I can identify with your W a lot. I said the same thing about H..."if you ever have an A then that is the end of it!" This is easy to say as a threat but you cannot say for sure until you are in that sitch. I said that before we were married before we had D1. Now there is soooo much more to lose.
You said you were trying to please her by doing things that you would like done. Well maybe those things are not her love language. Maybe she has different needs than you do. You are not reaching her in those ways. You need to figure out what she responds to. Have you read His Needs Her Needs by Harley or the 5 Love Languages by Chapman? You may just need to find an alternate route of talking or communicating with her.
My H tried to talk to me several times and I didn't get it. He wasn't talking to me in the right way. He wasn't speaking my love language.
Your W says she is happy. So did I, then the bomb dropped! ILUBNILWY!!! Now after working on things I can see that our R is soooo much better now and that I was just fooling myself into being happy. She doesn't talk to you not because she is trying to hide things or not be open and honest. It is because she doesn't know how to express her feelings. There may be some deep rooted resentment that she does not even realize. I know from personal experience.
There have been wrong doings on both of your ends in the M. However you are the one who broke your wedding vows. She probably fails to see that the A was a symptom of your unhappiness not the cause of your problems. I have only figured these things out in the past couple of months with all of the reading I have been doing. I must say that it all makes sense! I can personally relate and put into practice sooo many of the concepts.
Your W says she is happy but does she see that there is a problem? See if she will share in some of your readings, not to "fix" things but to improve and build your current R. Maybe this will help her to have some revelations and see what type of hurt and pain that you have experienced.
I still think that you need to be honest with her but that you need to use some tact and do it in the right time and the right place.
Oh and one more thing. Maybe she seems unwilling to work on things because she doesn't realize the extent of your unhappiness. My H tried to do the same things but never came out and said....I am not happy in our M....Something is wrong with us........I don't know if I can continue in our M unless something changes.
This might be enough of a wake up call for her. It wasn't until my H dropped the bomb that I realized just how unhappy he was and that I was at the root of it.
Watch out because if left alone you will get to the point where he was at the ILUBNILWY stage. I wish my H would have just come flat out and told me these things instead of trying 'round about ways. Looking back on things I can see the effort he put forth in trying to change things but at the time I didn't understand where he was coming from and just swept it under the rug and thought it would pass. It is kinda eery because my H's complaints match up so well to what you are saying and the same with your W and I.
BTW, once it finally clicked for me, ironically enough, I was the one who read all of the books and made all of the changes. Our sitch has totally turned around with a bunch of ILU'S...Thank God!
It's been a while since I posted. I am drawn to your posts because they are similar to my sitch. Do you remember me? I had read your posts last year and I didn't remember reading that you actually had a PA. Am I reading right? I have similar trust issues as your wife does. My H will not admit a PA and does not believe in the term EA. He does admit an attraction. I however I saw, at the very least, a strong attraction. I have to say that trust is very hard to regain. My H and are doing much better and it was this time last year that everything fell apart. I still have this incredible need to know that the OW is out if the picture. I still have a PI pull her phone records from time to time. So far my H has done everything right. He comes home when he is supposed to and we are spending time together again. He deactivated his TracFone and S is back and I am enjoying it. I can't help but wonder how often he thinks of OW and what brings up the memories. It's hard for me because I feel that all that we shared was replaced by special feelings for another woman. These were my special feelings at one time and there's just no room for the two of us.
Although I think I have another problem. His SD seems low. He never used to be like this. It was always him chasing me and wanting to. While my kids were really little I was extremely exhausted. Then gaining weight and working 60 hours a week did me no justice. My SD dissappeared. Now that it is back, I wonder where my H's went. I question whether he still has feelings for the OW and wishes I were her. My confidence is not back in full and I am not sure if it ever will be. I have lost 30 lbs since last year and have been feeling much better about myself. My H and I get along much better and we are spending time together. I still have the blues though and it's all related to the A and not being told the God's honest truth. It's my gut feeling that I still do not know the whole story since my H only told me or admitted things as I found them out on my own. This dishonesty still does not sit well with me and causes me to still distrust. I will say that it is coming back but I don't know if I will ever be the same. The shock and hurt will be with me forever and it's really hard to tuck all that away. Once again I find myself visiting this board because I know that bringing it up is a major set back and only puts the thought of the OW in my H's mind. I get mad at myself for not letting all of it go and I know it's the humiliation and deception that were the hardest to take in my case. There are still times when although we are more like we used to be, I still feel that our passion and love has gotten lost somewhere and I do not know exactly how to get it back or if I ever will.
I agree with Aussie Girl. If you are truly sorry and this A happened two years ago, you have admitted an EA, I would let it go. As my H and our M continues to improve, the need to know the truth is going away. The difference with me is I told my H that whether he admits it or not that I believe it to be true. Since I believe it to be true and still have made the choice to forgive him, then him telling me later on would only be confirmation. I feel that my H is afraid that I would use this against him if it ever came to a D. I know that my H is sorry. I also know that there is a great deal of shame that came with his A. One conversation with H last year was about what is father would say to him if he knew. My FIL would take my side for sure. There's plenty that I did to push my H away even though it does not really excuse his actions. I do know that he felt pretty bad about our M and he admitted to me last year that I hurt him by threatening D. When I vowed to repair our M, I also forgave H. I'm not sure that in your case that admitting the PA after all this time would be a good thing. It would only make things worse, hurt your W more, and make her have to go through this all over again. Trust would be completely gone. I say keep the secret.
Perhaps your wife is struggling because you have not told her the entire truth. My H confessed to a one night stand. I was willing to forgive him but I had a nagging feeling there was more to the story. I told him I wanted to know everything and if I found out more later I would leave. Well I found out more later. We are now divorced.
I can't tell you what to do but I will tell you that your wife is going to have a very hard time trusting you again. She is already aware of the EA but having the double whammy of finding out that it was really a PA and that you lied about will be hard for her to take. My feeling was if my H lied about his A just being a one night stand and then I found out it was more, what else was he lying about? Now I wonder how many more there were. There may have not been more but I don't believe anything he says anymore.
You have gotten yourself into a bad position. No matter what you do there are going to be problems and you seem to have the attitude that your wife should just get over it. It takes a LONG time to get over betrayal. A very very long time. It will take a lot of patience on your part. The burden of repairing the marriage is going to fall into your lap. She is going to cry and question and its going to happen a lot.
I am at a really low point right now and was just curious what made you decide to end A. Something within yourself, did OW end it, something wife did or said? What and what advice can you offer all of us who have H that are having A on what changed your thoughts. Why all the meanness and hurtful words, accusations (my H assumes if i go anywhere that it's with another man). Boy would i love to have a conversation with you just cause i have so many questions and what should i dos about such and such.
thanks for any advice as i am almost a phone call away from putting myself out of this misery marriage that i only seem to see as good.
I visited MarriageBuilders.com last year and pulled the articles on PA's and EA's. There is one line sticks out in my mind (among many others)..I remember reading, "There's a fine line between contemplating having an affair, and actually having the affair". It described the beginning, the friendship, and by that time I was in tears. One life shattering experience to say the least. I also read Michele's article, "Forgiveness is the Gift to Give Yourself". I have forgiven, but the hurt and wonder are still there. I will say that the sting is gone but I learned a very hard lessen if life. One that I do not wish upon my worst enemy.
