Dh still loves ow - any hope for us?

[Ineedabreak]

My dh recently admitted to having an affair with a colleague. We have been together 20 years & have 3 children under 8. He said he has been seeing her for 5 months and was friends with her before this. After a row he told me about her. We are still together and I don't want my marriage to end because I love him. I can see there were some problems in our relationship in that it had become a bit mundane and we had drifted a bit. Since I found out & we agreed to try again - 3 weeks ago - things have been good. Sex has been great & we have been much closer & talking. However he says he still loves her and that he feels something for her he has never felt before. He says he is not seeing her anymore so we can try & make a go of our marriage. He is a great dad to the kids. Is there any hope for us, will his feeling for her fade?

Oh poor you. Have you sorted out some counselling? I don't think you can just wait and see if the feelings fade, for one thing it'll drive you mad wanting to ask him if he still loves her every five minutes.
I really think you need some outside help.

I would like us to have some counselling although I am scared what might come out of it - but I know he would not agree to it. He has been into that sort of thing. I know that I have to not ask him about her as that would make things worse but it is so hard. If she wasn't around I know we could make a great success of our marriage.

Has anyone else any experience of this? Did you manage to get through it? Or anyone given up an affair - how long did it take to fall out of love? Did you keep seeing the other person? Is there anything I can do to make him see the value of his me and his family over this Ow?

I have been in your shoes.

He's not in love with her, but in love with the feelings she gives him, the excitement, the adrenalin rush, all that stuff. It's like an addiction.

In our case it took a couple of months for him to realise what it was and to see her for what she was. Don't fall into the trap of slagging her off, I did that and it just made him think I was doing it because I had my own agenda. As it turned out, everything I predicted she'd do came to pass - the various attempted contacts etc and he realised that no decent person would do that and really.. how could he ever be with someone who could be so devious and selfish.

It was hellish going through it, seeing him moping around, spending hours hidden in the study on his pc rather than with me, jumping every time his phone made a noise but eventually it did pass and he felt like an idiot.

A couple of books that might help are

Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass and
How Can I Ever Trust You Again - can't remember the author's name but it's a man.

Only you can decide if you're willing to wait it out.. and if you do, I wish you all the strength you need. Be very kind to yourself, make sure you eat and look after your health.. I lost 18kgs in 6 weeks and it wasn't good.

Keep posting here, the mumsnetters have been a fabulous support to me in my darkest times and again now. I would also suggest that you have someone in real life to support you, you need someone to offload to and cry to and rant to - that was a mistake I made, I told virtually no one and pretty much isolated myself. Just be careful who you choose for that, you need someone non-judgemental and who won't gossip.

I have been on the other side of this (the OW)... and at the risk of getting flamed I want to try to put your mind at rest. We broke up precisely because we had intense feelings as he was committed to, and loved his wife and family. We tried being friends, then polite acquaintances but it didn't work (we kidded ourselves that it did for a while though). It took a long time to get over the feelings. We eventually realised we had to break all contactas each time we made contact (text not actual) we had to start again in the "recovery" process... it took a good year altogether for the feelings to go (and the "what was I thinking?" common sense feelings to start)... Once we broke contact altogether though it was about 3 months.

He always knew the value of his family and thank heavens they never found out before we came to our senses (I don't think either of us will regret anything more). So yes, his feeling for her will fade but all contact must be broken. (I moved countries in the end to make the break definite) He has chosen you so he already sees the value of you and the family, remember that. It is he who should be proving himself to you not the other way around. Keep talking and keep being open... is he definitely not open to counselling? Ask gently... if he isn't you could always go on your own...

Blood is thicker than water. If you can hold your head high, take the moral high ground, look after yourself, be "a catch" so your partner realises what he might lose - you can ride the storm I am sure. A long term relationship with deep respect which survives through thick and thin is worth a thousand "flings" based primarily on a sexual high - and then what? Self-loathing in many cases. Good luck with riding the storm - I am sure you can come out of this stronger. (Haven't been in your situation but know of others who have.) I would have thought that the longer term danger might be that you could lose respect for him - but he must have thought about that, albeit through a haze of testosterone (or some chemical induced by such things....)

Thanks for all your advice - I do feel that I can ride it out but am so worried about him saying that he loves her / what a lovely person she is etc Also they will still see each other sometimes as they work together & in this climate it would be very difficult to change jobs. I just want him to see all that is good about his marriage but without obviously forcing the issue. I know he should be proving himself but he seems confused at the moment. It would have been much easier if he hadn't fallen in love with her!

I think he needs an ultimatum. If you continue being 'understanding' and listening to him chat on about this girl, he has no real incentive to make a proper choice. Even if he does love her, I suspect that ultimately he loves you and the kids and family life as a package more. It's possible to get over someone even if you do/did love them, and he needs to be concentrating on doing that, not just talking about her. At the moment he is moping and being self-indulgent - poor little him and his doomed love affair. What about you!? You shouldn't have to listen to him go on about loving her, it's disrespectful.

Don't have time to post much, but just a quick thought... have been there and could see H was missing 'being in love' (even though he very quickly found out OW was a compulsive liar and vile person). Within a month or so he was absolutely, horribly embarrassed by even thinking he'd had anything to do with her, as was wwifn's spouse... and counting's and many others. it will pass. he has chosen YOU, and is comnig to terms both with withdrawal from a drug-like hormone state and the fact his internal self esteem is in tatters.

Clinging to his 'love feelings' is a good diversion from facing reality, where he really deep down knows he has made a terrible mistake and now has a hard path to follow to get back your respect for him. Difficult because I bet his own self respect is in tatters. It will pass and things will get better, promise.

What's happened to you in all this, OP?

Reflecting back, you say that your H dropped this bombshell during a row and is now grieving for the OW's loss, telling you that he has never felt this way about anyone before.
Meanwhile he won't go to counselling and you are looking inwards and bargaining that your marriage had got a bit stale and are no doubt taking the blame for this yourself. Oh and also you are not asking him about the OW, because you think that will make it worse.

There is so much wrong with the above scenario that it would take months to unpick, but do please buy a book called Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass if you want some help with the path you've chosen, or read some of the other threads on here. Overall, I think you are going to lose your own self-respect if you continue to think like this and ultimately, that will make things worse, not better.

A good starting point would be to acknowledge that you are not responsible for his affair, that you have every right to talk about the OW and the affair and that you don't know yet whether you can forgive or get past this, but that you won't be able to until he goes to counselling on his own.

I know that what everyone has said is true and I would be saying the same to anyone else were they in my situation. I suppose I am seeing him as a 'recovering addict' at the moment and so trying to help him to move on. I think he is wary of making promises to me that he may not be able to keep - but I am hoping that if we can get through the next couple of months and just have some fun & enjoy each others company then maybe we will then have a chance.

OP, I can see that this is a very different type of affair to the ones that have blighted the lives of the respondents to your thread. This is not a "fling" with someone who arrived in your relationship suddenly. This was an affair with someone with whom he had a friendship, things in common and although it is always wrong to get involved with someone who is attached, in all probability, this OW doesn't have horns and isn't the devil incarnate. Good people have affairs.

I hope you take our advice and get that book, but you should both read it, not just you. There is some specific advice for couples coping with this ambivalent stage. The author Shirley Glass recommends that a couple cannot start getting past this until safety has been restored and contact severed with the affair partner.

She recognises that this is difficult in a work situation, so recommends that all contact is restricted to professional interactions only and that the betraying spouse enlists managerial support for that. So one of my questions is - do the people they report to know about the affair and have they been approached to help bring about a distance between them i.e. no unnecessary collaborative working, a change of role within the company etc.?

Secondly, there must be complete transparency. Your H must become an open book with phones, E mail accounts, messenger services, social networking and any means of contact. Any interactions with the OW must be volunteered to you - not you having to ask if they have spoken.

I understand that you are seeing this as an addiction and you are right - very often, these intense love affairs are like a temporary form of insanity, but the only thing that works in this situation is a period of cold turkey.

Now at the moment, you are in fight mode and I understand that; you are surviving on your instincts at the moment, I suspect and you see this as a competition between you and the family you have lovingly created - and this interloper.

But what we are trying to get you to see is that after this period has passed, while you are being forced to watch him grieve and recover, your own mental health will have suffered enormously unless you get some help for yourself and take some control. At the moment, you are being too accommodating and too self-flagellating and I think you'd be much better served if you withdrew yourself a little and started questioning some of your own thinking about affairs and why they happen. It might amaze you to learn for example that many affairs are not about the unfaithful party not "getting enough" of something - rather, they occur when he isn't "giving enough" to you and the marriage.

Can I direct you to this thread where I wrote a long post in an attempt to explain this.

Ultimately, what I am saying to you is please don't lose sight of you in all this, because I think you are at real risk of depression.

ohhh WWIFN.. that last post could have been written to me :(

I hope I won't upset anyone by posting here, but I wanted to let you know of my experiences, perhaps to try to and provide some insight about where your dh is right now.

I had an affair with someone who started out as a friend, and I told my dh about four months ago. The affair had been going on for about a year, and it was a big deal for me. I ended it because I knew it was wrong, and I told my dh because I felt he had a right to know so we could decide with full facts where to go from there.

At the time I told my dh, I was very ambivalent about continuing our relationship. Things hadn't been good for a while, and I believe now that my affair could possibly have been an exit affair - but when it came down to it, I just couldn't exit.

I miss my OM every day. He was a dear, dear friend, and I was very close to him indeed. He was also a player, and a coward. I knew all that, but I loved him anyway. That's what scared me - I had my eyes wide open, but I was so drawn to him, and still am. We connected.

That doesn't make what I did right. It was wrong. I made terrible choices, and I hurt a good man.

Which is why, although I still love my OM and miss him as much now as I did four months ago when I finally managed to break contact, I DO NOT bleat to my husband about my feelings.

I have counselling. I cry in the car and in the shower. I find myself talking out loud to my OM in the middle of fields when I'm walking the dog. I write letters to him then delete them. It's getting easier, slowly.

But I deal with it ON MY OWN.

At the same time as all this is going on, my dh and I are working very very hard to rebuild our relationship. I wouldn't believe for a minute that that was possible if I was spending any time at all mooning around the house bleating about missing my OM. That would just be rubbing salt in a very raw wound.

When I was having my affair I was treating my husband with massive disrespect. Telling him about the affair was one way of starting to show him respect again. And that's something that has to continue. Rubbing his nose in it is not a good way to show respect.

Feelings can't be turned off like a tap. I wish to God they could. But they do fade in the end, and I really think if your husband has any respect for you, and if he wants your relationship to work, then he really needs to shut up about the OW.

Affairs cause pain for all involved. But people like me and your dh have kind of asked for it, haven't we? People like you and my dh haven't. So I really believe that the people like me and your dh should shut up and deal with what we have done to ourselves by ourselves, and not make our pain another problem for our spouses to deal with, when they've got more than enough healing to do, thanks to us.

Ask your dh if he really is committed to rebuilding your marriage, and if he is, tell him to find a counsellor to bleat to, would be my advice.

I hope you're not offended by my posting on this thread, and I'm really sorry for what you're going through.

Thank you for your advice and for taking the time to post - I have ordered the book you suggest and will talk to dh about counselling.
Thank you.

Things had been going really well - we had talked and enjoyed spending time together - the tonight after a lovely day he told me that he is still seeing her & still loves her. I feel broken.

I am so sorry - I didn't want your post to go unanswered and I know the bleakness of the middle of the night posts.

Have you been to counselling? He seems to me to want it all - that's very unfair on you. I am the least well qualified person to advise - my husband in a very similar position didn't give me a say in what happened but just went - but his behaviour seems very selfish. What exactly does he want you to do or say in response to a comment like that?

Hang on in there. Someone wiser than me will be along soon but I can't stress the value of a good counsellor enough, as it seems to me you desperately need some resolution to this situation.

I am so sorry.

It sounds to me like he had decided to open up to you about his affair and "try' to make your relationship work so that he could salve his conscious and if he does leave he can tell everyone, "well, we really tried to make it work...". For the record, he didn't "try". He may have told he was trying. You may have had lovely times and felt the closeness returning but whilst he was still in contact with her and refusing to go to counselling etc., he was not giving your marriage a proper go.

What has he said he wants to do now ?

Your situation sounds very similar to mine; colleagues that were orginally friends etc. We are a year on from the affair, but it took him 6 months to lose all feelings for the OW. After 6 months, I realised they were still in touch, he broke my heart again, but something in him changed, and he finally faced up to his actions, now my husband is incredibly humiliated and embarassed by his actions and cannot believe he ever had any feelings for her. I know every situation is different, but he may just still be in a state of denial about everything and when it all catches up with him, he will realise just how ridiculous he is beng, as someone else pointed out, he isn't in love with her he is in love with all the feelings his affair stirred up. stay strong.

Couldn't read and run.

Sorry your 'D'H is putting you through more of this, his latest news must have been some blow. I think he really is being so incredibly disrespectful to you. Two weeks on and he's announced he Is still seeing her and still loves her.
What do you want? Have you vocalised your wants or has it all been his needs? Maybe you need to?
Will you accept this?

So so sorry you are going through this.

Thanks for your posts - I don't know what I want. I don't want to be a single parent, I just don't think I can do it all - kids, work, house etc He refuses to go to counselling, won't even look at the book I bought about dealing with the affair. I would try again but I don't think he will stop seeing her and I don't know if I could ever trust him again.

I've been in this position, though my ex didn't volunteer anything, it had to be wrung out of him. Don't underestimate the physical and emotional shock of all this - the first time I found out, I'd say it took me a couple of years to recover from the fact he could betray me.

I think you need to take decisive action now and pack his bags for him. Don't wait for him to make a decision. You will feel better if you act, rather than react to his decisions.

Pack his bags and tell him it's over. If your relationship is going to last, the shock of you rejecting him will help things along, believe me. I saw more respect in my ex's eyes the day I told him it was over than I'd seen in any conversation about this previously.

You can do it all. Plenty of us do. You may find (risking a flaming) that reducing your hours at work will allow you more tax credits. I didn't, before anyone yells!

If you have three children and continue to work full-time, factor a cleaner into your finances and give your ex a big basket of the children's ironing every week - give him 24 hours to get it back to you. There is no reason why you should pick up all the work.

You may find he'll go off and seem to have fun for a while and this will be very hard for you, but NEVER, EVER ask him to come back. If you and he have a future, you need to stay in control and continue to reject him and his behaviour.

Good luck. This is an awful time, but it does pass. You have obviously spent a lot of time in denial (ie we had a lovely time) when there's been this huge elephant in the room with you - if you make him leave, part of you will miss him and the other part will feel as though you are on holiday.

Should have said 'washing AND ironing.'

For god's sake. So he is still seeing her AND sleeping with you? Does she know this? And what about her situation; is she married? He sounds like he is being highly pathetic and trying to have it both ways. If I were you I would tell him that he is to leave right now, and see a solicitor regarding money etc. This will at least make you realise that all is not lost if you end up on your own. It's not that scary!

Nothing can be done while he is still seeing her, and counselling now will be a big waste of money.

I know this sounds drastic, but at the moment he is not having to face up to the reality of what he has done and thinks that if he just syas the right things to both of you he will not have to make difficult choices. Please don't collude with this any longer. Make his life hard and make him see you will not put up with this. (Divorce takes a long time, but if he knows you have been to see a solicitor then he knows you are serious with wanting to get on with life without waiting for him to pick and choose).

Never mind if he has nowhere to go - he'll have to find a place. He chose this. Because if things go on as they are then he will screw up his relationship with you forever - and actually, beneath the addiction to being told he's so marvellous by someone new, in most cases, he does not want to wreck his family. He is vocalising his confusion right now 'how can I love her but still not want to leave my family?' etc etc. And that is cruel to you and something that will actually take a lot more healing in the long term than anything else he has done.

Taking power back by calling the shots rather than waiting for him to do so will be immensely helpful. I do think that in the case of a few ladies here, this sudden knowledge for the H that it is not all about them and they are being left behind by a strong spouse who won't put up with their behaviour any longer does give a lot of Hs a good slap round the face from reality.

Faced with being 'left' with the OW as their only option, the OW suddenly doesn't look that attractive anymore and has to stand up to a lot more scrutiny as she'll be replacing their family - not just in his eyes, but in public also.

Can you tell family or confide in anyone in RL? Again, having him know that people know about what he's done can bring a welcome dose of reality to his bubble of romance. Please, stop depending on him and his decisions to make you happy - because he won't make a decision unless forced and the current situation is intolerable. Good luck.

You are enabling him to continue with this rigmarole.

Have you told anyone else? His parents? Your parents?

You could insist that jobs are changed, only to find that in a few years' time, the whole bloody thing starts up again with someone else . If you don't end it now, he will always see that it's acceptable within your marriage for him to have someone else.