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This is all that I can think about lately... I am having such a strong desire to reciprocate with my own emotional affair. It would be so easy, and I've always had the opportunity. I feel like to even consider reconciliation I need to make things even. I know this makes no sense logically, but it's becoming increasingly hard to ignore this urge. It doesn't help that I can't stand my WH's touch now, and can't imagine ever having a normal sex life with him again. He repeatedly cheated online and then had sex with me right after, so I feel totally violated and dirty. I just want to wash those feelings away with someone else. I guess I'm wondering if anyone has actually gone through with something like this. Did you really just feel worse afterwards?

Don't do it.

At the moment you have integrity and pride, don't throw that away for something meaningless, that will actually hurt you more in the end.

You feel dirty now...and you are not. That feeling won't improve with an affair.

I had the opportunity,and remembered just in time, before I removed my own boundaries, who I was and what I stood for.

I have been grateful for that moment of self-realisation and clarity ever since.

It's called temptation, resist it.

There is NO justification for indulging in it, at all. Just read here, no-one ever finds that an affair of any kind 'helps' anything, or is justifiable

I hear your pain, I'm so sorry.

((((hugs))))

This is all that I can think about lately... I am having such a strong desire to reciprocate with my own emotional affair.

I'm right there with you. My DDay was a while ago but I still have these thoughts...like will it build my confidence back up...this is the only way he'll understand how bad he hurt me...all sorts of craziness...

As tempting as it is I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror...I'm trying to grow as a person and I feel that by not having my own affair I'm becoming more mature (and it shows him how much he really messed up)

I'm a big list person...for me it's not worth it but maybe it will help you if you write out the pros and cons...(my biggest cons were my son, and what if my imaginary "OM" had a wife, fiance, or GF and I became the OW to her)

Well, here's the thing. It won't have the same affect on your WH that his had on you. You were hit out of the blue by his A- did nothing to cause it. He won't be hit out of the blue and will always rationalize that you just did it for revenge. Completely different emotional places.

Then, there is adding the pain of lowering yourself further into the hell you are already in by knowing you have thrown your morals, standards and boundaries away. You can't imagine feeling worse, but I've read on SI that it is what happens. You don't just double the pain, you geometrically compound it.

Remember, you have to live with yourself forever.

We have ALL had that feeling. The revenge affair. Seriously it only lowers us down to their low value.

Fantasize all ya want. Just don't do it.

I agree with soverysadnow. In theory/thought it sounds good, and believe me, I think most of us thought/think about it, but you would really only hurt yourself and your pride. When was the last time you had a one night stand? Or slept with someone other than your husband? How would it make you feel if your husband hadn't had an affair? I think you might feel the same way now ~ NOT GOOD. Try and do something only for yourself that will make you feel good. A massage, a mani/pedi, a movie, a weekend away with the girls, a weekend by yourself with a fire, a good book, a quilt, a candle and a glass of wine. Same thing but replace the book with a movie. Treat yourself like you would treat company and rediscover all the things that make you feel good and special. Go enjoy your solitude and rediscover how special you are.

DOmomma,

You should not feel dirty or shamed. You've done nothing wrong. It's your H who is broken and unworthy. That doesn't reflect on you!

If you cheat, you will feel worse. You will have violated your own values. The kind of guy who will have an A with a married woman is slime. You don't want to be with slime and you don't want to be a cheater.

If your feelings on the subject do not change over time, you can file for divorce. Early on, I had feelings of wanting to experience what fWH had, and wanting to even things out. Now, I would never want to be in his shoes. He was so messed-up and has had to work his ass off to become worthy of me. His remorse was crushing, the self hatred was ugly. He risked the most meaningful thing in his life for a nobody that he prays he will never see again.

I no longer want to experience what he did. I don't want to be equal in this. You will get to that point, too!

[This message edited by sailorgirl at 9:29 PM, October 22nd (Tuesday)]

You guys are right, I guess I just need to reread these comments when those thoughts occur. I just keep swinging back and forth between feeling like things will be okay/maybe even better than before and feeling so incredibly pissed off at the multiple ways in which he disrespected me while pregnant. Thinking about what he did makes me feel sick and I want him to have to experience that ten fold. I told him he's lucky I'm pregnant or else I may have done something stupid when I first found out (I would never risk an actual PA while pregnant). I also go back and forth between wanting to be comforted by him and wanting to smack the shit out of him. Ugh, just HOW could this have possibly been worth it?? I think I may just hate him now.

Yep, don't do it. After dday I wanted to find a way to hurt my wife as much as she hurt me. Thing is, I'd only be hurting my family and myself even more. Yeah, there might be momentary "gotcha", but the pain in doing so isn't worth it. There's other ways I could hurt her other than a PA, but don't want to do those things either.

I also felt that well, know I have a "get out of jail free card" if I should ever get the urge. Wrong thinking there!! If I ever get the urge, there's something more that's seriously wrong.

Also being pregnant doesn't stop people from having affairs. My WW told me about a year ago one of her close friends had an affair with her boss while her friend was pregnant. She looked at it as "I can't get pregnant twice". Personally, I think my wife told me about her friend to see my reaction. This was of course before I knew my wife was fooling around.

Why should you compromise your own values and ethics just to give him a taste of his own medicine? If you really want to turn the pain back around onto him, then perhaps you should accept the fact that this is a deal-breaker for you and get the ball rolling with filing for separation/divorce. It's ok if you want to start a new chapter in your life without him - he betrayed you and it hurts. You can either reconcile with him and remain true to your own values by remaining faithful; or you can decide to put a legal end to the marriage so that sometime in the near future, you'll be able to start something with somebody new. So there's a couple different right ways to do this (R with fidelity or D and waiting for a legal end to the marriage before physical intimacy with another) or there's a wrong way (revenge affair).

Take it from me, I'm here 12 years after the fact because I allowed my anger to get the best of me and turned to revenge which ultimately blew up in my face causing ME a decade's worth of guilt. I didn't deserve that guilt prior to exacting my revenge and I wish I'd never pursued it because that guilt has REALLY had a negative impact on my life over the past 10 years in ways that have not been overtly apparent to me until recently.

The bottom line is, don't do it - it will only make an already messy situation even messier.

So let's ignore right now whether or not your H "deserves" for you to have an emotional affair. What about your prospective affair partner? Depending on how you look at it, you're either using and potentially hurting an innocent person, or you're emotionally connecting with someone low enough to have an affair with a married woman - yuck. Neither sounds appealing, does it?

I totally get the urge. It's just - I don't think it will make you feel better in the end.

Try the following if you think a revenge affair will make things in any way better:

For this experiment you will need

A candle

A stop-watch

Matches

Paper

Pen or pencil

1) Light the candle.

2) Prime stop-watch.

3) Once you start the stop-watch hold left hand palm down 1 inch over the open flame of the candle.

4) When your stop-watch shows that 120 seconds have passed then remove left hand from flame.

5) Wait 5 minutes.

6) On paper write down the level of pain left hand is feeling. Use a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being no pain and 10 being extreme pain.

7) Prime stop-watch again.

8) Once you start the stop-watch hold RIGHT hand palm down 1 inch over the open flame of the candle.

9) When your stop-watch shows that 120 seconds have passed then remove right hand from flame.

10) Wait 5 minutes.

11) On paper write down the level of pain right hand is feeling. Use a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being no pain and 10 being extreme pain.

Answer these questions:

Did the pain in left hand grow any less once right hand was burned?

Does the left hand feel any better because the right hand is in pain?

Is your overall situation better or worse now that the pain is in both hands?

Do you think recovery will be easier or harder with both hands burned?

[This message edited by Bigger at 11:41 AM, October 23rd (Wednesday)]

Sooo.. I almost made a stupid choice. Nothing huge, but some good looking guy had messaged me a couple weeks ago. I of course didn't respond, but since DD had been going back and forth about whether to initiate a conversation. I was feeling extra shitty the other day, and decided to respond. I was literally moments away from typing out a reply when my computer froze. Talk about the universe sending me a message, it snapped me out of it and I realized how stupid it all was. It sounds silly but the timing was just so perfect, it really made me see that it was not the right thing to do at all.

I hear you on wanting to feel desired when this betrayal has taken your self-esteem and crushed it to little pieces. I hear you when you say you'd like him to feel even a little of what you are feeling but as everyone has posted ultimately here you get to suffer more. I also think that what you need address - if you are in any way feeling some of the horrible esteem issues I am - is how you feel about you. I am coming - very very slowly - to realise I still have value and the world holds a lot for me. In these first weeks all i have felt is anger and pain and worthlessness. How could he turn to sex with a shabby, low life desperate woman when he saw me every day loving his son and being there for him? As this site has helped me to realise - I was pretty invisible to him while he was living in his fantasy escape. Angelina Jolie probably wouldn't have stirred him while he has a massage stroke from someone he is pouring his energy into. What I admit have done (and made me feel a LOT better) - even if it is shallow I started to dress up for me and if I got a smile or two from the men I work around and with well that isn't anything to feel guilty about! I was at an event last night and kept all discussions purely business but know I looked good, was good company at the table and felt like the old me and not the worthless shoe i feel most days....bought myself a nice sweater and plan on some nice make-up. I know looking better on outside won't heal this hole on the inside but it sure helps to feel I am getting through this...

I think it's normal to entertain those thoughts after a betrayel like infidelity. I will say that you can make choices in life but you can't always choose the consequences. Choose wisely. It may be good for a bit but the fallout will be far worse in many more areas than the benefit you think you are going to get.

I think this is a normal response. I STILL feel this way and I told my WH IF somebody comes along that I'd like to have a good f*ck, I'm going to do it. I've even gone on Ashley Madison, and other websites and flirted a bit. But honestly, I don't want that. I DO love my WH and I DO want this to work.

I've had over 15 people that i know tell me DON'T DO IT, it seems that "our idea of getting even" doesn't really do anything but fracture the M even deeper. I'm the "get even" type. Everybody knows not to mess with me, but I have morales and I would feel cheap. But I do have my mind open to it, that IF something comes along and REALLY makes my boat float, I may dip my toe in the water. But I'm NOT going to go out and do a retaliation A.... Give yourself time. READ! There are so many great books that will help you obtain the tools you need to stop these feelings.

But know this is normal and a lot of us think about this

Okay Bigger, you convinced me, I loved your anology

Answer these questions:

Did the pain in left hand grow any less once right hand was burned?

Does the left hand feel any better because the right hand is in pain?

Is your overall situation better or worse now that the pain is in both hands?

Do you think recovery will be easier or harder with both hands burned?

Okay lesson learned!

[This message edited by cluless at 10:19 AM, October 25th (Friday)]

Oh, I definitely feel I deserve a bit of a shopping spree. I haven't even bought new maternity clothes yet despite desperately needing them. I felt bad about wasting our money on myself Needless to say, after finding out how he's been spending our money, I'll definitely be buying whatever I damn well please. Thinking about buying a new vibrator too (since there will clearly be no sexin' going on between us anytime soon).

Surprisingly, I'm not having too many insecurity issues over all this. I haven't been wondering what I did to cause it, or if it was because I wasn't good enough. I don't think his choices had anything to do with me. If anything, it's just confirmed that I'm too good for him. My thoughts of retaliation mainly stem from wanting to show him how it feels.. and also because it just doesn't seem fair. Why did I waste all this time being faithful when I wasn't getting the same in return? He got to have his fun while I was at home watching his daughter. It just pisses me off.