It doesn't seem to make you feel bad enough to leave this woman's husband alone, does it? Do you have an answer to Gloveoil's questions?

Since you have given this woman a nightmare experience for the duration of your A with her husband, you owe her Just Compensation.

She KNOWS something is terribly wrong and just can't figure out that it is you. She doesn't know you are the enemy firing bullets, at her marriage but she feels every one that hits. Every bit of love from her husband that you take away hurts her and she KNOWS she is being hurt. Just not how or why.

I'm not impressed with your 'blog' as evidence of your regret towards her, (especially since you avoided having to even mention her)

I would rather see you take action to undo your attack upon her. You should have someone contact her (not you, that is like the victim being contacted by the rapist)

That someone, a good friend or your Betrayed Husband, should tell her you will never contact her husband again and are willing to give up your job in order to facillitate that. That they are also holding you to account for your terrible actions in trying to destroy two marriages.

I didn't even read your complaints regarding your husband. They may matter so far as the future of the M is concerned but they don't matter so far as your A is concerned. I would never put anyone, not even my worst enemy, through the pain of betrayal.

You could have been honest with him about your unhappiness, and made a plan to leave honourably but you chose a knife in his back instead.

I've heard nothing about his reaction to the A or whether he wants you to quit your job.

I doubt your truthfulness when you say you have told him. I don't think you have and are trying to get out of your self-made mess dishonestly.

Its not too late to turn this around.

You can make amends to the BW and your BH if you want to.

And you can do this without assessing whether you want the marriage or not.

You have viciously mugged two people, one was a stranger to you, the other your nearest and dearest. When we have hurt others, we should put our hands up and confess our crime.

Gauging whether or not they are good people or whether we want something from one of them long term has nothing to do with the fact that you owe them amends for your dishonesty and attack upon them.

Saying 'Do I want this marriage?' is hopelessly arrogant after what you have done.

Rather ask why your H should want to be married to you, and whether he is being offered honesty and incentives to stay.

Couldn't he say the same thing about you?

That you had an A because you wanted one, and unless you are willing to make real changes, you'll have another?

But of course it is possible to make changes, if we really want to.

JB, indulge me for a moment while I explain a bit:

A reader of your thoughts here could be forgiven for thinking that you think this other man's wife to be of no consequence, because you have scarcely mentioned her except in conveying the brief, pejorative description you received from your affair-partner, nor have you expressed any empathy for her; and everything you think you "know" about her is apparently based solely on what you have heard from the mouth of her husband, who has had a conflicting interest, shall we say, in casting her in such light as to garner such sympathy from you as he may have found expedient for finding his way inside your thong.

As re: your feeling bad about this (possibly), a reader also could be forgiven for not being sure of your thoughts on the matter; after all, you described the affair as "such a relief and comfort" to you. (Your words, not mine.) And you've suggested that you intend to keep in contact with him, even if only for "business reasons".

Look: I'm not getting one dime or any jollies from typing to you here. I should be getting ready for hurricane Sandy. I'm trying to pay back some of the grace that was thrown my way after I almost wrecked my life. I've long ago ended my affair & come clean to my wife, and we've together restored our marriage to something better than what it had been before the affair. So you're going to have to trust me for a spell when I tell you that I've proven that I know a little more about ending an affair & saving a marriage than you do at this stage. I've walked in your shoes. But I've also walked farther past where you are.

You can't get there without some painful introspection. You can't get there guilt-free -- and actually, a certain amount of guilt can serve as a catalyzing, powerful motivator toward the more beneficial feeling of remorse.

But you're not there yet. No one who's there would look back & describe their infidelity as a "relief & comfort" without an awful lot of caveats.

If you think about it, an anonymous internet forum is a pretty easy & safe place to come clean with one's feelings & thoughts. To save a marriage, to build a marriage where both spouses' needs get met, you'll have to hash this all over with your husband in real life, and we're not even close to that yet, I sense.

So let's stay on-task, ok? I asked you two questions before.
How do you answer?

As someone who has been in your shoes, please bear with me while I offer my $.02.

Pay particular attention to the posts that make you feel angry or defensive. That defensiveness is likely due to something that is hitting you pretty close to the mark.

You've also never directly addressed the issue that ML posted - have you in fact told your BH the truth? Does he know that you chose to wound him in the worst way possible by going outside your marriage to have your needs met? "Relief and comfort," indeed. If you had in fact told him, I'm not so sure you'd be posting here with your own internal calculus of "should I stay or should I go?"

Why would I say this? Because it's highly possible - probable - that if your BH knew the truth, that decision would be taken out of YOUR hands. After all, it is ultimately the BS's decision to stay or go, wouldn't you agree? You already answered that question by sleeping with another man. It is now your BH's turn to decide, "should I stay or should I go," once fully armed with the knowledge of your adultery. YOUR decision relates to choosing to stay and recover the marriage, to atone for your adultery by #1, being honest with him about the extent of it, and #2, by choosing to do what you can to help your victim to heal. Even if you do not want to remain married to your BH anymore, you owe him the truth about his wife - and his life.

You've been married once before and we don't know how that marriage ended, or why. Was there adultery involved in your first marriage? Do you have a pattern of going outside your marriage(s) to have your needs met? I'm not asking this to cast stones at you, I'm asking this to get you to think clearly about your patterns in relationships and your response to conflict in marriage.

My pre-A marriage was no bed of roses. There was much IB and much LB'ing from both sides. The thing about this program is it will enable two committed spouses to building a romantic marriage...but you cannot begin to do that until there is honesty between the two of you. I can say this because I've been there. Pre-MB, I tried to rebuild our marriage based on lies, and ended up compounding a hundredfold the damage I caused with my adultery. It's sort of like trying to clean a stain on the carpet. Have you ever cleaned up something you spilled on the carpet, thought it was gone, only to have it reappear days or weeks later? What you spilled soaked through the carpet and onto the padding below. No amount of cleaning (need-meeting) is going to get rid of that stain. Sure, you can hide it under a throw rug or a piece of furniture, but it's always going to be there. Sometimes you simply have to go all-out and rip up the carpet and replace it. You have to admit there's a stain there and no amount of covering it up is going to work.

You could, I suppose, throw up your hands and decide to sell the whole house (dissolve the marriage) in order to get away from the stain. Maybe you can even do that without your BH finding out about it. But not only will your dishonesty and avoidance eat at you, you will never learn from it. You'll never learn how to address problems in your relationships - err, the stains on your carpet - the RIGHT way, and you will continue to have the same problems on down the road in your future relationships.

But what do I know, right? I'm just another former adulterer who is casting stones, huh?

Who I am is someone who tried to save my marriage after adultery. Once I got my head on straight - which took a while, I'll grant you - I took the advice of the good people here to heart and tried to show my BH that I wanted him, wanted our marriage, and that I was no longer the adulterous skank that I became over three years ago. I failed. But my failure was not because I ran from what I did. I was willing to learn, to grow, and to see my adultery for what it was - not a "relief and comfort," but the highest act of selfishness and cruelty to the man I promised to love till death do us part. And I learned that sometimes, we humans can break something so completely that no matter what we do, we can't "fix" it, and all we can do is own our responsibility for breaking it, and not try to blame someone else for what we did.

Brother: I appreciate your lengthy answer. I'm trying to be compact in my writing and am maybe leaving out what I should put in. I tried to give background for context. I will address your questions in order.

I have thought of *edit* and how she would feel about my having had a relationship (albeit brief) with her husband. I recognize that I have trespassed on their marriage. I don't know her. I don't want her to feel terrible. I don't want her to struggle with pain of this. I don't want to generate more damage than I already have done with my own marriage. Again, this may be too compact a writing to demonstrate well that I feel regret and compassion for her as the wronged woman.

I do know more about *edit* than just what he has told me. She is known in his office as a harridan who controls him with anger. I have heard stories from other colleagues about it. My understanding of her is second-hand but not just from him.

Regarding my feelings about my actions, I feel a certain numbness at this point, because I am so overwhelmed with all sorts of feelings, if that makes sense. I feel terrible for betraying my marriage vows. I feel terrible for hurting my husband. I feel guilty for having an affair. I feel bad for harming another marriage than my own. I hate the idea of getting divorced again. I am not sure that our marriage can be saved, and I have a lot of anxiety over that. I feel grief mixed with pain at causing pain, fear that I've only opened the floodgates for more punishment than I have already experienced in this marriage. I feel a lot of anxiety.

I said that the affair provided comfort and relief. It did, because my husband is rarely interested in sex, though I noticed on the computer that he keeps a subscription to a porn site. My husband rarely speaks to me more than 5 minutes at a time and spends most of the time we are at home either watching TV or napping. My home is a lonely place. For a long, long time I have felt like our marriage has become a roommates who happen to be business partners where only one partner does the work (me). It seems that everyone outside my husband loves me, but it's his love that I want. I've backed down and tried to adjust/change my actions and communication to try to bridge this gap between us. In the past year, my husband has taken to humiliating me when we are in social gatherings. That is crushing. So that is why I said the affair was a relief and a comfort; it was nice to be treated so differently than I am at home. Again, I'm trying to be compact in my writing and may not be communicating well.

I confessed to the affair 2 weeks ago, when he asked me about it. I asked him how he knew and he said that the giveaway was that I had seemed relaxed and seemed happy, which wasn't normal, so he figured something was wrong. I freely and readily confessed to everything and asked his forgiveness. I accept his raging/silence/raging/silence on this as part of the consequence, but I just wonder if the marriage is worth saving. Don't mean to sound mean, but we have a long record of unhappiness, and I don't know if it can be converted to anything else. I am in despair. Probably the best thing to have done was to have left the marriage without ever having an affair; now only more damage has been done.

Our marriage has been fraught with tension and silence and anger for most of the 9 years we've been married. I hate living this way. It wasn't this way before we married, though he was never very talkative. He winds up raging at me every time I broach the subject of improving our marriage or communication. In the past, the way I have coped is to stop talking about our marriage. I have grown so lonely in this marriage that I am terrified that what my husband considers fixing our marriage will only result in my staying lonely. He lies like a rug about all sorts of things, has for years, and I worry because of that. His drinking at times blocks interactions and wastes time. How can we mend if one is honest/comes clean but the other does not?

I am concerned that he is very comfortable with our living conditions. He makes a good living, and I make about 4 times what he makes. I feel like he loves money and status more than he loves me. Sometimes I feel like the little red hen.

We went to a counselor last week. She said that our only goal should be to address my husband's wound that I caused and to help him feel good again. She told me that I may be smart but I need to not think too much. She said that I may think that I don't need her approval as a person but deep down inside me I probably fear her judgment of me. I thought all that was weird to come from a counselor, and now I worry that she may not have an approach that really helps us heal the marriage, if it can be healed. That's why I googled "how to recover from an affair" and found this website.

I hope what I've written makes sense. It may seem disjointed; I've been writing it piecemeal and cannot see the whole writing at one view. I think I've answered your questions. Lastly, would you please decode the abbreviations on this blog for me? I don't know what they mean. Thanks.

Batten down the hatches. I hope the storm doesn't harm you and yours.

Do you understand, JB6, that it doesn't matter if he lies, or if she is angry. What you did to them is unspeakable. Even if they were murderers they wouldn't deserve what you did.

And you have turned yourself into a cheater. For what? To avoid some conflicts at home? That is senseless.

Are you willing to have someone inform the BW what you have done to her and give up your job for NC?

No matter what type of person, she does not deserve to be lied to like this, constantly wondering what is wrong with no one giving her answers. At the mercy of the manipulations of a cheating husband.

When I discovered my Hs affair, finally getting the truth was the biggest relief of my life.

When someone is really sorry for their actions, they don't tend to cite the wrongdoing of others. Did you know that? You seem to think that the poor state of your marriage somehow justifies your affair. It does not. You are also responsible for the poor state of your marriage. And even if you weren't, it is not an excuse to screw some other woman's husband. There are no excuses for an affair. A bad marriage does not entitle you to harm others.

As we explained in previous posts, you can have the same kind of love and happiness in your marriage that you have in this affair if you follow this program. If you can get your husband to come here and you both commit to this program we can walk you through this program.

But there is no hope unless you end all contact with this woman's husband. Your relationship with this loser is doomed anyway. You have no future in a relationship that began as an affair. Just ask yourself what kind of man has an affair and what kind of a man screws a married woman? He is a bum.

I would suggest that you are not in a position to criticize the OM's wife. Most spouses are "harridans" when they are being abused by their spouses. Her husband is having an affair, for God's sake, and that is about as abusive as it gets. Obviously she doesn't "control" him well enough if he is screwing his coworkers. CAlling her a "harridan" is about like criticizing the rape victim for obnoxious behavior while being raped. Talk about blaming the victim.

Your compassion is obviously fake because you are still in contact with her husband and have not made any amends to her. Have you ended your affair? Apologized to her? Those would be the actions of someone who was truly sorry for what they have done.


That is because *YOU* are emotionally invested elsewhere. You seem to not realize your own contribution to the problems in the marriage. Women CAN be accountable, and you are not a hapless victim in all this.

Melody Lane: Please don't contact me anymore through this blog. I didn't get on this blog to be bullied. GloveOil makes sense to me without bullying. I prefer to listen to him. Many thanks if you had any good intentions for me.
I wish you peace.
JB

You are not being bullied, you are being told things you don't want to hear -- there is a difference.

OK, I got it, you've told your BH.

But what I hear in your posts is rationalizing and blameshifting. Yes, he may have been a lousy H before your adultery. Yes, there may have been problems present in your pre-adultery marriage. None of that justifies your infidelity.

MB has a plan that can save marriages. Eventually, if both spouses buy into the program and work it, your marriage will be light years better than it was pre-adultery. Actually, in order for the two of you to recover from your infidelity, it must be better than the pre-A marriage.

I get that there were problems in your marriage. Each spouse is 50% responsible for the condition of the marriage. But only you, JB, are 100% responsible for the decision to cheat. Your BH didn't make you. The OM didn't make you. And the OM's BW certainly didn't make you (you might want to edit your post above and remove her name, BTW).

If you "hate the idea of getting divorced again," then you need to buckle up and get to work on this marriage. Your counselor was right about one thing, at least - your first priority is to tend to your husband's wounds.

Consider this. I am fond of analogies, although not as good at the word pictures as some posters. Imagine that you have just blasted your husband in the stomach at point-blank range with a shotgun. He's in shock, he's bleeding out. You decide to focus your energy on a particularly nasty-looking hangnail he has, ignoring his gunshot wound. Complaining about the state of your marriage pre-infidelity is kind of like that.

Yes, eventually, the issues present in your marriage pre-A will have to be addressed. But not until you tend to the damage you - and you alone - inflicted on your victim.

**ETA: PS - Mel is one of the best posters on this board. You are actually extremely fortunate that she has taken an interest in your thread.

Possibly you are right, karmasrose, but I didn't get on this website or this blog to get vindictive comments. Insights and advice can be given without making accusations. MelodyLane's accusations were not all accurate and it felt like she was striking out of personal bitterness.

This blog has terrific potential to help others, which is why I am on it. I have been wrong, but shouldn't strangers who want to help other strangers speak the truth with courtesy? The anonymity of the blog seems to be a free pass to nastiness for some folks. It's not your job to punish me when I ask for help.

Thanks, Wulffpack_girl. I appreciate your words. I can see the sense you make.

Melodylane is an experienced poster whose 'personal experience' is that she has helped save countless marriages.

As for her marriage, she recovered it. She moved on past the A.

She is trying to help you do the same.

Are you ready to take personal responsibility?

And get to work?

Or are you just here to 'blog'

Cause we aren't bloggers here. This is not a blog. This is a place of action.

What was inaccurate?


It is. Because if you had it your way, you would refuse to see what you have done wrong here. Case in point - you had an affair with another woman's husband and seem to have no remorse for it. Perhaps that is because you believe your lover and not common sense (if their marriage was "over" and you were important to him, then why are you a 1000-mile away secret?).

Actions that can help undo what you've done and save your marriage:

Telling the BW

Going NC for life with OM, quitting your job if need be.

Interested?

It is not vindictive and bitter for ML to know the difference between right and wrong and point out to you that what you are doing is, indeed, wrong.

Waywards who tend to gloss over what they've done tend not to get "courtesy."

We are not here to hold your hand and gently guide you through this. We are here to yank you back from the cliff's edge. Will it hurt? Yes.

But you HAVE to know to GET OFF THE EDGE first.

I read your thread and it seems you are looking for people to support your ideas. You won't find that here. Having an affair is wrong no matter how you felt into he marriage. Especially with a married man as well. One thing that is very true, people who cheat lack empathy. That goes for you as well. You need to tell that poor woman what you did to her marriage with her WH and end your affair and focus on your MARRIAGE. One thing that is said a lot is you can only fix yourself and instead of blaming your H try to look in the mirror and ask yourself what can I do to be a better spouse and do it. It's never too late!