My wife and I celebrated our 7th anniversary back in February this year. Two weeks ago, I received a phone call from someone telling me that she was seeing another man. When I approached her, she denied it. She made up a good story which I believed. The following day, the same person called and told me that I was incorrect in trusting her. They said that this was not the first time she had cheated on me. I was floored. I went straight home and confronted her and she admitted it… 4 different men. One that she met online and three at the Gym that she goes to every day.

It has now been 11 days since I found out. What an 11 days it has been! The range of emotions have gone from utter hopelessness to total happiness. Right now, every day I have these hours that I am totally down. My wife seems to notice these mood swings every day and always asks but either doesn’t know what to do or doesn’t care. What does she care about? I am unsure. I know this… she has had moments that she acted sorry for what she has done but she has definitely expressed outrage for the person that brought her affair into the light. She mentioned that she feels Satan attacks her by having her think how “fun” it was to do what she did. Can she not see that the fun was at her families (specifically my) detriment and destruction. How can sex be that good??? She voices that she loves me but earlier this year had told me (and the pastor) that she didn’t have feelings for me anymore. She obviously loves the kids but definitely gets frustrated with them quickly. Does she know who she is? I often wonder if she is not so bottled up inside that she just doesn’t know herself.

I feel closer to God than I have ever felt in my life. I do believe that I have truly found God during this rough time. My only question is… WHY DID IT HAVE TO COME TO THIS!?!? Although I do not necessarily think that this would NOT have happened if I had been a better Christian, I still wonder. I keep having these thoughts that I wish I had married a lady that wasn’t as beautiful as my wife, but would be faithful. I know how to love a person. Although I have looked at other women with lust in my heart, I have never played out the scenario other than in a lustful fantasy. While I am not saying that is correct, I also feel that I know where to draw the line.

Four men over 2 years. The first just after she found out she was pregnant with our second child. How could she do this? How could she come home for 2 years and pretend like everything was OK. How could she sleep with a guy while I am babysitting the kids so she can spend time “at the gym”? How can I struggle every month with money for her car when she uses it to pick up guys? How can she have looked me in the eye – sworn before God and the death of her children that she was not –and never had – cheated on me? How, how, how?

She says she wants to make everything right but I have a hard time believing what she says. I am so scared that she is going to hurt me again. We are going to a Christian counselor but she seems to feel she can do it alone. This makes me worry even more. I feel like I can’t do it on my own and I know that she cannot. She has agreed to spend a month going to him once a week. I guess we will see how that turns out. As I said before, all I want is a person that loves me and is faithful. I believe that I am a good guy. I have never cheated on her (nor entertained the thought). I have always been supportive of her staying at home with the kids. I have always tried to make sure she got time to herself. I feel totally betrayed. Throughout all this, I still love her immensely and just want it to work out.

Lastly, I will leave with some verses that have given me some comfort over the last week. It is found in 1 Peter 1:6-9

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you don not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Hello,

What a sad story. Four men in two years and putting your health at risk. Something you said jumps out at me. You said that she started her first affair immediately after getting pregnant.I think this is odd. I would strongly suggest that you consider having a paternity test done. I know this is painful to hear but I think it is reasonable to believe that there is a good possibility that she became pregnant because of the affair. I also think it is essential that the both of you get tested for std's. I feel very sorry for you.

Matt,

First let me say my heart goes out to you and your situation. I am only dealing with one A and one person. I don't think I could mentally handle all that you are right now. My first piece of advice if you already have not done so is to go out and get the book surviving an affair and read it, second I would get the book torn asunder and read that. Both of those books along with this site helped me not go into the nuthouse during my H's affair. Please let me be the one to tell you that no matter what you feel right now, you will get through this. I thought I was going to die when I found out. And six months ago I was going nuts with pain, didn't think that anything could be worse than what I was experiencing. I am here to tell you no matter what you will be okay. Most important take care of yourself right now. Work on you for you. Eat right, sleep.....and if you can't take benadryl. Get on some Anti-D's if you can't deal with it alone. Get some good friends that understand where you are coming from. Don't take advice from people who don't understand where you are right now, only have friends that are willing to listen to you. Or ask your friends to just listen and not say a word. Counseling! I can't say enough about it. IC is so important, you can't do it alone and shouldn't expect yourself to either. Remember that everyday from this day forward the pain will get less and less, even though I know this is hard to believe right now. There will come a day when you will wake up and it won't be the first thing you think of. I have found myself closer to GOD since this whole thing also. There is nothing wrong with that at all. My pastor said sometimes horrible events are the way to the path of the Lord. I truly believe that now. Most of all, post! Post whenever, or where ever. If no one answers it is okay, you will have gotten a load off your chest every time you post. And more than likely someone will post you back within a day or two. I hope this has helped you. I have come a long way since our A, not our M, but me myself. Take care of you and the rest will follow. Prayers to you.

HINY

Matt,
I don't want to sound negative, but won't you ALWAYS question her truthfulness? My husband cheated on me several times, the last one (that I am aware of) was the most horrible experince of my life. I now suspect he is cheating again, but maybe he's not. The trust is gone, not from a lack of trying. Although I never went through counceling I hear it helps alot. I hope it get's easier for you. You say you have looked at other women with lust, you never acted on it, don't be down on yourself for that (you are human!). Keep posting, it helps.

Matt: Click on the link in my signature line.

BBB: This is something I wrote about trust in another post that I hope you will find helpful: </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> …I knew that people who get divorced once are likely to get divorced again, and usually for the same reasons, and I did not want to find myself in the same place some years down the road. But, I was not sure I could overcome the pain, I had no idea how to re-establish trust, I frankly didn’t know if I could forgive her, and I had no desire at all to go back to the way things were, because frankly they were pretty miserable (even pre-A) for me

So, the first thing I did was go to God and repent of a couple of habitual “minor” (in my eyes) sins, so there would be nothing between God and I that would get in the way of our communication. I spent many hours in prayer asking God to show me my sin. I think at some level I thought the A was my fault. While I no longer think that, that time of humbling myself before God was really crucial to our recovery. Because, I HAD sinned, and had gotten so distant from God that I was unaware of many of my sins, so He did show me. As I agonized over what my wife did to me, it became clear that I had done almost identical things to God. That helped keep me from self-righteousness and arrogance which are poison to any recovery. Also, if I expected Him to forgive me, I had to forgive her. That got me a long way down the forgiveness road, but forgiveness and reconciliation are two separate things. The pain and trust issues remained barriers to reconciliation. It turns out the pain fades with time, 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">

Bryan,

Thanks for the sympathy. You are right about the STD's, and we are both being tested. All I can ask for there is for prayer.

Regarding the paternity test, I am lucky that I have some very distinct blue eyes - which both my children have so I don't have to worry about that. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

Again, thanks for the post. Although it is terrible to see so many hurting people, it is nice to know I am not alone.

Matt

HopefulinNY,

Thanks for your kind words. I chuckled to myself as I read your post because the first book I purchased was "Surviving an Affair" and a friend bought me "Torn Asunder" the following day. Both books have been instrumental in my dealing with the pain. Man, I never knew anything could hurt so bad!

Thanks also for you advice on counseling. My wife is going to go for a bit of time on her own because she has a lot to deal with personally. It is sad that she is physically one of the most beautiful woman I know - she is in shape, young, and has the world going for her, but hates herself. Pray that the Lord will allow her to see herself as He sees her...

As far as me, I am doing well - considering the circumstances. I have been eating, running, and working normally and haven't felt the need for Anti-D's yet. While I don't want to sound like things are rosy, I have an amazing Christian support group (3 close men that know). I work with all three of them and anytime I am down, I can talk to one of them and they are able to help me get through the times. As I said in the post, God lined up some amazing people to help me on this difficult path. Right now, the hardest time is when I am at home and somehow am reminded of her infedelity. It is hard to shake and I feel very down for a couple hours...

Thanks again.

Matt

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

First let me say my heart goes out to you and your situation. I am only dealing with one A and one person. I don't think I could mentally handle all that you are right now. My first piece of advice if you already have not done so is to go out and get the book surviving an affair and read it, second I would get the book torn asunder and read that. Both of those books along with this site helped me not go into the nuthouse during my H's affair. Please let me be the one to tell you that no matter what you feel right now, you will get through this. I thought I was going to die when I found out. And six months ago I was going nuts with pain, didn't think that anything could be worse than what I was experiencing. I am here to tell you no matter what you will be okay. Most important take care of yourself right now. Work on you for you. Eat right, sleep.....and if you can't take benadryl. Get on some Anti-D's if you can't deal with it alone. Get some good friends that understand where you are coming from. Don't take advice from people who don't understand where you are right now, only have friends that are willing to listen to you. Or ask your friends to just listen and not say a word. Counseling! I can't say enough about it. IC is so important, you can't do it alone and shouldn't expect yourself to either. Remember that everyday from this day forward the pain will get less and less, even though I know this is hard to believe right now. There will come a day when you will wake up and it won't be the first thing you think of. I have found myself closer to GOD since this whole thing also. There is nothing wrong with that at all. My pastor said sometimes horrible events are the way to the path of the Lord. I truly believe that now. Most of all, post! Post whenever, or where ever. If no one answers it is okay, you will have gotten a load off your chest every time you post. And more than likely someone will post you back within a day or two. I hope this has helped you. I have come a long way since our A, not our M, but me myself. Take care of you and the rest will follow. Prayers to you.

HINY </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Hi Matt,

Just read your thread and wanted to check in and see how you were doing...

Glad you have some good Christian brothers to help you...

Semper Fi,
RIF90