I am approaching one year since my wife's affair. We have been married for almost 10 years. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and began taking a medication called Pristiq for treatment. This medication was erroneously prescribed at 4X the normal dose. We believe the medication caused her to go crazy. She became fearless and ended up having the affair. There were about 2 months of emotional affair (mainly texting), three kisses (one in our house), and ending in four sexual encounters. This has been devastating to me. I have been severely depressed and seen numerous counselors. I have been on multiple medications for anxiety and depression but nothing seems to help. The pain is just as real and raw as it was a year ago.

We have a 9 year old son who we both love dearly. I also love my wife very much. Even though I forgive her, I cannot seem to forget. The memories haunt me and I think about the affair in detail almost every waking minute. I know that the enormous amount of stress is wrecking havoc on my body and I have to figure out a way to put a stop to it. I love my wife and I want to move on, but for some reason I cannot stop the memories or the pain.

My wife was also severely sexually abused from the ages of 6 to 12. She has never been overly sexual with me, having intercourse a handful of times during our marriage. This makes the sexual element of the affair so much more painful. At first, after the affair, she was more loving and intimate with me. But now, after about a year, she routinely refuses intercourse with me and avoids intimacy. I cannot understand this, it makes me feel worthless and unloved. I tell her how I feel but she can't seem to change.

So the way I see it, we have two issues. One, I cannot forget the details of the affair and wallow in despair and self-pity on a daily basis. And two, my wife has major issues with intimacy and sex that are destroying any chance our marriage has to recover and grow stronger. If anyone has any experience with either of these issues I would love your input. Thanks!

Time to move.

Every time you come home you are faced with seeing the scene of the crime where your WW kissed the OM instead of your home.

Also I doubt you got the whole truth from your WW. It is normal to only admit to doing nothing, then admiting kissing just to get you to stop asking questions. This is called trickle truth.

Way to end trickle truth is to schedule a polygraph test. Tell WW when the test is to happen. As the date approaches the pressure on the WW to trickle truths some more. Then claim they have told the whole truth so lets cancel the polygraph test. For that is their goal.

This is where you say the test is still on to confirm everything.

Welcome to Marriage Builders, Celestial. I'm sorry you've had to find your way here, but you've come to the right place.

I have a few comments and questions.

When was your WW diagnosed with fibromyalgia? When did she begin taking the medication?

Who is the OM? Do they work together? Is he married?

Now my comments:
I am concerned that you phrased this statement in the singular person. Your wife's affair involves both of you. Is she not actively working with you to recover your marriage?
What has she done to earn your forgiveness?
Reality-check time, sir. I was also severely sexually abused as a child, but it started even earlier - I think I was about 3. I could tell you things about my childhood that would spin your head right off your neck. I ended up here a few years ago, but I wasn't the one who had the affair - it was my husband, who lived on Sunnybrook Farm as a child and had a wonderful upbringing.

Her childhood abuse is not germane, here. Now, she may want to explore discussing that abuse with a counselor at some point if she has not done so by now, but do not use this as a Get Out Of Jail Free card for her. It's not. Was she fairly passionate when you first married? [quote]

Have you read the articles on this site? I would suggest you do so. There are tools here to help you to recover your marriage and make it great. Your WW will need to get on board with these concepts, but get started reading.

My wife was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in June of 2011. She started taking the medication in June as well. The emotional part of the affair started in September of 2011, the four sexual episodes occurred over a 3 week period in late October, early November 2011.

The OM was a advertising salesman. In my opinion, he is very experienced having affairs and took advantage of my wife and her condition with the medication. He is not married, but has lived with his girlfriend for many years. He wanted nothing more than sex, and once he got that he basically ended communication. My wife was apologetic and worked hard to save our marriage as soon as the truth came out.

I did not mention the child abuse meaning that that led to the affair. I mentioned it because the abuse is how I explain the lack of intimacy that has always existed in our marriage. She always avoided intimacy so that is why the intimacy with the OM is so hard for me to understand. My wife was very intimate and sexual with me before our son was born 9 years ago. But after he was born it went away for the most part.

I have been reading, but I am sort of lost right now. I think I am getting better then I go right back to the beginning. It still consumes me just like it did when I found out.

your wife refuses to have sex with you.
She had sex four times (that you know of) with this [censored] salesman.
So basically she had sex with him more in the past few months than she has with you in years. Is that correct?

She takes medication that was over prescribed. Did the medical doctor say it will cause people to have affairs if over prescribed?

I can rewrite your story and make it more concise:

"I'm in a sexless marriage. My wife had an affair with a salesman and I'm angry"

The first thing you need to do is expose this affair.
You need to contact the salesman girlfriend, his family and all married friends on Facebook.
There is a sample "exposure letter" that will be posted soon that you can use as a template.
You also need to expose this affair to your son, your family and her family.

In the meantime do not discuss the affair any further with your wife

The medication that she takes causes a mania in some people who already have bipolar tendencies. This mania can cause people to do crazy things - gamble away their life savings, commit murder and suicide, and even have affairs. I can say when she was taking the medication she was not herself at all. She is a very religious person who teaches Sunday school and will not touch a drop of alcohol. On the medication, she went out to a bar with girls in their 20s (she's 40). She did many other things that were totally out of her character - that is why we finally figured out the medication was causing this. A psychiatrist diagnosed her with medication induced mania and said this was a semi-common occurrence.

I have exposed this to everyone involved when it happened. It has been a year ago, so nothing has happened during that year. However, I still dwell on what happened and cannot let it go. I am miserable all of the time and feel like giving up. She loves me and apologizes all of the time, but she still has issues with intimacy. Marriage counselors have tried to help us but so far to no avail. It's not fair that I continue to browbeat and punish her for something she did while heavily medicated. And it's not healthy for me to continue to allow this stress to overwhelm me. That's what I need help with - figuring out how to move on and put this behind us.

Okay. Medication induced mania is not mind control.
She chose to have this affair.

I you want to have a loving , romantic marriage then you need to sit down and explain to her that you want to have a loving, romantic marriage where both of your needs are met.
A very good resource is His Needs Her Needs by Dr Harley.

This would mean that your marriage would no longer be sexless.
I think you should do what MB calls "Plan A" for a few weeks to sell her on the idea.
How do you plan a? Find out what her top emotional needs are and try to meet them.

I lived with bizarre behavior for several years.
There are support groups out there like NAMI that you may want to check out.

I was also in a sexless marriage.
Like you, my wife had an affair.

Today I am divorced and my thinking is much clearer. Living with someone that has mental issues affects you. Your thinking actually becomes clouded. Attending support group meetings can help a lot. I attended AlAnon but NAMI is more geared towards mental illness

Celestial21,

Did you expose this affair to the salemans boss and the upper management at his company? Generally it is very frowned upon for salesmen to act inappropriately with customers as it is bad for business.

God Bless
Gamma

Okay, let's take this slowly.

"Erasing" memories and imaginings is not really possible. What is usually the best treatment for this would have to be provided (believe it or not) by your FWW. She should be willing to provide you the so-termed "just compensation" for the pain you have suffered due to her actions. This typically involves (among other things) overly-satisfying your key Emotional Needs.

In your rather tragic case, however, whatever blockages against physical intimacy exist within your wife are preventing her from attending to what is traditionally male EN #1 or #2. You seem to indicate that this reticence toward intimacy pre-dates her affair, and likely existed through your whole marriage. Sadly, you acceded to her lack of desire, and NOW when you need it most, she's reverting back to her long-term pattern of refusing your requests.

Your job, then, will be to assist her in seeing that the state of your marriage before her affair was toxic, but never reached an acute state causing you to suffer (or at least, voice) dissatisfaction. She will, defensively, attribute your "new" requests for intimacy to be caused by her affair.

You're going to need real help, my friend, and having a conversation through the counseling center here would be the way to start.

BTW: I'm assuming you and she are pursuing legal recourse against whoever prescribed the faulty dosage of the psychotropic drug that damaged her (and your) life?

Gamma - I did not expose it to his bosses - just to his girlfriend. At the time, I was just so happy my wife still wanted to be with me that I didn't think about much else. This guy is a piece of human garbage, and I have no doubt he continues to have affairs with whoever will have him.

Medication induced mania is actually when the chemistry of the brain is fundamentally changed and the thoughts and feelings one would normally have are gone. I have a doctorate in pharmacy and this is a very real phenomenon. I have personally know people with similar issues with these medications. One guy too the same type of medication to stop smoking and shot himself in the head 2 months later. This was a happy outgoing guy with no problems prior to this medication. Look at all of the crime on television - even the zombie guy in Miami - these are all examples of drug fueled thoughts causing people to act in ways they would not otherwise.

We have read and tried His Needs, Her Needs. It just seems the further we get away from the affair (and our family life weekend), the weaker our marriage becomes. We used to do devotions each night but haven't for months. The sexually intimacy no longer happens as well. I want to stop it now from going back to how it was before.

NeverGuessed - we haven't don't anything legally yet - this past year has just been about saving our marriage and family, and preventing me from getting lost in depression forever. At first, she was more than willing to overcompensate to fill my emotional needs, but I am starting to think that she feels like she has done her time and it's time to move on and forget about it completely. How would I speak with the counseling center?

I also have very vivid thoughts of driving to where he lives and beating the living hell out of him. I am a ex-collegiate heavyweight boxer and would have no problem pounding him into submission. My wife doesn't want me to because she is afraid I will go to jail or accidentally kill the guy. But I think it would go a long way in making me feel better. Did anyone do this? Did it help?

Read the first post in my thread which you can get to by clicking the words "My Story" in the epilogue of this note.

I was very fortunate I pulled back from the ledge. I would suggest you step back as well.

It will help you spend the weekend in jail, have to deal with an assault trial and probation, and you'll feel even crummier about yourself.

I would suggest getting a copy of the book Surviving An Affair by Dr Willard Harley.

NeverGuessed - I really liked your story. You are so lucky that God removed him from the planet for you. I get to know exactly where he is located most every day. I would love the opportunity to piss on his grave. I place most of the blame on this guy - he is a career adulterer who just caught my wife in a very bad place in her life.

I really liked your story.

I hope you learn from it, my friend. You will have enough on your plate over the immediate future without adding a criminal-charge complication to it, okay?

I know I shouldn't go to where he works but I can't say it isn't still tempting. I want to punish him for the enormous pain that he has caused my family and I. I want to punish him for taking advantage of my wife when she was in no state to make these type of decisions. I want to cause pain to him as he knew I existed and had seen pictures of both me and my son. He stated to my wife how afraid he is of me - well I want to make those fears a reality.