I have just (in the last 2 hours) been told by my wife that she has been having an affair (after asking for a seperation, telling me off for being suspicious,,etc, etc....god why didnt I find this site before today!!). I am now struck with the terrifying realisation that I have no-one to talk to as i usually talk to my wife about such things. Im scared to tell my friends because I dont know if I can deal with the pain they will feel (most are also close to my wife) and because somehow i feel that if everyone knows its going to be impossible to even consider repairing our lives.. She has a friend who'se apparently known about the whole thing for a while so shes at least got someone to talk to. Please help, as the advice (comfort?) of strangers is the only avenue I feel is open to me at this time.

I talked to one close friend, my pastor & here, bcs like you say I figured if everyone knew it would be hard for him to change his mind.<P>We are here to listen & support you...<P>If you have not yet, read the "General Welcome for new Builders" post on this bb...<P>Hang in there--<P>Kathi

Welcome <B>ohmygodithurts</B>...<P>There is a post of general welcome I wish to share with you... <P>It has a lot of quick links to many of the <B>most</B> important MB sites...<BR>Click here ==> <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000553.html" TARGET=_blank>General Welcome for All New Builders(Newbies)</A><P><B>About your post</B>...<P>Do start on a <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8113_ab.html" TARGET=_blank>Plan A</A>...<BR>Check out my post <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum30/HTML/000176.html" TARGET=_blank>Plan A - 101 (2nd ed.)</A>.<P>Stay...<BR>...we can be your friends. <P> <P><A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000254.html" TARGET=_blank>Jim</A> / <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000037.html" TARGET=_blank>NSR</A>

If you have a church home, I believe your pastor is a good choice to unburden yourself with. I don't think pastors are always a good choice for counselors, however, because not all of them are gifted or trained in marriage and family therapy. I would definitely encourage you to seek out a qualified therapist for the long term.<P>If you have one close friend who you are certain you can trust, that person can be a great source of support. I don't recommend tell too many friends or even family members in the beginning. My family and my husband's family still don't know about his brief affair that was revealed and ended 3 years ago. We chose not to tell them to spare them the pain. We may share with them some day as our efforts to work in a marriage ministry become more public...but we are trusting God to prepare the way if that is the case.<P>What you have learned today is a very real trauma. You are wounded just as surely as if you have a gunshot or knife wound. Your body is undergoing a real physiological shock from this. Don't panic if you are unable to eat, sleep, or concentrate and if you cry very easily for a few days or even a couple of weeks. This is a very normal reaction to this kind of shock and it does get better. There is a great chapter in the book After the Affair by Janis Spring on this very subject.<P>Don't make any long term decisions right now. You and your wife are both under tremendous stress and are simply not able to make rational decisions. Staying married isn't a major choice....you already were married and should stay that way until this thing is a little more under control.<P>Eat small meals for a few days and rest when you can. If you can take some time off from work, it might be helpful so you can rest. Don't undertake any new tasks....your concentration skills are nil probably nil right now. Concentrate on getting from one day to the next and being searching for a good counselor asap.<P>My favorite book on restoration after an affair is Torn Asunder by Dave Carder. I've read several and believe it to the best out there.<P>This is a survivable crisis. I promise that you and your wife can rebuild a magnificent marriage that will be stronger than ever because of what you will learn if you chose to take this journey together. It isn't easy and it isn't always fun, but from my perspective it is absolutely worth it.<P>I can't encourage you without telling you that God is the author of the miracle in my marriage. He orchestrated the revelation and end of the affair and He gave us the tools to rebuild our marriage. He didn't drop a miracle in our laps, but He led us every step of the journey. If you have a relationship with Him, now is the time to cling to Him. If not, I encourage you to consider seeking Him out....you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.<P>------------------<BR>"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:31

ohmygodithurts,<BR> <BR>I really can’t add too much to the advice you have been given. Both NSR and HGBrawner are living legends around here and known for sound advice. <P>What I can tell you is I’m sorry for what you are going through right now. <P>If it helps, I can tell you that my W and I had this same conversation 6 months ago. Today we are not only still together, we are recovering. Were not perfect yet, but there a great light at the end of the tunnel.<BR>With the exception of my church Pastor I, like you opted not to tell a soul. It is a decision that I’m glad I made. <P>Who do you talk to? Us, today we are strangers, but you will find many friends here at MB, willing to listen and help when they can.<P>God Bless, I’ll say a special prayer for you tonight.<P>oswald<BR> <P>

This forum is terrific, so please keep posting.<P>Talking to one close, very trustworthy friend, is also REALLY worth considering. The support of a long standing friend who you can see and feel in front of you is invaluable in that they know who you are, when you are whole, what your values are, what your strengths and weaknesses are; he or she can "take your temperature" and tell you when he/she is concerned. It is really, really easy to lose oneself in what you have just discovered and are about to live, and a friend can remind you of who you are, what is great about you, and what is important in your life. In the months to come, you will probably lose track of all of these things from time to time. That one confidant can be your anchor to yourself.<P>You are right that telling close friends, particularly couple friends, can be hard on your friendship in the future. But, even if one friendship is altered, the support that it can give you is more than worth it.<P>I also agree that a minister, pastor, priest is good for unburdening, but a counsellor is much better for helping you and your W to recover.<BR>

Dear {{{{{{{{{ohmygodithurts}}}}}}}}}},<P>I'm so sorry for what you are feeling right now. Unfortunately, I still remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach. In fact, I used the exact same words as you....my H was the person I would have turned to for a crises like this. But he was the one who caused it!<P>I agree with the others.....talk to as few people as possible, at least right now. Find one good friend and/or a pastor to confide in. I also agree that you should start counseling (not with the pastor) for yourself. <P>And yes, please keep coming here. People on this forum understand like no one else can. It's a great place to come...and don't feel bad if you find yourself coming back hour after hour....sometimes it's all I could do for the first few months. It was such a relief to know that I wasn't alone and what I was going thru was known by the other members here.<P>The only bad thing about this place is that you cannot feel....in the flesh...someone else's hug like you can a friend you talk face-to-face with. I wish you could. But I think it's good to have both if you can find it.<P>My prayers are with you. It's gonna be a long, roller-coaster ride. Hold on....to Jesus...because sometimes that's all you will be able to do. God bless you.<P>Aloha,<BR>Mrs.O<BR>

I was in the same boat. I absolutely did not want anyone to know about my wife's A, but it was more for the sake of my daughter and her social group. But unfortunately OMW told the neighborhood gossip almost immediately once the A was in the open. Now everyone in our area knows. BUT, I have come to find that in ALL of those friends that find out, one of two things will happen: Some friends will pull away, and truly not want to hear about it or talk about it, and much to my surprise, we have a number of friends who are rallying around us and are offering tremendous support and encouragement. Many have offered to babysit so Wife and I can spend more time together. Ultimately, I don't think even your best friends can deal with what you need to talk about on a daily basis (unless they have been through it.) For me it has helped to find a personal counselor as well as finding a couples counselor. If WS is reluctant to go at first definitely go yourself. Also, do whatever you can to get rest. Can you take time from work? The first week was awful for me, I was actually awake for close to 36 hours one time. And couldn't eat a thing. What you're feeling is absolutely normal and what helped me was getting rest somehow. Maybe ask your doc for some sleeping pills or something. It's been just about a month for me and I'm at least sleeping and my appetite is coming back. Excercise for me helps me deal with the anger. I just try to run it out. Thoughts are with you.

I also found out about the OM last week. I know the feeling you are going through. I have felt that slow deep ache in my chest, and that gut wrentching pain. I agree with everything that has been said thus far. One very close personal friend helps tremendously, as well as pastors, or ministers. For me I was able to Open up to my father. He has allowed me to vent and cry. It helped alot. <P>Another thing that does help, especially during those late nights when sleep will not come, is a spiral notebook and a pen. Start writing. It does not have to legible, or neat, or organized. Let your thoughts and your feeling out onto the paper. If it cross your mind, write it down. It will help you to release. My prayers are with you.<P>Griz<p>[This message has been edited by Griz (edited March 01, 2001).]

You have gotten some of the best advice you will recieve above. This site saved me. I confided in my Mom. She has been great. My Dad doesn't know he would hate my wife forever if he found out. Same thing goes for my brother. I knew who I could talk to. You probably know too. Don't tell very many people at first. Come here often. We are all here for you. We have all been through this. YOU WILL SURVIVE!!!! I needed to hear that over and over. Why did this happen to you?? That is what I wanted to know. Only God knows. many of us have to go through terrible things in life to get where we need to be. On the other side of this you will be so much stronger. I know that is hard to see now. If you are like I was you probably feel like curling into a ball and laying there for a few years.Trust me it gets better with time. Some days you will feel totally confused. Trust the info you get here. Some of your friends that find out that have not been through this will likely give bad advice. Find somthing to get you from day to day. For me it was God and the bible. there is great strength there. Put the problem in his hands. I was not a very strong christian 5 months ago. Sure I went to church a few times a year. I thought I had faith. I had nothing compared to what I have now. <P>I don't want to dwell there too long. but if you are looking for strength that is where I found it.<P>KEEP YOUR HEAD UP!! STAY POSITIVE!!! READ THROUGH THIS SITE COMPLETELY!!! AND DEVELOP PATIENCE!!!<BR>YOU WIIL MAKE IT!!!!<P>

an update and a sincere thank you. Received a phone call y'day from my W, informong me she was going to see the OM and tell him it was over. Apparently he is in love with her but, she says, she decided to be honest with me because she wants to rebuild our marriage. She says she has now ended the affair and agrees never to see or contact him again. Of course, this is incredibly difficult to believe in the circumstances, but as she points out she didnt have to own up in the first place, she was the one who decided to be honest about this.<P> I still havnt talked to anyone which is the hardest thing Ive ever done, meaning Ive just sat on my own for 3 days going mad!! Incredibly I have started to feel a little better, I think the human mind eventually anaesthetises itself to pain no matter how bad. I did consider telling my parents but I cant imagine Christmas dinner in the future (assuming we manage to pull together) with them knowing what she did. This is basically my hang-up all along. While I desperately wish to confide in someone, I still feel the humiliation and sense of failure of a wronged husband and cant face the whole 'kill the guy' macho posturing I know I would get. (Although 4 days ago my response to anyone in my situation would probably have been just that!!) I really must say a very sincere thank you for the support and advice I have received, it really has helped to know there are people out there who understand, and who care despite having never met me, thank you all.<P>I am aware reading through this that I may sound a little too upbeat considering my situation. I am not, I realise how hard it is going to be to repair this awful damage (and I may yet end up having to tell SOMEONE) but as i have already decided I am at least going to try to salvage things I figure I may as well be as positive as possible. Thanks once again, I'll keep reading (particularly if anyone has any advice on how I can EVER have sex with her again....)

This is long.... <BR>Don't feel like it's wrong to be so optimistic in this first week. But don't let your optimism get in the way of fixing what is wrong in the marriage for BOTH of you. You have a long road ahead. My wife too broke it off w/ OM, but i'm lucky that he had already moved to another state 3 mos previous. (He travels weekly so A was able to continue.) I truly don't know what I would have done if he still lived 6 houses away. You do need to talk to somebody. Does your Health plan offer any basic counseling?... mine does but it's only for a max of 4 sessions but only $5 a session. It has helped me tremendously and I've only gone twice so far. But therapist did recommend a stellar couples counselor and we're going to our first session monday (ironically our 1 month d-day anniv.)<BR>We told her parents (her dad had cheated on her mom) but not my parents. My family would hold a grudge even if we do make it. My thoughts on the "macho" thing: Yes it would feel great to beat the crap out of OM, but it would get you nowhere. You might even end up in jail. And it wouldn't change the fact that he still slept with your wife. I take some comfort in the fact that she broke it off with him. He may have provided temporary EN and SF, but she's sleeping in my bed, under my roof. That tells me who the 'better' man is. <BR>With the humiliation and embarrasment feelings out there. Look at it this way. Take the six best couples you know and realize that statistically infidelity will touch 3 of those couples at some point. You're not in this alone. Your spouse will be judged by her actions, you will be judged by your reactions. No one will blame you if you walked out the door. Your closest friends will have nothing but respect for you staying and trying to work it out. The friends that lose respect for you by staying with a 'cheater' aren't friends. My closest friends have nothing but support for me and hope that we can work it out. There has only been one couple that said they couldn't be my wife's friend anymore but they could be mine. I told the woman that if they truly want to be my friend they had to accept me and wife (with both of our faults). <BR>The sex thing is weird. I too thought how can I be with her after she has been with another man? When i see her naked I think of the excitement that must of been going with OM when he saw her naked too. Seeing and doing things to and with each other are reserved for me and wife. But in the end it's just sex. The actual act of it is no different than dealing with the feelings about pre-marital partners. What you have to deal with is the fact that it happened in the marriage. With that said, did they use condoms? For me OM had vasectomy 2 years ago, no condoms, I just freaked about disease. But had wife get full STD/HIV panel and everything was neg. thank god. Mentally that did alot for me just knowing that when we do get intimate again I'm not going to have it in the back of my head that I might be catching something. But for this to be effective you must believe that no more contact is happening between w/ and OM. Thanks for reading....

There is nothing wrong with the optimism you feel right now. In fact, it is a foundation for you to stand on when things get hard on this journey. And, yes, they will get hard. You and your wife have some difficult work ahead of you, but I promise you both it is worth the effort. You both are going to have to dissect this affair and make sure it holds no negative power over either of you. This is hard for both of you, but in different ways. For you, it some the details (i.e. sex) will be very hard. For your wife, seeing the person she was in the affair is going to be hard. Both of you have very damaged self-esteem right now and it takes time to rebuild that.<P>You are also both going to have to do some seriousl self-examination regarding your marriage and your conduct in it. The fact is, there were problems in your marriage and your wife decided that her "fix" was to have an affair. This doesn't make you responsible for her decision or the affair. It does make you responsible for things you did and didn't do that weakened your marriage. You will both need to confess and forgive each other for harm you've done outside of the affair.<P>Hope is a wonderful thing. When you get down, you can pull out the hope you feel now and let it warm you and give you the strength to stay on the journey. I use the term journey to describe the rebuilding and restoration process for a reason. I see the work ahead of you as a journey with many unknown stops. There will be rough weather and rough terrain, but there will be many beautiful stops along the way as well. As I look back on my journey after three years, it was well worth it. I can never be grateful for the sin that came into my life, but I am eternally grateful for the way God revealed Himself and worked as we made the journey back to wholeness.<P>You ask how you will be able to make love with your wife again. Well, for one thing, you will realize that <I>sex</I> is an act, <I>making</I> love is something special. When you realize that the intimacy of making love is something that you share only with each other things will get better. I won't lie, there will be some adjustments and you'll both have to try some specific things to deal with them. My husband and I found that lighting candles or having a small lamp lit when we made love helped both of us. We talked to each other and looked into each other's eyes. When a negative mental image would attack me, he could feel me tense up and would take his time until I calmed again. I didn't have to say a word, he knew me that well. Sometimes I would mentally say to myself, "I love my husband and he loves me." Now, I rarely have any negative picures of he and the ow and they are very easily banished if I do.<P>I do caution you to move slowly on getting too many sexual details from your wife. Some of us deal better with them than others and in time, they really aren't important. Also what she thought and felt during any sexual encounters is probably best left alone. Remember that she wasn't thinking rationally and she wasn't behaving that way either. What she [i]thought[/i[ she thought and felt then is much less important than what she [i]knows[i/] she feels and thinks now.<P>------------------<BR>"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:31<p>[This message has been edited by HGBrawner (edited March 02, 2001).]

ohmy - <P>I have a friend with whom I have been partnering with via email since November whose wife did the same thing your wife has done. Maybe all you need is a confidant. <BR>[This message has been edited by Dogbert (edited March 02, 2001).]<p>[This message has been edited by Dogbert (edited March 02, 2001).]

I just read your posts..I just wanted to let you know that it has been 8 months since my husband told me about his affair. We are recoverying and doing well. I chose not to tell anyone. I know it is hard not to talk to anyone but you can survive! Currently I have a friend I correspond with via email and it helps to discuss things with him but throughout most of the beginning stages of recovery I had no one in real life. Keep posting on here and check out the other affair recovery sites.<P>Tammy<P>------------------<BR>I used to be "Hopeful in Michigan" but the board will not allow me to use that password anymore.<P>A LITTLE kindness can make a big difference!<P>We can survive this!