Will guilt catch up to me?

[AutumnMoon]

I've felt guilt at times throughout the affair.. But for real, this weekend I spent two night in a row with his family, and other friends too, my husbands away working and my kids were gone this weekend too. So he asked me to stay over Saturday night, I didn't, but he came over Sunday, we were intimate, then less than half hour later I'm eating a meal with his family again.

 

I felt no guilt, no nervousness.. I don't understand why. If you knew me that would shock you. Seems like situations with him are the only ones I behave in this way.

 

I'm not looking for people to call me a whore but go ahead I have thick skin. I'm more wondering what's up.. What's wrong inside me that this is the way I'm able to conduct myself with no real guilt??

[ConfusedMarriedOW]

I felt zero guilt for falling in love with my xMM and I have a sweet husband who I love and care deeply for. My xMM felt terrible guilt often during our EA. I just think each person is different. I did however feel terrible fear and sadness when I thought for a moment that my husband found out that I was having and EA with someone. It was only upon seeing him in pain that the guilt kicked in. But then disappeared the moment I realized he didn't know.

 

Perhaps you would be the same? Some say that the guilt kicks in after the affair is over and the thrill of the affair is over and you have fallen back in love with your spouse?

 

Personally I want to feel guilt. It would prove to me that I am in love with my husband, without it I don't know what to feel.

Edited May 26, 2014 by ConfusedMarriedOW

[veritas lux mea]

Guilt is when you know what you are doing is wrong but do it anyways. So maybe you don't think what you are doing is wrong. A lot of people feel guilt when caught because they see for real not just in an abstract concept what their selfish actions have caused. Before that no one was getting hurt so why feel guilty?

 

Or, it is possible you nees a phsyc analysis done. The thin is you have to go to an actual MD not just a counsellor and you have to be completely honest about everything. It couls be a PD.

 

I have a religeous friend who says that if we continue to go against our conscience it numbs are conscience against good and evil (bad). So basically that if we continue a certain action that we would have felt was wrong we become a sociopath in that area and probably only that area. If that makes sense. The problem is it can spread and it can cause us to change and not for the better (though we may not realize it)

[AutumnMoon]

I have a religeous friend who says that if we continue to go against our conscience it numbs are conscience against good and evil (bad). So basically that if we continue a certain action that we would have felt was wrong we become a sociopath in that area and probably only that area. If that makes sense. The problem is it can spread and it can cause us to change and not for the better (though we may not realize it)

 

This all rings very true. I'm not religious at all but I do feel numb abd desensitized in this area now. Affair has been going on a Year and a half and I do know and understand how wrong it is but continue. And don't feel bad. I mostly feel bad, because I DONT feel bad.. If that makes any sense.

[learning_slowly]

Do you think you lack empathy? Its been proven that certain people cannot process those feelings.

 

If you don't feel guilt, maybe there are no feelings there? Would it not be better to split up so that he has somebody who really loves him?

[violet1]

I'm curious, did you ever feel guilt in the beginning of your A? That's when I felt the most guilt. For example, right before we would meet up for sex I would have this aching feeling that I shouldn't go, but I would go anyway. In time, I felt numb because I ignored the guilt for so long. It wasn't until I got caught and saw the pain on my H's face that all the guilt poured onto me. My guess is that unless you get caught, you may never feel guilt. Right now no one knows, no one is hurt or upset so in return you feel NOTHING.

[whichwayisup]

I've felt guilt at times throughout the affair.. But for real, this weekend I spent two night in a row with his family, and other friends too, my husbands away working and my kids were gone this weekend too. So he asked me to stay over Saturday night, I didn't, but he came over Sunday, we were intimate, then less than half hour later I'm eating a meal with his family again.

 

I felt no guilt, no nervousness.. I don't understand why. If you knew me that would shock you. Seems like situations with him are the only ones I behave in this way.

 

I'm not looking for people to call me a whore but go ahead I have thick skin. I'm more wondering what's up.. What's wrong inside me that this is the way I'm able to conduct myself with no real guilt??

 

You're used to the lying and sneaking around, it's like it's second nature now, you've become a skilled liar and can hide things well without feeling bad or guilty.

 

People say affairs change them and not for the good...

 

You put yourself and your needs first and are able to separate and detach from what is right and wrong. This is a learned skill, something you picked up on along the way as to keep things 'normal' enough to those who are clueless.

 

The thing is, one day it'll all blow up in your face and all that guilt and knowing what you're doing is hurting innocent people will all come out. This is why some have break downs and end up in the hospital, needing counseling because they do and say things that they normally wouldn't think of ever doing.

 

Sorry if I sounded blunt there..

[jwi71]

You're used to the lying and sneaking around, it's like it's second nature now, you've become a skilled liar and can hide things well without feeling bad or guilty.

 

People say affairs change them and not for the good...

 

You put yourself and your needs first and are able to separate and detach from what is right and wrong. This is a learned skill, something you picked up on along the way as to keep things 'normal' enough to those who are clueless.

 

The thing is, one day it'll all blow up in your face and all that guilt and knowing what you're doing is hurting innocent people will all come out. This is why some have break downs and end up in the hospital, needing counseling because they do and say things that they normally wouldn't think of ever doing.

 

Sorry if I sounded blunt there..

 

I agree.

 

You feel nothing as you have become so used to this routine that it no longer has any emotional affect on you - its the deadening of parts of your soul.

 

And as WWIU says - these can REALLY explode - if/when it gets out.

[AutumnMoon]

Do you think you lack empathy? Its been proven that certain people cannot process those feelings.

 

If you don't feel guilt, maybe there are no feelings there? Would it not be better to split up so that he has somebody who really loves him?

 

I absolutely have empathy in every other aspect of my life. I do love my husband just in a very different way than the OM and no not in a roommate sort of fashion.. I really do love him.

Until all this happened with this guy i had never done anything like this before. I honestly don't know how we both do it sometimes. Nobody knows but us and we can look people in the eye straight faces immediately after. I don't know why.

It's like I'm living two lives.

[AutumnMoon]

I'm curious, did you ever feel guilt in the beginning of your A? That's when I felt the most guilt. For example, right before we would meet up for sex I would have this aching feeling that I shouldn't go, but I would go anyway. In time, I felt numb because I ignored the guilt for so long. It wasn't until I got caught and saw the pain on my H's face that all the guilt poured onto me. My guess is that unless you get caught, you may never feel guilt. Right now no one knows, no one is hurt or upset so in return you feel NOTHING.

 

I have felt guilt. At different times, beginning during and now, but not like I would expect to feel you know? And most of the time I'm only worried we'll get caught.. When I feel we won't, I feel content and fine!

I'm not joking if I found out a woman I knew was doing this with my friends husband I would be livid. Id think horrible things about her.

I know it's wrong but some how I just continue.

 

I totally understand what you are saying

[AutumnMoon]

Because of sporting functions I've had to be around her a lot more.

I guess I was just thinking the very fact I come here proves I feel guilty. My husband and I have been arguing about his schedule which also doesn't help. I miss him. I miss both guys too much. Messed up.

[learning_slowly]

I had an affair, where I felt I loved both but in different ways. My advice is to stop it and force yourself to work out who you want to be with.

 

If you don't and let it continue, you will end up getting hurt when one of them ends it.

 

And by making it shorter you allow the other to meet somebody new and find happiness with.

 

I wish I had this advice when I was in my affair, but the fact you're here shows you are ahead of where I was. I just buried my head in the sand and hoped it would all work itself out. Stupidly I believed in destiny.

 

Good luck

[RickFox]

Because of sporting functions I've had to be around her a lot more.

I guess I was just thinking the very fact I come here proves I feel guilty. My husband and I have been arguing about his schedule which also doesn't help. I miss him. I miss both guys too much. Messed up.

 

You coming here has does not prove you feel guilty.... not one bit.

[Trimmer]

I absolutely have empathy in every other aspect of my life. I do love my husband just in a very different way than the OM and no not in a roommate sort of fashion.. I really do love him.

Until all this happened with this guy i had never done anything like this before. I honestly don't know how we both do it sometimes. Nobody knows but us and we can look people in the eye straight faces immediately after. I don't know why.

It's like I'm living two lives.

 

I have felt guilt. At different times, beginning during and now, but not like I would expect to feel you know? And most of the time I'm only worried we'll get caught.. When I feel we won't, I feel content and fine!

I'm not joking if I found out a woman I knew was doing this with my friends husband I would be livid. Id think horrible things about her.

I know it's wrong but some how I just continue.

The human psyche has an incredible power to survive and adapt to dissonance - to competing, contradictory inputs that would mess you up. Some of the main mechanisms of this are suppression and denial - simply ignore what doesn't fit.

 

You wonder why you don't feel empathy for those being hurt, when you are normally empathetic in other ways? It's because the magnitude of the feeling would be so great, and so much at odds with what you are doing, it would tear you apart. So you ignore it - and you feel much better. Wonder why you don't feel guilt, when you would expect to "feel bad" for doing something so obviously out of bounds? It's because the magnitude of the guilt would mess you up, so your mind ignores it - and you feel much better.

 

The mind has an awesome ability to avoid, to ignore, to deny what is objectively present. And as long as things stay stable, you don't get discovered, and nobody knows any better, it's a more stable state for your mind to ignore the obvious, which avoids the obvious devastation which lies right nearby. Everything is just fine.

 

The difficulty comes, as WWIU mentions, when it all blows up. At which point, pain, anger and everything else you can imagine well up like a tidal wave from the outside, and become something you can't ignore, because it is all right there in front of you, written in the face and darkening the heart of the one who loved and trusted you, and you can't avoid or deny it any more. And at that point, everything switches, and the ton of bricks comes down. That little feeling you have now, of being worried about getting caught? Multiply it by a million and spread it all around, because it will be everywhere. That disgust you know you'd feel if someone you knew was cheating with a friend's husband? You won't be able to avoid seeing that in the mirror.

 

But as long as nobody finds out, hey, none of that will ever happen.

 

Like WWIU, I apologize for the bluntness here. I don't mean this as a personal attack, but my main point is to answer your "guilt" question with the suggestion of how powerful the mind is at avoiding the obvious and denying the truth to protect you - for now - from the devastation. But it's there waiting, right under the surface, and I think you have this kind of detached, academic understanding of that, don't you? ("Hmmm.. seems like I would expect to feel guilty here...") I saw my own wife go through it and it tore her apart, and it eventually tore our marriage apart. She was never the same again, in my eyes, and probably in her own eyes as well. And like you, sure, she said she loved me, but it also tore me apart - so much that I don't really care, even in retrospect, whether that was true or not. Do I even believe her that she "loved me"? I don't really know, mostly because I don't really care.

Edited May 27, 2014 by Trimmer

[ConfusedMarriedOW]

Just a little update:

 

As the spell from the xMM starts to wane, reading so many stories of how MM tend to lead on the OW, I am finally getting angry.

 

While under the spell it was like a drug, I was madly in love and was willing to forego everything to be with him it lasted even for a while after the end.

 

Now That I have time to process, the guilt is trickling in. I don't have the love hormones you feel with an affair to distract me, making me do wild things.

 

Now that I am trying to work on things with the hubby did I realize how much this distract me from the real person that needed me.

 

I think while under the spell of an affair it is very hard to notice much else until you have space to do so,

[Owl]

Do you WANT to feel guilt?

 

Do you WANT the situation to change, to fix your marriage?

 

Or do you WANT the situation to remain exactly as it it is right now?

 

If I had to guess...you want to continue on with the affair, and you've either given no thought to the damage you're doing to your marriage/your husband.....or you have thought about it and you simply don't care enough to feel guilty about it.

 

If you WANT to feel guilty about it...start spending some real time considering what this is going to do to your husband when it all comes out. What it'll do to his wife...how the kids are going to feel.

 

If you don't want to change...just keep avoiding the concept until it happens on its own.

[AutumnMoon]

You coming here has does not prove you feel guilty.... not one bit.

 

Your posts are going in such a self righteous direction lately. You do not know me and I am not your married woman. I do have a conscience and this is all on my mind so much, just knowing myself I would think I would feel awful enough to end it and I don't.

I do feel guilt. Coming here does prove that to me a bit because I wouldn't care about the whys if I didn't feel guilty.

 

I do feel sort of entitled though. And most of my guilt is over the kids.

[AutumnMoon]

Do you WANT to feel guilt?

.

 

I think I do. I can't answer everything else. Confused right now bug would feel off myself if I felt guilty

[Awake]

Just a little update:

 

As the spell from the xMM starts to wane, reading so many stories of how MM tend to lead on the OW, I am finally getting angry.

 

While under the spell it was like a drug, I was madly in love and was willing to forego everything to be with him it lasted even for a while after the end.

 

Now That I have time to process, the guilt is trickling in. I don't have the love hormones you feel with an affair to distract me, making me do wild things.

 

Now that I am trying to work on things with the hubby did I realize how much this distract me from the real person that needed me.

 

I think while under the spell of an affair it is very hard to notice much else until you have space to do so,

 

Yep, it's all the MM's fault, the woman has no power over herself whatsoever

 

I know that I am with my OW and she is with me willingly, we aren't leading each other on. If at some point either one of us feels led on, then it will be because we weren't honest to ourselves.

 

Maybe that's the real problem, rather than just MM leading the OW on, it's the OW not being honest with herself. Sorry, but demonizing the man isn't the solution here, particularly when you're both in the same boat.

[learning_slowly]

Yep, it's all the MM's fault, the woman has no power over herself whatsoever

 

I know that I am with my OW and she is with me willingly, we aren't leading each other on. If at some point either one of us feels led on, then it will be because we weren't honest to ourselves.

 

Maybe that's the real problem, rather than just MM leading the OW on, it's the OW not being honest with herself. Sorry, but demonizing the man isn't the solution here, particularly when you're both in the same boat.

 

As with everything, it takes 2 to tango. However, who is more in the wrong? If you are both married then you have equal liability. But if you have a partner and they don't then it can easily be seen they don't have great self-esteem. I know I wouldn't knowingly date a woman in a relationship: I know I deserve better.

 

Don't worry though, it took me ages to see the wrong I was committing when I was in your shoes. I'm just trying to speed up the process for you, so you & the other parties, get less overall pain.

[violet1]

Yep, it's all the MM's fault, the woman has no power over herself whatsoever

 

I know that I am with my OW and she is with me willingly, we aren't leading each other on. If at some point either one of us feels led on, then it will be because we weren't honest to ourselves.

 

Maybe that's the real problem, rather than just MM leading the OW on, it's the OW not being honest with herself. Sorry, but demonizing the man isn't the solution here, particularly when you're both in the same boat.

I agree! I only think there's a few cases where the MM is leading the OW on. IMO, if you know from day one that he's married than how can he be leading you on. I know it's easy to fall for the lies, but it's actions not words that matter in the long run.

 

To the OP, do you feel like living the double life is exhausting? I think that's what caught up to me the most. I just couldn't do it. My goodness it was such high maintenance and exhausting. What I hated the most was that the secrecy started to bleed into other areas of my life. I became so closed off. Lying became such a huge part of my life that it didn't phase me anymore. I tried ending my A months before I had a D Day because I couldn't recognize who I was anymore. My A messed up me and I'm still trying to recover from it. I'm trying not to be so closed off and I don't want secrecy to feel so natural, but it's so hard fixing yourself. Uggghhh...

[harrybrown]

I thought my wife would be the last person in the world to ever cheat on me.

(or anyone)

I was so stunned when I received the pictures in the mail.

 

I had no clue. The devastation to me has been total. I do not want to live anymore and what I am doing is not really living for the last 3 and 1/2 years.

 

I am glad that I did receive the anon mail. She killed any love with the deception and the lies and the cheating. I would rather know the truth and all her deception, than continue in the fake and false marriage. It has killed so many of what I thought were good memories.

 

Do not do this to your H. Just divorce him now and go be with the OM.

 

Do not destroy him. Divorce him today and go be with your OM, please.

 

I have one more year until the last son moves out. Then we will divorce, she can go her way and I will go mine. What a waste of 35 years of marriage.

 

But I will not have to pay her child support. She will try to get alimony because I work too hard. I make 4 times as much as she does. However, I am quitting my job, I am getting close to retirement.

 

She will get a real nice property settlement, but she will spend the 1/2 million in a short time. She loves to shop.

 

So her AP can support her.

 

But if you ever had any feelings for your H, divorce him now, and go be with your OM.

 

Do not make his entire married life a sham like my wife did to me.

[gettingstronger]

I think you do feel guilt but are trying to convince yourself that you don't. I hope you figure it all out because your present path is not good for you in the long run. I know for me, I suppressed the anger and was lying to myself on what I really felt. It took a lot of soul searching for me but I am better for it. I hope the same for you.

[Mycatsnuggles]

Trimmer,

 

What you wrote touched me so deeply and is helping me to understand emotions I am currently not dealing well with. This weekend I did something that hurt my family, not intentionally but I reacted poorly to a situation and embarrassed myself and inturn my h and a family member. In reality it was a minor clitch and yet I am feeling incredible pain and hurt over it. I want to close myself off and never see anyone else again. H at first was angry at me now he is confused, he thought I was angry at him, I just keep thinking I am a bad person. Three days later and it's all i can think. I ruin everything, i am a bad person, i should stay away from people i care for i only hurt them. Maybe it is the affair guilt finally coming forward. IDK.

 

Now the f'd up part.

 

I wish OM was here to comfort me. He was always so good when I was sad. He knew I never wanted him to "fix" or say magic words to heal me. I only wanted his arms wrapped around me while I cried on his chest. My tears never scared him. He never ran away from them or tried to make me stop. He was just there and the sadness would pass from his complete acceptance of me. I wish H could do this. I tried to tell him how to react to my tears. I cry often. But h has always either run away or gotten angry at my tears. I feel lonely and just wish he would hold me.

 

To stay on topic, I assume the guilt I actually am feeling is not for what occurred this weekend. I too never felt guilt during and wondered at times what is wrong with me.

[Bittersweetie]

I know when I was in the midst of the A that I didn't feel much guilt because I thought I "deserved this chance at happiness." I justified and rationalized everything in my head...I could do A because my H had done B and not C. Lots of mind games on my part in order to not face my own selfishness.

 

I was also really good at compartamentalizing. Maybe you are too?