Has anyone here experienced this? Husband has recommitted to marriage after 2 year affair. He says this is a woman he still loves but that our family comes first. I know he doesn't see her, she's in another state. Does he email her? Not sure.

My problem is we have been working our way up on the intimacy. Lots of SF just not the whole act. H can't seem to do that. He said when it get's that far he can't turn his brain off and he feels like it's wrong. Says he finds me very sexy and wants to but his mind gets in the way. WTF is this? I'm the wife. shouldn't that be what happens with OW?

My H says he loves me very much and wants our intmacy to go all the way, but I'm starting to feel like a real fool and to say my feelings are hurt is an understatement. I have been doing PlanA for about 6 weeks now and in every other part of our relationship things are really good. We spend lots of time together and enjoy each others company and really do have fun. We are great friends and in the past great lovers. What do you think? Maybe he should be with her if he loves her that much, although I've never said that to him. Hope for the future?

I am gong under the assumption that the problem is NOT physical. Our sexuality is mostly in our heads. So, there is something in his head about himself or your relationship that is interfering here.

OK, I admit I am grasping at straws here a bit, but maybe Plan A is the problem. There is an interesting post on this subject here: Plan A, B and Recovery that you may find helpful. My only partly educated guess is that PART of what is happening is that you are holding back from being emotionally honest in your efforts to Plan A. It is really common that we BS's hold back negative emotions to try to make our time together w/ our FWS's pleasant, but in holding back, we put an emotional barrier between us and our spouse. The thing that is hard to learn is how to address conflict and negative emotions in a way that enhances intimacy, instead of destroys it. This is the only idea I have about which you can do much. Tell him how you feel. To do this in a way that will not create more performance anxiety is not going to be easy, however, and anxiety does not enhance sexual performance.

Another thing that destroys intimacy is guilt. I am not sure you can do anything about his guilt, except forgive him. Until he accepts that forgiveness, nothing much will change.

Of course the other possibility is he is still involved w/ her. Why don't you know whether he emails her?

John

I'll try to post again I keep getting bumped. Thanks for your reply. I dont think guilt is the problem. What I'm concerned about is that H is feeling unfaithful to OW. It is not a physical problem either. I think he can't get out of the fog. Life is fun and exciting and sex is great when you don't have 3 kids, bills and laundry. He doesn't understand that but it's true.

I don't know if he emails her because I can't be with him 24/7 and I do know of one contact about 4 weeks ago. Supposedly to confirm that things were good and that he is where he should be. Do I believe that, yeah mostly. But I guess anything is possible.

I have never been shy about speaking my mind and I try very hard to do it in as supportive a way as possible. I'm not always successful but an A for effort.

What this all boils down to is I know he loves me. Is that enough? Will us making new memories together get us to where I do think we both want to be, in a committed relationship? I'll try to be patient, but it sure is hard.

sickandtiredofit,

You might want to go to the "In Recovery" forum and read the post "Sexual Addiction is not an Emotional Need" and see if any of the information there might apply to your situation. I'm not saying that it does as I do not know the dynamics of your marriage, but your WH seems to be struggling with something. It might be guilt, but I don't know. It is also possible that he is putting himself under pressure to perform. He said that his mind is getting in the way. Have you asked him what he is thinking about when this happens? It might be a good idea to have any discussions about this during a time when it is not an immediate issue that you are dealing with in the bedroom. Your sense of personal rejection comes through your post loud and clear. I don't have any answers for you, but here is a hug. (((HUGS))))

Personally, I wonder if he is still seeing and /or emailing/phoning her,,,if so then he is NOT in compliance with NC, he is STILL in the fog, and that makes his thoughts that he "loves" her, they are "soul mates" and if he has sex with his wife it's "cheating" on her make a whole heck of alot more sense. Pretty hard to enter marital recovery when the WS is still living in a fantasy land of champagne and roses,,,,next to reality of dirty laundry and kids homework, champagne and roses might win a man over still totally enshrouded in fog,,,,,,Holly

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I don't know if he emails her because I can't be with him 24/7 </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">No, but there are ways you can find out. If you have any doubts, you should use them. Now is not the time to be trusting.

Here we go again. If this comes out twice it's cause I keep getting bumped when I reply.

I know I shouldn't be trusting right now but we have 6 computers in this house all online and it makes it difficult to keep track. And after all these years of hiding stuff he is much better at it than I am. If anyone has any ideas I'm all ears. I hate snooping and I really s*ck at it. Lying does not come easily to me. I hate all of this.

If anyone knows of a way to track this many computers or how to find out if there are other email accounts let me know. And even if you find them, what do you do about the password? I told you I stink at this.

I thought we were past all this. What a haha on me. Thanks for any help.

There are free keylogger programs that you can download off of the internet which invisibly logs all keystrokes as well as the screenname of the website/program that these keystrokes were made in. It will help greatly in finding secret email accounts as well as record what he is typing and save this information for you to see. It doesn't matter if he deletes the history or cookies to erase his tracks. They keylogger will still have a record of what he typed and where. Even if they are meeting in innocent looking gaming chat rooms, it will record his keystrokes for you to see. I downloaded one of these and it works. For me, it gave me peace of mind because the mistrust is a hard barrier to overcome. Some call it snooping or spying, but I think of it as giving myself a reason to believe what he is telling me.