Hello, this is my first visit to the forums.

DH and I have been married almost 6 years, dated for 2 years before that. We have two children, ages 4 and almost 1. We are very devoted to each other, but sex has not been a priority since my first pregnancy (some times better than others.) He claims that I am not open to him, but the fact is that he turns down about 70% of my attempts at intimacy, and this is all made more complicated by the fact that he works as a musician and is away in the evenings probably 4 nights a week.

When we were first dating, we worked for the same company. Another woman who had been interested in him for some time left him a note and asked him out. She didn't know about us. DH never replied. After we got engaged, she was transferred to his area, and the situation was awkward. I encouraged him to apologize for being rude and put it behind them. He did, and they became friends. She got engaged shortly thereafter. My intuition told me that she was still interested in him, and I told him at the time that I didn't think it was appropriate for him to pursue a friendship with her because she obviously still had a crush on him. He told me that it really didn't matter because he felt no attraction for her, just kind of sorry for her.

Over the years she has continued to somewhat insinuate herself, and she is very competitive with me, always giving advice through him on books I should read, etc. She is truly one of the only people I have ever had an allergic reaction to, and I have said a number of times that it makes me angry that they should even talk about me in the most innocent way.

The other day we were having a discussion about our marriage and he asked me out of the blue if I had ever been unfaithful. I told him that I hadn't and asked why. He told me that he had been, early on, with this woman. That some "touching" had gone on but nothing more, just once, and that he'd felt horrible and that nothing like that had happened since. After a few more questions it came out that she had given him oral sex in her office at the place we all work, almost five years ago. Aside from being very angry with both of them for the position they put us in, and very upset (I was certainly newly pregnant at the time and she may well have been - which adds to the ick factor for me), I am just really confused because we were actually fairly "happy" at the time...and DH even agrees that he didn't feel unhappy in our marriage at all. He feels that she pursued him, that he was flattered by all the attention and liked her as a person, and that one afternoon got out of hand. I guess I would understand better if it had happened recently, if that makes any sense. I am further disgusted and annoyed that it was her, this person who I have asked him repeatedly to avoid for this very reason. He claims that in the past 5 years it has not come up again, but that they both live in "mortal fear" that their families will find out. Regardless, she still occasionally flirts with him and teases him. I choose to believe him that it has not gone farther since that incident; I see no reason for him to lie.

The good news is that he is in his last few weeks at this job (I left the company a couple of years ago.) DH is in a business where he has groupies and students, and if all it takes is dogged pursuing, how can I be sure this won't happen again?

He wants desperately to make it up to me, and I want for this to work, but I'm just wondering. Do these slips in judgment really happen where there are few problems in a relationship? What do you all think? I don't really understand why he's bringing it up 5 years down the line, but I am grateful to have the chance to work it out.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Do these slips in judgment really happen where there are few problems in a relationship?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Not all the time but the problems in the relationship do become a factor of vulnerability. It's like two people with a depressed immune system but only one gets sick.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">What do you all think? I don't really understand why he's bringing it up 5 years down the line, but I am grateful to have the chance to work it out.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Could it be that little voice inside his head called a conscience? Let's face it, if it hadn't bothered him all this time, he never would have told you. I know it sounds like he did it only to releive his conscience, and to a degree it is true BUT his actions in trying to make it up to you speak volumes of his love for you. He probably wants your love for him to be given with your full knowledge and forgiveness of his betrayal, because only then will he feel worthy of your love.

Amazing Coffeeman! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> So few words!

What I find so positive in your situation is that your H confessed...seemingly out of the blue. Something which points to a strong marriage bond. It seems that since his job is changing and he's able to completely get away from that situation...he wants to put everything out on the table so that the two of you can both began with ALL the information which is important to your marriage.

Yes, he made a very bad mistake and you've got every reason to be upset with him. But...it looks as if he has or is dealing with the guilt and has gone to true remorse. (Guilt is selfish...remorse is empathy.)

You've opened up new lines of communication which will make your marriage healtier. Congrats.

It MIGHT be a good idea for you (or H) to somehow let this woman know that you do know what happened and that you and your H want no further type of contact at all with her. Go into NO contact immediately. While this may be difficult for your H until he leaves his place of employment...he can make very sure that ALL contact is kept on a completely professional level with no "friendly" interaction at all.

He should do whatever is necessary to make these remaining weeks as safe and secure for you as possible. He must understand that she is NOT a friend, never was...she was a past affair partner (even if one time) and that she is DEAD and gone in his sight.

How are the two of you handling all of this? Are you working TOGETHER to mend the wounds and began healing? Is he doing whatever he can to help support you during this time of heartbreak? Are you able to began the search for forgiveness? The emotions are running high...but together you can make a better marriage...even tho it seems you had a really good one before all this...now it can be improved even more.

Good Luck!

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Do these slips in judgment really happen where there are few problems in a relationship? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yes. The best books at getting at the "Why?" question when the marriage seems to otherwise be solid (by Harley's definition), are "The State of Affairs, by Mulliken, and "Torn Asunder", by Carder. However, my wife said we had a good marriage, but when we started reading Harley's stuff, we found we did not, from his perspective. And, our worst point of marital weakness was one that frequently leads to affairs. My wife had one. I wanted one. In retrospect, I don't think we knew what a good marriage looked like until we read "Surviving an Affair", by Harley, and the Basic Concepts of this site. If reading SAA together and doing the questionnaires together does not answer your questions, read the other two books I've mentioned. A good counselor can help, too.

As for why he is bringing it up now - ask him.

"Not all the time but the problems in the relationship do become a factor of vulnerability. It's like two people with a depressed immune system but only one gets sick."

Not sure I completely understand this analogy but what one point of vulnerability for us is that DH is a performer. Like many performers, he has a touch of manic depression and is attracted to me because I am calm and unlike him. However, this ups his ante of needing gushing, positive feedback at all times. If I follow honesty as a policy, which I tend to, it means that he is not always on the receiving end of the kind of attention and affection he feels he needs, and neutrality is even a kind of censure. So I guess I need to work out some sort of compromise between bringing out the pompoms and being fairly neutral and practical, which is my tendency.

"Could it be that little voice inside his head called a conscience? Let's face it, if it hadn't bothered him all this time, he never would have told you."

Yep, I'm sure it was. However, one of the things that really burns me is that we've always joked that he couldn't possibly keep a secret from me because I can tell in an instant when something is bothering him. And many of our silly conversations (about stupid purchases or whatever) start out with the words (from him), "I have a confession to make." What concerns me is that our sex life slowed down right around the time of this affair. I have been blamed for 5 years for being cold, not needing him, etc. I know it will take time to sort it out, but I believe that this affair is to blame for part of those problems, and I really hate that I've been the scapegoat and blamed myself even sometimes when I knew in my heart that I wasn't entirely to blame.

"I know it sounds like he did it only to releive his conscience, and to a degree it is true BUT his actions in trying to make it up to you speak volumes of his love for you. He probably wants your love for him to be given with your full knowledge and forgiveness of his betrayal, because only then will he feel worthy of your love."

I pray that you are right.

RE: confronting OW. I talked to DH about this today. I told him that I would like to speak to her about it, and about the fact that I knew. He is very uncomfortable with that idea, because he has two weeks left at work and doesn't want it to "blow up."

I told him that it would be easy enough to make it non-confrontational, just an "I know, and we would prefer that you not be in contact with either of us from this point forward." He feels that she will not be a problem once he leaves this job. I disagree.

However, I told him that I will respect his wishes, but that if she "follows" him by e-mail or phone that I reserve the right to do so then. He agreed.

He's in a strange place. He keeps saying that he doesn't want to bring this up every day for the rest of our lives, and of course I have a million questions (and there have been a bunch of "aha!" moments, like why she acted like such a freak show at my birthday party that year and insisted on sitting across from us, and making odd comments.) He pointed out to me that while it feels very current to me, it was years in the past to him. So we're trying to come to some sort of compromise. He has agreed to answer all my questions, so I'm trying to walk a fine line between getting everything compartmentalized and together and driving him completely over the edge. (IE, "What led up to the event" ok, "What were you wearing?" not ok.)

He's also offered to stay in a hotel while I let this digest, and I told him in no uncertain terms that this is his home and staying away would probably only serve to make the situation worse. He has offered to go to a MB weekend with me, but we can't do the one in September - does anyone know if they are offered frequently? I couldn't tell from my perusal of the website.

Sorry for rambling.

I know how you feel. My H had an EA with my sister! of all people. He too, blamed me for not wanting, when it was him. He blamed me for everything, and it was him. I asked him a million times to stop talking to her, told him she wanted him in a different way - he always told me to get over it, it was all in my head.
That was the most difficult part. He kept blaming it on me. It took a lot for him to finally admit that he was wrong. But he still didn't see that I was miserable, and he was extremely upset about 6 months later, after we reconciled, when he asked if I ever considered divorce. I told him yes. I thought he was going to lose it. He was so distraught. Up until that moment, he didn't realize the magnitude of what he put me through.

Then...of course, he no longer wanted to talk about it. Put it all in the past. He didn't want to be reminded of it. I still had unanswered questions. I still wanted to know why, how, he could blame me for so much. He just didn't have any answers. I still wanted to know though.

But eventually, I put it in the past. I let my guard down. It's been 2 years almost to the day now, and here I am, back again. I let my guard down, and we're right back where we were then.

So, darling, love him, forgive him, put it in the past when you are ready - not him, but don't ever let your guard down. Never. You'll only get hurt again.

I am H's 3rd wife. I should have realized that two women couldn't be wrong. But his sisters saw such a change in him, so obviously he wasn't just changed for me. His neice told me this weekend that his family considers me his angel, that I saved him from a horrible life down the wrong road. His nephew asked why I'm still with him, since no one else stayed that long. And both of them told me if something goes wrong, it's not my fault. It's H's. He will ruin this, not me.

I look at his track record and see they are right.

I wish you all the luck in the world with this. {{{hugs}}}

Update and reply.

Thanks again for all your kind words. I've moved out of the fog remarkably quickly and am scrambling to pick up the pieces. H's birthday is today and we're going out as if nothing had happened.

However, significantly, he visited the psychiatrist he sees for anti-depressants yesterday. He has joked in the past that she is just concerned with his "meds" but I suggested that he bring this all up with her. She rose to the occasion, and has suggested that he up his visits to once a week (with me when possible) and that he join a support group for men who have strayed. (That one I am worried about, because I wonder if he sees people who are "much worse off" so to speak, if he will start to consider what he did as insignificant. But I'm willing to support it if it helps.)

Here's the best part, though! We've made progress on the no contact issue. H says that when he brought up my concern about his continuing to try to be a friend to this woman that the Dr. sat straight up in her seat and said, "You must take this seriously. Your wife is absolutely right, and I have seen many marriages break up over this kind of an issue." When we were talking about the appointment, H said that he had never before seen exactly how intently OW had pursued him, and that it kind of freaked him out. He'd always thought that it just "happened" without any kind of thought, and because he was mainly attracted to her for friendship as opposed to physically, that he assumed it was the same for her. I brought up again that I had expressed my discomfort all along.

The hardest part right now for me is that I have only one or two friends I can speak to about this, and we have both of our families descending upon us for an event in about 2 weeks. That, and the kiddos. I can't really wallow in anything right now (although we are talking for hours every day right now), so I wonder if it's going to come back and bite me one of these days. Time will tell.

I'm certainly going to take him up on the offer to attend his counseling with him, and I sincerely hope that my own feelings are being dealt with appropriately by me. I'm just confused about everything right now, particularly how I'm responding.

Oh what a mess.....

Well, last night we went out for H's birthday. It turns out he was *very* upset that I hadn't bought him a card for his birthday. I had made plans, gotten a babysitter, and tried to nail him down as to what type of restaurant so that I could call ahead and have them make a birthday treat for him, but he wouldn't let me do it. He just kept saying he clearly didn't deserve to celebrate.

So, it all blew up at dinner <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" /> where he told me that my decision not to get a card was proving that I really didn't care, but he knew he deserved it so he was just taking it. He decided it was passive aggressive.

You know, I don't think it was, but he started egging me on. "C'mon, you're mad...lay it out on the table." I didn't bite and didn't bite, and then finally I said, truthfully, that I had planned the date and after the revelations of last week spent most of the weekend feeling sorry for myself. In addition to that I didn't really know what to do, and we're in the habit of writing really flowery cards to each other for birthdays and I couldn't do that.

We left the restaurant and took a walk and on the walk he asked me again to just get angry with him. I told him that I probably will when I'm done being angry with myself, but that it doesn't feel productive to me to set us back any more than we already have been. He said again that it wasn't my fault, and I have to stop thinking that way. I told him that I would love to, but I have a million things running through my head as to why it happened and I'm still trying to get through them. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="images/icons/confused.gif" />

We ended up getting back to the restaurant, where I arranged a piece of birthday cake to be delivered to the table and a song from the waitstaff (he had no idea how I managed b/c he didn't expect it,) and we went to the movie, and ended up having an ok time. He looked like he was going to cry when they were singing Happy Birthday. The evening ended ok, but I just am getting so blue in the mornings, for some reason. <img border="0" alt="[Teary]" title="" src="graemlins/teary.gif" />

I want off the rollercoaster, and I know I don't have it as bad as some and that makes me feel worse. How craptacular would I feel if it had been worse, when I feel so badly now?

This is my only place to really vent. I'm trying to be as fair and reasonable as I possibly can while being true to my feelings at home.

Dear Mebb,

You wrote:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> What concerns me is that our sex life slowed down right around the time of this affair. I have been blamed for 5 years for being cold, not needing him, etc. I know it will take time to sort it out, but I believe that this affair is to blame for part of those problems, and I really hate that I've been the scapegoat and blamed myself even sometimes when I knew in my heart that I wasn't entirely to blame.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">This is a very real problem! I also found myself in this situation. My H felt terribly guilty over two early, unconfessed one night stands (the beginning of the second string of affairs after our first d-day). This guilt put up an invisible wall that kept him from feeling the intimacy that I was trying to give him. I've always struggled with giving him ENOUGH attention to satisfy him. This wall of guilt and shame didn't allow him to feel my attempts at intimacy. He often would use the wall to project his guilt and shame onto me to get a relief from it for himself. He would insist that if I really wanted to love him the way he needed to be loved that I would just do it! In other words, rather than face his own guilt and shame for not being able to stay faithful, he would project it onto me and say that I was not capable of loving him the way he needed to be loved. He got to the point that he actually BELIEVED that he was just having affairs because I wasn't capable of giving him what he needed. Funny how after he confessed and I took him back even though he thought he wanted out, I was capable of giving him more love than he could ever imagine. He just couldn't FEEL it before because he was running from taking responsibility for his own behavior. He blamed it all on me.

Since his confession he has figured out that this was really an unfillable hole in his very soul that nobody could have filled. He longed for someone to be able to fill it and actually EXPECTED me to be able to. He believed that it was the responsibility of the person that you chose as a mate to fill that hole. I believe that he thought that most people had this hole and that it was normal. Well, it is normal for some personality types, but not for others. The Enneagram type that is notorious for this is the type 4. You may find a lot of relief in both of you taking the test in my signature line. Reading about your type will give each of you a lot of insight into yourselves and each other's personality strategies and will allow you both to move to a healthier emotional state. (or for him to catch up with you)

Type 4s feel very misunderstood and think that no one feels things as deeply as they do. They pride themselves on being anything but ordinary...ordinary is frightening to them...special feels much safer. My H told me that on some level he had always had one foot in the marriage and one foot out in case something better came along, but all the while acting like the devoted H and father. When we read about the type 4 it actually said that they are waiting for a prince/princess to come along and rescue them from their ordinary life! What an eye-opener!!

He is now in the process of dealing with this hole on his own. He has recognized that it is there due to his own childhood wounds and that it is only he that can repair it. All type 4's need some sort of spiritual pursuit...it brings them a great deal of peace and a way to fill that hole. Above all other types, 4's need this desperately. He is working on this and it's helping him a great deal. He is taking responsibility for his own happiness without breaking his own boundaries of integrity.

My H has found that the two greatest sources of help for him have been the Enneagram and Karla McLaren. She is the author of a book called Emotional Genius among others. She is a pro at teaching you how to process emotions and getting in touch with every part of your whole self. Most of us neglect one or more areas, whether it be our emotions, intellect, whatever. She brings them all together to form a whole person and teaches us to deeply respect our emotions as a communication to us from our very soul.

My personal favorite has been the Enneagram, with Karla's work a close second. I tend to be more analytical than my H and he is more feeling so it makes sense that I'd prefer the Enneagram as a favorite tool.

I hope that you are able to figure out your situation. I think you will. You sound like somebody who has what it takes to do this!

Stillwed

P.S. If you can find it, check out the book, Why is it Always About You , by Sandy Hotchkiss. See if it fits. It fit us well and H acknowledges it. He is determined to recover!

<small>[ July 16, 2003, 01:46 PM: Message edited by: stillwed ]</small>

Stillwed, I did the test for both of us (not that that is terribly conclusive) and as you had guessed, according to my answers DH is 4w3. I am 3w2. Those two types together make a lot of sense when you consider the issues in our relationship. But at least we have some common ground, right? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

I really appreciated your kind words, and I don't have a lot of time now but will respond in more depth later. Our H's have a lot of similarities on the face of things, but I really hope that they don't have the serial affair thing in common!

Thanks again, more later.

Hi Stillwed:

Where to start? There is so much in your post!

"I've always struggled with giving him ENOUGH attention to satisfy him."

That, in a nutshell, is DH's biggest problem, fortunately self-admitted. He recently said to me, "I always want MORE. It doesn't matter what it is, I need MORE." We were talking about this subject - the very thing that draws him to me - my calm demeanor, drives him up a tree because I'm not pushing the envelope all the time. After reading through some of your website link, I have suggested to him that the best way to fill the hole is spirituality and he agrees in theory.

"He often would use the wall to project his guilt and shame onto me to get a relief from it for himself. He would insist that if I really wanted to love him the way he needed to be loved that I would just do it! In other words, rather than face his own guilt and shame for not being able to stay faithful, he would project it onto me and say that I was not capable of loving him the way he needed to be loved."

Again, this hits the mark like crazy. Although in our case it was, "If you loved me the house would be spotless when I got home," or "The yard is a complete wreck," and never mind that I was working part or full time with one or two kids, I would then jump in and try to fix it. My personality jumping in and being a little self-destructive.

"Since his confession he has figured out that this was really an unfillable hole in his very soul that nobody could have filled. He longed for someone to be able to fill it and actually EXPECTED me to be able to."

Yup -exactly as you expected. And while I like to really study something before I believe it hook line and sinker, the spirituality suggestion under Type 4 was SO illuminating. I really appreciate it.

"Type 4s feel very misunderstood and think that no one feels things as deeply as they do. They pride themselves on being anything but ordinary...ordinary is frightening to them...special feels much safer."

YUP!

"Most of us neglect one or more areas, whether it be our emotions, intellect, whatever. She brings them all together to form a whole person and teaches us to deeply respect our emotions as a communication to us from our very soul."

Now this is a very interesting thing. Almost as a result of being married to someone so vocal and so emotional, my emotions have very slowly been pushed under the surface so that my calm exterior has been, if anything, increased and expanded. So probably I am driving my H crazy without knowing it. While he needs to express his emotions in a constructive way, I probably need to express my emotions, period.

"I hope that you are able to figure out your situation. I think you will. You sound like somebody who has what it takes to do this!"

Thank you, and thank you so much for answering. I feel almost guilty posting because it appears that my situation is mostly under control, but it is so helpful to me to acknowledge that there has been a problem, and to find tools to deal with it. I am still flying back and forth in the emotional spectrum, and all the support is needed. I truly, truly appreciate it!

M

Response to Lanny:

"I asked him a million times to stop talking to her, told him she wanted him in a different way - he always told me to get over it, it was all in my head."

Next time my intuition comes knocking, I will be a bulldog about following it!

"So, darling, love him, forgive him, put it in the past when you are ready - not him, but don't ever let your guard down. Never. You'll only get hurt again.

And both of them told me if something goes wrong, it's not my fault. It's H's. He will ruin this, not me."

Well, my deepest fear is that he'll do it again, and my deepest anger stems from the fact that I have to now question what I used to believe unconditionally. He was telling me about an innocent conversation he had on the street yesterday with a woman he just met, and I had to actually say, "I really don't want you being friendly like that to women you don't know." And I hated myself for saying it, but I feel very threatened where I never used to.

Thank you for your kind words, and I am sorry it took me so long to respond.

I've gone over the edge, I really have.

I've been posting in other areas too; many thanks to those who have helped. Maybe I don't really belong at MB, because it's obvious that the worst part of H's affair doesn't even touch some of these, but I am SO grateful for the support.

We're making very little progress on the OW front. We're in MC together, we're talking well. Yesterday I even disagreed with him in a discussion and he let me! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

My problem is embarrassingly small and embarrassingly large, too. He refuses to break off his friendship with the OW in a definitive way. Now, he doesn't want anything to do with her, he just doesn't want the whole thing to "blow up in his face." He's had a GF in the past who was so angry at him for breaking up with her that she spread vicious rumors about him, and he's worried that the same thing could happen. Course, in this case the rumors would be true.

It's his last week at work. She's been bugging him to have dinner with her. He declined, finally told her the other night that his shrink doesn't think it's a good idea for him to be in contact with her. (More on that later.) Turns out she organized a large group dinner for 20 people tonight. While the logical side of me thinks it's really ok because it's a huge number of people, the other side is good and ticked off. I've also let him know that it upset me, but because she got together with one of H's good friends, and the friend told H he really couldn't get out of it (surprise party), that was that.

(Just to be clear, because of the shift today, this was more like a lunch than a dinner. They all went back to work afterwards.)

I'm also very upset that they didn't invite me. It wouldn't have been out of place.

OK, back to the NC thing. I am happy that DH drew one line in the sand, but I am not pleased that he passed the buck onto the therapist. Am I correct in believing that this could only make her feel she's being persecuted, and have her pursue harder? However, what I told him was that it was a good start.

Somebody please smack me and remind me that this A took place 5 years ago?!!??

Well, I guess if she pursues harder, then it's my turn to talk to her (that was our agreement.)

PHEW. I hope that gets it all off my chest. I really appreciate venting, even if no one's listening.

Mebb,

Why didn't you just go? I wouldn't need an invitation to go to an event that was sponsored for my husband....and planned by an OW.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by star*fish:
<strong>Mebb,

Why didn't you just go? I wouldn't need an invitation to go to an event that was sponsored for my husband....and planned by an OW.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Because I didn't find out all the details until after the event had taken place. Although I was pretty sure it was going to be a surprise party, the only way I would have figured it out for sure would have been to call OW, which I didn't want to do. (Although DH told me he thought it was just going to be 4 people, and that ticked me off too.)

The other, stupid reason is that I could not find a babysitter and I had to sing a funeral mass across town right before...so I couldn't have gotten home to pick up the kids and back across town in enough time. But I would have wanted to be invited.

Lame, lame, lame!

Mebb:

No contact is one of the cornerstones of recovering. It is not a point of negotiation; it is something he MUST do so you can both move on to heal the marriage.

The analogy here would be to have surgery, but at its conclusion, you left the offending organ in place because the patient could not part with it.

Do your duty "doctor" excise the offending organ in this particular kind of surgery.

Godspeed,
STL

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by SeenTheLight:
<strong>Mebb:

No contact is one of the cornerstones of recovering. It is not a point of negotiation; it is something he MUST do so you can both move on to heal the marriage.

The analogy here would be to have surgery, but at its conclusion, you left the offending organ in place because the patient could not part with it.

Do your duty "doctor" excise the offending organ in this particular kind of surgery.

Godspeed,
STL</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Oh, I agree. Fortunately this is the last day of work, and after that point H doesn't have to have contact with her at all. He is trying the "fade out" approach. If she continues to make contact, then I am allowed to put together some sort of NC letter, e-mail or phone call. This was his comfort level, it's what I agreed to, and so I need to honor it....for now.

He is very fearful of a "nuclear holocaust" in which OW gets mad, and starts talking about him. It's hard because he doesn't see that she has more to lose than he does by doing so.

Also further complicated by the fact that the actual EA/PA occurred mostly 5 years ago, and they've had a stop and start friendship ever since. By that I mean, they are friends until she pushes the limits and then he pushes away for a time. After that, at some point (usually in the 6 weeks to 6 months range) she comes back and says, "I just want to be friends. Why are you pulling away?"

Because of his fears of "what she might do" he usually gives in. They start chatting again and being friendly. I do believe that it is innocent on his side. He has recently truly begun to understand how emotional affairs start and continue. I don't think he realized that it was inappropriate.

As you might imagine, last night when he got home, we had a big talk about my feelings about the whole thing. Now, it was clearly an innocent event; he didn't ride with her, he didn't sit with her, etc etc etc. Since he told her he needed to keep his distance (but blamed it on his C) she has, more or less....except for planning this event. After all of this discussion he looked at me and said, "Are you sure that you never had an A with T---?" T is a friend of a friend that I met while on a weekend away at a house party. We hit it off very well but there was never anything inappropriate. IE, no conversations alone, always groups of people, etc. I do see now that going to this event without H,even though I had his blessing at the time, was probably not a great idea. But at the time (it was an anniversary party for friends) it seemed fairly innocuous...and in fact it was. H was jealous that he wasn't there, and the fact that there were singles there really bothered him. There were 150 people there, though. I answered, honestly (and again) that nothing had ever happened, that although I got along swimmingly with this person, I had never let myself be in a situation which could in any way turn either emotional or sexual. He told me he knew that I was telling the truth, but he wondered if he could ever really believe me, and that his belief that I might have been unfaithful may have contributed to his A. Then he also said that if I would just confess, he would probably not be as shellshocked as I was when he confessed, because he's been expecting it. I told him the fact I was shellshocked should help him to understand my innocence, as even though I had suspected *her* motives weren't good, I never doubted H's loyalty.

This is turning into a novel. I apologize.

What is up with this? I'm not a liar....anyone who knows me knows that I am honest to a fault. People don't like that about me sometimes. Is this more guilt on his part? I'm asking you, STL, because you were in his shoes.

The interesting thing about all of this is that I do feel (on one hand) like we're making some really great strides toward recovery, but then a bomb like this drops.

Oh, here's the other thing (while I'm at it...please forgive me!) We are going up to see H at his workplace today to have dinner with him on his last day and let his colleagues see the kids. He told me he was really afraid that I was going to drop a bomb (OW will be there). I told him that based on what he knows about me, I felt that was an unfair assessment of what I might do. Then he got upset and said, "All you have to say is it's going to be alright!" I told him that that kind of talk makes me uncomfortable because I feel like he's trying to protect her. He said that he's actually trying to protect himself.

Ack. Oh well, even the best situations (and I do consider this an ok infidelity situation, in the sense that I know we will recover) have their ups and downs, right?

Any feedback from you and Zorweb would be much appreciated, and I know you guys probably have other things to do!

Thanks.

Update....update.

Soooooo....went to H's workplace to have dinner with him and show off the kids. Made a point to avoid OW's office (and hung out in the hallway on the other side of the floor.)

She heard the kids and came looking for me, all "Hi, how are you doing?" I said, "Hello, fine thanks," and then pretty much ignored her...since others were around it wasn't that hard to do. She kind of looked at me and DH and left the area.

H and I had a really nice dinner with the kids, and I dropped him off. He called me to tell me that she'd left a note for him saying, "M has never been so cold to me. You must have told her. Etc." He called me all freaked out and said, "Promise me you're not going to call her or anything. I just need to get through today."

He saw how I acted. I wasn't warm, but I didn't give her "the cut direct" as they would have said in Victorian times. I told him not to worry, that she has more to lose than he does from going public, and that all she has right now to go on is that I didn't fall all over her. (It's not like I confronted her, or he did.)

I feel like I've fallen into a giant soap opera and I'm not even "allowed" to be the injured party, even though I am. Maybe I should look up the thread on narcissism. I'm just mentally exhausted. I really hope he brings that note home with him.

Thanks for all your posts; any additional thoughts welcome at this point. Maybe H is right and this will all be irrelevant tomorrow when he's not there. God I hope so.