Surviving an affair? Anyone fancy a support thread?

[Strangedays]

Hi

I've read a lot of older threads like this but is anyone else wanting a current thread for people who've decided to work with the marriage?

I'm about 5 or 6 weeks in after 'revelation day' and I'd love some company from others in a similar boat and you fab people further down the line who've managed to make a go of things.

Some days are good, some ok and there are times when I think I'm going mental.

Anyone else?

I'll log back in after the school run.

my dh has done most of those things, though he won't read the shirley glass book as he finds it too judgemental. he hasn't been to individual counselling partly as we are paying for it for me as well as a couple, and we're spending a fortune at the moment! He's not very good at dealing with me when i have a bad day, we end up arguing with all of my faults coming up. i think i'm trying to change and improve our marriage, but i feel like he's just carrying on as normal. i want to feel special, but i don't think he knows how, not sure i even know what he should do!

I am 3 months in, he moved out 10 days after I found out as he felt i was 'hounding him.'

Communication poor wrt our relationship. But we spoke last night. He is still in contact with OW (and lying), we dont know whether to reconcile or break for good. I cannot take the limbo anymore. I phoned him this morning and said he needed to cease all contact with ow immediuately and I wanted to be present when he made that call. He has until Sunday to do it.
I said it was the first step if there is to be any kind of reconciliation.

I dont think that he will. He has done nothing to help me to heal.

mefifi - you are right in saying that this is the first step if he wants to reconcile.

molly - I wonder why he thinks the book is judgmental...Could you bring up the issues you have mentioned at counselling, or talk to him about what kind of things he thinks he should be doing on a bad day.
You say that it ends up with your faults coming up - this sounds like he is not taking full responsibility for his choices, that he is blaming the affair on you and that he is rewriting history.

Remember that it was HIS choice to resolve things by having an affair. Its about him and his issues - you can only take half of the responsibility for the weaknesses in the marriage.

Hi all, 4 months and 10 days in and going through a horrible phase. Like Mefifi, I feel like I'm in limbo. I just discovered my H lied about the bonus he received last month. It's a least twice as much as he told me. Why lie about something that trivial when you're trying te save your marriage? He's also incredibly secretive with his phone still, only checking texts when im not around. And no I have no access to emails or anything.... Does not sound positive does it?! I wrote him a letter today that I'll give tonight when kids are in bed. Basically says how I feel; sad, disappointed, confused and hurt. There are 2 options in the letter and he needs to choose one. If that means he needs to move out for a litle while to make up his mind, fine by me. We went to Relate for 6 weeks and all was fine afterwards, or so I thought...
Does anyone feel they are being scammed by their husbands? Thats how I feel and I need it to stop. If it means the end of my marriage, my financial stability etc, so be it. At least then I can sleep at night without having to worry about what H is up to. It's nice to have a thread here and read the same things I feel as at least I know I'm not being weird but just a normal woman whose been stabbed right through the heart and it feels that these scars are being poked constantly and have no chance to heal, IYKWIM

Im havin a bad day today :(
OW is still hounding H with calls and e mails to work - it was her only way of contacting him. she e mails really nasty messages, then rings to apologise then gets nasty and he puts the phone down. She had to call to his office last week on a business matter and rang really upset asking could they meet just for 5 mins and he did! As much as Im gutted at least he told me or am I just clutching at straws here? He has e mailed me today to say she is still at it asking if they can be friends and he has said no. I feel like we've taken 10 steps back. I wish she would p**s off shes driving me mad never mind him :(

Doesn't sound good Mimie . Also had financial secrecy/infidelity with my DH - it was all the same bad, deceitful, lying behaviour that led to the affair and I think you have to look at it in the same way.

My DH's childhood led to issues with lying and secrecy and he took these issues into adulthood. It was exxtremely hard to change habits of a lifetime, he had an automatic default setting of covering up things, lying etc (not to mention a dose of arrogance and selfishness thrown in too ). Like you say, it was a trivial thing to lie about so why lie. This is something you really need to challenge, it sounds as if he has happily settled back into things(Relate having no effect). DH was open with his mobile (had a 2nd one to conduct affair ), gave me full access to emails, deleted his facebook a/c and gave me all financial details I wanted to know. He did these things to make me feel better because, quite frankly, if you want to conduct an affair you will find a way (OW knew where he worked etc so could get a message to him if she wanted and vice a visa) - only they can control their fidelity.

You need to set your boundaries and it is down to him to do everything he can to help you heal and save the marriage. It doesn't sound good atm .

doinmybest, can your DH not get his techy dept to block her emails/calls etc. My friend's DH had to do this to his OW who wouldn't take no for an answer - I think his boss intercepted the calls/emails in the end and it stopped.

for you at the meeting although my DH did this, thinking it would make her finally stop IYSWIM. As far as I was concerned, the meeting was not necessary and shouldn't happened, DH was scared OW was turning into a bunny boiler. I would have been more than happy to have attended said meeting with him and put her straight. TBH, I think DH did want me to know what bulls**t he had been saying to her and promising her.

Thanks countingto10
Well his 2 options are to start working together with me on our marriage and be open on everything or to call it quits.
Of course i realise that there are still ways to cheat if you really want to but I really think at the moment my H has a "I've got nothing to loose" attitude. Maybe he needs to see what he will loose when he moves out. the OW is also married and her H is blissfully unaware...isn't it incredible how selfish cheaters can be...if this is all blown out in the open, two marriages are destroyed and 4 kids will be heartbroken.

no one in work knows and its not that big tbh, I think hes worried about someone wondering why shes ringing all the time!
H was the same as yours, I think he genuinely thought by meeting her, he could tell her once and for all it was over. At one point he was worried she would do something stupid to herself.
Sometimes I wish I was still ignorant to all this - not coping very well today

It's the arrogance of them. My DH really thought he wasn't arrogant until I pointed out that his behaviour was the height of arrogance (including how he treated his friends). Like none of it was anything to do with me especially the financial stuff - it was family money, not his to do with as he saw fit (to gamble on stock exchange etc ).

Also I had to change and not be afraid to challenge him etc, not to put up with stuff for a quiet life .....

MimieD we sound as if we are in similar places. Although he moved out 10 days after dday. I see him because of DD, but he is very secretive and I was right about my gut feelings re. contact and bullshit.

I cannot make him do anything, but I feel a bit more in control saying explicitly that contact needs to cease and I need to be there for the conversation. By Sunday I will know, and I dont think that he will do it.

MadAboutHotChoc he thinks that I am being unreasonable to say all contact must cease and I must be present for the telephone conversation. Doesnt sound good does it? Am I being too aggressive with the timeline? It has been been 3 months, and I though that although we are livng apart that he had stopped contact.

Countingto10 - what you have said resonates with me, I too have had to challenge my H re finances and insist on all income to be treated as family money, he had a secret credit card and used it to pay for hotels/meals with OW - I told him that I really objected to half of my money being used in this way, he simply saw it as his money as he's the breadwinner, grrr!

doingmybest - sorry to hear its a bad day, your H needs to be more proactive - i,e refuse to take calls, block her email address & mobile number and ignore all attempts to make contact by OW.

mefifi - you cannot change him, but you can change how you deal with him is something I've learned so I think you are right by taking control of the situation. Why on earth does he think its unreasonable?if he wants to stay in the marriage, all contact must stop now not when its more convenient for him! He sounds very much attached to OW.

madabouthotchoc, you are right about him not taking full responsibility. That is what i find hard to deal with, when we see our relationship counsellor and we discuss problems within our marriage he's happy, when we discuss his affair he's not as he feels that he is being judged (when we are only there because of this!).

I don't think he feels guilty enough, that he feels he had his affair for a number of reasons most of which advocate him of responsibility.

We're having an emergency meeting with the relationship counsellor this evening after our argument last night where he went on about how awful i was, etc. This morning i said i wanted him to leave, this isn't because i don't love him, but more because i want him to prove that he loves me. Though he has no idea how to do this! i'm thinking that if he left he would try a bit harder to win me back, though of course he might try less!

Hope today's meeting goes well.

I didn't kick my H out - he moved to the spare room and was deprived of all domestic services (meals, shopping, laundry etc) until I came to a decision. However, many on here have got their Hs to move out and I can see why they have done this - giving him a taste of what life will be like on their own can work in bringing them to their senses.

we don't have a spare room, how long did it take you to come to a decision? some days i think i want him to stay, others i don't!

Dp and I are going to sit down tonight and talk things through. I still want to move out and will do so as soon as I can get money together. I can't bear being in the same house as him at the moment. We need to split, even if it is only temporary. His reaction when I confronted him was the worst thing in all of this and i'm finding that hard to get over. He basically blamed me that I wasn't giving him enough sex so he had to get his kicks elsewhere.

molly - a couple of months, I know what you mean about changing your mind all the time as I felt that too during the first few weeks.

fedup - good luck for tonight. Sadly your H's reaction is very common, they tend to try and shift the blame....

It's been 4 months and i still can't decide! DH doesn't understand and says that he has made his mind up and why haven't i?

Molly - I am not surprised you can't make up your mind and your H needs to understand that even though he says he has made up his mind, his actions do not really reflect this and he needs to work a lot harder and start taking full responsibility instead of blaming you for his issues....

Counselling went really well, she's really good at sticking us back together when we lose our way!

Glad to hear that :)

Thats good to know Molly. I am talking with H about him going to see someonebut he keeps changing his mind. Its more for the guilt to be honest, I think its making him ill. :(

well at least he is guilty. have you been to couples counselling?

I'm 7 months down the line and fwiw, I think for the first 5 months, although I'm convinced he was no longer having contact, H was being completely selfish, no empathy or sensitivity and very much feeling sorry for himself. He had been doing what I asked but no more.
Finally, I saw the situation as it was and I got really angry about how I had been treated and calmly told him that I thought he should leave. When he saw I was absolutely serious, it was like the penny dropped and everything I had wanted to see - concern, anxiety, upset, stress at the thought of not being with me and the kids - seemed to hit him like a ton of bricks.

I questioned whether I could have saved myself 5 months of angst by kicking him out as soon as he told me about the OW but with hindsight, I think by him staying we kept our lines of communication open (however strained they may have been at times!) and had he left, I think I would have gone into survival mode and emotionally shut down, making any reconciliation very difficult.
So it has been long, tiring, painful, expensive and time-consuming but I do feel that we are at the beginning of the right track. Just a question of keeping it there now...

Having a sad day today. I've known since 6th August and I'm still struggling to come to terms with the reality of it. I would have bet the lives of our children that my DH would not shag someone else. That he did so on a drunken night out with the work colleagues where he was working abroad with no 'run up' first is sooo out of character that I'm having trouble getting my head around it. It just doesn't seem real.

The OW took the opportunity to be sent here to work in his office for a couple of months and will be going home soon. I'm wondering whether seeing her (without her knowing) would actually bring home the reality of it? Any ideas? Opinions?

At the moment, I'm almost too ok, IYSWIM.

I do get that feeling you get when you go over a hump back bridge though. That's when I've forgotten for a bit, then it washes over me suddenly again. Any ideas how long that might last please?