Why is it that people assume that me and the OM are going to hook up and get married? I have no desire to ever get married again to anyone, so the fact that he will be the step father to my children is stretching it extensively!!

Just curious, are your going to keep seeing OM?

I have no idea. After all of the obscene drama (way more extensive than the divorce) that has occurred recently, I don't have time to worry about it right now.

Please tell me that you're going to give your husband custody of the kids and you won't be seeking alimony (and obviously child support). If you're going to forego and get out of the marriage, it's not right that you get to reap the benefits of being married to him (his money).

No, he is not taking the children. We both will be living in the same town and will have joint custody and no I am not seeking child support or alimony and neither is he. We already have our assets divided out, no surprises, no taking anything from the other one...pretty cut and dried.

Just clarify for me...

You cheated and created a huge mess. But you don't want to do the hardwork of trying to put everything back together? And you're going to continue a relationship with a guy that doesn't value being faithful?

And you will forever have to lie about being faithful or why your marriage failed in new relationships. Because would you want to start a relationship with someone that cheated on their spouse?

I don't get it.

WPG - You knew she was still lurking. You sensed it with your being. Remember that thing we call "gut", i.e. intuition. Yours is still there. Many of us BS used our gut to discover the truth about the affair. It is almost as if we are all connected by this awful sense of betrayal (BS and WS). Our intuition seems to still never fail us.

Sitting here as the BS and knowing IS's thread I have to take a moment and feel some hope. Hope that she is still here. Hope that she will see the magnitude of her life.

I have spent hundreds of hours on this board. I have searched these threads far and wide.

There seems to be thousands of cases on these threads that demonstrate the same pattern: After some time to defog the WS always comes back to the BS. I used to get so excited when I saw this happen. Yeah - maybe some hope for me. Now that is keeps continuing to happen I actually don't bother reading the threads entirely. I am astonished how many BS say at some point (usually within 2 years) the WS comes back missing what they had. Some seem more repenant than others, but it seems to be a trend.

I don't know if Dr. H does much statistical analysis on the number of BS who have had this occur, but I can only imagine it is a relatively high number.

Most interstingly is the BS has already moved on with their life. I can see actually a pattern that occurs. The BS goes through all the emotions first and seems to be the first one to recover. After a delay the WS (in most cases) loses a lot of their fog and some reality sets in for them. They come back to the BS thinking all can be repaired. The WS lags dramatically behind in their healing process. They often still come back foggy. In so many cases the BS is so far out in front they do not want to even approach the subject of reconciliation. They would rather keep their new happy life. Many have remarried, and some have even had more kids.

The WS is left to either to fend for themselves, or they give up all hope of fixing themselves and head back into waywardness. Just an awful life!!!

I see so much of my WH in Stuggling. It is painful to know the facts, but see her go against the grain. There is nothing good about divorce. There is nothing good about broken homes. They bring on so much anger, pain, and devastation for generations to come.

The people who make divorce out as okay are often the waywards who try to calm their own guilt.

There is nothing good about divorce. Like I told my WH you just ripped yourself in half. You now have a gapping hole that no Band-Aid can patch. No new wife (in her case No new Husband), No new life will repair this hole. You were one flesh with your spouse, and that goes until death. The only option is to become one flesh again, or slowly bleed to death.

I guess bleeding to death is a happier, more fulfilling life. Not sure how is is possible when half of them is gone, but somehow they believe they will find eternal happiness with only half themselves.

Luckily for the BS God gives us back our whole self if divorce is the chosen option. By his Grace the BS can actually live a happier, healthier, and eternally joyful life with or without the infidel.

Struggling, I just want you to know that my daughters from my first marriage (they are 13 and 15) still hate it that their mother and I are not together. At times they even blame themselves.

I know you konw a friend or two whose kids are okay after the parents split up. But do you think the majority of children do okay and don't struggle? They may end up okay when they reach adulthood but what do you think they go through as children/adolescents?

I can tell you that my 8 and 4 year olds have friends that come over and their primary wish is that their mom and dad were still together.

You are fooling yourself. Ask your poor children in 5 years if they are fine. You are teaching them horrible values and I'm pretty sure you have just ruined your life and the lives of your children. As to the relationships of your friends that cheated and their children being best friends? Um-hm. Time will tell. It always does. One usually reaps what one sows.

I feel so bad for your sweet children.

It's nice how you phrased that so it seems like you are doing your BH a favor.

What he actually deserved was for you not to contact the OM or look at OM FB page. That was incredibly inconsiderate and cruel. It's too bad that you couldn't put down the crackpipe long enough to give your M a real shot.

Prayers out to IS and your children...

Blah. Blah blah blah. Blah.

The situation was too much for YOU to overcome? Seriously? YOur BH was the one who had a mountain to overcome AND HE WAS WILLING TO DO THAT!

Your daughters WILL be affected by this. Do not lie to yourself. Or are you going to try and lie to them about what happened? Not going to admit that you are bailing on your M? That you didn't want to put down the crack pipe and see the man right in front of you who was willing to give you another chance?

So you can cite one example of daughters who are "OK" with their mother having an A and divorcing their father. Whoop-te-do. My aunt happens to be in an affairage and has 2 daughters. I wouldn't exactly have called them the best-adjusted girls in the world. Their mother overcompensated for blowing up their family by trying to be their "buddy" and not their mother. Bad-mouthed their father to them. You know they still call the stepdad/affairage H "Mr"?

I'd sell my soul for the chance you threw away. If my M doesn't recover, I'll probably not remarry either, but it won't be b/c I am thinking of me. It's b/c I am thinking of my daughters. It doesn't matter who I - or you - would end up remarrying, there is not a man around who would love my girls as much as their father. Not to mention how you have to watch out for men that would use you to get to them.

The grace and forgiveness that your BH was offering you speaks volumes about his character.

Your actions speak volumes about yours, too.

And I'm totally insulted by that whole sarcastic "hello to all my 'friends'" thing. You totally don't realize that the people posting here actually care about your M. That's a lot more than your "friend" the OM could say. You know what he cared about. A piece of married tail. I do care about you, and your M, and your poor BH. You had Mrs. W, who is awesome, offer to help you off-board and apparently you declined her offer. None of us felt like you were a waste of time.

Sorry, I am in a lousy mood tonight and this has hit me wrong.

Colleagues, much of what works on this site owes some of its validity to the insight that WS's are "addicted" to something that they received from their participation in the affair. Some get a thrill from the danger; some receive intellectual validation from the idea that they are "putting one over" on the BS and the community; others seek to experience the "forbidden".

"Exposure" in most cases counters these "highs". But, and this apparently applies to the sad initiator of this thread, it seems that some WS's cling to the "drama" of their participation in the affair, as an end in itself. In their threads, AndyM and TimBurned have given examples of WS's creating "conflicts" and "anguish" to sustain their wayward lifestyles, without the explicit existence of a current AP.

AndyM and TimBurned are more-or-less captive participants in the disoriented cha-cha's their WS's are currently performing. In this particular case, we are not. IS has shown great insight in not engaging on this thread. It might be well if we do not, either. Why supply the addict with their drug of choice, just to go, "Tsk,tsk"?

(SA: Waste no time countering this argument; it was not addressed to you. Besides, waywards lie.......)

I am so glad you checked in and gave us an update!

It's cruel and selfish not to let go of your GREAT Husband. You might feel great about your decision to dissolve your marriage AT THIS MOMENT but please keep In mind that the impact of YOUR life altering decision will not happen right away. You will realize that impact when it's too late.

Remember, your daughters are learning from YOUR ACTIONS. What kind of examples are you teaching them?


I am positive that your H will be able to move on and will find a NEW wife that will love and care and be DEVOTED to him.

Actually the situation that you are creating now will be harder to overcome. It would have been better if you took the high road and defog and recover your marriage.


Since you've been in contact you didn't get a chance to defog, therefore, you never had a chance to recover your marriage. It would be terrible to bring another victim in this family, so please use protection. You have no foundation with this OM. You are throwing an AMAZING HUSBAND and an intact family for someone that is willing to STEAL another man's wife! How can you have respect for someone like that?

Struggling, you want out because you're clouded by this OM even though you tell yourself it's not because of him but your H and marriage. It is definitely because of OM. Why don't you give yourself a gift of NO CONTACT.

In my situation, in the beginning, I really believed OM was my knight and shining armor. He was my savior from what my H did to me. My H and I would divorce (my LIE to MYSELF since my H committed adultery first) and OM and I will be together and live happily ever after. Just typing this makes me laugh at how crazy stupid I was. I was willing to give up my kids and a chance to have an amazing marriage for this OM?!?

One of the things I did to defog was to read here (I admit, I was a WL (wayward lurker)), I would copy and paste the posts was and I kept and reading it OVER and OVER in my stubborn head. One of them was about an infection and you must completely remove the infection to heal and there was another one about an overgrown garden and you looked at your neighbors beautiful garden but all you needed was to tend your own and it will be a beautiful garden as well.

Can you really live with yourself that YOU caused the destruction of your family? Where would you be five, ten or twenty years from now?

I still have hope for you that you will do the RIGHT THING. You know the right decision (it's the title of your thread after all) and that's why you're here. It's not too late to make good out of a bad situation.

Struggling, I just want to make sure that you're going to be honest to your kids when they cry or ask why their Dad isn't there and you're going to say "I had an affair and I chose to leave the marriage. And that is why you cannot have your mom and dad living together."

And when people ask why your marriage disolved, you will be honest, correct?

Struggling, you will need to be honest with your kids about why you have destroyed their family. They need to know that you wrecked their family for absolutely...nothing. A big fat nothing like a loser OM who will dump you soon enough.

I can only hope that your H is honest with them and everyone else so they all know the truth. At least have the decency to not expose your children to this loserOM. You will just be teaching them to grow up and be little liars and adulteresses. And you also expose them to the risk of being sexually molested. This scumbag has already demonstrated he has ill intent for your children so don't leave them alone with any of your scumbag friends.

oh no, your kids will not be "ok." They will never be the same. They will suffer psychological and developmental damage that will affect them for life. Children from homes with bad marriages fare much better than children from broken homes. They will never be the same.

The OM will be eternally hated by your girls because they will blame him for the ruination of their family. You are in a fantasy, believing that you can seamlessly replace your H with the OM, but that is never how it works. 95% of affairs fall apart within 2 years because the very things that made them possible: deceit and thoughtlessness and selfishness eventually kill the affair.

Not to mention that there are very few places you can show your face because decent people will know the truth.

For your reading pleasure:

An Exploration of the Ramifications...nia State University College of Medicine

� Divorce is an intensely stressful experience for all children, regardless of age or developmental level; many children are inadequately prepared for the impending divorce by their parents. A study in 1980 found that less than 10% of children had support from adults other than relatives during the acute phase of the divorce.

� The pain experienced by children at the beginning of a divorce is composed of: a sense of vulnerability as the family disintegrates, a grief reaction to the loss of the intact family (many children do not realize their parents� marriage is troubled), loss of the non-custodial parent, a feeling of intense anger as the disruption of the family, and strong feelings of powerlessness.

� Unlike bereavement or other stressful events, it is almost unique to divorcing families that as children experience the onset of this life change, usual and customary support systems tend to dissolve, though the ignorance or unwillingness of adults to actively seek out this support for children.

� Early latency (ages 6�-8): These children will often openly grieve for the departed parent. There is a noted preoccupation with fantasies that distinguishes the reactions of this age group. Children have replacement fantasies, or fantasies that their parents will happily reunite in the not-so-distant future. Children in this developmental stage have an especially difficult time with the concept of the permanence of the divorce.

� Late latency (ages 8-11): Anger and a feeling of powerlessness are the predominate emotional response in this age group. Like the other developmental stages, these children experience a grief reaction to the loss of their previously intact family. There is a greater tendency to label a �good� parent and a �bad� parent and these children are very susceptible to attempting to take care of a parent at the expense of their own needs.

� Adolescence (ages 12-18): Adolescents are prone to responding to their parent�s divorce with acute depression, suicidal ideation, and sometimes violent acting out episodes. These children tend to focus on the moral issues surrounding divorce and will often judge their parents� decisions and actions. Many adolescents become anxious and fearful about their own future love and marital relationships. However, this age group has the capability to perceive integrity in the post-divorce relationship of their parents and to show compassion for their parents without neglecting their own needs.

Conclusions
� Divorce and its ensuing ramifications can have a significant and life-altering impact on the well being and subsequent development of children and adolescents.

� The consequences of divorce impact almost all aspects of a child�s life, including the parent-child relationship, emotions and behavior, psychological development, and coping skills.

� There is a significant need for child mental health professionals, along with other child specialists, to be cognizant of the broad spectrum of possible fall-out from a divorce and then to provide sufficient support for children of divorced parents in all the necessary psychosocial aspects of the child�s life.

[u][i]Abuse Risk Seen Worse As Families Change[/b][/i][/u]

- Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.


- [b]Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center.

- Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University. . . .

- The previous version of the study, released in 1996, concluded that children of single parents had a 77 percent greater risk of being harmed by physical abuse than children living with both parents. But the new version will delve much deeper into the specifics of family structure and cohabitation, according to project director Andrea Sedlak.

strugglinaz,

This sounds a bit defensive. I would say that the only person you are fooling is yourself... but I don't think that you are even doing that.

QFT. I've got one in each age group. The youngest shows signs of regression (thumb sucking) and prays every night for her daddy to come home. She alternately cries b/c she tells me she misses me when she is with her daddy on the weekends and cries when she is home b/c she misses her daddy.

My oldest gets angry, acts out. She flip-flops between being protective of me and being angry with me, b/c she knows it is my fault that her daddy has left.

So don't kid yourself, struggling. They won't be "OK."

My aunt, the one in the affairage? Her older daughter worked at this "Coyote Ugly" type bar in college. She was literally cage dancing for money. Just sayin'.

Not a lot to say that hasn't already been said and said well, strugglin -- I grieve for your family -- for your husband, your sweet, little girls and even you -- You have no idea what you are doing -- I know this, because if you did, you would not be doing it -- no way. The impact of what you are doing will be felt for generations in your family. My heart breaks watching this. If you only knew...



Mrs. W

Nah. She's right. Her husband does deserve better. I hope he demonstrates that in the divorce proceedings.

He deserves someone with some courage, dignity, and who will WORK towards making the life that they deserve together.

Could have been struggling... but she'd rather be a coward and phone it in.

Oh, let's go delve into a romance novel...