SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This need is not going away. I still feel the urge to pursue.....but the universe keeps blocking

Mickie, have you told your WH about your urge to have a revenge affair?

No I haven’t told him. Am I supposed to?

I don't know that there is a "supposed to" when it comes to revenge affairs, because the overarching "supposed to" is that you're not supposed to. Hiding the intention to pursue someone else is wayward. Using outside sex as a band-aid for self-esteem issues is wayward. Blaming your partner for the choices you make is wayward. Resentment leading to entitlement leading to self-justification is wayward.

Why be wayward? Leave your marriage and fuck anyone you want. If the answer is that you feel you deserve the perks of the A without losing the benefits of the M, that's the most classic wayward argument of all.

There is no justice for the BS. What we did to you, there is no way for you to feel ok with it. You having a revenge affair will just bring you down even further than you already feel. Don't lose your integrity like we did.

If you don't want to be with you WH because you know you will never be able to love him again the same way, then divorce. Find someone that you can be happy with. Find someone who hasn't hurt you. Find someone you can trust. Don't stoop to our level. It's not worth it.

However, if you think that there is a chance that you can truly be happy with your husband and you are willing to fight for it, then do so. Don't have the revenge affair. Talk to him. Talk to him over and over again. Tell him what you are wanting from him. Tell him what you expect from him. Don't have that affair. Be better than us.

Thank you so much. I know it is a battle between me and my ego. I want him to feel what it feels like to not be able believe anything anymore

leavingorbit

do you think of sex as something you give or something you get? Had you shared your desires with your wife? Also idk, no sex is a surface why. Why do you need it to the extent that you’d be willing to lie and cheat to get it? Just some stuff to think about. There’s nothing wrong with sex being important to you and a dealbreaker, but if you don’t get it, you work with your partner or leave.

Sorry for leaving you in the wind. I had myself a little vacation that already pre-planned, helped clear my head quite a bit. It's kind of amazing how far two weeks without electronics, internet, and stress can go towards clearing your head.

It's not just sex. I'm a bit of spooner. Since our daughter was born, we spooned a lot less. Easier to get out of bed for crying when nobody has to be unwrapped. When I got my current job, and she went back to work, we had lopsided hours. Our daughter was only with a sitter three hours a day, and with transit, we only had about eleven hours a day together. And at least 7-9 of that was spent trying to sleep.

Rarely did we watch anything together, we got one meal together a day. We managed to carve out some time for sex, but just that. We used to just spend hours curled up next to each other on the couch, granted we were each doing our own thing, but that was something.

I'm usually not a tactile person, but my therapist thinks that due our differing work schedules, stress; part of me thought that since quality time was going to be next to impossible, so I in turn, placed even more importance on our physical relationship. Which, considering everything above, was kind of sabotage, when combined with communication problems.

Shttrd: I think everyone values different things. It’s fine to value physical intimacy. The question is, why would I be willing to cheat to get it? The answers to that involve unique internal factors for you and your wife.

I hope you’re finding some peace these days.

Does anyone actually miss, at least part of who their spouse was before all the A's?

My wife used to be so confident. She didn't sugar coat things and was upfront with what she wanted. She never hesitated to speak her mind.

Now she's timid, indecisive, and she's even gotten quieter. I have been noticing it for it a while, but everything just came to a head a hour ago. She's been looking at me the way a bear looks at a fish, for three days now. I correctly guessed why, and waited for her to either initiate or ask.

By today, I was thoroughly confused and more than a little fearful that her affair had resumed, and asked for her to swap devices for a trust check (stupid name, I know, MC's idea). Nothing. So I asked her what was wrong, and she stared at the ground and mumbled. It took me ten minutes to get to clearly ask if I was in the mood to 'fool around'. I might have been before, but I definitely wasn't after that. This is the first, and time, I have heard my wife refer to it as fooling around, and not some crude euphemism, 'fuck', or 'make love'.

I have suddenly found myself wondering if my wife's body was possessed by the spirit of a teenage girl.

@Shttrd

No. But then, it’s not that black and white. Before we had parts that were inauthentic and unhealthy. Now we work on those parts. I think I was guilty of pining for some idealized version of my husband and marriage. It’s just not real, and who I was wasn’t real either on many levels. Our process has been about defining and confronting “the real.”

Gently, a major bomb has gone off in your lives that you both set. Things are not the same and will not be the same. I imagine she’s struggling with a great deal of shame and guilt and pain. If her experience is anything like mine, it’ll be compounded by your cheating. She’s probably blaming herself for it all. She may also be struggling to see you as safe.

Have you talked to her about it? It makes sense to me that she may be struggling with confidence. However, she also tried to initiate intimacy with you.

I understand being hurt and upset. I guess I’m having a harder time with understanding why you would think she wouldn’t feel the same. Do you think you’re the same as before? Do you blame her for your ONS?

[This message edited by leavingorbit at 8:38 AM, August 18th (Tuesday)]

Gently, a major bomb has gone off in your lives that you both set. Things are not the same and will not be the same. I imagine she’s struggling with a great deal of shame and guilt and pain. If her experience is anything like mine, it’ll be compounded by your cheating. She’s probably blaming herself for it all. She may also be struggling to see you as safe.

I know. Most of my frustration is because I feel like I broke her. Just before we started dating, I watched her break a man's arm for grabbing her ass. After we got engaged, some her fire went away, but she always knew what she wanted and didn't let anything stop her.

Have you talked to her about it? It makes sense to me that she may be struggling with confidence. However, she also tried to initiate intimacy with you.

If you call that initiating. We don't have dogs, cats, or fish because we move a lot. We don't have a bird because I'm fairly certain that she was born with a sailor's vocabulary ingrained into her mind. If we had a bird (a cockatoo, or parrot), our daughter's first words would definitely have been "damn". Followed by either "c***" or "father-fucking whore".

In our second year dating, we experimented with a little bit of porn in the bedroom. One day we tried anime/hentai. Maybe it was the kind that we tried, but that submissive shit was always a mood-killer for me. Better boner-killer than ice-water for me.

I understand being hurt and upset. I guess I’m having a harder time with understanding why you would think she wouldn’t feel the same. Do you think you’re the same as before? Do you blame her for your ONS?

I am not the same as before, but she went from herself to this over two weeks that I was camping. My brother and father went with to vouch that I wasn't out plowing prostitutes or anybody for that matter. It gave me time to physically heal from an injury, and clear my head from a recent complication that's developed.

I don't blame her for my ONS. Yes, she pulled away due to an affair, and it made me feel alone and unwanted. But I still made the choice(s) to have it. I had a literal ton of chances to stop, or walk back my chosen course of action and I didn't.

However, my wife does not mimic my thought on this. She has expressed, in MC and in private that she feels like my ONS is her fault. She knows that it isn't her fault, but she is trying to work through those feelings.

How does this work? I don't get it. My wife and myself has been married over 30 yrs. Not good at at all. 3 beautiful adult boys I love so much. She is disrespectful. Mean. Bitch. I early on wanted to leave. Planned to move in with ex girlfriend. Didn't happen. Promised myself I would leave when my youngest was 18. He is now 25. I was out of town in a contract job for 6 months. She invited ex boyfriend over with my sons home. They said it was uncomfortable. They had sex. Now 10 yrs later. I hate my marriage. I'm nearly 60. She doesn't care if I live or die. I'm so depressed. How does this work?

This is the worst club I've ever been a part of. Seriously, I wish I didn't know anything about this madhatter way of life.

My marriage is a train wreck,. My life is a mess. My heart hurts and my brain can't figure anything out. Worst thing in the world. Only thing to do is keep going. But man, it is not easy.

I'm sorry, Bewuzzled. Do you have an update on your H and OW?

I'm sorry, Bewuzzled. Do you have an update on your H and OW

So he finally went NC with her. And was NC with me, while he tried to figure out what he wanted.

I got tired of living the limbo and feeling like I was waiting for my husband to choose between me and another woman. I told him I was done and wanted a divorce. I made a mistake and moved on too quickly after he didn't stop me, and I slept with someone else. It was intentional and I had told H what was going to happen next, and quickly, if he said nothing and felt no differently about us 3 weeks after his betrayl.

Long story short, he comes back to me the next week with a proposal for R, that included keeping her as a friend. When he found out there was an OM, he changed his mind again. Now I'm back to sad and depressed cause if I'd waited more, maybe we'd have been able to fix it. But maybe not, since his plan included keeping her. Now I'm just confused and hurting again. So frustrated and sad. It's so convoluted and messy and terrible.

Guess we should just say goodbye and move on.

Did your WS forgive you after you became a MH?

After our latest fight The urge is back again.

Long story short, he comes back to me the next week with a proposal for R, that included keeping her as a friend.

That would be the same status he was at when the two of them "accidentally" ended up making out, right?

I'm sorry, Bewuzzled. Falling into bed with someone else was not a smart move, but it doesn't sound like he was going to accept any terms that eliminated OW from his life, and your marriage was already irreparable under those conditions.

Did your WS forgive you after you became a MH?

The sequence in our case we that he had an ONS that he didn't tell me about, I had a 4 month A about two years later, he came clean retroactively, and then he had another "sanctioned" ONS with someone else. It didn't help him feel that justice had been served. It did give him some ego kibbles. But the main outcome was that we both rugswept; I was a hell of a lot less apologetic and willing to do the work once he stepped out on me.

How are you going to feel if every time you want to vent at your WH or ask him for comfort, his response is to tell you to get the fuck over it because you did the same thing to him? Does that really sound like a healthy marriage, or a promising way to heal?

No it doesn’t.