I have been married for 7 years and I have had an affair with a man that I met one night and had an instant connection with. I cannot, hard as I try, get the other man out of my head. My husband knows of the affair and we have been counseling for 5 weeks, but I cannot shake it. We had an instant connection and I felt feelings for him like I have never had for anyone. My husband and I have never had anything in common and have lived separate lives since the day we got married. What do I do? I feel like my in my heart the relationship between my husband and I is not right and that we arent meant to be together and that the OM came into my life for a reason. My husband and I have 2 children together.

Well, the OM did come into your life for a reason. To get some free nookie. That is all. Any man who does a married woman has utterly disrespected and degraded her. I am sorry you were degraded so shamefully.

Your marriage with your husband can be right if you end all contact with the OM and use this program to create a romantic, passionate marriage.

Is the OM married? If so, does his wife know you were shagging her husband? Who all knows about your affair? Do your kids what you have done?

Did you end ALL CONTACT with this loser?

You can make your marriage work. If you have nothing in common find things that you both enjoy (the recreational inventory). Even though things aren't going well for me and my marriage. I have found activities that we both do together that we both enjoy.

About the separate lives things, the MB program will solve that.

Make sure you end contact with the other man and figure out why it happened. Help your husband heal from the wound that us WS's inflict on our unsuspecting, wonderful spouse.

We have a special name for this story you just told. Many men and women tell the same story for some time until they, too, learn the special name.

That name is bull crap.

Start your reading here;

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5024_qa.html

And continue here;

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5059_qa.html


The only thing that was "special" about the disgusting behavior which you exhibited with a man that was not your husband, is that you gave this man more energy than you gave your marriage.

And don't fool yourself, it was disgusting because YOU HAVE A HUSBAND.

You got married for a reason, strugglingaz. You didn't just bump into your husband in a grocery store and stop at a church on the way out to the parking lot. Don't rewrite history.

In short, what you do is, you stop living separate lives. You start spending significant time together giving one another your undivided attention. (You can read about "undivided attention" on this site -- do a search for the phrase.) It's huge for a marriage, and its huge for recovering a marriage from an affair. As I can tell you from personal experience.

Please know that you are going to get beat up on this site. Try to ignore the snide remarks until you've read up enough to see some of the wisdom behind some of it all.

No one here is going to give you an easy "out" by telling you it's OK to ditch your marriage. If that's what you're seeking, that's not what MarriageBuilders is about.

What it's about is learning to be in love, or back in love, with your spouse, in a way that is better than you had before the affair. If you're up for that, then stick around & ask questions & have a thick skin, but I'm here to tell you that it can work out, IF you're willing to put in the effort.

....had an instant connection with. I cannot get the other man out of my head. I cannot shake it. We had an instant connection and I felt feelings for him like I have never had for anyone. I feel like my in my heart the relationship between my husband and I is not right and that we aren't meant to be together and that the OM came into my life for a reason.

Okay, then, after reading your post several times, I am still confused about why you spent any time typing it - you didn't actually lay it out. I figure you did so in order either to

• request assistance from the affair-attack-dogs on this site to end it, and try to repair your marriage
• brag about it, harvest "drama" from it, but not end it

If it's the second, you should probably bail out of here immediately. The folks here can smell out a phony in about three postings - and then it gets UGLY.

If it's the first, give us proof of your sincerity. Write a letter, detailing EVERYTHING in plain language(not "inappropriate relationship", but "extramarital affair", etc), and make clear that your goal is to NEVER do this again, asking for help by the reader to keep you on the righteous path, make copies, and distribute them to your parents, siblings, girlfriends, co-workers, and HIS wife, family, and friends.

There, that would take about, oh, a day. Then you can work on trying to heal your husband's wounds, the ones YOU, supposedly his partner-for-life, inflicted.

Get back to us Monday, and tell us how it went.

Here�s what�s in your future if you don�t end contact with the OM and proceed down this course:

Your children will be subjected to massive selfishness on your part. Don�t kid yourself. Adultery is a betrayal of a family, not of a spouse. You will have effectively cheated on your kids as well. Don�t tell yourself the standard lie, �My kids will want me to be happy, therefore they will be happy if I�m happy.�

Not true. My wife left me when my daughter was 3 and my sons were one. They have openly expressed, even in front of my current wife, whom they love, that they would rather have all of us together.

You will not be friends with your ex. Dispel this Hollywood myth out of your head. It�s not going to happen and if it does happen, it will be after many, many, many years.

How do you get rid of these feelings? You end all contact with the OM for life.

This will put you in withdrawal and over time you�ll see the insanity of what you�re doing.

You can�t have an instant contact with someone based on one night. What you have right now is not love. It�s flat out lust. You don�t know this man. You have an impression of him, but that�s it. It isn�t the truth.

So it�s time to grow up, act like a mom, and put your kids first. YOU will be the cause of the destruction of their family, and it is YOU that they will blame once they grow up and have the maturity to know the truth. It will all be the result of your selfish actions.

AND

I would advise your H, if he was on this forum, to divorce you on the grounds of adultery and seek sole physical and legal custody of your kids and fight you tooth and nail for custody, child support, and marital assets.

Just so you know, 95% of affairs never make it to marriage. Of those that do, 70% end up divorced in the first 5 years.

They are horrible, horrible relationships, because the traits that made the affair possible, deceit, dishonesty and thoughtlessness destroy the "affairage." We have several that show up here every year because one of the partners is having an affair. When you marry a cheater, they tend to cheat. When you marry someone who has no respect for marriage, they have no respect for marriage.

Dr Harley speaks here about the disaster of "affairages" here. Your affair is doomed.

I would love to cut and paste what you wrote here and hand it to my WW to read.

She needs to hear this.

Thanks.

"Instant connection," huh???

I thought my POSOM - an old HS boyfriend - was my "soulmate." That we were "connected." Puh-leeze. He was after one thing - the same thing your OM was after, coincidentally - to get laid.

You want to know what my life is like now? My H left me. I spend weekends alone in a huge empty house. Our daughters don't get to see their daddy every day. I miss curling up against my H every night. I miss his cooking. I miss his smile. My H sometimes can't even stand to look at me because of what I did. And I live with the knowledge that POSOM was nothing compared to my H, yet I threw it all away. For nothing.

And I have to look at myself in the mirror every morning.

Hon, your BH has given you a gift - he knows about the A (I hope he has the whole truth) and he is staying with you, going to counseling. The best thing that can happen to you is to spend a lifetime passionately in love with the father of your children. Not chuck it all b/c of some sleazeball you had an ONS with.

Thank you for all of the insight. I am not saying that the OM and I have any sort of future together because chances are nothing would ever develop from that. Its not a matter of leaving my husband for him, its just a matter that I think I would be happier not married. I have yet to see, in the 30 years of my life, a marriage that I would ever want to model myself after, therefore I think it is a joke. I would have no desire to ever be married again. I will give counseling a try, but I am not completely sold on the idea that it will make me love my husband.

Give this plan a try. Please. Even after just a few short weeks, it's working for me. But you HAVE to follow the plan.

Also, I have a question. I'm not saying that my husband never met my emotional needs. He probably did, he just wasn't around much. OM didn't meet my emotional needs either as we have only seen each other twice in the last 7 months so based on the "basis" of the marriage builders philosophy, why did I develop such deep feelings for him?

An instant connection,eh?
"I met one night" is pretty vague.
Purposely vague.
Makes me suspect (strongly) this meeting was at a bar, and the instant connection was alcohol inspired.



Did you remove thoughts of your little children from your head in order to make space for a drunken one night stand?



You don't need counseling. You need a reality check.
Maybe you need alcohol counseling?



What "things"?
Are you talking about lust?
You must be, because that man was a total stranger, and still is.
Your feelings are really a "high" which means your brain got a flood of a brain chemical called dopamine.




Then, you identify yourself as a person who ALREADY makes major life decisions without any sound reasoning. If it is true and you have NOTHING in common with your H (besides kids .... or did you forget?) then that points the finger at YOU.
YOU ought to be suspicious of your own judgment and lack of decision-making skills.

In reality, you have nothing in common with OM. Not even 2 kids.



Were your kids adopted?



You honor your commitments. That's what you do.



Really?
Because in my heart I think you are a liar and a cheat and a fool.
Who is right?
Who's heart is right?

Use your brain.
God gave you a brain and a soul for a reason.
It certainly wasn't to screw some stranger and then obsess over OM at the expense of your husband and children.

Every second you spend obsessing over OM is time you have not spent thinking about your family, your husband, and your children.
This makes you a mentally/emotionally absent parent/wife.





Well, I guess you have SOMETHING in common.
This is more valuable than anything else you have, and you think about throwing it away for what?
Lust?
A one night stand?

Don't become a bigger fool.
If you have a church, contact a female from that church and ask for help getting over a sickness and an obsession with a drunken one night stand.

Or, continue to "follow your heart" straight to hell, dragging your husband and your kids along for the ride.

I have tried following the plan, but I hate every minute of it. I do not enjoy being with my husband, doing things with him or giving him affection. How will I ever get past this part of it????

I don't believe you ever really tried.

Just for your information, I don't appreciate assumptions. I did not meet him at a bar, was NOT drinking, and did NOT have sex with him. So, there goes your whole theory.