Can it work?

[nightshade]

Thank you so much talitsa for answering.
It is true that my husband's self esteem seems to always be at the edge, ready to drop to nothing easily. And it is also true that the two affairs did boost his ego. He even confessed he felt flatered by their interest and it made him feel more important. I often think back trying to figure out if in some way I am giving him some insecurity or letting him feel less important. But I know I am not. On the contrary.
ANother thing that seems to happen is that he has trouble dealing with problems even if they are small. The temptation of an affair is heightned by the lack of responsability of the whole thing. There are no bills to pay - in his case - no children's problems to deal with - at first, then he was starting to get requests to help out with her own kids(3), no need for accountability. I must confess that it sounds great, but it's definitely a situation that happens only at the beginning, if the affair continues it is bound to come with more and more responsabilities, requests and need for accountability.

Like you said about your h's A, mine didn't seem to care a great deal for this person, but still was having a lot of trouble ending it. I have about 12 emails from him to her, ending it. Followed by a period of not seing each other, followed by a restart.
I am not able to go to MC right now. AGain due to all that happened our financial situation went to shambles. I don't work during the summer ( july and august) so I don't get paid. ANd with him quitting his job things got bad again. ANd maybe I ressent that a bit too. We had it all, so to speak, a good job, benefits, and for the second time he has to let it go because of an affair.
Just before he quit we had quite a few expensed that were budgeted counting on his salary. We bought the trailer we had been dreaming about, paid the trailer park fees for the year, and spend quite some money to get the whole site the way we wanted it.We felt secure that money was coming and we had no problem with bills. Then this happened and all the plans went
Working nights seems to have some sort of an effect as well- at least in his case, both affairs happened when he was working nigh shift, and there were never problems when he was working straight days. I wonder, there is some time with nothing to do and it's easy to try to avoid boredoom by going for longer coffee breaks and talk with people in the same circumstances.
THe inability to refuse something like that when it's offered is certainly something that I can see in both cases. but no matter where he's working or what he's doing that is always a possibility. Having someone showing that she's available for him, or even initiating something, and I guess that's what's really worrying me here.
We've also been talking about boundaries, and the fact that things are easy to start but them become difficult to end. We also talked about the cultural differences. We came from Europe and where we came from, different things seem to be accepted in different ways. Hugging, touching, even kissing is done most times without ulterior motives, talking about more intimate things doesn't come out as an invitation, just a talk. I think that my h has trouble understanding that often here those things are taken as a come on. So he ends up giving signals that are taken in a different way.

In his case I also can find - and this is not new -a certain inability to feel empathy. I know he reall his doing all to make things better, but I can see that sometimes he finds that there was no reason for all this big thing. He has trouble putting himself in my shoes and feel - or even imagine - what I felt throughout both affairs, so if he can't feel it himself he can't really understand it fully. He always showed some lack of empaty, but because there were no problems, it didn't make much of a difference other than showing itself and "telling" me that that was a trait in his personality.

He is now working again. Days. He tells me he's not going to accept any night jobs again, and I wonder if that will help. He got his first paycheque last week and once again we're worse off financially because in his hurry to start working fast he had to take the first thing that came. There was no need for this.
ANd to answer your question, no this job doesn't come with benefits and counseling certainly is out of question now. We have bills pilling up that need to be payed and weren't in these two months.

I am having trouble believing in committment from his part - when with his first affair that created no problem at all. I am just worried about a pattern and I'm not sure I'd be able to go trough this again and again. My own self esteem took a big dive and I'm having trouble getting it back. I know none of this was my fault, and I know that i didn't do anything wrong but still I feel down.
I don't want to take my husband or my marriage for granted but I need to feel some security. I know that nothing in life comes with guaranties, but thinking that I might have to go trough this again is really to stressfull.
As for my H, there is some part of him that is struggling with all of this. ANd even though I can undersand it, I also believe that it's kind of selfish. He just wants it to go away. To just keep forward as it never happened. He tries to answer me and be open to talk about what happened and what I think we need to work on, but it's a straing for him because he only wants to put it all out of his bead. But it did happen and we can't really pretend it didn't.Maybe I am wrong but to work something out, we need to figure out what is causing it in the first place, and he seems to have no clue. Neither does he show the desire to look deeper and try to figure out why.In a way it seems to be painful to him to realise that he has shortcomings, that he makes mistakes because that works negatively in his ego. SO he tries to avoid thinking about it.

You talked about your H having email and phone conversations with other women, but that they didn't turn into affairs. In my case I"m actually the one that used the computer for communication more. I don't - nor didn't - have any relationships over the computer or phone and I don't go to chats. But I do have groups of friends, with whom I correspond regularly. My H on the other hand uses the computer more to play games or look for information.

ANyway, thanks again for your answer and i hope things continue to improve in your situation.
I hope it happens to me too, but for now I just think that nothing seems real. I'm not very demanding. But I really need to believe that my happiness is as important to him as his own. That he cares enough to remember me when I'm not present and is thinking about not hurting me when he deals with other people. I would like to believe that he understands how negative those two experiences were for me, and would want to avoid doint it again because he does not want me to feel like that again and not because of any other reason. I want to believe that he listens when we talk about boundaries and is ready to learn how to stop something like this before it happens again. I guess I would like a "happy ever after". ANd this doesn't mean that I can't understand that there are always problems, just that I feel the need to smile and be cheerful and I haven't been able to feel like that much lately.
Many hugs to you
nightshade