Getting over anger about an affair

[purplepea]

I found out about my husband's affair over a year ago. It had been going on for a year, someone he worked with. Utterly hideous, I was suffering from PND, had 2 young kids etc etc. I knew something was worng and challenged him on a number of occasions, but he always denied things. I saw a text from her on his phone at the beginning of last year which started the process of me finding out the truth - although it took until May for it all to come out (or at least as much as I know, not sure if there isn't more).
He has had therapy and we have been to counselling together which definitely helped, but I still can't get over the anger. The slightest things trigger memories of what happened or horrible things he did/said to me. I still have difficulties sleeping - my brain has this very annoying habit of shrinking away from things during the day and then letting it all splurge out at night which means lots of bad dreams and then lying awake wondering what I should do.
Anyway, enough rambling, I just want to know if anyone has any advice about how to put everything behind me. I need/want to move on but I am failing abysmally at the moment.

Is he doing all he can to try and regain your trust? Is he helping you and being loving? If so, then maybe some counselling on your own might help.

Hi Visitor. I have had counselling myself. I had PTSD after the birth of my first child which I basically ignored until everything went pear shaped after the birth of my second and the PTSD morphed into full blown depression. I saw a psychiatrist and then a counsellor for a number of months as well as being on anti-depressants. Had just come off the pills when I found out about the affair, which was spectacular timing.
He says that he is trying, has changed jobs and feels like he is making an effort. its just that I don't see that but have difficulty telling him what it is I need. I say that I need reassurance and support but he doesn't really understand. I also say that I need to understand why it happened and how he could have put our family in jeopardy but we never get to the bottom of it. He had had emotional affairs in the past and had promised he would never do anything to hurt me , but then this happened.

It all happened when I was at the lowest possible ebb and I have lost all self confidence. I just don't know if I can forgive him for it.

He needs to put some more work in to reassuring you. Seems like now he's broken it off and changed jobs, he's done his bit. More counselling may help, as this is now a completely different issue and you need help to rebuild your confidence, and maybe a frank and honest chat with him about exactly how you're feeling. Write it down for him if you find it difficult to say. I completely understand why you're finding it difficult to forgive him.

Take care of yourself. xxx

Hello purplepea, I am also trying to decide whether I can ever forgive my husband's recent (Xmas), very brief and meaningless affair, so I can't give you any advice based upon the length of time I have had to recover. But a couple of things strike me:

First of all, from what I see on this forum, even under the best circumstances (you can see from other members here who had healthy marriages prior to the affair and whose husbands did everything right subsequently), it takes years to get over an affair (I don't want to exaggerate - 2 seems to be a frequent number that comes up!). You're a year in - don't be too hard on yourself.

Many of the MN survivors also separated temporarily from their husbands which gave them some necessary space and forced their husbands to get off their dithering fence. Not an option for me, unfortunately, as I am in South America and sure as hell am not going to stay here whilst separated, even temporarily. I don't know whether your situation (support with kids, primarily) would allow this. I think it can be really healthy. The close presence of someone who has betrayed you so profoundly, even if you still love them, can stop wounds from healing

Finally, like TheVisitor, I have to ask you if you really feel your husband has done all he can to help you get over this. I'm sure TheV didn't seriously mean that by breaking it off and changing jobs that he has done his bit, full stop. By doing that he has merely laid the groundwork for you to overcome it. He has to show on a daily basis that he loves you, wants you, will do anything to keep you. I just ranted a bit to this effect on this thread earlier: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/1178609-Recovery-after-an-affair?pg=10. IF he is doing that and your anger is still undiminished, then you should definitely think about counselling. You should think about counselling either way, in fact. You are suffering the effects of trauma, after all!

Big hugs, I wish you the very best.

PP, just realised that you also said that he had emotional affairs in the past. You mentioned it like this was something rather incidental. But doesn't this mean, surely, that he is a serial offender? I myself have wrestled with the significance of emotional vs. physical affairs (my H's was purely physical, no romance or attachment involved), but those on this forum whose partners have had EAs only clearly find it just as difficult (if not more?) to overcome.

If he is, in fact, a serial offender, then he has EVEN MORE work to do to overcome your anger and grief. How can you trust him? Why should you? What has changed?

Counselling - for both of you.

Thanks lost. Ugh, I don't know. He says he has changed and would never do it again, but how can I ever really know that. Sometimes (most of the time) I think that I am just a total mug for staying with him. Trust is a massive issue, I don't know when I will ever be able to trust him again, but how can I live the rest of my life without trust?

The emotional affair was definitely not incidental, I found out about it days after I found out I was pregnant with my second daughter and I think it played a massive part in my descent into depression. I did ask my husband to leave last year when things got too much, and he did for a couple of weeks but he was back and forth all the time as we wanted to keep things as normal as possible for the girls, so I don't know what good it did really.

You poor thing going through all this so far away from home (sorry, asssuming you are from UK). How are you? Do you have any family/close friends over there that you can talk/rant to?

PP, he had one EA, or more (you used plural above)?

You can't ever KNOW for certain, you just have to make an informed judgement and then try to work on internalising it. But it doesn't seem to me that you can do that without having a neutral observer come in from the outside, ie. counsellor - most of all to help your husband work through the background/triggers to what he did. (If he's serious he will not object for a second.) And you can't do it either unless you feel that your H has told you EVERYTHING that you need to know about how and why these things happened and why he thinks it will never happen again. I'm hoping WhenwillIfeelnormal will come in at this stage and give you some of her brilliant advice. Every time she gets online it's like the heavens open and a shaft of light descends!

For my part, my husband's suffering has been far-out enormous over the last month, and that is what allows me to believe that he won't do it again. As he says - not with me, not with anyone else. As he also so says "I had to eat s* to know what it tastes like". It went so awfully for him (Psychobitch Inc.!) that to be honest , why would he want to do it again?! My head believes it, my heart - if we stay together - will need to do some catching up. He did this while I was back home for Xmas, and as another poster said to me, won't I be thinking about it all the time the next time I travel? Probably, yes, the first time, the second time, but then I expect it will get easier.

All that, of course, if I do decide to stay with him, which is far from assured. I'm not sure I can forgive.

Yep, it's pretty crap being in South America, not least because I come all the way down here, begin a new life just so that he can get his act together and then he does this to me! There is some slight advantage in that I have not yet wanted to tell my family (always dubious about the relationship, so plenty of humiliation involved) or close friends back home (if we stick together I'm not sure that I will want them to know as it may make social life very difficult). I have told a couple of new friends here who have been great to me (still not the same as age-old friends), and one friend overseas who I love but don't see too often and so whose attitude to H would not be too much of a problem. The biggest problem is, as I say, not being able to just chuck him out, which I would have done on March 2nd (D-day) if I had been at home. Not necesssarily definitively - I just need space!

Do you think you will be able to go for a combo of individual and couples counselling?

We are going for counselling, btw, H probably more into it even than me. We'll see where it goes, important to have a good counsellor obviously.

The main EA was with one person, but with a hiatus in the middle. Other times he has got too close to people, always from work. He has been to counselling on his own - both one on one and group counselling. He'd actually started this whilst he was having the affair. I could see things weren't right and having been through therapy myself thought it might be useful for him. Do you know, I even suggested he went away for the weekend on his own to get some space and work things out. What sort of fool am I? he says he did go away on his own, but who knows.
We also did 3 months of counselling together, which helped but didn't give me the definitive answers I guess I am looking for.

Maybe I just have to accept that those definitive answers don't exist? He says that the counselling really helped and that he understands his issues now and thinks he knows how to recognise them when they arise and do something about it. I'm not so sure. He started his new job in December and the first couple of months were very intense, which I understand, but he totally withdrew from me and the girls, which is what he has done in the past. I eventually picked him up on it and he said that after I'd raised it he rrealised what he was doing, but what scares me is that I needed to tell him it was happening before he saw it. he thinks I should be pleased he accepted it when I told him and doesn't really see why I am worried he didn't see it himself.

I think its a really good sign that your husband is almost keener for the counselling than you. It definitely sugggests that he really wants to work things out and change himself to make sure it doesn't happen again. My view was always that I wanted to do everything I could to try and make the relationship work, and if it didn't at least I could look my girls in the eye and say I tried.

I can really understand your reticence about telling friends/family. OUr immediate families know as well as a small number of our closest friends. My family don't know the whole truth to be honest, not sure how they would react. He initially told me the affair had lasted 3 months which is what my family think. They don't know it was a full year.

How did you find out? I found a text which confirmed my suspicions, but initially my husband tried to say it was just an EA. Only found out about the physical side of things when she contacted me at work. Not the best day of my working life.

Hello PP, two psychobitches then? Yes, she called me at home and proceeded to tell me what appears to have been a bunch of lies designed to maximise the hurt (appears - have evidence that a couple of things were lies, choose to believe husband on rest as a result).

On what you mention about him withdrawing from you after starting a new job, maybe I'm being obtuse but I don't really see a connection here by definition? Starting a new job is massively challenging, you don't need me to tell you that. Seems to me that its worlds apart from getting "close" to women at work, which in the context of two full-blown affairs is totally unacceptable. Maybe you can explain the connection.

What is the difference, also, between an EA and "getting too close"? I could be wrong but it sounds like your husband has put you through the mill over an extended period. So even if he is doing absolutely everything right (and I'm still not fully clear on that), it will still take a lot of time to heal. I would have thought that after one year you should be feeling improvement though, so if you don't that seems to me to be a problem. Did you do the joint counselling after this last affair?

I'd love to see WhenwillIfeelnormal come in on this. Perhaps you could PM her?