I just found out my husband was having an affair. The affair has ended and he wants to work things out. I however found out this wasn't the only affair. He had one a few years and fell deeply in love with this woman. I read all of the love letters. How do I get all of this out of my head so that I can move forward? How could he love me, but also fall in love with this other woman? I know that his feelings are still strong for her. It hurts to read "how much he loved her" and all of the sweet nothings he wrote to her and she wrote back. I want to make the marriage work, but I cannot get past all of this, and get the words I read out of my head. My husband just wants to look forward and not backwords. I know things were not good between my husband and I when these two affairs happened. I don't know what to do with all of these feelings or how to handle all of this. I had no idea my husband had cheated on me until the last month or so. I just never knew.

First of all I am so sorry that you find yourself at this point in your life. I know it hurts and I know that sometimes you feel like "this can't be happening to me", but it will get better with time. Some days are good and some days are bad.

You have to allow yourself to feel all of it without dwelling on it. You have every right to feel hurt, angry, sad, confused and a million other things, and your husband should support you whatever you are feeling. He needs to remember that you are at a very different place in this process than he is. He has already accepted what happened and has had time to work through his feelings about it. You have just begun that process and you need to explain that to him. Just reassure him that you need some time to work through your feelings on it, and once you do you will be ready to commit 100% to making the marriage work. If you don't take the time to work through your feelings now, they will resurface later and probably not in a way that will benefit your marriage.

Finally, I know it is hard to get those love letters out of your mind. For me, I struggle with picturing my husband "being" with another woman. I picture it over and over in my head and eventually get to the point of throwing up. BUT I am learning that I am learning that I can control the images in my head through prayer. I have allowed myself to grieve over it and now everytime I start picturing them together I just pray for God to lead my mind in another direction. It's not always easy, but it will get better with time.

You can't control how you feel, but you can control what you do about it! Take care of yourself and allow yourself to grieve before you try to move on. I hope this helps you some.

Blessings to you!

You can recover, but it will take some time - months to years. It isn't easy, and not everyone succeeds, but as long as you are both working on it, your chances are close to 100%. You should 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.

Of course, that is just my opinions and what worked for me, who experienced it once, first hand. Harley, who has helped HUNDREDS of couples through this process, lays out his program in the following link: How to Survive Infidelity Read it while you wait for your copy of "Surviving an Affair" to arrive in the mail.