Hi everyone. I am new to this and am wishing I did not need to be online right now dealing with my husband's infidelity. My husband is military and was deployed last summer for 3 months. I just discovered during this time he had sex with a woman twice. I am in shock because we seemed to have no problems and now we have a HUGE problem. We have been married for almost 12 years and have 3 children together. I guess my reason for writing is in hopes of finding out if these horrific feelings of sadness, anger, and betrayal will ever get any better. I feel as though our marriage has been forever tainted. Please anyone with advice----HELP
Kimmie

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.) I understand that you may not be a person of faith, but 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.

I should add one thing: As much as I like it, and as much as I learned from it, in reading SAA, it can be easy to conclude that unmet Emotional Needs are the reason for affairs. Not so. Unmet EN's do not cause affairs, they cause lousy marriages. Affairs are entirely the responsibility of those involved, and the reasons 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. If you want to learn more, read the chapter on "The Double-Life Man" in "The State of Affairs", by Todd Mulliken.

Hi Kimmie,
I am very sorry for what you are going through, you, like me, have just found out and in fact this is my first reply to anyone at this site. I can tell you that you are not alone in your pain. I have never felt this much heart break and hope to never again. (My post is entitled Wife and Brother in Law you can read it if you would like) I as well have 3 children and have been married for 12 years. We have alot in common. I have found that reading some of the posts have helped me realize that I am not alone. Go through the site, I hope it helps.
God Bless!

kimmierw, so very sorry that you do need to reach out for information on this type of site, but do know that you've discovered a very good one with lots of valuable information. Please do read everything you can here, take from it what will benefit you and your situation.

Read all the links in Johnh39's post. Understand that what you are feeling right now is completely normal and right on track. Jumping from emotion to emotion is NORMAL! (ie. crying to raging)

Yes, it can and will get better...but it will take some time, some healing, some acceptance that you do need to feel these emotions and DEAL with them. You're likely feeling emotions which you've never felt before, and right now, you may feel as if they are overwhelming you and are completely out of your control. This too is NORMAL. It takes a while before we learn how to productively deal with all this emotional overload.

The incident of betrayal seldom has much to do with the state of the marriage. (Weird I know.) You did NOTHING wrong. Now the state of your marriage has everything to do with how well you overcome a betrayal. If you've got a strong foundation you have a very good chance of rebuilding an even stronger fortress IF you and your H both commit to doing so.

Good Luck!

Thank You to everyone who has replied to my desperate attempt to make sense of my situation. I have recieved lots of helpful advice and in new ways I feel connected and not so alone. I appreciate all of you for taking the time to comfort me. May God Bless us all and guide our lives and marriages through recovery

Hello everyone I am new at this myself I just found this site and thought maybe some one out there can help me I have read alot about husbands cheating While I just found out on Jan10 that my husband was cheating with some one who I thought was my friend He told me it started in October and ended the first week of Dec But she left him a message on his cell phone and he called her on Jan 10 to meet with her I found this out because Her husband called me about it When I called my husband on the phone he asked me waht was wrong and I said we will talk about it when u get home. When he came home i confronted him he said he did he said it was mostly just talking but he said they had sex 2 times in the back seat of her car. He told me it was over We have been married for 16 years and we have 4 boys I can not get over this he said I should be over it my now i said really about 7 years I cheated on him,but we moved away from the place we were living when he found out about me I told him yea well it was easier for u cause we moved and u did not know the person like I did I called her that day and she said yea so what r u going to do about it So I wrote her a email,and she never replyed so I wrote another one a real nasty one telling her what she did to me and my family it was really nasty and she called the cops on me for harrasing her I told the cop oh but she can come into my life and destroy my marriage cause hers was bad I am so depressed I do not know how to get over this my husband said that he loves me and swears on our kids lives that he will never do it again. How do I deal with this? I can picture them doing it?? I love him and I do not want to leave him He gave me the chance when I did it but we did not stay in that city we moved so he never saw the person again I still live here and can see her any time I told him if I see her I am going to get her [censored] He said no u be the stronger person I asked him if he loved her or had feelings for her He told me no I said if u ended in dec,why did u go to met her in jan? He said to tell her it was over,but i said u already did tell her that he said he does not know why he went he thinks he wanted to get caught cause she did leave her cell phone at home so her husband will see it I hurt so bad and he does not know why I can't get over this My husband is not really that kind of man His sister was shocked that he did that How do I go on? I feel like I have to have sex with him because it makes me feel closer to him he wants to get on with our lives and finish the dreams we had for all these years But how am I suppose to do that? Can any one out there help me? I feel like my heart was ripped out of me It hurts so bad when I am alone that is what i do think about cna u help me?

B83: We have all experienced or are also experiencing the pain you are going through. The cure is time, and what you do with it. What i wrote to Kim applies to pretty much everyone. I will say that you and your husband should read together Torn Asunder, because from what I can make of your description, it does not sound like either of you really did either the internal work required or the couple work required to get through your affair and address the problems that caused it. So, all the root causes of affairs remained a part of your marriage. You have to eliminate them, or one of you will do this again. Although this is a bit of an over-simplified explanation, we can argue the details as you are on the journey of marriage repair. Look at the three things I suggested in my earlier post, and get started.

Please use paragraphs and sentences with periods when you write, if possible. It makes things easier to read. You will get more responses that way.