I discovered my gf's EA against me and multiple EA's and PA's against her ex-H a little over 2 weeks ago.

She has done a lot since then - confessing to me, talking to her family and friends, contacting one of the OMW's etc. I believe she is also in the process of modifying her work role so that she does not have to take overnight trips.

But I find myself obsessed with thoughts that she is still cheating, or that she will cheat again and just do a better job of covering her tracks. I have no evidence to believe this - it is just a worry, and it won't go away, no matter how much I try to ignore it and focus on the good we have together.

When does this horrible feeling end? How do I move past this?

-HappyHiker

You are four months into a relationship with a cheater, liar, and a woman who is constantly looking for new men.

There is no way your mind will lie to you and make you think she will not cheat in the future. This woman has had a lifetime of lying and cheating. Yet you have only known her to cheat on you in the last 4 months.

You would have to know her for about 5 years, and see beyond a shadow of a doubt that she has not cheated on you in that time to even BEGIN to believe her.

But to stick with her for 5 years after you KNOW for a fact she is a cheater/liar by nature...well, that invites heartache.

Please do not be foolish and try to "get over" her cheating/lying behavior. Your mind and emotions are telling you to "worry" because they are trying to protect YOU.

Face facts. She is in her forties and has cheated and lied her whole life. Unless there is an earthshaking happening in her life like a car accident or a child dying or some such shocking thing to wake her up, she is not going to change.

And though she acts remorseful, you cannot believe she would change just for you. Even though this is a pleasant thought, and you want to trust her, you need to verify everything for years since she is NOT to be trusted.

Sorry you fell in love with a lyer and cheater, if only you could get PAST THE RELATIONSHIP and into a BETTER relationship with a better type of woman, one who would never think of lying, cheating, or being selfish to you, then you could indeed GET PAST IT and not have to constantly worry about when and how this woman cheats on you again.

I am glad you are worrying. And that you have horrible feelings about her cheating again. It shows me you are not mentally ill and that you know what can happen and are at least trying to protect yourself a little from what she can and will do behind your back and....then lie to you about it.

If you had been married for 20 years, had three kids, and your wife cheated one time or flirted with another man one time, then you might want to work with her.

But this one is a 4 month relationship gone bad. Let it go man for your own good. She is quite corrupt.

HH

Dr Harley advises cutting a cheating BF or GF loose when there are no children involved. Even a spouse if newly wed and no kids.

I would concur with Bubbles advice here that you cut your losses and save your heart for somebody worthy of it.

all blessings

That can be easily remedied by breaking up with her. She is not marriage material, HH. Be grateful you found this all out before you got married, not after. You have been handed a GIFT of finding out before, don'[t squander it!

My WH cheated multiple times on the GF he had before he married me (and the excuse he took was that she cheated on him...it had to be someone else's fault, of course.
I knew it and still went ahead and married him. Guess what...he kept up his habit.
Those cheaters and liars do not change unless something major rocks their life. Otherwise they see cheating and lying as a way of life. They also love to point fingers and attribute their filty behaviour to others, namely their spouse.
Given all of the above, you will be sparing yourself very much pain and anguish. By the way, serial cheaters do not love anybody but themselves (and even that could be debated.)
blessing

HH you really need to disconnect from this woman. I know she is making great strides, but you are a hindrance to her and yourself. I laid out my argument in your other thread.

This woman, as she is right now is NOT trustworthy. She'll need years of clean living to be trustworthy. I notice she's stopped posting here. After an initial rush, she's got you back and she's tapered off. Why? Because she got you back.

She need to focus on fixing herself, not building a relationship with you.

You need to LISTEN to your gut that is telling you not to trust her. Listen, because it is trying to warn you. I agree with the others that say that it will take YEARS before you feel safe with her, because she ISN'T SAFE. It's like a druggie that comes out of rehab, sure they made a lot of progress in rehab, but they're probably going to relapse. It will take a while before she's recovered.

You need distance from her. For both your sakes.

She needs to do this without a relationship hanging over her head and you need to separate yourself from betting too entrenched with her in case she DOESN'T recover, she doesn't drag you down with her as she hits rock bottom.

If she truely loved and cared about you and realized the danger she was to you, she wouldn't countenance a relationship with you. The fact that she is still in one only demonstrates her further selfishness.

SHE is more important. HER need for you is more important than your safety or happiness.

Think about that.

She is willing to gamble with your future and safety just so SHE can have you right now.

Please, break up with her and STAY BROKEN UP.

Maybe a few years in the future after she's cleaned up her act, she'll be worth having a relationship. Maybe you'll still be available and maybe not.

There are many women out there. Some you could have as good, no a BETTER relationship with because they aren't so broken right now.

Just because you love someone doesn't mean you are meant to be with them. You CAN fall in love with someone who is BAD for you.

You know we're speaking the truth.

Everyone is so right!

You need to find someone who is marriage material.

This one you found just failed her interview for "your wife"

So save yourself from all this heartache and find someone who wont lie and cheat on you.

Good luck.

ditch the bee-otch

Based on my own experience, it takes several years for that feeling to end, and several more for to you fully let your guard down - just in time for the cheater to be able to abuse your trust again.

Unless you are REALLY sure that she's completely repentant about her actions, disgusted by them and not willing to engage in that activity again, I suggest walking. My FWW SWORE to up and down that she'd never, ever do it again. Guess what happened.

All,

I am so torn. It's not easy to turn off the feelings I have for this woman. Yes, I have only known her for 4 months, but we have a compatibility that makes it very difficult for me to leave. Objectively, I know that is the right thing to do, and I know I am weak for not being able to just do it.

We both have so much work to do on ourselves before we should even consider another relationship, let alone with each other. I was hoping we could do that work together, but I'm realizing that is most likely not possible. It's too painful.

-HappyHiker

FOUR MONTHS?? Hiker, don't waster your time.

HH it IS hard. But it will be for the best.

You need to go NC to clear your head. Because of the attraction, if you see each other in any capacity you will want to rationalize how staying together isn't THAT bad.

All the compatibility you THINK you have is superficial.

Liking the same stuff, having the same hobbies, even having similar desires for the future is MEANINGLESS when there is a fundamental incompatibility.

Her lying and double life is a HUGE incompatibility.

Yes she can fix that, yes she can be better.

But she has to do it WITHOUT your, or else her recovery isn't based on her own actions, but rather, your approval. Thats a very unhealthy foundation for any relationship.

Listen to yourself. You are torn because you KNOW you shouldn't trust her but you WANT to trust her. The conflict will tear you up. Eventually you will come to hate her for it.

Just wanted to jump in here and point out something about being betrayed by the one you love and what it does to brain chemistry.

Dr Harley recommends that a BS sometimes needs to see about taking an antidepressant for a while after discovery and in early recovery. Depression is typically the result of lower levels of serotonin which is why it is often treated with SSRIs that counter the drop in the chemical.

Low serotonin levels though are also related to obsession and compulsive actions that result from disorders like OCD. Recent studies using functional Magnetic resonance Imaging (fMRI) to look at the brains of people who suffer from OCD have shown that certain parts of the brain are affected by the low levels of serotonin as part of the disorder.

But the emotions that come flooding in as part of a memory of a traumatic experience such as betrayal are not really obsessing as much as they are failing to recognize the memory in time to circumvent the emotions that follow the memory by about 1 1/2 to 2 full minutes. We can sometimes learn to identify certain memories that when invoked cause us a negative emotional response and actually mitigate the emotional turmoil that follows the triggering of those memories by actively changing what we are thinking about to a memory of something with more positive emotional content.

See the Managing Memories thread in my sig line for more on this, but if depression and obsession are both present it might be necessary to look into anti-Ds in order to work through the trauma until the brain can return to some new sense of normalcy.

Mark

If anything..this thread is really an eye opener to the practices of the WS.
It basically shows that unless the WS goes thru some major shift and admits to her faults and begs for forgiveness and applies all the necessary measures to compensate for her As and to make sure no other As ever take place...well, unless all of this happens the BS spouse is a 1,000 times better without WS.
It is really very obvious, I am sure, when a WS is ready to fully commit to the M.
Till then, fear that they will betray again is just the natural reaction to an unsure or unrepentant WS....
blessing

Why do you need to do work on yourself? It seems to me that she is the admitted pathological liar and cheater, not you, so why are you dragging yourself down to her level?

The only work you have to do is on improving your partner picker, so you avoid such people in the future.

AGG

AGoodGuy,

It seems I have a lot of work to do too. For one, I need to figure out why I trust people so easily. This is obviously a flaw that I need to correct.

I need to become bitter, cold and distrustful of everyone until they have proved to me they are worthy of my trust.

-HappyHiker

Oh BS.

That is not what anyone is saying.

But you shouldn't trust someone who isn't TRUSTWORTHY.

She has damaged your trust. You are in conflict because she isn't trustworthy and you feel that you should trust her for some reason.

YOU are not responsible for your feelings of trust for her. SHE is. She destroyed that trust. Your job isn't to just start trusting because she's doing a few right things over a couple of weeks. You can't do that, that is why you are conflicted. It will take YEARS of her acting properly for the trust to return.

You are worried because she damaged your trust and was unfaithful. You have to learn to listen to that worry, because it's looking out for you.

You don't have to be cold and bitter. But you should be cautious, wary and wise. You give people the benefit of the doubt, but once they have DEMONSTRATED their untrustworthiness, THEN you distance yourself from them because they are unsafe.

Your problem is not that you want to trust so easily, it is that you want to trust despite evidence that you shouldn't.

And yeah, you got a picker problem.

But how do you know if someone is trustworthy or not? Either you are a trusting person, or you're not. You either give folks the benefit of the doubt, or you don't.

I can definitely see how people become cold, bitter and twisted over stuff like this. I'm halfway there myself.

-HappyHiker

HH - until you are more familiar with the MB concepts, and how to deal with affairs, I would recommend you avoid posting to people here trying to cope with adultery.

THIS is not the MB philosophy. MANY adulterers here HAVE changed. THE MARRIAGE is worth fighting for despite the fact that the wayward isn't.

You're comparing a 4 month relationship of an 'amazing' connection and fantastic sex, with a 12 year marriage?!?! Really?

No one is saying your girlfriend CAN'T change. What they ARE saying is that as she is RIGHT NOW is someone unsafe for you and the relationship creates a distraction from work she needs to do and pain for you.

This is what happens when you commit too early, without discrimination.

Vibrissa,

Thanks for your advice. I am actually very familiar with the MB concepts. I've been lurking here for over 10 years, I've read two of Harley's books and participated in his radio show on one occasion.

I will, however, refrain from contaminating others' threads with my bitter rants. Thank you for that suggestion.

-HappyHiker

Your posts don't demonstrate that knowledge or you'd realize that infidelity IN MARRIAGE is surmountable.

Unless you were using the opportunity to make a stab at the forum and the advice you've been given to leave your girlfriend. In which case, using the poor man and his's wife's terrible situation as a chance to get on your own soap box is despicable. There is a man in real pain as is the woman who he has hurt. MB provides a path to recovery. How dare you use their suffering as a method to push your own agenda. But whatever.

Vibrissa,

It was a stab at the forum and the advice I have received here.

However, I recognize this forum is not to blame. My gf is to blame for her affair and her lies. And I am to blame for trusting her and not having the will or the desire to get out.

I have apologized to the OP.

-HappyHiker

Good luck HH!
I think the work many of us betrayed people have to do is to figure out why we attract lairs and cheaters and work on ourselves so we no longer have to deal with them.
There are honest people out there who would not cheat or lie and those are the ones we want in our love life.
blessing

Well, I wish you'd spend some more time on the After Divorce Dating board, we'd set you straight real good .

That aside, you do not need to become bitter or distrustful. You need to learn to become attracted to the right people, and vice versa. I have spent several of my initital post-divorce years dating the wrong people, until I got beat up enough to ask myself why I attracted those kind of people, and why I was attracted to them. And believe it or not, I learned to stop that pattern, and learned to value and be attracted to things like stability, normalcy and calm, over excitement, wildness, and drama. And my subsequent relationship improved tremendously as a result.

I am not saying that you should look for the same things as I did, I am just saying that it's important to understand what you really want in a partner, and then look for that person, as opposed to being attracted to the wrong things. As they say, opposites attract, but they are rarely good for you in the longterm.

AGG

Well you have been given a gift my friend. Should you try and build a relationship with this women then don't come back crying about an affair she had because she will have them.

It is in her makeup. It is what she does it is what she knows. I am sure she has cheated in every relationship she has had.

Those of us who have had a spouse that did that to us would have loved to know it ahead of time. Before all of the kids and all of the wasted years. You have been given a gift and you should take it.


Well you do have evidence that she will cheat again because that is what she does. It does not make you a bad person it makes her a bad person. Some women need the thrill or need the attention of other men to validate their attractiveness. It happens and there is something broke inside of them.

What you choose to do now will decide how much drama you are going to have in your life. Good luck.