Well, I've been told that women look at A's differently than men, but I don't really believe it. I also concentrated a lot on the OW's my H was involved with. They had rather poor characters, which, of course, I was happy to point out to him!! I believe he sees the truth now. He has also learned in counseling that he choose these women because he felt that was all he deserved -- he was dealing with a very, very low self-esteem and much feeling of worthlessness and self-loathing. Perhaps your W was/is having some of the same feelings.
I also confronted the xOW's -- the PA (almost a year after it was over) I confronted face-to-face; the EA, the day I found out about her I called her (she lives across the country) with my children and my H sitting right there! I also called the EA a couple of weeks later (after she contacted my H at work). I told her my H would be telling me of any contact that she tried to initiate because he was committed to making our M work and now wanted to be honest with me. I told her I had her work #, home #, home address, email address, her sister's phone #, and if she tried to contact my H again I would let the world know just what kind of a person she really was. I was also able to relate a few rather embarassing facts about her that my H told me so she would know with certainty that my H and I were on the same team now and there was no room in the locker room for her. Felt good. Bad DB'ing, but worked for me
So, my point is, yes, your W was/is going through "something." Of course, she picked a guy who was not worthy and a guy who would never measure up to you. A man like that wouldn't be sniffing around a married woman with young kids. Try to let HIM go. He's a scum bag who probably honed in on your W's vulnerablity at the time and took advantage of it. I'm certainly not trying to condone what you're wif has done, but I think we've all been vulnerable like that at some time or another. Some of us had the good judgment to say no. Some of us were just lucky that no one came around to tempt us at that vulnerable time.
I have come through this rather well, but if you'd ever care to read my whole story you'd see that it was an up-hill battle all the way. It took a lot of help from my friends here to keep me on track. Maybe we can do the same for you.
WOW...your situation sound very similar to mine...Thank you again for sharing your thoughts. I can find comfort in them.
My wife has not returned home. I have worked out an arrangement so that she can come by the house every morning to get the kids ready for school and spend about an hour with them.
I did confront the OM before this all went down. I feel that my anger now comes from the fact that I gave him two different opportunities to "take the high road" and he still chose to have the PA with my wife. I do strongly believe that it takes two to have an affair, but it only takes one to stop an affair. I have chosen to focus my anger on him since I did give the opportunities for him to distance himself with integrity.
I have not confronted him recently though...Like you said, Bad DB'ing but there is so much I would like to say to him.
My W is now seeing a counselor and working on herself. I have not asked if she is still in contact with OM but I'm sure she probably is "as a friend".
I am scared now that every time I look at her I see him and will continue to. He lives only two blocks away and I do see him driving by every now and then when I'm out with the kids. When I see him it can instantly change my mood, and then I feel a tremendous sense of loss. I am also seeing a counselor and he has told me this may take years to get any resemblance of my former life...I worry about that long trip.
I have read a few stories and I can take some motivation away from people who say they have a better M now than ever before. I guess it's the silly little things that creep into my mind.....again what is lost. My W always told me that one of the most important things to her was that I was the only Man she had ever been with....We had met in High School and dated for years before we got married. I feel a tremendous loss of what that was some days and on others I weigh that against what else I could lose. Either way it just makes me sad. I worry now that the way I look at my wife is different than before....I don't feel the admiration that I used to feel. I worry about getting that back.
I guess that is what you meant about it being an uphill battle.
I will try to go through your posts to get more background on your story. Thank you again for taking the time to correspond...it has helped.
Hi pmc, My W decided to have a PA earlier in the year with an on going EA (who btw also lives only a mile away) after she decided she felt trapped by our M and was looking for a way out.
Such an event awakens your emotions to a very conscientious level we have not experienced in a while. At first most are a result of the pain and hurt, hence your anger. Search down deep inside and ask yourself do you really want to live the rest of your life with this woman. If the answer is yes, than in order to heal and overcome the anger, you work on forgiving, but rather focusing on showing her that you forgive, focus on demonstrating to yourself within that you have forgiven for what had happen. This is the first step at healing the hurt and allowing your emotions about the A to stay in the past. At first you will need to conscientiously give yourself the gift of forgiveness for your sake at a very heighten level of awareness daily in order to overpower the anger. Eventually, as you allow your forgiveness replace the anger, you can gather more strength from how it makes you feel as a better person and it will cease to become a struggle to be with your W.
As far as your anger towards OM is concern is allowing him to hold a power over you as to how you will live the rest of your life!! You need to let it go. He is undeserving to have such a hold on your emotions and by letting the anger go, you regain control of yourself rather that relinquishing it to him. Prove to yourself who really is the better man and then bury him (figuratively speaking of course) and forget him. Don't let him get in the way of what you want in the remainder of you life. In time you can succeed.
Mattie: i enjoy too much this post because you talk a lot about my own experience... my h return home after an affair with a too much young girl (25 and my h is 40)... i am really convince she was not the cause but a sympton... at first she insist calling him, sending him mails, but right now i think she is not around... but the last months i had felt really bad, returning to past memories about them... the travel they made, his last birthday, christmass time... i dream a lot about this when i sleep... although i am working a lot trying to let that back, do you think this is normal...?!!... is the common heal process i need to pass...?!!... I never talk with him about OW... how she was...?... what they did...?... bc i dont want her between our talks or in our R... but sometimes i think a lot if she still call him... Is this normal...?!!... will this emotional thinking go away someday...?!!...
I understand completely about the memories of your H and the OW together. I guess you could say I obcessed about it for along time. I would close my eyes and see her face(I saw her picture she sent my H). I would think about the nights they spent together in a hotel room (she sent pictures of the room and pictures of my H in a robe sitting at the table with room service!). It would tear me apart! I asked my H a few questions but I feel some of his answers were not totally honest. There are a lot of things I know I am better off not knowing. I no longer talk to my H about the A because I feel after a year and 8 months there is really nothing else to be said. There is nothing else he will tell me or even can tell me. To him,it is over,finished,done with and should be left in the past. He is right but I don't think I will ever forget it. I do know however that the pain has gotten so much better. I no longer feel the need to burst in to tears when I happen to think about it. The deep deep pain is no longer there...just a sadness. One thing that helped me was that she lived out of town and he stopped the trips there. The A was very brief (only 4 trips in 4 months)and he broke it off when I found out. Also he never loved her or told her he did. Another think that helped me was going to the town where she lived and making my own memories. That may sound crazy to some people. Everytime I thought of the place (which incidently was somewhere that I had always wanted to visit) it made me angry,it hurt and it made me hate the thought of the place. He agreed to take me there for a romantic get away 8 months after the A ended. I went on line and found some places there I'd like to go. Unbeknown to me I picked the place where he met her!! He agreed to take me there because he said it held no special meaning to him but he was concerned that we would see her or some of her friends and they would say or do something to try and upset me or hurt me and he didn't want that to happen because we were doing so good and having so much fun together. It was her "hang out". Well,she was not there the night we went. Then we went there again 3 months later to celebrate our 33rd anniversary. We went 2 nights in a row (I really liked the place and it was the best place in town to have drinks and dance) and I guess it was not meant to be that we run in to her. What happened to me was that I now have only happy memories of the things my H and I did there together and I have happy and very special memories to replace the unhappy ones.
I honestly do believe it is normal to think about it and I also believe it is a part of the healing process. Coming here also helped me so much. Anytime I think about it and it makes me feel a little nuts,I come here and everyone is so caring,understanding and make me feel so good about myself. They make me see that I am human and quite normal!! I am a firm believer that time does heal!! I have already healed a great deal and I know that I still have some healing to do. I have dealt with the issues one by one. Slowly but surely I am dealing with them and eventually I hope that her face will be totally erased from my memory and the whole A will be just a distant sad memory.
You need to ask yourself if the things you want to know are things that you'd be better off knowing or something that would just add to your pain if you knew. I feel that if there is something I really "need" to know,it will be revealed to me. I am a firm believer in prayer and Goid answering them! I prayed for a long time for a way to find out what was making my H and me so unhappy in our M and to find a way to fix it. The A was revealed to me...yes,my prayer was answered in a way I didn't like or want and in a way that hurt deeply but God knew that it was time to stop it and showed me the way. He also knew that my H made the choice and I would have to be hurt but He also knew that out of the pain would come a more loving and a much stronger R with my H. That has happened!! Now I pray that whenever we go to that place,if it is meant to be that we run into the XOW,then God will see me through it. I no longer worry about "her" or what she did with my H. Why? Becuase it simply no longer matters!! It happened,I cannot change it,my H can't undo it. The important thing is to find a way to replace the hurtful memories with happy ones.
If you H is with you,the XOW is completely out of the picture and you and your H have love going for you then you will make it. You will eventually put the hurtful past behind you. It won't happen overnight. It takes work and it takes time but the "prize" at the end is worth it. You will find peace of mind and your R with your H will be happy,fulfilled and strong!! I wish you the very best and I will have you in my thoughts and prayers. If you would like to talk to me privately about anything please feel free to email me at...pfroglady@aol.com.
Quote: You need to ask yourself if the things you want to know are things that you'd be better off knowing or something that would just add to your pain if you knew
You are so right... Why need to ask about something you know will cause you pain...?!!... bc of that i never ask nothing about her... I dont know how is her, bc i never seen her and i never seen a picture of her... my curiosity sometimes point me to want to see her, how she is... but is curiosity, i think is only that... About your strategy of the place she is, This christmass we maybe will go to orlando... this means a lot for me, bc last christmass he went with her and her children to orlando... he knows i found out that travel... and never told my childrens about it bc they love too much going to orlando and this will hurt them so much... daddy going alone to the place we love most...!!... So, this travel will be significant to us... for me bc it is like erasing his last hurting moves... for him, bc last time he was there, he wasnt in familly... with the people he loves most...!!... There are some issue i need to tell him i cant see bc hurts my memories... like a tshirt he have that say: Miami (they went together to miami just a month after he left home), a special music i relate with her i dont know why... So he avoid wearing that t shirt in front of me, and avoid to put that music in car when i am with him...!!... but you know what...?... comes a day when i realize that asking him not to wear that shirt or play that music, is to maintain that stupid young girl between us, so some days ago i ask him to put that music and i will not tell him again to not wear that t shirt...!!... Thanks, i know is a healing process... i know that as time pass i will feel better and think less on that episode of our life... i hope my h never repeat an A bc its hurt so much... also i know he cant stand confortable and please having an affair being in home... thats was one of the reasons he need to left home... bc besides our problems, he need to be out just to do the things he feel he wants to do in his MLC... and ones of them, was the A...!!... Thanks again for your answer... and yes, i pray a lot and ask God many many times to help me heal this feelings..
I totally understand where you are coming from about the tee shirt! In my case it is a pair of shoes. I know a lot of people will think this silly and maybe even childish but I simply can't help the way I feel. In early Dec. 2000 he came home from a "golf" trip (of course at the time I didn't know about "her"). He had this pair of really nice dress loafers and told me he was "somewhere and they had them on sale for a great price". I didn't think too much about them. Then in March 2001 when I discovered the cheating and read the letters she sent him and realized that the trip when he bought the shoes was,according to her, their Christmas together because she knew he wouldn't be able to visit her at Christmas time. So I got it in my head that she had bought them for him as a Christmas gift. I was acting "crazy" and everytime he wore them I got unhappy and when he would take them off I would throw them in the closet where he had to get down and hunt for them whenever he wanted to wear them. He asked me about it and I told him how I felt about his wearing them. He told me that she didn't buy them nor was she with him when he bought them. To be honest I don't know if he was being truthful or not seeing as how he had lied about the really important things, I figured he'd have no problem lying about something like that (and maybe he "lied" to try and stop me from being hurt by it). He did stop wearing them whenever we went somewhere (I never asked him to stop wearing them) but he did wear them to work (he said he didn't care if he got them messed up wearing them to work). I continued to toss them in the closet after he'd wear them but would try not to look sad when he did wear them. This went on for a long long time. Finally I noticed that he stopped looking for them. He hasn't worn them in several months now. Maybe I should have believed his story but it was hard at the time. He even told me I was being irrational about the shoes but my mind just wouldn't let it go. I wanted him to understand that every time he put those shoes on it reminded me of where he was and what he had been doing when he got them. Even if he did get them himself,he was there with "her"! When you mentioned the tee shirt it made me think of the shoes. This may seem like a silly,childish or irrational thing to some people but I know that when you have been hurt so badly by the person you love more than anyone or anything,sometimes your mind goes places it wouldn't normally go. I tried to deal with it the best I could. It is strange how certain things can affect you when you have been cheated on,lied to and hurt. While I was typing this I did feel a little nuts but I can't help it...that's just me !! pfroglady
You need to let it go. He is undeserving to have such a hold on your emotions and by letting the anger go, you regain control of yourself rather that relinquishing it to him. Prove to yourself who really is the better man and then bury him (figuratively speaking of course) and forget him. Don't let him get in the way of what you want in the remainder of you life. In time you can succeed. 
!! pfroglady
