SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I don't know if this is because this is the marker when the EA started or if I really have had enough.

I feel like this is a deal-breaker now. I have given it a year, I tried.

My fWH has done everything to prove his love for me, say he is so sorry, and build a good marriage. He shows it, he lives it. I am just never going to be okay that he chose to fall for another women.

I can't forgive him still. This is in the way of "falling in love" with him again. Which I need (along with trust and loyalty) in a relationship. After having the A, I truly believe we can't get this back. Me feeling sacred and special to him. (He had an A- in a M there is no room for any other women...EVER) Him choosing her means I was not important to him or cherished.

I just feel like second best to him still. He doesn't treat me that way, but I can't forget that for several months I was.

It still kills me that he desired her, missed her, wanted her, built her up, dreamed/lusted after her,....could not stop thinking about her.

He says it wasn't her, she was just a drug.

I say when you have me or spend a weekend away with me and our children with friends having fun, and you could not stop thinking about her-then it wasn't a drug. It was HER.

It has been a year, I still hurt. I still feel like he doesn't deserve to be forgiven for this pain he caused for putting me (his wife/his so called love of his life) second best. I feel disposable. I want to forgive in my heart, but my mind says (are you kidding-he treated you like shit...he liked another women and acted on it. He chose this, he felt it was acceptable-and you got hurt. He hurt you. You were collateral damage to get another women that was disgusting)

Could the reality be...that I am wasting my time. It is what it is-a deal breaker. I really don't see how I can fall in love with him again, feeling like I was worthless to him for any amount of time.

We both deserve to be happy. He has changed, but I just can't stay with a man that put me behind another women. One that was worthless to boot. One that he continued to still be nice to months later. To me-that showed he still cared...that she wasn't just a drug. It was about her. It is sad that she never felt the same way about him. She just used him because she was bored.

Guess it is time to face the reality and visit the divorce forum. I am not capable of forgiving and moving on. Now I have to go have a good long crying fit.

Why did he have to ruin such a beautiful thing for another women?

[This message edited by hopefulmother at 2:46 PM, July 30th (Tuesday)]

(((hopefulmother)))

At the end of the day, for some of us, it IS a dealbreaker. In my case, I was "helped" by having a tepidly remorseful spouse, and eeven then it didn't make the decision easy.

But, in the end, I knew that at some level I would never move beyond the betrayal and have had a hard time with the idea that she was "broken" and that's what led to it -- for me, it exposed the person - call it broken or not -- that she really is.

That person, I did not want to be married to.

((Hm))

Why did he have to ruin such a beautiful thing? I don't think anyone has the answer. I ask it about my wife all the time. Have you tried counseling?

I'm so sorry. (((hugs)))

(((hopefulmother)))

I understand

Yes, IC for me.

I don't think MC will help. This is all about me and my problem with the A.

IC has helped me to understand what the problem is and how my past has played into it. It just can't help me to move past it and forgive.

You know, for some folks an affair, a betrayal, is a deal breaker, but it doesn't have to be. If you are set on ending your marriage, you will get all of the support and love you need on this site.

But based on your husbands actions towards you, I would give it a little more time.

When he says it was like a drug, he is probably telling the truth. The "high" of an affair is like a drug. My WH kept trying to tell me why and finally sais, "I really don't know. It was like a drug I was addicted to."

Only after it was over did he look at it for what it was and was deeply ashamed.

I had a mantra for the first year I would say to myself, over and over. "I can leave any time I want...I can leave..."

And then I would just push through another day. It truly does take two to five years to heal from an affair. And I think MC would help. Also, if you haven't done so, some of the books on this subject can be really helpful.

I am so, so, sorry that you are going through this pain. We all know what that is like. The worst pain in the world!!

Love, hugs, and good luck, to you no matter what you decide.

I totally get it! I could have been the one writing your post because I feel exactly the same way. You can read my story on my profile, my WH and I had a long talk about D when he was a month into his A and I had no idea. I asked if there was someone else and he denied it. So we R for 2 months before I busted him. He was sleeping with me and OW at the same time. It was like it happened and he couldn't stop. He quit seeing her a few times but kept going back he said to keep her quiet to avoid being caught. My mind tells me that's BS! He chose HER over ME! Call it mid life crisis or addiction I don't care but it was cheating! And he chose to do it.

I know now that the details are out that it was a year ago today that she sent the 1st text luring him in. I don't know when the 1st time was that they slept together but I'm sure it didn't take long. Our daughters birthday is in 5 days and our anniversary is in 10 days...didn't matter. The day after our grandson was born I was going back to see him at the hospital that is less than a mile from my WH office yet he told me he was taking a guy to an AA meeting so he couldn't come along. WH actually left his office to drive to OW house which is only 10 miles from our house. He stayed there long enough for sex and then begged me to come by his office when I left the hospital!!!

How's that for being 2nd choice? He now said he went to see her to break things off...and went back 4 times during his last week seeing her to do the same but never ended it until I busted him. So I say all of this to share with you the similarities of all of our stories. No one will ever know why. It will never make sense, not even to the WH. But, only you can decide if you can live with it.

Often times my therapist says stay in today and today WH is with you because he chose you and it's hard to do but it has helped me get thru some bad days when I just wanted to be DONE!

Hugs to you.

-------–---------------------------_

Me BW-44

WH-47

2 grown sons 26&22

1 grown daughter 24

1 8 year old daughter

Together 14 years

Married 7 years,will be 8 on 8/10

D-Day 11/6/12

Trying to R

I understand. Some months I have more days that I feel that way. I am in MC and IC. Sometimes MC has made me feel really bad. When I hear how he feels I feel so much smaller in his life. It is a hard conclusion to come to after so many years as friends and more. I will be praying for you and your family.

(((hopefulmother))) Just wanted to say you are not alone in these thoughts. I feel as you do and I am 16 months out from DDay. When I hit the 1 year mark was when I realized this will be with me forever. His A and the way he treated me post A cannot be undone. I find R to be a constant struggle. We have to work at our M every day and it is exhausting. I often wonder why I am paying the price in this M for WH's brokenness. It is a very very steep price to pay.

Thank-you guys, I just don't know if I have anything left to push through. These last few days have been a fog.

A song came on last night in the car that triggered me. We had a wonderful day with extended family at a lake and cabin. On the way home...a song about a man who "can't stop thinking about you girl. We must be living in a fantasy world. I'm high and stuck on you." 80's song just made me think about how he felt about her.

I asked him if he had felt that way about her. He said yes. He couldn't wait or stop thinking about his next fix. (They texted non-stop, some days 150 times) He didn't have to wait too long. Then I asked him if he looked forward to her, even when he was with me or coming home to me. He said yes...I just snapped. Broke...

I didn't yell or anything. I just haven't talked to him or let him touch me. I don't want to be near him...see him. I am so disgusted with him. For the first time- I feel hatred for him.

Kansas 1968: I just thought I would feel better after a year. I keep pushing through each day, but I feel defeated and un-loved. Thank you everyone else for the hugs.

At this point it is not about the lies, cheating, betrayal, whatever. It is about his emotional attachment to this other leech. He chose it, he decided she was worth it.

Sweetie, I think you said the premier thing that all of us thing, the in a year, it will be better and you will feel feel better, and different. That is why the one year antiversary is SO disappointing. A year is really nothing in the long process of healing. We are SO dissapointed that we do not feel better. That we are still angry, we still have the mind movies, and we just do not think that we will ever, ever, feel any different.

Please give it a little more time. If he is doing what he needs to be doing, and it sounds like he is, please don't give up yet.

Get you both into counseling. I know you feel like it will not help, but if you get a good counselor, I promise you, it will help.

You can often find a counselor that will counsel you both. Sometimes separate, and sometimes together.

Again, we all know the pain you are suffering. One of our memebers had on his tag line, "I never knew there was this much pain in the whole world"

There is, and it is called infidelity. There have even been discussion on this site about which is worse, this or losing a child. A lot of disagreement about this, but on perseon posted that they had lost a child, and this was worse. That is because it is a BETRAYAL and nothing hurts worse than that.

A person that you thought had your back, that you trusted with your life, and to find out that they subjected you to the worst thing there is, to make a fool out of you, is just almost intolerable. I and say "almost" because I know that people can and do make it through this.

I know you don't feel lucky, but you are lucky to have a remorseful husband. Many, many, people do not.

Again, you have to make your own decicion, but just do not make it too soon.

Love and hugs again. K

Kansas 1968

Thank you again. I know I am lucky and feel lucky to have a remorseful husband. So on top of my personal conflict and pain, I have guilt for wanting to give up.

My mind say, "Why should I keep fighting through this pain of seeing him everyday -reminded of what he did. Envisioning him and her together? Why should I fight for something he gave up on?"

I don't care about his reasons. We were in a rut, no time to ourselves (away from friends and family-he put us there), he was unhappy, he was going through a mid-life crisis, and I focused on the baby and our toddler too much. That was just a few months of unhappiness. What about him focusing on the 13 yrs we had before those few months? As soon as things got hard, he gave up and fell in love with someone else.

Why should I focus on the here and now, when he couldn't focus on the 13 yrs of our relationship before the A? The 20yrs of friendship thrown away for a girl he knew for a couple months?

I lost my little sister to suicide. I found her with a shot-gun in her mouth and her brains on the wall.(because she was terminally ill and her husband cheated on her)She was 17. He was there for me through that. This does hurt more and is more damaging. Because, I chose to be married to him to be put in this situation. It just does not go through stages and fade away (like death does). It just continues to cycle and fester. How can he add to my pain for her?

NotsureIcan- I could have written your post, so many similarities. Except my story is ending with divorce.

hopefulmother-I totally get everything you're saying and our situations are very similar. We were busy and instead of him coming to me and talking he took the easy way out. Like I couldn't have done that? Like I didn't want relief from the day to day stress? Seriously? After all I'd given in the marriage?

It all comes down to being selfish.

Although he is remorseful, he still isn't ready to do the hard work.

While he was pining over her and trying to decide who he wanted, I was moving on with my life. He is now stuck trying to figure out himself and I am 4 months further than he is in this process.

It's hard to give up the dream of an unscarred marriage. But I know I am not the one who caused the wound.

If you decide to stay and work it out, or if you decide to divorce, you MUST make sure that you have the tools to heal.

Even if I feel guilty for not giving it "one more chance" (after a thousand), I tell myself "It wouldn't be healthy for me to stay in this relationship."

At the end of the day, that is my only truth.

NotsureIcanI feel that too. It enrages me the crap they are willing to do for the AP, but not for us.

Reminds me of the times my WH said he cried(really break down crying) and begged me once not to leave and will not do it again. WHAT!!! You can throw away everything for the other women, stay out till 4AM, abandon your family, trash talk about your wife to her Bff, pine over the other women and build her up to her and through her BFF......but you will only cry for me and beg me once.

Like I said....now it is just because I will never be okay with him deciding to fall in love with such a vile creature.

If he can give me up for something so cheap and broken. Than what the hell am I worth to him? Why should I be thankful that he woke up and decided he wanted me after-all.

When you get married, you feel sacred, special, one-of-a-kind. The truth is, he proved I can easily be replaced. When your spouse has an A-the reality is your are not worth it to him (maybe I never was) You are disposable.

I don't see our M as a positive union anymore.

Everything positive is gone...a lie....our wedding, our friendship....the birth of our first child...the decision to have another. It was all a lie. I was never the "one". I was never enough.

He just married me till he found another women that could give him more. A women he had more in common with. A women that would need him to build her up. A women that would be carefree and have fun no matter what. A women that would light up his world with her beautiful smile and the sound of her voice. He thought she was a good person. This creature that would abandon her daughter to chase a married man. This leech that would text a married man all hours of the day. This creature that would meet other men when they were out. This creature that would smile at his wife and children and then text him. It disgusts me that he would be attracted to that.

I am done! I want to be with a man that wants me like that.

You guys are right, he has done everything. He went to one IC session, the counselor asked why he did it, "He said because it felt good." That was it. He told him if all his pts had that insight, he would be out of a job. No other sessions needed.

He has lived his life trying to prove to me he is sorry and will never do it again. He tries to do so much to make me happy and help me with the kids. Which seemed like a waste, because he still had positive feelings for the AP "she was a good person, just flawed".

Now it wasn't her! She was a drug. It just took way to long for him to figure that out. Like comparing her to a drug is supposed to make me feel better or make it okay.

The only thing he never did was talk about it to anyone else. He has an account, but never used it. He thinks SI makes me worse. It might have made me feel better if he apologized for what he did publically....not just to me...but to the world that he loved me-that he was lucky to have me. He had no problems declaring his love to the AP, her BFF, and me.

NO-I am not as important to him as she was to him for that brief period of time. He afforded her so much more. His time, his life, his wedding vows, his family, his wife, his thoughts, his compassion, his apologies, his sincerity. His soul.

I can relate to.so much.of what you.posted. although I was willing to R, I could never get those thoughts out of my head. He chose her, over and over again. Even though he lived with me, he chose her rverytime he text, thought about her, schemed ...all on our time, in our home. He let that bitch into our lives. He let her in knowing how private I am. Just so sad...I'm so very sorry

They all do it, "because it feels good." My husband said the same thing, and they ALWAYS affair down. There is no other way to have an affair but to affair down. Any woman who would sleep with a married man, a man with a family, children, a life, is basically a whore, so they will ALWAYS be less that the wife who has remained faithful in spite of problems in the marriage.

The waywards always betray us in a million different ways. He brough her to our home, he had her make up flowers for me for OUR anniversary (she had a flower shop), he gave her money, he let her have the flower shop rent free, he fixed up an apartment in one of our rental buildings for her, and would take me down there for suggestions on decorating. He would take me down to the flower shop at night to show me how beautiful her displays were, how wonderful she was, he took her on a trip, he bought her jewelery...on and on. This is while I was working full time, taking care of a dad sliding into demetia, taking care of our home. And it went on for seven years. It is almost enough to send you to the looney bin.

From what I can tell, about 80pct of marriages have to deal with this at one time or another. It is amazing.

I took my wedding ring off early, and have never had it back on, and will not ever wear it. I told him I don't even consider us married now, but at some point when I am ready, I want a new ring and a new commitment.

He is working on apologies for the six or seven betrayals that have hurt me the most. Our MC has the list and she is trying to help him do it. Maybe then I will be ready to let it go.

Only you can decide if your marriage is worth saving and if he is worth keeping. But it truly is a roller-coaster. Some times you have a really good week, and then bang, you are in hell again.

The number one hardest thing I have tried to deal with is the knowledge that for the rest of my (our) lives, I will know that he had an affair. That knowledge is almost suffocating at times. It can almost cause me to hyper-ventilate, and in fact, it did once. Hubby thought I was dying. It was just the first time that brutal knowledge that I would forever have to live with the fact that he cheated. Just brought me to my knees.

Yes, there were many reasons why he was unhappy, many related to me, but there are no excuses for an affair. There are other paths to take, an affair just seems to be the easiest and the most fun way to build their self esteem and step out of their real life problems.

Keep posting, and rant all you want to. I finally had to get a prescription for anti-depressants but have weaned myself off of them. You might want to think about that.

Kansas 1968

I was put on Escitalopram for the anxiety about December. I stopped taking it a week ago. He thinks it is why I am having a bad time now. I am hurt, not having anxiety. The pills made me tired and crabbier. I didn't want that for my children. I am happier off of them and more patient with them. (stay-at-home-mom)

Besides, I view it as him seeing them as a sedative. Sure...drug me to stay with you.