BNC,<P>Your story really hits home with me given what I am going through. My wife has had an ongoing EA with a man across the street for over a year now. She came to me about 4 months ago to tell me that she was connected to him and was going to stop. She has not and claims they are just friends and can't get the love back for me. You know the drill.<P>My question is while your wifes affair was going on how did she treat you? You made mention that she was a little nasty to you. I have been trying plan A for 6 months without much luck. My wife is no closer to gaining her feelings back then she was when this whole thing started. What suggestions might you have?

<BR>Dear NoMas,<P>Glad you were blessed by my testimony. My email address is grace2all8@aol.com if you need to talk further.<P>Best Wishes,<P>BrokenButNotCrushed<P>

Dear Pam,<P>What an amazing attitude you have! I hope your H commits to breaking off contact with the OW soon. Perhaps showing him my story might help. I wrote it very much hoping that it would impact unfaithful spouses.<P>No doubt about it, God does allow suffering into our lives to refine our character to produce beneficial changes that otherwise we wouldn't have voluntarily chosen. There will be a quite a bit on this in my 'insights' post that I hope to have ready soon.<P>Best Wishes,<P>BrokenButNotCrushed<P>

BBNC<P>What if you are in a situation like mine, where my wife claims to be a Christian outside the home, but when we are alone, does nothing but tell me how horrible I am. She refuses to make love with me more than 2 times per month, demands to be in control of every aspect of my life, and even has told me that if I have sexual needs, that I should just masturbate and leave her alone?<P>I am extremely vulnerable to temptation, so I make it a point to never be alone with another woman. But sometimes I find myself wishing that I could catch her in an affair, so that I could get out of this self-imposed prison. <P>May the Lord Bless you and Keep You.<BR>John

BBNC, thank-you for taking the time to reply. The encouragement always helps. It has been a hard road.<P>Yes, I'm still not sure about him saying he was never in love, so many betrayers say that. And yet, unlike many I've heard, he took the difficult step of ending it and "working" on us even when he had no "in-love" feelings. He took a further step of breaking the emotional attachment he felt to OW rather than letting it die slowly as many have said. <P>I have no clue how he did that. He is a man who does what he decides to do. He did say it was incredibly hard.<P>What was your reason for confronting OM? We have both wondered about closure with OW. He really botched the attempt to share the gospel with her and would like to somehow make it "right". On the other hand, there has been no contact for four months, and we would be playing a dangerous game to invite any.<P>My last and most important question: you described your wife as being strong and not defensive. Yet, in a reply, you describe how you were there when she was overwhelmed by what she had done. I identify with the strong part. But it is very difficult for me to understand his lack of sorrow for what he did to me, unless it is a real lack of love.<P>Besides the usual pain of withdrawal, there was even more sorrow for the pain he had caused the OW. He sees her as a victim here even though she jumped into the sack on their first date knowing he was married with small children. This was no gradual slipping into adultery.<P>According to Harley there are some very good recoveries even without remorse. But it continues to stick inside me that he would see OW as a "sweet girl" and leave me to feel my pain alone. Does he feel pain for what he did to us?? Can't remember if you mentioned children, but he was nasty to me and them during this time. My then 4 year old son was biting his nails down to the roots from the stress.<P>I still wait to stop feeling like an outsider in my own life. But the transformation between him and the children is a miracle. I would never have believed he could be so good with them.

Dear Derby,<P>It's neat when He shows us the same thing, isn't it? Like you, I took my spouse's fidelity forgranted. Thankfully, the wake-up call made me realize there were lots of things in my marriage I was taking forgranted. It's amazing how much we have to learn...<P>I pray that your H will soon see what a dead end the other relationship is, and what a treasure he has in his marriage.<P>In His Love,<P>BrokenButNotCrushed<P>

Dear Zip,<P>The way my wife treated me was tremendously influenced by how deeply she was deceived at the time about the affair. When she wanted to stop the affair, she took positive steps in our marriage. But when the affair was uppermost in her thought life, our relationship suffered terribly.<P>Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." Change the heart and the words will soon follow. If you're meeting her emotional needs, avoiding love busters and praying for God to expose the deceptions in your wife's mind, then you're doing all that you can.<P>Have you ever come right out and said to your wife: "I know I haven't done a good job of meeting your emotional needs in the past. Will you help me to love you the way you need to be loved by constructively sharing what I might do differently?" Don't ask for any changes in return. If you can get her to see that you are giving unselfishly to her, it's likely that she will want to progress out of emotional withdrawal toward being a giver without your even asking! <P>By the way, it's impossible for you to know whether your wife is any closer toward regaining her feelings for you. Recovery isn't a straight path, it's a winding journey. Remember, it always seems darkest before the dawn! <P>Keep pressing on until with God's help, you attain your goal.<P>Best Wishes,<P>BrokenButNotCrushed<P><BR>

You truly are inspriational!!<P>I am in the process of printing. I also hope to share this with my H when the time is right. Thank-you<P>By the way do you remember where you got the article of emotional and physiological responses?? I wish my h could understand that it is an addiction, that WE can work through this!! <P>Thank-you again and God Bless<P>T

BBNC,<P>Thanks for the inspiration. I have such a long road to go, but I know that there are great rewards waiting at the end. God Bless.<P>Kevin

Dear John,<P>What a horrible situation to deal with! While I'd need to hear her side of the story to more fully understand what's going on, it doesn't sound like you have a functional marriage. There are clearly serious emotional problems that, at this point, are the dominant force in your relationship.<P>Have you both been to a Christian counselor? If you have, but without success, try another one, perhaps one of the pastors at your local church. If being perceived by others as a Christian woman is important to her, that may provide some of the motivation necessary for her to change.<P>Don't put this off! You've been struggling with temptation for a while, and unless you fix your marriage, there's a strong chance that eventually you will fall into terrible sin, which would enormously complicate any chance of recovery.<P>If she refuses to work on the marriage, as a last resort, you should pray about direct confrontation. In as nonthreatening a voice as possible, say something like: "We need help. You tell all the world you're a Christian woman, but at home you haven't acted like one. I want to be part of the solution, but I can't fix our problems by myself. I can't force you to change, only you can do that, and you have to want to for it to work. Here's the bottom line: I refuse to live a lie any longer. If you're not willing to really try to work on our problems, I'm going to meet with our pastor and tell him that we're going to separate. I'm not doing this because I want a divorce. I'm doing it because I want our marriage! And right now, what we have is not a marriage, just a shell..."<P>Make sure you have people praying for you and are prayed up yourself if you go the confrontation route. One last thought, it sounds like your wife may have been the victim of sexual abuse as a child, or rape as a woman. The number of women who have endured these horrors is truly staggering. If your wife is one of them, she hasn't dealt with it yet, and needs to for your marriage to work. There are many good books out there. Two I recommend are Beauty For Ashes by Joyes Meyer and Woman, Thou Art Loosed by Jakes.<P>May God bless you and your marriage!<P>BrokenButNotCrushed<P><BR><p>[This message has been edited by BrokenButNotCrushed (edited March 11, 2000).]

Dear Schizzo,<P>Your H is obvious very serious about making your marraige work. One month ago, he took the important step of acting on what he knows to be true, rather than relying on his emotions. That takes real conviction, and lots of encouragement from you.<P>Please try not to get discouraged over his concern for the OW, and his lack of compassion for you. Recovery is a gradual process. He still hasn't pierced through all the deceptions. As more and more lies of Satan are exposed, he will experience increasing amounts of true remorse.<P>At the time of initial confession, my wife wasn't yet truly repentant. She still loved the OM, and was just sorry that it was impossible for her to have both our marriage and the fantasy. It was almost midway into our recovery that her big breakthrough occurred. She finally understood that all her feelings for him were based on deceptions and lies, and that she was just being used as an instrument of sin by the enemy.<P>It was incredibly hard for her to deal with the truth. Before then, she almost never cried. Afterwards, she was hurting as deeply as I was, just in a different way.<P>It's important that you not focus on what your H isn't doing, just on what he is doing to make your mariage work. (Phil. 4:6-8) The rest will come in time, especially if you keep on loving him back to recovery. He sounds like a great guy who got caught up in a sin that overwhelmed him emotionally and spiritually.<P>As to the other woman, I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Harley! No contact is a must! It's natural for him to have concerns about a person he loved so much, but he needs to realize that he has disqualified himself from ministering to her. He should trust that God is more than able to send some other person to share the gospel with her.<P>Best Wishes,<P>BrokenButNotCrushed<P>

BBNC, <BR>What a beautiful inspiring testimony to our Lord your story is! Thank you so much for sharing. I would very much like to print this out and share it with my husband, but I don't think it would help him right now. He is not a Christian, so it may not make sense to him? Plus his is not truly remorseful for what he's done, mostly he just wants to forget it ever happened.<P>We've been recovering for almost 6 months now. Some days are better than most, but for the most part, things have been better in the last 6 months than the majority of our marriage. Our story is a long one (if you want the details, read the post by Used2BCozy "Why we Pray in Jesus Name" on the Women's Bible Study Forum) but the gist of it is my husband was unfaithful several times, is an alcoholic, and was abusive. I am a Christian, and pray continuously for my husband and our marriage. I believe there is tremendous power in prayer, and trust in the Lord to guide me every day. Plus I am on Plan A. <P>Several counselors in the past have told me that as long as my husband is drinking our marriage is doomed for failure. I don't want to believe that. I'm trusting the Lord for the complete restoration of our marriage, and my husband's deliverance from alcohol addiction. <P>Thank you again for posting your story. It gives me such hope and encouragement for us.<P>MTAW

I wanted to post earlier when I first read your story but I was at work. You have given me such hope. You tell your story with such eloquence and understanding and love for your wife.<P>My H and I just started counceling. He does not know why he had the affair. We have such a long road ahead of us. Our coucelor is a psychiatrist and feels my H is depressed and has been for a long time.<P>It may be a surprise to most people that many men suffer from covert depression that is not immediatly identifiable to others.<P>I wonder so often if we will make it. But your story has truly given me hope and I thank you for taking time to share it.<P>Acacai

Thanks again for responding to all of us.<P>To clarify, I was thinking of contact to the OW, but fear even that would be dangerous.<P>If the deceptions your wife realized later are related to the entire fantasy nature of the affair, my hubby has already realized that.<P>I was thinking of writing a post of the things I have learned in hindsight. While my failure as a wife don't justify his affair, they do go a long way towards explaining it. Maybe that's why he doesn't feel much sorrow??<P>That was a difficult part of Harley to swallow at first. While it is true he was going through a crisis of his own at work and personally, I also NOW see our failures in maintaining intimacy.<P>The resentment in my heart grew over the years when he did not bond with his son, and was sooo caught up in his work. I was advised a couple of times to attempt to better meet his needs in certain areas, but in my heart I was at a "stand-off", believing he should fix things first.<P>It is sad that we had to come down this road, but we both have learned the importance of basing our marriage on Harley's four rules. If we do "renew" our vows, it would be something along those lines.<P>I think most of us here believed our spouses would be faithful, focusing on the "till death do us part" rather than what we can give our wonderful spouse. For me, at least, if he had been getting steak at home, he wouldn't have gone looking for dog food outside. I actually feel sad that he was so pathetic in his search for what was missing in us.<P>If anyone is interested I have thought of posting specific examples of changes in us to serve as an encouragement to others. Many of them were mostly logistical. But there was an attitude that had to change first.<P>For John, I replied to you once before that in HINDSIGHT I realize I wasn't treating my h well. I had built up so much resentment that I criticized him. While I didn't deny him sex, it was never good between us until now. I suggest two things I wish my h had done instead of having an affair:<P>1. Really find out if she has reasons to feel resentful towards you and address them. Someone has to break the cycle!<P>2. Sit down and tell her you are not feeling "in love" with her anymore. My h told me a month before I learned of the ongoing affair, and I was very concerned and started trying to address it immediately.<P>3. Counselling with Jennifer Harley has been a God send. She helped us and held us accountable to devise a plan to better meet each other's needs.

Dear Troublec,<P>I'm glad that the story of how I responded to my wife's infidelity gave you hope.<P>Several people have asked where the article I showed my wife was located, so last night I spent an hour trying to find it. Unfortunately, it eluded me!<P>I do recall that it was on a site I found by doing a search on affairs/infidelity/adultery. I also remember that there was a picture in the aricle of a woman crying as her angry husband glared at her as he stormed out the door.<P>Hope that helps you find it! <P>Best Wishes,<P>BrokenButNotCrushed <P>

A truly inspiring but painful story. It is amazing that things have worked out for you. I am truly greatful for having come upon this post (and your post on "truths learned through spouse affair". I was so touched by how you were able to hang in there, and also by the change in your W. I truly hope my W can make this realization too.<P>My wafe had a short emotional affair, that lasted a few months, but was found out just before New Year's when I overheard her say "I Love You" on the phone to someone else. I can't get that memory out of my head. She still talks with him, and wan't say whether she is "in love" with him, but knows she wants to stay friends with him. For the last 2 & half months I have been Plan Aing it big time. I go pretty well for about 1- weeks at a time, and then the pain and hurt of "not knowing where she stands with him and us" gets to me and and I have to ask questions about the OM and if we still have a chance, and telling her what I need.<P>Yesterday she told me that she still loves me, but that it is different - it is not the "same as it was when we fell in love". This hurt me tremendously, because I am more in love today than I was when we were married. I never got upset or cried, (but showed tears) and thanked her for her honesty. <P>I have been reluctant to give myself and my problems totally over to God, and think it must now be time....Lonely Boy

Dear Lonely Boy,<P>I'm glad that my post showed you the way to go. It is a hard journey, and without God, a fruitless one.<P>Consider getting a copy of the Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. There is an excellent chapter on the myth of being 'in love' that might help you and your wife better understand what's going on.<P>The world feeds us lies about what love is: a sense of euphoria, where all we think about is how wonderful the object of our affection is. Women, especially, are brought up to view attaining this state as the goal of their lives.<P>The problem is, it's not true love. According to Chapman, the in love sensations rarely last more than two years, if that. Then reality sets in. They disappoint us. We begin to see the other person's faults. We are surprised to learn that they aren't so wonderful after all. <P>At this point, people begin to wonder what went wrong, and why they married their spouse in the first place. This process can take months or years to play itself out.<P>Only true love lasts. True love is a conscious choice, not an uncontrollable emotional reaction. True love requires real effort, whereas 'in love' requires no conscious effort. Finally, in love does not focus on ourt own growth or that of the other person. It gives a false sense that we have 'arrived.'<P>I hope this helps. Go to God and ask Him how He wants to rebuild your relationship.<P>Best Wishes,<P>BrokenButNotCrushed<p>[This message has been edited by BrokenButNotCrushed (edited March 13, 2000).]

BrokenButNotCrushed, <P>Wonderful post! You are an excellent writer. You captured the heartache of this mess and the joy of new found love with your wife very well. God is good isn't He?!<P>Like you, I have been at this for some time and am starting to see God's grace and blessing on my marriage. Our wives have so many experiences in common. There is a pattern to this madness, which should be good news to those suffering the early pangs of heartbreak.<P>Our stories differ in that I discovered the affair about 5 months after it started. My wife has felt nearly everything you described that your wife has felt. She hasn't found that "new" desire for me yet, but I'm hopeful it will return as the memory of this OM fades (she is finally letting go). <P>I have no desire for our marriage to return to it's former state. My wife and I will have a new and better marriage; one that we both deserve. <P>It's nice to hear that another man is doing well here. You have an incredible story that I'm sure will encourage others to not give up hope. <P>God bless you, <P>SHA<P>------------------<BR>There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

BBNC,<P>Your insight really amazes me. My wife was sexually abused as a child at least once that I know of, but she completely refuses to discuss it any more. <P>I had arranged for us to go to a His Needs, Her needs class, but it was cancelled. The only other class in town was not at a convenient time (for her). Finally, this weekend, she agreed to go to counseling. I had previously made an appointment and when she threw a fit and refused to go. Now, since she has agreed to find a counselor, maybe we will go. Maybe she will discuss her abuse with a counselor. <P>Anyway, her refusal to meet my needs and denial that she has any other problems continues to drive me nuts. I still struggle with the temptation to just move on and try to start over. <P>May the Lord Bless You and Keep You,<BR>John

Dear SirHurtsAlot,<P>I'm glad that my post ministered to you, and that you are on the road to a wonderful new relationship with your wife. I'm sorry that your wife hasn't yet reached the place where she can look back in revulsion at memories from the affair that used to be pleasant. It meant a great deal to me when my wife took that step. But, like everything, that takes time.<P>If you haven't seen it, please read my post on "Truths I have learned..."<P>God bless you, too!<P>BrokenButNotCrushed <P><BR>