Moving on after having an affair

[Needtomoveon1]

I'd really like some advice and support here, even though I know I don't deserve it and lots of people will want to flame me.

I'm a married man (5 yrs), with one DC, and I had a 6 month affair with another woman that started last year. The other woman is single, says she loves me, and to be honest I think I love her too.... or I'm at least infatuated with her. I ended our affair a few weeks ago and told her that I was going to work on saving my marriage, but I just can't get her out of my mind. I constantly think about her and want to contact her all the time (but I haven't). I've been waiting for things to get better with time but they don't seem to be.

My wife doesn't know and I've decided not to tell her. I know this is controversial and some people will think I should - but if I can resolve all this without causing her pain that seems the best option.

I've not had sex with the OW. We've kissed and been intimate but this affair wasn't about the sex for me. I felt a deep emotional connection with her, and just enjoyed being with her or talking to her. I'm not claiming this is any better (it's not), but I just wanted to provide some context that this wasn't about purely physical stuff.

I want to try and save my marriage, not least for my DC. In hindsight I let things with my wife go stale and we had a passionless marriage. Having a child a few years ago no doubt changed the dynamic of our relationship, and I think we both got lazy and became more like housemates than lovers. The disengagement (on my part) was very gradual and I didn't even realise it was happening until it was too late. The romantic love in our marriage had evaporated and this is what I think the OW provided.

There are of course loads more details in all this that I won't go into in the interests of keeping this post short. My main question is: How do I move on? There must be others out there who have been through similar. Does this get easier or do you always think about your affair partner? Is it possible to save the marriage or have a ruined things?

I'm sorry to all those who have been on the receiving end of affairs, and I really don't want to come across as insensitive. I know what I've done is very wrong and I don't deserve (nor am I looking for) any sympathy. I've made a big mistake and now am in a mess of my own making. Just really want to find my way out of it.

Huntinginthedark - Yes I feel terrible for the OW. I didn't want to say that on here for fear of more abuse, but I want her to be happy and I care for her deeply. Another thing that pushed me to end it when I did was the fact I knew I was being unfair to her too.

Do I really love her? I would say yes, but then most things I've read say it's most probably infatuation, affair fog, etc. I suppose it depends how you define love. I don't know...

It is so unbelievably selfish not to come clean and give her some choice.

Whether it not you should tell your wife aside, your original q was how do you get over the ow...in exactly the same way that you would any other relationship that ended. No contact, at all. delete all messages etc (not to cover your tracks but to stop you mooning over them). Get busy with other life stuff. Overtime the frequency of the desire to contact them or think about them will fade. you could have just posted on here..I ended a relationship but still thinking about her, how do I stop? The affair element doesn't make that part of it any different BUT an affair relationship is not a real one, it's dates and romantic stolen moments. Of course it's headspinning and you 'connect' compared to a decade or more of shared living / bills / chores / tedium of family life . But its not real.

Angrybird - thanks. What you wrote makes a lot of sense.

What is love indeed!
agree with others, you just have to go nc
Do not drag her back into the affair because you miss her, if you have no plans to leave

She needs to move in with her life. I do still think you should tell your wife. She’s living a lie currently

Tell your wife. She suspects now and if you want to save your marriage you need to do her courtesy of telling her the truth, the whole truth all at once, don’t trickle truth or sugar coat. Her imagination will be worse than the reality.
If you want to see what devastation finding out years later causes look for my first thread. You aren’t protecting her and your marriage will always be a lie if you don’t. Is that how you want to live?

Have a look at the surviving infidelity site- you will get more help from people in your situation there.

You need to go full on cold turkey no contact with the other woman.
Block her number, block her on social media.
Write her an email that is a blunt no holds bared ‘we are over’ don’t ever contact me again message.
Have it to show your wife or better offer to let her write it and send it when you tell her.

Don’t delete any emails or messages as your wife may want to see them to help her deal.

Be prepared to have no privacy - let your wife go through everything, phone, laptop everything.

Give her what ever she needs to feel safe.

If you can’t do any of this then leave, leave now because you don’t deserve her.

Asomodai - so in hindsight do you think that you never actually loved your wife enough? Does what you have found now feel completely different?

The problem you've got, OP, is that the way to re-commit and re-build a marriage in any meaningful way is to really get to know one another again, as full people, with weaknesses, strengths, history, etc. That is the only way to closeness. How can you do that, really share who you are, while keeping such a massive secret? You can stay together, sure. You can even improve things. But, nah, you won't have a great marriage without telling her, and of course you may lose her. But that's the price of what you've done. I don't say that cruelly, and I have some sympathy for those who get together so young; I do think it's a big ask to make a long marriage from that base. But you need to pull on your big boy pants and accept the consequences.

What is the root cause of you getting bored and starting a relationship with someone else? There must be a reason?

OK OP I will give you a different side to this age old story and one that had had mumsnet hackles up before but I believe that this is an open forum and we can all tell our stories.
I had an affair with a married man. We felt a really strong attraction, completely connected, he was perfect for me... And vice versa.
When his wife found out, we together decided to end our affair, we both had young children, and complex finances and both feared the unknown.
We felt that 'the right thing' was to go home and make good.
A year of no contact did not lesson the craving for him, the thoughts about him, the need and love I had for him.
It turned out he was going through the same.
And we lboth unknown to the other left our marriages. The affair had shown us we were never going to save things, we were never going to get the spark back etc etc...
We did get in touch and now we arw blissfully happy together, he is indeed perfect for me and me him.

Now during that year I read all about affairs fog and the dopamine withdrawl etc, I did everything I could to keep busy, focus on my husband, etc... But in the end we are not all in a fog, for some the other person genuinely is the person they should be with.

My biggest regret is I had the affair because of the pain it caused other people but I do not regret meeting my dp and I do not regret being with him.

So OP maybe give yourself a time frame, and if in a year those feelings haven't gone away and you cannot love your wife as she deserves then u should end your marriage

OP - Truthfully? No. There was certainly attraction initially. We got together young (18) were together a total of 9 years, married for less then one and I cheated 4 months after the wedding. We were like roommates after a couple of years. But we were co-dependent on each other, we had no other friends.

It was a very unhealthy relationship. I treated her like a young teenager would a mother. She knew I was treating her badly but was desperate to keep hold of me and normalised my behavior. I was very slick at gaslighting her, making her seem like the problem, when in fact it was all me. She made all the effort and I made a token gesture.

I would never have had what I had now without experiencing the end of my relationship, ending in the way that it did. I recognized that I was incredibly narcissistic, initially I blamed my Dad, but then realised that though it was truly learnt behavior from him, it was MY choice alone to carry on being like him. I realised I didn't want to be like him anymore. I gradually changed. I still have some narc tendencies, but I can recognize them and admit to them.

I have married again, to someone who I can fully appreciate, who I cannot dream of ruining. I was very lucky to find her. I admitted to her everything that I did before even dating. I didn't want to go into a relationship without that person knowing what I did.

Whilst you might not be me, I couldn't FORCE myself to love someone, I had fallen out of love with ex if indeed I ever was in love with her. It was best for her and I to no longer be together, to give everyone a chance at happiness. If she took me back, she would always have to think about what I did to her, and that is not fair.

So you have lied to you wife for 6mths plus, probably not treating your and family nice while you have been involved with the OW.

And now you want to lie again to your wife to rebuild your relationship with her.

And you want to 'rebuild' a relationship with your with on a foundation of lies, you are only worried about yourself and not you wife and children.

The only reason why you won't be honest with your wife is because you know that if she knew the truth that she wouldn't want to continue a life with you. So onto of lying, cheating you are a coward.

Are you my ex? With some details changed?

It's rediculously unfair on both women and I think they deserve both to know exactly what you're capable of.

OP, when discussing this with H post my confrontation, it sees he developed an infatuation because lots of other things in life were ‘going wrong’ at the same time and it was a deflection and an ego boost and didn’t involve the other bad stuff, dying parent, business issues etc. He says it was never that he didn’t love me, it was something ‘nice’ to think about and look forward to (the texting etc) he very much regrets it because although we are still together I’m pretty sure he is fully aware I cannot 100% feel quite the same because that deep level of trust went with it. Say nothing and it comes out and your wife may well stay , but it looks worse on you for saying nothing. I can’t agree one bit with people who say to just work on rebuilding, that is important yes if she wants to remain in the marriage but out of respect if you do care and I think you do, it should be her making that choice,

To not tell her is taking away her free will. You are making a decision on how she is going to live her life.
You don’t have that right.

You've had some good advice on here OP.

You can't love both women romantically. You'll realise in a couple of months at most which you love, if either of them.

If you want to save your marriage you need to tell your wife.

If you want to leave then you may as well keep quiet.

Like I mentioned, it's complicated but my wife does know part of the story. She knows about the OW, who she is, and that I had an emotional affair. She just doesn't know how long it went on for, or all the details. Off the back of this, we spoke about the issues in our own marriage and we agreed to try and fix things. I agree it's not perfect and maybe I should have told her absolutely everything... but she isn't completely in the dark.

Did you tell her or did she find out?

What has she said about the affair? She needs to know that it went on for 6 months.

How desperately sad for her that you don't respect her enough to be honest with her.
She absolutely deserves to know the extent of your deceit.
'Not being completely in the dark' is not enough.

If the tables were turned and this was something your wife did, with you knowing a bit about it, what would you want? Would you want to keep your head in the sand, or would you want to know the entire truth and figure out how to move on together?

I don’t approve of cheating in any sense, I do believe you accept you’re wrong for what you did and it’s up to you and your spouse to figure it out.

It is interesting that, anonymous or not, you told the internet and not her.

I guess I told the internet because I have nobody to talk to about all this and confide in or get advice from.

Loveyoutothemoon - I told her. Basically I told her early on and then I was no contact with OW for 3 months before she got back in touch and I ended up seeing her again for a couple months. It’s the second spell that she doesn’t know about. I’m so ashamed about what I’ve done - I really never thought I was the the type of person to do this but obviously I was wrong. I know I don’t deserve love from either of them

Your wife deserves better, than a lying and cheating husband. She will find out eventually, from someone else, if you don't tell her.

Ouch - I think the problem is you will now idolise/idealise (not sure on the word) the affair/OW, you probably feel love sick, distraught, like you've made a huge sacrifice - yada yada. You're comparing new, lusty feelings with that of your long term, committed relationship. I genuinely don't think you'll be able to 'move on' unless you fess up to your wife, its debatable whether thats actually fair on your wife but it allows her the choice of whether she wants to stay with you, secondly - seeing the devastation you've caused will pretty swiftly crystallise your feelings one way or another.

The fact that you did this, and went in again after telling her about the first time, speaks volumes.

She definitely should know, and it’s up to her to do what she will with your relationship. Best of luck, to her.

OP, I haven't read the other replies but I'm going to reply to your question, 'How do I move on?'

I was the betrayed party, and I'm a woman, so I'll give you my take on it.

You admit you'd let your marriage become stale. This is where you need to put the work in.

You need to find ways to reconnect with your wife on all levels, first of all emotionally. You need to start making time to do special things together again. Get a babysitter and go out together alone once a week. Arrange special time together at home - cook a meal, lay the table, arrange candles and pop a cork, go out for a drink or see a band / musical / play / art gallery / shared interest outings / walks by the river, weekends away (can your DC go to a grandparent for the weekend?).

You need to find a way to build the closeness back. You made your choice to stay with your wife and protect her from the damaging truth of your betrayal so focus on her and don't look back. Good luck.