SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am always wanting positive happy endings.

Some times that is possible, sometimes not.

I do hope you put yourself in your H's shoes.

How would you feel if he had the same affair that you had?

Your actions are so important. words are less important.

As you think hard about him having an affair, how does that make you feel?

He feels this way and it is real.

You have really hurt his self-esteem.

you did not try to start something with him when he felt rejected. You went with someone else.

You are very smart and used so much energy in your A. please now use that energy to try and help him get back his self-esteem.

He is feeling like less of a man because you chose your AP over him.

use your smarts and energy to figure out a way to help his self-esteem.

I do know you are smart, but some of your decisions were lousy.

Rather than lie and go see the OM, you could have spent that time with your H. The why that you did this and the truth will be helpful.

If you loved the OM or he was bigger or better looking, or whatever.

hope you use your energy to help him.

You can do this much. hope you and he find some happiness some day.

Continue self-improvement and complete support for BH, but be fully prepared for divorce.

With me, the mind movies were just too painful to endure, no matter WW's monumental demonstrations of remorse and commitment to 'do the work'.

I knew that staying would mean continued misery for both of us and divorce was the only solution.

Best of luck.

[This message edited by MidnightRun at 9:32 PM, August 8th (Tuesday)]

I have not read the responses since my 3AM posts last night, but I will. This is just a quick note to say that I'm emotionally drained from MC today. I am still very much invested in this thread and I will respond tomorrow (or as soon as I am able). In the meantime, I have a lot to process.

As always, I appreciate the time and effort that has gone into all of the replies here. Thank you, and stay tuned.

I was thinking about you and your BH on the way in to work this morning. I think I can better explain the difficulty that you are having.

The problem: You are looking back at your behavior and you are having a hard time matching up your behavior with your self-image.

Your solution: I must have been temporarily insane and out of my mind to engage in such behaviors.

The actual solution: I did this in full mind, aware of the consequences, and I just didn't care.

It seems like the work you are interested in is to separate yourself from the behaviors, when what you should be doing is adjusting to how you see yourself. You are not who you thought yourself to be. That needs to be your motivation going forward, with your BH or not.

Lastly, there seems to be a lot of desperation in the way you engage your husband. As a BH, it comes across as really awful and disgusting. You said earlier in this thread that you didn't leave your husband and come crawling back, but that's precisely what you did. If I were you, I would right away get to the point that you let go of the outcome and stop trying to control this. You need to own that you did something that he might never get over, whether he stays with you or not. That's the only way that you stand a real chance.

Good luck.

CSCE:

Please read the previous post repeatedly until it sinks in.

If I were your BH, I would NEVER consider reconciliation with you until your actions showed this crucial change.

Take care.

When you decided to never see AP, was that before or after you found out that he was on several dating sites and was seeing several other women on the side too?

Let's talk about those deleted text and Instagram messages. What work have you done in an attempt to retrieve them? I know you've given him a timeline; however, my experience with timelines is that they are very matter-of-fact and straight to the point. Not much insight into the emotional aspect to the affair can be obtained. Since you've claimed that you never wanted to leave your husband and that the OM meant nothing to you, these text messages will either prove or disprove that. So what have you done to retrieve them? In my opinion you should be bending over backwards to obtain them in some way or another unless these messages are a direct contridiction to your claims. If you really want to reconcile and prove your claims, this is your job to do, not your husbands.

I don't want to pile on, but I think you might get a glimmer of the pain your H is in by pointing out the way you describe things.

You were "starting to consider" ending the affair. You do realize how messed up that sounds, right? What your husband is hearing is that after a year of weekly or more sex you were supposedly thinking that if the creek don't rise and the weather be good, maybe you might see your way clear to stopping. Seriously? This screams total fantasy projecting. Were you worrying? Sure that's understandable. Were you feeling guilty? Maybe. But don't go with the trite "I was trying to end it" story. You didn't end it. End of story.

You let the om in to your house, your husbands sacred space, because you knew your om was pestering you to get together (why? To discuss the abyss between Catholicism and Protestantism?) and you didn't want to "disappoint" him. Seriously? He had had you how many times by then? To you H this statement has to be crazy making.

Then things just "escalated." Come on! Nothing just escalates unless you are ok with it, and want it. Please stop this minimization. What you H is hearing is that you took the om home and screwed him. Your supposed intentions are meaningless, and your minimization of your intent is malarkey. Please just stop.

Your H thinks you are parroting back stuff from the healing library. "Yes I told the om I loved him but (fill in the blank)."

Look. It's your call. You can keep talking the talk,or you can start walking the walk. You might start by canning the psychobabble and face the facts honestly. You did it because you could, wanted to, kept the om on a string with protestations of love, thought you would not get caught and thought you could keep this up as long as you wanted. Your H couldn't get hurt cause he would not find out.

It may not save your marriage, but a bit of clear thinking admission will be like manna from heaven to your poor H.

CECS there seems to be a lot to focus on specific parts of your A and discussions about intentions, arguments over semantics and defensiveness in this thread.

The real truth is you had a year long affair.

The details, all the explanations do not change that fact.

What are you doing to make yourself a safe partner?

What are you doing to figure out why you had an A?

Stop trying to make the affair "less" bad and start focusing on making yourself better.

This must be difficult for CECS - she's not reading her BH's thread and you guys come jumping in interrogating her about stuff she may not even know her husband is thinking and saying to the support group on his thread.

I'm not judging because I know I've done it in the past with Donewiththatlife - but I realized later it wasn't fair and apologized. Aren't these questions things her BH should be asking? And since they are avoiding each other's threads - do you have her BH's permission to share with her what he's sharing with you?

CECS - I thought it was generous to risk your safe place in order to get support for your husband - but I cringed too. It's much more difficult for both spouses to be authentic when they know their thoughts could be read by the other. If this is becoming too much - you could ask the mods to add the stop sign. It's your choice - just want to remind you, the option is there.

I'm going to delay direct responses for a little while longer, only because the last time I started those, they took me hours to finish and I didn't get to sleep until 3AM. I apologize for the long delay. So many people have taken the time to comment, and you all deserve to be responded to.

But, I did want to call out one in particular right now, because I think it's really important, and I've been thinking about it almost constantly since I first read it:

zhx700

The problem: You are looking back at your behavior and you are having a hard time matching up your behavior with your self-image.

This is absolutely true, and incredibly astute. I think I might have called it out in my first post as an issue I was struggling with, and I honestly don't feel like I've made any real progress on it, since then. I know what I DID, and I will admit that to everyone. I am not hiding from that - I take responsibility for my actions. But I have not come to terms with how to translate that into the concept of who I am as a person.

Yesterday I was presented with Carl Jung's concept of the "Shadow" self, and I feel like it could have been created for me. For anyone who doesn't know, the Shadow is everything within ourselves that we have no wish to be - the "disowned" aspects of our personality that we deny, repress, and "refuse to acknowledge".

This is me. It hit me like a ton of bricks as soon as I read it. I KNOW I am rejecting the assimilation of "adulteress" into my concept of self (almost certainly a handful of other things, too). Unfortunately, I'm not sure yet how to stop doing that and come to terms with the undeniable reality that even though I don't want to admit it, the fact of the matter is that I AM, and forever will be.

I don't have any profound conclusions - I still don't know how to move forward from here. If anyone has any advice about modifying/updating your sense of self, I'd be grateful for it. In the meantime, I've found some really interesting resources on "Assimilating The Shadow" that I am going to dig into in the hopes that they will provide some direction.

Thanks for your patience on the responses, and I promise they are forthcoming!

Good, CSCE. Do not let this go until you have reconciled the disparity.

A simple way to consider this situation is this:

We are what we do.

A lot of people do not like to consider this as truth. However, our choices ultimately define us.

As an example, I know several people who attend my church who consider themselves charitable, compassionate, and down-to-earth. Yet these same people would never consider volunteering in a food kitchen to feed the poor; the people are too dirty and it would be a headache. At the same time, they will give charitably to organizations that actually do the work.

Are they actually charitable, compassionate, and down-to-earth? I would argue they are charitable, but that they lack compassion and are not down-to-earth.

So they continue to lie to themselves in saying that they care about the homeless when they refuse to get in proximity to them.

You must do the same thing. Yes, you are an adulteress. However, with growth, you can transition from being a cheater to being someone who cheated.

How do you do this? You face it. Toxic shame is killing you right now, and will kill your chances for being a better, emotionally healthy person.

"When shame becomes toxic, it can ruin our lives. Everyone experiences shame at one time another. It’s an emotion with physical symptoms like any other that come and go, but when it’s severe, it can be extremely painful.

Strong feelings of shame stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, causing a fight/flight/freeze reaction. We feel exposed and want to hide or react with rage, while feeling profoundly alienated from others and good parts of ourselves. We may not be able to think or talk clearly and be consumed with self-loathing, which is made worse because we’re unable to be rid of ourselves."

I think you have had toxic shame before the affair. I think it is a large reason you sought the affair. It was an escape from that toxic shame...just like your previous addiction was also an escape...just like your next addiction when the shame starts to become overwhelming...unless you address it now.

Beating toxic shame begins with loving yourself. How do you begin loving yourself? By adhering to principles. These principles become the parameters of your life. They are simple things like always telling the truth with love no matter the consequences.

When you are faced with potentially detrimental choices, you fall back on your principles and values to make the right choice. This builds self love and self respect and in turn, makes it easier to make the right choice. It then becomes a positive feedback loop, as opposed to the toxic shame negative feedback loop of making a poor choice, hating yourself, making another poor choice, etc.

This is why one poor choice often leads to relapse in addicts, with the spiraling effect of the negative feedback loop.

CSCE, address your toxic shame and you will have gone a long way to making yourself a safe partner again.

Take care.

Just wanted to mention something that I haven't seen brought up. You invited this OM to your home (which has already been established), however, in doing so you (no matter what you claim your intent was) you never for one second thought that maybe your neighbors would see this? That they would see a strange car in your driveway, or worse actually see this OM enter and leave your home knowing your husband was out of town?

I know what I would be thinking if one of my neighbors wives had done this exact same thing, and trust me what I would be thinking wouldn't be good. Of all the places you could have met up with OM you decide to bring him into your husbands home and didn't give a damn who or what anyone would think if they saw this OM.

Any neighbor who saw this would think you must really hate your husband, that you were pulling something over on him and that he might as well be the village idiot because it would be quite clear that you never for one second RESPECTED your husband.

Throw in that you "conveniently" turned off the security camera as well before OM came into your home and sorry there's no way anyone is buying your excuse (that's what it is as it's certainly not a reason) that you were going to have a sex with OM in your home that night.

I see sincerity in your wanting to R. I really do.

As a BH myself, the hardest thing for me to come to terms with was that my XWW would never tell the truth regarding her feelings during the A. She said a lot of what you are saying (never cared for him, never thought about leaving me). Evidence showed a much different story, also like your story. I divorced her.

It's hard to argue with cold, hard, printed evidence. Just something for you to think about. She was a horrible person through and through,though. We never would've made it anyway. But I may have tried to R had I thought she was telling me the truth about her feelings.

[This message edited by GoldenR at 3:49 PM, August 11th (Friday)]

BS's get jaded after a while because most waywards tell a strikingly similar tale when caught red handed, and there is usually lots of TT and minimization.

Your case is a little different however in that you are both the one who threw the hand grenade into the marriage, and the one who dove on top of it.

You have made yourself vulnerable more than any other WS that I can recall. The last obstacle for you to get over in regards to full and honest disclosure to your husband is not the details of what you did, but how you felt. Almost all waywards get wrapped up in fantasyland during the A. Your AP was likely a narcissist who was skilled at identifying your weaknesses and exploiting them to get what he wanted (sex, ego kibbles, validation, the thrill of having a married woman risk everything for him).

No shame in admitting to the fantasy fog. It is what it is, and there is nothing you can do about it now other than be totally honest about it.

Again, best of luck to you and your husband.

[This message edited by Limboaz at 8:08 PM, August 11th (Friday)]

Limboaz

You have made yourself vulnerable more than any other BS that I can recall. The last obstacle for you to get over in regards to full and honest disclosure to your husband is not the details of what you did, but how you felt. Almost all waywards get wrapped up in fantasyland during the A. Your AP was likely a narcissist who was skilled at identifying your weaknesses and exploiting them to get what he wanted (sex, ego kibbles, validation, the thrill of having a married woman risk everything for him).

No shame in admitting to the fantasy fog. It is what it is, and there is nothing you can do about it now other than be totally honest about it.

Most excellent points Limboaz.

Please do not continue to minimizing your actions. That will not help your BH nor will it sit well with the extremely knowledgeable members of this forum. It does appear that you were infatuated with the OM and loved the ego kibbles and the sexual gratification that came with the affair. That comes with the territory of any affair; there is no point in denying it.

However, to me the critical issue is if this continued after DD, having seen the devastating effect it had on your BH. It seems to me that did not happen and that all your attention was then directed at trying to repair yourself, your relationship with your husband and the marriage. The latter two may not be possible but you can only keep on trying whilst respecting your husband's wishes.

You have made and will likely continue to make many mistakes on the way but my gut feeling is that your heart is now in the right place. I can only advise you to continue down this difficult path of redemption and remorse, hopefully with the help of this forum. Good luck to you and best wishes to your husband.

CSCE,

I think part of your problem here may be the approach you are taking to it. It seems like you are trying to investigate and establish the why and the how involved with you allowing yourself to do what you did.

There is probably a ton of merit to that, but let's imagine that you spend the next five years establishing how you enabled and allowed yourself to betray your husband and spoil something that could have been pure and special for both of you.

Let's imagine that you have all of that knowledge, and all of that insight, all collected in a burlap sack. What do you really have? A heap of evidence of dysfunctional thinking and behaviour that led to bad decisions being made, bad actions being conducted, and catastrophic results occurring as a consequence. And as you review the contents of that burlap sack, wanting a way forward, won't you just end up pointing at the sack and saying, "I don't want to be like that anymore"?

A recognition of destructive and dysfunctional behaviour may be great, but all it really does is identify what you do not want to be in future. The real question here is not what you do not want to be, but this: what do you want to be in future?

It is vital that you identify the broken parts of yourself that allowed and enabled you to cheat, but true progress will only come from you building a vision of who you want to be in future, and motivating yourself to live up to that ideal and image. And the thing is, that is actually incredibly simple.

What you do is sign up mentally and emotionally to be bonded and locked together with your husband. You abandon whatever wishy-washy, flexible rules you have had in the past and you vow, with all your heart and soul, to not lie to him, because you are one with him, and he is one with you, and lying to him is really lying to yourself.

You mentally run through a stack of different scenarios in your head, and deal with them in a way that protects your marriage. George Clooney comes along and winks at you? You smile, and tell him you are already taken. The guy next door invites you to come round and see his etchings? You tell him thanks, but no thanks. Basically, you become a female version of the kind of man that you would want to be in a relationship with. It isn't rocket science, it's easy, and it's obvious.

As I say, I think you have become 'stuck' because identifying what you did does not necessarily point the way forward. What you need is a target to focus on, and to try and become. Figure out what you would want in a partner you would trust your life to, and then take on the values and obligations that maintain the specialness of that relationship.

The bottom line here is that cheating devalued something that could have been special and precious to you. You have to ask yourself if it was really worth it.

[This message edited by M1965 at 8:48 PM, August 11th (Friday)]

M1965 - that flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that says the wayward must get to their why. Peel back the onion to figure out what allowed them to compromise their integrity. When waywards vow to simply "never do it again" we tell them they're just white knuckling it.

She has to do the work of figuring out what gave herself the right to do this to her husband and marriage. If she can't figure that out and fix her flawed thinking - her likelihood of doing it again is high, no matter how strong her vow to be the female version of the man she wants to be married to.

Sassy,

M1965 - that flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that says the wayward must get to their why. Peel back the onion to figure out what allowed them to compromise their integrity. When waywards vow to simply "never do it again" we tell them they're just white knuckling it.

You are absolutely right, but CSCE is focusing on not knowing the way forward. She knows what she does not want to be, but she doesn't know what she wants to be. My thinking is that what she needs is a target to work towards. And that target may well be something very different to just not doing the things that led to the infidelity occurring.

CantSleepCantEat

I think I am one of those you believed was cruel to you. I am not a cruel person but I believe honesty is the best way to approach rebuilding your marriage. I was an abused child from 4 to 5 years old. An older girl cousin abused me and taught me things no five year old should know. I was alway full of guilt and self loathing and I think it finally led me to give in to a female predator while I was living and working in another city for several months. After years of denying what I was, I finally got into therapy and was able to forgive myself and then went to my wife with the truth. She helped me to overcome my past and I will always be thankful. I hope you can get some professional help. I hope you can come up with your own "why". Good luck. I am rooting for you.