I've had 4 long-term PAs. I was found with my last 3 mths ago. I came clean re OW 3 weeks ago. This amounted to 19 yrs of lying to my DW. I feel terrible. My BS is having a terrible time calling her last 19 yrs with me wasted, tainted and lost. We have been together 30 yrs. I just don't know how to deal with her AO and LBs. I desperately want to rebuild our marriage. We've always had difficulties but now I know that the MB methods can make our marriage work and be happy as it never was. I know it was my fault and had I known what to do using the MB methods it would have been a good M. But that's no use now. What do I need to do to bring new trust, new love? I have NC with OW. I want to be a loyal H based on MB concepts. I know it's early days. But can I do anything to help my BS through her torment? We've seperated but remain in regular contact. But our contact is very strong talk from my DW. We love each other but my EN weren't fulfilled and hence the PAs with time lapses between as each ended. I feel no attachment to any OW. I just need help with helping my DW thru this terrible agony.

We love each other but my EN weren't fulfilled and hence the PAs

The above statement is false. Your wife meeting or not meeting your EN's is not an excuse for an affair. The affair is 100% YOUR responsibility, as was mine. The reason your W is having AO's and LB's is because she is devastated. It's time to look in the mirror, get humble, take responsibility, roll up your sleeves, and get to work. Read EVERYTHING here, not just the stuff you think your W should be doing. She owes you nothing right now. I would recommend buying Surviving an Affair as well.

Do not make me laugh. You have NO RIGHT to misuse these terms to describe her justified outraged at the abuse you have put her through.

Is she "busting" your love with these angry outbursts? Is you love bank depleting? Is it her job now to stop that happening? She has left you; do you think she gives a toss about your love bank?

What do you intend to do to rebuild after the terrorist attack you committed on HER love bank, bombing it to smithereens?

No. Bad. Submit your explanation again.

What marriage?

Look, the only thing you can do is be a better person going forward and hope that she'll see the improvements and choose 2 stay married 2 you. But be prepared that she may not.

-ol' 2long

Steve Harley has said "People don't have affairs because of unmet needs. They have affairs because they don't protect their marriages from their own weaknesses."

-ol' 2long

eek! She needs to run for her life if that is your attitude. If you are going to blame your affairs on her ["unmet needs"] then you are not safe. What will she do the next time your needs go unmet? Who would sign on for that punishment?? Does this mean she is entitled to have an affair if her needs are unmet?

Your post is not very reassuring and it reflects the attitude of someone who is not safe. 19 years of lies and adultery is not something most would want to try to overcome. If you want to have a chance, I would rethink this "unmet needs" angle and start taking some accountability.

When we had good times they were very happy, very compatible... but inevitably the bad times got longer with terrible LB on both sides. Obviously during the years of deceipt there was little chance. Now things are suddenly different since finding Harley's MBs. She agrees with them and wants to work with them; but just can't, and I understand why. But how can I help slow her rampant imagination? How can I make things better? Desperate...

I can usually tell when someone has taken responsibility for a wrong choice. They just say, I am truly sorry. What I did was wrong, and there is no excuse. When people start giving a whole bunch of "background information" then my radar goes off.

Your first post doesn't sound genuine or remorseful. It sounds like you just learned a bunch of the acronyms and decided to throw them around to sound like you did a lot of reading.

I hope you do read everything and that once you really "get it," the great people here help you out.

I have full awareness that my ENs weren't met but also that I had no right to have PAs. I plead guilty every day. I wish I'd known about methods such as MB but I didn't and thought my EN would be fulfilled with PAs but they woren't; it was an escape. I don't want condemnation from you guys. I need constructive advice please.

The reason people are being so blunt is because the first real step is to see the horror of what you did with no qualifications. It is impossible to truly, sincerely do the work you need to do until you feel the full force of what you chose to do. I would suggest dropping the issue of your EN's and focusing on the choice you made, how it was without excuse, and what you can do to make sure it never happens again regardless of what your wife does or doesn't do. I am speaking as a FWW. I have walked the wayward path. Nothing about my mind and heart and actions really changed until I faced what I did head on.

My H was a long-time serial cheater. He managed to justify his cheating by treating me like crap, which led to my not wanting to meet his ENs. Naturally, he was not meeting my ENs, either. Actually, I was meeting far more of his than he met of mine.

However, I did not cheat. He did.

The reason you cheated was because you have lousy boundaries.

Did you ever sit down and LOVINGLY tell your wife that you needed certain ENs met? Think a minute before you respond. There were times when my husband told me that he needed me to meet certain ENs. His delivery was the problem...in the form of angry outbursts and selfish demands, to which I reacted in anger and which caused me to not WANT to meet his ENs.

You had lousy boundaries, and you cheated because you thought you could get away with it. The YEARS of lying, as in my marriage, are likely what has done the most damage. Right now, your wife has no idea whether or not she could EVER trust you...and she should never completely trust you again.

Stop blaming your wife for your lack of boundaries and your resulting affairs.

That said, you need to have a humble heart.

Forget about having your ENs met for now. Find out what your wife's ENs are and start meeting them.

Be completely open and honest with your wife. Your life should be an open book from here on out.

Give her all your passwords and do not delete anything from your phone. Let her see EVERYTHING!

Account for every minute of your time.

If you work with any of the OW, you need to find another job ASAP.

Write each and every one of the OW a NC letter, give them to your wife for her approval, and let HER mail them.

Look for tst's posts, and pay very close attention to what he says and DO IT. He is a FWH who has recovered his marriage.

Could you tell us which ENs were not being met, please?

JK,

But how can I help slow her rampant imagination?

How about being COMPLETELY HONEST with her, "rampant imagination" NO she likely senses your are not being absolutely open.

When you find out that your spouse had cheated the whole world seems filled with people who knew and never said anything to you btw, and the longer the affair is undiscovered the larger the patsy the betrayed spouse feels.

Gamma

You have had 4 long term PA's and have been lying to your BW for 19 years and you think that after 3 weeks she should be okay?

I'm sorry but if you really want to save your M, then you need to be willing to deal with the deep pain you have caused and the time it will take for her to process the deception, betrayal and life-altering pain you have caused her.

That's going to take longer than 3 weeks.

I would suggest that you get the book "Torn Asunder" by Dave Carder. He is a pastor who also specializes in helping M recover from infidelity. There are some chapters in there that will help you understand what your BW is going through.

Please listen. These people are right. My WH wasn't meeting my ENs, either. I was better to him than he was to me, yet he still is the one who cheated.

He cheated because he had bad boundaries. He cheated because he felt entitled - he was angry at me. He cheated because he gave himself permission to call our marriage over and not tell me.

If you were focused on meeting your wifes ENs, and doing a good job at that, I betcha she would have tried to meet yours. I bet if you had put the energy into the marriage and not affairs, it would have been a much better marriage.

Just sayin.

Thanks for being frank. Much of what you say I should do I have done. Things are moving forward. And you're right three weeks is no time at all to process all this. Thanks also for your advice. I have owned up to weak character, weak boundaries. Regrettably I knew nothing of how to improve our M that was very rocky. Now we both do and have acknowledged to each other our failings. We wrote a letter to OW and there's been NC since. The others were over 10 years ago and there's been NC at all. I express sorrow often. I let her know where I am and what I'm doing often. When we meet I do my best to absorb all my wife's waterfall of anger and criticism and to answer honestly all her questions. It is this I feel hard to work through. It is so negative. I know it is pain and reactive sorrow. Do I just allow it or should I try to divert it to a more positive outlook eg a happier future of honesty and fulfillment of all of each others ENs? What should I do for her to make her know I've changed and wont cheat again?

If you are serious and really want to do the right thing then sign everything you own over to her and disappear....forever.

Just keep being brutally honest. Continually. Let her vent and be her soft place to land even if you're not feeling very soft. Let her know where you are and what you are doing, always and give her full access to all emails, computer, cell phone(s), any accounts, vehicle, etc.

Good luck.

We ARE giving you constructive advice. You need to man up and stop blaming your wife for your adultery. Otherwise, she needs to kick you to the curb because you are not safe. You weren't filling her EN's either when you rolling around in the pig pen, but she didn't have an affair.

I realize you have been wayward for a long time and might not get this, but you had BETTER GET IT if you want to be taken seriously. Stop blaming HER for your affairs. That is the first step.

I would actually CHANGE. CHANGE yourself first and then she will believe you. Blaming others for your crime tells others you do not take accountability for your crimes. If you take no accountability, then there won't be anything to change, right?

From reading your first post, there is nothing for YOU to change, that onus all falls on her to start meetin your needs. If the affairs were a result of unmet needs, then what do you need to change?

Your BW has had 19 years of her life stolen from her. She is left to look around her at the rubble that is the reality of her marriage. Three weeks isn't even close to the time she's going to need. That's one thing you're going to need that we can't give you: TIME. Settle back for the ride, jkl. It's going to be bumpy.

Your BW is now a victim of infidelity. It is akin to the death of a child or rape - yes, it's that traumatic. It was all about you during your A's. Now it's all about her. She may choose to dump your sorry a@@ and move on. That is her right. However, I suspect she wants to stay with you. If that is the case, you need to do whatever it takes to make her feel safe again, and it needs to be done on her timetable, not yours.

Others have posted some steps to help you. Be totally open and honest, totally transparent. Give her everything she asks. If she wants to know the ugly details of your adultery, tell her. She may scream and throw things. Dodge them. Let her vent. She may shut down and refuse to speak to you. Let her know you will still be there when she's ready to talk again. Be patient while she processes this terrible tragedy.

I would suggest you send her to this site. It may help her.

You are confused about what emotional needs are. I think it would be helpful if you named them "emotional wants" instead. You could name them "roses" if you wanted.

An emotional need is not something that you NEED.

An emotional need is what you need in order to be in love with the person giving it.

You only need it for the purpose of being in love.

Your "love bank" is not just a big pile of love units, like a vault. It's a real bank with separate accounts for every single person you know. Male and female.

When one of those accounts gets high, beyond a certain threshold, you experience the feeling of being in love, which feels wonderful.

Sadly, you DID let women you were not married to meet (partially) one or more of your emotional needs. This made love bank deposits, even if they weren't enough to make you fall in love.

Even if you had fallen in love, that wouldn't have done anyone any good, because YOU WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN IN LOVE WITH YOUR WIFE. Deposits go into the account of the depositor. They make you fall in love with someone else.

It's not about filling your vault. It's about letting your wife fill her account, and not letting anyone else fill theirs.


That's still not the reason why you committed adultery. Lots of people never knew about MB and still live their lives without committing adultery.

You believed you were entitled to try to "fill your vault" from any source, if your wife wouldn't fill it. You wanted sex, or whatever, and since you weren't getting it, you believed you were entitled. You didn't protect your wife's account from competition with other accounts. You believed you were entitled to do anything with a woman that felt good, including participating in conversation, affection, recreational companionship, and/or sex.

You were wrong. You promised not to do those things when you got married. You said "forsaking all others," and then you didn't keep your promise.


First piece of constructive advice: you need to accept the condemnation. You probably won't move forward until you do. If you want to redeem yourself and become someone who even can help your wife, accept and agree with the condemnation, and then start working all the practical steps people give you.

There will be a lot of reading and the need to change a lot of your thinking. The condemnation may not feel good, but if you'll just accept it it'll be one of the quickest ways to help change your thinking.

Your brain is like a computer with a bug. People are trying to fix the bug.

You can't make her know or do anything.

You change and you don't cheat again.

And you learn patience, empathy, and compassion. Recovery will take several YEARS, because you were unfaithful for so long.

-ol' 2long

Yep. I can definitely relate to this statement!

jkl345 - You're getting some good advice. Your W may NOT be able to recover from this. You need to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, even if she chooses to leave you...

Semper Fi,

RIF