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

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.

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.

I don't need aspersions. I need advice.

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?

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.

Is there a set of questions to answer that will help me decide to end my marriage or try to recover it?

Thanks.
I've read the articles, and they make sense.