SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

You have been dealt a double betrayal, your wife and someone you thought was a friend.

Your wife is not remorseful (for now), she is showing narcissistic traits. She is only thinking of herself, she doesn't care that she hurt you because what she did made he feel good.

Your cousin/friend is showing narcissistic traits. He had sex with his friends wife. He made a conscious decision to hurt you.

You didn't do anything to deserve their treatment. It was not your fault they decide to cheat and lie.

Get IC for yourself, get STD testing, see an attorney to be prepared.

But I do believe that with time, forgiveness, , and complete honesty, my marriage can be repaired.

I am not a big fan of religious counselors. They are wonderful for spiritual guidance, but when it comes to tough love infidelity marriage counseling, you need to find someone well versed in the area of affairs.

Yes your marriage can be fixed but only with complete remorse and honesty from your wife, not to mention she needs to understand the why so she never does it again.

ETA: If your wife continues to say she is not sorry and that she enjoyed the affair, and she continues to carry good feelings for this OM, time cannot heal your marriage at all. And as long as your wife continues to say she enjoyed the affair and the OM, there will most likely be no forgiveness on your part.

[This message edited by craig2001 at 1:06 PM, October 29th (Saturday)]

Just really struggling today...I cried again more than once in front of my wife because of all the hurt and betrayal I feel. She did put her hand on mine as I cried. WE got home and I cried again. She put her arms around me and comforted me....But. ...She still has NO tears for me. She says she loves me. But there are no tears from her. I cant stop myself from bringing some tears for the people I care about. .......Today has been really HARD.

Thank you everyone for your posts of advice and support... Everything is still spinning.

I did finally get ahold of a christian counselor, that has made special arrangements to see us today.

I know several of u think I am being naive. And I probably am a little bit. But I do believe that with time, forgiveness, , and complete honesty, my marriage can be repaired. Again thanks. I will try to repost after the appt.

If your counselor doesn't have experience in infidelity it's a problem. From what I've seen many are incapable of handling these issues. In any event you are going to have to get strong and take control of your life. No one is going to fix this for you.

It takes two to reconcile. So far it seems you wife has zero remourse. Without that you have no chance.

[This message edited by Marc878 at 10:39 PM, October 29th (Saturday)]

Your wife is a liar. You cannot trust anything she tells you at this time. Her actions see what important and she is showing nothing for you.

Don't be in denial of what you're dealing with.

Sorry man

Sorry for the private hell you are going through. We all remember that exquisite pain with a sense of relief.

Hard to feel while you are in its grip, but you shall overcome.

You are getting some great support and information in this thread.

What you lack right now is perspective. Most are paralyzed by the trauma you are experiencing. It's all normal response. Just breath and focus on simple steps. Literally turn left, drink water, eat and so on.

I remember well my reactions. Identical to yours. Would have done anything to work things out, to fix any problems. I accepted blame. Practically begged her to stay.

I don't actually have any regrets about my behaviour at that time. I look back with pride on the way I handled things. Perhaps I was quite clueless regarding what had happened and was happening. But I responded to her poor behaviour by trying to be a good person.

in my case things ended in D. I now thank god that R was not my path. Time provided the perspective which bought with it wisdom.

No doubt you have already heard it. But what is just uncanny regarding infidelity is the commonality in behaviours of cheaters. Down to the words that they use.

It does sound as though your wife has already left you. The half hearted compasion is a clear indicator of that. That is a tough thing to swallow. You are married to a drug addict and your influence is negligible. You cannot fix this situation. Your marriage as you know it ended without your knowledge

What you can control is your behaviour and when your wits return, your future.

Use this horror to better yourself.

I am a better person, partner and parent as a result of my cheating ex.

Keep posting and reading.

But I do believe that with time, forgiveness, , and complete honesty, my marriage can be repaired.

One other HUGE factor that is missing in the above statement is COMMITMENT. If your wife isn't 'all in', then there isn't a shot at repairing your marriage.

You are also going to hear the word REMORSE around here in virtually every post. It is the essential ingredient, because with remorse, you will have all of the items that you currently lack: empathy, honesty(they have had sex), transparency, and commitment....if she wants to save the marriage.

I know that your faith is very important to you, but you need to reach outside of your faith. You need to focus more at this time on self-healing than marriage healing. You need to look at terminating this marriage as a real possibility. Right now, your focus should NOT be on saving the marriage, but finding out the entire truth, so you can then decide if the marriage is worth saving.

I know things are really bad right now, but you are going to have to get way further out of your comfort zone to get to the truth. For that, I am sorry.

jb3199, and kamster.

Thank you for the advice. I am not an overly confident person. But I always knew when I had time to process things, I would make decisions I was confident in. Thats all gone too. My processor has checked out on me. Cant think clearly at all. I dont have any close friends, because my wife and my cousin (the one she was with), would of been whom I turned to, with any problems. Never ever imagined my life would take a turn like this........This all sucks so badly.

It was a week ago today i found the text messages.....

This is a private HELL on earth.

Sanity seems impossible some days

Your intellect and emotions are going to fluctuate without cause or reason. It is the result of major trauma.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Your wits and reasoning shall return to serve you. Your wound is fresh. It shall take time for the healing to occur. There is no short cut on this journey. As you are able to manage the pain. Embrace the process. Use it as a vehicle for personal change.

One minute, hour and day at a time. Hang in there brother.

kamster:

Thank you. That helped this morning.

kamster

I appreciate your advice. Especially that you don't regret, and that you are proud of the way you handled your spouse. Thats kind of where I am. I don't want to look back at any time in my life and think I wasnt fair, or mistreated her. Because i would regret later having done that.

Its so crazy, this whole "HELL", that a person goes through after finding out about the infidelity. I appreciate another males perspective. I have put several things into perspective over the past week. Thank you Kamster for posting here.

Glad I can be of some help. Perhaps you shall do the same for someone one day.

Somewhere in the madness I came to the realization that you can but control your own behaviour.

In my case this event proved to be a turning point. It provided the impetus for me to make positive changes in my life.

It takes a while to reach acceptance. I occupied myself by doing a lot of reading and research. Was trying to understand what had happened and why. Ended up learning a lot about human behaviour and personal development.

This is not a journey any of us chose. At some point we all wanted to return to that time before D day. Why does it have to be this way?

I believe things happen for a reason. It is just hard to see that in the early stages.

I would have preferred R. It was just not my path. Primarily because of my ex. R requires a lot from the WS. Especially remorse.

I am sure that you shall find your way through.

Some days, its hard to imagine my making it through this.....

Right now my kids are my anchor to sanity.

You'll become desensitized to the pain and you may even miss it one day. I remember being a big mess like you are now but for the life of me I can't remember the actual pain. It's been a few year and I promised myself I wouldn't do that again, if there is a next time it will be anger instead of hurt.

Her seeing your pain doesn't help your situation, she can't emphasize since most likely she thinks if she was in your shoes she would kick you to the curb. You need to get angry because you have every right to. You didn't cause this, she did and you didn't do anything wrong, she did. All the pain you have is her fault and she was only thinking about herself. She is screwing you over and she needs to be held accountable.

You can get to that point but it will require you to look at your situation in a different light. You are the victim BUT you are not helpless and you do hold power over her, the power to divorce her and being justified for it. The only power she has is what you give her.

Dobby

Thank you. I did get angry and so did my children. We basically told her to get with the program and start being repentant and sorry. Also start being part of our family again. If she didnt, she would lose all of us. Probably FOREVER.

I want to thank everyone that has commented back and offer advice to me. I really do appreciate it. I dont have anyone but my parents to turn to.....So

THANK YOU

Although there is a long road ahead. I finally got an apology from my wife.

One that actually said:

Im sorry I hurt you

Im sorry I had an affair

Im sorry it was with your close cousin

All I had before that was, I'm sorry I hurt you. But she couldnt say she was sorry that she did what she did.

I had been waiting 11 days to see some repentance in her attitude. So for me being on this roller coaster ride, the last two days have been good.

If your counselor doesn't have experience in infidelity it's a problem.

That's one hell of an understatement.

Any "marriage counselor" who's supposedly helping on reconciliation after an affair and doesn't have any experience with infidelity is more likely to be an "unmitigated disaster," not just a "problem."

Based on what I've seen here over the last ten years, they generally advocate rugsweeping, and blame the betrayed spouse for "not giving the cheating asshat what they needed to NOT have an affair" and other such bullshit.

Broken, I am sorry you are here. It's probably one of the most painful things I have ever been through. It does get better, but it takes time. When I first found out I was shocked then angry and then afraid. My wife was sorry it happened,but tried to blameshift. She was sure she wanted to stay married and broke it off , but didn't grasp the damage that she had done. I took way too much responsibility for her cheating. I played the pick me dance for the next 3 weeks.

I found this site and learned a lot. I finally got my head outta my butt and realized it was not my fault. I took a lot of the advice here and eventually things became better.

The main thing is staying out of infidelity. I have to agree with the others that marriage counseling won't be very helpful right now. Individual counseling will. You need to take care of yourself and your kids first. One thing I regret is offering R Oo soon. It will take a while to see if your wife will do what it takes to make her a safe partner . I would also get the tested for stds. Your wife also .

1survivor

Thank you for your advice. I probably did offer R too early. Basically D-Day. It was definitely too early. After reading some other posts, and them talking about the FOG that the WS is in after being discovered. My WS is still in somewhat of a fog, , and not realizing fully what she has done. I don't think she wants to admit it to herself the damage she has done to our marriage, and to me personally. Not to mention going against all of her beliefs of honor and dedication in marriage vows.

I kinda had a melt down on her last nite, and told her all the things she stole from me. The things she promised to me only, and gave them to someone else outside of our marriage. She tried to say I wasnt home when she would meet with him. So I started reminding her of all the days they met I was home with our kids. Believing my wife was just at church.

Ive always been an even keeled person. But now my emotions are running amok.

I cry ALOT more. I cant trust my mind right now. It betrayed me in believing my WS.

We were arguing last nite, as we were, she said she was kind of afraid of me, that i might snap and hurt her.......You can ask anyone that has ever known me, I would never raise my hand to my WS. I told her I will walk away from all of this before I would ever raise my hand toward her....She cant even see that im still the same man that promised to protect her, and never hurt her. That was just something else that hurt in this HUGE HURTFUL MESS