I've made a decision

[PTFsWife]

I am going to turn his affair into the best thing that ever happened to our relationship. If he hadn't had his affair, I am sure that we would have continued our non- communicative relationship until the kids left home and then stared at each other over cold toast and thought: why the fuck am I still here?

It is still early days. We have about a billion hurdles to jump, but I know that I do not want to be a divorce statistic. We used to love each other. I believe we can again.

So to all those women out there being told to LTB, before you do, think about whether it isn't worth giving your best to fix it first. I may well be back in months or years saying that I tried and failed. But I am not going to walk out on my vows without a fight. The fact that he wants to fight for us to will make it easier.

I am posting this purely so that I feel as though I am shouting my intention to the world. Keeping it to myself seems quiet and easier to escape from later.

Just remember too that he also said "for better or for worse," but chose to shag someone else for reasons best known to himself.

That's just the thing clam when you go through the process, the reasons for him shagging someone are laid all out and he has to face them alongside the OP through counselling or the like. He can no longer hide away and keep secrets. As I said earlier he has this has to be a two way street. It can be done, it is very, very hard and it may not work. But like the OP I had to know I did everything I could before I gave up, the same has to be from the cheater.

Will you come back op and tell us what he said last night?

We had a very good discussion last night. I asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted us to be together and to have a happy marriage (summarised version). I then painted a picture of what I imagined our marriage could be like. I explained that we had three options: get divorced, stay together for the sake of the kids but not be happy, or work our backsides off to create a marriage that would make us both happy.

I said only one of these was an option for me. That to achieve option 3, would take 110% commitment from both of us. He agreed wholeheartedly. I said that we would need to work together to,create a vision for our marriage and then a plan as to how to achieve it. That we would have to stive to be kind to each other throughout this long process.

Finally I pointed out that while I was happy to take responsibility for my role in creating an unhappy marriage, I would take no responsibility for him having an affair. That was his selfish choice and I will never blame myself for it. He again agreed and apologised.

We agreed to share the marital bed to avoid creating more boundaries between us but that it would be a long slow process with each of us taking small steps everyday. I feel very happy and empowered that I know what we can focus on together through this.

He thanked me for being awesome ( his words)

You are awesome. Best of luck!

Fantastic PTF. Good luck I hope it goes well.

Hi PTF

I wanted to add my support to you, too. You are where I would like to be soon, but can't quite get there yet, due to various circumstances. I would go so far as to say I would like to pilfer your 3 options and give them to my DH too, and see how he responds.

And, for what it's worth, I think you are awesome too, and I really hope your DH does not let you down in this.

Good luck OP

Good luck from here too. He is bloody lucky to have such an awesome wife prepared to give him another chance

I wish you all the best also and I do agree there's far too much LTB on this site instead of, is this worth saving etc?

For me, if my husband had an affair that would be the end of the marriage for me, regardless of his reason/excuse - if the trust is broken then so is the relationship (and the vows) - forever in my book. No matter how bad my relationship became, i.e., no amount of non communication would justify any kind of relationship with any other woman.

I know lots of couples do come back from affairs but I think it's really important you don't just focus on the future and how to make it work but what in fact caused the affair in the first place, esp if you don't want it to happen again in the years to come.

I think you sound awesome too.

I'm sure that you won't always be able to have this optimistic, positive head on and sometimes you'll waver, feel vulnerable, feel angry, feel anxious and so on. Perhaps save this thread and read it for those less strong moments.

I keep thinking about this and what actions I would want to see from my partner if I were in your shoes. It's hard to think about what affirmative actions I would want to see, but all I can think about is passive. I.e. not putting his penis or tongue in to another woman, not lying to me about who he had dinner with, not writing explicit emails to another woman etc.

Active would be: making time, talking honestly, providing open accesd to all devices, organising fun and happy things ( in due course ), including hus wife inall aspects of his life thst she wants. And, as my friend's DH did, transferring all their savings into her name so that she could leave any moment she wished to.

I can't help thinking for all the emotions in your posts there is no mention of any substance to your plan to fix your marriage apart from it not being an option to 'fail' and forcing yourself to share a bed with someone you don't want to share a bed with right now...

I agree with others mentioning cognitive dissonance and I question the ability to fix a relationship and be happy if splitting up is not an option because that means the motivator is not the relationship itself but reluctance to be divorced.

I believe many marriages survive affairs in that many people stay married but I'm not convinced that this is very often happily if the cheated on spouse felt the affair was a big deal to start with...

I suppose the only way I could conceive of it working is to start the whole relationship again from scratch eg move out and start from dating again.

Thanks to all of you offering support.

Offred - I haven't mentioned the substance of my plan yet. But here are some of the things we will do:

• talk and talk and talk - but not to the point that all we do is analyse our relationship. We will do it in bitesize chunks

• we will create a vision of what we want our lives to look like - individiually and then comparing them and coming up with a joint one that we agree on. This will literally be like creating a 'mood board' - using pictures or words.

• creating a list of the areas we need to discuss - some of them very hard e.g. why he had the affair, how he felt during it, what he got from it that he wasn't getting from home, where we went wrong before the affair, what we both would like from the other, the things we like about each other now, the things we liked about each other when we first got married, my anxieties, trust issues, how to ever get back to having sex with each other etc.

• go out and have fun together. Be more couple-centric than kid-centric when we do spend time together ie. show interest in each others lives/work/interests instead of discussing money, kids, household chores

• work on the little things that build affection and love. For example, I was away with my family last week and got back yesterday. I drink skimmed milk. The rest of the family has semi. When I made coffee this morning, there was a full, new bottle of skimmed milk in the fridge. He had thought about me coming home, knew I would want that and went and got some. He did something thoughtful. I recognised it and thanked him for it, instead of either of us taking each other for granted. A small example but the type of things we need to do daily

I am sure there will be more. Much more. Including a list of things we can do when things go wrong, as they no doubt will.

But it's a start - we're starting this evening. I bought two bottles of the wine we served at our wedding. We are opening one tonight when we will begin work on our vision for our lives together. I have said that in a years time, assuming we are still working hard at it and moving together positively, we will have the other.

So he bought a carton of skimmed milk for you and this is him being thoughtful - no offence but I think he needs to do a lot more than that considering he is the one that has broken your marriage.

Good for you being able to even share a house with a man who has done the worst possible betrayal in a marriage, I don't know how long it is since the affair was discovered, but your apparent optimism and taking on a 50% blame in it all is either commendable or in fact, deluded, only time will tell, good luck!

Just be careful your actions aren't subconsciously giving him the green light for the next time things get a bit dull for him.

I think he's got off scot free.

Jan you are welcome to your opinion. I gave one example of the skimmed milk to give an idea of the small things - that is not the sum total of what has happened here. I am not deluded.

I strongly believe that I have a choice about how I wish to react to him doing something deeply stupid and hurtful. I am choosing the path which I believe will make everyone (myself included) happiest in the long run. If he were not committed to this and I was trying to force him into it, then it would be different. But I know he is deeply sorry for what he did. I can choose to punish him forever (and myself and children in the process) or I can start the long, long road to forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a gift to him. It is a gift to myself. We have a long way to go but I hope one day I reach that place.

And I don't think he is getting off scot free - he has a hell of a lot of hard work to do and he knows it.

PTF - you sound like you'll be fine. I wish you well.

Sorry but if someone shits on you from a high height and you roll over and take it, there's a distinct possibility it will happen again to you.

Instead of BOTH of you working at it, why not sit back and let him show you how sorry he actually is, then you will know if it's him - or indeed you actually behind him pushing him forwards.

A couple within our family have been through this and have come out the other side. He was the one who cheated.

Their situation was a bit different to yours though, in that his was a proper 'cake and eat it' affair. By his own admission, their long marriage wasn't unhappy or stale. It was just fairly normal for a couple who'd been together for over twenty years.

So they went down a different route to you, because it was more obvious that the affair was about his selfishness and feeling entitled to an adventure, than as a response to marital unhappiness.

This would be my worry for you. I don't blame you in the slightest for wanting to work on your marriage and personally, I think there are a lot more couples who do this silently than we might think. But even if you get that happier marriage, unless he works on his own issues it might happen again. Or if it doesn't (let's face it he might never get the opportunity again), you'll see that selfishness come out again in other ways.

I think it's a grave mistake to say that divorce is not an option for you. You should keep it as an option that you'd be willing to choose if a) he doesn't fulfil these promises that are being made out of fear or b) you find you just can't get past it, no matter how hard he tries or how much better things are.

I honestly think the reason my relatives got through this and why my female relative in particular is now one of the happiest women I know, is because she absolutely insisted that her husband owned his shit and changed habits of a lifetime. She also told him at the stage you're at that he would have to get used to the idea that she wasn't certain of continuing and wouldn't be able to give him any certainty for a long, long time. That time more or less coincided with a renewal of their vows on their 30th anniv, about 5-6 years after his affair.

Is he reading that book and any others? Is he going to see a counsellor on his own?

Jan - have you never made a mistake? Admittedly his is huge mistake. But sometimes people you love do stupid, thoughtless things. They know it. If they could go back and undo time, they would a million times over. That is where he is.

Now I could choose to remain aloof or kick him out or refuse to talk to him or keep beating him over the head with it or be angry for months and months until he knows well and truly that he can't shit on someone and that it will be fine. But I don't think that that will help me reach MY end goal - which is to be happily married and happy within myself. I think it will make me bitter and angry and cold and miserable.

Do you know what, if we work through this and he decides 'well that was a breeze, I'll do it again' - then I will come back here and let you know and you can call me a gullible fool. But I genuinely do not believe he will ever do it again. You don't know him or me. You can only base your judgement on your life experiences. Try to be happy for people who want to try again.

Leaven - yes to all you ask. he is reading the book and blogs and articles. He has found a counsellor and is going to see them on his own. We are going to see someone jointly too. I have told him that I am going to do my best to reach this end goal but if it isn't working and he isn't committed to it or shows any of the selfish/entitlement/impatience etc attitude again, I will still leave. He knows that. I have said divorce is not an option for me. Perhaps I should have said, Divorce is not an option for me yet.

If we do our best and our best still isn't good enough, then I will absolutely consider it. But why start with a defeatist attitude?

Apart from talking to you, what else is he doing to try and salvage this marriage?.

And what of yourself, have you also considered talking to a counsellor alone?.

Has he gone to counselling of his own accord, has he started to really try and work out why he decided to have an affair?. He has to want to properly address his own issues, if he is only paying lip service to the problem then it is likely that you will ultimately go your separate ways.

Leavenheath: brilliantly said, PTFsWife, this is what I mean but don't speak as eloquently I'm afraid.

I'm just a bit astounded at your apparent acceptance of what he has done to you with no apparent consequences.

Good luck, honestly, and I'm happy for any couple that can try again! My judgement of course is on my own experiences and values, what else would it be, sorry but this is a very public forum and posting on here will mean you get differing opinions and not ones you agree with!

PS: having an affair is not making a mistake in my book.