I like the site and what it has to offer. I got my wife to look at it and she instantly took offense at looking into what emotional needs wern't being met because it was interpreted as placing the blame on her and what she failed to do so if she fulfilled my needs then I would not have had an affair. That is how she interpreted it and she was very angry. How do I answer that question? What do you think?

You can tell her that your affair was 100& the responsibility of the cheater. Cheaters cheat because they have poor boundaries around members of the opposite sex.

I think she hasn't read enough. Show her this: How to Survive Infidelity

I think finding this site is good for the two of you, just let her read the articles on the site alone, let her process it all and then the two of you can sit down and discuss your marriage, separate from the affair, it is a process for the BS and that last thing we want is to be held responsible for your decisions........
The marriage is a shared responsibility though and that she should be able to understand.
I would start to ask her what you missed when filling her needs and start there.
Reading and learning and coming up with a good plan together to re-build a marriage worth saving.............
welcome aboard.

Have you first of all, TAKEN RESPONSIBILITY, 100 percent for the affair? SHE needs to know that it was NOT HER, but in fact, it was you who was wrong.

An affair is a selfish thing to do, and she should in no way at all, be made to feel as if it's her fault.

Now with regard to the EN's, I would approach it as "we should learn each other's top EN's so we can have the most loving relationship and grow closer than ever". That needs to be the reason. Maybe do as Jessitaylor said and explore what HER needs are first and foremost.

She should see this like team-building. It's you both working together to fall deeper in love and also about YOU admitting YOU were the one at fault 100 percent.

yes I keep reassuring that it was all me and my selfish needs with poor boundaries and not her. She has told me she wants better communication and geniun quality time for both of us and I want to do those things too. I just hope I am not too late. I love her so much and I messed up repeatedly, but for the first time I am confronting my issues and I don't want my mistakes to define me.

As a FWW, I can tell you it takes time. You can look at my info at the bottom of the post and see when my A was. I would say it was 6 months before DH was able to wrap his mind around moving forward and at least a year before we could really dig into working on things that were a problem pre-A. Dr. H says it takes 2-5 years to fully recover. Your A doesn't have to define you, but the truth is, until your spouse has TIME and EVIDENCE that things are different and you can be trusted.....it WILL define you, because that is how grief works. Your two biggest assets are going to be humility and patience.

Why not tell her that she should be offended. Affairs are very offensive things.

I wouldn't tell her she should not be offended by the site, as she can choose what offends her.

However, I think you show her that this is YOUR roadmap to show her how much you love her, are going to protect her, meet her needs, etc, and that she can use this to make sure that YOU are on track.

At this point, it's not really instruction for her to follow, but instruction for you to return to your marriage and help your betrayed wife heal from the damage you've done to her and the marriage.

This

Show her this "formula":

Met Needs + Weak Boundaries = An Affair (or can)
Unmet Needs + Weak Boundaries = An Affair (or can)
Met Needs + Strong Boundaries does NOT = An Affair
Unmet Needs + Strong Boundaries does NOT = An Affair

The common denominator here is YOUR WEAK BOUNDARIES, not met or unmet needs.

Make sense?

Can she come here and post? We will help her through this tough time. We do NOT believe that unmet needs cause affairs ~ we believe that the WS's weak boundaries cause affairs.

Thank you all I will keep looking around. I sent the string to my BS and I liked the formula. I think I need to keep reading more.

MO,

You can tell her that your marriage was where you should have sought answers to your "unmet needs", and instead you chose to have an affair. Instead, you focused on YOUR OWN "unmet needs" and blamed your wife, using this as justification in your own mind to seek out OW and have an affair. You chose this route because you focused solely on your own needs, instead of the state of your marriage and the needs of your wife.

You can tell your wife that you recognize that SHE has "unmet needs" in the marriage, too, and that she did NOT go outside of the marriage to solve the problems. You can tell her that "unmet needs" are NOT the cause of affairs, and that would be a quite simplistic way of trying to explain the behavior of wayward people, and would be an irresponsible blaming of the victim in the case of an affair.

Instead, "unmet needs" are commonplace in marriages. It is the way in which the spouses communicate those needs to one another, how each spouse meets the needs of the other, and how each spouse reacts to "unmet needs" that defines a marriage. One reaction is to speak up, talk to the other spouse, find ways to work things out openly and honestly. An opposite extreme is to have an affair, then blame the betrayed spouse because he/she "wasn't meeting" the wayward's needs.

Truth is, if an affair happens, a wayward CHOSE to go outside of the marriage for what might be 100 or 1,000 or 1,000,000 different "reasons" - but in the final analysis the affair is NOT about the betrayed spouse at all. It is all about the wayward, the wayward's self-control, honesty, boundaries, problem-solving skills, life-approach, selfishness, and belief that his/her own needs are the single-most important priority above all others.

Affairs are the epitome of placing one's own needs and personal desires ahead of everyone else's. The affairee decides that nobody else's needs even matter.


You can tell your wife that you CHOSE to place your own needs ahead of everyone else's in the world, and that your actions were despicable.

And then you can tell her that the Marriage Builders program offers a plan for change. It offers a method for the wayward to actually SEE the problems in a marriage, how NOT to handle them and how TO handle them, and what went wrong in the first place. It helps the betrayed and the wayward find a path back into the marriage so that the BS can feel safer, the WS has clarity on risks and responsibilities

and the couple can redesign the marriage so that affairs are less likely


and LOVE for one another is more likely.


And it sets forward a clear-cut plan to help the marriage become a place where BOTH spouses have their needs met.


And then tell her that you did NOT have an affair because of anything she did or did not do. You had an affair because YOU CHOSE to do something that you KNEW was wrong, from the moment you first thought about it. You knew it was wrong that very moment, and you pursued it anyway. You could have stopped at any moment, and CHOSE not to stop. Each and every step along the way was your choice, and you know

that if your wife had voted on whether or not you were to have had an affair

she would have voted "NO".

Which is why you didn't ask for her input, why you lied about it, and why you kept it a secret.

And THAT is what you need to tell her.


Then, with all the humility in the world, ASK her if she would CONSIDER reading the material with you

and CONSIDER reading "Surviving an Affair"

or would she maybe CONSIDER a phone counseling session with the Harleys....


because you have a woman worth keeping.