I have had a sexual affair with a friends husband for the past 6 months. The sex has been extremely fulfilling, and this man has made me feel physical pleasure that I have not experienced before. My husband and I are in our mid 40's and have been married 19 years with two children. The other man has effectively ended the affair as he thought I was becoming too emotionally involved. Yes, I probably was. I think it's almost impossible for a woman to have sex without some level of emotion. I am ok with the affair ending. I knew it was wrong and eventually there would have been a lot of hurt and pain if it had been discovered. I am now working on rebuilding my marriage with my husband, but I am finding that I am continually thinking about this other man. Sex with m husband is not as fulfilling to me any more. My husband has become a grumpy man, he spends most evenings working, and is short tempered with our children, ESP has little patience with our 12 year old daughter, whm he simply doesn't seem to connect with. How do I ssaints this marriage? I don't want to be with my ex lover, and he clearly wants to stay with his wife and family, but I am feeling very lonely and unloved, ignored even - most likely the very same feelings that led me to look outside my marriage for attention 6 months ago. How long do I work on this marriage? When do I say that I cannot live like this any longer.... We have grown apart n an emotional level. My husband rarely seems happy any more.. Please help.

Have you told your H of your affair?

Is your OM married? If he is does his wife know?

Read this to let you know the path you need to be walking to protect your husband from your abuse.

A Recovery Guide for Wayward Wives

No, I haven't told my husband. And he has not told his wife. I don't want to hurt anyone. He doesnt want to lose his wife or family either. Is this the right ormwrong approach? We only see this couple occasionally. I feel confident that I can resist this other man in the future, and I am certain that we both understand " no more".

Yes you need to tell him. Be prepared to get lots of 2X4's here. You need to care for your BH and lying to him is cruel and mean.
Do you really want yo save your M or is it all lip service?

Read what Dr. Harley has to say about how to survive an affair.

How to Survive Infidelity

Thanks for that link Brainhurts. I couldn't open the link to Withdrawal. Can you give me another resource t help with withdrawal from the OM??? Help coping with the withdrawal would be so immensely useful for me right now. Thank you.

SKK,

The very first step you need to take is to tell your husband, and the OMW. If you don't want to hurt anyone, or lose your family, you should not have had an affair. It is not HONESTY that will hurt someone or cause you to lose your family, it is your AFFAIR that will do those things. I suspect the real reason you don't want to be honest is because you do not want to pay the consequences for your actions, and you know they will be grave.

One of the key components to MB is Radical Honesty. You cannot rebuild or recover a marriage without it. You cannot work toward rebuilding a marriage that is based on lies and deceit.

You need to stop thinking about protecting yourself and your AP. You need to START thinking about the damage you have caused your marriage and the pain you have caused your BH. And you need to read the link above for wayward wives and commit to doing whatever it takes to make just compensation for the massive amount of damage you have caused.

The vets will be along shortly with advice for you on how to go about this process. Unless you are not truly remorseful for your actions and seeking recovery, you should NOT get defensive! Take their advice.

Try this one.
Recovery After An Affair
Might need to get to your doctor and get AD's.

Telling your H and the Wife of your OM will help you TONS. Honesty is the first step you need to take to help you get through withdrawal.

Your BH has a right to know about how is life has been a lie.
Requirements for Recovery From an Affair

Although I am sure that you BOTH contributed to a marriage that was ripe for affair, your BH is NOT responsible for your choice to have an affair. You alone are responsible for that. You are starting this thread seeking advice on how to recover your marriage and in the very first post detailing to us the 'reason' you had an affair and insinuating that your BH has some responsibility in that. I can guarentee you that if/when you go to him and confess, you do NOT want to bring this 'this is why its your fault' attitude.

Whatever problems you had pre A will only be times 100 now, and that, is what YOU contributed to the mess. Remember that.

And I have to cringe when I hear people who are actively wayward say that their spouse is 'never happy' or the like. Of COURSE he is never happy anymore. Of COURSE you have 'grown apart emotionally.' YOU WERE HAVING AN AFFAIR. That, tends to make a spouse unhappy and grow apart emotionally.

THERE MAY BE REASONS TO HAVE AN AFFAIR BUT NO EXCUSES!!!!!

You only see this couple occasionally. Can you imagine how it would feel, if YOU were the BS, finding out that you hung out with a couple and all the while your spouse was actively having sex with one of them, and you, the trusting spouse, laughed and joked and hung out knowing nothing? It is completely degrading to your BH to put him in this position. If you have any respect at all for your H, you will not put him in this position ever again.

And nobody else on here, except for you, feels confident that you can be in this position without any relapses. You cannot. You need to have no contact FOR LIFE with this man who helped you destroy your marriage.

If it helps with withdrawal at all, understand he did not care about you, which is why he ended it when you started getting emotionally involved (with him, not the other way around from how it sounds). And if he CARED about you he would not help you destroy your life. And if he was some prize to be cared about, he would not be betraying his own wife!

You are about to receive a huge break, my friend.

I, as a FBH, am going to refrain from dissecting your initial epistle for a week. Hopefully, in that time, the (so far all female) correspondents here will be able to instill in you some knowledge of the casually awful admissions you made, apparently unconcernedly, in that note (ex: you were "ok" with the affair ending?).

In a week's time, I'll check back in, and see if you have made any progress in becoming a human being. If not, we'll start the "NG Marital Responsibility Remedial Boot Camp".

Thank you for posting that unwritten.

SKK. The only way you will ever be able to recover "yourself" and your marriage is to confess to your BH and OM BW and then go NC for LIFE. Trying to cover up your affair will only make things worse when the truth finally comes out and it will come out.

Tell your BH the truth and then send him here so we can help him to recover.

Ditto. I still wince thinking of the girl chat talks I had with my friend, all the while she was sleeping with my husband.

I am still very angry he let me find out the truth alone, instead of helping me pinpoint it.

I was not 'hurt' by the truth and neither will your husband be, SKK. I was relived to discover the truth behind what was hurting my marriage. All the strange, odd behaviour was not my fault! There was a reason everyone was behaving so oddly!

It was the affair that hurt me, the lying was the insult on top of injury.

I am glad you are "OK" with ending the worst thing you have ever done to two innocent people. You know how dreadfully you have behaved and this secret will trap you all in misery until you let it free with the truth

SKK,

You've already had many wonderful posts explaining that you must tell your husband -- Are you willing to take this necessary [read: mandatory] step? Please understand if you are not willing, there is nothing we can do to help you. That really is the ONLY way.

I read that you don't wish to hurt anyone. That has already happened though -- you and OM hurt your husband, OM's wife and all of your children when you decided to engage in an affair. All that's left is telling them. Honesty is the solution to adultery, not more lies. Your husband and OMW deserve the truth about their lives, wouldn't you agree?

The others are absolutely right too, nothing your husband did made you have an affair. That was all your choice. You had the affair because you exercised poor boundaries and allowed a man other than your husband to meet your emotional needs -- You CHOSE to do that. Does that make sense?

Lastly, [for now] you can NEVER EVER EVER EVER, etc. see or speak to the OM for the rest of your life. You are mistaken if you think you and he could resist each other -- will power is VERY unreliable -- and you've already proven that to yourself -- I'm willing to bet when you first began talking with OM your intent wasn't to have an affair was it? And what happened? Your will power that said "I would never have an affair" failed you -- what you needed instead were EXTRAORDINARY PRECAUTIONS in place that would have prevented you from allowing a member of the opposite sex to meet any of your emotional needs.

When do you plan on telling your betrayed husband of your affair?

Mrs. W

SKK,

I am a FWW [Former Wayward Wife] myself -- My affair happened 7 years ago. Today, my husband [MrWondering] and I have a very fulfilling, romantic and happy marriage. In spite of the affair [certainly not because of] our marriage is better than it's ever been. This would not be true though without radical honesty -- without honesty our marriage would never have made it -- that would have been a huge tragedy.

Every day that you don't tell your husband the truth you compound the crime and make his hurt even worse. Please do not delay the inevitable.

Mrs. W

P.S. Please do yourself [and others here] a favor and don't say anything more about "great affair sex" -- That really is vulgar and disgusting. One day you will look back and be mortified that you ever thought it, much less spoke/wrote it.

SKK,

WHEN you tell your BH about this affair, please be prepared for the following:

Give him ALL the information the first time. DO NOT TRICKLE TRUTH HIM. If you want true recovery then be completely honest. The longer you trickle truth him the more damage is done, and the longer it will take for you to begin recovery.

Give him ALL the information about the details that he wants. Be prepared to give him OM's identity, and even the most intimate details about the affair. Not all BS's need this, but many do, and it is not OK for YOU to judge what he does or does not need. If he asks, you give. If it seems like the details are hurting him, THEY ARE. But your continued lies will only spread that pain out.

DO NOT BLAME HIM. You absolutely canNOT blame him for this. In fact, I would refrain from bringing up any kind of discussion about your needs not being met. This will be devastating to him. It will be traumatic for him. Telling him how he wasn't meeting YOUR needs will not be effective at all at this time. There will be time to introduce MB and EN's in the near future, but when you are confessing to having betrayed him, that is not the time. You canNOT make this about you. It will just give him a big billboard sign that you are not remorseful.

I think he should be introduced to the MB principles AND boards immediately, vets may disagree??? As a BS who has just been devastated and does not know what to do with the rug of life that was pulled out from under him, he will need support and a plan, and he can get that here.

I hope you haven't run from this forum because of the advice being given. I hope for your BH's sake mainly, because he deserves more.

I am not trying to be harsh, you CAN be a great wife and you CAN recover this. But it is a narrow path and it will only happen when you have true remorse and are willing to do whatever it takes to recover.

SKK, welcome to Marriage Builders. The others are right, your husband, the OMs wife, your children all have to be told what you have done. Lying is not the solution to adultery, honesty is. And of course you and your husband are not close. Your dishonesty makes intimacy impossible.

So first tell him about your affair. Then sit your kids down and confess what you have done to them since this places their security at risk. You are a dangerous, reckless person and the more people who know, the more people to hold you accountable.

Your husband and your other victims have a right to know what you have done since your reckless actions directly affect their lives.

As far as your "great affair sex" I just wanted to point out that pigs have great sex too but it doesnt make it honorable. Great sex is commenced in a loving, respectful relationship, not in a degrading relationship that is no more honorable than 2 pigs rutting in their pen. The OM just used you and tossed you aside like used Kleenex. He spit in your face but you don't seem to realize it. I mention this because I want you to see how putrid it looks to someone who is not fogged out.

Skk,

Last December, you posted that you had sex twice with this OM and that you and he decided to end it. You had a plethora of advice about how to go about this. But, you didn't do any of it, did you?

Are you actually serious now about ending your adultery and rebuilding your marriage? Or is everyone here wasting their time?

AM

SKK, please keep reading here and being honest with this board. No one knows you here and though the message may not be what you expect to hear it is important for you to hear it and for you to be honest. Consider it a form of safe and anonymous group therapy. If you can be honest with this board and the veterans here... you have a chance of being honest with yourself. And then your husband and then your marriage has a tremendous chance to grow into what you want. In my humble opinion, it has to start with you being honest with yourself.
You will know if you are honest with yourself because when and if you become honest with yourself you will struggle to understand how you have lied to yourself about your behavior. You will struggle to understand how you could behave in such a reckless manner. Your affair partner may not have gone back to his wife you know. He may have just found another woman to add to his trophy connection. The harshest truth of all is that when you tell yourself the truth you will struggle to accept that you could so destroy your own life.
That one bond of fidelity with your husband is broken now. And as difficult as it is to hear... the only path forward is to be honest with your husband. I can assure you, it also the only path to redeeming your own self respect and to ending your loneliness. Don't live a lie.
This will not go away in a week, a month or even a year. But being honest with your husband about your mistake is the first step to real intimacy and love in your marriage.
Living a lie will suck the remaining humanity out of you and right now you don't have much.
The day you can cry not for yourself but for your husband is the day your marriage has a chance. The day you don't compare your husband with your affair partner will happen if you follow the advice of the vets here. And on that day you will realize that your marriage is recovered and that you are living the dream and not a lie.

ME: BS male 57