The antidepressants will help with that.

In addition to the antidepressants, the two of you need to turn to rebuilding your marriage. It needs to be better than it was pre-affair, and fulfilling for both of you.

To start, you need to be going out of the house on dates, 4 days a week, 4 hours at a time. You should spend these dates meeting the 4 intimate emotional needs: Intimate Conversation, Affection, Recreational Companionship and finally Sexual Fulfillment.

All lovebusters need to be eliminated.

You should both agree to live by the POJA, as well as Radical Honesty.

Have you read the Basic Concepts? Do you have the book Surviving an Affair? This plan for recovery is laid out very well there.

True, but what should be discussed is present problems - the affair partner should not be brought into conversation.

Just to be sure, has everything on this list been done?

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.

Yes he has been honest that he doesn't feel in love with me and that makes him feel guilty and makes it harder for him to feel comfortable staying.

TA, we are not in the least concerned with his feelings because feelings change. If he will agree to this plan, his feelings will come back. What is important now are his ACTIONS. Feelings follow actions.

Will he participate in this program of marriage recovery? <---that is all that matters right now.

Are you reading Prisca's posts? Do you have the book Surviving an Affair? You need to get to work here if you want to save your marriage.

Hi Torn, withdrawal can look like taking the crack pipe away. It is ugly, but it doesn't last forever.

LOGIC needs to be the guide for both of you right now. How he "feels" isn't important at this stage...Jon and Sue (in Dr. H's SAA) didn't FEEL much goodwill toward each other when they began to follow Dr. H's plan for recovery, but now they are back in love.

Start aiming for that undivided attention together. We did 25 plus per week as per Dr. Harley. You won't FEEL like being together at first, it will FEEL off kilter and forced, but eventually you both will discover that wow, you are having FUN together.

No to counseling for him (individual counseling tends to make waywards more self focused and less focused on working on recovering a relationship with a wife).

Yes to time spent together.

Almost all men have Recreational Companionship as a top emotional need they want filled. Love grows from an emotional need being met.

No lovebusting.

Meet needs.

Spend time together.

Recovery is HARD! I've heard Dr. Harley say that many betrayed spouses make a bit of a mess of recovery because they are SO angry and/or disrespectful with their wayward husband. So avoid this at all costs. Try your best to be as pleasant as possible and don't talk about the affair.

The antidepressants should help your husband feel a little better within a week or so. You might also consider them for yourself if you are feeling very depressed.

Try getting yourselves out for walks and other physical activity. Not only will it be some UA time, but the physical activity itself can help make you both feel better. Make sure you plan to do things together that you find enjoyable.

It takes about two years to recover from an affair. It takes less time than that to fall back in love, as long as the ENs are being met and LBs are eliminated. You will both need lots of patience to get through this time.

Make sure there is no contact ever between your H and his AP.

Thank you BlindSighted! This is very helpful. I agree about the offkilter bit. We are just pressing forward. It seems like things are still raw and painful but have the potential to be great.

Thank you for the tips about avoiding anger. I have already given into that bug once in a 4am conversation. And immediately regretted it. So i am more committed to shutting that down and instead waiting to discuss once we are calm.

And yes patience is going to be my mantra. And we are doing all that we can for the contact issue. She is starting to escalate a bit as he has cut her off. But i think we are through the worst of it. I know it affects him but he is working hard at this too. He has had me monitor incoming things and delete anything prior to him having to deal with it. I am also working on planning items we can do together as a family and alone. We have a 3 year old and a newborn. So there are some limits to what we can do and how much.

Thanks again.

Markos - GOOD point. I will stop bringing her up and really focus on present and future.

Yup we are working on dating more and spending more time together. But with a 3 year old and a newborn it has been challenging. Thankfully we have some really supportive family and friends. I will bring up the UA time.

How does UA time work when you have young kids? Is it about spending time away from them or can they also participate in the UA time when it will be a fun family outing? (i.e. going to see Christmas Lights or a picnic at the park)

Babysitters! As many as possible. UA time is only effective when the kids are not there. The way we do it is to sit down every Sunday afternoon and schedule our time using the UA time worksheet. download worksheet here

UA time is time spent with your spouse only, meeting all four intimate emotional needs. The time you and your husband spend with your children doing family things together are great for family time, which is also important, but this time won't make you fall in love with each other. To meet each others emotional needs, privacy is important.

Having children does complicate trying to get the UA time; the more children a couple has, the more at risk the marriage.

Try as much as possible to get the UA time you will need to recover your marriage. Have several sitters lined up. Four 4-hour dates is the recommendation. Now, you could get out for several three-hour dates, returning home in time and with enough energy to enjoy more affection and SF for an hour.

Recovery is already tough; recovery without sufficient UA time will be even harder. The last thing you want is to simply have the affair end; you will want the marriage to become better than it ever has been.

This is one of Dr. Harley's cardinal rules for affair recovery. In fact it is one of his rules for good conversation: do not dwell on mistakes of the past or present.

Once you have all the knowledge that you need about the affair, it should not be discussed again.

From your description I didn't realize that you were bringing the affair up - I thought it was your husband. Neither one of you should bring it up.

I am not actively trying to bring her into our discussions, but there are little things. Like I ask him if there has been any contact. Or when he starts shaking and getting really antsy I know it is because he is fighting his urge to leave the house and run to her. This last one is really hard because it usually leads to a big discussion about how he doesn't love me and she is so great of a connection for him. (Which is all him bringing her up.) But he knows logically she isn't worth losing everything over. He just struggles and then tells me how he isn't doing this for all the right reasons. And that it is primarily for the kids and not for me. And how when we do connect sexually or otherwise it is hard on him and he then gets even antsier.

What the heck and am I supposed to do with that??!?!

Last night i just collapsed into a pile of sobbing mess. I just couldn't control it anymore. My poor daughter (3yo) saw it and kept telling me to not be sad and giving me hugs. I hate that i was so broken in front of her. But i am human and couldn't do it anymore. Thankfully husband helped once he saw what was happening, and it oddly helped us a bit. But i just feel so tossed about.

You shouldn't have to ask if there's been contact. You should be able to see that every single means of contact has been eliminated. He can't see her or work with her any more. She shouldn't be able to reach him at all. Every means of communication that he has should have shared passwords. This is essential for going into recovery.

UA is very essential for recovery. It will contribute greatly to solving the problems you are facing.

It needs to be done away from the kids to be effective. Date each other.

Dr. Harley also recommends that you plan 15 hours to spend as a family in addition to UA. Christmas lights and a picnic would fall under this family commitment time.

Don't ever have any such discussions again. The affair is now in the past. The OW is now in the past. Leave them there, and focus on the present.