Hi IP,

I was and still am disgusted with my H's A. Before I came here, I called an attorney. At the time I called, I was sure I didn't love him. I was sure he crushed everything I felt for him. After I hung up with the attorney, I broke down and cried for a very long time. I realized my guard was up trying to protect me from the pain of the A. When I cried, my guard fell and I felt the pain even worse than when I first discovered the A. I realized then that I did not stop loving him as I convinced myself that I had. I also knew that for the kids and myself I have to try. I have no clue what the future holds for me. I stay focused on what is important for me at this point in my life. In one year I will reevaluate the situation and make new decisions based upon current circumstances, which include, do I still love him. Can I forgive? I don't know. Can I move forward? Maybe

So, when you say you don't love him anymore, be sure it is not your guard protecting yourself. Take the time to sort through your feelings. You are very hurt by this, and the trust has been shattered. Only you know if it could be saved and rebuilt or not. I just don't want to see you rush into any decision you may regret later. All decisions are best made with a cool and level head.

Dear Sue,
so glad (in all this mess) to hear from you again. I admire you for the thoughtfulness and love you have for your children. How much more difficult is a situation like this when financial aspects are important. Maybe I can be so "selfish" as to consider leaving him because I know I'll have our nanny with me and enough resources to offer my children a protected life. I've read almost all of "Surviving an affair" tonight and it is somewhat strange to me that I (or you) or any betrayed spouses should work on this Plan A (essentially just be nice and sweet and don't dare to upset Mr. cheating jerk). How about just kick him out, make him pay and let him loose his trophy wife-tough luck.(I had some really good red wine tonight. And boy-that makes pain go away and blessed anger come back.)
Sounds somewhat like Plan B from the beginning (essentially play hard to get). I'm good at that-but I can't get rid of the feeling that all of these theories are basically made for people who really want their WSs back. I always felt that you should not try to manipulate others. If someone doesn't want to be with me-ok, let him leave.

<small>[ August 01, 2002, 09:32 PM: Message edited by: Iceprincess ]</small>

Hi Liza,

I know how the Wine, sometimes helps. The financial is important to me. I grew up, not impoverished, but in a large family. My dad worked very hard, and when his occupation was in its prime, my dad I'm sure made a good income. With technology comes changes, and his occupation was practically obsolete. He came from that generation where you took a job and kept that job. By the time I was a teenager, (I was 3rd of 8) His raises were few and far between. We had food stamps and free lunches. For a teenager, that was humilitating. I will not do that to my children. My current job, by some standards, pays well, but not enought to support three children on, even with the child support. Okay, I could support the kids with the child support. My H's current occupation, can sometimes be seasonal. What do I do during the layoff times? Then i would not have enough to support the kids. I went back to school 3 years ago, for a career change. When I calmed down from my discovering my H's A, I decided when I finish school, then I will make decisions with regards to my M. Right now, I cannot make those decisions. If I was to do so, I would have to quit school, and remain at a job I hate. My current job used to cause me so much stress that when I would pick up the kids from the daycare, they could not talk to me, because I was still uptight from work. They don't deserve that. They will be far better served if I finish school. At this time, I have not truly found out if my H is in an A, but to be hones, I will say that I am probably 99.99% correct. I will give hin the .01% that I am wrong. All the signs indicate that I am correct. See, I can't even go foward with recovery because it is not in the open.

You have to make decisions that you can live with. The anger will come and go. The WHY?'s will come and go. As I said, even if you go foward with your decision to not reconcile with your H because you do not feel that the love and trust can be recovered, you need to heal from this experience. It is sort of like a grieving process, that unfortunately needs to be experienced to move forward.

Last night I really hit rock bottom of my life. Never have I felt so desperate and the pain just was unbearable. This is worse than soemone dying because you have to live with this situation now, with this betrayal and all its horrible consequences. A divorce-which for myself would be the best right now-would be horrible for our older son. so I'll have to work with WH on this. After reading Dr. Harley's books I am really frightened now that my WH will continue the affair and that this pain will even get worse. How could anyone manage Plan A??? I can't just pretend nothing happened and be sweet and loving (depositing in the Love bank). How have you experienced Plan A veterans managed to do this???? Please help me...

Hi Liza,

There are far more experienced Plan A veterans out there, and I'm sure you will be hearing from them.

For me, I had to identify why things were the way they were. I realized, that I contributed to the problem. This by no means excuses his decision. I was angry with him from the previous A he had. He lived with my anger and resentment for 5 years. I was very seldom nice to him, even though I believed I was. I had to lose the anger before I could go forward. So, I started doing things like exercise, and made a concentrated effort to show I cared. After awhile, I started feeling like I cared for him. Your situation is somewhat different than mine in that he confessed. My efforts are totally one sided.

How do you feel about Counseling for yourself? How does your WH feel about counseling for himself? How about MC counseling are you and your WH?

I would love to use Dr. Harley, but I cannot afford them. I was told they have about a 75% plus success rate.

There are others who feel the same way you do, and wonder where or how to begin.

I hope anything I have said helps. Remember to do what is in the best interest of everyone. I know, you are wondering "What is that?" It takes time to sort it all out.

How old are your children?

Iceprinces-Hello, this is my first time making contact. I've been reading MB for about 2 months. I found this site in desperation because i had no one to confide my pain. I am the BS with WH. The pain I have suffered has been unsurmountable. Never in a million years did I think I would become one of the statistics. But it happened. It's been approx. 2 1/2 mos. since D-day. We have two small children. I decided to fight for our marriage because of them and my love for my H. I want to instill some hope in you. I did not think we would survive the PA. It has been the worst nightmare emotionally. Too bad it wasn't all a bad dream. We have been seeing a counselor, first together and now separately. My H now seems to be coming out of the "fog"!!!!!! I felt like it was never going to happen. At some points I felt like we weren't going to make it and thought about giving up. But I didn't and will not. My family is the most important thing in my life. Remember, "For better or for worse" Well, guess what, here we are, right in the middle of the worse!!! And I am sticking to those promises I made. Given of course, that my H makes changes too. I too was not too happy in our M. He confessed the A went on for almost two years. I was in shock. Could not understand how he was able to home from work everyday and face me while he was doing this to me. I still feel the pain sometimes. Surprisingly enough it is getting better because my H wants to work on our M. Thank God!!!! The OW is still in the pic. She works with him. I wish she would quit but told me she is not going anywhere. I hate it that he still has to see her every day!!! H says he doesn't talk to her I have chosen to believe him, I feel he is sincere. Just don't give up. In the end, whatever happens I think that you just like I want to know that if the M doen't make it, that it was not because you did not try. I could never live with that. I owe it to my children and to my self to try. Good luck

Hi Liza,
How are you doing?

Dear friends,
thank you so much for your caring and kind words.
I spoke with WH yesterday and he told me a million beautiful loving things. I started to believe him and felt for the first time that we may be able to mend this. For the first time I got a good night's sleep. This morning he called me again and then again tonight, everytime he says he wants to fix all his faults, that I am his life and his love. That the OW was only an adventure and means nothing to him. He always said that he never wants to see or speak to her again. He wrote me today: "I want our lives to be a sea of eternal caring love".
I still have my guard up and I am terribly hurt by his affair, but now that I have decided to work on our marriage, I really want to believe him. I told him today again that honesty and openness are the most important EN for me, I asked him to not ever lie to me. We spoke about the OW and I wanted him to tell me everything about her. He told me. He will see the therapist again next week. The therapist asked him in the first session if I would come at times too. I think I will. These two weeks were horrible. I would never recommend to anyone to leave for ANY reason after an A is discovered (I wanted him to go for the sake of our older boy as not to spoil the vacation, but I have been through HELL these days). The first week after it happened he was there with me all the time and showed me how sorry he was. You need to be with someone to hear the words and see the look of love and caring in his eyes. With time, eventually-as you wrote-love and happiness may come to us again.

Liza - what encouraging news! I'm glad things look a little more hopeful to you today. Just remember that it's perfectly OK to proceed with your recovery with cautious optimism. You're right to have your guard up, but it's also a good idea to give him the benefit of the doubt unless you have conclusive evidence that proves otherwise.

If he is really sincere in trying to make up for his stupidity (yes, he knows he was stupid), he's going to try really hard to earn your trust back, even though he can probably understand that it may not get back to where it was before his stumble.

I'll continue to pray for improvement in your situation. Good news!

<small>[ August 04, 2002, 02:10 PM: Message edited by: shattered in SF ]</small>

Hi Liza,

I'm glad you are feeling a little better. And Shattered is correct, your guard will be up. You will be cautious, and that is okay. Unfortunately it will take awhile. Your H being honest about your questions you had is a good sign that he is trying to work with you on this.

Your WH, sounds like he is really remorseful, and that is a benefit for you and your M.

I'm glad that you took some time to decide what you want to do and not to react in anger and hurt.

I will also pray for more improvement for you.

Take care
S

Dear friends,
now I know what you people meant with "you are in for a rollercoaster ride of emotions". Since he came back from the vacation my husband is showing me all day long how much he loves me and how much he regrets his A (which he calls "the biggest mistake of my life"). He says he never wants to see or speak to the OW again. He says he doesn't know why he was so blind, now he looks at me with admiration and endless love in his eyes. It is like in the first days of our love, except for this pain that is still very big in my heart. But he tries everything to heal me. He says I and he are one and that he wants to rebuild our lives together. I am still full of fear that he may shatter all of this new love with continuing the A somehow in secret. There are enough examples for this on this site...Now I know how you can love your WSs. I can't tell him yet but I can feel the love grow in my heart. It is very strong but at the same time very fragile because it only grew out of his loving and remorseful behaviour since he told me about the A (he thought that day that I would go to the divorce lawyer right away,that he had lost me, but he felt that he had to be honest).He answered all my questions honestly and in full. There were some facts that were very difficult to take, but as a good student of Dr. Harley I did not scream at him but just said "I appreciate your being honest with me, thank you for telling me the truth".
I just hope and pray that this recovery will last and that there are no more contacts between him and OW. Thank you all for your support and your cautious words to stay calm and not make any hasty decisions. I wish for all of you that the love may return to your lives and this pain may end.
Thank you so much. God's blessing to all of you...

Hi Liza,
It sounds like your H is truly remorseful, which is more than most of us have, especially so early in discovery. Right now, your emotions are so fragile.

Thank You for wishing us all well. I wish your recovery is uphill more than down.

We are here for you.

Dear Ice Princess,

I understand what you are going through, but I am not sure I understand the degree of your anger. my husband did have a sexual affair while away for training and i found out that he did sleep with this woman after we uprouted our family to another province . It has been 4 months since i found and am still on a roller coasterr but have chosen to try to forgive, mainly because i have been with him for 13 years and we have/had an incredible relationship, he did a very STUPID thing and followed what his heart was telling him to do at that time(he really thought he fell in love). Do i excuse his behaviour-NO WAY! Do I think that he may have had some reasons to develop feelings for some one else-YES! We (myself mainly) have been through some very strong personality issues and me not being the easiest person to be with, but that was not reason for him to move it to a sexual thing either, I just understand how some one else can make him feel good about himself again. Your anger is extreme at this point and you sound like you have given up so maybe you should explore the reason for that, maybe your feelings are not where should be in order for you to move on-either because it is too soon or you do not have that love for him any longer. I am not saying it is easy to forgive-or forget but you have to want to before you can start to achieve it. Maybe we can reach out to each other every once in awhile and share some thoughts.

Good luck!

Dear ZM,

thanks for your thoughts. Reading what you and the other MBs say, many times helps me to straighten out my feelings and realize certain points.

I can tell you I am so angry because I feel that I did not give him a reason to do this. I tried -out of my strong love for my husband-to meet all his ENs (even before I had ever read about Dr. Harley's concepts). He was so stuck in his depression that I could not reach him. But I tried every (EVERY!!!) day. He could have walked away from the A, but instead he chose to fuel the fire. He says it was just an adventure-but excuse me for being so blunt-if you want adventure you sure can have that with me!

Forget about your loving wife, your promise of fidelidad before God, your two wonderful sons, your life and career-just for some disgusting available woman who is after you-like there is no tomorrow. See ZM: that's why I'm so angry and I am still having a tough time now to keep up the trying to put this back together. I give him a lot of credit for being honest (when it was too late) and for working on this (when he had it all shattered into ruins first). It could be worse-you guys are right. But it also could be better if he had never done this. He had so many choices that it is not pretty. He could have talked to a therapist, to me, to his friends, changed his job, changed our life, ANYTHING else but to go for an A. The A was his choice and I find I have the right to be angry.

And about love...at times I love him, at times I don't. Some of you here apparently can separate the love for their WSs from the WSs actions. For me that goes together. How can I really love someone who has hurt me like this. Yes, I can love him now at times when I see he has changed. But that does not erase his behavior in the past months when he actively pursued this A, lied to me, betrayed me. Someone who I will love and spend my life with, has to behave better than that. He got his last chance now and believe me, he knows.

I'd love to hear what you think about this, ZM. And I am so sorry to meet you here under these circumstances, but I find it gives a lot of strength to exchange thoughts with others in a similar life crisis.
All the best to you!

Hi Liza,

I can totally relate to your feelings of disgust-4 months later i still have them. Let me shed a little more light also, he was away on 5 months training for a new job and I never questioned my support-even after having a horrible summer 2001 with him (he was in a mild depression because of his job), I was going to be giving up a job i loved, my home that i loved and my friends to move with him becuase this is what he needed. In that 5 months, I was dealing with a new job that required me to travel until our move date in March(this started in Nov.), bought and sold our real estate, was a single mom to our son, took care of EVERYTHING, to find out that he fell in love with someone else, partied and then consumated that love--to then continue it emotionally after we moved (she lives about 12 hours away so it was through phone and e-mail). So yes, I think he is the biggest jerk to allow me to do all this FOR HIM-while he went off on a single life. But, I also know that for the last 3 mos (before the EA started) he was miserable being away from home, he felt a lot of pressure because he was uprouting us(this was all his doing), and I got extremely caught up in the stress of it all, and was not always the easiest person to be with(rightfully so at times)..Suddenly he had this woman(the only one in their class), who was paying an immense amount of attention to him, he also had to help with language because she was extremely french and he was the only french speaking person in class-she relied on him a lot (I am extremely independent-too much so at times), I do know that she made him feel wonderful. Where my anger and hurt come from is the fact that he did tell me on his last weekend home that he had developed feelings for her, and it scared him (we have been together for 13 years), he was returning for the final 10 days and to graduate then move back home. I took him to the airport with this immense sadness because i knew the next 10 days would be emotional let alone have him deal with feelings for another woman, but I stuck it out. And stupidly believed him when he said nothing happened, and stupidly believed him for 2 mos(although i always had this feeling and doubt), when i finally found out WHAM!!!! So I know my roller coaster is not over, the only thing that makes me hang in there is a I do love him-but the past 2 weeks I have slipped a lot and am having a lot of bad feelings, tremendous sadness and hurt, then trememndous love for this man. This evening our son is going for a sleep over and we are getting a hotel etc, but I am scared because there is so much we have not talked about that it is on my mind a lot. that is why i came to MB is to get some help on forgetting-HOW!!! I hope we both find peace, preferably with our spouses but if not at least with ourselves. I am reading After the Affair and it is pretty interesting (I bought it at Chapters), let's move on from this somehow, we deserve the peace...

Take care, e-mail me anytime!!!

Hi,
I can't speak for other WS's, but for myself, there are times when I feel like I don't love him and it would probably be easy for me to leave during those times. The times I feel the least for him is the easiest for me to deal with things also. I love my kids more than I do him. Hurting them is what I want to avoid.

Will I do this forever, no. If things don't change, I will do something different

Dear MBs,

just an update: we are trying to rebuild our marriage. Every day is a new day to appreciate each other again.

We had incredible beautiful evenings together last week. We have times where there is so much love around us, that others notice. Quote of our waiter Wednesday:" I didn't know you guys were in a hurry" (...to get home for 'dessert' that is...).

We laugh together and cry together. Yesterday I had to work and he spend the day with me there-reading HNHN. We have times when I am devastated by the A and he tries to comfort me, to apologize and show his love.

Sometimes it is so easy for me to love him, sometimes I am struggling with huge resentment. It is difficult to find a way out of this and I still wish with all my heart it had never happened. At times I feel hopeless, but then I read Steve's book and he talks about the new tools that you have at your "disposal" such as learning about ENs, avoiding LBs (sometimes very difficult right now, but I'm trying, trying so hard...) and spending time together.

Thank you all for your continuing support. I feel that this crisis is not over but that we have just taken the first steps on the long way of healing from this.

Liza - glad to hear that things are progressing so well. You're right on track with your feelings - so many of us here have gone through what you are experiencing right now.

It is amazing what God can do when you step back and allow Him to work. Three months ago, I was certain my marriage was over. Today, we are celebrating our 24th anniversary. Not just acknowledging, but celebrating! I am so grateful for the healing we have experienced so far.

But, I know we still have work to do. We are both working on ourselves to make us better for each other. I am determined to make "us" better than ever. There just has to be a big upside to counter all the pain we've endured.

One thing I've found to be helpful is going back to re-read my earliest posts. I recognize the despair and hopelessness expressed then, contrasted to the optimism and hope and love I feel today. Sometimes it helps to see where you've been so you can appreciate where you are now and where you are headed.

You're doing great so far. I'll continue to pray for your family and for ongoing progress in your effort to re-discover each other.

Dear "shattered"

thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

You told me just what I needed to hear at this point. Your experience, that it is possible to feel true love again and to celebrate being together. You've been through hell like me. In my darkest hours there is so much hopelessness. Your words are like a bright light in this darkness.

Thank you