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I had a very rough week with lots of rage from too little communication. Yesterday I saw H at lunch and told him I needed to see more from him. At first he was defensive and said he couldn't talk at work but eventuall he told me how hard it is for him to talk about it and to face that he did this. We ended up having a semi-productive chat and I started to feel better.

Then last night I asked him a question. He had told me after I found out about the pictures that he justified getting them from her because he was just using it as a release (since our sex life wasn't that great). I asked him if he had ever thougt of asking me to do it instead and he said he didn't think I would. I then said "You realize now it was more than just a release right?" and asked if he gave it any more thought . He said "no because that's what he thought it was"...I was shocked!! I had NO idea he still thought of it that way. He KNOWS it was wrong so that's a good thing but there has to be more to it than that for him to end up in an actual PA (where he thought they were in love) right? We have SO much to deal with but I don't want to push this too much if this is something I'm making more than it was.

Help??

[This message edited by AML04 at 2:28 PM, October 9th (Wednesday)]

Some people say that while affairs seem to be about love or sex, they are really about escape. It sounds like a possibility, right? I mean, what he told himself then (i.e. i'm in love) and reality are two different things, right?

I can't really help with perspective because my WH is still telling me it was just sex and he just wanted to be desired and that the 3000-4000 texts per month were just chit chat. It seems to me there had to be more there. If it had been a prostitute or someone he met on Craig's list I could believe the just sex but this was a woman he knew, someone he knew was my friend. I have a hard time believing you would throw away a friendship and a marriage for just sex.

A key turning point for us was getting him to discuss the true EA that went along with the PA. The EA was his escape and the PA was just a sick progression of that.

It was a very meaningful and changing discussion- it was hard and I crashed enormously afterward- but it helped us move on.

I wish you peace.

I'm just so confused. It was obviously more than just friendship for her to think it was okay to send that kind of picture in the first place but it's like he's separating the pictures and their "friendship".

Wondertwin-that sounds like a great idea. Not sure how we would do it but we definitely need to get into that more.

Bionicgal-I actually agree that most affairs are forms of escape of at least they start that way. His IC told him the same thing. I just don't know how it went as far as it did without it being something more.

Roses-I am so sorry. My H & his OW had iPhones so I have no idea the amount of texts they really sent but if I had to guess it would be in the 1000s. It was constantly going off.