I am totally new to this, here goes. My wife and I have been married for 21 years, I am 46 and she is 47. We have 4 great kids 11-19 yrs. From my point of view we have had a very happy marriage until about 3 years ago.

At that time she began to express sadness and the fact that something was missing in our relationship. This was a big surprise to me and it was all very vague and seemed hard for either of us to get our arms around. I think I initially listened but didn't really hear her. However we did have a lot of what I thought were open discussions about what her needs were.

After a lot of talks over a long period of time the net of it seemed to be that she felt she could not be totally intimate and open with me. We tried some tactics like spending more time with just the two of us, becoming more exploratory from a sexual aspect, being more aware. I will say in retrospect that from a sexual point of view we were both somewhat inhibited and imature. Things really strated to deteriorate in the past year. We probably made love twice since January. We had been reading books talking about separation, talking about seeing counsellors, During this time I felt like I was working alone trying to solve a very tough problem.

Well anyway on Sept. 6 she told me that she had been having an affair with another married man she has known for 25 years. They worked together before we were married and have kept in touch since. Well evidently this affair had been going strong for a year or so. The reason she told me was that her friend had a heart attack & died when she was with him on 9/6. It was traumatic, she followed the ambulance from the athletic event they met at and identified him at the hospital.

She is devastated by the loss of what she feels was the love of her life. I really can not believe she had an affair. I don't think we ever really lied to each other before. She now feels like she spent a lot of years trying to find intimacy and deep love in our marriage and then she found it in someone else. She feels she can never have passion for me. She says that we never had a true love for each other and that the chemistry just can not be there. She feels like we should get on with our lives and get divorced.

I have tried and been reasonbly successful at not judging her, realizing that this affair as unbelievable as it is, happened for a reason. What should I be doing? I am not love busting and am trying to add love units but it seems like the more I do that, the colder response I get.

Right now she has no interest in having our marriage survive. I have a great interest in trying to see if we can satisfy each other as we continue our journey, marriage and family are the most important things in my life and the family probably got in front of the marriage which is what probably caused this. While she has not been mean spirited it seems like she almost resents my attmpts at adding love units. It's like she needs us to split to validate the affair. Any help is appreciated I am beginning to flounder.

T:

Believe it or not, as weird as your situation is, there is another poster on the site (sorry, don't know which forum he posts to or if he is still active), whose wife was in an affair with her boss and he died before the affair was found out. Anyway, his name on the board is DrCru, so you might want to contact him for a little help and support in your particular situation.

sstnt is right about Dr Cu having had a very similar experience and I to advice you to seek his help. He hangs out at the recovery forum just in case you want to seek him out.

Thanks, I did hear from Dr Cu on the recovery forum. I appreciate the help

Dr. Harley's methods are especially well-tuned to your situation, because they work by showing people how to fall passionately in love with each other. Showing someone how, and actually getting them to do it is two different things, however, and competing with a dead man is tough, which makes your situation that much harder. The good thing is that he is no longer REALLY there to compete with you. You will need to let her grieve, but while that is happening, educate yourself about Harley's methods. Until her grief subsides, she will not be emotionally available, though comforting her in her loss, if you can stand it, will probably make her more receptive once the grieving process is over. click on the link in my signature line for what I think are the most important things for a BS and a couple to do, based on our experience.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by johnh39:
<strong>The good thing is that he is no longer REALLY there to compete with you. You will need to let her grieve, but while that is happening, educate yourself about Harley's methods. Until her grief subsides, she will not be emotionally available, though comforting her in her loss, if you can stand it, will probably make her more receptive once the grieving process is over.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">It is of course true that you are not competing with a man but you are competing with a memory. The denouement of the A brings special difficulties. That the affair ended the way it did, instead of in a more natural fashion, works to make the A itself more difficult for your W to recover from. In a sense, the A did not end. A WS who has an A end on its own begins to see the warts on the OP and is, I think, more ready to begin to heal the M. You can expect a longer and deeper period of dealing with "fog" than is sometimes the case in other As. An A that ends this way leaves the A and the OM still glowing in infatuation.

John is correct in pointing out that you W will be difficult to reach while she is still grieving, and helping her through the grief will help you to set the foundation for rebuilding the M, if you can stand it. Both of you are in very, very difficult emotional places right now. You are dealing with a great deal of hurt and anger. She is dealing with mourning and also some guilt. The guilt may make it difficult for her to lean on you for support even if she wants to do that.

Be patient and be loving. Good luck and God bless.