I recently marrried the man of my dreams. We met only months after my 15 year marriage to my first husband ended. I married young to a man who was very controlling and very jealous!! He ended up being the one who had an affair, but I was ready to cut lose from him and took it head-on. I met my current husband on a vacation I took to 'celebrate' my divorce and knew we were meant to be together. I wasn't looking for a relationship, but as we all know, these things aren't planned. I am 35 and can honestly say this is the first time I have ever been in love. The problem?!?! Well, I was still very much confused over the turmoil of divorce, losing the house we built together, putting my children in a different school system, buying a home and dealing with a deadly car accident of a friend...to mention a few things. I still wanted to make my own decisions and go about life on my own terms. The thing is, I had this perfect man who put all of his trust in me even though we lived in different states and he knew I would have a custody battle ahead of me. I continued to go to bars drinking and living it up knowing full well that he wouldn't approve. I had a one-night affair that I chose not to tell him about until months later, which almost ended our relationship. He chose to stick it out to see if we could make it work with the understanding that we would deal with it by talking through it. It is now over a year later, he is in a different state working and all of this is surfacing because he feels so betrayed and used. He has every right to be angry and I am just looking for some advice to share with him to try to make his pain go away. I was a train wreck waiting to happen in the early days of our relationship, and I manipulated and used him to keep him interested. My concern is that I appeared to be someone I was not when we were building the foundation of our relationship. He has no intentions of leaving me, but we have talked about giving him a two week period to do WHATEVER he wants to try to blow off some steam and get his head on straight. At the time I told him about the one-nighter, he asked to have some time to go home (He was working on the road at the time) and try to deal with our situation. I told him flat out that he was to come see me or it was over. He came to see me, but is now feeling cheated out of his time to deal with it. Advice, anyone?

mount,

You probably know by now that infidelity is excruciatingly painful...so the first step towards helping your H is remorse. I suspect you have already done that or you wouldn't be here. Radical Honesty is next....some spouses need the details and the explanations for how and why these things occur. Last but very importantly you need to tell your H what your plan is to protect him from future infidelity. How will you prevent it...what will you do/not do to ensure that you are not placed in a position of temptation. (I made my H go to confession!) Read the sections on the site about Recovery. Get the book "Surviving an Affair" it will help both of you recover. Open your life to scrutiny by your spouse....your purse, your computer.....everything. Good Luck...and welcome to the forum.

Star, your advice is good and appreciated, but I have been remorseful and I have been brutally honest about what/why it happened. His concern is that I lied over and over to cover my infidelity in our relationship when it was so vital to be honest. He is seeking fairness now because I didn't give it to him then. I am more than willing to give him two weeks of 'whatever' because I have so much to lose without another solution.

Remember that words are going to mean very little to him...time and consistency is what will ultimately matter. Trust takes seconds to destroy and literally years to rebuild. Be willing to stay in for the long haul. Practice Honesty with all of the details of your life. Tell him how you plan to make Honesty a priority...and then do it. These things take time, and without patience...you will soon become resentful that he is still recovering. To be brutally honest to you....and I am currently in recovery....it took about two years after the A....I will never have the innocent trust I had in my husband before...but I am in love with him, and the level of trust is slowly rising. Don't lose heart.