How do you go about resuming intimate relations when you have pictures in your mind of the guy you love, the father of your children, whose body you know as well as your own, bumping uglies with this frizzy-haired old woman who's face looks like Batman's arch-enemy The Joker? Sex is no light matter to me--call me old-fashioned and churchy, but I think that sex is a physical bond between a committed, loving husband and wife, a way to bring children to the world. It is a means for two people to come together to create one, literally. When I confronted my husband with the age-old question "Was she worth it?" He just casually replied "Before we were married, I went to bed with lots of people and had a great time--no strings attached. It just happened again, during a stressful time in our marriage. No big deal." This is so shocking to me, because if there was one perfect part of our marriage, it was the sex. Now, I guess I was the only one who felt that way, although my husband insists it is as wonderful with me as ever. (Before I found out about the Joker and I stopped sleeping with him.) In fact, one of my first clues to his affair was his sudden drive to try weird stuff in the rack--when we were content to relatively normal--but delightful--lovemaking for 5 years with no comment. (When he started slapping me on the butt and begging for sodomy I could practically smell the Joker all over him.) <BR>Also, the way that I found out about the affair is particularly destructive to our marriage and potential for rebuilding any kind of intimacy: I found a year's worth of chat on the computer; a whole lot of it was erotic dialogue about all the nasty things that they had done together, and wished to do in the future (before I found out and ruined everything for them; this affair occured while he was temporarily working away from home and ended--physically but continued cyber--when he came back.) To simply know that he had an affair is pretty devastating--to know the shocking and disgusting details completely floors me. Now I know all about trying on underwear together in the dressing-room at Nordstrom's and her obsession with drinking the fruits of their labor. Now I know where and how he spent Valentine's day while I took the kids bowling. I have a complete description of her boobs, her derriere, her kitty-cat. . you get the picture. More than I want to know.<BR> If that's not horrid enough, she had the nerve to ask him in one of their chat sessions how a Jesus-freak like me could possibly please him in bed, to which he gave a reply of "why don't you ask Jesus?" (I am a Christian.) This query prompted a scathing e-mail from me to her. She took my husband, isn't that bad enough? Then she has to mock my religion, which, of course, is the only thing getting me through this nightmare.<BR>To summarize: I feel as if I have been raped. I feel filthy. I feel as if I have just been another piece of [censored] for 5 years before and 6 months after he was with the Joker. I feel as if all I am is a receptical, when I gave the man my heart, soul, and body freely. He stood there watching me give birth to his child--the same body who carried his baby for 9 months is easily replaced by another, just for fun. Is it normal to feel this way?<BR>How could I possibly let him touch me after all this? I know that I will have to get over this if I want to resume a normal marriage with him. I used to absolutely love sex with my husband, I had no inhibitions and I really thought that I pleased him. What now?<p>[This message has been edited by Bernzini (edited August 15, 2000).]

Oh,B,<BR>I can relate to a lot of what you are saying. I, too, found some emails I wish I had never found!!! One was a particularly searing love letter to OW - things he has never said to me. Luckily, the ones I found did not have all the graphic stuff you found. It would be so tough to get those pics out of one's mind! The ones I have are tough enough!!! He bought her lingerie, too - things I have always wanted him to do for me. I have the opposite problem - our sex life was ok - quality, but not quantity. He never wanted it as much as I did - so now I am having difficulty understanding how he could go to the time and trouble of scheduling sex with someone else, but not with me...has left me with all sorts of questions and insecurities - I went without for 5 months!!! 2 1/2 before I knew about the A, and 2 1/2 after discovery - and it still is very tentative - me initiating - H still doesn't seem to want it very much. H tells me to "relax" - everything will be ok...<BR>I don't know - here I want sex in spite of the pictures, yet H is struggling which makes me even more insecure. Counselor suggested to say "stop" every time the "movies" start running - but it's hard.<BR>Hang in there... take care - A

Bernzini: I'm going to copy a response I gave to a similar post. I still feel very strongly about it. I still think about it every time my H and I are intimate. But I just remind myself that the OW will "NEVER" match up to me.<P>***When I first found out about this entire mess I went into shock and was numb for a day. The next day I told my H that it was over. That I loved him and was sorry we failed to be successful at our marriage. He came to me and put his arms around me. Not for many many months had I allowed myself to "feel" him next to me and love him the way I did that night. I thought it was over and it hurt so deep inside that we had failed. We cryed together. My H looked me in the eyes and told me we were going to grow old together. We were intimate the next night. We were so close and it had not been so engaging for several months. Maybe years. I wanted him, wanted to be close with him, wanted to be one. I couldn't get close enough to him. It's been that way ever since. I now have my sex drive back. I don't know what happened. Though every time we make love I do wonder if "she" did it better, etc. But I feel confident enough that what I have to offer in the bed or out is richer than this OW could ever offer to my H. That only until she spends 12 years of her life with him will she be able to match what I give. That after 12 years my H still finds me attractive and wants to be intimate with me. That keeps me going. The newness may be getting the better of my H but he'll look back one day and regret this for the rest of his life. He'll have to live with that. Not me. Stay proud of yourself and who you are. Don't let anyone take away your pride and your self worth. You are worth so much more and someone will notice...some day. Walk proud. Stay strong. NO ONE can give what you have given to your H. NO ONE! LSM***

An excellent perspective, Bernzini. And I know exactly how you feel and I concur completely. The tragedy about this horror is that many of us find it impossible to not obsess over what it was like for them...what they did, how it was, how he felt, etc. It is a horrible picture that replays in your head and it takes a long time to shed those obsessions. <BR>It takes along time to get over the betrayal and the loss of your exclusivity. It does lessen with time...<P>It's always a shock and heartbreaking when you see the other woman and realize that your spouse has "traded down" and shared intimacies with someone else that are reserved just for you.<P>Your husband's duty to you now is to chase away the images and demons and reassure you in order to find your way back to each other and restore that specialness that you once shared.<P>These wayward spouses are such idiots and sacrifice so much for so little.<P>Your faith that 'she' mocks will get you through this and she will have to face her karma.<P>Catnip =^^=

I am going through the same thing with my husband. I keep making love with this man and then I end up crying myself to sleep afterward wondering if he was thinking about her etc. We are going to counseling together tomorrow for the first time and I hope I can start to get some answers. Right now all I get is I don't know why I did it and I'll never do it again stuff.<P>It's really weird. I always thought of us together as special but to find out he can do whatever they did together with a person who looks worse than the joker and dirtier is really amazing to me....Makes me rethink this whole thing time and time again.<BR>Then I can't help but wonder what he thinks of me..does he see the commitment on my part or does he think wow..she must really love me to try and make things work after all this.<BR>

Every now and then I wonder how I stack up against the OM. I used to have pictures in my head but they are starting to diminish now.<P>It's only been 3 or so months so it's still early since we started to fix it. But I think it's still a good start. When we make love I think of her, not what he did with her. <P>I am trying to think of ways to help her get her SDrive back. It really isn't all there. But it's coming and what we do is pretty wonderful.<P>I think it takes time. I wonder at times how important it really is to 'know' it all? I know that they did and I think thats all I want to know. If she needed to get it out to help her I would listen. <P>All I need is us working on things <P>Time... thats what it takes<P>J

Oddly enough, the sex between OW and my H is less important than the close emotional bond they shared. If he wanted, he could have had sex with a hooker, or a girl he picked up in a bar. As long as there was NO EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT, I think I could have recovered so much easier. However, it was obvious to me that they shared more than sex. She had a pet nickname for him, "Charlie." They called each other by nicknames when they e-mailed. She sent him little electronic postcards to his hotmail account. They lived together, like man and wife, for five months. I once found a card to him, from her, that said something along the lines of, "Charlie, you are simply the best! Thanks for listening to all of my problems." That shot me right through the heart. All the while my H was with her, he never took the time to listen to my problems, not ever. He hadn't listened to my problems in a very, very long time. So to see that he was so kind and patient with another woman was a stab right through the heart. He gave her everything that I craved from him - his time, his full attention, his patience, his gentleness ... she had the best of him, and I got the worst. When I started to talk to OW over email and she was describing my H as the most "kindest, gentlest man" she'd ever met, I wanted to throw my lunch. He was anything else but with me. He treated me like the piece of sh*t he insisted that I was. He treated me as though I were scum of the earth.<P>That is what hurt the most. But of course, OW kissed his butt on a daily basis, and I saw things more clearly ... that made me the bad, evil person, I suppose.<P>So ... sex? Nah. I don't care about the sex that much, because that is the secondary issue. What I care about is what he gave her, emotionally. He will never admit this to me, but he was in love with her. He was hooked.<P>belld

Belldandy: My Story EXACTLY!!!!<P>I wish I could print your reply out and stick it up on the fridge to show myself that someone understands!!!! You have lived my life! You have shared my thoughts!<BR>When I first discovered the affair, it actually started with finding a picture of the Joker that he had printed out from his PC--bearing the name Joker's name and phone #. I put two-and-two together with the same name that I found in an address book (not searching, of course. I have never purposely gotten into my husband's things because I trusted him SO VERY MUCH and thought that he was TOTALLY INCAPABLE of having an affair.) When I finally confronted him, he casually said "Just a girl that I like to chat with." This really made me mad! I said "You know, all I have really ever hoped for is that I would be the one that you loved to talk to, share thoughts and dreams with, place your trust in. And that's the one thing that you have never done with me--you have always insisted on your 'privacy,' as if I were encroaching on your territory just by marrying you. If you had just slept with her, (which he of course did, I just didn't know at the time)I would feel better about this." He didn't even reply. He just sulked bigtime. I would later find that this is the point when he regretably ended the affair with her.<P>He is so angry with me for reading his chat! He insists that it is personal business and that it disgusts him that I should stoop so low to pour over his private life. Private life my foot! The whole point is, he should have never had a private life to begin with--or am I wrong about this?<P>My H, too, sent and received mushy e-cards. They had pet names for each other and their body parts and favorite "activities." He showered her with sweetness that he had never showed me--when I had a bad day, cried, or needed empathy or affection, he would always say "Quit feeling sorry for yourself." or "Get over it." or "Life is a soap opera to you, aint it?" or the prize-winner: "Why do I gotta spend every moment of the day with you? I need space!" Not like I ever asked for much of his precious time, just a tiny affirmation of his alleged love for me. But for her, he would come home during his lunch hour to receive her e-mails or phonecalls. She poured her heart out about her stupid problems--how her hubby played golf every weekend and left her all alone, oh, boo-hoo. And he would actually console her enthusiastically, when the problems we faced in our marriage were quite a bit more serious: dual careers, a blended family, an child with emotional problems, occasional finacial disasters, to which he would tell me: "Can't you handle anything like a grown-up" (Sometimes I felt like I was the ONLY one handling things like a grown-up while he retreated into his 'private life!')<P> He once even had a friend of his call her to let her know what was up when he was delayed in the field for a day and couldn't contact her. And get this: I found this weepy dialogue of the night she decided to tell her own H that she was moving out (to move in with my H, only she wasn't going to tell him this.) My H replied "Honey, I wish that I could be there to comfort you right now. Please don't cry." (Gag.)<P>But me--guess what I was referred to? You know the monster in the movie "Predator?" Well, that was me. Also "Soon-To-Be-Ex." (Funny how I didn't know that I was a Soon-To-Be-Ex.) <P>I did nothing but love the man unconditionally with all my heart. I put up with years of his temper tantrums, thinking that temper is just temper and does not reflect much upon a person's true character. Yet, the relatively few times that I responded poorly to his insults, name-calling and outbursts by crying or telling my friends, he would say "You just can't control your emotions, can you? Your're crazy."<P>At times, he actually convinced me that I was crazy. I was the one who sought counseling, religion, prayer, and self-improvement in every facet of life. So that I could change myself to please him, while he simply took his affections to someone else rather than actually put any effort into working things out with with himself and me. A "fantasy" relationship is so much easier than a "real" one. It requires so little work!<P> The OW--all she had to do was appear on his chat and praise and worship him almost absurdly every day. She barely "knew" him because it was mostly a cyber relationship that on the week-days and a sex festival with a break for dinner on the weekends that she could get away from her family and meet him at Motel 6. Yet, he seemed to thrive on her mushy, shallow praises "for her rugged, handsome man." The most heartbreaking thing that keeps coming back to me is when he said to her: "Sweetie, I am going to do everything that I can to make you proud of me."<P>What about me, the girl who was standing by him, running my own career and our household and doing everything that I could to accomodate his career? I was there for him 100%. What about when I told him how proud I was of him? Did it matter?<P>Can you believe, now that it is all over and that we are beginning a recovery process, where ever this will take us, that he says that he really and truly loves me more than her? (He should, after all, but by his chat files, you couldn't tell.)<P>When it comes right down to it--an affair is a fantasy, an illusion. Think about it. Wouldn't it be easier to deal with the tiny problems of a complete stranger than face boring, every day reality and difficult trials? To act weak and stupid in front of someone who really doesn't matter that much, instead of those who you have to be strong for? Sounds dumb, but it is kinda easy to profess love for someone that is disposable--noncommittal way of getting mutual ego strokes. It's just that much easier in a cyber realtionship--you can pour your heart out in writing to a face on a machine, and nobody has to see your own faults! You can be a perfect person in your lover's eyes because they only see your good side.<P>I understand that this, in and of itself, could be emotionally addictive.<P>Here I am, sitting here telling myself this, trying to believe it. Does this make sense?<P>Being one of those who are dealing with an "emotionally attached affair" along with an intense sexual affair, I feel immensely betrayed. Yes, I agree that if he had just picked up a bar-fly or hired a prostitute or had cyber-sex with many (he did this, also) I would feel much more forgiving and would heal quicker. But see, my husband seems to see sex as true love in and of itself--and the intense bearing of the soul via PC seemed to warrant his love and the sex part conveniently went along with this. Sex is also very easy to get in this modern virtual world. Stupid, aint it?<P>So I am dealing with both--the sex, and the obsession with the Joker. And then Volume 3: Her Addiction TO HIM! (Double gag!)<BR><p>[This message has been edited by Bernzini (edited August 16, 2000).]

Wow....Bernzini - this woman and my husbands 'friend' could be the same people - <P>Maybe they were?? I know she was 'chatting' with several other men and women - no discrimination there.......<P>My husband said all the same and acted the same as yours - all I've done is stand by him while he went after his precious financial security - our marriage was on hold and then he goes as does this right as he was about to retire so we could enjoy the rewards. <P><BR>Yah, like I really want to do that now.......It has been 7 months for us and I still have the pictures in my mind and the questions. Since I have not changed - I find it hard to believe this is not going to happen again... I'm still struggling with the whole thing....<P>J

Bernzini,<P>It does make you wanna gag, doesn't it? You and I did go through the same thing. My H was *very* verbally abusive to me during his affair. All of a sudden, I was just a pile of sh*t to him, and he told me so. I taped several of our telephone conversations, at my therapist's suggestion, because he *was* so abusive at times. Now when I listen to them, I can hear how he was comparing me to her. He told me that he wanted someone who would always agree with him 100 percent of the time, and I was "not that person." Oh gee. Forgive me for having a different opinion!<P>She was Miss Wonderful and Perfect. She sent him cute little emails and electronic cards. And yet when I did the same thing, hoping to win back my H's love, all I got was the cold shoulder. He didn't even acknowledge them. He didn't even buy me a Christmas present - he told me that I didn't "deserve" one; however, I'm sure he bought Miss Wonderful a present! <P>I have not been perfect, and I will admit it. I have been cranky and sometimes I didn't always listen to my H when he needed it. But I have worked hard for our family in every way I could, as the sole provider of the paycheck. I was not good enough for his time, compassion and a sympathetic ear; I was not good enough to have lunch with or for him to call every day every hour on the hour; however, I *was* good enough for sex whenever he wanted it, keeping the house, and paying all of the bills. That offended me a LOT.<P>I realize this is just venting, but it hurts that H did not see how I was supporting him in any way that I could. And now he blames me because I am resentful? Go figure!<P>belld

Belld: <P>Please, please, please do NOT let him convince you that you are less of a person than what you are. You are NOT a piece of sh*t. It's obvious that you are a strong person, as you seem to having enough loving heart to hang on. What he is trying to do is make you less of a person in his own eyes to justify his own weakness in taking a lover. (My H does the same; he tries repeatedly to point out every infraction that I have ever committed towards him or anybody--it's so absurd! But I can also identify what his rantings are all about: his own GUILT and his poor efforts to make me look just as bad to make himself feel better.)<P>Also, I guess since a person truly cannot "love" two people at once, he is attempting to reduce you in his mind. He is torn between the images of two women, and he has to eliminate one of them. He has an ideal of the OW because it is a fantasy relationship--in a fantasy, the OW IS virtually perfect, because she is just a picture, a make-believe. No fussing, no fighting, no work, no responsibility, just good times, because it is just a role-play and not reality. (She is NOT Miss Perfect and Wonderful--only another human being, just like you, and you know as well as I do that a woman that hangs onto a married man is of much less character than a faithful, loving wife. You have that on her.) So you end up being the scapegoat--you get the BS--because you are in the "real" relationship. It's just him talking. Most likely he doesn't think you less than his lover--he's just angry and you get the brunt of it. He has to take it out on someone. Please don't let it hurt you. Be strong. You are never less than what you yourself think you are. <P>Your tries at affections toward him are met with poor response because of his attempt to compartmentalize his real life from his private life, and that is all. If you love him, and it is obvious that you really do despite the pain and grief that he has brought you, please keep trying again and again to be good to him. Eventually you will win him--or, if not, then he doesn't deserve you and you will definately know that with time. You can move on with confidence and with an even stronger character, knowing that you are a loyal, charitable woman who deserves to be loved. And you do. And you will.<P>I say again--don't let him convince you that you are a piece of S. You are not. No one is perfect, but no one is worthless, either. Everyone should be loved, and so should you.<P>I know that I am really one to talk and give advise when I am hurting as badly as you are and reacting probably a lot worse to this situation. But it really breaks my heart when woman like you are bullied into thinking that they are crap when they have done nothing but give of themselves tirelessly. Don't believe it for one minute. Don't even think or say it. <P>My best wishes to you. God bless you for your efforts in saving your marriage--and may He comfort you in your pain.<P>Bernzini