The affair is destroying my family

[barclay20q]

My wife’s affair has destroyed our family and is ripping through us like a cancer.

Since the affair was disclosed just under a year ago, the aftermath of the affair has destroyed my life, my family and is continuing to destroy the little that we do have left.

Since D-Day, my wife has done everything she possibly can to try and fix and help me heal. Cut contact with the affair partner, changed mobile numbers, come off social media, moved city, changed cars. But it’s been hard work and it’s getting harder. Time should be making things better, but things feel like are getting worse.

I have always had a problem with her version of events. I have never, really been given the full story from start to finish. I have always been given parts of what happened and filled in the blanks myself. She doesn’t rub my face in it but stick by the fact that he made her happy but she doesn’t want him. She wants us and only us. He was a massive mistake and she wants to get on with our lives.

But How ?

How do you really move on? When in the back of my mind is what they did, what they felt and the biggest one is how she could even do it when she had a loving family at home.

She is always showing me love, sending texts saying she loves me and we will get through this. Why isn’t this enough? I get triggered by texts that she sends to me and I think did she say that to him?

At this stage I understand I won’t be over it, but shouldn’t I at least be at a stage where we don’t argue, bicker or fight every day and discus the affair? She is giving answers and I’m not accepting them. It’s like unless the answer she gives, hurts me in some way, I don’t believe it.

I have a feeling I’m not getting the whole story. The story doesn’t add up. Should I leave it and try and move on, as I really want my wife and my family back, or do I continue to try and get what I believe may be the truth, but then there is always a possibility that she has given me the truth and I’m just pushing her away.

My biggest fear is that she still has feelings, no matter how small for her affair partner and there is always a chance this can start up all over again. You can’t have a 2 month physical and emotional affair and come away with no feelings. Like she is trying to get me to believe. It’s clear the affair partner meant something to her, but she denies this and says the affair was a mistake and he meant and means nothing.

Isn’t this what cheaters normally say

This happened to me a long time ago now. It ended my marriage.
The thing is - if you try to carry on and repair after an affair you are generally basing this on what you once had - the past shared experiences, creating a home, having children, years of memories.
What I realised was that (from my point of view) this was all gone and it wouldn't be repairing as such but starting again trying to build a relationship with what felt like someone new, who now had other different experiences to you, which was how it felt to me at the time.

OP, you really need to move on. You don't know what was in your wife's head then or now and it's frankly ridiculous to say you know she will be thinking about it being a year since x y or z. You sound overbearing with your badgering of your wife.m and it will drive you apart. She shouldn't have cheated but you've decided to stay so you cannot keep at her every day. Stay and make the conscious decision to move on or leave for both your sakes.

@Daisydoo99 it was one year on for me (just two days ago). We’re in a pretty good place; things aren’t perfect (but who’s relationship is?!). Just wanted to say an affair is not always the death knell for a relationship.
Advice on here for affairs is always heavily biased to walking away. Take care to not let it colour your thinking too much; it’s easily done when it’s repeated over and over.
Happy to be a sounding board if you’d like to pm me.

That's a great post.
I know that my initial feeling was, looking at my house as I drove away, that all that work was destroyed, 12 yrs gone for a couple of sneaky shags. Then there was the overwhelming feeling, 'Am I good enough, what is wrong with me'.
This dissipated relatively quickly, 13 yrs or so later, I'll never fully trust a woman again. I do feel people need to behave in a trustworthy manner and society doesn't always place a high value on this.

Hello

Sorry I have been away from the thread for a few days. I have read all your comments and taken all these on board. Everything everyone has said makes sense. But some is easer said than done.

Im at a cross roads. Im stuck and I'm frustrated. I don't want to leave but i feel sometimes i cant stay either. But in the back of my head and my heart I know I wont go.

Things are hard at the moment even one year out. We are still arguing and talking about the affair and the same old questions daily. We do have good days don't get me wrong, but this is eating away at both of us.

Im stuck on a couple of facts that i cant get out my head. He made her feel good at the time of the affair and she was happy. Them two things together just show me this wasn't a meaningless affair that meant nothing to her, even though she say it meant nothing and he meant nothing to her either. She tries to make me see that an affair makes people happy and makes people feel good. But then I think yeah I get that but it was at my expense. Im the one that feels worthless, second best and inadequate.

I don't see how she can say a year later that she doesn't miss the happy times she had with him, the happy memories, the good feelings that he made her feel. Compared to the fact that i don't make her feel good, she is un happy and we argue and go over the affair all the time. She says she is happy and i do make her feel good but when we have bad arguments its not nice, its not happiness but she wont go anywhere.

Im stuck because I wont leave but at the same time i wont brush it under the carpet and get on with life and act like nothing happened.

I get that you feel worthless, but just remember that you were in the real world, and she and the AP were in the fantasy world. Real world has toilets, bins, sickness, farting in it. These things don't exist in affair-fantasy land. It's not you that was inadequate in comparison to the AP; it was the environment.

what you do know is that she did have an affair. But what else you know is that it’s now over. She seems to gone to a lot of lengths to cut ties with this man which would confirm that. It was a 2 month affair, probably fun and made her feel good. But when reality has set in and she realised what was at stake she made the choice and that was you and your family. Whatever he meant to her at the time isn’t really relevant as it happened, it’s over and she made her choice. You are torturing yourself daily with the constant thoughts of what was really going on but why does this even matter now? It happened and it’s over. What value would there be if she told you every last detail. How would that make you feel better? I can guarantee it isn’t your wife wanting to talk about the affair every day, that’s you! You reminding her of the affair and him! How can he be forgotten if you bring him up every day. You need to decide if you can accept this happened and make a new life together or not. If you don’t I personally wouldn’t be surprised if she left you as I think this is verging on emotional abuse.

You asking her continually about her affair is not verging on emotional abuse, OP. You haven't yet processed what happened. Possibly you have PTSD which needs therapy?

Most conversations of this type, don't make any sense. I agree what she is saying is full of contradictions, however, matters of the heart are nearly always full of external and internal conflicts.
The heart isn't rational, I'm not sure what you want her to say, and I hazard a guess she won't say it even if you could explain it.

@barclay20q

Hello

Sorry I have been away from the thread for a few days. I have read all your comments and taken all these on board. Everything everyone has said makes sense. But some is easer said than done.

Im at a cross roads. Im stuck and I'm frustrated. I don't want to leave but i feel sometimes i cant stay either. But in the back of my head and my heart I know I wont go.

Things are hard at the moment even one year out. We are still arguing and talking about the affair and the same old questions daily. We do have good days don't get me wrong, but this is eating away at both of us.

Im stuck on a couple of facts that i cant get out my head. He made her feel good at the time of the affair and she was happy. Them two things together just show me this wasn't a meaningless affair that meant nothing to her, even though she say it meant nothing and he meant nothing to her either. She tries to make me see that an affair makes people happy and makes people feel good. But then I think yeah I get that but it was at my expense. Im the one that feels worthless, second best and inadequate.

I don't see how she can say a year later that she doesn't miss the happy times she had with him, the happy memories, the good feelings that he made her feel. Compared to the fact that i don't make her feel good, she is un happy and we argue and go over the affair all the time. She says she is happy and i do make her feel good but when we have bad arguments its not nice, its not happiness but she wont go anywhere.

Im stuck because I wont leave but at the same time i wont brush it under the carpet and get on with life and act like nothing happened.

The constant, daily questioning of your wife and other behaviours you are describing are abusive. You are abusing her because she cheated on you. Leave her for her sake and the children's too.

@barclay20q a year out I was a mess. I still had unanswered questions and to some extent still do.
The one thing I know and have learned three years on, is that talking about it every day will absolutely destroy your marriage. There will be nothing left between you to build on. Suspicion and resentment will take over and love won’t thrive in that.
Eventually she will decide she can’t convince you that it’s you she wants, that you won’t or can’t believe that whatever she does, or however hard she tries. Eventually she will decide that she had an affair but is not and will not be solely defined by it forever, and if the rest of her life is going to be a constant reminder of how badly she fucked up, despite trying hard to make it up to you, she will leave.
Rebuilding your marriage properly isn’t about sweeping this under the carpet, however. It’s accepting that it happened, you can’t change the past. It’s about having enough facts to see what happened, when and where. It’s about the AP being permanent history and no contact at all, ever. It’s about your wife showing you true remorse, being an open book about her present life with you, and starting to build closeness again by shared experiences which are not about the affair. Go out for a drink and talk about your day, some crap you saw on tv or a stupid thing on the radio, life’s normal bread and butter. No talking about the affair during this time. You need to have some ‘normal’ time together. If you need to talk about the affair, agree a time every day and a time limit. Gradually lessen this to every few days etc etc going forward. The pressure is off a little then. You will know that you have an opportunity to talk about it, she knows it won’t just crop up out of the blue and start an argument. It gives you non-affair topic space to actually live as man and wife again, whilst simultaneously acknowledging that there is an issue which needs addressing, not sweeping to one side like it never happened.
However:
If you are waiting for some magic information she can give you to make this make sense, I’m sorry to be blunt, but there isn’t any. There won’t be an ‘aha!’ moment. Here’s why:
you’re trying to solve a circular argument. He made her happy/ he meant nothing/ but he made her happy so how can he mean nothing? Because he made her happy back then/ but if he made her happy he must mean something then.....rinse and repeat to the point of insanity. You need to break into the loop. Here’s how: the timeline of both statements.
The thing that is making this so hard to hold in your head is called cognitive dissonance, ie you are being asked to accept that two apparently conflicting statements are true. “He made me feel happy” true. “He means nothing to me.” Also, most likely, true. Because she’s with you, not him. But how? How can they both be true? Because of the timeline. One was then, in the past, and the other is now. She has told you about her affair, and how he made her feel at the time. Then. NOT NOW. It was true that he meant something during the affair and fulfilled some need she had then, but she’s realised it was some daft crush, an ego rush, based on fantasy, not a real love for a real husband and family. She saw what she had to lose and the horror of it burst the affair bubble, she saw it for what it was, saw herself for what she had become, saw him for the escape/ crutch he actually was, and distanced herself physically and emotionally from something which now only causes shame, regret and pain. How it felt then versus now are totally different. Both true at the time, but not at the same time.
Whatever you think she deserves, daily reminders of her wrongdoing and shame from the person who says he loves her and wants to be with her, when she has said many times that the OM is now nothing, and the memories she has are just reminders that she did a terrible thing, are going to drive her away.
I struggled with this too, I dreaded that secretly he was mooning about it all and missing her etc etc, but it wasn’t true. My husband said honestly how he thought he felt during the affair, but that the part I didn’t get was that there were now no ‘happy memories’, that every reminder of it just held up a mirror to what a ‘giant shit’ (his words) he was, and what a dark time of his life it was. He struggles understanding how far he let himself fall, how he never, ever thought he’d be that guy. They lie to themselves in affairs, OP. They justify the shitty thing they have stooped so low to do with lies in their heads, to avoid the pain, the shame, the guilt, to avoid facing the reality of who they have become. The only way to continue to do something you know is wrong is to weave a narrative about it to justify it. Put a spin on it. Lie, lie, lie. They can barely look at themselves in the mirror. Reality fills them with dread. Compartmentalising, lying and tunnel vision all help. Truth and reality terrify them, because in the face of that, the love affair becomes tawdry sex by cheats in hotels, the Romeo scenario becomes selfish ego driven hogwash, and being clever and smart enough to trick people becomes manipulating, lying and deceiving. Who wants to face that about themselves? The spin they put on it withers in the cold sharp light of truth. This is why DTE could be ‘happy’ whilst doing such a terrible thing to those she really loved. Olympic standard mental gymnastics.
It is absolutely possible that he made her happy but means nothing. Add the words ‘then’ and ‘now’ into the sentence and hopefully it will start to make sense. She’s not minimising, she’s telling you the truth. Allow her to show you that she means it, or you’ll eventually lose her OP. Nobody who is honest and remorseful and trying to put things right can or should be dragged back in front of their past wrongdoing forever.
You don’t have to forgive, or rug sweep it, you have to accept it happened, accept what she says and does about it in the present, and slowly move forward together.

Your constant questioning and bringing up of the affair is abuse. Daily badgering her for information and details is abusive.

She will decide she can't convince you anymore and leave. An affair is a terrible thing to have but she can't be punished for it forever. You are emotionally abusing her regardless of the reason for it.

@Thewookiemustgo this is probably the best post I've ever seen on here.

My marriage survived an affair. It was a work colleague and they both still have to work together, all his colleagues (some mutual friends) knew. - your wife has cut all ties herself, there's not much more she can do.

I don't condone affairs but I feel quite sorry for her. Either forgive her or don't. But it's your choice to make.

How Infidelity Causes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - Psychology Today
This process is not for those who want a quick fix, nor for those who hold fast to the past. Superficializing a true betrayal can create unresolvable pain. Similarly, carrying mistrust, anger, and pain forever will eventually destroy any hope of true healing. The betraying partner must take seriously what he or she has done. The partner who has been betrayed must truly want to rebuild the relationship and to ultimately learn to trust that person again.

Do you think that you are hung up on her saying it meant nothing because that means she risked her relationship with you over something so trivial?

I think that Thewookiemustgo is probably right about time being a factor in her descriptions of what the affair meant to her.

Perhaps you need to find a different counsellor or start couples counselling if you don't feel that the one you currently have is helping.

@barclay20q

Hello

Sorry I have been away from the thread for a few days. I have read all your comments and taken all these on board. Everything everyone has said makes sense. But some is easer said than done.

Im at a cross roads. Im stuck and I'm frustrated. I don't want to leave but i feel sometimes i cant stay either. But in the back of my head and my heart I know I wont go.

Things are hard at the moment even one year out. We are still arguing and talking about the affair and the same old questions daily. We do have good days don't get me wrong, but this is eating away at both of us.

Im stuck on a couple of facts that i cant get out my head. He made her feel good at the time of the affair and she was happy. Them two things together just show me this wasn't a meaningless affair that meant nothing to her, even though she say it meant nothing and he meant nothing to her either. She tries to make me see that an affair makes people happy and makes people feel good. But then I think yeah I get that but it was at my expense. Im the one that feels worthless, second best and inadequate.

I don't see how she can say a year later that she doesn't miss the happy times she had with him, the happy memories, the good feelings that he made her feel. Compared to the fact that i don't make her feel good, she is un happy and we argue and go over the affair all the time. She says she is happy and i do make her feel good but when we have bad arguments its not nice, its not happiness but she wont go anywhere.

Im stuck because I wont leave but at the same time i wont brush it under the carpet and get on with life and act like nothing happened.

Then stop going over the affair all the time. Stop assuming you know what's going on in your wife's head. Stop drawing out this suffering day after day.

You dont know she must feel things one year on
You cant assume she misses him just because he made her happy at the time - that just isn't logical
You are harming yourself and your wife

Either stay and move on or leave for both of your sakes. Your posts sound so unhealthy.

OP screenshot what @Thewookiemustgo has said, and refer back to that whenever needed. That is the best advice you will see on the internet, and certainly ever receive for free.

Thank you @PuggyMum . It is knowledge hard-won by falling into every pitfall and thinking-trap there is. I wish I’d known then what I’ve learned since, but then life is a lesson.
You’re far braver than me though. I’d never have coped with the ‘still working together’ thing. They didn’t work together but they did work very near each other, they first met in the same city bar after work. Afterwards (I found out and he ended it) I told him he could work anywhere except in that city (an hour’s commute from where we lived) and I didn’t and don’t give a shit how unfair that is/was. He’d already dumped her but I was too traumatised in the early days to cope with the fact that when at work, he was nearer to where she was than where I was, dumped or not. Don’t actually care how crazy or unfair that sounds, in the early days to my mind he’d lost all right to bleating about what was fair or unfair, none of it was fucking fair as far as I was concerned so he could just suck it up. It was heartbreak, my rules. I knew it wouldn’t necessarily stop them communicating with each other or stop anything to be honest, but I needed a concrete gesture from him that she no longer mattered, I needed to see where his loyalty was. His word meant nothing to me. I needed to see him do stuff.
Them continuing to work together at the time would have just been too much, I’d have eventually gone under.

Please just leave. You are impossible. No one could live up to your expectations. Deal with it and get over it. Let the poor woman live in peace.

@Thewookiemustgo it wasn't easy but 'd'h had ended it before I found out (although I knew for a long time just had no evidence!). I only found the messages as the OW had moved onto someone else and was messaging Dh to say the new guy wasn't a patch on him!
It ended as she'd stalked my social media and realised we had a great life and tried to make Dh leave me. He then said this has gone too far and called it a day and she turned nasty, threatening to tell me etc.

I went nuclear. Told OW DH, the new guys wife and also many of his colleagues I thought were my friends too knew so I made my feelings clear to them too.

Sadly we had a close family illness and bereavement after me asking Dh to leave so we had a month away dealing with that and pretending all was ok for the family. As sad as it was, I'm 100% sure that I'd have stuck to making him leave.

I still to this day can't believe he risked it all for a few massages of their egos

He can avoid her mostly but for the odd handover - I've seen her more than he has over the years and she squirms when she sees me.

It can be done and it wasn't as easy as I've laid out here for sure and I don't want to minimise the impact an affair can have but OP is reliving it day after day and that can't be healthy. I genuinely don't know what more the woman can do.

OP, I have read all your posts and I can see you are genuinely hurting. I hope what I say now helps you a little to move forward.

I picked up early in the thread you said you admit you were neglecting your wife, I am assuming you mean not paying her enough attention, not complimenting her, not putting an effort in?

Whilst there is never an excuse for an affair-there definitely isn't-this is the void your wife was probably seeking to fill by having an affair. In this sense, yes, the AP will have made her happy-he has filled a need she had that was once filled by you. It doesnt sound like this was a mainly sexual affair-you said they only had sex once-so the affair seems to have been based mainly in the emotional side. The feelings of happiness she experienced are purely the first flushes everyone gets at the start of a relationship. Before you see the real side of people. The bit that is all fun and no worries. It will have felt easy and effortless. It always does.

Should she have had an affair? Absolutely not.

Have you done things wrong as well?
Yes. Yes, you have.

The truth is you cannot punish your wife forever, even if you are not meaning to. It is absolutely OK for you to say, an affair is my red line, I cannot accept it, we have to split up. What you cannot do is say you want to move past it and then bring it up every single day. Its no good for you and its no good for her. You will destroy your marriage anyway.

Instead, you need to focus on rebuilding and both of you need to individually work on that without making the other one suffer. You admitted you had neglected your wife. All this energy you are focusing on forensically examining the affair needs to be pushed into that. Look at the affair as a symptom of an underlying issue.

The question is, do you truly want to be happy and for your wife to be happy? Because if you do, its time to let it go and doing positive things for your relationship. Get some romance back. Show her you love her. Put some effort in too. It is a choice every single day to love someone. Do something every day to make that choice a no brainer for her.

Stop asking questions ad nauseum. If you must, get a piggy bank or something, write them on scraps of paper and put them in there. You are NEVER going to get the answer you want. You will just push your wife away more and more. You are making you both miserable. Choose to be happy. But accept you have to put the effort in too.

Do you have children OP? How old are they? What is this whole dynamic teaching them about relationships? It sounds like there's tension at home, you're constantly rehashing the same conversation, she has bursts of outrage (which is how she admitted the affair, seems dysfunctional!). Think about the potential positive future if you split, co parenting apart without this bitterness at home.

Thanks to everyone for your valued input.

I know myself that the questions every day isn’t healthy. It doesn’t normally lead to an argument. It’s a civil conversation. There have been times when it does escalate. But these talks where the questions are present may only last a few minutes. It’s not constant. But it is constant in my head.

I know it’s no excuse, but I’m broken. I don’t want to leave my life or my wife. But I sometimes think, how can I stay and live this way too. I know I can’t wish this away and I have to get through it. But as many of you have said, its hard.

I think most of this steams back to the time around DDAY. Some of you have said you had read all my posts. So you will know the back story, but for those who don’t in a nut shell. I was told one thing and then another for about 3 months. I was told she was confused and then she wasn’t, I was told she had feelings for him and then she didn’t. I was even told at one point that she thought she had fallen out of love me and then later that night she said that wasn’t true.

So now when she is saying things, I think is she being honest? She even said to me a couple of nights ago. If I acted like I do now when she gives me the truth, how would I act if she said she did have feelings for him. Why would she say that if she didn’t think it. Because if it wasn’t a thought, there would be no point in saying it.

Our children did see an atmosphere at times, at the start. But we try and keep our kids out of that now. They see we are getting on and making things work.

She swears blind that there is nothing there for the AP and I need to find a way of accepting that. When we are together things are really good, but when I’m away from her, my insecurities creep in and things start to go around in my head.

No matter what some of you think, I’m not trying to abuse my wife and I’m not trying to punish her. I just trying to put all the pieces together in my head. Some pieces don’t fit and somethings don’t add up. I see that she is doing everything she can to right her wrong. Before this we had a good relationship. We were a solid family. That’s been shaken. But a year later, we are still together. That’s must say something. Mustn’t it ?

You need a hard reset OP because you are just going around in circles. You arent going to get any more clarity than you have now. It was a year ago. Your wife may not even remember fully or know the answers you are seeking any more. I am not having a go, because what you have been through is awful, but honestly you do need to let it go now. Or walk away. You cannot stay in no mans land forever. Pick a side and dont look back.

You know you best. If you know you cannot let this go without 100% answers then you need to split up. You are not going to get them. Otherwise, accept what you know as the closest to the truth you will get. And work out whether you can build on this and leave it in the past.

Your wife has made a horrible mistake. But she deserves happiness and to leave this behind as well.

Are you both more afraid of the upheaval that divorce WILL bring, but not emotionally able to dig down to the real feelings and motivations underlying what your wife did and why your relationship with her had been put so far on the back burner?

You know, it's OK to admit that you don't quite love each other enough in the right way for this to be a goer. It's OK to admit that and put your energies into building a new future for the family where you work together for the kids but aren't romantic partners.

If you can't both be brutally honest - and if even one of you isn't up to that, then, sorry, no go - you're trying to build a family on an unstable mix of resentment and fear of change.

Far better then to work on the art of not being dicks to each other, to go the extra mile in sorting out the finances and child residence arrangements with the kids' welfare put first, and start again.

I am reminded of what a colleague said to me about the end of his first marriage.
"We had a disagreement. She thought it was ok to sleep with someone else. I disagreed". He met someone else, married them, very happy.

What pieces of the jigsaw are missing for you that you think you need and why do you feel you need them?

I didn't need to know the details as I knew it was over. You accept its well and truly over now for your wife. Things happened and the line was crossed. How far over that line they went is almost irrelevant.

I know some people believe 'once a cheat' and all that but my DH himself sometimes says how lucky he is to be given a second chance and he would never cross that line.

I believe him - it was initially a choice but now the trust is back. I don't check his phone or grill him if he goes out for drinks.
I could not live like that.

You have to take a leap of faith OP and leave the past behind.