Hello. My husband and I have been together for 16 years. We have been through A LOT. Both have had affairs(his physical and mine emotional) and we have attempted to work through them. The problem that we are facing is that my emotional affair ended about 4 years ago and ever since then my husband has felt like my second choice. The reason for this is that the man I was talking with committed suicide. Now, I can honestly say that I was very conflicted about which way I would have done but I know that toward the end I was thinking about staying and fighting for my marriage. I do honestly love my husband but we just were in a very bad space. I know that is no excuse but I did what I did. Now, he feels like I could never really love him the way that I say I do because I can't really make a choice that he can see. Does anyone either have experience in this or have any suggestions?

If you make a great marriage in the present together, those worries will dissipate on their own. Do you two have good EPs, extraordinary precautions,in place so you can both feel like the most special to the other? Is your best RC, recreational companionship time, the favorite time for both of you in the week?

What�s missing is that you have not really recovered from the affairs. What I mean by that is that a full recovery leading go to romantic, passionate love would erase all the bad memories of the past. When one is happy in the present, their mind does not go to the tragedy of the past.

If you will follow the steps in surviving an affair, you will both notice a remarkable difference in a few short weeks.

Another important step is to never bring up the affair again. By talking about it, he keeps it front of mind. He needs to stop that immediately.

�Now, he feels like I could never really love him the way that I say I do because I can't really make a choice that he can see. Does anyone either have experience in this or have any suggestions?�

This is a self fulfilling prophecy. By bringing this up over and over, he is actually hurting the love you feel for him. A better strategy is to do things that create romantic love. His approach is all wrong.

Hi, JustB, welcome to Marriage Builders. You've definitely come to the right place for the answer to this question - as the other posters have mentioned, you can't really recover from affairs without building a happy marriage in the present.

Going through Surviving an Affair will allow the two of you to affair proof your marriage and restore the feeling of being in love, which will erase the resentment over the past. As a part of this you'll need to learn to meet each other's most important emotional needs and avoid love busters, habits that destroy romantic love. Dwelling on mistakes of the past is a huge love buster so after all the truth is out about an affair recover involves never bringing it up again. This forces the two of you to deal with what is actually unhappy about the present.

If you follow Dr. Harley's policy of undivided attention you'll be taking care of each other's most important emotional needs. If he stops bringing up the affair and the two of you do this you will probably both find that you are happy in very short time.