zorweb, i think i read all of your threads, but i am not sure. the ones i did read hit home hard. i have been crying now for an hour trying to do it quietly so the kids would not hear. my H was on the computer the entire time i was at work and has been speaking to OW for a year. (he says she is no longer around or in the same state, but i do not know since i do not know who she is or name or anything else.)<BR>my H has private emails and erases the history. he erased the history before i found out about the A because he said he knew it made me crazy, but now i don't believe that. he did it to cover his tracks. now i think he still erases part of the history because i do not know who his emails are through.(search engine) i know a lot of WS said they have given up private emails and only chat here because they think it is the right thing to do and it makes the BS feel better. do you think this is true? i am hesistant about my WS chatting with anyone because he supposedly met OW in a marriage help chat room or discussion group. i am still very scared. <BR>i did have a trust problem before i found out about the A.<BR>i tried not to(details in my 1st post) but i did. he says that is why he did what he did. all he wants now is my trust. and believe me, i really really want to give it to him but i am so sosososososososo scared. i don't know if the empty feeling in my stomach will ever go away.<BR>i am having a very bad day today. i do not know sometimes if i will make it. i feel very worthless and stupid. i should have seen the signs. ishould have been a better wife. i should have trusted but i did not know how. now i am afraid he will leave for good if i don't trust him and trust him soon. i am trying, i want him to know that.(nolo if you read this, please believe me and understand.) right now i don't know if i can make it. am i repeating some things? sorry. i just feel very depressed today.<BR>i think i hit another low point. i should be happy that we are trying to make it work, but i am not right now. i am very depressed and sick. i just want to lay around the house and do nothing. i want to crawl back into bed and forget that i even exist. <BR>is an affair ever acceptable? even when you feel your W/H doesn't love you? or would leaving be a better thing to do? i don't know.<BR>please help me with these issues....i am at a point where i don't know what to do........bluegirl

BlueGirl,<P>I did not get to sleep until 5 a.m. as I cannot seem to shake this insomnia. Did not even realize how long I was on the computer until that time. I just read your responses and am writing a longer response. I'll post it in a bit.<P>My short answer is your husband has done nothing to earn your trust.<P>Z<P>------------------<BR>He loves not who does not show love.<BR>----William Shakespeare

bluegirl,<P>Your situation sounds somewhat like mine. My W was spending a lot of time on the internet in private "chat" + email with a particular person. I even saw some of the email. Scary. <P>Like you (and Zorweb) I was physically in pain for about a month. I was taking a full dose of Tums every day for a couple of weeks (they were sufficient - whew). I still have problems functioning properly at work (at all?). <P>I'm currently on the other coast from my W, trying to maintain contact. (I can do this) <P>Like you, I feel like one of the lucky ones. They've never met and I don't think they talked on the phone (she has his number, though). <P>If you've been around this site, you know that marriage is all about filling needs to keep each other happy. Our marriage survived for a long time even though neither of us were meeting our partners most important needs. We were just lucky there were no external pressures (until now). <P>It sounds like you have a lot worth saving. You should try to do the EN questionaire (your H too if you can get him to do it) The books that Zorweb recommended are real eye openers. Keep posting here, this place has helped me *a lot*. You'll get a lot of advice from Zorweb on your problem - she's probably the internet expert here. Her posts and replies have helped me a lot.<P> -- Jeff<BR>

Have you read the Surviving an Affair book and all of the material on this web site? You really need to do that before you make any further moves to recover your marriage. I am a very strong proponent of the MB philosophy.. It saved my marriage and my mental/emotional state. That said, here’s my response to your posts…..<P>If you searched all of the forums for my user name and my husband’s, SeenTheLight, then you have found all of my posts. If you read all of that, my hat is off to you. <P><BR>No it is not hard for me to talk about it. Talking so much about it is what gets me through and what is making me heal. At least not here and with my H. If I were to tell someone and have to revisit every detail it might do that to me. But what ever your current reaction is, accept it. It is normal for you. One of the reasons you probably still react as you do is that you husband is not doing what he needs to do to make you feel better, to build your trust. I have been lucky in that my husband has done the things I’ve asked of him and he has suggested some on his own. <P>RE: “i still get sick if i see someone that looks like the woman in the picture.”<P>I think that there will always be triggers. Hopefully they will diminish with time. It normally takes at least 2 years to recover from an affair. You have all the reason in the world to feel the way you do. <P>RE: “Did you find out all of the details, and if you did, do you think it was necessary for your healing? or should i just leave well enough alone and go on?”<P>You will not be able to move on until you have the details. Your husband needs to be open with you. If you have read my posts you have read my theory on how the WS needs to learn to trust the BS in order to open up. And that the WS must not tell any further lies, not even ones meant to protect the BS from further pain. The truth no matter how painful is easier to handle then a lie. No matter how protective the lie is. A lie is just a lie. And a liar cannot be trusted. Your husband needs to realize that. But once you tell him that you have to be ready to handle anything he says without love busting. Expressing your true feelings of pain and anger are not love busters. Love busters are doing so in a hurtful, ugly way. He needs to know how he has hurt you.<P>As for all the details: There are many details I did not want to have. I do not need to know intimate details about what he did in bed with Alison (now that made me cringe). What I needed to know is whom he did what with (cyber, phone in person), the depth and extent of each relationship. If he led them on or not (yes he did), what lead him to do this terrible thing, what it meant our relationship? There is a very good thread here in General Questions II in which bluerodeoboy asks about wanting to know everything about his wife’s affair. He got some very good advice about the level of detail that will do him good. My advice is avoiding any detail that will lead to you building a “mental video” of your husband with other women. I even told my husband that should I ask a question about some thing that fell into the too much detail category, that he first double check with me that I really wanted that information before answering the question. Then if I said yes, I wanted him to answer it. His double-checking was usually enough to stop me. <P>RE: “now when i go to work, i still can't get a hold of him because he is again on the computer. he also has private emails that i have no access to and do not even know where they are(what search engine) is this privacy allowed and should i just <BR>let him be on the i-net all nite while i am at work?”<P>You have no reason to believe your husband at this point. He has done nothing to change his behavior. If he continues to have email accounts that you do not have access to and if he continues to delete history then I would assume that he is still doing things that would hurt you. Why else would he need to be secretive?<P>How computer literate are you? There are things that you may still be able to find on his computer. He may not know all of the things that need to be deleted. One way for you to find out what he is up to is to install monitoring software. We use the one on <A HREF="http://www.iopus.com." TARGET=_blank>www.iopus.com.</A> It works great and can run in slelth mode and password protected. Believe me he will not even know it is there. My H and I are both software engineers/web developers and neither one of us can find the evidence of it running. If you install this software on his computer without his knowledge, you will find out what he is doing, where is email accounts are and the passwords to all of them, the pass words to his IM. Then you can get is buddy list and chat with all his “friends”. I called all of the women whose phone numbers showed up on our bills too. When I found out about what my H as doing I did not give a hang if he got upset I my only thought was to protect our children and myself. If he wanted to get upset with he … oh well. But if you do this brace yourself for what you will find. Do not blow your cover until you have all of the solid evidence you need to confront him. Let him now what you have found out only once you are in a very strong Plan A and have enough evidence that he cannot back out of it or deny it. You have all the right in the world to know what is going on in your life. Do not apologize for that.<P>Do not call the other women until you have solid evidence of what he is doing because once you call them the cat is out of the bag. He may very well be telling them that he is not married. If you read my story you’ll understand why I say that.<P>He has given you no reason to trust him at this time. In fact he only gives you reasons do distrust him. This does not mean your marriage cannot be saved. It means that you have a long road to travel and you must do so wisely. The good people here at the MB site are more then willing to help you do a good Plan A. Bring it all here first so that you can get the support you need. At this point in time I would not tell your H about this site. It will be your best support.<P>The story about a couple giving him a computer is very hard to believe though anything is possible. Have you searched on the Internet for whom the phone numbers and addresses really belong to? This information is fairly easy to come by.<P>Should your husband’s online time be limited? Absolutely. He is involved in an addiction of sorts. The only way to break is cold turkey. That should be your ultimate goal. <P>Is there any way you can change your job so that you work the same hours he does? <P>You say that you have hurt your husband a lot. How have you hurt him? <P>Let’s keep this dialogue open and see if we can chart a path here to get your marriage on track. <P>Again.. Please read the material and the SAA book. Perhaps and appointment with the MB staff is in order too.<P>I’ll check back later to see how you are doing.<P>Z<P><P>------------------<BR>He loves not who does not show love.<BR>----William Shakespeare

An aside to Jeffers,<P>How are you doing? We have not heard much from you recently.<P>Z

Thanks Zorweb,<P>I hate to steal someone else's thread, but bluegirl might be interested in this story.<P>[see bluegirl, people do pay attention and care about you here]<P>[synopsis] <BR>My W has had an internet EF (if I call it "friendship" I won't get in as much trouble) for at least the last 6 months. It was an addiction. She was spending lot's of time online, having very personal discussions (about our marriage, for example), being affectionate, lot's of secrecy, etc. With another man. <P>I first came here (MB web page) about two months ago and read all the materials. About 3 weeks ago I posted my story and asked W to read it. (If I were skilled I could paste a link here, but if you search under my name you can find it)<P>After reading my post, W realized how much I was hurt and read HNHN ("His Needs, Her Needs", by W. Harley). Then did the Emotional Needs Questionaire with me (you can find it on this web site somewhere). She also went off the internet (her idea, not mine). <BR>[end synopsis]<P>[Brief Update]<BR>For lack of a better description we have been Plan A'ing each other like crazy since then. [My reading of Plan A is that you try to figure out what you're doing that angers your spouse and stop it - lovebusters, while at the same time trying to meet the needs that you weren't meeting previously. This is talked about all over this site.]<P>W was off the internet for about a week, but is back on now and appears to operating in a "safer" manner. Every now and then, she tells me something more about what was going on between her and OM. I don't know if she truly believes that what she was doing was "wrong", but she has acknowledged that it hurt me and that she shouldn't have done it for that reason, but she needed support from someone. She compares the support I get from the MB forums to the support she was getting from OM. <P>I was feeling a little down on Thurs. and Friday and was writing a post, but it was taking me so long to compose it that I felt better after I got it half done and never submitted it. I think I was getting very worried about my trip to the left coast (gone 6 days, in day 1 now) and I also thought we were falling into our old uncommunicative bad habits. Bad stuff before a long trip. We had a good evening together on Friday so I feel much better now.<P>I seem to be going from up to down to up on the period of a day or so. I don't get it, I should be really happy right now. I think I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and I feel guilty about that.<P>bluegirl:<P>Don't beat yourself up about how good a spouse you should've been. All of us think that. Turns out none of us knew what we were doing wrong until we came here. I've always lived my life by the "Golden Rule" (do unto others...). Who would ever have thought that doesn't work in most marriages. Why? Because what makes you happy is rarely what makes your spouse happy. We have to put some effort into finding out from our spouse what their needs are and verse-visa.<P>I was feeling all the things you are feeling (worthless stupid, scared --esp. scared) when I came here. Now, at least I understand. I'm certain that my marriage can be fixed using the techniques described here. Your marriage doesn't sound hopeless, but it does sound like it feels that way to you. People here will help you do the things you need to be doing. You can find lot's of role models for saving marriages here.<P>(dang, my posts are always too long)<P> -- Jeffers<BR>"A marriage put on the back burner will always boil over."<P>

Jeffers .. thanks for the update. I know how hard it is to be separated from your spouse during this.. we've posted about this before.<P>Bluegirl ...<P>Sorry do not want to steal your thread. So how's it going?<P>Z<P>------------------<BR>He loves not who does not show love.<BR>----William Shakespeare

thank you for all of the support. it means a lot to know others are going through the same things as we are in our marriage. i have to go now, but thanks. and nothing ever written is too long, the longer the better.<BR>bluegirl