@Ndd1356387
are you saying that you are ‘faking it until you make it’ with your husband, but if your affair partner ever ‘grows up and leaves his wife’ you will ‘let him back into your life’?
Your husband has apparently according to you seen and acknowledged how he was acting within your marriage and changed for the better. He thinks he is in reconciliation with you and building a secure future whilst trying to be a better man.
He us actually in what is called a ‘false reconciliation’ which is a second betrayal. He thinks you have been completely honest and that your affair is over permanently, not just over unless your affair partner ‘grows up’. He thinks your feelings and motives are genuine not ‘faking it until you make it’.
None of this is honest or fair to your husband.
What you point out to other posters in the first part of your post about the people messing with their heads is true, however are you not messing with your husband’s head, albeit not as unkindly?
I may have mistaken what you have written but from what you have written it looks as if your husband is living in a fake situation where unbeknownst to him, his life could implode at any minute if you decide you can’t ‘fake it’ any more (he doesn’t know you are doing this, you allow him or have told him to believe the opposite) or if your affair partner leaves his wife (your husband doesn’t know this either, you are either allowing him or have told him to believe the opposite).
There can be no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’ or ‘untils’ in a no contact situation after infidelity.
Your affair cannot be over ‘if he stays with his wife’ or ‘until he leaves his wife’ or ‘I’ll be faithful to my husband but I love somebody else and if they come back I’ll let them back into my life”.
Your husband isn’t perfect, nobody is, but to acknowledge his faults and apologise and strive to put things right (he has, ‘what he is doing now I would have died for a year ago as I love him so much’) is pretty big of anyone and he deserves to know what you honestly feel and that his marriage is at stake if your affair partner ever leaves his wife.
Im not being harsh or unkind, but all betrayed spouses want to know after deciding to stay with their unfaithful spouse is that their unfaithful spouse is now being fully honest, faking nothing, hiding nothing, the affair partner is permanent history, and that their formerly unfaithful spouse is fully committed to the marriage and to them.
I don’t doubt you love your husband, and that you are trying to rebuild your marriage, or that you have ended the affair.
Bit why did it end? Because you realised you really love your husband and want your marriage back? Or because your affair partner got cold feet and wouldn’t leave his wife? You say leaving his wife would be him ‘growing up’ because presumably you think he loves you and is only faking it with his wife? Are you not doing the same thing by loving him but staying with your husband? Your husband hasn’t been ‘chosen’ by you, loving your husband is not why you ended the affair, he became second best when your affair partner chose his wife.
To be honest, from your own admission I think mentally you are not really 100% in this, and you have not put your affair and affair partner in the past.
Both you and your affair partner allegedly love each other but are choosing to stay married. Your affair partner had an open choice and chose his wife and marriage.
I might be wrong but it reads as I you have chosen your marriage only because he did not choose you.
Please be honest with yourself and your husband about your reasons for where you are now.
Your “reconciliation “ with your husband is not real, you are faking it and know that you’d leave him in a heartbeat if your affair partner left his wife.
At present you have all the choices and still deep down haven’t made one of them. Your husband has and presumed you have too.
Choose honesty, give your husband the luxury of choice that you have at present. You want to remain ‘no contact’ with your affair partner and have joined this thread, but admit that if contact with him included him leaving his wife you’d want all the contact he could give you. Too much cognitive dissonance for this to work, you have too many opposing/ conflicting thoughts in your head at the same time. If you want success either way with this, your one choice has to be stuck to with no ‘ifs’ or ‘untils’.
Your affair partner is a proven liar. He lied to his wife to be with you, he possibly lied to you if he said he loved you and promised any kind of future with you, he made a choice which showed you that.
I’d stick with your husband who honestly acknowledges his faults and works on them, for your benefit because he loves you and his actions show it. Your affair partner’s actions show how he really feels and who and what he chose when the chips were down.
You’ve ended the affair and want no contact, make that permanent and you stand a chance of a happy marriage with a man who shows you he loves you by his actions every day.
If you can’t, allow your husband to be free to move on and live somebody who isn’t faking it and would leave him for somebody else if the somebody else left his wife.
Make your no contact vow permanent, it’s what your marriage vows said all along.