Confused and upset..not sure what direction to go.

[reborn_Loser]

I discovered that my wife of 5 years had a four month affair last summer with a person I considered a friend.

 

To give some background into who we are as people:

 

During the first three years of our marriage, I was a regular user of marijuana. Things started to fall apart in our marriage after the third year, and we went to marriage counselling to try and resolve our issues. I wasn't keen on attending counselling at the time, as my wife suffers from depression and in the past has refused to seek treatment - usually blaming her feelings on different aspects of our marriage. I was convinced that this was the root of our marriage problems, and thought that she should be seeing her doctor or a therapist for help rather than attending marriage counselling. Finally, she told me that if we didn't seek counselling then she wanted a divorce. I loved her very much, and decided that I did not want to live without her, so we went to a few sessions. These sessions turned into "bashing" sessions in which she described how unhappy she was because I used marijuana, because we didn't have children yet, and how I let her down in our marriage.

 

I decided that she had some validity to these concerns, and made some significant changes to my lifestyle. I found that I was not able to use marijuana anymore without feeling extreme anxiety (my own psyche telling me that what I was doing needed to stop), and it was cut completely out of my life.

 

After several months of sobriety, our marriage became turbulent again. She started playing softball, and wanted me to join the team. I was not interested in playing softball - this isn't a sport I enjoy. I'm not very good at it, and remember being teased as a child because I was so lousy at it (the last kid to be picked on a team). Anyway, a friend of mine was on the team and they started going to the practices and games togethor.

 

About two weeks into the season, she started coming home later than normal and was drinking heavier than I had ever seen her do. I was worried about it and voiced my concerns. She told me that there was nothing to worry about, and that the baseball team unwound at a local pub after games and practices. This went on until the end of the baseball season, and then abruptly stopped.

 

A couple of things to mention - during the summer, I accidently received a bounced animated email message back from her addressed to our "friend" that was peculiar in nature - "SoandSo, you light my fire". I also noticed her hair all over the center seat of our minivan when I was cleaning it out. I confronted her about these things, and was reassured that nothing was going on - some silly excuse about the email that I bought at the time (mainly because I trusted her).

 

Well, after she stopped playing baseball we started getting harassing phone calls to the house - hang ups when I answered, and heavy breathing when she answered. Our "friend" was known to be a prankster on the phone, so when I discovered it was him from telephone records, I wasn't really surprised. These harassing phone calls were also being made to my wife's work, and when it was determined that they were coming from him I called his employer to end them. The calls ended.

 

About a week ago, this "friend" went to my brother and told him that he suspected my wife was having an affair last summer, and made references to her being in our van with another man as well as throwing away garbage for her and discovering condoms and lubricant in the trash.

 

My brother called her and said that she needed to talkto me about last summer, and that if she didn't that he would.

 

She didn't, so he did.

 

I confronted her about it, and she was finally honest about the affair.

 

She confessed to the fling, telling me that it was "only sex", and that she wasn't satisfied with out sexual relationship that summer.

 

Our "friend" denies that it was him - stating that he is married with two children, and the wouldn't compromise his life over this. My wife told me that when she ended the affair, he threatened to tell me because he wanted the fling to continue on a casual sex basis. She didn't want to continue, so he started the obsessive behaviour (which I see now, but didn't at the time).

 

He has his wife fooled into believing his lies - even after I spoke with her about it.

 

I'm a total wreck now.

I am making sure that I don't use any drugs or alcohol to get through this even though I feel devastated.

 

She told me that she "died" last summer, and that her depression was a factor in this, and that she attended counselling to get through it - apparently she considered suicide at the time.

 

I moved out of the house last week, and am trying to decide what to do.

 

I love her dearly even though she hurt me in a way I never imagined possible.

 

Unfortunately, my family is aware of the situation because my brother could not decide what to do and consulted my parents. They are supportive and patient, and are not telling me what to do - ultimately it is up to me.

 

I feel so lost and hurt and taken advantage of - the hardest part of this is that the last 8 months of our marriage have been healthy and happy.

 

I'm just not sure if I'm prepared to go through years of turbulence to deal with this - marriage counselling, dealing with her recurring depression, learning to trust again.

 

Do I cut it clean and move on, ensuring that my future will be healthy and happy or do I put myself through more marriage counselling and therapy hoping that everything will tun out well?

 

She wants to work it out, and is willing to do whatever necessary.

 

I just don't know which path to take.

 

Help.

[DazednConfused]

Hey Reborn...

 

I can relate. I think you should also realize that if you do the easy thing and run, you are still looking at years of turbulence in regaining your own self-esteem.

 

What she did was the most horrible thing I am sure you can imagine. Decide what you want; I mean REALLY want and do the work. Neither road is going to be easy.

 

Is she willing to go to counseling with you? Is she truly remorseful for what she has done? Can you believe it will be the only time she will do this to you? Can you ever rebuild any trust in her?

 

Read up on infidelity, and how to recover. The steps to take, etc.

 

I am never an advocate of ending marriages, but the decision is yours. It sounds like you love your wife and want things right again. If that is the case, make it happen.

 

Send me a PM anytime, I am right there with ya, and can offer some book titles, authors etc. that have helped me...

 

Good Luck!

 

-D

[TMCM]

reborn_Loser,

 

Right now is not the time for you to be making any far reaching and long term decisions to continue the marriage or seek a divorce. Emotionally based decisions tend to come back and haunt us later on and more so in your case because you still love your W very much. If you give yourself some time [maybe 6 months] you'll be in a much better position to make wiser decisions with regards to continuing or ending your marriage. Instead you and your W would be best served in seeking the services of a professional marriage counselor and making the effort to understand how the two of you [she too is hurting] can recover from this ordeal whether the marriage is saved or not.

 

I wish you and your W the best of luck.

[reborn_Loser]

I think that the advice that both of you have given me makes sense.

 

I've read a lot of information on surviving infidelity on marriagebuilders, and bought a book called "Surviving Infidelity, Rona Subotnik, Gloria Harris".

 

Unfortunately I can only view these books as "cookbooks", so I've set up an appointment with a professional to help me get my head wrapped around everything - hopefully help put things more into perspective.

 

My wife is having a horrible time dealing with this as well, as she does not want me to leave - and I truly believe that her reasons are sincere.

 

This will probably end up going to professional marriage councelling as I rarely have taken the "easy" way out of difficult times in my life.

 

I'm having a really hard time understanding how things can move forward - things will never be the same. This may be positive, and then again it may be negative.

 

Maybe in future posts, my nick will simply be "reborn".

 

Thank you for caring.