I had the affair and now my marriage appears Over

[fooled again]

Hi Lousy,

Thank you for replying to me. What you are saying is the same thing my H has been saying. And some of the way you describe your marriage sounds like ours. We have hurt each other, we made each other feel insecure by our actions and inactions, we stopped telling each other what we needed, we stopped showing each other how much we loved each other. Part of it had to do with our daughter becoming my sole focus, and part of it had to do with his traveling for work too often. We drifted so far apart that he felt I didn't love him anymore. I didn't know he was feeling this way, but I did know that our marriage was not great. He said that the OW made him feel good and gave him what he needed.

But I have a lot of trouble believing that it's now over and that he is totally committed to us now, even though he keeps telling me. You see, he told me on several previous occasions that his affair was over, but he simply continued seeing the OW. He lied to me so many times about so many things for so long, and each time he told me it was over, it took me a long time to open myself up to him. Eventually, though, the lies started to show through and I became suspicious each time, eventually finding out that the affair was still ongoing.

I understand that your affair lasted a long time, part of that time your wife was aware of it. Now your affair is completely over and you are honestly trying to show your wife your sincerity, love, dedication, honesty and faithfulness. I want to believe that my H is at that place too. How can I tell for sure? How do I know that he is not seeing the OW anymore, that he is not trying to have his cake and eat it? Recently little things and one bigger event has made me suspicious and upset and I am afraid that he is back with her again, or maybe the past couple of months of him trying to convince me have been a ruse. I wish I could know.

Sometimes I feel so crazy with the thought of him still being unfaithful - I feel sick, I can't concentrate on anything, I can't eat, I can't sleep. The only thing that helps is to not talk to him, not tell him how I feel, pull back into myself and put up a wall around me to protect myself from being hurt. I know this is not how to save my marriage, but the alternative is to be so obsessed with the affair that I can't function. I don't want to end up putting up a wall so thick and high that eventually I stop wanting to make my marriage work. I wonder if that's what your wife has done - create a wall that insulates her and that is why she won't talk to you and let you know what she is thinking or doing. These secrets that we keep from our unfaithful H's give us strength, make us feel protected, less vulnerable. When we open ourselves up, we don't feel safe anymore, and if we can't depend on our H's to protect us because they were the ones who hurt us, we focus on protecting ourselves, controlling our world in order to survive.

I feel in my heart, right now anyway, that I will continue to fight for him, or wait for this thing to be over so that we can finally do the work we need to do. But I can't commit to working on our marriage if I think he is still being unfaithful. And I don't know how many times I can do this, I don't know how many times I can be beat down, before he completely destroys whatever love I have left for him and I give up on our marriage.

I want to ask you, what could I do to make sure that he gives her up for good (that is, if he is still seeing her, and I don't know for sure either way)? What did you need from your wife that would have made you give up your lover? What could she have said or done? Or was it simply a matter of you coming to your own realization of what was truly important and nothing your wife could have done would have expedited the process? And when it was really over, how could she know for sure that it was over? What did you do to show her?

I feel that you may be the only person who can answer these questions for me because you are on the other side, and I suspect that you have been for a long time. Please help me understand.