Before we met each other: H came from a home with Mom as a cancer patient for 13 years of the 15 he knew her. She was addicted to many drugs because of her pain and depression and he found her actions from this embarrassing. He found her when he was only 7 or 8 after she had tried to take her own life by slitting her wrists. His Mom and Dad loved each other, but it was still very disfunctional and he was the last child at home.

My home life was as the oldest child of 3. Family was very disfunctional. Mom and Dad fighting all the time. Dad beating up Mom and me. Grandparents around all the time and they fought constantly too. Eventually my father tried to have sex with me at about age 11. I had to keep him from killing my Mom several times. It was bad. They divorced when I was about 13. Mom had to have the police deliver the papers because he had threatened to kill her if she ever left. Years later he told me he should have killed her when he had the chance. He's a very sick human being.

When H and I met we felt it was a match made in heaven compared to what we were used to in our family lives! We met in Jr. year of H.S.

We have been married 26 years. As an insider I'd say happily married with some bumpy spots. An outsider usually considers us wedded blissfully.

I am 44 and H is 45. Our lives together began at age 16. We married at 17 and 18 and had first child when I was 18. Our children are now 25, 23 and 19.

Bought our first house in '84...big challenge on one income. I was at home with kids. We were involved in a religious cult led by H's brother from dating days until around '85. It was oppressive toward women who had to submit to H, no makeup, no pants, no hair cutting. Men ruled the roost. I was very sexually alive when I met H, but we did not have sex until we were married. Once we were married I thought I was finally set free until H said that we shouldn't have sex on Sunday out of respect for the Sabbath. He seemed insecure about my sexual advances so I stopped them and was very hurt. Did manage to get pregnant 1 month after wedding day.

Put kids through Christian school which was tough on one income. Hubby seemed to hold these Christian values, but in reality was searching just about all religions without my full knowledge.

H announced first affair almost right after it started in Nov, 1987. He wanted to go with OW, but decided to stay. He was very remorseful and we did our best to move on. He had expressed that his emotional needs were not being met. I was trying, but with 3 kids it was tough. Realized later that mine weren't being met either, but I was too busy to realize it at the time. OW was remorseful too and he was concerned about her and wanted to "help" her "as a Christian". So I ended up talking and praying with her to keep him from doing so. She ended up calling me about a month later saying she was being tempted by another married man. I told her she was on her own.

Many years of raising kids, getting "normal" from being in a cult. In 1990 I contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) while volunteering at kids school. All the while, hubby had times of great love for me, mixed with angry or emotional outbursts regarding his emotional needs. I was in bad shape with the CFS for about 3 years, then finally recovered to about 90% of normal.

In 1995, our youngest son contracted Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He was in a lot of pain and docs could find no reason for it and therefore doubted his pain. It was so sad and difficult.

In 1999 we finally found a CFS specialist who treated his pain and he got somewhat better, but still had severe fatigue and pain. We move on to a rheumatologist in 2000 and he eventually found more relief and he graduated from high school in 2001! What a relief that day was...he missed about 26 days per semester of his senior year!

In the mean time, I developed Fibromyalgia (which I was obviously prone to) due to all of the stress in about 1998. I also suffered from irritable bowel and bladder pain. I finally agree to medication in 2000 and found great relief, but still couldn't think straight half of the time.

H was generally very supportive of my illness, but occasionally would have outbursts about his needs not being met. I felt terrible, but was doing the best I could just to survive. I was confused about how loving he would be and then just attack me verbally out of the clear blue!

In Dec. 2002 I told him how happy I was. We were blessed with a new Grandchild in mid-Dec. and our other grandchild had just turned 4. We had a great Holiday season and I thanked him over and over for making it the best ever. Then I told him that I was so happy that I was almost scared of something coming up to spoil it.

I was right to have that feeling. On Jan,4,03 he went out to mail some letters (a 5 minute trip) and came back an hour later. I asked where he had been and told him I had been worried and he said that he could lie to me no longer...he was having an affair. I was devastated. He was in love and had found his soulmate. He also told me that he'd had 2 more in 1995 and 2000 that I didn't know about. I asked him over and over if he realized what he was giving up. We are very close with our children and I had warned him after his first affair that if he did it again he wouldn't have the luxury of them not knowing. He didn't care. He didn't want the house, the car, just his OW. He was so blinded and deluded and I knew it, but nothing I could say could convince him of that. He said that he wanted to be with her because she lived in the emotion of love, not fear like me. He said he'd leave and get a hotel room and I told him that if we were getting a divorce that he couldn't afford one so he could sleep on the couch.

The couch lasted about an hour...he was in our room, in our bed sobbing that he didn't know what to do. He said that he loved me so much and he loved our life together, but he loved her too. We were up all night and held each other and cried.

About a day later he decided to stay with me. He didn't know what to do about the OW, but he wanted our life together. Our kids were devasted and felt as though their lives as they knew them, as a Christian family was just a lie.

At this same time, I read an email (he had previously given me his password and forgotten) he had written to her...talk about a love letter...it crushed me. I also read an email to his coworker which caught him in many lies to me. One of them was that he told her that he couldn't bear to tell me about the rest of his escapades. I confronted him on all of these lies and demanded the truth from now on. He then confessed to a grand total of 4 E and P affairs and 5 one night stands. Two of the ONSs were in 1990 and the others while he traveled from 1998 to 2000. All involved unprotected sex...that part makes me very angry.

His relationship with the most recent OW was based on a 2 year friendship. They occasionally worked together, but weren't in the same office thankfully. Their relationship was built on similar emotional needs and spiritual beliefs, thus the soulmate feeling. He said that she was extemely spiritual. He did write her an email saying that he would not see her and not to write to him...he insisted on keeping it private though and that hurt.

About 1 1/2 weeks into this ordeal I wrote her an email. I told her that from H's description she seemed like someone who would not want to hurt a family if she knew the pain she had helped to cause. It was a very carefully written letter and not mean in any way. She wrote back and said that I was right and she was sorry for my pain, but took not one bit of responsibility. It was strange and H thought so too, coming from this spiritual woman. I wrote again and was a little more direct, but still nice. She wrote back and was really strange. She told me her beliefs (which she thought H agreed with) and they were that she could cause me no pain, H could cause me no pain...only I could cause me this pain. He and she were guilt free! She said that she refused to buy in to my desire for her to feel any guilt! H read this very long letter and was shocked at her insensitivity. He felt that she was not the person he thought she was...Hooray! He cared for her, but had not loved her and they were not soulmates...what a relief.

I guess that's why I felt I such a need to write that letter even though I wasn't sure it was the correct thing to do at the time. It was just a gut instinct.

He wrote back with my approval in my defense and to end it once and for all. He told her about not agreeing with her beliefs and apologized for making her think that he did. He told her that he loved me and his family and he belonged with us. He also told her that the closest thing to God's love that he'd ever experienced was the love that I was showing him now. I felt vindicated.

H now feels that his A with OW was because she offered a way out of all of his lies. She would take him "as is", even with all of the affairs. The sad thing is that I would have too...he was just afraid to ask. The last A before this one was in 2000 and if he had just asked me to forgive him instead having this recent A it would have been so much easier for me.

So this is our story. We are trying to piece together our relationship. I am having a terrible time with the number 9. It's almost unbelievable.

<small>[ February 06, 2003, 03:07 PM: Message edited by: stillwed ]</small>

You can recover. Many people have. It isn't easy, and not everyone succeeds, but as long as you are both working on it, your chances are close to 100%, providing you do three things:

1.) Learn. Read everything in the Basic Concepts section of this site. Next, read all the Q&A's on infidelity on this site. They are found at How to Survive Infidelity Then buy and read “Surviving an Affair”, by Willard Harley, (hereinafter referred to as “SAA”) available at the Bookstore. SAA is THE best book on the market for helping one get to the root of “the message of the affair” (BUT YOU HAVE TO DO THE QUESTIONAIRES!). It (along with the Basic Concepts section of this site) is also helpful for giving you a vision of what a great marriage should look like. The approach of SAA to this problem is that the best defense against affairs is to have a great marriage. My wife said we had a good marriage, but she still had an affair. She was kidding herself, but it was not until we read SAA and saw what a great marriage should look like that we could clearly identify the problem areas and had the tools necessary to fix them.

The phrase “the message of the affair” is from the book “Torn Asunder”, by Carder (hereinafter referred to as “TA”). I personally think this is the best book on affair recovery we have read. In particular it deals with the two different paths the recovery of the betrayed spouse (BS) and the wayward spouse (WS) need to take, and deals w/ remorse in a way that I prefer to SAA. Read it together, if your spouse is willing. If not, go through it yourself. If you or your spouse has issues with control, you might also want to read “The State of Affairs”, (SOA) by Todd Mulliken, which also treats the remorse issue similarly to TA. SOA also deals with "the vision thing" for marriage, which is neglected in SAA.

2.) See a marriage counselor. This is hard. You need help. These boards are populated by amateurs. MC’s are professionals. There is a difference. They can help deal with issues the books don’t cover, and customize things to your individual situation. That said, there are lots of bad MC’s in the world. Read, and take to heart, How To Find A Good Marriage Counselor. You do not want an MC that is going to teach you how to live with an awful spouse, or how to adjust to divorce. Too many of them do, as is documented here: Hazardous Counseling. Reading that link may scare you off counseling, but it should give you some good ideas to ask a potential MC before you start w/ them, so you can avoid those that give you the wrong answers. You need one that is committed to helping couples have great marriages, and knows how to do that.

You are on an emotional rollercoaster right now, and there will be times that you will think it would be best to just divorce your spouse and go on with your life. Though there are no guarantees, recovery IS possible, but it takes time and effort. You will hate yourself if you don't do everything you can to make that happen. Give yourself the time you need.

3.) For me, getting my spiritual life in order was crucial. As I said, this is hard. I knew I would need all the help I could get. Repenting of the habitual sins in my life let me stop pushing God away so I could hold on for dear life. I had to humble myself and ask Him what I had done wrong, and what I could do to be the husband He wanted me to be for his child, my wife. This was not about blaming myself. It was about doing what I could to do my part in having a great marriage. My wife could participate or not, but I had to know I had done everything I could do. It also helped me to let go of thinking about what SHE needed to do, since I couldn't control her, anyway.

You might also want to read through: WAT's Quick Start Guidelines for Betrayed Spouses, but keep in mind that these are the writings of amateurs. Get the books, read the articles, and see a GOOD counselor - you need the best help you can get.

Dear Johnh39,

Thank you so much for your detailed and heartfelt response! It means a lot to us!

We have both read SAA and we will be doing to contracts soon...our printer is down! We both agree that we want to grow old together more than anything else. It will be hard work, but already, just one month later we are having far more good days than bad. Also, we really enjoy our time together...we aren't having to just go through the motions. We both are at our saddest when we aren't together.

We have a date set for today...an early dinner at a favorite restaurant that we hardly ever get to go to and then a trip to our favorite bookstore and some other shopping. I am going to check out the other books that you mentioned. Thanks so much for telling me about those! We are both good at gathering information from literature and we have very few actual conflicts in our marriage so it can be a good resource for us. Our biggest challenges now are not to repeat the past, meet each others emotional needs, getting over my broken heart and my H learning to forgive himself for his shortcomings.

I learned a ton from the article on how to pick out a good marriage counselor. Right now, my IC is trying to teach me how to be selfish and I'm not sure that I agree with her methodology. She is very nice, but has never read any of the books I have on marriage and relationships and that worries me. I think that our next visit might be our last unless she turns out to be the person who can help me with my father's sexual, emotional and physical abuse issues.

My H's has only been able to get one visit with his counselor so far, but is scheduled for a second visit on Monday morning. We'll see how that goes. He had a very tough childhood with his Mother's illness. The advantage that he had over my childhood is that they all loved each other and there was no abuse.

He is interested in finding a men's group at some point. He tends to have women as friends since this is a skill that women are often better at than men. We have both agreed that women friends are out of the question for him. Every situation he has been in could have been avoided by avoiding unnecessary contact with women and he is well aware that he needs to reset his boundaries.

Thanks again for taking the time to write. We both will be reading and rereading your post for some time to come.

Take care!

I have a few more ideas for you: As a big-time conflict avoider, the "teaching you to be selfish" thing resonates w/ me. I really like Harley's approach to this, even though it seems to conflict with what I have been taught about Biblical principles of "unconditional love" (a phrase that is not actually found in the Bible, however...). It is a radical application of Jesus' command to "love our neighbor as ourselves". Go to the MarriageBuilders home page and do a search on "POJA" or "Policy of Joint Agreement, but this link is a good starting place: The Policy of Joint Agreement. Gary Smalley's approach, which he call's "LUV Talk" was helpful to me, too. There is an article giving a brief explanation at: LUV Talk

Next, for your H, he might want to read "The Sexual Man", by Hart. It shows how sexual expression which God prohibits prevents having a great sex life, and helped me see what a great sex life should look like.

Reading "Passionate Marriage", by Snarch, together has also been a help to us both. His perspective is not Christian, but he understands how important integrity is to a healthy sex life, and how our sexual expression w/ our spouses relates to the rest of our marriage relationship.

I've heard good things about the book "Boundaries in Marriage", but have not read it.

One thing about your comment about meeting each other's emotional needs: Unmet EN's do not cause affairs, they cause lousy marriages. Having had a marriage where we did not meet each other's EN's, I wholeheartedly agree that this is something you should work on, as my marriage is now MUCH improved. However, reading SAA, it can be easy to conclude that unmet needs are the "reason" for affairs. Not so. Affairs are entirely the responsibility of those involved, and the reasons (lack of appropriate boundaries is a common one) vary. If you read Harley thoroughly and carefully, he does not say unmet EN's cause affairs, either, though it is a so common a misconception among his readers that I would say he should do some re-writing of his material.

Our MC worked w/ Bill Harley for 8 years, and one of his biggest dis-agreements w/ Bill was on this very issue, because according to him, in about 80% of men's affairs unmet EN's had very little to do with it. Yes, there were usually unmet EN's in their marriages, because no marriage is perfect. But, having the wife find out about and meet his most important EN's did not stop the affairs from re-kindling or stop the husband from having another. Harley is aware of this, which is why his plan for recovery is a lot more complicated than: 1.) Take the EN questionaire. 2.) Meet your husbands EN's. Our MC said that in his opinion, for that 80%, if the wife had been meeting the husband's top 5 EN's PERFECTLY, the husband still would have had the affair, and the only real deterrent to future affairs is a spiritual transformation. If you want to learn more, read "The State of Affairs", by Todd Mulliken.

Dear Johnh39,

Thanks again for your time and insight! We have purchased all of the books you mentioned that you have read and they should arrive soon.

Right now I'm reading His Needs Her Needs. I was reading the part in the beginning about the emotional needs not being met will set up the marriage for failure. I agree with this, but at the same time I have to draw the line somewhere. When H had his first A in 1987, I took almost all of the blame on myself for it and tried thereafter to meet his needs. I eventually fell very short of that when I got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). He'd often complain that I wasn't meeting his needs for affection. Affection was always his biggest complaint and he didn't bring it up in a kind way many times. I ended up feeling so beat up about it that I felt helpless to meet any of his needs. I felt like a failure. He would often have angry outbursts that left me devastated.

He is taking responsibility for all of them now because he feels that he always had a choice and he chose to step outside of the marriage. The EAs I can understand, but there isn't much true affection in a one night stand. I just can't take credit for the sheer volume of adulteries he has participated in. The first one was a warning to our marriage, but the rest was a warning to him that he has a personality flaw in my opinion.

I went in for a medicine evaluation yesterday. I have anxiety problems when things are normal so you can imagine how I feel now. He said that although I scored high on the depression scale I seemed perfectly normal to him. Interesting...I always come off as normal even when I'm in deep despair! He did tell me that instead of a daily antidepressant dose, I can take my rescue type med whenever I need it so that was a relief. He said not to be afraid of it, but if I need it often to then discontinue it gradually instead of all at once. Right now I'm taking less than one per day so I should be fine.

I have discontinued my IC therapy for now. The doctor yesterday said that it might be overkill with all of the books we are reading. I suggested that I save it for a little later when I'm ready to deal with the issues of abuse that I suffered as a child. Letting some of these new wounds heal sounds like a good idea to me. I also have a hard time with the "get selfish" idea and their reaction to hubby having 9 affairs...they obviously think I'm crazy and he's hopeless and show it without even opening their mouths. Our worst conflicts have been right after my IC sessions!

I am having trouble with anemia right now and had gotten my hematocrit up into the low normal, but I think it's slipping again. It is wearing me out. I've been needing about 9 to 10 hours of sleep and there isn't time for it with all of this research and reading....hehe! Maybe a nice juicy steak would be in order for a Valentine's dinner!

Take care and thanks again. We do appreciate your help very much.