reconcilliation? how goes it?

[dobler33]

for folks who cheated on a spouse and remained with them after d-day: how are things going? what has the process been like? does it feel like the marriage will recover, possibly even be stronger, or does it feel like something is broken that can't be fixed? i'm in the process with my husband and it's tough to tell some days how we're doing in the larger scheme of things, so i thought i'd get some perspective from other peoples' experience.

[sugarmomma]

You may want to post on another forum to get more responses.

[dobler33]

how so? is it unusual on this board to be a married spouse who had an affair with another married spouse? this may explain some clashes of culture i've had......

[dobler33]

AH! i just reread the original post and totally see the problem. it sounds like i'm a BS soliciting responses from CS's. ok, totally not the case. i'm a FOW who was also a CS, affair ended by MM and now in the process of recovering from A and rebuilding with my BS. does that sound less threatening? it certainly sounds more acronystic.......

[boldjack]

I'm a FOM but have never been a BS. I know myself enough to know that if my present wife treated me as I treated my first wife, I couldn't reconcile. The two issues would be trust and also the mental images of my wife doing to another man , what she does for me, sexually. The trust issue would be about her integrity, and the depth of her love. She would have to prove herself every moment. The sexual images would be there every time we made love. I don't think it's possible to lay traumatic issues like these to rest. I could possibly forgive her, but I would never forget. How does your H deal with those issues? Do you have full NC and full transparency?

[dobler33]

yup, full NC and full transparancy. luckily i never had sex w/ MM - i was actually trying to act responsibly, believe it or not. my H has largely been dealing with it by not dealing with it, although recently we've at least started bringing the OM up in conversation - at least he is no longer He Who Must Not Be Named. my H has been a lot more loving and open lately, the absence of which we have both recognized was a contributing factor - although by no means an EXCUSE, lest i be gunned down in a blaze of glory by the BS's - to the affair.

[tami-chan]

No, the marriage was never the same. In fact, there was no marriage in the truest sense, but my husband and I are friendly and civil and stayed "married". More than a dozen years later, divorce is imminent-no big drama, no major regrets on my side either( not sure if H has), just that it is time.

[sadintexas]

I was a BS when I was married (became an OW later on, and now nothing just hanging by myself for a while).

 

I decided to reconcile with my then H after D-day. I didn't stay for the right reasons. I was afraid - of a lot of things and I let that fear keep my in a situation I shouldn't have been in. Although he was no help in my recovery process, I did recover - by myself and for myself.

 

We divorced a couple of years later. The divorce wasn't due to the A, but all of the problems we had even prior to that. Those were never resolved, and I learned would never be resolved because he is NPD. It's really hard to say if the problems were compounded by the A or not. It was bad before it, and it was still bad after it. I know I got to a point where it didn't hurt me anymore and wasn't a focus of mine, but the other issues remained.

 

That's why I think (personally, and I know some disagree) that the focus shouldn't really be on the A if you want to reconcile. It does have to be worked through, yes, but more focus needs to go towards fixing whatever was wrong prior to that. Whether that's a personal issue for one partner, combined issues of both partners or whatever, something or someone was definitely needing attention before that A happened. If those issues can be identified and resolved, then I think reconciliation is a great idea. It takes both partners to do that, and my partner was incapable of looking at himself so we failed to grow and improve our marriage.

[tami-chan]

... - although by no means an EXCUSE, lest i be gunned down in a blaze of glory by the BS's - to the affair.

 

you're funny!

[boldjack]

Dob, You are wise not to have had a PA, that way you only have one set of problems, instead of two. BTW, anyone tries to gun you has to go through me. Sorry Tami, you can say you tried, that counts for something.

[dobler33]

thanks, texas. that's definitely what we're working on. my H has agreed to go into therapy - i'm already in and we tried couples a while back but nothing is going to change until he's ready to deal with his depression and withdrawal - and i'm hoping that makes a difference. when i told him about the affair i said that while i take total responsibility for my actions and ask for no leniency, if he wanted to stay together he was going to have to work on his total emotional unavailability or it was never going to work for us. he's been working hard but i'm not sure if it's going to be enough. here's the big vulnerable exposure - i can't tell if the dissatisfaction i feel is just the lingering residue of loving and missing someone else and will therefore fade in time or if it's the true echo of the problems we had before any of this happened, and if so, if there's a way to get past that. i just can't tell yet. my heart got broke SOOOOO bad, and it'll be a while till i can pull apart how much of what i'm feeling now is the loss of the MM and how much is a feeling that my H and i won't be able to pull it together. i'm totally at sea at the moment. and yes, i'm totally expecting to be gunned down for this inconvenient ambiguity of emotions. hit me, y'all grumpy people. hit me witcha best shot.

[dobler33]

aw, boldjack. i feel like maureen ohara to your john wayne. i may pop you one in the eye but i do so appreciate the thought.

[boldjack]

You wouldn't be the first and you won't be the last. How is your H doing with the trust issue, is this the reason behind his depression and in what way is he withdrawn? What are you doing ,in a personal way, to ease his anxiety? and what of your own issue of this lingering affection for the OM, is your H aware of this? ................Texas, In what way did your A help fix what was wrong in your marriage? You blame your ex and his NPD, but who's to blame for the A? Both of you ruined the marriage, not just him. Exceptance of responsibility is crucial to your own well being, even if you did get a divorce.

[boldjack]

BTW, I really don't like John Wayne, I prefer to be Peter O"toole in "The LION in Winter".

[dobler33]

nuh uh, you are messing with me. that's my favorite movie - that and cool hand luke. about to go to bed but will answer all very astute and incisive questions tomorrow.

[boldjack]

If I can be Henry II , you can be Eleanor of Aquitaine, Good night.

[jj33]

Dobler this really does belong on the infidelity board and you will get lots more responses there.

[bentnotbroken]

thanks, texas. that's definitely what we're working on. my H has agreed to go into therapy - i'm already in and we tried couples a while back but nothing is going to change until he's ready to deal with his depression and withdrawal - and i'm hoping that makes a difference. when i told him about the affair i said that while i take total responsibility for my actions and ask for no leniency, if he wanted to stay together he was going to have to work on his total emotional unavailability or it was never going to work for us. he's been working hard but i'm not sure if it's going to be enough. here's the big vulnerable exposure - i can't tell if the dissatisfaction i feel is just the lingering residue of loving and missing someone else and will therefore fade in time or if it's the true echo of the problems we had before any of this happened, and if so, if there's a way to get past that. i just can't tell yet. my heart got broke SOOOOO bad, and it'll be a while till i can pull apart how much of what i'm feeling now is the loss of the MM and how much is a feeling that my H and i won't be able to pull it together. i'm totally at sea at the moment. and yes, i'm totally expecting to be gunned down for this inconvenient ambiguity of emotions. hit me, y'all grumpy people. hit me witcha best shot.

 

 

 

I pray your H gets help. He isn't really living life in that depressed state. It is as if you are just walking through your own life observing what is happening. You aren't an active participant. You let outside sources determine which direction you go and if the direction isn't conducive to healing, you withdraw further. One huge problem in our marital breakdown. I am dealing now, but I wasted so many years, not because I didn't want help, because I didn't understand the depths of what was going on.

 

Your H seems to know what is happening and he needs to address it, not just for his marriage and you, but for his own physical and mental health.

[Reggie]

"Cool Hand Luke". good taste, d. Gotta go boil some eggs.

[DNU1]

dobler33: Good for you for posting here and wanting to work on your marriage. The people here are great and have much wisdom. I might also suggest marriagebuilder.com (I call it MB.com). Dr. Harley's site and books and forum have helped many.

 

He's been helping couples recover from affairs for 30+ years. Pick up his book, "surviving an affair" and "his needs her needs" and start reading.

 

If you manage to get over to the MB.com, post your story on the General Questions II forum. You will get lots and lots of feedback and very quickly.

 

The path to recovery is narrow and Harley states that even the slightest diversion from that path can make recovery difficult.

 

First, you must establish complete and total no contact with the OP. Quit your job, move to another city, do whatever you must to make sure you will NEVER have contact with that person again.

 

See Harley's site for more information...It's great stuff.

 

I just wish my STBx would have came clean and told me about all the OMs in her life. She had been seeing OM#4 at work daily for 2 years since their EA/PA started. He was always in her life...and she was always wayward-foggy. My story is long and tragic. Too much to go in to here.

 

Be strong and keep reading and keep posting.

[Gamine]

Dobler, the reconciliation has quite a bit to do with the expectations of the BS as it concerned the marriage and their partner. Infidelity often wages war internally with the BS attacking constructs, expectations, and their subjective reality concerning their life's path.

 

For me, the aftermath was brutal. I had a very 'settled in' feeling with my husband and had an unshakable belief that he would always have my back. After the A it felt like I was sleeping with the enemy and I wondered how I could have been such an idiot to have trusted anyone without any self protection whatsoever. I'm not capable of hurting him that way and could not understand how he was capable of it with me.

 

He is seeing a professional who believes that there were psychological issues at play and that his behavior did not follow 'normal' patterns for affairs.

 

Still, there is a trauma and it is a mighty hard one.

[eyeswide]

Well, maybe it's too soon to tell for us, but reconciliation is going really, really well.

 

I was a WS for a while. then became a BS. I don't know exactly how much the 2 had to do with one another. Obviously a lot but what I'm trying to say is I don't know how much his cheating had to do with my having been involved with someone else versus how much it had to do with our having the same issues that we had before either of us got involved with other people.

 

Bottom line, I think: we wern't meeting each other's needs and we weren't communicating about it.

 

Now if you ask his OP, she'd probably tell you that we CAN'T meet each other's need regardless of how well we communicate about it. In her opinion, we just aren't right for each other. (I think you can guess who she thinks IS right for him.)

 

I disagree, however. We've been married a long time and that is no accident. There is something down deep there -- something that we took for granted -- something that we forgot to pay attention too during all the tough times and when life was a little too much the same everyday. But it's there.

 

That man loves me like he loves no other. I believe he loved the OW too -- ya, probably in a way that he'd never loved another, also. And sure that hurts, but the only love they ever shared was the romantic, exciting, passionate, forbidden kind of love. My husband and I had that early on too (and it was even a little bit forbidden for reasons I won't bore you with) and that was nice and fun, of course. But what we have that he and the OW didn't was the far more meaningful and weighty love of committed partners who reinvest in each other every day over time.

 

FYI, I had some of that romantic, passionate feeling with my OM for a while too. I didn't really trust it though and, thank God, I had a moment where I realized I was assuming waaaaaay more good about him than I really had evidence for. I realized that I was letting/making myself see in him the things I wanted to see in my husband. So I thought I should give my husband a chance to show them to me too. Unfortunately, we didn't handle that reconciliation as honestly and openly as we could have, and here I am again.

 

But this time, it feels a whole lot different. Yes, communication. Yes, not being afraid. Yes, being willing to trust each other and to tell each other when trust feels hard. And for me, it's important sometimes to just tell myself "you love that man and in front of friends, family and God you promised to stick with him through good and bad and, sweetheart, this has been the bad but if it looks like he's keeping that promise too, then you better just close your eyes, and when you open them again look at his face and see the love that has always been there."

 

It works pretty darned well.

 

If your husband is really working hard and getting the help that you said you needed him to get, then can I recommend that you try to remind yourself of the promises you made to him however many moons ago that was? He probably deserves as much. You probably do too.

[dobler33]

You wouldn't be the first and you won't be the last. How is your H doing with the trust issue, is this the reason behind his depression and in what way is he withdrawn? What are you doing ,in a personal way, to ease his anxiety? and what of your own issue of this lingering affection for the OM, is your H aware of this? ................Texas, In what way did your A help fix what was wrong in your marriage? You blame your ex and his NPD, but who's to blame for the A? Both of you ruined the marriage, not just him. Exceptance of responsibility is crucial to your own well being, even if you did get a divorce.

 

 

1st of all, i wonder why this was moved to infidelity? have i lost my OW street cred because i'm talking about my H now instead of the OM? kind of a bummer......

 

2nd, thanks for all the feedback, y'all! i'm going to get to boldjack's questions first cause i've only got a few minutes this morning.

 

boldjack's questions: ok, my H seems to be doing fairly well with the trust issue. i've tried to be as open and honest with him as he is able to tolerate - it usually comes down to that, how much he wants to talk about anything to do w the A. i let him set the boundaries there - there may be a time when he's willing to talk more but it'll have to be him that decides that. this is also what i'm trying to do to ease his anxiety - letting him know that i'm willing to talk about whatever he wants to talk about, to hear his anger if he wants to express it, to answer any question he might have about my whereabouts or who i'm hanging out with, etc. he doesn't really take me up on that and i'm not sure if that's his naturally emotionally dissociated way or if he's trying to give me the benefit of the doubt as a gesture of compassion.

 

he has been depressed and withdrawn for at least the past 3 years, which is part of why i was vulnerable to another man showing me intense and devoted love. you can be assured that we have been through it a million times and i have tried every possible approach that my training and my human experience can provide. the depression has always been there at the edges for him but about 3 years ago he started traveling for work like half the year or more, and the pattern of away/home, work/idle has exacerbated it to the point that it's crippling. he goes through massive episodes when he comes home from the road and stops leaving the house, stops bathing, stops talking, etc.... i'll leave the rest up to your imagination. i don't especially like bagging on him on a public forum. when he's up and in a good place he'll tell me he realizes that he's depressed and that he wants to get help. then he goes down and he'll tell me he only said he wanted help to get me off his back. he will go through long periods of time where he literally will not tell me anything that's going through his head. the OM came roaring into my life telling me every feeling and thought he had and it was just SOOOOOO relieving to have someone let me the eff in for once.

 

i was honest about this when i told my H about the affair, told him that if he wanted to keep me he was going to have to do some serious work on how he engages with me emotionally. as for my lingering affection, he knows it's there but i try not to get it up in his face. in the first two weeks, when the big waves of grief would hit, i'd just go walking around the city in a hat pulled low and big sunglasses, sobbing it out until i could pull it together to go home and be around him again. of course those first days were unbearably traumatic for him as well, so i was extra aware of trying to protect him from my grief and loss. at this point, 5 weeks later, there are some very sweet and encouraging moments where we're both able to briefly express that we're sad and missing the OM (i'm not sure if you read any of the posts where i exposed this but OM was my H's best friend from childhood. yeah, i know. could not possibly have been more effed up if it tried). we went on a day outing last week where we had to get off at the trainstop we'd get off at to go see the OM and his wife and kids. i'd been dreading it all morning, antsy and heartbroken, and he asked on the train if i was ok. so i took a chance and told him it was going to be hard to get off at their stop, and that i was sad, and he nodded and said "me too." and then both of us felt a lot less lonely. so, little baby steps like that are happening, which i guess is a good sign.

 

i think those were all your questions, my liege. you might not want me to be eleanor - there are only so many times a woman can try to get a man's own children to kill him before he gets annoyed.

[sugarmomma]

you're funny!

 

 

She has felt the wrath of LS. Good luck Dobler.

 

Its a good thing that you didn't have sex w MM.

 

I hope everything works out for you and hubby.

[sugarmomma]

1st of all, i wonder why this was moved to infidelity? have i lost my OW street cred because i'm talking about my H now instead of the OM? kind of a bummer......

 

.

 

 

You are too funny. We gotcha back on the OW forum. Hopefully, you will just be providing updates like some of us trying to recover.

 

Peace