SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am the person who broke my wife and our family to pieces. I am selfish and thought I could get away with a few occasions of sex then go back to my amazing family life and wonderful wife. What a fool I am. 3 months later and she has found out. It’s still only 6 days in and very raw for her: and I think it always will be. I want to dedicate every ounce of my life to making things right for her and to give her some kind of healing. I have never seen someone in so much pain. And I am the cause of this. I am going to seek counselling for my behaviour and do whatever I can for my wife and the kids. Is there anyway back for our marriage? I will never give up on her. But I think she is likely to have given up on me.

  Moving to Wayward Side

Delahoya1985

As per the guidelines and forum rules wayward spouses (those that have the affair) are not allowed to post in the Just Found Out forum so the SI Staff moved your post here to the Wayward forum.
This is a great forum and there are some really brave and fantastic posters that will hopefully help you on your path to recovery.

For any BS that might be tempted to post on this thread since there is no STOP sign – I firmly remind you that we the BS are visitors here and need to both show the WS that are trying to fix their wrong AND the site guidelines the expected respect:

A forum for all Former WS's who have ended or trying to end their affairs and are striving to reconcile. BS's are not to start threads asking questions of the WS's. Discussions about this forum, participating members, or topics contained are prohibited outside of this forum. Being disrespectful to this forum, members, or this description will result in your losing access without warning.

Reposted from JFO:

No stop sign.

I am going to seek counselling for my behaviour and

Make sure your counselor is versed in infidelity and is willing to hold you accountable. No unmet needs, blame shifting or rug sweeping. Also urge your betrayed wife to get into counseling with someone trained in trauma, betrayal trauma if it’s available in your area.

Is there anyway back for our marriage?

Maybe, but not your former marriage. That one is dead. If your BW is willing, and if you both can do the work, a new marriage may be possible. Welcome to your marathon. You’re barefoot and haven’t run more than a half mile in years. When you feel sorry for yourself remember her first fifty yards are over broken glass.

What have you done to assure her that the affair is over? Gone no contact with your affair partner, even if that means finding another job? Given access to all of your electronics and social media with all passwords? Turned on location tracking?

What reading have you done? How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair and Not Just Friends are two to start with.

Your post will be moved to the Wayward Side as you aren’t allowed to post in Just Found Out . Listen to the advice the former waywards will have for you. Urge your BW to post here for support.

[This message edited by asc1226 at 10:53 PM, Monday, August 28th]

D

You want to dedicate all your energy to heal her…
Well… it wasn’t "her" that thought she deserved and/or could seek out sex outside the marriage. Healing "her" would be like carefully gluing back that broken plate but then replacing it on the shelf that occasionally falls off the wall.
What you need to focus on is healing YOU.

I have this theory… It’s nothing scientific, hasn’t been corroborated with a wide survey on a million people that cheat or by monitoring brain-activity in rats or anything like that… but it’s MY theory on why people cheat.
No – it’s not sex or lack of sex or even the beauty of the OP…
I think the prevalent reason people cheat – male or female – is for validation.

We all need validation, but most of us get it in healthier ways: a pat on the back from the boss plus a raise, praise from people, people want to be with us, laughs at our jokes, we are asked for advice, we feel validation looking at our paid-for car or house, in the eyes of a spouse… whatever… but some of us need validation as in "I might be turning thirty eight but I can still get the attention of the new girl at the office".
That form of validation is IMHO based on a lack of self-worth…

I suggest you focus on YOU.

Of course you need to offer your wife something. My suggestion is to offer her a changed YOU. Start by telling her that you really want to save your relationship with her and ask her what she needs. I’m going to suggest you offer to answer ANY question and give the total truth: number of events, where, who and so on. Show her that although she can’t trust you right now then at least YOU trust her with the truth.
Then promise her honesty, and then LIVE BY THAT policy.

Hello delahoya. Welcome to SI.

If I had to look back on the one piece of advice I least wanted to believe, and most needed to, it was this: tell your BS everything. Everything she wants to know, no matter how painful, no matter how graphic, no matter how detailed. Tell her things it doesn't occur to her to ask, like if you bought the AP your wife's favorite flowers, or had sex with AP on your wedding anniversary, or texted AP from your bed with your wife right next to you. If you told AP you loved her. If there are other affairs your BW doesn't yet know about. Get it all out there. All at once, and now.

You're probably thinking, "BraveSirRobin, no offense, but you are out of your fucking mind. My wife is barely holding herself together. She can't sleep, she's losing weight, and she won't even look at me. I'm trying to save this marriage, not finish it off. She knows I cheated. What possible good can it do to twist the knife with all the gory details? I can fix this if she'll just let me. I know what I'm doing."

This is the most damaging thought process imaginable. It allows her to start healing and then sneaks up behind her and viciously stabs her just as she's letting her guard down. Every new discovery will tear her healing back down to zero. There are many, many BS who say that they could have forgiven the cheating but not the lying. Not the WS's desperate attempt to save their own skin at the expense of brutally, savagely attacking the BS over and over with a series of D-days, each as gutting as the first. Your wife has the right to know exactly what she's being asked to forgive. She didn't deserve this pain even once, and certainly not multiple times.

I speak from bitter personal experience. I almost destroyed the sweetest, bravest, most loving man on the planet with my belief that I knew best and my fear of letting go of control. I'm intimately aware of the surreal terror you're experiencing in watching your life fall apart, and yet I'm still giving you the same advice. Don't claim remorse; prove it. Spare her the repeated attacks of trickle truth. Give her the agency to deal with the worst and to decide whether she has it in her to rebuild.

Hi delahoya1985,

Welcome to SI. I'm a BS (betrayed spouse) that managed to R (reconcile) with my husband, who - it sounds like, had an affair that was very much sort of like yours. He never intended to leave, it was more of an "added bonus" type thing for him. So yes, what I will tell you is that it is POSSIBLE to rebuilt the marriage, but what you do next will be a big part of whether your wife ultimately ever decides she can (and wants to) rebuild with you.

The advice you have received so far is good. Please read and re-read BraveSirRobin's post again and again. There is an unfortunate habit amongst WSs (wayward spouses) to continue lying after discovery in an attempt to minimize the egregiousness of their actions or to "protect" their BS from particularly hurtful information. It's a form of damage control/self-preservation. Whatever you do, do not do that. The best thing my husband ever did in the aftermath of D-day was to stop lying and start answering my billions of questions as honestly as he could. Your wife will have a million questions and she will ask them over and over and over again until the story makes sense to her - that means she is likely going to ask the same questions over and over again for months (maybe years). She will be like a dog with a bone about the parts of your story that do not make sense. Being honest with her now will go a long way in her ability to begin to trust you again (though don't expect that to happen anytime soon). The more you lie now and in the next several months, the less likely she ever will be to start trusting you again. If you continue to lie, she will eventually decide to stop trying.

You also mention that the pain she is currently is is excruciating. Continuing to lie will prolong this suffering and will crush her soul over and over again. Every new d-day is a fresh trauma for a betrayed spouse. It sets any healing back to zero, and sets any gains in trust back even farther than zero. Getting everything out now is like ripping off a bandaid - it's so much better to do all at once.

Good luck and I hope you keep posting.

It’s a long road and we are currently separated so although this may not be applicable right now do you have any advice on how to regain her trust? since the news broke I have tried to be there for her and help her out with certain things. I want to give her space too as she said she can’t grow with me constantly in contact. But I don’t want her thinking I have given up. This is something I will never do.

Understand it's going to take years to regain her trust.

Right now it's actions. Not words, but actions.

Be completely truthful when she asks questions, and she will ask the same questions over and over, don't get frustrated.

What does she want? What does she need?

If she wants space, give it to her. Obviously you have children, but you can keep contact primarily with your children.

Did you give her the timeline of the affair? Is the affair over? Have you gone NC with the AP?

There 's a book you can read called How to Help your Spouse Heal from An affair. Probably a two hour read. Purchase it and read it.

Continue with IC. Do not pressure her. She's in shock and grieving.

The best thing that you can do to attempt to regain her trust while you're separated is to abide by her wishes and to work on yourself. Go to counseling, read books about healing yourself after infidelity, leave her alone if that's what she wants from you, and be available if she does want to communicate.

I have a friend who separated from her husband after he cheated. She asked that he give her some space. Instead of doing as she asked, he messaged her constantly, telling her how much he loved her, how sexy and smart she was, how he wanted her back, etc. The outcome was the opposite of what he was hoping for: She felt disrespected because he wouldn't abide by her boundaries and just did whatever the heck he felt like doing in the moment. It didn't come across as loving adoration. It came across as a lack of respect, strong need for validation, and poor impulse control, which, let's be real, is what got him into this mess in the first place. It's just more of the same selfishness.

I imagine that you've already told her that you would like the chance to reconcile. If you haven't, I would send ONE email/text telling her that that's your hope and that you're very interested in doing the work, but that you'll respect her wishes and won't bother her. And then don't bother her. Leave the ball in her court. If you've already told her that, do not contact her again. And don't blow smoke up her skirt. If you don't think you're up for doing the work, don't pretend that you are. It's a hard row to hoe.

I wish you luck. Now get to work.

I have given her space although I do worry she may think I no longer care. I want to spend my time away from her positively and have been counselling and am reading an infidelity book (she got it for me!) as I want to regain her trust long term. But I appreciate it is a long journey. I don’t think anyone ever thinks of the true consequence of infidelity. The impact is huge and defo not something I would ever want to do again.

I don’t think anyone ever thinks of the true consequence of infidelity. The impact is huge and defo not something I would ever want to do again.

I think you're right. I think most people think that they understand the risks intellectually, but being in the trenches is a whole 'nother ballgame. The scope of pain for both parties is enormous.

am reading an infidelity book (she got it for me!)

Do you remember the scene in Knocked Up where she finds the unread baby books and decides that it isn't going to work? And then he shows up for the delivery and is employing things that he learned in the books and she decides to try again? Yeah, read the books. And then read some more. Take initiative, don't just do what she's asking. Go above and beyond to better yourself and become a safe partner.

You mention in your other thread – the one with the stop sign – that your wife has asked for a divorce.
This thread does not have a stop-sign so BS can offer advice on your situation here…

We have suggested you focus on you and that you show 100% truth and accountability. Most of the advice is in that vein and IMHO is spot-on. You show her that you are changing, but you change for YOU rather than as some effort to save the marriage.

Your wife asked for a divorce. This is so common and so strange.
Divorces don’t come gift-wrapped. You don’t "ask" – you DO.
If your W wants a divorce she goes and speaks to an attorney and/or files. She does not need your permission.
Heck… you can refuse to sign the petition, refuse cooperation and drag your feet all the way… but all that can do is make it take a longer time and cost you two a lot more money.
IF she wants a divorce and IF she GETS a divorce she will become DIVORCED no matter what you do.

So when she tells you she wants a divorce you answer truthfully:
It’s not what I want and I wish you would give us some time before committing to a divorce, but I can’t stop you if it’s really what you want.

Thanks for the replies. I sit here reading the "not just friends" book currently. I am having counselling and am trying to learn and better myself hence writing on forums. She wants to understand the "how" of my affair. As in how did I think it was something I could do. I want to answer her but I’m not sure what she is hearing is enough for her. Hopefully I’ll learn a way to verbalise it to her. she worries I will do it again in 10 years. The pain of this is enough to stop that but the most important thing is I love her so much. Yet she questions that love as I cheated over a 4 week period. And I get what she is saying. I just need to find the right words. Cos she is enough. I just need to show her

Thanks for the replies. I sit here reading the "not just friends" book currently. I am having counselling and am trying to learn and better myself hence writing on forums. She wants to understand the "how" of my affair. As in how did I think it was something I could do. I want to answer her but I’m not sure what she is hearing is enough for her. Hopefully I’ll learn a way to verbalise it to her. she worries I will do it again in 10 years. The pain of this is enough to stop that but the most important thing is I love her so much. Yet she questions that love as I cheated over a 4 week period. And I get what she is saying. I just need to find the right words. Cos she is enough. I just need to show her

First off, I think your wife is more looking for your why and not your how. She may be saying, "how could you have done this?" but she is really trying to understand the "why" did you do this...the how seems pretty straightforward, you made a choice to have an affair and the how is the logistics of how you ended up in an affair. The why is what she really wants to know, because only if you understand your why, can you put corrective actions in place. As someone who does root cause investigations and corrective actions as part of my career, I can tell you, sometimes you need to ask a number of why questions to get to your true root cause.

This should be something that you work on in IC. I used my 5 Whys technique with my therapist and found it helpful. For example, I am a fixer and I tend to try and help people fix their problems, which in the workplace can be great, it has helped my career tremendously, but in the personal setting, I become the KISA (Knight in Shining Armor) and well, that is incompatible with being married in a number of ways. One of the things that I now am very consciously and deliberately aware of is keeping my emotional distance between myself and members of the opposite sex. I manage a team of mostly women and so it isn't just protecting my marriage, it is also protecting my career and employment. I have been up front and honest with each of them that I want to be approachable and helpful as a leader, because that is my job, but please do not come to me for emotional support outside of a strictly work setting. That isn't to say that I'm going to be a robot who feels nothing, quite the opposite, one of my direct reports lost her mom this past weekend and I got the text while I was at the gym, I turned into a sobbing mess, because it took me back to when I lost my dad a few years ago. At the same time, I can be there to support my team at a tough time like this, but I have to at a certain level remain cold and clinical about what needs to happen. If you need extra time off to get yourself right to come back to work, I'm all there, but if you need a therapist, I'll give you my therapist's number.

It is unfortunate that it took the devastation and pain of infidelity in my marriage for me to make these tangible changes and to protect my marriage, but nevertheless, it was a lesson that will remain with me until my dying days.

I wanted to ask you to try to meet your wife where she is at.

I understand why Bor says it is really the WHYS. But the WHYS are not really what I wanted answered in the depths of the pain.

Mostly because the WHYS sort of make sene. They are written all over the hundreds of responses in this forum. The WHYS are the KISA and the ego kibbles, and the external validation, and the needing to feel like you’re still an attractive man at your age, and the having an emotional connection to someone other than your spouse in a world that doesn’t really allow men to emotionally connect, and the feeling alive and sexually turned on despite being in a long term relationship with the same body and the same person for a lifetime. The WHYS all make sense. On a certain level one can even sympathize.

But the HOWS are somehow different. I am not a linguist. I am an English major. For me the question I would love to hear answered from my husband or another WS is how. And the HOW is not a technical description of crossing a line, scheduling a meet-up, inserting body part A into body part B.

How could you?

How could you treat someone you are supposed to love with such cruelty?

Even when I take into account all the answers to your WHYS I still don’t understand HOW a person who considers themselves a decent person could do that to their wife, their family.

How did you look your wife in the face and lie like that?

How could you disrespect her like that?

How could keep going with the cheating OVER WEEKS and keep making that choice?

How could you throw away everything that had been built up over the many years of the supposed love?

How could you stoop so low?

I am not saying these things to be mean. I really love my husband and I have watched him labor over 7 years to try to make up for this. It sounds like you truly love your wife and want to make amends. I am trying to recommend that you actually try to answer these questions. Dare to write a response to each one.

It might be that the answer to a HOW is different than a WHY. The answer to a WHY can be provided in a cool clinical tone. It can be a bullet list. This is why and this is why and this is why. Okay, great. Done. You’ve given me your WHYS and now we can move on.

But a HOW COULD YOU? Requires something more. It forces you to show grief and anguish over your choices. It forces you down on your knees to demonstrate you really understand the devastation you have wrought. It forces you to cry with her. It forces you to leave a flower on her doorstep every day for years and not knock on the door to offer up your unsatisfying WHY answers, and just go home and come back the next day and leave the flower again until some day she feels you understand…

If you really want her back answer « how could you? «  and then give her a lot of time. Then she will love you again. Really love you like she used to.

I understand why Bor says it is really the WHYS. But the WHYS are not really what I wanted answered in the depths of the pain.

Mostly because the WHYS sort of make sene. They are written all over the hundreds of responses in this forum. The WHYS are the KISA and the ego kibbles, and the external validation, and the needing to feel like you’re still an attractive man at your age, and the having an emotional connection to someone other than your spouse in a world that doesn’t really allow men to emotionally connect, and the feeling alive and sexually turned on despite being in a long term relationship with the same body and the same person for a lifetime. The WHYS all make sense. On a certain level one can even sympathize.

But the HOWS are somehow different. I am not a linguist. I am an English major. For me the question I would love to hear answered from my husband or another WS is how. And the HOW is not a technical description of crossing a line, scheduling a meet-up, inserting body part A into body part B.

Very good point, I hadn't considered it the way you put it in this post. I think what we are both driving at is that a deep dive on all the behaviors and decisions that went into an A are important. Because, affairs are often labeled by regular folks as "mistakes" but those of us steeped in the shitshow of infidelity know full well that within affairs are hundreds to thousands of decisions for a wayward to stray from their relationship and their partner. At some point in the OP's affair there was the first boundary crossed and then another and pretty soon he was knee deep and then neck deep in an affair.

It is important to go back to those early days and understand what behaviors and actions were taken that lead to those later actions. I mean, even the first time the affair went from physical, maybe it was the first time you had sex or it was something less graphic like a kiss, or even more discrete like she brushed your thigh, but each one of those times the wayward keeps going back for more. At many of those points along the way, the alarm bells and guilty conscience was going off like it was a five alarm fire, but the wayward ignores and suppresses those thoughts/feelings. I think what the OP's wife is after is how could you live with yourself keeping all those secrets and things from her? How did you come home at night and look her in the eyes and tell her you love her when you spent the afternoon in a hotel room with your AP? What inside you is so broken that you were able to do live a life like that?

As we always say, the first person the wayward betrays is not their partner, but themselves. I doubt that delahoya1985 stood up there on the altar on his wedding day and thought "through sickness and health...hell no, if she is sick I'm going to branch out to that bridesmaid over there." No, I think it is more likely he got married with the absolute intention of staying faithful to his marriage, his stated value of fidelity was so important he went through the whole exercise of a wedding to demonstrate to his bride his commitment. That is all well and good, except that for whatever reason(s) when it came time to put that level of commitment and fidelity to the test, he failed to live his values as he betrayed his own stated values.

Thanks for the replies. Really appreciate them all. my wife says she will only be able to give me 95% love if we ever reconcile. It’s early days I guess and we are still less than a month in so I suppose I can’t tell her otherwise it can be like before as we both truly don’t know.

I am a BS. My first bit of advice is to read what BraveSirRobin wrote, then read again and again. Be braver than you have ever been, because this advice is the most important part of this. Your wife has a trauma, and believe me she needs it to be just one. Hide nothing. That doesn't mean telling her positions you had sex in. It means write down a full timeline of everything you did and give it to her. She needs to know what she is forgiving and the pain of more shocks later will make it far, far worse for her.

Next; if you are separated, then there's a chance she wants you to respect her boundaries and leave her alone and there's also a chance that she will feel like you don't care. You might try writing to her, even journaling and explaining the work you are doing and putting in on a shared drive that she can choose to access if she wants to. This gives her control, but also access to seeing that you care if she needs that.

The books recommended are great, but I think "Just good friends" is something for down the road. The short book "How to help your spouse heal from your affair" is better for the first few weeks. Also the thread at the top of this forum is incredibly helpful.

Overall here is the advice:

- Total honesty and transparency from here on it
- Provide her with whatever she asks for
- Give her a timeline of everything
- Get into counselling and stay there
- Read the books, read the forums, learn what she is going through
- Give her empathy in bucketloads - check your guilt at the door and think about her
- Apologise, apologise, apologise
- Learn how to give reassurance and provide it in spades
- Keep your word, no matter how small, always keep it
- NEVER and I mean NEVER have any contact of ANY kind with people you cheated with

Then patience, and love. Learn here.

I am sorry, I know you probably feel terrible right now and I have empathy for you also. We are not perfect people.

You can make it through this either way, but you'll be a lot prouder of yourself if you know you did everything right from her on.