shame and guilt - long

[howdiditcometothis]

I am engulfed with guilt and shame for my actions (in short ? an emotional affair that got physical twice ? backstory
) and I expect that I will always feel this way. I?ve ruined my life and trashed my wedding vows and we will never recover from it.

Sorry for using this place to vent. It has been a safe place for me to do that in the past and people have given me so much to think about previously and helped me to order my thinking (as well as some deserved b***ings).

Recognising the damage that I?ve done and the pain I have caused and continue to cause haunts me. I?ve spent a lot of time trying to redirect my energy and pouring my attention into my family life. Things have improved to a point I didn?t think we could get back to. Having come this far I can see that the relationship is salvageable and that is what I must do for everyone. This is a step forward from the brink I was on where I was definitive about wanting out and wanting to be on my own. If we can make it work it will be so much better for DD (3).

So, to the present. I cannot bring myself to be intimate with DH. I can see that he is attractive and I want to be able to be intimate because I can see that it will help to heal things and without that intimacy, the relationship will surely never survive. We are now into years plural rather than months since. I have quite a physical reaction to any suggestion of it (aversion) which I try and suppress. I don?t know why but I suspect it is linked to the guilt and the shame I feel. However hard I try to overcome it, I hit a brick wall.

And there is a pervasive sadness and sense of loss in my life now. I miss the OM although I do not want him in my life. We have extremely little contact now, working towards none at all. I cannot shake a sense of responsibility for him and what has happened to his life in the last 2 years. We have met up twioce in the last 9 months and each time was painful in the sense of sharing an understanding of the awfulness of our actions. These were not meetings to regress to what had happened but to try and make sense of it. He expressed anger at himself, at me at our mutual stupidity and selfishness. He talked about the impact of his actions on his family and how disgusted he is with himself. How he feels unable to get over the fact that he crossed such a moral line. How much he believes in marriage and how he cannot believe how he could be capable of messing with two marriages. He talked of completely losing it with someone who was attached who he (maybe mistakenly) felt was coming onto him. Verbally assaulted her in rage at the prospect of it. We both have struggled with previously thinking of ourselves as good people and not feeling like we have any solid ground under our feet any longer. If we were capable of adultery, what hope is there. I?ve sat and cried with him. Sad, stupid, selfish fools in crisis finding solace together. He says that he does not know what he can be to me. Best to withdraw altogether but we have both found it difficult to make the definitive and final push away. We both know that there is no future of any kind for us and nor do we deserve one but it is hard to push away somebody altogether that you feel understands you so well. We can?t be friends to each other and we certainly can?t be ?more? but for all that I pray to find the strength to never ever see him again in any capacity. He is clear that he would never ever cross any line with me. There is no sense in it. I miss him more for his friendship and advice and guidance, wit and sharp thinking than for any of the other stuff. I know I have to leave it be but it is very difficult when it feels like the best friend you?ve ever had who can read you and see right into you is so toxic to you. Meeting him ruined my life but the disgust I feel at my actions cannot bring me to hate him or even dislike him.

So many lies and damage done. The shame I feel is like a burning sensation in my chest. It wakes me up in the night and makes me want to throw up when I catch sight of DH or DD on certain days.

I?ve tried to tell DH but I?m too much of a coward to force the rest of the truth on him. To admit that I fell deeply in love with somebody else. That the pain of not seeing him has caused me to question my sanity at times. That I became a bad person as a result of it.

I?ve made progress with my DD in the last year, I?ve found a better balance with work and home. I feel a better mum for it although I still loathe myself for what has happened.

I know that the guilt and the shame are part of the punishment and I know I don?t deserve anything different but I want to heal things, I want a better future and more stable home for my DD and I want to try and repair some of the damage I?ve done.

I'm sorry but to meet to cry over what you've done to your families sounds incredibly self-indulgent.

And you talk more about your feelings towards the OM than you do regarding your dh. Do you love your dh?

Tbh, if you feel aversion to the idea of sex with him, I've no idea how you come back from that or if you can. Don't stay with him out of guilt - you'd be better forging your own path - and he would too, with a chance to meet someone who is attracted to him.

Counselling maybe?

I've read your prev thread. I'm just going to come out and say this.

I think your self-flagellation is out of proportion to your crime. To the point of pathology, frankly. You had an affair, you revealed part of it to your H to ensure you can hang on to the guilt of being dishonest, and then you commenced with the beating-self-with-birch-twigs-till-death part.

I'm sorry to say it, but that is actually quite ridiculous. It's not a sensible way to deal with the problem. You are using these emotions to distract yourself from something, I would bet money on that.

I think you are quite drunk on it actually -- the self-loathing. It's now part of your connection to the OM, part of the set of powerful emotions that you've used to bond with him. They are part of your intimacy with him. I'm quite sure that there's a large part of you that would not give up the loathing, for fear that your life would become boring and grey without the intense emotion, and the connection it consolidates with the OM.

You talk about this man like he's your grand passion, like the affair is something that great novelists would long to immortalize in florid prose.

Actually, mature love is not like that. It's not a compulsion or something that ruins you. Infatuation, & relationships that feed unresolved subconscious issues, DO feel like that though. They're addictive, heady, painful, all-consuming, they distract you from EVERYTHING you should hold dear. But they're not real. All that emotion is bubbling up from something inside YOU, completely independent from him and his qualities.

It sounds to me like you have deep-seated self-loathing, combined with an odd sort of pride that you are "different" from ordinary people, that originated long before the OM was on the scene. When he appeared, you probably clung to him because he mirrored these things back to you, helped you ignore the things that you REALLY need to face, and that was intoxicating.

You need to put the shame aside and start examining yourself with compassion, honesty and curiosity. There's a monster under the bed, somewhere in your life. Once you find it and face it, you'll be shocked to find this OM suddenly looks quite small, human, frail and a bit pathetic.

If you really wanted to resolve this situation, you would have cut him off immediately and spent all your energy in psychotherapy. I'm not saying that to shame you shame is useless, what you need to understand is your motive, and to work from there I'm just pointing out that your actions don't line up to your words. You are hiding something from yourself.

If you've been in therapy, and it hasn't helped, look for someone else. A healthy person grieves a major loss for a period of 6-18 months; if the negative emotions are still preoccupying you two years on, you need professional assistance. You have taken this too too far. There is something in this situation that you are stoically ignoring, and that's why it's dragging on. The shame and guilt are, imo, fabrications that you're using to ignore the real issue.

I'm just some random internet person, but that's my take on it. Sorry for the long disjointed rambling. Hope this post is helpful despite that.

Hello howdid, the first thing I would say is I am sorry you are and have been in so much pain. I understand the hard line you are taking against yourself, and that you want to voice it hear to make sure no one thinks you are considering your actions lightly.

However, I would respectfully suggest that your guilt and shame are possibly holding you back from moving on. You had an affair of some kind. That is devastating to all involved, I'm sure, but it does not make you different from a huge number of people in the world and you have learnt a really big life lesson from it which means you are unlikely to make the same mistake again and some wisdom has been granted you. Forgive yourself. Believing you are a good person is the first step to being one.

Now for the hard bit. If you are still seeing the OM and sharing any emotional pain you are also holding yourself back. Crying with someone is more intimate than shagging them. Supporting someone through the loss of each other is still supporting them, it is still emotionally leaning on someone that you must set free. The brain is very good with rationalising endings if it no longer has to process the object of the trauma (and affection). I would suspect that any emotional link to the OM will prevent you truly loving your partner properly long term. That is why anger and hate are such important, though unpleasant parts of breaking up with someone. They don't last forever but they are invaluable. Stop focusing on your wrongs and concentrate on OM's if you must live with fault and blame. You are clearly still in the thrall of the love that you shared. I'm not claiming that was meaningless but it is irrelevant and needs to be seen as what it is just another potential relationship with loads of flaws that you are choosing not to go through.

No contact is essential. If work makes this impossible then contact must only be in the presence of others and cold and professional. no phone calls, no emails, nothing. If you cannot do that then you do not truly want to rebuild your marriage, it is the only measure by which your commitment can be judged. I promise that if you have chosen to stay in your relationship, then something deep inside knows that the relationship with OM would have been flawed in its own way too. Stop canonising it. If someone or something had halted your relationship with your OH in its early days you would have been just as traumatised and lost as you say you are now. He is worth just as much if not more than the man you were infidelitous with. Romanticise that.

As for the physical, that's very personal to everyone, but I promise you a big part of that disgust will be linked to your necessary detachment from your OH to do what you did and also a latent fear of 'betraying' your lover. There is no betrayal there and when you feel able to have sex you should do so in an attempt to rebond and normalise him as your primary source of physical affection. The most important thing is to cut off completely any source of emotional comfort from the OM, even if that is taking the form of shared guilt, that is just as intimate as any other form of sharing and you will never recover if you choose to keep feeding it. I would also suggest individual counselling to get through what is a wihthdrawal from an emotional addiction. Like all withdrawal it is hellish until it is not. Every time you contact you set yourself back by six months (which is about the average time of no contact for the depression to really lift.)

I wish you all the best.

Read this to see how common and practical what you are going through is.

www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5060_qa.html

This is exactly what I need. I need the spotlight shining on it because otherwise I only have my own judgement on any of it and I know how flawed it has become.

I always end up going on and on about him and it probably doesn't reflect the progress of sorts that has been made. I do accept that it's gone and for all of my protestations previoulsy I'm not sure I ever accepted that properly. I secretly had a vision that somehow everything would come out in the wash and OM and I would end up together and the hurt to others would somehow be minimised. I do now KNOW that will never ever happen and I deep down accept that. I have glimpses of clarity that see that the problem is me, there's something f*ed up with me and I would most likely also ruin that relationship if it was ever given a chance in a real life situation. It woudl be flawed. I can even see that DH is better looking, more attractive than OM and a better person.

I'd also say there have been glimpses between DH and I of our old selves before everything went wrong. But the intimacy thing is a massive wall between us and I feel physically sick trying to overcome it. It's revulsion at myself not at him.

It sounds like its back to counselling with some brutal honesty. I think perhaps you are all right in that there is something I'm hiding/something 'under the bed' but I honestly don't understand or know what that is.

Accepting that you won't end up together is a big step and a good one. But it pales in comparison to the practical, unromantic and important understanding that you will not contact or reply to contact from him or see him.

If you do that for a long enough period your pain will be over. Think about that. Think about what a good friend to you that pain and longing has become. Now be really really honest with yourself about whether you want the pain to be over or not. Because the worst thing, sometimes, to realise about ourselves is that we can get over things and they actually weren't necessarily the huge, dreadful, life changing things we imagined. In a strange way your pain is protecting you. Because deep down maybe you worry that if you can get over him and be okay then what does it mean about what you did? That it was essentially a lovely but opportunistic transient affair to give you both ego boosts and a rush of endorphins and youth again? Far better to frame oneself as a tragic lover sacrificing everything for the greater good of others. Don't fall in love with your tragedy, fall in love with your family again.

And also, OP, think about what it means if you accept that you won't ever be together BUT continue to be in contact. Then it just means that you want the taboo thrill and emotional support of another man with whom you share a secret, alongside your husband. That, surely, is worse.

The problem with intimacy with your OH is that you share a much more profound secret with another man of which your OH knows nothing. So he can't compete unless you either tell him, or ensure no sharing at all with the OM. Put that emotional sharing onto your counsellor and OH. Intimacy will return if the avenue it has at the moment (away from the marriage towards lover) is blocked.

Perhaps, in some sort of weird way, you feel that you are being unfaithful to the OM by resuming your sex life with your dh.

Just a thought.

Right... Stop thinking and start doing:

• Cease all contact with the OM and vow to your husband that you will never contact him again? You have continued the affair by containing contact, it has not ended yet.
• Tell your husband everything, including recent meetings and all the key bits of the affair, including your feelings. He deserves to know exactly who you are so he can make the decision to stay or go in full knowledge.

As mentioned above, go to www.marriagebuilders.com and do everything Dr Harley says for an in love affair like ours he'll set you straight. He also has a great section on sexual aversion. Your husband needs sexual fulfilment and you eed to find a way past our own issues to give it to him.

Stop self flagellating and start doing.

I remember your previous threads. Has your DH ever known that you slept with OM?

It seems as if you are enjoying being some sort of martyr here, which isn't going to help anyone or anything in this situation. You've wallowed in it for long enough, you need to take active steps to move on.

Life doesn't just happen to you, we all make choices. You chose to be unfaithful, you chose to stay. Now make the best of it, before you find everyone around you as miserable as you want to paint yourself.

Sorry, just read your follow up post op. Aren't you hiding the fact that you were physically unfaithful behind your husbands back? I don't think you will ever find any 'closure' from the OM until you stop deceiving your husband. He deserves the chance to make his own choices with all the information made available to him.

You feel bad because you continue to do a bad thing.

LadyMedea, suggesting OP get past her own issues to fulfil her husbands needs is like the surrendered wife shite. And as for the marriage builders site, some advice on there is questionable.

This situation is not cut and dried, that OP must sort herself out and get on with it. OP is in love with someone else, and love is not something that you can just switch off especially if you are trying to do whats best for everyone else.

Yes OP, maybe you can avoid contact, get on with it, but I would guess that part of the problem is that you are trying to deny a love you feel ( only you can know if you really love OM ). Accepting that its part of you may lessen the pain. You love and are loved IYSWIM - and I don't just mean the relationship with OM.

SirSugar, forgive me but this is moving towards splitting the thread. I think it's really harsh for people just to say 'pull yourself together' etc and that's not what I've said at least. I've been on both sides of this, I understand one can truly love someone and miss them. I understand you can love TWO people and want what's best for both of them, or yearn for one whilst appreciating and loving the other. Emotions cannot be turned on and off, of course.

I only recommended marriagebuilders one page on ending an affair because it reveals so starkly how common and familiar the patterns are there on the trajectory of an affair. This does not mean the love from them is meaningless. It does not mean they are 'false' as relationships. It just shows that there are certain things that work if you really really want to stay in your marriage and there are certain things that just never do. A bit like an addict, one really needs to hit rock bottom in an affair to go cold turkey, some consider suicide and seriously seriously decide that they would rather do anything than keep going through the deception and hurt and decide once and for all to put the happiness of someone else above their own pain. That is, after all, pretty much the definition of love, not 'he understands me' or 'he makes me feel good about myself' but what you will sacrifice for that person.

I don't think anyone should stay in a marriage if they don't want to and would fully support people getting together if they really really, clear-sightedly believe their life would be happier and better and more fulfilled if they do.

But if the OP really feels such pain and guilt and shame as her title and original post suggest, and still wants what she says she wants which is to stay with her family, there is one simple yet excruciatingly difficult step that will solve that and give her marriage a chance. And that is no contact for a period of 6 months I'd say. If she really can't / won't do that, then she is better off leaving because I promise, the marriage will not improve in that time and she will keep wondering why and blaming herself whilst not doing the one thing that would help. I am deeply sympathetic to love, but people must admit, as I have done in the past, that a portion of the reason she is choosing to stay is because it is easier, because a new relationship with the OM would come with so much baggage, so much guilt, so much complication, that broadly speaking, they are better off staying where they are. This is not just a tragic love story of two people who cannot be together who should be, it is also the story of two people who don't love each other enough to confess to their spouses' and don't deep down think it's worth the hassle to themselves and others to leave. All love, however romantic, is also essentially practical. I know she's in love. It's awful. I sympathise greatly. But there, sadly, it is.

Its a marriage, a relationship.
it can be good, bad or indifferent.
You can't make yourself feel something you don't feel and why on earth do you feel you have to?
This is the yr 2012, not 1952.

still don't like that marriage builders site, way too stepford for me

You will get over it but you have to want to move forwards for it to cease causing you pain. Stop beating yourself up and get on with your life. Re LadyMedeas advice you so do not have to provide sexual favours for your husband and my blood boils that this is suggested. Think more though for yourself and what you can get from resuming your sex life with hubby (if you really want to).

Hopefully your outpouring on your post will be the push you need to get on.

Good post oikopolis

Am not sympathetic towards you - my life was destroyed by my partner's affair. Feel very sorry for your H

"it is also the story of two people who don't love each other enough to confess to their spouses'"

That observation should echo, OP. It hits the nail squarely on the head.

Ask yourself this: if you were on your deathbed, of the men in your life, which would be the one that you would want to be with you.

To be honest, I think if you have any respect for your DH, you're most honorable move now is to leave the relationship and let him get on with his life. He'll get over you if you stop messing him around and you might find someone that you can have a proper relationship with too once you lose the baggage.

Just to correct I'm not suggesting 'sexual favours'. But sexual fulfilment is a legitimate emotional need of a spouse and should be part of the way you love each other. I'm not talking about just doing it as a favour, but doing it because you love your spouse. If sex has been part of your relationship before, it needs to be part of your relationship again - you want him to give you what you need, you need to prepare to work towards the point where you can give him what you need.

And I second vanderelsken, wise words.

Marriage builders is not perfect - although I don't think it is the same as the surrendered wife btw as it asks both parties to sign up to the same set of conditions.

I'm a strong feminist but I don't read that as meaning I must be independent at all costs, I want to be part of a true partnership. Marriage builders is strong medicine and even gets too much for me at times - but I agree with the fundamental principles of honest, joint agreement and spending quality time together. To stay married you have to prioritise it, it's that simple. At that means not putting your own needs first all the time. An affair is one of the most selfish things to do, and the other posters are right, if OP can't let go and commit to her marriage she should let her husband go.

OP, I strongly recommend going on the Ending Affair Support forum on the ivillage website (just Google 'ending affair support'). You will get lots of support there.

You know in your heart you can't continue to see this man - you admit you can't be friends and you certainly can't be more.