SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Mythought, I think you posted that on the wrong thread.

Our daughter sees us both being sad. She is incredibly smart. She is a tough little kid, but I still worry. I am just trying to make it through today. I really just want to be in a ball in bed crying. I have to put on my fake face and teach 23 kids and interact with other adults, while I'm screaming and crying on the inside. I have therapy tonight. I can't even think straight.

I am afraid that divorce is coming.

If you truly want to be with your husband, don't start dating other men for a long time and keep telling him that you are sorry and that he is still the one you want to be with.

I've seen this work. And the 2nd marriage is much better than the first.

This ^^^^

Sorry LD, you know it is coming. He needs this to make the world right in his head/heart.

I can tell you, he is trying to swallow that resentment and injustice.

He just doesn't think he can do it. He isn't strong enough. Trust me, it is a daily fight for the BS. We hate ourselves for tolerating this behavior. We just learn we are with someone who can never fix us or love us like we do. Instead we can focus on how awesome we are and move on, while scared it will happen again. It is really tough. I am in great shape and I have an eating disorder (I know how that works) and periodically question my sexual prowess. (Shit my WS will never be able to fix or understand.)

So, you spent a year chasing someone else. Chase your husband for double that time. When you are done, you will know you tried everything to make up for your awful decisions.

You said you were strong, you can do this!

I don't plan on dating anyone. I want to be with my husband. I wish he could see that I mean the words I tell him. That I will do everything possible to be a safe partner for him. I know what I took for granted, and I'm kicking myself every second of every day for doing that.

I was a WH many years ago. My wife could not get over my betrayal and we divorced. I remained devoted to her. I did not date. I spent every moment I could with my wife and daughter. I showed remorse every day. I took my daughter when my wife went out on dates. Three years later we remarried. That was over 25 years ago. We have two more children and have a wonderful life. My infidelity seldom comes up - maybe 2 or 3 times a year. When it does, I apologize and thank her for giving me the gift of a second chance. I had to swallow my pride and put her pain above mine. It was painful for both of us. But I am thankful that I was able to help her heal. Hang in there. There is always hope. But you must put your spouse first.

For those 6 months I absolutely put myself first. I am back to putting my husband first. I will not stop pursuing him. I will always hope that he can see how badly I want to be with him. I understand that he doesn't believe me when I tell him I don't have feelings for the AP anymore. I was doing this for 6 months, how could I not? I get it, but I don't have them. The only feelings I have for him are shame, hatred, disappointment in myself, sorry for the families destroyed by our selfish choices, disgust, regret, nothing but negative feelings and emotions. I do not look back at those months and feel any sort of positive emotions. I don't miss him. I'm not in a fog. I don't wish I could speak to him. I don't feel any of that because I didn't really love him. I loved how it felt to be wanted by two men. I loved how it felt to receive compliments. I absolutely was in a fantasy world. I was in love with that. I was not in love with him. I wish I could speak to my husband. I miss my husband. I wish I could be with my husband. I feel those because I love my husband. I am in love with my husband.

I don't want to be with another man. I realize what I had and what I took for granted. That's what I want. I want our life back. I know I destroyed that. I have destroyed everything. Today's therapy was nothing but me crying and blaming myself for fucking everything up. Blaming myself for separating my daughter's life. Blaming myself for the reason that she will miss days with one parent. Blaming myself that we will miss days with her. Blaming myself that she will have to see her parents be sad. Blaming myself that we have to give up everything. Blaming myself for all of it. I told my therapist that I do think they would be better off if I wasn't around. She wouldn't have to go from apartment to apartment. He wouldn't have to ask if he could have an extra day with her. I fucking hate myself. I threw my whole world away because I liked how it felt to be wanted.

With all due respect, you will date. You dated during marriage and it doesn’t make an ounce of logical sense that dating after marriage is off of the table. What you are saying is manipulative and disrespectful. Again, said respectfully

[This message edited by Sharkman at 8:03 PM, September 9th (Monday)]

How is it manipulative and disrespectful to say that I don't want to date? I am not denying that I fucked up. I am saying that I realize what I did. I realize how I took my husband for granted. I will be trying to survive being a single mom while dealing with the depression. Dating is not on my mind. It is not anywhere in my near future unless it's to start dating my husband again.

This may sound odd, by congratulations on realizing the damage that you and only you have caused. This is a big step.

Now the next big step in showing your husband that he and his happiness are more important to you than yourself or your own happiness is to allow for an amicable divorce. I know you don’t want a divorce, but it seems to me after reading both threads that divorce is your only chance to get back and rebuild some type of relationship.

After you have given him time and space to heal from what you have caused, he might ask you out. This might take weeks, months, years, or it might never take place. But during the pre and post divorce periods, you should take advantage of every opportunity to prove to him that you are safe for him.

Keep moving forward, and good luck

[This message edited by Newlifeisgreat at 9:17 PM, September 9th (Monday)]

I just binge-read your posts. I hope you both find happiness.

I know he thinks I didn't love him, but I did love my husband.

LD, you questioned yourself in another response on here. You really need to answer yourself and your husband truthfully about this. Not with what you feel now. With honesty of what you really felt then. The two of you are at odds with that while you were cheating and that will always always stand in the way if you continue to hold onto that. You see it as truth now. Personally I call BS on any cheater saying they loved their spouse. Valued, yes. Object loved, yes. The moment I processed that for myself and my wife, things changed. A BS can't trust you if you can't trust yourself and stop lying to yourself. You need to really dig that apart. He sees it as a lie and you need to focus on his POV and stop holding onto to what you see.

questioned yourself in another response on here. You really need to answer yourself and your husband truthfully about this. Not with what you feel now. With honesty of what you really felt then. The two of you are at odds with that while you were cheating and that will always always stand in the way if you continue to hold onto that. You see it as truth now. Personally I call BS on any cheater saying they loved their spouse. Valued, yes. Object loved, yes. The moment I processed that for myself and my wife, things changed. A BS can't trust you if you can't trust yourself and stop lying to yourself. You need to really dig that apart. He sees it as a lie and you need to focus on his POV and stop holding onto to what you see

I questioned myself after reading a post about that. So many WWs and BSs commented. I felt ashamed and disgusted that I could say that I loved my BS while betraying him. That's what I honestly believe. I never fell out of love with him. I know I didn't value him and I took him for granted. I valued myself and my own feelings over him. I know that nothing I say will ever be believed. He made that very clear last night. I can either tell the truth about my feelings or lie about them. I am telling the truth about my feelings. He thinks I am just writing stuff on here to get sympathy from you all. I am most definitely not. I have even commented how those types of comments bother me because I know I deserve these feelings and what he has to throw at me. I am fucking terrified out of my mind over losing him, over losing our family, over losing everything we have all because of what I did. He is not open to hearing or seeing anything I am doing to be a better person. Our marriage is over. He wants nothing to do with me. Even though I still believe I can make him happy, I know I won't ever get that chance. I now have to work on being a good co-parent with him for our daughter. I have to let go of that hope that we will be together. He does deserve better. He does not want me. I fucked up beyond belief, and now I have to face the consequences. We all do.

quote] I think you need to be honest with yourself about whether or not remaining with your husband is the right thing to do, for both of you.

I urge you to think about whether or not you really, truly want to be with your husband for the rest of your life. Not out of prurient curiosity, but because your affair indicates that he may not be everything that you want in life.

There is nothing to gain by revisiting the affair to examine whether it should have happened. Nobody, including you, would say it was a good thing to do. And yet...It happened. didn't it?

During the affair, your husband came to you and opened up, to say that he sensed something was wrong, and that he wanted to fix it.

At that point, you had no interest in engaging with him. You brushed him off, pushed him away, lied to him, and subsequently slept with your affair partner.

This is not said to make you feel bad, but to make you consider why - at that point - you were so detached from your husband, and so committed to your affair partner.

My thinking, which may be faulty, is that if your husband really is 100% the man you should spend the rest of your life with, why did you prioritize your affair partner over him? Again, I am not suggesting you answer that here; it is posed as a question that you should answer to yourself.

You see, this is not just about trying to prevent the destruction of a marriage and family in the aftermath of infidelity, but about whether it is right - and wise - for you to remain with your husband for the rest of your life.

Sure, you can go into damage limitation mode and try to keep the family and the marriage going, because - being horribly cynical - you do not want to go from having two men in your life to having no men in your life. And then there are the pressures of trying to preserve the family that your daughter is growing up in.

What I want to suggest to you is that although there can be all sorts of pressures and circumstantial reasons for trying to 'save' a marriage, there was a reason - or several reasons - why you loved your affair partner and gave him greater priority in your life than your husband.

Think about those.

Okay, it turned out that your affair partner was a serial cheat, and that you were no more than the latest in a series of trophies he bagged, but that is irrelevant to your life. Whatever he did, whatever he said, it struck a chord with you, to the point where you reached the point of having what looks like an exit affair with him.

You became comfortable in his home while his wife was not there. You were comfortable driving him and his children around. You took your daughter to his house, to be with his children, and were happy to be a guardian to his children. You had sex with him after hearing the pleas from your husband to address the problems that were occurring in your relationship.

As much as you might wish you could press 'rewind' and not do those things, the truth is that you did them. And you did them for a reason.

And now you find yourself struggling to try and save a marriage that for six months was clearly less desirable to you than your relationship with your affair partner.

If that man could become the focus of your life and your desires, above your husband, and above your daughter, I think you should really question whether you really, truly want to remain with your husband for the rest of your life.

Essentially, during your affair, you found a man that you wanted more than your husband for six months. Ask yourself why. This is not about punishing you, or being cruel, but because it is essential for you to not try to rebuild your relationship with your husband unless you are sure that he is a person you can spend the erst of your life with and be happy.

Because if you have issues with your husband that made the man you had an affair with look like a better match for you, those issues are not going to go away just because your husband beat the crap out of your AP and sent him on his way.

During the affair you told your AP you loved him, and you appeared to be trying to blend the children together. I ask you to think about what would would have happened if your husband had not busted the affair, and if your AP suggested that he would leave his wife for you and set up home with you.

What response would you have given to him?

From what I know of the affair, I would think you would have dumped your husband with an "I love you, but I'm not in love with you" speech, and moved in with your affair partner.

The reality is that he never had an interest in a real relationship with you, it was no more than getting kicks for free, but would you really have refused him if he had offered you the chance of a life with him? [/quote]

I want to be with my husband. I want to build a new relationship. I don't want it for the safety or the comfort. I don't want it because it's what we've known for 17 years. I don't want it because anything else will be a huge change for all of us. I want it because I love him. I know my actions for those 6 months prove otherwise. I know it's fucked up to say that I still loved my husband during it. I never hated him. I never resented him. I was not happy with myself as a mother or wife. The mother aspect I have already explained, so I will explain the wife part. From when he first told me that he wasn't in love with me anymore, that always stuck in my mind. Clearly I was doing something wrong. I wasn't having sex with him enough. He told me that plenty of times, even when I thought we were having sex. That was a huge failure for me. I make a teacher's salary, which isn't much. Even though I contributed to our finances, I felt less than because he made so much more. We never struggled while we were both working, but I still felt like a failure. When we moved here I gained weight, 60lbs throughout the 11 years. I absolutely let myself go. I have never had great self-esteem. I would try not to talk down about myself, but I'm a woman who's always done it so it was hard. For the first 4 years of our relationship he tried so hard to help me with that. When we moved here, he was tired of it and told me how he really felt. I never felt good enough. There were times when I felt great, when I felt that I looked good, when I felt that he was lucky to be with me.

In January of 2018, I was done with being fat. I finally decided to do something about it and started to lose weight. I started to feel really good about myself. He started giving me compliments again, but my mind was so fucking warped that I thought he was only saying it because he had to as my husband. I didn't let myself see his compliments for what they truly were. A year later when the OM came into the picture, I didn't know any of this would happen. I didn't agree to run the club with him because I wanted to be with another man. I wanted to look good in my principal's eyes, being a new teacher there and agreeing to run a new club. I wanted the brownie points. I needed that external validation. When our conversationd turned flirtatious, I'm sad to say it felt good. Someone thought I was attractive and it wasn't because they had to think that, again my warped thinking. The OM was good at making people feel good about themselves. I saw him do it, and I fell for it. I soaked it up. I was in it for myself. I started to feel more self-confident.

When my husband first came to me with his concerns, I was scared. I couldn't tell him what I had been doing. I didn't want to hurt him. I didn't want what's happening now to have happened. I was also selfish. I would not have left my husband and family for the OM. It was not an exit affair for me. I wanted my cake and to eat it too. I did not want to leave my husband. Yes, I would have refused him if had come to me saying that he was going to leave his wife for me.

My husband made it very clear to me last night that he does not want me. He wants out of this hell hole so fast. He called me tons of names, his anger started to come out. He is absolutely disgusted with me. The best that I can hope for is that we can be good co-parents for our daughter's sake. He will not believe anything I say or do. I completely destroyed any chance of us being together. I won't stop trying to be a better person and hoping that he can see that one day. I do need to realize that he will be divorcing me. As much as I want to hold on to that hope, I don't think it will do me any good.

LifeDestroyer

All I can say is that you are giving up very easily. You have chosen to stop fighting even after realizing that you are in the early stage of the exposure. Many here have given you good advice and “if you desire reconciliation, you must choose to be in this for the long haul.” You won’t even try for six months which the same amount of time you were practicing infidelity and keeping house with your AP. You are the one that must do the heavy lifting, but you have decided to run. At this moment in time; your husband is all over the place, and I believe he is trying to find the real you. Your husband is an analytical person and will view everything logically and your revelation, the timeline doesn’t add up. If you want your marriage to work, you must continue the pilgrimage to reconciliation to the end regardless of what he is presently saying or requesting. Think about it!!!!

Best,

Bigheart

I am not giving up. I am still going to try, but in also going to allow myself to think that this will end. I will continue to show him. I will continue to try to talk to him. I will continue to try to do things for him. I am not running, but I know my husband. I can see the destruction I have caused in him. I can see that he absolutely does deserve better. Do I think I can be that better, yes, but I need him to see that. I'm not giving up, but I'm not going to pretend that we will reconcile. I will hope and pray and work for it, but I'm not expecting it. I will never give up on him, because again if we do divorce I want us to be friendly. I don't want him to hate me for the rest of his life. I will stand here for however many years it may take. I will listen to the words he has to tell me, good and bad. I will put him before myself. I don't want to be a shitty selfish piece of shit person.

[This message edited by LifeDestroyer at 9:21 AM, September 10th (Tuesday)]

LD - When I read your first posts, I honestly thought you were full of it. Granted it could've been coming from my own situation and seeing my WW in your words.

However, some of the things you have written lately have seemed so sincere and moving. I think I am going to give my wife the gift of R and I sent her what you said about how all waywards should appreciate that gift. Thank you for how you said that.

I truly hope you mean what you are saying. I hope you become that better version of yourself and never do this again to anyone.

I am sorry for you and your family.

The thing is with what you want is this. Your husband believed all those things about you. He even tried to step in at the start and warn you off and you blew him off. Then he comes to you again with the warning, again you lie and blow him off. Then you bring your daughters to your ap’s house to watch his.

Why would he ever believe anything you say or your actions when they didn’t mean anything before?

Their is no way for you to understand how you have hurt your husband unless he has done the same to you. I honestly would never say that you can imagine how you hurt him again, You can’t.

The only thing you can do is move forward from here. There is a WW wife on another sight that did the same as you, she never dated again even though her ex did for around three years. They got back together finally once her actions proved what she was saying. It will be a hard road ahead of you, I wish you the best.

How is it manipulative and disrespectful to say that I don't want to date? I am not denying that I fucked up. I am saying that I realize what I did. I realize how I took my husband for granted. I will be trying to survive being a single mom while dealing with the depression. Dating is not on my mind. It is not anywhere in my near future unless it's to start dating my husband again.

Because it's ridiculous. Of course you are going to date. It's pretending to be "all in at all costs" when overwhelming common sense suggests that you'll be dating again at some point, be in in a few weeks or a year or whatever.

Ugh. I'd recommend you stop listening to people on this thread. Put a stop sign on your next post.

I didn't read 100% of the thread. Are you seeing your daughter? You absolutely have a right to have her 50% of the time. See a lawyer, get a temp order in place.

Just because you are a WS doesn't mean you have to give up everything and destroy your life.

Keep working on yourself. Even if he files. Never give up on yourself.

You have mentioned suicide a few times. That you think they will be better off without you. That is your guilt and shame talking. Do not harm yourself. Your child needs her mommy. Have you made mistakes with her? Of course. There has never been a mother who hasn't made a lot of mistakes with their children. It's ok. It truly is. Now that you know better, you do better. But you don't have the right to leave your baby. She would have to live with that burden for the rest of her life. She will wonder why she wasn't enough to keep you here. You are a mother. You don't get to give up.

Hugs to you.

[This message edited by HellFire at 1:47 PM, September 10th (Tuesday)]