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Although we are trying to reconcile and we're getting there, I still can't understand how someone who loves their wife could be unfaithful. He said he never gave my hurt a single thought when he was doing this. Never thought about me AT ALL.

Now he says he loves me and I'm not sure that his version of love and mine, where I couldn't bear to hurt him, are the same.

I know its a basic question, but I'm still hurting and I need to sort this out in my mind.

I thought loved my BS whilst I had my affair, but I accept now that I didn't. I feel that love, for me, is a verb, a physical act. For example, "what can I do to love my wife today?" I'm sure it's my language of love, but, post affair, it has made me a more loving husband.
Your spouse didn't behave in a loving way to you so didn't love you properly. Possibly, like my situation, he took your love for granted and didn't make the effort back, assuming that his love could more or less just be "taken as read".
He needs to acknowledge that, sadly, you weren't in his heart at the crucial time. Doesn't mean you can't be in the present and future though.

My WH has said that he "lost sight of how much he loved me and how much that meant to him" during his 3 month affair - but that he was clear that he DID love me and knew what he was doing would cause me pain. We are still unraveling the mess.

I always tell people that my first marriage failed because my definition and my exes definition of marriage just didn't match. I wonder if that is the case here sometimes too.

I could not bear to hurt him in this way. And it is not like I was a raging bitch - in fact the opposite. And I was begging for intimacy throughout.

Yes, I am curious to see other (more experienced) responses too...

I think the Native American prayer/Sioux prayer says it best: "Make me strong, not to be superior to my brothers, but to fight my greatest enemy, myself." This year has taught me that this is true. Our greatest enemy is ourselves.

Freud observed a "death drive" in his subjects which "... is the drive towards death, self-destruction..." We all have it, it may manifest itself differently in each one of us and at different times in our lives, but Freud taught that we all have that drive.

This has been my lesson this year. The manifestation of self-destructive tendencies is not one of moral failing but proof of a deep brokenness, someone who has not sufficiently developped their sense of self-preservation. someone who is not fully aware of their own value and who through their own actions has damaged their self-esteem has no defence against self-destructive tendencies. In their emotional isolation they give into their most selfish desires. We are innocent by-standers in their self-deluded "tragi-comedy", part of the collateral damage.

Self-destructive tendencies are inside each one of us, but it doesn't mean they have to manifest themselves.

I also question if my definition of love is the same as my husbands, he says he didn't stop loving me but he thought he could have it all, a loving wife and family and a bit of sex offered to him on the side appeared exciting as we had only been with each other. He didn't think about getting caught and what he had to lose until it was staring him in the face. I will never understand how it is possible to cheat on someone you love. My definition of love means that respect and love would stop me hurting the one i love. My own self respect has also always stopped me going there in the past. I think thats why it hurts so much, i gauge his love to my love.

Healing, I see that your WH was sexually abused as a child. My H was also sexually abused as a child. Not only that, but after the creep abused my H, he then called my H's younger brother into the room to abuse him as well. H isn't sure, to this day, if the creep called in yet another brother (making it 3 boys in one day) or not, but he sure has felt an extreme amount of guilt for his one younger brother being molested that day... like he should have been able to protect him somehow at 10 years old.

I was also sexually abused as a child. I can tell you from personal experience that that really messes a person up! I was molested at age 5, and from that time on I thought that boys and girls were supposed to get naked with each other and play naughty. Somehow, from that day on, I managed to always find the screwed up kids who had most likely also been abused and we could then participate in our destruction together. I was on self destruct in a big way, I just didn't know any better. I did figure things out when I was an adult though, and have done a lot of work on myself to get over that.

My H....not so much. He never addressed those feelings and those things that happened to him. So he still was filled with MUCH self hate, guilt, shame, all kinds of toxic feelings about himself, even into adulthood. On the outside he was fine, he was a great guy, it was the inside that was royally messed up.

His A wasn't about me, it wasn't about thinking about me, it was about finding another way to hurt himself and show himself how little he deserves to be happy and how he's a terrible person. He hated himself more than he could possibly love me at the time, because he was too broken to be able to love me like he should have, like he does now.

His "version" of love has always been right, but he couldn't love me deeply until he learned to love himself finally. It has taken him many years of IC/MC/reading books, talking countless hours, crying, rehashing his own past as well as our M past, to get to this point.

Sometimes we (the BS's) are collateral damage to a self destructive WS who is bent on harming themselves in any way shape or form. It really isn't about the BS.

I feel the same way about my H and though he says hes always been "in love" with me, I feel like its always been more of a lust or platonic love for me. I know that if he was ever truly in love with me he would have a sort of tunnel vision and unable to see anyone else in that way besides me, like he is now. I dont feel like hes in love with me yet like how ive always been in love with him but I think if he stays on course, we can make it. Good luck

I have come to a similar conclusion. My FWH did not love me, or her, or even himself during that time. He was consumed with insecurity and self-hatred. He thought that having a fantasy escape from his life would help, but it only worked for a short while. The rest of the time he was in a hell of his own making that he did not have the emotional capacity to deal with. Sad, really. He hurt so many people and now has to live with the fallout.

We see this topic on here a lot. I guess I think differently. I do think a person can love their spouse and still have an affair. As the above poster said, its not about the other spouse – its about the one who had the affair. When I discovered my H’s affair and saw the emails where he said he loved her – I almost laughed- because I KNEW he didn’t love her. Love had nothing to do with anything.

He was simply trying to make himself feel better – he was trying to escape from himself, he wasn’t where he wanted to be in his life, he wasn’t happy with our marriage, he wasn’t happy with our kids- he wasn’t happy with his career and the affair was a release from real life– I asked him “..and how did that work out for you? Did it make things better, did it make you happier?”. He admitted, it didn’t. In fact, it made things worse, he was stressed out much of the time. An affair is nothing more than a selfish act and the wayward is the star of his very own reality show.

I think we could ask that same question in lots of different scenarios. If my mother and father really loved me they wouldn’t have _________. If my kids really loved me they wouldn’t have ______________. And the list can go on and on.

I’m not trying to minimize affairs at all – or pretend that I could possibly justify my H’s actions at all. Once the dust settled, I wondered how he could live with himself - all the lying and sneaking around and the broken NCs, not whether I doubted his love for me – the real problem was he didn’t love himself or respect himself very much during that period of time.

I also struggle with the question of how could he possibly love me and do the things he did for 3yrs? I had been propositioned by a few guys during the first years of our marriage, but quickly put them in their place.

We both came from prior marriages that ended with infedility on our ex's part and had discussed many times early in the marriage about how hurtful that was to us. We swore to each other if things in our marriage got that bad we would either end the marriage or go to MC, but we would never cheat. I thought our marriage was solid and never for one second thought he was cheating and lying to me.

Now I can't believe him when he says he loves me. I no longer feel the love that I thought we once had and I don't think I could ever feel it again even if he was the picture of a remorseful spouse, which he hasn't been. He tries in his own way to make me feel safe now, but will not fix what is broken in himself. He is an extemely selfish person and I overlooked a lot of that when I had my rose-colored glasses on. I now point it out to him when I see him being outright selfish and he will apoligize, but I don't think he really gets it or thinks about it.

I would actually hate to think that my WH loved me while engaged in his affair.

What kind of monster would he be to love me all the while intentionally, and selfishly, causing me so much pain.

Personally, I would not want to R with someone that *loved* that way.

I think my WW didn't know how to love, didn't understand what love was, and didn't love and respect herself let alone me.

My WW said the same thing. She said she didn't think about me and didn't think I would ever feel hurt because she didn't expect me to find out.

Then she got caught. And it hurts like hell.

What she showed for me during the A is contempt. To me, contempt is the opposite of love.

Coming to terms with that is my biggest struggle in R.

Good luck and stay strong.

To everyone that replied, thank you so, so much.

We talked last night and he said he 'shelved' his love for me. Still there, but put into another compartment.

He didn't want the emotional bit, just the sex, and the sex was part of trying to re-enact the abuse.

He's read 'How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair' twice, and is putting it all into operation. I know its going to be ok, but I don't think I'll ever truly understand. I've decided to give it some more time, and maybe I'll have to accept things and move on, rather than understand.

Thank you all so much. I feel so much better for all your answers.

Healinggirl x