hello! i hope someone can help me out. i am 22 years old and i just got married 5 MONTHS ago. 3 weeks ago my husband confessed to having an affair. ALREADY. we were together for 3 years before we got married and we have a 9 month old daughter. 3 months ago he started acting strange. i suspected something was going on and i jumped the gun and started accusing him of having an affair as soon as i suspected it. needless to say... he left me for her. up until the day he confessed he wouldnt come home no matter how much i begged and pleaded.(and trust me i begged and pleaded <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" /> ) now he wants to work things out. he is trying to act like nothing happened. he says he just wants his family back. i cant help but think that his girlfriend dumped him. he swears that he came back to me because he loves me and i told him that i would forgive him. he says that the only reason that he wouldnt come home for that entire month was because he didnt think i would forgive him. i know that i told him that i could forgive him, but now that he told me about her and i saw a pic of her and heard how involved he was with her i cant stand the thought of touching him. i cant even stand the thought of being nice to him. i cant stand the thought of being with him. but im so afraid to be a single mom. im in school full time and i work part time there is no way that i can make it without him. i know this is a generic excuse but it is a real one for me. i do love him more than i ever thought i could love, but the pain is soooooooo unbearable right now. i have so much anger inside of me. he had a full blown affair after ONLY 5 months.

but wait there is more to this story...
after a month of begging him to come home i thought that he wasnt ever going to come back to me. i know that this is no excuse but it is the way that i justify what i've done. a friend from school took me out one night and we had a few beers and ended up sleeping together. he is a good friend and i never intended for anything to happen. but he made me feel better. i didnt think my husband was going to come back and i knew that he was having an affair anyway, so what did it matter, right? (WRONG) well, needless to say 3 days later my husband calls me and wants to meet up cause he decided that he has something to confess and wants to work things out.
so now hubby really thinks he doesnt have anything to be sorry for because i had sex with someone else too. i know what i did was wrong but we werent together when i cheated. help me? i will make this up to my husband cause i know i am wrong but he thinks he doesnt have help me get over his affair because of what i did! i need his comfort, and reassurance and security and he refuses to give it to me. help me please! is this situation hopeless? im hoping someone out there tells me that it isnt...

Hi & welcome to MB,

U 2 need counseling and quick! Read the concepts section above, get ahold of the books: Surviving an Affair and His needs/Her needs by Dr W. Harley. Another book is Love must be tough by Dr James Dobson. There are more books but at least this is a start.

Now your H is justifying his A and may be trying to make you pay for your indiscretions and his. U should not take the blame for his indiscretions.

What is he doing now?

L.

thank u for your reply! that was fast!
he has agreed to marriage counseling, but insists that the first time the therapist points the finger at him we are leaving. i tried to explain that a therapist isnt there to assign blame but i guess he will just have to figure that out himself.
other than that he is barely doing anything to help me thru this. the only time that i get any reassurance from him is when i get so angry that i go pyscho on him. he seems to respond to my going crazy. is that weird? he keeps telling me how beautiful i am and that he loves me and stuff like that, but it all seems so fake. i cant believe anything that comes out of his mouth anymore. every time i try to have a conversation about the A's he says "it is in the past... can we just leave it there. can we just move forward?"
he is expecting me to just pretend like nothing happened and move back in with him. he is upset cause i wont move back in with him yet. im not ready. i havent even put my rings back on, and we've been "back together" for 3 weeks now. do u think he even noticed that i dont have my rings on yet???? nope.

Your husband trying to use something you did in a vulnerable state that HE CREATED to cancel out what HE DID is ludicrous.

And furthermore, by putting ultimatums on "leaving therapy" before it has even begun is him setting the stage to leave whenever he feels like it. The first time he's confronted with something ugly about himself, he'll justify and run. Exactly NOT what he needs to do...

Like it or not, he made a choice to have an affair. In coming back, there should be no strings on his part. He is either willing to come back and do WHATEVER it takes to rescue his marriage, or he is not.

I am not saying that what you did in a moment of weakness is excusable, but it is, at least, understandable, especially since his infidelity created the situation.

Off the soapbox now.

Read this site, and look for the books Surviving An Affair by Harley and Torn Asunder by Carder. Two great resourses that can shed some light.

Jake.

thanks jake, needed to hear someone put that into words for me. i cant seem to get him to understand that i never even imagined being with the OM until i felt so lonely... like i just said i cant seem to find the right words to explain to him what i mean...
i just got off the phone with my H and the more i talk to him the more i feel like he is only tolerating me. he just doesnt have the love in his voice anymore. when i ask him about it he gets defensive and patronizing. (spelling) i did order the book "his needs her needs" and a friend of mine highly recommended it to me before i even came across this site.
hopefully i can get H to read it with me and maybe something will speak to him. i know that he loves me and i do love him, but i wonder if he is committed. After only a month of being lonely I was ready to fall into the arms of another man. how committed is that of me? how can i expect something out of H that i can barely do? im so confused.
as my logon name implies we are both young and dumb. im 22, he is 24. i know that neither of us was ready to get married, but we figured we planned on being together forever anyway... and of course our daughter... now i think ive made the BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE.