Gonna - please, please follow up on that counselling. I was so pleased to read that this morning. This is progress from yesterday, when you said you couldn't face it.
I still feel that you accept his explanations far too readily - and then resume thinking that it must be you who is going mad and having unrealistic expectations. He cannot seriously think he is doing everything on that list in my earlier post can he? And surely you don't? As I said to you before, even what he has admitted to you re. considering calling the OW is bad enough - and very revealing.
As Happy Woman says, his E mail accounts and social networking sites should be open to you. There should be no secretive behaviour whatsoever. Being open and transparent about activities restores trust. Saying he cannot remember the passwords is balderdash - they are so easily retrieved and he knows that.
Why has he still even got OW's number in his phone? In your position, I'm afraid, I'd be checking phone records, as well as the accounts you tried to hack into last night. Like Happy Woman said downthread, I don't trust your H one iota and I can't imagine why you do.
All your H seems to do is say sorry and that he loves you and wants to stay with you. But words are cheap - it really is about actions - and I just can't see any of those from your posts.
A counsellor would pick this up in a flash - and maybe if you actually heard a RL professional telling you what we've been trying to, it might help. It will certainly wake your H up from his delusions.
When choosing a counsellor, please ask for someone who specialises in recovery from affairs. I'd want to know that they have intimate knowledge and understanding of what I think is the bible of affairs - a book called Not Just Friends by Dr. Shirley Glass.
However much you might want to hear it, because in the nicest way, it lets you off the hook from tackling the issues - please avoid like the plague, any counsellor who wants to rush your recovery and acceptance. Abedelia's experience is just such an example of this - counsellors like this shouldn't be in business IMO.
Conversely, counselling might cause you to confront some of your own unhelpful behaviours too - and apart from anything you might gain as a couple, I think you'll learn a lot about yourself.
On to other points made by posters. Happy Woman, I was so glad to see your posts from today. When you have a wobble, I think we all get worried!
I would echo all that you've said about your H's selfishness. My H completely admits that he has spent his entire adult life being selfish - and he sees the affair as an extreme manifestation of that. As a case in point, he readily but painfully acknowledges that his reasons for wanting to end the affair were all about his needs - and not anything to do with mine and the pain he was causing me and our marriage.
In fact he hadn't even acknowledged that it was causing any pain or damage, despite a long chat we'd had about his awful behaviour at home 6 weeks earlier. I had cried, asked him whether there was someone else and received a complete denial and protestations of extreme love for me.
Towards the end of the affair, he had tired of OW, wasn't interested in her any longer and found her needy, demanding and intrusive. He did care about hurting her feelings though, but like the arch manipulator he was, felt that the best way forward was to "get himself dumped" by her, by refusing to see her again, being slow to reply to texts and urging her to make a go of things with her husband. It has angered me that he never once mentioned that it was time to re-commit to his own marriage too - but I have had to accept that at the time, bizarrely, he never thought he was causing me or our marriage damage. This story causes me pain and some satisfaction too. I'm pleased that OW was never a real threat and that he never saw this relationship as long-term or a possible alternative, but it appalls me that he only wanted to end it when it no longer suited his needs.
Unfortunately for us, there haven't been too many positive spin-offs from his selfishness, mainly because his other great vice was extreme laziness. This has been one of the most amazing transformations in him - I just don't see any of that in him anymore. He would work his fingers to the bone to make my life easier now and without being a complete doormat (which wouldn't be very attractive ) he just isn't selfish any longer. Counselling on his own really helped him to tackle some major character faults.
Sadly however, one big bone of contention has reared its head this past week - and when I saw your post Happy Woman, a shiver went down my spine.
Over the past year, I have caught him out in several lies (about the affair). Not about the major things - in fact some of them have been utterly pointless and the truth would not have made me feel any worse. He has never really been able to account for why he he has done that - but like yours HW, he has always loved having a secret and it's something we acknowledged in him in the very early post-discovery days. He's often had trouble describing things as "lies" too - and on some issues, I have conceded that he didn't understand they were lies at the time, but with new understanding, realised that in fact he was lying to himself more than anyone.
Then there have been other things that are mystifying. Things that he has withheld and lied about when questioned - but didn't internally acknowledge that he was actually lying.
One of these "slipped out" this weekend (must have been something in the air!) and in fact it was a pretty major lie about something that happened during the affair. What was worse was that he didn't "come to the table" with this information - it came out during a conversation, almost as though he thought he had told me about it all along. I sat there open-mouthed, my stomach lurched and my mind was racing.
The thing itself doesn't cause any particular fresh pain - and had I known about it a year ago, wouldn't have made much difference to the outcome. But the lying has really hurt, particularly as he has repeatedly lied about it when questioned.
He cannot account for it and a load of fresh doubts have re-surfaced, leading to much googling about pathological liars. He has been in bits, knowing he's let me down again. I'm now wondering how much more is unknown to me and since he doesn't seem to even acknowledge that he's withholding information, even he cannot seem to help me with this one.
This is the worst "down" we've had in a long while and I am in turmoil. I know that we love each other deeply and that he is the most caring, adoring and selfless husband I could wish for. But I would say I've always had 2 sticking points in my recovery:
1)How can I carry on with these awful flashbacks and knowledge about how badly I was treated - like most of us on here, I find I obsess about the affair constantly and have awful images that I cannot remove from my head.
2)How can I continue a marriage with someone who lies - and sometimes doesn't even realise he's doing it?
Any words of wisdom gratefully received. Hopefully this will reassure you too Gonna, that the people on here are far from sorted!