NKOTB

[tpc1977]

New here. Someone pointed me to this site for help. Great material and support here. Thank you to everyone.

Two nights ago my wife finally told me she was having an affair. I was floored!! I knew it in the back of my mind. Certain things about her changed and I really believe God was poking me to wake up. So I confronted her and finally dragged it out of her.

We've been married almost 15 years. Her affair was about a year long, I think. I really haven't gotten to the point of asking too many questions yet. Honestly, I don't want to know too much. I'm sick as it is.

My problem was that I do see where I pushed her away enough emotionally and cut the rope that connected us. I'll admit, I wasn't the man she needed when she needed someone. And she needed me a lot. She's been through a lot and I brushed too much of it away to keep to myself.

I've never, in all our years together, seen her cry like she did the night she confessed and the day after when we really started talking about it. It's been a whirlwind to say the least. I've cried more in these past couple of days than in many, many decades combined. I feel walked on, laughed at, ridiculed, and betrayed. Maybe some of my feelings are immature. It seems that way. "Suck it up!" I keep telling myself. "Fix it and move on." But that was my problem in the past. I've always wanted to fix her or tell her what she needed to get better and move past it. I mean, that's how I managed myself. Why not her?

So she found someone to fill that void, that chasm, I wasn't wanting to bridge. And apparently he was all that.

I'm sick on my stomach even typing this. I hurt in places I haven't hurt my whole life. Those school-boy crushes have nothing on the utter damage something like this creates. It obliterates the innocence your marriage possessed. Just in the few days I've had to deal with this I can see how it slowly infiltrates every aspect of your thought process. It's a blackness that slowly covers all the wonderful thoughts you once had about your relationship.

Now. Just two days later, I see my wife differently than I have ever seen her. Yes, still with a love. I cannot shake that. But she's different. As if, someone gave me a new set of eyes. Darker, unwelcoming eyes. My skin has changed too. Her touch seems fake and weak - almost with a haunting sensation. She's damaged. Her touch is damaged. Her words are damaged. Her essence is damaged.

But I hear her deep sobs and my mood changes from scorn to support. We are going through a financial crises, as well, that is quite crippling. For a while it seems like I have tried to hold us up through a ton of burdens and now I feel I need to help hold my wife up through this as well. We have children who we want to guard from all this; the financial burden, the marriage problems, her affair. It’s almost ironic. Because I feel as though I am going to fall any moment. Possibly never to get up. And I would welcome it too. But I need to be here for us. Or at least I think I do. Maybe that's a problem in itself.