hi all,

you can read "opinion requested" string found on this topic to get up to speed w/my situation and a little history.

my hope is that noplacelikehome and others will explain in detail their trek through this devastating chain of events. your feelings b4 during and after the affair/childbirth are what i am really searching for. what do you feel about the om and hubby now that it is over or if it is not over.

any bs's that this has happened to, i would love to here your story and how you deal w/the inevitable resentments, suspicion, lack of security, feelings of inferiority regarding other men, feelings of i am more righteous than the ww? how do you deal with these things w/out taking points out of your spouses much needed love bank? w/out sending crushing love buster's into your wife's already wounded heart like missles of destruction.

noplacelikehome, you mentioned that in order to get your history/story/testimony, i just need to look back at your posts. logistcly speaking, how do i do that w/out having to sift through countless posts and strings that don't pertain to what i am looking for?

lastly. why this has to happen to good people on both sides of the equation is a mystery to me. but, i bet if any that were "thinking" about taking that 1st unreturnable step into adultry, would read this site and half the books i have read about it, they would realise beyond a shadow of a doubt that what looks like "fun" or an inevitable "pull" towards the op is avoidable and truly ridiculous. hind sight is ???????...lol

peace to you all
tim

Tuff,

My dday was 3-02. It is so hard not to love bust when all these emotions are going through your heart like a pitchfork. Seems like everytime I take a step forward something happens that punches me right in the face. Like OC being born and DNA is unknown and OW is playing hide and go seek. The months of waiting for this baby to be born built up resentment more and more everyday and getting stronger now that the baby has been born. As for this happening to good people on both sides. Satan not only attacks the person that sinned, he attacks everyone that is close to that person and loves them. I can only tell you that after 6 1/2 months of knowing, that it doesn't hurt as bad as when I first found out but is still and will always be a devastating.

God Bless
DBH

HT_D,
Please go to the top of the page you're reading this on and click search...then put in Noplacelikehome's # which is 21559 and see what she answered or requested an answer to.

I hope this helps.

You will find your way w/WW if you can be patient and WW is fully committed to you.

As far as feeling morally superior, who cares?
I feel that way too, but H had an opportunity to leave for good as did I, but we didn't.

It must be a wakeup call that happens.
Especially w/pregnancy!

My H was "in the fog" however, until oc was born and for a few months after.

I did plan A for only 4 months then a quick plan B as I had enough.

We are still together after all the drama....go figure! Ow was a symptom of H's problems as is OM a symptom of WW's problems.

Bless you and good luck!
Debi

Hi, tuff,

In answer to your question,

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> your feelings b4 during and after the affair/childbirth are what i am really searching for. what do you feel about the om and hubby now that it is over or if it is not over.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">My feelings before the affair were that husband was neglecting me. He would leave me alone weekend after weekend while he went surfing with his buddies or visiting surfshops within a 2 hour radius. At first I would defend him to my family and friends and say, "He works hard, he deserves to have his time," but after a couple years of this I really started to feel cast aside. I couldn't understand it - I'm young, attractive, show enthusiasm in the bedroom, enjoy sports, keep a tidy home and really desire to get along and connect.

Well, I started moving up at work and since we had no children (husband kept saying we couldn't afford them) and husband usually worked late, I started to do the same. Once in a while when I got invited to happy hour, I would go just so I wouldn't have to go home to an empty house. Husband's answer to this was to get me a dog - then I had to go home.

Well, as you might guess, I was a sitting duck for an affair. All it took was for OM to lavish me with attention and compliments and I was puddy in his hands. He was married too, but fed me the line about being so unhappy and staying together only for the children and insurance reasons. He talked me into a Saturday outing and I went. Husband didn't even question me when I got home after 8 hours of supposedly being at the mall.

After OM and I got involved intimately, I moved into the guest bedroom which didn't even seem to bother H. I wondered if he were having an affair himself but he wasn't.

OM and I began planning for a future together. I was going to get an apt. and he was going to move in with me. We were going to be together and live happily ever after. His wife was going to take the children and move far away and I doubted my H would even notice if I left.

Then I got pregnant with OM's baby. OM wanted us to move ahead with our plans, but when my H found out and he said he still loved me, wanted me back, wanted to work on our relationship and raise this child as his own, it really gripped me. Husband then went on a surf trip to Costa Rica and while I thought, "here we go again" and "this would be the perfect time for me to move out" I just couldn't do it. I had the apt., even furnished it, but couldn't bring myself to move out.

Being a Christian I guess I knew that I was not living right and I would only be compounding the problem and my guilt by moving out. Things might be good with OM for a while, but eventually, reality would settle in and then what? I'd have his exwife and children to deal with - and I knew she would make every step of the way difficult for us. I just couldn't rationalize it in my heart to divorce my H, especially when he said he still loved me and wanted me after all that happened.

That Sunday when H was in Costa Rica and I was supposed to move into my apt., I went to church and the sermon was from the book of Joshua. Our pastor spoke about the difference of staying in God's perfect will for our lives, versus His permissive will, versus outright disobedience and the consequences of each. By the end of the sermon I was so convicted that I went forward during committment time to repent and rededicate my life to Christ. I called OM and explained my change of heart and immediately went to no contact. He was not happy and left town. He has made no attempt to contact me to see how the pregnancy went or how the baby is. I've struggled with that (even though I was the one who ended it) but now see that as a blessing in disguise.

Its been a rough road. Husband still loves his surfing, but we've been rebuilding our marriage by reading, sharing, and connecting regularly. Husband adores our son - we named him Joshua, after the sermon I heard (guess its good the sermon wasn't from the book of Deuteronomy - although H wouldn't mind calling the little guy Dude for short!)

Anyway, now, mostly what I feel for husband is gratitude, admiration, and respect. There's no doubt in my mind that he loves me and wants to make our marriage work, sometimes he just gets his priorities out of order. Over time, I've learned how to get myself up to top billing without love busting and we have a newfound purpose now with raising our son. Josh has brought new life, both literally and figuratively into our marriage.

There are times when I still struggle with my thought life. But I'm constantly trying to renew my mind with reading, teaching tapes, Bible study, praise music, prayer, etc. I believe that God and my husband have forgiven me and I have forgiven myself. Husband rarely brings the affair up and really doesn't like it when I bring it up, but realizes that sometimes I just need to talk things out. I go back and forth about telling my son everything someday - I'll probably tell him, though, because its the truth. But by then I hope he'll have grown up seeing how much his mommy and daddy clung to their marriage and their committment to each other to make a stable and loving, traditional homelife for him.

I hope my story helps you in some way.

Noplacelikehome

very much so..... thank you for your candid and quick reply to my post.... i found out how ta read yours and everyone elses posts w/out sifting and that has made a world of difference in my "perspective" of the situation i face.

peace
tim

tuff,,,,,, as you can see fullhouse (fh) and i have been m for awhile and have created quite a full house together. this is another difference between our situations. i will have to do this in several posts so please bare with me. and please don't jump to any conclusions.

when i first found out fh was falling into a relationship with om and she told me she wasn't sure she loved me any more i was tramatized to say the least. all the emotions hit me like a ton of bricks. a tremendous emptiness came over me to say the least. she told me many times that it wasn't me but she had no feelings for anyone. i knew she wqsn't feeling anything for me but could see that she was falling for om. i didn't know him just that they worked together. i loved her so much that in the face of reality i believed everything she said that they were just friends. watching her everyday prepare herself for work with the extra primping one does when they are first in love with someone was killing me yet i still wanted to believe her. i was afraid of many things raising the kids on my own, how often i would be able to see the kids, finances, transportation, keeping the house paid for.

when she told me on d-day she was pregnant i still felt i loved her and told her that we will raise the baby together since her story at that time was that she had a one night stand and would never see the om again. i knew the o-n-s thing was a lie because when i said to her that i would adopt the baby and raise her as our own her reply was that what if the om wanted to know his child. she has never been the type to be interested in any om's without getting to know them first and why would she care if om never knew the baby she was supposed to have come to her senses and be ready to recommit to our m. the truth was she was not ready to recommit and was still in the "fog".

i have to drop grace off at the babysitter and go to work now and will right more later, pops

tuff,,,,, to continue. the urge to ask her to leave was there all the time. in fact fh wanted to walk out several times and i stopped her. many people suggested that i let her go but i knew that if we ever separated i would move on and not look back. that meant an ugly divorce fight for the kids and i also knew that would be no good for anyone. the only choice i had was to try and survuve this nightmare.

so i suggested both the usual responses abortion and adoption. she could not take either path so we just struggled through. the om was out of the picture and made no effort to contact her and she made no effort to contact him. meanwhile i joined the gym and dropped 40 lbs. felt great about myself and relized that i would be able to support the family without her additional income (i had been doing the whole time of the affair and didn't relize it). i was regaining the self respect that an a takes away from a bs. as the pregnancy went along i felt myelf growing farther and farther apart from fh. she would mention that she felt this happening and i would deny it. if someone were to have come into mt life at that time i was mtself truely in danger of falling into an a myself. i made sure that i kept myself out of any situations that could possibly lead me to this road. the kids and there activities took a very big part in this. the day grace was born you would have thought someone had died in that room instead of being born. the mood was so sullen. i'm sure the dr's and rn's were quite confused as they had no idea if graces conception.

the firsty few months of her life i had no interest in holding her because i didn't know whether we were going to stay married or not. i watched as my children loved their new sister and everyone odled over her. she is a very cute little girl.

because of my age and the size of our family i felt that the om had to be responsible if in no other way financialy. fh didn't want this as she was hoping that we could move on and raise grace as ours without interference from om (visitation). i felt very strongly about his being responsible for his actions. i went down and picked up my divorce papers and begaan getting them ready to file should grace turn one without fh filing for cs. she filed in aug 02. the reason i was going to file for divorce was to deny paternity in case our marriage ended in divorce. i didn't want to be financialy responsible for someone else's child in that situation.

will write more later,, pops