I have been putting this off since my wife found the site, joined and asked me to please post and become active. That was three months ago. I'm not sure why I have put it off so long, I think posting this publicly (even if anonymously) is hard for me to do, hard to openly admit what I've done.
I met my wife almost ten years ago, married her almost five years ago, and spent two of those years engaged in a physical and emotional affair with a co-worker. I was selfish, I was disconnected, I was terrible to my wife. Through it all she never did anything other than commit herself in every way she knew how to making our life and our marriage better. I lied to her throughout, I blame shifted to her in order to get her to stop asking hard questions, I lied to myself about problems in our marriage that did not exist in order to avoid examining the damage I was inflicting. I lied to my family and to my friends, I took time away from my children to engage in the affair. I have alienated so many people who mean so much to me. The problem now is that these are the feelings that are starting to take over....the breadth of what I have done to my wife, to our life together, to our family are settling firmly down on my shoulders and I find that I get stuck hating myself. I recognize this does nothing to help the situation, but at times it feels like I can't help it. Particularly when she is struggling as well.
We are working, and she has put in so much more effort than I could possibly have asked for in this process, given me every opportunity to make things better and I have tried so hard to take advantage of them....my fear (realization?) is that it will not be enough. That I have done too much, that it is too hard, that the effort it would require of her to move through this is not there.
I have taken all the steps I hope will help: left my job, no contact, in individual counseling, marriage counseling, sex therapy. But days like yesterday make it seem like a drop of water into a bucket of shit. I know this is very general, I hope in the future I can be more specific, but any insights or advice from those who have worked through their own feelings of a long-term betrayal would be welcome. I thank you for any responses, I thank you for your posts that I have been lurking and reading as a part of this process.