darn it! my post didn;t work, I posted yesterday and prob closed the window too soon.
Anyways, in a nutshell, it is a very very good thing your H acknowledges how messed up his thinking was, it is a good step towards healing and moving on.
You are not being silly, it really hurts and it is very hard to control our imaginations (they tend to run wild and create all sorts of scenarios, quite a few prob worse than what really happened, btdt) The A was so easy because it was an escape route, a fun ride w/out responsibilities, now, piecing, is facing his mistakes, admit his failures and work hard at gaining your trust and build your M again.
YEY! I found this great article I'd post to lost of people which isn't online anymore, I looked for it to post it on your thread:
================================================ About the only people more dangerous than philandering men going through life with an open fly and romantic damsels going through life in perennial distress, are emotionally retarded men in love. When such men go through a difficult transition in life, they hunker down and ignore all emotions. Their brain chemistry gets depressed, but they don't know how to feel it as depression. Their loved ones try to kee from bothering them, try to keep things calm and serene - and isolate them further
An emotionally retarded man may go for a time without feeling pleasure, pain, or anything else, untd a strange woman jerks him back into awareness of something intense enough for him to feel it - perhaps sexual fireworks, or the boyish heroics of rescuing hff, or perhaps just fascination with her constantly changing moods and never-ending emotional crises.
With her, he can pull out of his depression briefly, but he sinks back even deeper into it when he is not with her. He is getting addicted to her, but he doesn't know that. He only feels the absence of joy and love and life with his serenely cautious wife and kids, and the awareness of life with this new woman. It doesn't work for him to leave home to be with her, as she too would grow stale and irritating if she were around full time.
What he needs is not a crazier woman to sacrifice his life for, but treatment for his depression. However, since the best home remedies for depression are sex, exercise, joy, and triumph, the dangerous damsel may be providing one or more of them in a big enough dose to make him feel a lot better. He may feel pretty good until he gets the bill, and sees how much of his life and the lives of his loved ones this treatment is costing. Marriages that start this way, stepping over the bodies of loved ones as the giddy couple walks down the aisle, are not likely to last long.
Be not afraid...I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten Joel2
30something 2kids survivor of S, MLC, A, D I have peace in my heart, at last.