healing after an affair

[gonnabehappy]

I hope someone here can help, I am feeling pretty low right now.

Short summary. Husband (of 23 years and father of my three boys 10 - 15) had an major emotional affair with young (he was 47 she was 26) woman at work. This developed into a physical affair. He told me Easter 2008.

He left for about 8 months (went to live with his mother) and came home when she finally decided she would not leave her husband. We do not have enough money for two homes in this really quite expensive town, he wanted to be with his sons, his sons wanted him to be with them and I thought I still loved him and believed he still loved me. Bot sure why - he had told me often enough that he didn't, that he had not loved me for years etc etc - she was his soul mate.

Fast forward another 6 months and he is still here. Sometimes he tries really hard with our relationship and sometimes he can't be bothered. He is back to sport etc. I am so hurt and struggling to heal. I can't get out of mind the words he said to me, the words she said to me and the emails etc they exchanged. (Yes I know but I did turn into a pretty gifted cyberstalker!).

I cause upset a few nights/days a week 9better than when it was every day). I cry I rant and I make him feel so so guilty and bad. These are times when he says he loves me (I sometimes wonder if I am like a toddler trying to get attention).

This relationship is mutually destructive but I think we both want it to work just cant see how.

I feel as though this is my fault -0 it is way past time to forgive and let go. I am stuck. Crisis last night - he said earlier in week when I was crying that he would take me out Friday night. This is a big deal because it is always me that arranges babysitting etc etc. Guess what last night he said not, no money. Most of all I think he forgot. Yep I was pretty upset. Today he says he will take me out early eve and has checked with eldest son if he will be ok babysitting (he and ,middle son fight - alot). Now I don't feel like going. What is the point of dressing up. He has told me I am too fat, he has told her she is wonderful, what is the point in dressing up and sitting there knowing he wanted to be with her. He choose her, not me and the boys.

Btw he does not want to do Relate or similar.

Okay Gonna. But what I'm suggesting you do is ASK him these questions. If you've shown him this thread, that will be no problem. Resolve to listen as carefully as you can, resist the urge to get angry at the responses. In fact, if you promise him that you won't get angry before you start talking, this might help your resolve.

It sometimes helps to jot down any thoughts/questions you have as he speaks. If you rush in with a supplementary question, you will perhaps never know what you might have otherwise learned.

If they only had sex twice in 13 months, that tells you something about his needs in this affair. You say your sex life continues and is a huge part of your relationship. All of this is good news, you know. The gap here though is to find out what needs she WAS meeting. Again, don't speculate, ask him.

There are always needs in this situation. My DH thought his need was for sexual excitement, but it turns out his needs were far more complex than that. In summary, it was the need to be adored, made to feel special, desirable etc. etc. In his case, the sex with OW was pretty dreadful, but because he had other needs too, the affair continued after the first sexual encounter. The second occasion was 2 months after the first, it was dreadful again and the other needs started to recede too. Try and get him to see what his needs were - this will really help in rebuilding your marriage.

How do you feel about insisting you both go to counselling?

Dittany - to some extent i agree - it is dreadful when a man dislikes the ow after the affair.
However i do believe it is possible. At the time everyone is caught up in the 'excitment' of the affair.
He does not face up the truth anymore than the ow does at the time.
He 'thinks' he needs something/someone else - the ow so wants to believe what he is telling her (she probably logically knows he is lying and she thinks he is not capable of that then she truly is not thinking straight).
It is only after that part of the affair is over that everyone comes to their senses.
Even the wife who often is 'unwilling' to accept the evidence of what is happening (which of course makes the ow think she is some silly cow to be putting up with it all).

But after the event the man will often not be able to understand what he ever saw in the affair - especially when he sees that it was destroying everything he has often worked so hard to get. And if he can see that the ow was 'allowing' him to destroy his family why would he not see her in a bad light?

However i do sometimes wonder if it is a good idea to get these men to seek help in the same way that we do.
Without sounding sexist i do also believe they think on a very different level sometimes.

What is important though is to both acknowledge what an awful situation it is and to find a way to together beat it and become a great team again.

having read your last post again gonna i think you feel he is not over it and unfortunately until you think he is i dont think it is going to work.
He can tell you a million times but unless you believe him, it will not change the way you feel. You will still want to believe he is lying to you.

You seem to think that life for him was somehow better - without the daily grind that you had. So why did he come back? Surely his single life would have been better, and if you were so bad surely he would not have wanted to come back.

Are you able to accept that he has destroyed your marriage?
Like a precious plate - no matter how much glue you use you will always see the cracks and you will never be happy with it.
If you do still want a relationship with him make it a new one with new rules and new excitment and try and not dwell on how lovely the old marriage could have been if only he hadnt destroyed it.

dittany - i think it a way of trying to figure out exactly what happened.
My h fully admits that he was a total shit at the time and knows he was totally selfish - so selfish he did not want to lose me either.
The ow 'allowing' him to do this is because it is not in her favour to help him stay married - so is not a 'friend'.
All marriages have problems and real friends will support that not be a part in the break-up.
For a long time my h thought she was his friend and i think was more worried about losing that 'friendship'
She has stayed with her h and i am sure her h sees my h in the same way i see her.
For a pair who declared such love there is certainly no love lost between them. I would imagine they both see each other as 'flawed' individuals and because they are obviously of a selfish nature would not really want that in their partners.

Gonna - does have a chance now to make a new relationship with her own rules - it can be better, but she needs to let go of the past. It is easier for her h to let it go as he has all the answers to all the questions.

But i have said that i think gonna needs to take some time for her now.

Happy you are right. I need to find out what was lacking in our relationship that OW had an opportunity to fill a gap. The horrible thing is I know what was lacking her relationship(s) and the gap my husband filled but not what was lacking in ours.

Not yet able to face this but yes, you are right, it is essential that I do.

Re-reading 'My Husband';s Affair Was The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me'. Will post again soon.

I just hope I manage to get out of this hole and don;t end up posting same sorry for myself kind of stuff. Am thinking about counselling and CBT. Just don't have the get and and go for that right now either.

I am so tired - but I do know my husband is a good good man, a man who has got things very wrong but nonetheless true. Our marriage problems are a function of both of us...our ongoing problems are largely down to me. I have to get a grip.

I just want my life back, that is the life I thought I had

This is no kick. It is about healing as a family. My husband is wonderful in many ways. He takes full responsibility for his actions over the past eighteen months but we are not just two individuals. We are a couple, and some of what went wrong, some of the 'gap' in our relationship that lead him to think the grass was greener on the other side is because we both got things wrong.

And yes, I do need to think about who I am, as I said before the loss of identity I have experienced/am experiencing is due to my disappointment with myself as well as with him and us.

I don't know if we can heal properly, I do know that for many many reasons I will not regret trying. If it does not work out I will be stronger and more self aware as a result of this, if it does work out hopefully we will both be stronger (as individual but more importantly as a couple).

Dittany if anyone had asked me a couple of years ago if I would have been like this I would have said no. One of things I have learnt is that infidelity is very very painful but not necessarily enough to stop me loving someone. Someone who is my best friend and a fantastic dad, someone incidentally who I find very attractive in all senses of the word.

I do need to sort my self out and have an appointment with GP this afternoon to explore possibilities for CBT. My husband will support me in this. Couple's counselling. I am not sure I am strong enough to do it without crying at present. Piling on the guilt in front of someone wont help so I am putting that to one side at the moment.

Of course they are problems in your marriage - show me one that is perfect.
But as dittany says - THE AFFAIR WAS NOT YOUR FAULT.

You cannot have your life back- sorry but it is gone - it is now your gift to find a new life (that you can now choose).

None of us know what is around the corner - thats just life, sometimes its good and we are able to plan for it, sometimes it throws crap at us.

There may not have been anything lacking in your marriage as far as your h was concerned.

As i have said before i do think men think very differently about affairs (certainly the way they get into them).

I know this is a bit simplistic but think about what you do when you are feeling a bit low - do you go shopping?

I love shoes - i have loads of perfectly good functional pairs and probably enough to see me through the rest of my life for every occasion anyway. But i still lust after new pairs - there is nothing lacking but when the oppotunity arises i will want another pair.

I suspect your h was feeling a bit low (nothing wrong with that), he started a friendship with ow and before he knew it - it was deeper than he wanted.
Affairs do bring up all sorts of feelings - and during that first flush makes you see your partner in a bad light. Its a vicious circle.

I have been very close (probably an emotional affiar) so i know how intense those feelings can be. It was a long time ago (before mobiles - goodness knows how far it could have got if we could have been in more contact rather than just bumping into each other at work).

Your h was a prize prick for not putting a stop to this and of course he has treated you very badly.

Now it is up to you if you are willing to let him try and make it up to you.

Keep talking and dont worry about the self wallowing and pity - i think it is all part of the process and you will soon get fed up of it yourself too .

If you want more of a chat you can always cat me.

Just read your last post - dont discount couple counselling - you obviously still have a need for 'punishment' - thats ok and as for the crying - if thats what you need do it and dont try to 'protect' him from it - if he feels guilty that is up to hiim to sort out and is not your responsibility.

Again one of the things i think you are in danger of is not letting him face up to what he has done - you are making yourself feel worse because you dont want to pile on the guilt.

I promise you, if he is really going for it for real he will be able to withstand that - and actually support you through it too.

It is tedeous having to go over it with someone else but really they do not judge you.

For a while my h wore the 'hair suit' and would tell people of his shortcomings. It was a comfort in some ways as i could see his guilt.
Sometimes the problems are there because you are both too scared to bring it up for fear of hurting the other.

Your h may well be a good man - but he can also take the punishment too - and if he cant well he is not really worth it is he?

Good luck

I won't discount couples therapy but I don't want to do it now. I want to stop the punishment and start loving again first. I have to be happier in myself otherwise I will never know if he stays out of responsibility or love.

Gonna. I'm sorry, but it still sounds as though you are speculating about how he feels (and felt) rather than KNOWING it. I honestly believe that for a couple to heal from this, there needs to be a shared understanding. For us, this has been an ongoing process.

I would never have expected myself to heal if I'd ever thought that my husband was still pining over what might have been and was staying with me out of a sense of duty. I know myself pretty well and like I said before, it wouldn't even have occurred to me that I could have got past this, had I felt that way. This is what I meant about you having set yourself an impossible task and I still think you have wholly unrealistic expectations of yourself.

It is however possible to love - and not punish - while you are building the shared understanding of what happened here. Our story over the past year has been about that long process to build our shared understanding. But throughout it, we have loved each other very well indeed.

It would be a mistake to think that it's only you who needs understanding. If you are to go forward as a couple or as two individuals, it is crucial that you BOTH understand. Perhaps most tellingly, it has been important for my husband's mental health that HE understood the what and the why. And it certainly has been for mine. In fact, I was talking to DH last night about your situation and he thinks this is what is missing for you. You don't have a shared understanding.

This process is long and fraught with setbacks - but I honestly don't think anyone gets over this without it. What we both believed about this a year ago is very, very different to what we believe now.

People in affairs have the most enormous capacity to delude themselves and I'm afraid that doesn't stop when the affair is over. For example, my husband had deluded himself (at the time and at points since) that this affair was about sex. It would have been very comforting to me perhaps at the time to believe that, but of course the facts didn't add up.

I know him pretty well (we've been together 25 years!) and I knew he was telling the truth about the poor quality of sex with OW. In this sense, the facts added up. If he'd ever thought it was even good, he would not have turned down OW's repeated appeals to meet more frequently and 2 months would not have elapsed before he met her again. But of course what didn't add up was: if it had been about sex and that was bad, what on earth sustained it? This is of course how we arrived at our shared understanding that this was never just about sex - he had other needs.

This is just an example (there were so many others, I could write a book!) of how my understanding differed from his. I couldn't move on at points because the facts (and his actions) during the affair just didn't seem to mirror what he said he was feeling at the time. I used to get so frustrated and angry that he couldn't see what seemed bloody obvious to me, about a whole host of issues. In one memorable conversation, I said "If it looks like a banana, tastes like a banana and you told someone else it WAS a banana, chances are, it IS a banana"!!!

More times than I can tell you about, I felt like giving up. I used to feel drained by this process, but I knew I had to do it, otherwise I'd never be able to move on. Fortunately, my H felt the same.

Equally, I have had to compromise on my long-held beliefs too. As an example, one of my sticking points until relatively recently was that he CANNOT have loved me during the affair. He knows with certainty that he never stopped loving me, but accepts that at that point, he didn't love me enough. I know in reality that in terms of his feelings for me, he wasn't running on empty during the affair, because there were glimpses of care, desire and pride in me. We have therefore settled (in terms of our shared understanding) that just as there have been times when I haven't loved him enough over the past 25 years, this was true of his feelings for me then.

It took infinite patience and many tears to build this shared understanding - and I'd still say that on some things, we are a work in progress, but we love each other so much and so deeply, it has surely been worth it.

I do believe that every experience teaches us something. My worst case scenario would have been that neither of us really learned much about ourselves as a couple or as individuals. Had I given him his marching orders on discovery day, I would never have learned what I know know and of course, neither would he.

The point is, are you and he up for this? Do you both have the stomach and courage to go through this process? I fear that if you don't - and I'm afraid it still doesn't sound to me as though your H is brave enough - you will not heal as a person and the marriage will never reach its potential, with the real risk that something else could happen again.

Thankyou for that post dittany.

Here here Dittany. What has always been missing from this is the H's efforts to repair and heal, beyond the superficial. Also (and I mean this with great kindness, OP) Gonna's belief that without REAL understanding, she can possibly move on and get over this. You were absolutely right. Her rages and anger are simply the human spirit kicking back - and are therefore entirely normal and to be expected.

I think Dittany that is my main fear - I do feel as though he is treating me as though everything is 'normal' and I am struggling because for me its not.

Maybe there is only one person trying to make this work - he says not but I do feel lonely.

good post whenwill

I just wanted to add that it is normal to feel like giving up during the process.
I also agree that a man can still love throughout an affair and actually the lies are not only to protect him but in a weird way are to 'protect' you.

I think as well that you need to get to a point where you feel able to cope alone and in fact the only reason he is in your life is to enhance it and that is your choice not because you feel you have to tolerate it for the sake of anyone or anything else.

If you take the time to learn about yourself you too will see this a good thing.

You're right about needing patience with you!

So now you're appearing to accept that there's no way you can heal on your own, what are you going to do about that?

gonna - does he really know that you are not ready for 'normal'.
He is not a mind reader and if you dont tell him how you feel he will not know.
I remember my h wanting it to be normal more than anything and really not knowing what to do to make it better. I would often retreat to my room to write and he would see this as me 'blanking' his attempts to make things better.
I felt lonely then too as all i wanted was for someone (him) to know how i felt - of course that is impossible and so it becomes a bit of a viciuos cycle.
Do you think you know what you want from him - and could you not tell him?
I wonder if you really dont know yourself and want someone to wave a magic wand and make it all go away.
It is hard and painful but you must keep exploring your own feelings and never feel guilty about asking your h for his help - he can either give it or not but if you dont tell him what your needs are he cant help.
Also dont worry if they change over a period of time - as whenwill said the way you think you will feel changes and you just have no idea how you will feel.
There is no 'should' about it - dont beat yourself up for feeling the way you do.

Gonna, everyone on here has given you very good advice.

I have been lurking on threads and contributing about my own stuff/problems and am probably at the stage of healing (or not) that you are at atm although my DH does appear to have "got it". I am six months down the line from discovery and still have rages and "but you left me for her, you obviously didn't love me and the DC enough" but I had a turning point this weekend where I "got it" ie it wasn't about me, it was about him and only I am responsible for my happiness.

We have had four months of counselling at Relate as a couple and I personally think that you really do need to go to counselling as a couple so the therapist can see how you communicate (or don't ) and you also need a "no nonsense" counsellor that will tell him (and you) as it really is.

My DH still hasn't really confronted his childhood issues and these have come back to haunt him this weekend (as I finally "got it" about us as a couple). He knows he probably needs more therapy as an individual and tbh I don't think he has fully confronted his own "horror" at the affair - he has admitted as much as it is very hard to admit you don't particulary like "the man in mirror" and what he has done to his DW and DC.

Sorry for the ramble - I do know how truly horrible it is and it is worth remembering that it takes on average 2/3 years to recover from an affair.

Good luck.

I have been told 3-5 years - and i think that is probably more like it. The longer the affair and the longer you put off dealing with it the longer it will take.

You are right counting - once you see that it is not about how awful you were that he left you but about what a total selfish twunt he was and he would probably have done it to anyone he was with is a turning point. Well done.

As for the rages well they will still appear but what i find is, it is becoming less and less about the 'affair' and more just about us and that is when it becomes 'normal'. There comes a time when you argue about 'other stuff' and actually you find you dont refer back to the reference point of pre/post affair.

I am grateful for the affair in some ways as it has made us both look at ourselves and actually we have both learnt a lot about each other.

This is a horrible time for us - time of year - not just because of the affair but generally busy too so we are trying to take some time out just the 2 of again - we both now recognize when we need that time (finding that time is another matter though).

Yes Happywoman, DH's is 40 in 3 weeks time (midlife crisis anybody ?????) and we are going to go away again on our own for a couple of days (can't persuade anybody to have the 4 DSs any longer!!!!).

We are now making more time for ourselves individually and as a couple and the affair was the catalyst to better things if that makes sense. Our therapist actually thinks DH would not have sought help if he hadn't had the affair with the tpye of woman he had the affair with - it was really his rock bottom (tbh he couldn't have got much lower than the woman he had the affair with and that was one of the questions I actually asked him when I found out who she was - "Was she really all he thought he deserved ?" - his self-esteem is/was that low (childhood crap) - so it really was all about him).

But it is hard to get the obsessive thoughts out of your head and I did realise this weekend that I was only hurting myself with these awful thoughts and nobody else. As I said to my DH the bad days do become less and less and hopefully she will become an irrelevance to me in the not too distant future.