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WH says he was in love with OW and still is...The A ended a month prior to Dday (5-10-13) with a NC from OW. He was depressed and already in IC for other issues (loss of a parent) and I thought that was his reason for having such a hard time this past month. It turns out that he is brokenhearted. I want to scream. OW was a big part of his grieving process and healing while I was being Mommy and working and taking care of our life so he could lean on her. Now he is grieving loosing her. FML!

Just reading this makes me furious for you. read up on the 180 and make it your best friend. Your WH is still in the A in his mind and you cannot recover your M while he is there.

I'm sorry you find yourself here (((allfalldown)))

This is something that would have been intolerable for me. I would have told my FWH to GTFO.

That being said, I know there are many that have stayed and reconciled with a WS who was either "brokenhearted" or going through withdrawal from the AP. I hope someone who was able to do that comes along with some advice.

eta: a hug ((((allfalldown)))) So sorry you find yourself here.

[This message edited by SisterMilkshake at 1:21 PM, May 22nd (Wednesday)]

This can be typical situation. Don't despair, mine mourned his too.

With 5-10-13 as D-day, everything is still fresh, raw, and just plain painful. Do you have any of the books recommended?

Depending on how long and how intensive his A was, it might take him some time to snap out of it.

Research the 180 in the healing library, it will help you to focus on yourself and not his drama involved in his healing.

He chose a very poor way of dealing with his problems. Now he has to find a better way, hopefully with a qualified therapist to help him figure all this out.

One thing I wish I would have done sooner was to make fDH feel the pain sooner and more fully. The pain of his actions against you and the marriage. Don't hesitate to walk away from any pity parties he throws. Thank him for telling the truth and walk away from him. (btdt with this "love for her crap').

When it comes down to it, you don't want him unless he can come to you free of any attachments of the heart to someone else. You are the only one who can make that clear to him. So I would suggest spelling that out to him and backing off. 180 in action. Go on with what you need to do for yourself. You can't control what he does just as he can't control what you do.

This sounds way too familiar. My W says she wasn't "in love" with him, but she sure had some STRONG emotions for him. In fact, it took several months for her to detach, detox or release him. It's BS if you ask me. But it's part of the fog and the big deceit of adultery.

I wish I could have walked out or kicked her out of the house, but financially it was impossible. So I had to take the shit like a man.

If you stick it out, he'll come to his senses. What he defined as "love" was just a stupid notion of falling in love with the fantasy, not the person. There's a whole bunch of info on that stuff. I and the therapist had to convince my wife that she was in love with a fantasy, not a person. If she would jump ship, the same thing would happen to her new marriage as ours. And even worse since there would be some much fallout and damage.

I feel for you. Hugs.... your DDAY wasn't too long ago so there's lots to go.

"WH says he was in love with OW and still is..."

Then it is time for you to tell him to move on. You will not share your marriage, physically or emotionally. Read up on the 180, see an attorney to help you see your options, let him know you have seen an attorney. He has to believe that you are already gone, you are just waiting for your departure date. This is the only thing that will save your marriage if it can be saved.

He is still in the fog and is showing great disrespect to you by telling you he is in love with her. What are you?? Chopped liver? He is in love with another woman but is staying with you why...?

Dynamite him with the 180 and maybe you can blow his head out of his ass. If you can't, then you are better off without him. So, so, sorry you are going through this.

One poster commented, "I never knew there was this much pain in the world."

That says it all. Love, K

20 years of history, the family and life we have built including our 2 children is why he says that he wants R. He says that I understand him.

[This message edited by allfalldown at 9:44 PM, June 10th (Monday)]

Shock and awe time as a wiser SI-er once said. He's in love with her? Then GTFO...you are not plan be - you don't win by default. I know my H missed his cow - but he was far enough out of his ass to recognize he missed the excitement - of sneaking around and wondering when she would relent and take the EA to a PA. The thought of ONLY having that to live for - with the kids and I out of his life - was enough to get him seeing reality fast.

My husband told me he "missed" me AND the women he had been involved with in the week after DD#2. Looking back, I think his still non-reasoning solution to DD was to try to plug me into the places he'd filled with the huge time and attention investment he'd put into the other women and the community they all belonged to. He even was all excited talking about another community to join for "just us."

.../face palm.

A month later, when I reminded him of it, he winced and said the thought of anything connected to it made him sick.

Coming out of that fog is a process. A sucky, self involved, self centered, illogical, painful process. I hate, hate, hate watching people in it. I don't know how many times I'd watch my husband's face, while he was still completely in denial, and think, "Who the hell are you, wearing my husband's face? Don't look at me with that face and pretend you're him!"

That your husband could say that to you, that he only wanted R because of your shared experiences and kids, and not for YOU? That's so cruel. That's so selfish.

All, you deserve more than this. So much MORE than this. Yes, for 180'ing the hell out of him. Don't give him you. He flat out doesn't deserve you, especially right now.

Can you find ways to give you some safe emotional/physical distance?

hi allfalldown....i'm so sorry, that's so incredibly painful and mind boggling to hear! I'm so sorry for your screaming pain. I've been there and I might be there again. i have developed a somewhat different thought on this that what i see so far posted and my WS also loved (loves) his OW and it was killing me, making me physically ill. I just read last night an affairs blog on wordpress.com written by a FORMER WS. ((The blog has a lot of good food for thought and healing BUT i wouldn't recommend it to someone who is RAW as it's written by a FWS and he has some opinions which are triggering!! But there's also stuff there that brought me understanding even if it also pissed me off!!!)

However, he does talk about how the WS often suffers also after Dday but in a different way than the BS and that often the WS has to mourn the end of the A and mourn the loss of the AP. This doesn't mean he does not love you, it also doesn't mean that he truly loved AP; it means that he sort of thought, felt like he did, might love her in the false reality of an affair. It is part of the fog but until some time passes and the fog starts to lift, he might mourn and that's very very difficult, nearly unbearable for you. Once you gain perspective, which somehow happened as if by magic to me while i was sleeping last night, and could change in an instant, the pain that you are feeling about this hopefully will soften, somewhat erratically, into a gentle understanding depending on what else is happening with you and with him and between you.

It's a good sign that he wants to R, that he's already in counseling. I read your other posts and there is hope in there but I don't know too much.

I guess what i want to say is that it hurts like crazy right now but i really believe, based on a lot of reading all over the places (i am now an SI Addict!!!) that your pain about this will soften if/when he is able to get himself out of the fog and come to understanding, and its going to take time.

Hope you can hang in there! Keep posting. I've learned so much here. It's helped me a lot, life saver!!

180 will help you too, not just you and him. highly recommend.

[This message edited by TheAgonyOfIt at 4:38 PM, May 22nd (Wednesday)]

My H is the one that ended his A. His MCOW did not take it well either. Sent him love letters, etc. They had exchanged *I love you* and planned to have our kids meet, etc. Now, reading your post makes me understand that when the WS is not the one that ends the A - well that is probably a whole different ball game in the healing process.

You might want to go into the Wayward Forum and read Maia's Withdrawl guide - might be helpful for you to understand what he is going through.

Also, one of my biggest regrets in this whole sordid mess is that I didn't kick him to the curb when I found out he was still lying 6 months later. Perhaps he would have had a rude awakening if he had to experience losing his family, if even for a short while.

You are only a few weeks out. It is a horrible time. But don't let his grief replace (for lack of a better word) yours. Don't let your focus turn to him and his healing before your own.

I agree. Read up on the 180 and implement it HARD. You may also want to consider IC for yourself to help maneuver through it all.

Don't despair! There is much about this in After the Affair by Janis Spring and even Gary Chapman's 5 Love Languages.

Do your "homework" in terms of learning all you can. That way you can make an informed rather then "emotional" decision at this crazy time!

Big hug to you!

My FWW went through the process. Detox and all. It was a long lengthy heart breaking process. I'm crying right now remember :(. To see her in love with this other guy (my Ex-friend). It just killed me.

I tell you what, when the OBS found out, it was a cold shower for everybody involved. Then it really hit home for her.

I read her diary just recently and this month it will be a year since the A started. Although she feels very different now, she writes "sometimes I miss him".

I feel like a trampled, beatened piece of shit.

Pretty sure it's never about love. It's probably more about infatuation. He probably loved how he felt during the affair (but didn't love her). Who wouldn't fall in love with an escape from reality? No bills, no whining kids, no shared responsibilities. Eventually he'll get it and realize he was never really in love with her at all. Your love is REAL and in the REAL world. Hopefully he can see that one day soon...and start to help you heal.

[This message edited by so_lost at 5:40 PM, May 22nd (Wednesday)]

THANK YOU for the virtual hugs...my goodness, thank you. We know our love languages and have had a healthy wonderful marriage until the past 3 years. He lost a parent traumatically through murder/suicide and it has shaken all of us. IC was helping and he met OW at a support group. They were instantly bonded with their tragedies. I understand that part of it to a degree. He really says he loved/loves her so much and she ended it. I think BS must have discovered her first. WH is in a daze. I feel like I am having an out of body experience.

allfalldown,

So: Is your WH saying he'd be with his LOVE OW - if she had not dumped him?

What exactly does your husband expect you to do with this type of information?

Is OW's husband aware of this affair? If not - he must be told.

Do you know WHY OW ended the affair?

Your husband really does need to man-up...grow up and accept that: It's impossible to have a love affair and a wife/family at the same time.

I hope he's being honest with his IC and is seeking help for his adulterous behaviors.

I'm sincerely sorry for the pain you're going through.

allfalldown, I so feel for you and can very much relate.

My husband lost his dad to cancer, fairly quickly after diagnosis. It was during that time that she "snuck" in. She was "there for him". He said I wasn't, which crushed me. I tried to be there for him, but he wouldn't let me. He was pushing me away while letting her in. This was the build up to the affair.

The affair initially lasted only about month before they broke it off and he told me about it. That was July.

In hindsight, I wish I had known what I know now when my husband was in the "fog" as they say. If you haven't read the article on the WS Fog, you should. It describes where my husband was at to a T, including the "addiction", which is the word he used when he described it to me later. What it doesn't mention is to be wary of him going back to her, which is what mine did. Emotionally, he never really broke it off and only a handful of days after Dday he called her. When I found the phone call on his cell bill he told me it was for closure, but I found out months later it wasn't closure at all, it was "goodbye for now . . . we'll figure out how to connect again soon".

I knew he was still "supposedly" in love with her during that time (now he says that he realizes he wasn't, so maybe that will be of slight comfort to you). He was certainly depressed (as he was prior to that when, like you, I thought it was about his dad dying and/or our finances.) Just as the article about the fog mentions, my husband told me he loved me but wasn't "in love" with me. While I was doing everything I could to love him and was "mostly" confident he would fall back in love with me eventually, he apparently couldn't imagine ever being in love with me again. (He didn't tell me that at the time.)

All that changed when her husband found a message from him to her on Christmas Day and I got my second Dday. Merry Christmas to me. However, that night my husband was able to truly resolve to let her go and figure out how to love me. Within only a couple of days he had fallen in love with me and it only got better from there. Better in the sense of him loving me massively and my love for him growing even more. My pain is still intense, even more so from the many months of betrayal after I had forgiven him and was pouring my love all over him.

While every situation is different, I believe, and my husband would back this up, had I followed all of the behaviors in 180 article, it would not have been helpful for our situation. Some of them make perfect sense, however, because of our history, and the fact that my husband didn't feel loved by me the way he needed it prior to the A, had I not shown him how much I needed him, and how loved I could make him feel . . . had I threatened to leave as some people suggest, or actually left, our marriage probably would have been over. In his mind, a happy marriage for us was hopeless. He couldn't imagine it in a million years, so me acting like I don't need him and not lavishing my love on him would have just cemented this in his mind.

As hard as it is to look back at all those months that I showered him with love while he was apparently still seeing her, he says he believes that's what saved our marriage. It was during that time that she slowly began to lose her grip on him. He began to realize how ridiculous what he was doing was and how he'd been rationalizing everything. He was slowly coming out of the fog.

I guess the best advice I could give you as a person who's been there is to not lose hope. It hurts like hell knowing he's "grieving" another woman. It hurts that he says he's not staying for you, but I believe while my husband didn't say this specifically, he probably thought it. I think he initially stayed for the kids and because of the history we have and it was the right thing to do. He did love me, as he told, but wasn't in love. Ouch.

And yet, he came to be so madly in love with me, even more so than ever before. He told me he's never been in love with anyone but me (which is saying a lot since in addition to the A, he was engaged to someone else before me). He could finally see that what he felt for her wasn't love. He even began to have anger toward her because she wouldn't fully leave the cycling group he and I were both a part of. There was a time when I felt he was defending her right to be in the same group I was in (when he was still seeing her), and after he was truly out of the fog, he realized it was ridiculous for her to be there and that she should just leave me alone.

I tell you a lot of details of my story in hopes that it will give you hope that it can get better. He can let her go completely and fall madly in love with you again. I also tell you that he went back to her (never really left) to keep you aware. I had zero clue he was still seeing her. I had done a lot of snooping for the first month or so, then a little less until I didn't really check up on him at all. I couldn't have been more whacked upside the head when he told me on Christmas night. And I feel so stupid about it now.

Having said that, I also fear what may have happened had I found out earlier, when he was still so attached to her.

At any rate, maybe in your situation the 180 thing makes sense. For me it didn't. Hopefully my story is a help to you in some way. Big hugs to you during this very difficult time.

hi again allfalldown,

First i loved patchy's post above. I hope you might too.

Wow. What a terrible, terrible tragedy to have to face. That's quite a trauma. Unfathomable until it happens and then wow, how does one deal? He's really hurting/struggling, isn't he.

I'm not excusing his betrayal.. and i feel this is an Extreme Situation, and out of extreme situations sometimes extreme things happen. He feels he loves her so much because they did bond over their horrible tragedies like you said, and so the love is about what they were able to uniquely ((uniquely)) give to each other during a period when they were both struggling terribly. In a limited way, it can be "real love." Okay, stay with me here.... how can i say this best so that it is digestible to you so so so close to Dday. I mean if he and she felt it, it was real even if it was limited or in a false environment of deceit and secrecy, engendered by awful pain. But it was like a BUFFER LOVE i think; like his pain was too terrible to face and so in some way this relationship in some way worked to alleviate the pain that was too overwhelming to bear? So that is a love, and we can love many things and people but the love for you is different and unique, and bigger and longer and deeper than the love that arose out of tragedy. And she ended it, so he's mourning and it feels intense to him still. Thing is, that "love" is going to slowly morph in his heart and mind as time passes and he comes out of his fog, as he reconnects to you, as he stays in counseling and hopefully you both go and he gains understanding of what was really happening in his heart and mind that caused him to believe so much in these feelings of love . No one knows how much time. You say it's still TT; is there any change in the trickle? Perhaps a little more truth little by little? It's still so early for you but if the trickle becomes stronger, more truthful, more info, that's a good sign; it's progress.

And if you are both committed to R and are well coached and introspective and hard working, at some point he is likely going to slowly or suddenly understand not just intellectually but also emotionally that the "love" filled a need that arose out of a terrible trauma. And the feelings of love will come down from the throne and be integrated somehow into the fabric of your lives together. And sometimes it will still hurt. Does that make any sense? I don't have personal experience with this but I sort of feel it as possible and it makes sense. You say you had a "wonderful marriage" (congratulations!) so with that I'm making the assumption that he doesn't have any major addictions or betrayals or other major issues or even bad hygiene! Such a trauma is enough to shatter a person.

I think you are really going to be okay if he is able to work his way through his grief and you two together work yourselves through your losses of trust together.

I hope this makes some sense. I'm low on sleep and food and feel like i have a perpetual headache and stomachache so i tried hard to explain my thoughts; i hope it reads okay.

Wishing you strength and I think you have a ton of it.

[This message edited by TheAgonyOfIt at 9:16 PM, May 22nd (Wednesday)]

OW sent a NC. I only know her first name. I am assuming BS found out but I don't know for sure. WH is not sharing details about them due to anonymity. The TT is interesting. He is carrying so much hurt and guilt from the tragedy and it is wrapped up in this. He acts like he can't breathe without her. She is going seriously NC and not even going to their group. I have no way to contact BS. It doesn't feel like the right thing to do because it is over. Their situation is bigger than me. So TT is about the past month. I have had zero details about the actual A other than how it started.

allfalldown, ouch. Ouch.

Gently, it isn't just that he's saying he's in love with her. He's also holding back info on the A? Is he talking to you about it at all?

And...he's protecting her identity? Not good. That should be a dealbreaker. And if you do find out who she is, tell the other betrayed spouse. He deserves to know.

And, last thing - he shouldn't be going to that group anymore. Even if she's not going now, she could show up in the future. I know the support is important for him - but can he find another one? There are probably so many reminders there that are not good for his "detoxing."

This isn't what reconciliation looks like. I'm so sorry.