who can determine what information he needs or does not need, you are the only one in possession of all of the details - so if there is some area he hasn't even considered, e.g., you will need to bring it up with him in a way that allows him to know or not know.)

Recovery - both personal and marital - starts with an entirely clean slate. If there is anything you are holding back, any feelings you are harboring, details you glossed over, information you blatantly lied about, you most certainly do NOT have a clean slate. What you have is one of those chalkboards that has been erased over but not washed in ages, and you are about to write a recovery over a mess of grayish, foggy-looking detritus that will muddle the recovery message and make the work that much more difficult.

And, eventually, when you do finally realize the need for a clean slate, you will have to erase and wash not only the ages of accumulated chalkdust away, but also whatever you had been working on as your recovery that was established on false pretenses and a dirty chalkboard to begin with.

In other words, you start from scratch.

(Hrm, I can picture that analogy really nicely in my head, but not sure if it came out so well. I hope you get what I'm saying.)

Anyway, all this to say: NC, EPs, and completely open and honest.

Another thing:

Be very careful of putting your own guilt before your BH and his feelings. It is incredibly easy to continue the selfishness that characterizes infidelity by focusing only on how bad you feel, how horrible this all is, how life will never be the same, how it's so terrible, how it's just so unfair... You get the idea.

And you know what? Yes, it is all of those things. But that is secondary to the unwilling victims of your betrayal.

One thing that might help, as I believe MelodyLane suggested, is using your guilt as motivation. Channel those feelings into doing things for others, your BH first and foremost. Meet his ENs above and beyond his expectations. Evaluate what led to the affair and come up with a plan to address it. What happened, and what can you do to prevent anything similar from happening again?

Turn your feelings into actions. Show your remorse, show your guilt, with loving actions.

Several have questioned whether I have told him everything.....YES. Nothing was ever hidden. He knew the whole time. I have answered every question he has asked. The ONLY contact I have had with the other guy was his text last week, and I cut that off and told him no more. I plan to send him an email soon cutting off all contact whatsoever; block him from email and phone; etc.

It is incredibly difficult to give a clear picture here because I am not going to tell my side of the story. Possibly some of you are picturing a wayward wife and a guileless, hurting husband. So be it. It does seem that I am being incredibly selfish and focusing only on how I feel.....and I don't argue that I am a selfish person. I wouldn't have had the affair otherwise.

HOWEVER...let me just say that the guilt I feel is triggered when I see his pain. When I let myself feel how much I betrayed him. He doesn't talk to me about it much. I ask him, often, how he is doing. He doesn't say much. He feels like he deserved me to cheat on him because of what he did. We are both consumed with our individual guilt.

Our issues go way WAY beyond what started a year ago. We desperately need help and I'm at a loss to know how 2 people who are so horrible at communication can ever make it. We want to make it; we love each other. We just completely suck at expressing ourselves. I feel completely hopeless right now.