SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Even starting to try to write this I can’t think of what to say. What I’ve done to my husband and my family was selfish. It’s still very fresh and we are only a few months into trying to recover. There’s this weird cycle that we’re in where He feels bad for talking thru things because it makes me sad. I know we need to talk about it to move forward. That’s what he’s asked me to do. I hate talking about it. I don’t know the next step or how to help or if I should even try to help. I joined this group for advice and guidance to save my marriage. What do I say to him? Where do we start?

You will get a lot of good help and guidance here. For the best responses, you should probably tell your story.

That said, if he wants to talk about it, you talk about it. Don't get defensive. Don't get quiet on him.

Hi there Rogue0719,

Welcome to SI. You've landed in a good place if you want to start figuring out how to recover from infidelity. I and every Wayward on this forum made the decision to betray our spouses and our own integrity. Some people like you are just starting out and other people are leagues down the path and are fully reconciled. Most people are someplace in between. So you will be able to get advice and support from people who know what you're going through right now and people who know what lies ahead. If you leave the stop-sign checked on your posts, only other Wayward Spouses (WS) will be able to respond and sometimes that's what you'll want. Other times you might want to get a Betrayed Spouse (BS) perspective so you would uncheck the box before you hit submit in that case.

I know you're probably in overwhelm mode. I would suggest some reading to start. Maybe you've already discovered these but if not, a good starter kit is

1) Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass. If your affair had an emotional component I'd say it's critical reading. Even if it didn't, it is a good, all-purpose education on the nature of affairs and how they impact everyone involved and also gives good practical advice on how to go about healing and further affair proofing yourself for the future.

2) How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair by Linda J MacDonald. Great book. If you can only have one, make it this one. It's about 100 pages long and addresses the WS directly. It lays out very succinctly which behaviors on your part are likely to help reconciliation, and which are likely to hinder it.

3) The post entitled "Things Every WS Needs to Know" on this forum. I'll bump it up to the top for you. It gives a pretty good accounting of what your BS is likely to be going through and what you can do to help. It also talks about what the timeline and long term signs of healing look like.

4) The Healing Library on this site has a lot short writings on many different aspects of infidelity and its impact on the people involved and what helps healing and why. I did a lot of browsing there after I first joined and it was a big help for me to start to wrap my mind around the true nature of infidelity.

Your BS's natural inclination to protect you from hurt and harm is likely interfering with his need to talk about what happened in order to process it. One of the ways you can support him is to learn to lean into the uncomfortable feelings and don't let your sadness and guilt shut down the conversation. Yes it is painful to face our BS's in their pain and so very hard to just sit with them while they go through it but that is what you're going to need to learn how to do.

Most of us WS don't have great skills for coping with crummy feelings and in fact if we had a lot of us would not need to be on this site in the first place. Over the last several years I've been developing a meditation practice that has helped me so much in learning to be okay with my feelings, whatever they are. They exist, I feel them, but I don't have to let them sweep me away. Meditation is about learning to stay in the present moment and deal with what is, not what we wish would be. If you have never tried it's pretty easy to find info about it on the interwebs. I use an app called Headspace that is a subscription deal, but the first 10 sessions are free so you could just use it to dip your toe into the pool, so to speak. Once you get a sense of what it is, there are a lot of free resources on the internet.

At some point you're going to have to figure out how and why you were able to betray your husband. You had some perceived need which may or may not have been an unrealistic expectation of what your relationship is supposed to provide but regardless of whether it was a valid need, you chose to get it met at his very great expense and, if you're like most WS, lied to him to keep doing it or to avoid consequences after you stopped doing it. That betrayal of trust required some thought processes that gave you the green light to make those choices and until you understand what they are and do some work to change them you can't really offer your BS any emotional security in the relationship. Going to see a counselor/therapist individually can help you start untangling that and I would place doing that work far, far, far above any work that the marriage itself might have needed before your affair.

All of this takes time. Think years rather than weeks or months. From the vantage point of the beginning the healing timeline can seem excruciatingly long but you know what? That time is going to go by. Regardless. So get started. Start reading and post here with questions or if you just need support. You will find that people here are really wanting to help you get through this.

Proceed with conviction and valor.

Best to you from this EvolvingSoul.

As a BS, my best advice to a WS is to read "How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair." We read it out loud, taking turns. I literally felt like the author had a spy camera in our home watching and writing this book!

Also, know that there are "triggers" and he will have them for a long, long time. Be conscious of them and try to avoid them if at all possible. For instance, I know where my husband met his whore for their A. When we need to travel somewhere and the fastest route is past that hotel, we leave early and travel a different route. I can not go past that hotel without breaking down.

If your husband is aware of specific dates you were with the AP, be sensitive on those antiversary dates...they're still hard to get through.

Answer any and all questions as honestly as possible; PLEASE don't say, "I don't remember!" Tell him you love only him, tell him you want only him. Ask him what he needs from you to feel safe.

Don't change your email, but give him the password and allow him to check it. Don't delete things. For a while, until he says otherwise, he needs complete access to everything that is yours. And he needs 100% accountability from you.

Good luck!

I hate talking about it.

WHY?

What's your story?

Did you confess or were you caught?

Does your AP's wife know?

I'm so sorry you have a reason to be here.

As someone else stated, don't shut down when he asks questions.

A timeline of the affair is very helpful for a BS.

It can keep you from answering the same questions over and over again.

Even if he does ask the same questions over and over again, be patient with him.

He's processing all of this new information and every time he asks a question he's seeing something new. It's very overwhelming.

[This message edited by Wool94 at 5:53 AM, January 25th (Thursday)]

Another BS here. I am glad you found SI because the men and women here will be a big help to you. They can better help you if they knew your story better so please share that with them. But I just wanted to tell you some things that helped me. My wife told me everything about the affair. She answered every question, even those questions I call Catch 22 questions, "damned if you answer, damned if you don't" questions. Those questions are things like, "Was he better than me" or "Did you do things with him that you never did with me". These type questions usually are self esteem killers so be gentle and wise when answering these types of questions. So even if answering will hurt him. Tell him in the most gentle way you can. But answer all questions.

Write a timeline of the affair for him. Leave no detail out. Show him all of your communication emails, text, and IMs. Don't delete anything. If you have already then find a way to retrieve it so he can see it. Hide nothing. Give him full access to your phone, email accounts, and everything.

He will, of not already, ask for sexual details. He will want to know when did it start, where did you meet, how many times did you guys have sex, why did you do this to me, who is the POSOM. My biggest suggestion besides telling the truth and hiding nothing, is never, and I mean NEVER, defend the OM. Even if you think your BH is wrong in what he is saying, NEVER defend the OM. It helped me that my wife calls him now "That Bastard". She doesn't even use his real name anymore.

Thank you for all the responses, it’s suprisingly comforting to know I’m not alone in this and the ability to remain anonymous has made my BS feel okay for me to share my story. The affair started in 2011. My marriage had been struggling for a few years but I really started to reach a breaking point when my husband didn’t want to have sex with me. He said it was stress from work and being physically too tired. I tried for atleast a year and a half to talk to him about it and try to figure out what was going on but it never got better. I knew he was getting his needs met by master bating and watching porn so I figured it had to be me. I had gained weight from having our first child and I just thought he wasn’t attracted to me anymore. He’s against divorce so I just thought this was how things were gonna be now, he wouldn’t leave me but he didn’t seem to want me. Then I met AP at work. We started as friends and talked all the time, it was nice to have the attention and he had a beautiful GF so I thought at first he would never really be interested in me. It progressed to having them over for drinks weekly. The physical affair started soon after that in December of 2011. It lasted for a little over 3 yrs. I tried to end it multiple times and went long stretches without talking to AP. Finally ended It for good in 2014. I wanted to tell BS about the affair and come clean but I could never find the courage to do it. I kept a few screen shots as proof, it wasn’t fair to my BS to not find out. On October 17th 2017 he found the messages I had kept. I had spent the last few years trying to work on what I could do to make our relationship better. I found ways to lower my libido and let go of my expectations for our sex life. Things were great between us actually. Now all I can see is the pain in his eyes. I will talk about it with BS whenever he has asked but I do hate it because I want to comfort him and show how much I love him but I’m the reason he’s hurting.

BS here again. Since no stop sign I will respond again. Right now he will be on a roller coaster of emotions. He will want to be comforted by you sometimes and other times he will reject you outright. He will yell at you, call you names (maybe), be kind and patient. The best way for him to begin to heal is to first have all the information. Right now he only has 1/4 of the picture. Only you can complete the 3/4 he needs so he can see the entire picture. It is harder to reconcile if you only have part of the story.

One of things I wanted to say right away is DONT LIE! If you read on here it’s the lies afterwards that kill the M. If your H needs to talk about it then please find a way to do that. Be open and honset even if you think the truth will hurt him it’s the lies that hurt the most. The sooner he knows everything the better.

I will post more in a while. I just wanted to get that out there for you right away. Maybe you can start to do a timeline for him. Writing everything down for him and start for the beginning until the end. Write everything down that you can remember.

Start to read other posts. It’s great information to see what you and your H will be facing. The more you know the better. This place has the right tools you need but you have to use them. Write more later.

WilliamM thank you for responding. I think it’s a great feature to get perspective from other BS especially from a Males perspective. I also like the idea of referring to the AP as “that bastard” and I’m definitely going to try it. : ). I’ve told my BS everything that I can remember and I have no way of recovering any of the old messages? I’m new so I may be missing what you’re meaning by the other 3/4 of the story?

Look your husband have porn addicton

He need help for porn addiction.

But first you need to tell him everything about your affair

And btw how old are you and your husband and length of marriage?

The porn doesn’t bother me honestly. I’ve always been a very sexual person and I think porn is for some couples an addition to a healthy sex life. I know it’s not for everyone. I don’t know if he is addicted to it, I would be curious to know why you would think so?

Sorry forgot to answer that I’m 30, H is 31. We got married in February of 2007. Our 11 yr anniversary is coming up.

Rogue- a few things here from a BH turned WS.

Anytime we cheat, it’s wrong. But that being said, sometimes an underlying condition can contribute more to it than others. That doesn’t negate the fact that your choice to cheat was entirely your choice, fault, and at your BHs emotional and physical expense. I think you probably know that. But if you were in a dead bedroom scenario, that is a situation that will need to be fixed after the damage from your infidelity is addressed. A healthy couple engages in, and compromises libido levels in the middle, to have a healthy sex life which both partners agree on. It sounds like that wasn’t the case for you.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

men tend to place a high value on sexual betrayal. Not all, but many, myself included. It may be related to territoriality, ego, biology, and pride, but it’s there. It attacks us at the core of our definition of our own masculinity and can cause us to question our worth as men to our wives...”if she needed to go elsewhere, what is it I am lacking?” This is tough enough for men who had healthy sex lives with their WS, I’d imagine it’s a feeling compounded for your husband given the sexual issues you two have faced in the past.

To help him heal, you need to do anything you can to show him you value him #1 As your man. Find ways to try and reconnect if you let him, verbally reassure him that this is all your fault, and that your terribly sorry, and that while you can’t change what you have done, you love him and respect him as a powerful confident man. Build his ego back up, treading lightly to cater to how comfortable her is. Show him adoration, humility and affection. Speak Gently to him, and show acts of kindness. Don’t be disengenous. With regards to sex, it’s trickier in your situation, but be generous and giving. Not to be too graphic, but try initiating with him and start slow. Maybe surprise him with oral sex to completion, show desire to him, maybe it will help kick start his desire too. If this is an especially hard place for him, be honest with what you and AP did, and if it’s something he wants to do too to reclaim, be more than willing.

From more practical standpoints,be an open book. Tracking your location, acces to your devices and social media, check in with him, put a VAR in your car, essentially anything he could use to check in on you to ensure you’re not capable of sneaking around. Do not hang Around friends who know about your AP and didn’t disclose to your BH. They aren’t friends to your marriage. Do not badmouth your H to anyone, even in confidence or out of frustration. Do not hang out with the opposite sex without your H present.

He will likely go from sadness to anger. At you, at your AP, and strangers, and at himself. If he wants to bash the AP, let him. Tel him you understand why he hates the AP Andy remind him he is the better man, and that while he may not feel that from your actions, that it’s the truth and that your unbelievably sort your for making him doubt it. Don’t ever defend the AP in any context. He Matt make verbal threats towards the AP. He may horrible things that he would probably never do, but Is simply venting. He may tell you he wants to hitting or kill your AP. While you don’t want him to do it (jail time...) express that he Is ok to feel that way, and you think the AP deserves it, but so do you, and you don’t want want yor husband to get in trouble. If their are legal and creative ways you’re husband can punish your AP let him. Expose to his BW, get him fired, and humiliate him publically are all fair play. Your H May not want to, but support him fin he does. The reason I am a WS too Is partially because I slept without my wife’s APs BW after dday. I’m not condoning that, but I am trying to show you how powerful the feeling of humiliation and injustices go in a BH to do and say things way out of their norm.

And finally, if all of your efforts fail, which they might sometimes it’s a dealbreaker no matter what, show him mercy in the divorce don’t request alimony, and let him keep the lions share of the assets. And don’t be cruel in terms of custody. Be fair. Give him a gift of kindness in your final parting. Some redemption.

I hope this helps.

Look at it this way: you had every opportunity to go see a lawyer and extricate yourself from an what you felt was an unhappy marriage. Instead of talking to your husband and expressing your needs, you cheated, and in doing so, stole three years from your husbands life. I'm sorry to be direct, but you need to be talking, and talking and talking. Not talking to him is what got you into the sorry situation you are in now.

You owe him honesty and transparency. The onus and burden is on you. He shouldn't have to be doing the heavy lifting. You should be the one bringing up the issues, discussing his pain, scheduling the counseling and therapy, and working on creating better boundaries so that he can begin seeing you as a safe partner again. Right now he wouldn't bet a dollar on you.

Hi again Rogue0719,

Thanks for sharing your story. The lack of sex in your marriage is a valid reason to feel tempted to cheat. It isn't a valid reason to actually go through with it. The choice to go through with it and to lie to your BS to keep doing it is yours to own. You had other choices, but with this statement you're making it seem like it's your BS's fault that you didn't:

He’s against divorce so I just thought this was how things were gonna be now, he wouldn’t leave me but he didn’t seem to want me.

Do you see how that puts your choice to have an affair on him? He didn't want divorce, he didn't want you so...your only choice wasn't to have sex with someone else while you were still married with him. You could have chosen divorce. Would it have been fair? Nope. Would you had to have given up all the good in the relationship to satisfy your need for a healthy sex life? Yep. Is that fair? Nope. But it would have been the choice of integrity, the choice of being authentic, the choice of caring more about how things actually are than how they look. And that might be the thread that you need to follow to start figuring out how and why you were able to do this to him. Why was having sex outside your marriage and hiding it okay but filing for divorce was not? You will probably find that it has a lot to do with how you think people see you, with what kind of person you think they think you are.

Proceed with conviction and valor.

I could see how my statements could be taken that way, it’s good to hear my story thru others eyes. I don’t blame him, I know the affair was fully on me. There is no excuse for my choices and I know that no matter how this turns out there wasn’t some magical set of events that would’ve prevented the affair. I’m trying to talk to him but we’ve started this weird cycle where he tells me how he feels which is upsetting and I show signs of hurt so he shuts down. I tried to be neutral and just sit with him and be supportive thru his pain but then he says I seem like I’m being cold and unfeeling. I have suggested counseling but he doesn’t feel like he can open up to a stranger about such personal things and I don’t feel like I’m in a position to push him. I’m going to start with the reading that’s been suggested and see if it’s a good place to start. Thanks to all of you for the suggestions so far.

It's really common to not be completely clear on why you did things. Part of the process of recovery is gaining the critical awareness to see when thinking is distorted. I can tell you that a lot of times even when I could intellectually get that things were not what I had thought, getting it on a felt/gut level took a lot longer. In some cases years longer.

Counseling would be a great idea for him but you're right you can't force him to go. Have you told him about this site? It might be that he could more easily open up on an anonymous forum.

As far as being able to sit with him in his pain and him shutting down when he sees you feeling pain, it might help to be able to sort out whether the pain you are feeling is for yourself or for him and be open about that with him. Compassion is going to be a really important part of the process. The word literally means "suffering together" and its essence is to be aware of and have a desire to relieve another person's suffering. The key is staying connected in spite of the suffering.

This

I tried to be neutral and just sit with him and be supportive thru his pain but then he says I seem like I’m being cold and unfeeling.

makes it seem that while you are physically present during these talks your efforts to stay neutral results in him feeling a sense of disconnection from you. The idea isn't to avoid the painful emotions, it's to stay connected with him, to stay there for him even though it is painful. Examples: "I feel so bad for hurting you." "I feel like a piece of shit." "I'm just a bad person." "I don't deserve anything good." "I felt lonely and rejected." Those are about how you feel or felt. Don't make it about your feelings. Focus on his. "That had to have felt awful." "I can see why you feel hurt." "You have every right to be mad." "How can I help you bear your pain?" Those are all focused on him. If he sees that's where your focus is, that you're feeling pain with him and for him and not expecting him to take care of you but instead asking how you can take care of him, it might allow him to let his guard down enough to start processing things.

This shit is hard. I know. You're still wrapping your head around it. Be patient with yourself and keep reading and asking questions. Don't go into Scarlet O'hara mode, which is to choose to just not think about the hard stuff, a la "I'll think about that tomorrow."

Proceed with conviction and valor.

I don’t know if he is addicted to it, I would be curious to know why you would think so?

Because i am dealing with it.

Porn causes a person to have disinterest in real person.

(if he was not attracted you is because of porn)

Because of Porn many couples had problems with intimacy

belive me i never thought i was an addict

but after reading and starting nofap

i saw the changes.

BUT your Affair and BETRAYAL to your Husband is not justified.