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"You are both disgusting pigs" is what my AP's wife wrote to me after she had somehow hacked our email account and claimed she had seen every email and picture exchange that we had ever sent one another. She is right. We are disgusting pigs. That was 2 weeks ago. She was rightfully repulsed at the fact that I was pregnant (my husbands baby. AP is snipped) during our 18 month long affair.

I had deleted his email account and mine, and we had both permanently deleted all correspondences when shit originally began to hit the fan. So I'm still in awe of her hacking abilities. I never wanted to hurt her. The things in those emails have to be irreparable. Explicit photos, evidence of every lie, sex, and what may be even worse imo..... him often discussing how he can't handle her, doesn't love her, comparing her to me, how he didn't feel "that bad" for her when one of our co-workers anonymously texted her on FB (and then quit with a no call no show that night) telling her that AP was having an affair with another nurse named -------.

That partial DDay was a month ago.

During that time, AP and I tried to damage control as best we could. His wife insisted he get a new job. We began the process of tearful goodbyes. Being in denial at the time, I thought we could possibly still be friends some how... maybe that he would contact me in the future. He begged her not to tell my husband. She texted me and threatened me many times. I'm so emotionally involved in this OM. We talked daily, had so much in common. He was my best friend and I was his. We shared many of the same struggles, both married for over 10 years and both having multiple children, so when we started working together, it was an easy connection and even easier to cross the line. He was there for me when I was new in the unit (we are nurses in an ICU) and helped me learn the job.

In the beginning, our coworkers hated us. In time, they backed off and I think it fed into our belief that we were untouchable.

Since my APs wife found the emails, he has done everything he can to avoid me at all costs. Switching shifts, calling off etc.

Normally he would call me from a work phone to give me updates on the situation. I'm terrified she's going to tell my husband. He has officially no contacted me. I wrote him a letter thanking him for being apart of my life, and left it for him at work. He did not reply.

Last night was the worst. When he saw me in the hallway and kept walking as if he hadn't seen me. That crushed me. He was on the phone with her.

I was sad and angry at the same time, and also understand why he's doing it. Can't he say 2 words to me about what has transpired??? Give me some clue as to what her plans are with these emails and photos??

I just want to move forward and appreciate my beautiful family. Not spend anymore energy on this. I would never want to hurt my husband, I do love him. I do feel like some of his character flaws may have led me astray. So when my handsome AP showered me with love and attention, I easily took the bait.

I feel guilty, angry, sad. Guilty for hurting his wife and for taking time away from my family. Angry at the person who outted us, at my AP for avoiding me. Sad for losing such a great friend.

This affair has put my growth in my career on hold and has ruined my reputation. How do I begin to move on? And work on my relationship with my husband without telling him about it? How do I start the healing process?

[This message edited by SI Staff at 8:27 PM, August 22nd (Tuesday)]

As rough as it may be, you should tell your husband. He has the right to know and make an informed decision about your marriage.

It's that or he gets all the emails with the photos and finds out that way.

Welcome and thank you for sharing.

You are in a precarious position, but your best bet remains taking back control over your life and your actions.

You need to be up front and don't hide. I did for many many years and it ruined my BS, our family and the best marriage a man could ask for. Don't deceive him to save yourself. It is not worth it. He deserves to know what kind of life he is and has been living. It should be his decision

Thanks for the insight and advice. Previously my AP stated that his wife wasn't going to tell my H....and he convinced her that doing so may open up another can of worms that could affect them.

My gut is that it's been two weeks, and she would have contacted him by now if she were going to. She has no way of directly contacting him. He has no social media accounts and she does not know his phone number or email. She would have to find a relative of his on FB to do so.

I was so close to telling him when this first happened. A close friend told me not to. Why hurt him and potentially destroy our relationship if this can all just go away?

I just want to move forward and appreciate my beautiful family. Not spend anymore energy on this. I would never want to hurt my husband, I do love him. I do feel like some of his character flaws may have led me astray. So when my handsome AP showered me with love and attention, I easily took the bait.

Oh hell no... your husband gets no blame for you having an affair. This was your choice. Also the AP showered you with love... that didn't cause it either.

You made this choice.

Affairs are not a victimless crime. While you never meant to hurt your husband, he has been hurt he just has no idea about it yet.

This affair has put my growth in my career on hold and has ruined my reputation. How do I begin to move on? And work on my relationship with my husband without telling him about it? How do I start the healing process?

Affairs are based on selfishness and self-centeredness. Notice that you didn't list your husband first...

You are complaining about your career is on hold

You then mention that you reputation is ruined

You then ask how you move on...

ONLY THEN DO YOU MENTION YOUR HUSBAND and this is only in the context of being able to keep this lie hidden

How do you start the healing process? The only way I was able to start healing was to stop the lies and become honest with both myself, my wife, and my family.

My gut is that it's been two weeks, and she would have contacted him by now if she were going to. She has no way of directly contacting him. He has no social media accounts and she does not know his phone number or email. She would have to find a relative of his on FB to do so.

I get that you are fresh out of the affair, so I'll point out some things you are clearly missing...

You don't understand the pain that has been caused to the betrayed spouses. Chances are you can't understand. This woman hacked your email, seriously, do you not think she couldn't find your spouse? She could have you both fired I'd imagine if she can prove things happened utilizing work resources etc.

You didn't enjoy the light coming into what you and your AP shared, but here's the thing. You did that, you and he both. Now that it's out, you still can't face it?

The truth is you already hurt your husband. He just doesn't know it now. Your marriage is hemorrhaging on the table, but you are the only one who knows.

If you were big enough to have an affair, you need to be big enough to own that affair to the person who matters most to you. If you have ANY respect at all for him, you will tell. The AP's wife may not YET have done it, but I wouldn't put too much money on her NOT telling eventually.

I suspect your life is going to get a whole lot more interesting then not in the future behind your affair. Better to take the reins back now then after you've already driven the wagon off the cliff.

I see why you all think disclosing the affair is best for healing. I will consider.

Also, I didn't intentionally put my husband last on the list. He and my family are my priority.

I'm sorry but I do not believe that the BS has zero to do with an affair starting. It's not his fault, however AP filled a void when my husband wasn't there. Including during the birth of our son. That void is one of many factors in this twisted formula that created this situation.

I am sorry you are here. I know for me it was both terrifying and beyond humbling for me when my cheating started to come to light.

You need to tell your BH. I trickle truthed my BW over several months and doing so may have put us in a place where real R is no longer possible....because at the time I was more interested in saving my own ass than finally showing my wife some of the respect she deserved. Please don't do what I did. Your family and relationship may never recover from it.

I'm sorry but I do not believe that the BS has zero to do with an affair starting. It's not his fault, however AP filled a void when my husband wasn't there.

I disagree with you here. I think what you are saying is that it is your husband's fault that he didn't fulfill a need that your AP did for you and this drove you to your AP. In the end, you still had a choice. Your husband has not had a choice in your A. Did you communicate this need surrounding the birth of your son to your husband? If so, did he explicitly say no to your need? It is possible that your husband also felt that his needs weren't getting met by you and he didn't choose to cheat. I am sorry, but beyond explicitly asking you to cheat on him, I fail to see how your BH bears any responsibility for your choice. You are your own person.

I am sorry if I was harsh here. This is undoubtedly very stressful and frightening time for you and you probably feel like everyone is just piling on. I certainly do not want to chase you away from SI when you are here for help and support.

I am almost 2 years from our last DDay and believe me, I still very much feel like a hypocrite when I chastise WS's for the same thoughts and feelings I had not that long ago. I am just trying to expose some of the dysfunctional thought patterns us WS's have when we are still wrapped up in our cheating ways.

[This message edited by HurtingEveryone at 1:42 AM, August 23rd (Wednesday)]

You need to come clean.

This does not go away.

The longer you wait, the worse it will be.

In my situation, AP was caught (the first time) by his wife in May 2015. Unbeknownst to me, she had sent a message on FB messenger to my BH, which he did not find until Oct 2016, after the A was OVER!

You came to SI for a reason - take the advice you are being given. This will be the absolute hardest thing you will ever do, and you may not get the result you are hoping for. But IT WILL RUIN YOU if you rugsweep it.

You are new, I get that, it's very common to blame the BS in the beginning, most do. You are however, an adult. You could have said, my needs are going unmet to your spouse and if you did, and nothing happened, you could have left. People do it all the time, divorce that is, in lieu of cheating.

Your husband and family may have been a priority in the past and now because you risk losing them, but they were not a priority when you were in an affair, you were, or more exactly your needs and wants.

This is the hardest part of the recovery from an affair. Watching your BS be gutted, knowing you are responsible for that pain, 100%, and having to watch him heal on his own. There is no magic wand for that.

Check out the healing library in the yellow box in the upper left hand corner on this site. As you share details and people relate, chances are good they will recommend books they found helpful. I think it's hard to do that when you don't feel you know someone but bare details.

Have you considered why you had an affair? Not how your BS "made" you have an affair. What in you allowed you to cast your family aside and break your vows? That's an excellent place to start.

I'm sorry but I do not believe that the BS has zero to do with an affair starting. It's not his fault, however AP filled a void when my husband wasn't there.

This is what people here call "wayward thinking". I understand what you are saying. Not ever too long ago I too said that it was my BH's fault that I was seeking attention from others. "If he had not been so neglectful of me I wouldn't have done it". "If he had listened to me, I wouldn't have done it", "If he loved me more, I wouldn't have done it" --The list can go on and on.

The truth is that maybe your husband didn't listen to you, or show you love in a way you wanted, or pay you enough attention in your eyes. But did you tell him these things? Did you talk to him about your problems, discuss them and give him the opportunity to make it better? Did you ask for professional help from a MC? Did you write him a letter explaining your feelings? In ANY way did you give him a chance to change his actions that you think were driving you?

If you did these things, and he did not respond, you were always left with the option of divorce. But you didn't choose that. YOU made a choice to "have your cake and eat it too". You made a choice that avoided conflict with your husband, and made you feel good in that moment. Your husband was in the same marriage you were - he did not cheat on you. He probably does not even know there is a big problem.

We are all waywards here at some level of "recovery". The advice you get from this place will be invaluable. Trust these people, they will help you and guide you. They care, truly CARE about those that come here looking for help. The words you read may be harsh at times. They made be things you don't want to hear, but sometimes those are exactly the things you need to hear MOST.

I urge you to do something else - really sit down and think, Do you truly want to stay married to your husband? You do not talk about his as if you love him. You talk about him in a manner that suggests that you just don't want to get into trouble. You don't have to answer here, just really dig deep and think if you really truly love him and want to be with him. If you do, you need to come clean, explain everything to him, get professional help MC and IC, and work on finding out how to fill your own holes, so this never happens again.

If the answer is no then I urge you to contact a D lawyer today, and keep your mouth shut. If you really want to leave, there is not reason (in my eyes) to destroy him even more on your way out the door.

To be completely honest, I'm looking for advice on how to move past the grief of losing my AP. That has to be my first step. One thing at a time. Seems like the only advice people here can give is disclosing the affair. Why is that? I guess maybe I don't see why it is best for healing. Sorry if that is contradictory to what I previously said.

No one mentions if talking to a friend, counselor, therapist etc has helped them, or other ways of coping.

For the record, I realize my BS did not twist my arm and physically put me in another man's bed.

From experience... the way I finally got over my AP was by looking inward and thinking about why I had an AP to begin with. That, and telling my husband right away about everything. The "glamor" and "longing" for the AP goes away pretty damn quickly when fully exposed to the light of day. I was able to start pulling my head out of my ass and see what I had in front of me... and become determined how to fix it. It's hard to think of AP with sparkles and hearts when you're looking into the dejected, saddened face of your spouse.

You also mention therapist - by all means, yes. But I would encourage you to use that time to examine yourself to determine why you let an AP in. I get the lack of support in your marriage... the feeling like you are alone. I felt it too, thus giving myself permission to seek it from someone else. But is that how it is supposed to work? Are we supposed to just turn away from the person we married and to another if we aren't getting what we need? And even if we think we have talked to our spouse about our needs until we are blue in the face... have we really? Through counseling, I found I was not at all a good communicator. And much of my "conversations" with my husband were drowned out by me listening to preconceived notions in my head of what he was saying in response.

I understand where you are at. I was there 10 years ago. It's a long road, but work at it. It's not the AP you need to heal from - it's yourself. When I opened myself up to examining my thought processes and responses, that's when I really began to heal.

[This message edited by stroppy_wanadoo at 10:02 AM, August 23rd (Wednesday)]

Thank you for the response stroppy_wannado

It helps to stop romanticizing the AP to yourself. He wasn't some great guy really, if you think about it. You were his dirty little secret. He wasn't bragging about you to anyone, showing you off. You had stolen clandestine moments of sex. He gave his word to his wife he would remain faithful and broke it with you.

It's a process. You start by realizing what exactly you've risked, that your family and your spouse are more important then you convinced yourself they were so you could cheat. There's a running joke here in the BS sections about the cheater's handbook. (I am a mad hatter ws/bs) It's sad but true, the things they tell themselves to make it ok to cheat etc. We are sadly unoriginal.

As you start being brutally honest with yourself, the warm fuzzy haze fades and you begin to embrace reality for what it is and you are able to see your faults and strengths more clearly.

To be clear - letting go of the AP isn't accomplished by mourning the "relationship." I think if you start examining yourself, you naturally let go of the AP because there's nothing wonderful there to see there. In fact, it's rather ugly and disgusting... and it's easy to become afraid because your own reflection is ugly and disgusting. I challenge you to keep staring at it... don't turn away when the going gets tough. It's the only way to truly let it all go and become the person you were meant to be.

I have bumped this thread up for you:

Called Maia's survival guide

http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/text.forums.asp?tid137622

Just realize that the affair is artificial mental construct. It implodes when the truth intersects with it. You are already seeing the results in how your AP has changed toward you i.e ignoring you. He is embracing no contact because no matter what he told you about his marriage, when the truth was found out he had a choice to make. Break off the affair, go no contact or lose his wife and kids.

I'm sorry but I do not believe that the BS has zero to do with an affair starting. It's not his fault, however AP filled a void when my husband wasn't there. Including during the birth of our son. That void is one of many factors in this twisted formula that created this situation.

Here is a bit of a secret. There are many others out there who had a "void" inside them and didn't have an affair. You had other choices:

Talk to your husband about it

Talk to a counselor about it

Ask your husband to attend marriage therapy

Even file for divorce...

But your choice was to start a relationship with another man outside your marriage and have sex with him, and now that the affair has been discovered he is doing what many wayward do in the same position. They choose their family, and the life they have been living over their AP.

As long as you attempt to hang the affair on the actions of your BS, then you are able to absolve yourself of the blame for what you have done. But the reality is that your husband did not make you have an affair. Your AP didn't make you have an affair.

In order to heal... you have to own up to what you did without placing blame on other people.

i am astonished by your post.you had an affair when youwere pregnant with your BH's baby and you dont even think that informing him about your A is necessary. wow simply wow!!!

i am not disgusted by you just by your cheating. there are many WS here who will even shout in a street that they had betrayed. that is how they are truly sorry for their actions even knowing they may not be forgiven. but you dont even say about your A to your husband.

i suppose you are one of those women who think that you deserve more than one man because you are beautiful, successful etc.

mistakes can be forgiven in time if the person owns up to the mistake inspite of consequences. you have done mistakes and you have to accept its consequences. that is called INTEGRITY which is something you dont know.

truly you are disgusting

Hi there Uh01eka,

Welcome to SI. Recovering from infidelity is tough but people here can support you as you go through what is a pretty long process.

Grief is definitely a part of the process, in ways that seem obvious to you now and some that are not. Right now you are in withdrawal. Affairs and other forbidden behaviors that we sneak to participate in give us an emotional high born of chemistry and brain wiring. Your source has been cut off. It's going to suck for a while yet.

What helped me a lot is when I started to differentiate between AP as a person and the feelings I had during the affair. The feelings were not coming from AP. They were being generated in my brain based on what I believed to be true about him and our situation. Over time, my perspective changed and I came to realize that AP and I did not love each other. We used each other as a source of feelings. Someone who loves you does not encourage you to lie and cheat for the sake of a feeling. Someone who loves you supports you in being your best self. Affair behavior is the opposite. Once you get some distance and get through the withdrawal process you will be able to see that and you will see that AP and the affair are not worthy of your grief.

What is worthy of your grief, however, is your integrity. That died with the affair. AP helped you kill it. It can be resurrected, though, with a lot of effort on your part to start making different decisions and becoming a truth teller. That is the only path to being an authentic person. You have to own your entire story. Only then can you write a new ending, an ending that does not involve you being a fake person with your spouse and family until you die.

Healing from infidelity is the hardest thing I have ever done. And I'm still not done. I have come farther than I ever thought possible, though, and it has been worth every difficult and painful moment. My life isn't perfect, but it's real. I'm not perfect but I'm real. Nothing is hidden. My connection with my spouse, family and friends is based on the real and imperfect me and that feels wonderful.

Keep reading and posting. That "Maia's withdrawal survival guide" is key. Read it multiple times. There is another post of hers that was really helpful for me too that I'll bump for you about "Reframing needs and validation".

Proceed with conviction and valor.

Best to you from a fellow EvolvingSoul.

Thank you for your response EvolvingSoul. I appreciate that.

I did read Maia's Survival Guide.

And to the poster that called me disgusting.... I am worse than disgusting. I agree.

I think my BS and I may need MC. I've been thinking about everything everyone here has said. This guy would never listen to me if I disclosed the affair. He doesn't communicate well and only listens to what he wants to listen to. Maybe disclosing will help our marriage in some way.