Deep, you asked: "DanceQueen, can I ask you a question? During the times when you and H were trying to work things out, and as you said, trusting in your love to carry it thru, would you say you were back in love with H, re-connected with him, and had the best intentions? You were disgusted with OM (and this is hitting a red flag becuase it is exactly what W is saying), in what way did his presence cause a D eventually?"
Yes I was back in love, reconnected and had the best intentions. Yes I was discusted with OM.
It was not his presence that caused a D eventually. It was the fact that my H and I just trusted our love only, and did not seek out help from a mental health or relationship professional. Then there was the fact that I personally could never heal from my self-inflicted wounds (ie: the affair) because I had to work with this OM every single day. And there was the fact that my H could not heal from it either, because (just as one example) he would come pick me up at work and have to see the OM from time to time. Although my H did trust me with the OM because he knew for a fact that I hated his guts, and although yes I really did hate his guts and never once even spoke to him again, although I saw him everyday....the fact remained, we simply could NOT heal in this situation.
So then later, I finally quit my job and got another one. Again, we never sought help, just figured "oh good, now it might be easier to heal".
But you see...by never seeking help from a professional, and thinking naively that we had it all conquered, what happened was that we never talked it out to discover exactly why I had the affair to begin with. We never were fully honest with each other about how we felt about anything. We were afraid to hurt each other, so we figured covering the truth was somehow better than being brutally honest.
After about 5 more years of me being on my best behavior, I finally cheated again with someone else.
This time, I just figured, wow, I must be a pyscho, horrible, mean, discusting person. I never once thought "oh maybe its because there were flaws in our marriage to begin with, and flaws in myself as a human being". Instead I just beat myself over the head for being a loser.
However, this does not mean it made me stop cheating. I was a totally messed up person by that time.
Everything just got worse from there, and after married a total of 15 years we divorced. H did not even know of the subsequent affairs (although I have since confessed it to him in a long closure letter I sent after our divorce).
THE ONE THING that might have saved our marriage, would have been for me to immediately leave my place of employment and for us to immediately enter marriage counseling and stay with it for several years, until we unrooted all of our problems as a couple and as individuals.
I am begging you to realize that your marriage is not going to survive this affair under the current conditions. You are fooling yourself and your W is fooling herself, too. There are reasons beneath each of your actions and reactions, and those reasons are part of the "why" she had an A. Without deep reflection and counseling, you will never get to the bottom of it, and without her completely disappearing forever out of the OM's life, she will never personally be able to heal, reflect, and find out her own answers to why she has done this horrible thing to you.
