Here is another thought on what your poor husband may be going through. I base it on my experience in dealing with my wife's affair.

Not only is he finding it difficult to believe and trust you, but he is finding it difficult to believe and trust his own judgment. Think about this for a moment. For years you had an affair that he knew nothing about. In his mind, he was completely fooled. While he thought he had a loving and faithful wife, in reality, he had completly misjudged you!

How can he trust his own judgement after finding out that he was fooled so badly for so long?

I am in the same situation as your husband. Not only do I not trust my WW, but I do not trust my ability to judge her honesty, behavior and commitement to our marriage.

Think about this.

<small>[ January 26, 2004, 07:38 PM: Message edited by: auto009988 ]</small>

Werone,

You made a couple of statements that I thougt I would address. Let me address your comments about resentment. The is a saying that has been around here for the 5 years I have been reading here. </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I mention this quote because I believe it has a profound affect on marriages and leads to lots of affairs. It is a product of bad communications, people looking for an excuse, the reluctance to see the good in people OR that they are indeed tring in their way.

How many of those things did you do? You see Auto hit it right on the head, your H cannot trust himself. IF you had asked him before when your resentment was high, he would have probably said he was doing a good job as an H and father. He was bringing in the money, he wasn't out playing around, ect. You felt that was not enough.

So his problem is not only does he feel like the worst kind of fool for believing you were a faithful W, he is wondering if he could ever make you happy.

Here is where the real problem comes in. How come for 6 years you did not like him and resented many things about him and NOW you don't want to lose him? He is pondering that question. You need to as well, because within that question and you finally realizing how deadly resentment can be to YOU, there is the path to rebuilding your marriage.

If you two read His Needs Her Needs it might help close the communications gap. He might realize that he was trying to make you happy the wrong way, and it might help you see that he was trying to be a good H. You clearly lost sight of the fact that he was trying to be a good H. Perhaps you can explain how you came to think that way, and the two of you develop a plan so that he KNOWS what is going on. You see if he doesn't regain trust in himself, there is no hope for the marriage. Trust in you can be developed over time, IF he feels he can trust that he will know what is going on.

All is not lost, this takes time and patience. I would however go easy on recommending he leave. You want that man near you as much as you can get him to do so. He loves you or he would NOT be this hurt. You have really ripped him up, and it will take time for him to heal. Give him the time but work on understanding your thought processes, the places where they failed, and then communicate to your H what you are learning. He can help you, and in turn you can help him.

Please think about this.

God Bless,

JL

werone04

Is it fair to say that if H had not discovered the affair that you would still be in the affair and that a big part of what you are experiencing is the pain and remorse of being caught - of having your betrayal revealed, of having the details of two affairs brought out in the open. What did you get from the affairs that made them so worthwhile for so long? You must understand the motivation behind the affairs if you want to prevent future affairs. Only then do you have any chance of showing H that the marriage can be made affair proof. Until this happens he will not trust you.

Total honesty and complete openness about every detail of your life must be available to H. When you hold back the truth you are not helping H but are continuing to protect yourself. Your selfishness is what got you in this situation to begin with. You were more concerned with your needs and wants than the feelings of your H. You were willing to toss aside the purity of marriage and any moral values to suit your own selfish desires. Only through radical honesty and openness can you hope to rebuilt trust.

You should account for your time everyday. H should have access to email and cell phone passwords. NC contact with OM is mandatory even if you have to change jobs. Has OM W been told so that she can work on her marriage otherwise she is like your H and is totally in the dark? You must take bold steps to show H your sincere desire to restore the marriage. You actions will speak louder than any words.

Beau

W04: Actually, the question about love was not for you, it was for Why me?. I think you get it. I would like to comment on a couple of things you said: </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I can't explain what made me be so uncaring and destroying, and like he says, I did it so easily. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">You better figure it out, and tell your husband. This is likely to be hard and painful. My wife said she would do ANYTHING to restore our marriage, but when it came time to act there were several things she resisted doing. One of them was digging into her personal history to look at patterns of behavior that she found extremely painful to recall. Another was examining her behavior during the affair, because it took her back to a place that was very painful and shameful for her. This is not for the faint of heart. You may need the help of an IC. </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I have tried real hard over the weekend to express to him that I will do whatever it takes to make him feel that he can feel okay with me again, that I will be by his side through good times and bad until I die, and that I want to help him do what it takes to help get over the pain, but I don't know that he can do it. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">At this point, words are meaningless. Actions count. Personally, if he is willing, I would start with reading through "Survivng an Affair" with him, out loud if necessary, and doing all the questionnaires and discussing each chapter. (We downloaded the questionnaires from this site, because printing them was easier than copying them from the book.) You could suggest to him that what the two of you learn by doing so will help you whether or not you stay married.

The biggest issue is rebuilding trust. I tried to gather my thoughts on this subject once before. It was written to another BS out of my experience, but I hope it will help: </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> ...The pain and trust issues remained barriers to reconciliation. It turns out the pain fades with time [think in terms of months to years], if the actions that produced it are not repeated. That leaves trust, and trusting that the actions will not be repeated, as the sole barrier to reconciliation.

As far as I can discern there is really only one approach to re-establishing trust, and a couple of well-established ways to get there. In both cases, the bottom line is: believe their actions, not their words, at least until you have seen a consistent pattern of their words and actions being aligned for a period of many months. That necessarily means you have to be more involved in their lives so that you have the ability to verify that their actions and words are cohesive.

The path to get there, according to Willard Harley, is to have no secrets from each other, and to use the Policy of Joint Agreement (POJA) in all your decisions. Once you see your spouse consistently use the POJA, and the two of you have learned to understand each other and communicate with each other well enough to implement it, you will trust them when they are out of sight, too. Perhaps ironically, one thing that will convince you of your spouse's honesty is if they tell you things they know will hurt, instead of lying or keeping silent to "protect" you. So this process will likely not be painless, especially since, if you are like most couples, it will require learning a new way to communicate. Change is hard.

A second path, promoted by Carder in “Torn Asunder” (and the younger Harleys, too, I think), is for the WS to really dig in to the "WHY?" of the affair, and in gaining that self-understanding, communicate to you both why it happened, and how they will change their behavior in ways that you can verify and that will prevent them from having another.

Of course, these two paths are not mutually exclusive. I view them as complementary, and think “Surviving an Affair”, by Harley is extremely helpful in figuring out important parts of the why, at least as far as the answer involves unmet Emotional Needs, and it almost always does, especially for a woman who has an affair.

The fallacy is the belief that unmet EN’s “cause” affairs. If that was the case, I would have had the affair, not my wife, because my EN’s were less well met in our marriage than hers.

Unmet EN's do not cause affairs, they cause lousy marriages. 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. Reading SAA, it can be easy to conclude that unmet needs are the reason for affairs. Not so. Affairs are entirely the responsibility of those involved, and the reasons vary.

Our MC worked w/ Bill Harley for 8 years, and 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 questionnaire. 2.) Meet your spouse’s 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 State of Affairs", by Todd Mulliken particularly the chapter on "The Double Life Man". Though the percentage of women who have this type of affair is small, it is not zero. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Werone04

I hope the hard questions have not run you off. Our intent is to challenge your thinking about the affairs. We do not intentionally try to hurt you but instead ask very hard questions to cause you to seriously consider your behavior. Marriage counseling can be very helpful for you and your H. Perhaps individual counseling will help you uncover the reasons for the affairs.

Keep posting and learn everything you can about affairs. If you have not purchased Surviving and Affair and His Needs Her Needs both by Harley. I would also suggest that you consider getting Torn Asunder by Carder.

We are here to help even though our questions may hurt. Please feel free to express your thoughts and any questions you may have.

Beau

I fear that she has not posted again because her life is in turmoil right now because of how her husband reacted to the latest news. I do not think she ran off because the questions were too hard for her. The questions posed here are nothing compared to having to tell her husband what she told him.

Werone04, I am praying for you. You are in my thoughts very much. I have not told my husband about my affairs. Considering what our relationship has been through these past two years and considering the progress we are currently making, I do not believe it would be very constructive at all. I hope you guys figure out a way to recover. all my best! Karen

<small>[ January 29, 2004, 07:57 PM: Message edited by: FinallyLearning ]</small>

Thank you again for your support and heart-felt well wishes. I actually have not posted b/c our lives have been in turmoil the past week. I have hurt and destroyed parts of my husband that I never felt possible. He is having a very rough time dealing w/ the most-recent news and I am actually looking at how horrible a person I have been for the past 7 years. I know it seems totally ridiculous to say that I hate myself for what I have done and am so sorry for it, b/c it was something I did and did not care enough to not do it---that's is what my H feels every day. And through this all the past week, he has tried so very hard to still keep the idea of making our marriage work. We've had some low points, much anger and pain. And we've had some high points. Last night was very rough, b/c he finds himself trying to evaluate it all, disecting it, and it only hurts him more, and makes him angrier. We were up most of the night, and when we have nights like that, I miss him so much. The closeness, and I just feel empty. He says that's what he feels a lot. I know it is my fault. I know that my lack of protecting him has brought him pain. I know that my selfishness has destroyed his self worth and esteem. And I want so much to work to help him gain all that back. I lost sight of how wonderful of a person he is, when I chose to act like those around me and put what I thought was okay for me ahead of him and all those I love. He is such a loving and caring man. He is trying so hard to make this work and be caring toward me. I love him w/ all my heart. We have read Surving an Affair, and we now have His Needs, Her Needs for Parents, and Falling In Love, Staying In Love Forever, or something like that--he is reading that one. That is actually what sent him spinning last night, b/c it started talking about behaviors and such, and he felt that the reason I did what I did was b/c it is a behavior I have and I will continue to do it forever. I honestly don't feel that way. I hate myself for what I did. I am disgusted w/ what I was for the past 7 years, I am ashamed and I gave up my own self respect for nothing. I don't look people in the eye these days. I don't talk much to anyone. My only focus is on working on what I have here at home and I want to keep that forever! We had our first counseling session w/ Jennifer Wed night and have another one next Wed. She really helped him understand some things, but we have ?s written down for this next session. I know we have a long road ahead of us, and I really feel that if he continues to give me a chance, I can make him happy. I want to make him happy. Thank you for all your concern. We would appreciate your prayers. God is going to become a much bigger presence in our lives as well. Thank you.

I wish you all the luck in the world. You really seem to "get it" and I doubt it will ever happen again to you. I hope your husband is able to heal.
Again I wish you luck.

werone04

Thinking about you and hope that you and H are doing better. Let us hear from you.

Beau