This is my first time posting so here is the background. As I'm sure is true for everyone, it's a long complex story so I will try to put it in a nutshell. My husband and I have been married almost 7 years and have two young children. In Dec. 09 my husband told me that he didn't know if he was in love with me anymore. I immediately realized that there was major things missing in our marriage (on both our parts) and went into action to improve the marriage, including counseling. Unfortunately my husband was so disengaged from me he wasn't willing to work on things. Our children were 6 months and 3 years at the time. This set in motion him moving in and out of our home several times, being fired from his job for having an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work, and him taking a new job out of state. Throughout all of this he continually lied to me about his relationship with this other woman being non-sexual until I found out the truth through a third party and he finally admitted it. We have been working on our marriage for five months, but things did not completey turn around for the positive for us until about 2 � months ago. Even though he is out of state, he travels to see the children and me almost every weekend. Since this is such a shorten version of the story there are so many other painful details that I deal with. I have so many questions in my head and hate how it has consumed my life. My husband and I are working with a great counselor but feel I would like support from others who have been there. One of the big things I�m struggling with right now is if I will ever get past the hurt and anger I have. I love and adore my husband and want nothing more to make this work.

Welcome to MB, 2kiddos. I am sorry to hear about the affair.

I am also sorry to say that your marriage will not be in the first stages of recovery while your H lives apart from you. Are you making plans to join him in the new state?

The marriage also cannot begin recovery if there is any contact between your H and OW, and while he is living away from you, you have no idea how much contact there is. For all you know, she spends time with him during the weekday evenings while he is working away. That is what happened between my H and his OW while he worked away.

Does your counsellor insist that your H proves no contact? Does he or she tell you that you must live together full-time? If not, then he or she is not demonstrating good marriage-saving knowledge and you would be far better off getting coaching from the Harley centre here.

What do you know about this affair? How did they meet for sex - did they ever travel together? Did they book hotel rooms at lunchtime? How long did it last? What makes you think that it is over?

What do you know about the woman? Was she married? Did she report to your H at work? Was she fired from the job also, and if not, why not? Does her H know about the affair? If he does not know the full details of whom it was with and what they did, then you need to tell him. He has a right to know, and also, he will not allow his wife to live under his roof and maintain an affair. His knowledge will help both of you end the affair completely.

Just to be clear: was the inappropriate relationship with a woman from work the same affair that you learned of through a third party? Have there been any other affairs?

Have you read the articles written by Dr Harley, the owner of this site, on how to end the affair for good, and how to recovery you marriage?

This article is addressed to a woman having an affair, so you need to adjust the gender from female to male and apply it to your husband. You will see that you cannot rebuild after an affair - indeed you cannot be sure that an affair has ended - if you are spending non-working hours living apart from each other. You simply cannot meet each other's emotional needs if you are not together, and you cannot be sure OW is not meeting his needs when he is not with you.

Extraordinary Precautions to Avoid A Former Lover

To help you totally separate from your lover, and avoid the temptation to see him when you crave him the most, I suggest the following extraordinary precautions:

1. Honesty

The first extraordinary precaution to avoid your lover is to tell your husband all about your affair, and the decision you have made to restore your love for him. Then promise to keep telling him the truth about every aspect of your life, so you never again have a secret second life where you are tempted to hurt him behind his back.


2. Account for Your Time.

Once you have established a willingness to be completely honest with your husband, then continue to be honest with him about all of your activities. Make sure he knows about everything you do throughout the day. Give him a complete schedule of your activities, and let him know which of those activities make you most tempted to contact your former lover. Try to avoid people and places that increase your craving to be with him.


3. Spend As Much of Your Time with Your Husband as Possible.

During withdrawal, there is not much your husband can do to deposit love units into your Love Bank. But it still makes sense for you to be together as much as possible. That's because the more you are with him, the less you will be tempted to contact your lover. Try to have lunch together, talk on the telephone several times a day, and be sure to spend evenings and weekends together.

Four Rules to Guide Marital Recovery

1. The Rule of Protection: Avoid being the cause of your spouse's unhappiness.

If you and your husband want to be in love with each other, you must build your Love Bank accounts. But before you build them, you must be sure there are no leaks in the Love Bank. It's pointless to deposit love units into a sieve, where every deposit is promptly withdrawn by a Love Buster. So you must make a special effort to plug up those leaks by committing yourselves to avoid being the cause of each other's unhappiness.

2. The Rule of Care: Meet your spouse's most important emotional needs.

The way to deposit the most love units is to meet a person's most important emotional needs. Your lover did that when he wrote you all those e-mail letters because conversation was your most important emotional need. After one month of filling your Love Bank with thousands of love units that were e-mailed to you, you found him irresistible -- you were in love with him.

Conversation is not your only important emotional need. Affection, recreational companionship, admiration and sexual fulfillment may be some of the other important emotional needs that your lover met. Unless your husband eventually meets your must important needs as well as your lover met them, you will be frustrated and at risk for another affair.


3: The Rule of Time: Give your spouse your undivided attention.


As I already mentioned, your husband may already know how to meet your emotional needs, but unless he sets aside enough time to do it, all of his skill does you no good at all. It's the man who gives you time for undivided attention who will win your heart.

I suggest that you and your husband plan to spend at least 15 hours each week together, giving each other your undivided attention. Use that time to meet each other's emotional needs for affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment. I have found that if that amount of time is taken to meet emotional needs, you can spend the rest of your 100 waking hours each week doing just about anything you please, without any risk to your love for each other. But if you do not set aside that time, your good intentions will not buy you a single love unit.

Since most everything we do must be scheduled or we don't do it, I suggest you take about a half an hour each week (say, Sunday afternoon from 3:30 to 4:00) to schedule your time together for the next week. Get out your schedules and write each other into your appointment books. Once scheduled, don't let anything interfere with your time together.

4. The Rule of Honesty: Be completely honest with your spouse.

We have already discussed honesty as an extraordinary precaution to prevent you from contacting your lover, so I won't say much more about it. But what you begin as an extraordinary precaution, must become the standard way you and your husband communicate with each other -- with openness and honesty.

Full article here

Hi 2Kiddos, welcome to Marriage Builders. Please listen to Sugarcane. If your "counselor" is not telling you these things, then your marriage won't recover. Recovery takes place when your H stops traveling and spends the weeks with you. The conditions that led to the affair must be eliminated [traveling] and you must be together every night in order to restore the intimacy and trust to your marriage.

That is where I would start.

Hi 2kiddos,

I'm so sorry that your husband had an affair. You have come to the right place for help. Please listen to the veterans on this website. They offer good advice that can work for you, but only if you follow the suggestions offered.

Take it from me, I have been through two affairs with my husband. After his first affair, I was not aware of the Marriage Builders plan and the core causes of the affair (unmet needs and bad boundaries) were not resolved. As a result, another affair occured. Don't let that happen to you.

It's only been a couple months since I found out about the second affair and I can already say that the Marriage Builders plan has helped us overcome my husbands affairs and build a stronger marriage. Follow the narrow path of the plan. It will work for you and your husband.

Good luck to you and your kiddos!

Hi 2kiddos ~

Welcome to MB. Unfortunately, everything everyone here has been telling you is true ~ you can't and won't recover until your H stops traveling.

My H traveled for work for about a year after his A ended. I almost had a nervous breakdown while he was traveling and any sort of progress we had made was completely reversed during his travel.

This is what you must work on first and foremost. If your H refuses to stop traveling, I would assume the A is still on and go immediately into Plan B.

(((hugs)))

May I just point out that this is not even "travelling"? This H has taken a new job in a different state. He lives somewhere else more often that he lives with his wife.

This is a permanent, weekday living-apart lifestyle. That is no way to run a marriage under the best circumstances, and certainly not right after an affair.

It sounds like you are separated and he is having his cake and eating it too.