Found out that my wife had an affair a few years back, she told me about it a year later after the affair. It has now been 4 years after I have kown and I still can't get over it. She would not give me all the details and I found out who it was, but have not been able to locate him to confront. It still hurts me deeply, am I being unreasonable and should just get over it.

At the time of the infidelity, I was having erection problems, and once again I am. I'm just nervouse that the whole situation will happen again. I can not leave, besides I will lose my shirt in a divorce we have 4 kids that I would never leave.

Advice????

Dear Father:
Welcome to MB! I'm sorry that you're W had an A but you have come to the right place to help you with whatever decisions you need to make.

First, please read the articles on the website. They are chock full of information for you. You will find the book, Surviving an Affair by Harley especially helpful. It is available for purchase in the bookstore section of this website. Buy it now.

Second, Please do the questionnaires on this website. Have your wife fill them out as well. They will give you much to talk about and find what was "missing" in your M.

Most will offer the guidance of MC. I have never done MC so can't be of much help here. The wonderful people on this board are only amateur advice givers, often in the same boat, better or worse, than you. You might need a professional to help coach your M back on track. Think about it.

My H had a ONS several years ago. We did not process that whole A adequately, just swept it under the rug. This time, I am bound and determined to do it right. Except for the MC, I feel we are heading in the right direction.

Please keep posting, though, it helps more than you will realize at this point.

Good luck,
DB

You won't "get over" it until it is resolved. First off, it is manipulative and cruel for her to continue to withhold the details from you. You have a right to know what has happened in your own life and you have a right to know WHO you are married to. Withholding these details will only make you wonder - and always assume the WORST - endlessly.

If you knew all the facts, you would be able to digest them and move on. BUT, her continued withholding only serves to aggravate the original betrayal because she continues to have secrets that only she and the OM know. A stranger, the OM, knows things that YOU don't know. She has no right to withhold these details from you and you will never recover unless she fesses up and answers ALL your questions.

Secondly, you need to find out what conditions in the marriage led to this affair and RESOLVE them. She needs to know why she did this and take steps to correct the problem. Otherwise, it will happen again.

But first off, realize that your feelings are perfectly natural and your marriage will not recover unless she starts taking steps to undo the damage she caused.

Here is what Harley says about it:
“From my perspective, honesty is part of the solution to infidelity, and so I'll take honesty for whatever reason, even if it's to relieve a feeling of guilt and depression. The revelation of an affair is very hard on an unsuspecting spouse, of course, but at the same time, it's the first step toward marital reconciliation.

Most unfaithful spouses know that their affair is one of the most heartless acts they could ever inflict on their spouse. So one of their reasons to be dishonest is to protect their spouse from emotional pain. "Why add insult to injury," they reason. "What I did was wrong, but why put my spouse through needless pain by revealing this thoughtless act?" As is the case with bank robbers and murderers, unfaithful spouses don't think they will ever be discovered, and so they don't expect their unfaithfulness to hurt their spouse.

But I am one of the very few that advocate the revelation of affairs at all costs, even when the wayward spouse has no feelings of guilt or depression to overcome. I believe that honesty is so essential to the success of marriage, that hiding past infidelity makes a marriage dishonest, preventing emotional closeness and intimacy.

It isn't honesty that causes the pain, it's the affair. Honesty is simply revealing truth to the victim. Those who advocate dishonesty regarding infidelity assume that the truth will cause such irreparable harm, that it's in the best interest of a victimized spouse to go through life with the illusion of fidelity.

It's patronizing to think that a spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Anyone who assumes that their spouse cannot handle truth is being incredibly disrespectful, manipulative and in the final analysis, dangerous. How little you must think of your spouse when you try to protect him or her from the truth.

It's not only patronizing, but it's also false to assume that your spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Illusions do not make us happy, they cause us to wander through life, bumping into barriers that are invisible to us because of the illusion that is created. Truth, on the other hand, reveals those barriers, and sheds light on them so that we can see well enough to overcome them. The unsuspecting spouse of an unfaithful husband or wife wonders why their marriage is not more fulfilling and more intimate. Knowledge of an affair would make it clear why all efforts have failed.

After revealing an affair, your spouse will no longer trust you. But lack of trust does not ruin a marriage, it's the lack of care and protection that ruins marriages. Your spouse should not trust you, and the sooner your spouse realizes it, the better.

The Policy of Radical Honesty is one of two rules you must follow to protect your spouse from your self-centered behavior, which includes affairs. The other rule is the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). If you were to be completely honest with you spouse, and you were to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement, an affair would be impossible, unless for some reason your spouse wanted you to have one.

If you knew that your affair would be discovered -- that right after having sex with your co-worker, your spouse were to find out about it -- you would probably not go through with it. And if you were honest enough with your spouse so that YOU would be the one to tell him or her what you did, your honesty would be a huge reason to avoid any affair.

How the victimized spouse should respond to the revelation of an affair is a subject of a later column. I do not have the space to treat it here. But a spouse is twice victimized when he or she is lied to about an affair. Truth is far easier to handle than lies.”

Think of all of this as a giant, 3000-piece puzzle ... one in which your wife has completed and is now withholding 2000 pieces. How can you be reasonably asked to move forward when she has not given you the things you need to make sense of the puzzle ... the see the whole picture? She's being extremely unfair to you. Read all you can at this site. Ask her to join you. Seek a counselor you both agree on who can help you both make sense of all you're going through.

Learn something every day that will help you become a better man and husband.

Dear FO4, I am in a similar situation with my FWH as he does not want to answer questions or talk about the A he had with a coworker.I understand the frustration. We have been in recovery for 20 months and I struggle everyday due to this unresolved situation,too.I am sorry that you have been trying to heal your deep open wounds,inflicted by the A, for so long.

I hope you have been checked out by an MD to make sure your erection problem is not a health issue.I also "hear" you trying to blame(excuse) what your FWW did on your inability to perform sexually. The vows say for better or for worse,in sickness and in health....There can be problems in a M but the thing to do is to talk with the spouse about the problem and work it out together. There are many solutions to a sexual problem. A's are so devastating and so painful.Always Self centered,self serving on the part of the WS.
Melodylane's post to you is great. She has included some valuable reading from the one of the Harley articles.
My H will not read on this or any other site to get advice or go back to MC after hearing he needed to do things he was not willing to do...like answer questions and do a NC with OW, so I have copied some of the articles and posts and given them to him to read and emailed some of them to him. He has the "just sweep it under the rug" attitude,too. But know that everyone is different and your W just might read what will open her eyes to do what she needs to do to help in recovery.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> She would not give me all the details and I found out who it was, but have not been able to locate him to confront. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">PLEASE read the thread started by WORTHATRY
"On contacting the OP"... It might help in at least one of your decisions. I wish you the best.