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I really need prayer. i am a christian woman 50, married for 32yrs, husband had a yr long affair, we divorced & remarried, 9 mos ago i got 'addicted' to an emotional/txt affair, now trying desperately to become free of this. all of this is so hard to explain and it's extremely hard for me to face because of trauma, our oldest son was on the heart transplant list suffered for five years before passing away at age 21, then The sudden death of my mom-my best friend in the world, and for most of our family life husb. treated us horribly and then 8 yrs after our son died he had a year-long affair and told me he was divorcing me and left me. I had never been on social websites before, innocently joined one, struck up a friendship etc. I know why I became so attached to this person. these past 9 months I've been on a downhill slope and I feel sometimes like I've gone nuts like I have a split personality sometimes. I do understand some of it. Some People who have been through extreme intense long-term emotional suffering ..sometimes their brains must split their emotions..and they develop certain coping techniques to block out the pain so that they can survive. mentally and emotionally. that's no excuse for what I've done. having an affair is wrong. I should've either committed to staying with My husb and not had anything to do with the OM or divorced Husb and then found someone at my church to date. I could write a novel on this.. Me and the om connected for whatever reasons and we seemed to really care about each other. I thought he really cared for me and I really loved him to death ..I'm sobbing. God this hurts. I came along at a time when he needed emotional needs met and I met them and he definitely did the same for me. The benefit that I derived from the affair was an immense happiness freedom and joy in the sense of being my real self again, ..the me that I was before I got married ..the real me ..the happy, positive, upbeat me. but this affair (if you can even call it that) has been so torturous, filled with anxiety and grief and more pain than I have ever felt..believe it or not it's pretty close to the pain of Losing our son. I don't really understand how or why I have clung to it more than life itself almost, just to keep it going, even at the risk of ruining my life. I haven't talked to my family in 5 months because I'm so ashamed and there's no way I can explain this to them that I'm staying in this affair even though it's so painful and destructive, because I don't even understand it. I'm constantly full of guilt, the negatives way outweigh the positives. and as far as 'effort', trying to do the right thing, break it off MoveOn etc?.. ..I tell you I have tried to break it off harder than I have ever tried at anything in my whole life. The weird part is we have so little contact with each other. He gives me little tiny crumbs of attention that I lap up like a starving person. We go for weeks without even talking to each other. and then when we do 'connect' it's only through texting- he hardly ever wants to call me on the phone so basically it's just a few paragraphs of texting maybe 3-4 times a week that's so pathetic. The om has tried to do the right thing, he's broken it off many times. The problem is not me not being able to decide whether to leave my husb and be with Om, my logical brain has always known that that would never ever happen. The problem is that every time I've tried to break it off with Him...the pain is so intense ..it's so intense for whatever my emotional reasons are..the pain is so intense that I cannot even bear it. and I am a strong woman, I've been through years of being strong through suffering. there must be some survival instinct in me that when I break up with him it feels like I am just dying. it's hard to explain it's not just the end of a romantic love affair.. it feels like I am really dying, like God is leaving me, if that makes any sense. something must've gotten screwed up inside me to make me cling to the om as if he was God or something. and I don't have low self-esteem, I know that I could get any man so it's not that. I know the om is not gonna leave His wife and I tell him all the time. I've never asked him to, I hardly even ask him for anything. I know this all sounds crazy and weird believe me it's still crazy and weird to me. All I know is it it's getting harder and harder or for both of us and I know that he's probably going to try to break it off with me again pretty soon. ( this will be probably the 4th time maybe)-and it hurts so bad I can't even think about it. Right now I'm just praying that God will give him the strength to do it and give me the strength to stay away and grieve the loss and then move on, I haven't been able to do that yet and I've tried harder than anything. it's like my heart wants to keep these fantasy dreams alive of 'me and him maybe being together someday' -even though it's not real, it still brings so much joy and happiness. and I know it does the same for him or he wouldn't keep coming back to me. He has risked alot too..she has thrown him out twice and even now they're on very shaky ground. If I was OM, there's No Way in the world I would leave my wife to be with me! that's illogical. But when that little dream is taken away, it feels like..death. just death. and I'm not talking about a week or few weeks, the pain doesnt end. -Some people when they're very addicted to something, get delivered from it instantly. other people have to try many times (3 steps forward 2 steps back) and eventually they get free after trying and failing. all I can do is keep praying that God will give me the strength to do the right thing and that maybe He will bring some good out of this. but I dont have the right to ask God 'hey can you bring a nice-good-happy ending out of my sexual- sinful-lying affair?' When we break up, the OM becomes extremely emotionally cruel, I know he doesn't do it on purpose it has to do with his childhood etc. But combine my fear of the pain and grief of breakup, and Om's bad coping skill of becoming extremely cruel, it is just the most horrible horrible thing to go through. i'm sorry I'm babbling on and on.. I know I have sinned grievously and I need prayer and God's help to get me on the right path. Thank you God bless.
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Joined: Apr 2001
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The problem is that every time I've tried to break it off with Him...the pain is so intense ..it's so intense for whatever my emotional reasons are..the pain is so intense that I cannot even bear it. and I am a strong woman, I've been through years of being strong through suffering. Does your husband know about the affair? Does he know you are still in contact with the OM?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Joined: Jul 2005
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The only way you will ever get relief is to tell your husband, break off the affair with a no contact FOR LIFE letter (that your husband reads and approves) and then suffer through withdrawal. There is no other way. I am speaking from experience, as I am a former wayward spouse.
You will not get better until you take these steps. It will only get worse. The way to do these things? Choose. That's it. It's all a matter of choice. You can do it, but you must choose to. Will you?
Mrs. W
FWW ~ 47 ~ MeFBH ~ 50 ~ MrWonderingDD ~ 17 Dday ~ 2005 ~ Recovered
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PartsCaster,
One of the things I hear Dr Harley say alot during on his radio show is that having an affair does not make you a bad person, and that all of us me, you and whoever reads this are vulnerable to one if we don't maintain proper boundries.
That being said do the right thing and please tell your husband now, if the OM has a W please tell her now.
God Bless Gamma
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PartsCaster, you don't need further prayer right now. God has already told you what you need to do, and you continue willfully to ignore Him. I've lived that kind of false-pious, self-deceiving (and other-deceiving) charade myself, and you aren't fooling me with it.
You don't need more prayer. Rather, you need to get serious about ending your affair. You haven't even begun to get serious.
It's this simple: What you need is to 'fess up to your husband and to the other mans wife. That's the first step to ending an affair -- to break up the secrecy under which affairs thrive. You get instant external accountability to fight your addiction, and your husband gets a fighting chance to protect his marriage from this interloper, and information that he needs in order to try to better meet some of your needs, if he decides he wants to try to improve your marriage.
That's what you need to do. An answer to prayer, if you will. Right here on this page in blue & white. And black-&-white from the other posters who have similarly advised you. Each one an answer to prayer.
Unless & until you take those steps toward accountability, you are basically resolved & determined to continue sinning. Under those circumstances, don't you think it's going out on a limb to ask for forgiveness, since doing so is supposed to include at least a passing nod to changing for the better, a la someone's famous suggestion to "Go and sin no more"? You, however, will be proving yourself completely determined to continue sinning more, as long as you insist on maintaining the shroud of secrecy that facilitates your infidelity.
And you think this other guy has been trying to "do the right thing"? Uh, no, he's actually not. Every time he responds to you, he makes a conscious decision to keep the door open for more. I've been him, and I know. The only way he'd be doing the right thing is if he'd already completely cut you off. That is the only right thing when it comes to messing around in someone else's marriage. This other guy is merely the same kind of idiot I was back in 2008 when I kept 'resolving to end it' yet still kept my wife in the dark & resumed taking the other woman's calls and answering her emails.
Your problem is, you're "trying" to end your affair while keeping your husband in the dark. That's like "trying" to quit smoking crack while keeping your crackpipe in your pocket and your dealer's phone number on speed-dial in your phone -- it's not really "trying" at all, is it?
Or you can call it quits and ask for a divorce and continue trying to lure the OM out of his marriage & treating his wife as if she's of no more worth than some piece of old chewing gum no the bottom of your shoe, and constantly trying to tell yourself that because you've had rough times in life (and who at our age hasn't), it's somehow OK for you to permit yourself to behave so.
Ponder it. Get serious. Right now, you're not serious. You'll be serious when you've 'fessed up o your husband. Until then, you're simply not serious, PartsCaster.
Me: FWH, 50 My BW: Trust_Will_Come, 52, tall, beautiful & heart of gold DD23, DS19 EA-then-PA Oct'08-Jan'09 Broke it off & confessed to BW (after OW's H found out) Jan.7 2009 Married 25 years & counting. Grateful for forgiveness. Working to be a better husband. "I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard" ~Jacob Marley's ghost, A Christmas Carol "Do it again & you're out on your [bum]." ~My BW, Jan.7 2009
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Joined: Jun 2011
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Its addiction : just addiction.
You know this man is using you.
You can't break free alone - you have to tell your husband. Only cold turkey will work and you need the help of others.
What would you do if you were not afraid?
"Fear is the little death. Fear is the mind-killer" Frank Herbert.
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. The weird part is we have so little contact with each other. He gives me little tiny crumbs of attention that I lap up like a starving person. We go for weeks without even talking to each other. and then when we do 'connect' it's only through texting- Not weird at all. Married men in affairs only want the admiration of someone desperate. They tend to get most of their needs met by their wife. The woman tends to be more addicted and more desperate than he is.
What would you do if you were not afraid?
"Fear is the little death. Fear is the mind-killer" Frank Herbert.
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Take the first steps and come clean to your husband and Omw. The take steps to cut it off-- change all contact information, submit to monitoring by your husband.
It will feel like a death. Many break-ups feel that way. Most of us betrayed spouses in plan B have gone through some version of that. I've never been in an affair, but I can imagine that in some ways it is even worse in an affair because the shroud of secrecy has kept the affair sheltered from reality for so long. That's why it's important to come clean and take steps to end contact.
Me: 38, have been divorced for 4 years
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PartsCaster, I see you found time to change your username to "GuiltRidden".
Did you also find time to pay attention to & think on any of the sound advice that's been given you? Perhaps even to act on it?
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Joined: Jun 2011
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Or you could have used the time to send this thread to your BH. Then you would have hit the affair in the eye long before your withdrawal pains kicked in.
Don't blame withdrawal - every time you've 'ended it' you've done it in secrecy so you could restart it.
The on again/off again nature is the only thing keeping this pathetic dynamic interesting.
What would you do if you were not afraid?
"Fear is the little death. Fear is the mind-killer" Frank Herbert.
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Come clean with your husband. The truth is the only thing that will set you free and put you on the path to recovery.
I'll pray for you. However, you already know what you need to do.
Married 31 years, 5 kids, 4 GK
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Have you told your husband yet?
FWW/BW (me) WH 2nd M for both Blended Family with 7 kids between us Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.
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You know I really thought she would....appeared to be genuine guilt...
What would you do if you were not afraid?
"Fear is the little death. Fear is the mind-killer" Frank Herbert.
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You know I really thought she would....appeared to be genuine guilt... I know, right? I'm afraid she's in contact with OM yet again.
FWW/BW (me) WH 2nd M for both Blended Family with 7 kids between us Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.
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