Four years ago my husband was in a EA and PA. He would not stop the affair once I found out and even moved out and continued the affair. Many harsh things were said on the way out the door and our children and I endured extreme pain during the time he was away. I'm sure all of this is known by eqch and every BS here.

My husband I were able to reconcile after a few months of him leaving. Although I did not know of the methods recommended here at the time, it's pretty similar to what occurred.

What I still struggle with today though is still knowing my husband had feelings for someone else. He's done a lot to make amends and we do have a better and wiser marriage now but it's still there. The pain of knowing that occurred. I am for the most part healed but that will often stop me in my tracks when I remember. Sometimes I wonder if this will ever go away.

I'm wondering from women who have lived through the abandonent then infidelity, the rejection and how you truly got over this. I know my husband does not have feelings any longer but he did and he went through thr withdrawal period for a few months after returning home. This rips my heart out still to this day. How do you cope?

GG21, welcome to Marriage Builders. You are certainly in the right place. One thing we have learned from the Marriage Builders program is that if you don't create a marriage that is immensely better than what you had before, the marriage will suffer. Lingering resentment is a sign that recovery is not complete and the marriage is a crippled version of the pre-affair marriage.

What we have learned is that if one is happy in the present, the mind doesn't tend to wander to the past. In a recovered marriage, we wouldn't expect to see resentment and pain beyond 2 years. A critical part of recovery is affair proofing the marriage and then creating a romantic, passionate relationship. We can help you do that and bring your marriage to a better place.

There can also be triggers that can prevent recovery. For example, if there is any contact between the spouse and his affair partner, or if he travels, is not transparent [hides his phone, etc] or engages in any of the same behavior, it will trigger the betrayed spouse. Another obstacle is living close to the affair partner or living in the same home.

I will post the extraordinary precautions in the next post and you can look them over and see how many you can check.

From Surviving an Affair, pg 66-67

The extraordinary precautions do more than end marriage-threatening affairs; they help a couple form the kind of relationship they always wanted.

These recommendations may seem rigid, unnecessarily confining, and even paranoid to those who have not been the victim of infidelity. But people like Sue and Jon, who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of an affair that spun out of control, can easily see their value. For the inconvenience of following my advice, Sue would have spared herself and Jon the very worst experience of their lives.


Checklist for How Affairs Should End

_____The unfaithful spouse should reveal information about the affair to the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should make a commitment to the betrayed spouse to never see or talk to the lover OP again.

_____The unfaithful spouse should write a letter to the lover OP ending the relationship and send it with the approval of the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from the lover OP:

_____Block potential communication with the lover OP (change e-mail address and home and cell phone numbers, and close all social networking accounts; have voice messages and mail monitored by the betrayed spouse).

_____Account for time (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

_____Account for money (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a complete account of all money spent).

_____Spend leisure time together.

_____Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

_____Avoid overnight separation.

_____Allow technical accountability.

_____ Expose affair to family members, clergy, and/or friends.

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it

I wish I could find something we haven't done or that needs to be done to fix this because there there would be something I could say "yes, this wasn't completed" and complete or "this hasn't been done" and do it.

There's absolutely no resentment on my part. I am prob 99% healed. No anger no bitterness no hatred. I have forgiven but living with the knowledge that there was someone my husband felt so strongly for he left his family over and emotionally and physically abandoned me for is something that still cuts me to the quick. The pain isn't as it used to be but I oftrn still feel tremendous sadness about.

We are under a lot of financial stress at the moment but even still we have UA time and marriage check ups every two weeks. I have no complaints. Just the knowing. I want so badly to get past it.

This is what I mean by an incomplete recovery. There wouldn't be lingering sadness about the past if the present was great. How has your marriage changed from before the affair?

Would you say you and your husband have a romantic, passionate relationship?

Can you describe your UA time? What do you do? How much time every week? When you say check ups, what does that mean?

Absolutely. My husband has done a 180 in terms of romantic gestures. Was totally lacking that before. Many passionate moments.

Answering your next post. With our finances being what they are right now we don't go out as much as we used to but we do go for walks together, open a bottle of wine and have quiet time together when the kids are asleep or out the house. My husband loved to take long drives and that's one of our favorite things "cheap" things to do lately. Baths together, lots of random sweet moments for one another.

This isn't a daily sadness or eveb weekly. They're random. No triggers that start them. It's like it's just a knowing. I know my husband left me. He chose someone over me. He left us. He did not care about me during that time. Did not check on me. This all hurts to think of when I do even as little as I do.

Does anyone else go through this at all?

Oh check ups is when we check in with one another about meeting our emotional needs. We prob do that every two weeks. We have a standing Friday appt.

We spend about 7-10 hours of UA time lately per week. I'm back in school so that has cut down some of the time we had before.

Does he ever see the OW? How far away does she live?

Can you think really hard and identify what triggers your sadness?

That might be one of the issues, because it takes 15 hours to MAINTAIN romantic love and 20-25 to create. My H and I have been in recovery for over 10 years and we can always tell when we slip under 15 because we start feeling detached. Dr Harley will tell you his program doesn't work without this step.

Can you drop out of school?

Can you be more specific? What do you during your meetings exactly?

He never sees the OW. She's in NY we are in CA.

Nothing specifically is a trigger when I think it, it's just a knowing. Despite all of our hard work. All of his hard work, all of my hard work, a fact remains a fact. It happened. This will always be a part of our history.

As for school, I could drop out but I won't. I don't want to and he doesn't want me to either. There will be things in life that will prevent every schedule from going as planned. I really don't think it's lack of UA time. We feel no disconnect even with fewer hours. The time we get together is rich and full. Quality over quantity some times

I'm starting to think I'm just going to have to live with this and hopefully one day it will die.

This is the one miss that I see. Quantity really does matter and the marriage suffers when you fall below 15 hours. It should all be "quality" but in order to sustain a marriage, it has to be 15 hours. People who are in recovery really notice the difference when their UA time falls below 15. So maybe it is not school, but something else that can be moved aside to make room for your marriage. ITs critically important to put your marriage first and schedule everything else around that.


I would email Dr Harley and see if he can help. He might be able to help you figure out what is wrong. He has a free radio show where he addresses such issues. [it is free] And you don't have to go on the radio if you don't want to. They can just call you or communicate via email. Instructions are here: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi4200_radio.html

Check this out: The Policy of Undivided Attention

Have you read about Just Compensation?

Tell us what you think. What is Just Compensation?

Here is another good read.
Resentment Type A and Type B

Here some more good clips. Dr. Harley on How to Deal with Triggers

Thank you Melody Lane for your suggestions and help. I will email Dr. Harley. Thank you.

Makes perfect sense and I definttly feel compensated. Took him a while to get his head out of his [censored] when he first returned but once he wised up he moved heaven and earth and still is to make amends. It not only wounds me when I have these moments it wounds him.

No resentment. Took two years for they to completely go away but I can honestly say all the resentment is gone.