SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have been off this page for several weeks as I have been undergoing intense personal counseling and doctor visits. I have come to terms with cheating on my spouse and was able to finally confess that I had had intercourse with my AP. I am ashamed and very defensive. I have to let go of the defensiveness and embarrassment to give us a chance to heal. It's like being knocked down and realizing that you have to walk but you aren't sure if your legs will ever work again.

It may be too late, but I hope we can still remain married (maybe even be happy again one day).

I also have been finally diagnosed with numerous severe food intolerances and lead poisoning, both of which have likely contributed to my initial depression and decent into becoming someone I barely recognize myself. I first got sick with shingles almost 7 years ago and had experienced chronic neuralgia and back pain from the shingles. I took on exercising furiously to try to regain health. I became passionate about nutrition and tried things that were supposed to be so healthy, diet wise, on my family.

This exercising and dieting had worked for a couple of years, but then I fell down again. Over the last couple of years, I had been to several specialists and had been told by each one that I was healthy. But I didn't feel healthy. I had intense muscle pain in my neck and back. My intestines were letting me know on a daily basis that our lifestyle wasn't doing me good, no matter what I had eliminated from my diet. I had lost my verve, my interest in things I had previously been enchanted by.

Probably the main problem was that I had talked myself over the years into a place where I felt unloved at home, only usable for my income resources. I frankly, felt very sorry for myself. I fell so very low and felt worthless and unimportant to those that were supposed to love and care for me. That's selfish in many ways, but it is truthfully where I was. So, the medical diagnosis by my integrative doctor has given me a lot of new things to incorporate into my life to heal. I am convinced that this will make a big difference in the outcome of my horrible actions in starting an affair, because I am finally understanding myself better. I think that by feeling better, I will be able to handle the stresses of home/ work much better and won't feel the need of an escape. Of course, this is where the naysayers will all say, "Dummy, it's too late to fix your marriage." To this, I say, "maybe, but I will still hope that it's not too late." And I won't live in my mind in a place where my marriage is over.

After several weeks of supplements and chelation therapy, I am feeling my energy return. The doctor visits take a total of about 10 hours weekly, and this is an adjustment at home. Afterall, laundry and meals, etc. still have to get done. The kids and my kind husband are helping me. Thank God it seems there is a solution to the problems I have felt!

I am on a path to healing myself physically, spiritually and mentally. I hope that my wonderful husband will understand that I am really trying to get strong again, and that he can see that I want to become who I had been but much better! I am confident that I will never cheat again. I have no feelings for my AP anymore. I want to restore my family. I have no place I'd rather be than in my family, married to the love of my life.

I am extremely sorry, beyond words, for the damage, possibly irrevocable, that I have placed on my poor spouse and family. I know that even with forgiveness, that I may have changed the landscape of my homelife (with 2 parents and kids there at all times) forever. I have more growth and rebuilding before me than I think I've ever had. My actions to turn outside my marriage are inexcusable. I am sure that a lot of readers will see as me not showing remorse. But you all don't know me. I will strive ahead and feel that somehow, my spouse and I will come out stronger than ever. That's my "bring it on attitude!"

I am usually a do-it-yourself type of girl. So, posting is hard because I listen to myself, quite stubbornly, most of the time. But, Please let me know what you think about what I've written. I will really try to listen constructively. Thank you.

I I I I I I. To many I' s for me.

I just finished reading your husband's thread this morning, and I think you posting here is a positive step toward your own healing.

However your "I'm Back" post has less to do with the choices you've made and everything to do with your health. And while I can sympathize with the ailments you have had what does your health have to do with the choices you have made in regards to your relationship with your husband AND your children? IIRC your affair had entangled your kids in it as well.

Good luck with your healing.

[This message edited by Dark Inertia at 4:26 PM, May 2nd (Saturday)]

Your illness didn't make you cheat and lie. Lots of people deal with worse situations and don't cheat. Your own selfishness is why you cheated and lied and lied and lied some more.

Since 2009 I've had my kidneys shut down to 15% function. I've been in a severe car accident that left me in chronic pain, but lucky to be alive. I too lost my verve to the intense pain. I too lost self esteem to weight gain and feeling ugly. Now, I'm recovering from a mastectomy for breast cancer. Talk about feeling ugly, deformed and unloveable. I didn't cheat. I am just one of thousands of people who have similar or even worse issues than you who still didn't use our situations as an excuse to cheat, lie and mind fuck our spouses.

I'm glad to see you back here, but all I'm seeing is same shit, different day.

Edited to add: I'm sorry if I come off as dismissive of your health issues. I am glad you are getting so,e answers and wish you well in your physical healing. I just think you still have many miles to go to get to where you are safe for your BS.

[This message edited by CheaterMagnet at 4:39 PM, May 2nd (Saturday)]

Sending you strength Edith.

I have no answers for you, but hoping that you can work this out & that you are able to start healing.

Thanks for the Too many IIIII's. Yes, well there is a lot to life, and this information has definitely shaped my reality and hampered the ability to live normally. Big time physical pain and chronic illness does that. This story is part of the background. Is it a gas lighting story to give excuses about why I made poor choices? NO ABSOLUTELY NOT. I MADE THOSE CHOICES. I am just trying to explain where I have been. People can become overwhelmed and can feel boxed into a corner, like a caged animal in a sense. A caged animal who hasn't been fed acts unpredictably. I have acted out of character. Anyone who knows me can see this. I take full responsibility for my actions. When I finally woke up to the magnitude of what I had done, it was so far along. Having been the kind of person who before had always been a pleaser, walking the straight and narrow, It was exceptionally hard to stop the behavior (personally acknowledge that it was wrong) and even harder to admit it and so, so crush the man I love.

What am I personally doing to help the marriage and save the family? Seeing an IC and implementing what is being advised. Also to post here and take anything, hits and all, that anyone wants to spit my way.

I have no more trickling out to tell my spouse. Maybe the trickle out effect wouldn't have taken so long if we hadn't experienced a murder/suicide within a family we knew around the time I had stopped my affair. I slipped up several times after ending the affair by doing idiotic stuff like giving myself a pass to keep up with my AP on FaceBook and going to hear him play a song at a concert without my husband's knowledge and calling him a couple of months ago. YES, I did these things. But I am done now- full on NC. Only time will be able to show that this is true since I have covered up so many times unless I was caught. Even though I having been checking in with my spouse, have a tracker and who knows what else on my car, I wont be trusted possibly ever. Have to live with that because it's from my actions.

Both my spouse and myself need to establish boundaries about what makes us each feel safe in our home. We have both let one another cross over into territories that were uncomfortable for the other. Learning to recognize and respect those boundaries is where we are now. We are communicating with one another in a much more real, honest way than ever before. Communication between us has greatly improved over the last 6 months. That made the trickling out of information seem worse, opening old wounds all over again- so the trickle came out slower and was harder each time.Hopefully it wont be too late.

And CheaterMagnet: I sincerely hope you will make an excellent recovery and be able to live life again in a meaningful way where you feel physically whole again. I will say a prayer for you.

Edith,

I was hoping you'd start posting again. I'm glad you came back. Although there is never an excuse to cheat, I know the feeling of feeling so crappy (not physically, but emotionally), that you numb yourself to consequences and just seek the thrill, the short term high, the escape from what seems like the grind of life and not being heard (real or imagined). It's an ugly place, and it sometimes takes a lot crap to happen for us to begin to dig ourselves out.

I hope you truly are done with the TT. Now is the time to start with authenticity, no matter what the outcome. Time to be real, to get healthy, and to rebuild, starting with you. I hope your M survives, and that the two of you can heal together.

keep working on you, and the rest will happen.

What can happen is that when you feel that boxed in feeling- a general overwhelmedness in life, you can make changes that keep you sane and are wise, normal and healthy OR one can choose stupid, selfish unwise decisions. I choose to be very reckless and unwise. You often choose your boundaries in which you live. Some people never made some boundaries. Boundary setting and enforcement has been a problem for me. I let a lot of boundaries be broken by my family and in laws on the home front and by poor management of work personnel and patient expectations at work. I felt I had to be a caregiver to everybody all of the time. I had to be perfect. It was foolish. You burn out. No one is perfect. You have to take care of yourself before you commit to taking care of other people, even when that is not the message that those others want to hear. I was at a point of a nervous breakdown but wouldn't see a personal counselor. That's what I should have done. So I was thinking I was finding solace in an affair.

I can see that this was so, so foolish now. Hindsight is always 20/20. It's easy to judge me. I am sorry and have become much wiser. I am ready to listen.

First of all, I'm sorry to hear about your health issues and hope they continue improving.

With that said, what has IC taught you about your "whys"? You say your A was comparable to a caged/cornered animal lashing out. Ok, if that's true, then it's good that that isn't an ingrained habit. But that says nothing about how you know it won't happen again. A fluke can be repeated. Also, you go from discussing your A to how you both need to set boundaries and how you both have things to improve. NO. Your BH's issues are SEPARATE from your A. You need some firm boundaries and to actually respect your BH's needs if you want to R. You are ALSO entitled to set boundaries about other issues in your M that make you feel unsafe, but these issues ARE NOT RELATED. By lumping them in together you're trying to give yourself an excuse to do whatever you want if the boundaries you want aren't followed. Keep your M issues separate. You slept with someone. He did things that made you feel unsafe. Don't connect them; they both need to be dealt with but they're not linked.

It sounds like you are very aware of your whys, but I agree that you need to figure out how you won't fall into your default coping mechanisms. Intentions are fine, but putting tools in place and learning HOW to enforce the boundaries and new habits is key.

It's very easy to fall back into old habits if the work isn't done.

Having read the previous threads, really it comes down to one basic question:

Why is today different from the previous days on which you have misled your H?

This for example, from here in February:

I did that simply because there was not actual sex involved, and it has taken me a long time to appreciate that emotional intimacy was still an affair.

I suspect your H would say he has heard this all before, and he had to drag out of you the confession about the A. I wonder if he would even agree this is correct:

I have come to terms with cheating on my spouse and was able to finally confess that I had had intercourse with my AP

This may sound tough - but every BS in the world would be thinking the same thing.

You really have to tell him why you mean it this time. I would give this real thought both for yourself and for your H.

[This message edited by redsox13 at 6:42 PM, May 2nd (Saturday)]

BS's please note the Stop Sign has been added to this thread.

crap. sorry. spent a long time typing that out and see that the Stop sign is in place. I'll send in pm.

[This message edited by yearsofpain25 at 7:10 PM, May 2nd (Saturday)]

I sympathize with you about your health problems and hope your health improves.

The thing is edith, how can NP5 be sure that this is not another manipulation tactic?

You've lied, lied, lied and gaslighted him so badly. You've used your own children to facilitate this affair. It took him putting his foot down and demanding a polygraph for him to get the truth (and there may be more not told yet) for you to finally confess to intercourse with the AP.

I speak for myself, but I don't know of any two adults going to a hotel room and getting naked and just holding hands. Unless it's a fetish.

You had resentments..fair enough. But the man you now call the love of your life. The man that so wanted to believe you every time you said it was over and no sex was involved

The man that defended you on here when everyone here was telling him exactly what you were doing

You took him for granted..

Why should he believe you now

You and your AP made a fool out of him.

Your AP moved right in driving distance of your home from many miles away and wrote NP5 telling him so after you two had spent time in that hotel room.

You both emasculated him...why should he believe you now?

Are you going to really do the hard work?

Health issues do cause problems for the person having them, but they are no foundation for an affair. Your health, as has been said, had nothing to do with the affair and the way you treated NP5.

I personally felt so bad for him...he so had faith in you and I knew that the faith he was having was being ill-placed...

Maybe this will be a true wake up call.I hope it is.

Maybe you can "Prove us all wrong" It will remain to be seen, because what you are posting now is still full of selfish intent.

TO LOSTINMYOWNHEAD:

Thank you for your response. You are absolutely right that the issues I had do not in any way give me a license to do whatever I want in the marriage and that they are completely separate from me choosing to have an affair.

I get that.

Also, I started distancing myself from my old "best girlfriend/ godmother to my kids" starting about 5 months ago. I've seen her about 3 or 4 times since that time period and it has gotten to be fairly rare to talk with her on the phone or exchange text messages as we used to do for hours. I realized a good while back that she wasn't good for our family. She has a very different lifestyle/ moral code than me. I will be vigilant and careful about the time I spend with her. Without an official breaking off of the friendship to her face, I have verbally told her that I have to be distant from now on because of her influence on me and what's happened with this affair. I have allowed her to get me in trouble, rather like she would do back when we were in our teens. I saw her as a last vestige of my youth in my current life. But I don't need that anymore. I'd much rather have my family intact. I have told my husband.

As far as involving my children in the affair...I wanted to explain that the AP is done with his arrangement at the kids' school and the director says he doesn't reside here in the area. I confirmed this yesterday with the school director.

Maybe the trickle out effect wouldn't have taken so long if we hadn't experienced a murder/suicide within a family we knew around the time I had stopped my affair.

Is this truly your reason for not being truthful to your BH? You need to be honest with yourself about your reason for TT. Was it to protect yourself from the uncomfortable questions and possibly the consequences of your actions. Something to think about.

Only time will be able to show that this is true since I have covered up so many times unless I was caught.

What about the times you weren't caught? Does you BH know about ALL the times your covered up now?

Even though I having been checking in with my spouse, have a tracker and who knows what else on my car, I wont be trusted possibly ever. Have to live with that because it's from my actions. 

You make it sound like you are being punished by your BH. If you have nothing to hide and truly want to restore trust then you will not view this as a burden but as conducive to helping your BH heal.

We have both let one another cross over into territories that were uncomfortable for the other.

Apart from your A not being a result of or dependent on any unrelated boundaries your BH has or may cross, to describe an A as uncomfortable for a BS is not only an understatement but shows a lack of understanding. The A is soul destroying for your betrayed partner.

Ultimately, you have to stop trying to 'justify' your A. Stop making it about how it has impacted on you. You need to make it about you BH and what you are doing to help him. This is the time to be selfless, show empathy and compassion for him. You need to honest about everything, not just what you allow him to know.

TO T123: Thanks for your response.

Here is how I am trying to help my spouse;

- completed a timeline with contact dates and information that I will give to my spouse in the morning.

- verbally telling him morning, noon, and night how terribly sorry I am for my actions. Asking him daily what I can do each day to make his day a little easier.

- telling him about what I am working on in the IC sessions.

- taking a polygraph test this Tuesday.

-reading many articles on affairs and healing.

ALso have read several books on affairs recommended by people on this site.

- distancing myself from my best friend who acted as a facilitator for me (and telling her what I am doing and why).

- letting him know that I am willing to go to the ends of the earth for him if he will give me another chance.

- installed phone tracking device. checking in with him with any plans, places I go, who I speak with so he is aware of my movements.

- offering to never go places where a siting of my affair partner is possible

-already gave him long ago all passwords, user names, etc to my email account and any bills I pay he might like to see (account activity. He has all texts ever on record. (I don't know how to see these myself so I don't know what they say anymore)

- relinquished most access to the ipad I used to contact the affair partner. I do not keep track of the password on the device and have to get the kids to activate it. But I don't use the device much at all, and it is in front of others when I do use it.

-my husband has 100% access to my phone and all records related to it.

-

Argh! Here is one of my big peeves with this site! edith, you really poured your heart out, but there are so many people on here who simply can't wait to tear a posting to pieces. Sometimes, whether you are a BS or a WS, you need to step back and see where a poster is coming from!!! I didn't see too many "I's" in this post, I saw a lot of self-reflection about challenges you've faced, which means a lot of self-awareness. I applaud you for that! You CANNOT be healthy for your BS if you are not being healthy for yourself! Bravo for taking the time to focus on your health needs, many of which sound really intense and worthy of your time and energy. It sounds to me like you have a good idea of where you are coming from and where you need to go to be healthy for YOU (which will in turn enable you to be healthy for your spouse.) You have nothing but my most positive thoughts, my friend! Keep up the good self-reflection!