is it possible to be truly and honestly happy again after your dh has an affair?

[keelybooboo]

i'll keep it brief,

found out on sat dh has been having an affair for the last 3 months or so with a woman from work. he has ended it now and cannot believe that i still want to be with him and havent thrown him out.

we have been married for 14yrs have dd14 and ds8 together, we are both mid 30's

what i really want to know is even though i am devestated and feel let down and humiliated and more i want it to be gotten over iyswim. will i end up bitter and twisted 20yrs from now wishing i'd told him to fuck off? is it possible to trust again?

i know that its really early days and its still all so raw but in agreeing to try and make it work as i still love him have i made myself look like a mug who'll put up with anything?

i don't know. any advice from anyone who's been there?

You crack me up cab., H is an editor and would be just as insistent on the correct usage of words! good on you!

Just makes me think of databases :)

W w I f n, how did you remove the character and personality traits that permit infidelity? I posted on dec 6th and you replied,we got through it, dh changed jobs went for solo counselling and he is very sorry,he admitted watching porn to wank every morning for years,I found out and banned him before affair. I had been refusing him sex for about 3 years,4kids,working and so tired all the time,not an excuse but I can see how rejected he was.we are happy again.I have asked him all about it, he will answer anything,and he said that ow did not mean anything and that it was fantasy. He promises that it wont happen again and he is a good husband in other ways,but I find it hard knowing that he is capable of it and why would he be any different to other men?he promises that he will prove it.he only met ow a few weeks before he got a phone and began the text relationship,are you saying that this short permission giving process means that he had been unfaithfull before or was detached for ages? Would he be detached when we were not having sex?

cabbageroses yes, the word relational is used in psychology and psychotherapy. Relational psychotherapy means psychotherapy that focuses on interpersonal relationships, and ways of relating to another. It's a perfectly sensible word - language is alive, no?

As for the OP, um yes, I have been there. And yes, I am honestly and truly happy again, but, on the other hand, no I still don't trust him. I can be happy and content and still not trust him, because there are other sources of contentment in my life not just my marriage. The marriage is ok, on a good day, and actually I see the affair as a positive thing in that it moved us beyond some problems and woke us both up a bit, and in many ways brought us closer. But I'm not sure if I will ever completely trust again. It was about 4 years ago I think.

It's well worth the effort to try and repair your relationship, but it takes a lot of time, and don't expect it to all blow over quickly.

Thought I'd throw in my tuppenny worth though I dont want to lower the generally positive tone of this thread.... my now xp had an affair over 10 years ago. Was working with OW etc etc. He told me after I found out I was pregnant (!) and I was up for going it alone but his complete mortification about what he had done, attentiveness towards me and willingness to move out of the situation convinced me it could be water under the bridge.

Several happy years followed, but in the last few years he became increasingly emotionally and physically withdrawn and a few months ago I got the "i love you but i'm not in love with you" line ... Perhaps we didnt work through everything that needed to be worked through then. But over the last few months I find myself wondering if I should have known better ...

I want to believe it can in some cases strengthen a relationship by addressing/resolving issues and increasing communication but sadly that hasnt been my experience.

I'm sorry but if your dp has an affair it does reflect badly on the primary relationship. It shows he is an arse not to be trusted and obviously not commited enough sorry. It dosn't mean it's YOUR fault but i would question if i wanted to be with a cheater. No excuses should be made.

I meant to say it is ALWAYS his fault.

Nooka, I'm sorry I never came back to thank you for giving that detailed and very instructive account of what happened in your marriage. Somewhat relevant to my own situation I think, at least in that there was quite a lot of discord before the affair happened - and yet you still managed to recover. I only wish that he and I were not from different continents and he could simply live around the corner from us for DS's sake. I would love to get the space that you had through your separation, but I cannot stay here living on my own in a foreign country that I am not wild about just for DS. How long exactly was your separation again? You were basically seeing him the whole time? Weren't you terrified of what that would mean for the kids if it didn't work out (and I'm so glad it did of course!)?

SmallSteps - How completely crap. So what were the circumstances of your ultimate split? As other threads have shown the "I love you but am not in love with you" line can often mean an affair is going on (though I myself dither about this because even though I never said it to my husband I am pretty sure I thought it to myself before I found out about his affair, yet doing the same thing never crossed my mind). Did he have another one, or did you just part on the basis of lost love? Id also really like to know iIn what way you think that maybe you failed to work some things out after the affair. Did you guys not talk it all through over and again at the time? That is certainly what H and I have done, it is only a month now but there was nothing new left to say after a couple of weeks to be honest. No stone has been left unturned. It seems to me that H has been through a massive learning process, I can't tell you how many times he has said that it will never happen again, with me or with anyone if this marriage doesn't survive. But obviously I'm looking to other peoples' experiences for lessons, so thanks for any that you can give.

I'm partially amused at the hijack about the word "relational" because last week, my company learned that we'd been successful in winning a new contract with an organisation with strong links to academia - and having re-read it this weekend, the word "relational" was used throughout the very complex tender bid that my team and I wrote . So I'll keep using it........and thanks Nimpy.

Nimpy's post also prompted me to echo a very important point that she raised and has links with the above bit of good news for my company. I think it's terribly important that if you're facing a trauma like this, you find other things that define you and make you happy, not relying exclusively on your marriage or your DCs. I know this really helped me, because although it was a time of great unhappiness, I had always gained my esteem from lots of other areas of my life and not just my marriage; motherhood, my career, my lovely friendships, my interests and passions in life.

If it turns out that these have taken a back seat because you have been putting everyone else first, then an affair discovery is a wonderful opportunity to get the life you want, as well as a better marriage. That way you are building up your own reserves of happiness from within and it's not solely dependent on your romantic relationship.

Scattermummy sorry, just seen this. Can I suggest you PM me or perhaps start a new thread, detailing your particular circumstances? I don't think this thread is necessarily going to be helpful, given how it's developed in recent days. I'll be happy to help you though.

Hi Lost, my thoughts are as follows: previously we were young (20s) no excuses but I thought we had enough love to go the distance. Yes we talked it out and it really seemed to be behind us.

More recently we had grown more distant - work, kidz etc. Possibly not putting enough time into our relationship. But I also think (and our counsellor also raised this last year) that he has some long standing childhood issues that he can't acknowledge. They didnt seem so significant then. Maybe the kids have got to an age where the situation has "triggered" this seemingly unresolvable situation. Definitely an EA, but our communication since starting the counselling (and possibly raising the challenging possibilities) mean that he is so distant that I'm not sure I'll ever really understand or know all the details.

Though I have to say that I had to do everything possible to know that we had reached the end of the road. Its deeply sad, but until he can take responsibility, there is nothing else that can be done.

And now it is as though he is someone I don't know at all :( But better to know now (knocking 40) than struggle on for endless years of heartache...

Sounds like WWIFN has got a bit of a formula, and it would be really good to have a separate thread on it all for people to refer to directly. If there is any way to deal not just with the affair, but with any other outstanding issues that would be ideal! Or maybe another way of putting it is for both parties to take responsibility for their stuff, and to keep making time for the relationship. Hope this is useful :)

Hi lost, yes I can see that's much more difficult, and we almost got there as when dh decided he wanted to emigrate he wanted to continue some sort of shared care (but for years rather than for days, idiot!). Opting for a shared residence approach with children who are at school is very restrictive because essentially neither parent can move (well I suppose it is possible but difficult).

We lived separately for about two years, and at the beginning I was determined that it would be temporary so I didn't really think much ahead, and then after a while it became normal I suppose. When dh said he wanted to move to Canada I went to the lawyer to make sure that he couldn't take the children with him and I would have fought that tooth and nail.

I also wanted to second what WWIFN said in her last post. I don't believe that 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' and I think that life would have been a great deal better if dh hadn't gone off the rails (we would have been a great deal better off to start with). But losing dh (even temporarily) helped me to take steps to come to terms with a lot of my past baggage, and to rediscover that I had great friends and a wonderful family. I am a lot more resilient now, but being betrayed has left it's scars, both on me personally and on our relationship.

Absolutely, it was hard work, and soul crushing at times but for us, the best thing that happened because it changed us. We started listening and growing together. It was been a year (to the day actually) that our recovery to this point began. His affair came to light dec 13th 2010

Blackcoffee - that is so heartening! I wish you all the best and hope it keeps on getting better :) Well done to you both, that is very special...

thankyou. if you both really want it, it can always be saved. Hard work and honesty can get you there in the end. If he doesn't want to work for it. Then hes not worth it.