Thanks Knittedscarff, I am feeling pretty bad today everthing kinda of just hit me hard last night. I think she feels the same way you do. I asked her if she could find a way to forgive me and allow me to earn her trust again. All she could say was "I don't know". I guess that is better than a flat "NO", but still not very incourageing. I get that I messed up and I owned up to it. I have been a faithful husband for 15 years and a good father. I made a horrible mistake and I took and awful risk, but do I deserve to lose everything, to be a weekend father? I think that is a bit harsh. Do I deserve to be the whipping boy .....yes of course. Do I deserve to be put through hell ....yes.
Chris I hope you understand that I applaude your honesty in owning up to what you did; here of all places.
What you don't seem to grasp are a few of the following things.
You don't get a choice in her reaction to this; she didn't get a choice in your decision to have an affair. It really doesn't matter what YOU think is harsh, it matters what she thinks.
Go ahead and tell her it's not fair; advice, call a doctor and have a room at the nearest hospital waiting for you though.
She is going to rebuild her trust for you in HER time, not in yours or what YOU think her time should be, and she is only going to rebuild that trust if you are worthy of it.
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I asked her if she could find a way to forgive me and allow me to earn her trust again. All she could say was "I don't know".
Stop asking and show her.
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I have been a faithful husband for 15 years and a good father.
Get over that, you WERE a faithful husband for 15 years...now you're not. Faithful is no longer a descriptive word for you anymore.
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
I want to say I'm sorry you are going through this, but I can't.
You seem to want to minimize your behavior. Heck you already started to on here.
a. It wasn't a one-time, one-night thing. It was over a 3 week period. That means you had time to plan, think and act on your feelings and time to reflect. But most importantly, you had time to BACK OUT. You didn't. b. You knew her stance on cheating from when you were married and yet you still cheated. You knew you could lose everything. You knew the rules going in, but you want her to changes that stance. Realistic? so in some ways, you do deserve to lose everything. c. You really need to see why you deserve to lose everything. Because if you don't think you do, you will never grasp why this hurts your W. d. You said you are willing to walk through h3ll to keep your marriage intact. Yet you couldn't keep it in your pants. doubts? yes e. It doesn't matter that you were faithful for 15 years or 20 years or 100 years, so stop using that some sort of crutch. You weren't being a good dad either as Knittedscarff pointed out. you put your needs above your family, wife and kids. f. You have a LONG road ahead. Like years (no matter if you stay together or not) Stop trying to make it shorter.
You only hope is to have your wife find the DB sight. It seems that the consensus here is to allow affairs to continue without any fallout for the cheating spouse.
I know Jack, I was just venting a bit. What I think I deserve and what she thinks are miles apart. I guess I should get used to be treated less than human. I would never say the things to her that I say here. No completely insane.
How do I show her when she will barely sit in the same room with me?
I am really trying not to feel sorry for myself.....and did not intentionally mean to sound that way. I know that this is early in the process, I am very anxious, something I have suffered from for many years. I want to fix this and have let her know that I am willing to do what it takes. I told her I would not push but would be here anytime she was ready to talk. She is the type to stew and hold it all in until it explodes, which for her could take a very long time.
What I meant about not being treated as human was.....I should get used to her ignoring me and not recognizing me even being in the room. I dont blame her in the least little bit, nor should I even consider it. I guess I am curious if I am even on the right track.....am I barking up the wrong tree.
Let's make it clear what it (might) feel like for her, what is it, less than a week after ANOTHER woman told her you had been shagging on the sly.
First, like an earlier poster said, own it. You made the choice to have an affair. Why didn't you think it was wrong, what was your rationalization? You could have just as easily woken up one day and said, ya know, I'll try heroin today or I'd like to wear lady high heels to work. You made a choice, why was that your choice?
Second, the best way that I was able to describe the shock after finding out about an affair was it was like I dropped a glass off the table and instead of falling to the ground, it flew up. Marriages don't break like cups, really. They just really float off into space, the final frontier. There is no chart of how deep and dark it can be.
Third, all you do is keep talking about you, which makes sense, you go after what you think you deserve. I don't know your wife, but if you want just a tiny taste of what she might be feeling is imagine the loudest, most explosive orgasm you've ever had with her, and think about that sound coming from her with another man.
Imagine HIM all over (up, under, behind, and in) HER.
I don't know the experience of other people, but something that worked a whole lot in my ex's favor was that he told me of the affair instead of learning it off the street (or internet) like your wife.
So when it came to the custody agreements and splitting our assets, it helped tremendously that he was honest at the beginning.
My lawyer said that it was few of the bartering chips he had: that he had shown honesty and that would be an ok role model for the kids to be around.
It really became a situation before all of the final paperwork was signed that my husband was sort of being looked at like a defective car, and we needed to make sure we didn't want to expose the kids dangerous situations, like not answering the phone or not being where he said he was. Cell phone records....it might as well be called a printing press for money in divorce lawyer land.
Good luck. I'm not saying this to make you feel bad. It's good to know what might be coming.
Knitted, yea has been less than a week. I try not think about my wife and another man. To be honest I never thought she cared that much for me since there was a lack of physical relationship much of the time.
We had a chat tonight, didn't go well.....turned into a lot of anger on her part which I took and tried to stay positive. She said alot of things which I hope came from anger. Said that she had the number of atty. has called him yet but as soon as one of us are financially able I am gone. That she will never kiss me again or have sex with me. That the D will happen only a matter of time before it happens, and this point no way of stopping it. I make her skin craw and feels like she needs a shower to be in the same room with me. Since that is the first time she has shown any anger I hope that is where it is coming from. Any insight??
You nailed another woman, and you are questioning where her anger is coming from?
Please go to counseling as soon as possible to be honest with yourself if you can't be it here.
You didn't have sex with someone else because she didn't touch you. If you wanted to make the relationship with your wife work, you would have said, let's discuss our problems.
You decided to solve +your+ problem.
Really, a good therapist can work wonders (and cut down on a lot of costs). But I have to hand it to my lawyer, even though he was a shark and monster and I would have no interaction with him in any other situation, but he was brilliant when he put all of the medical costs of my doctors and children on what my husband owed.
See, not only do you have to get tested for STDs once. You really need to do it for a year, and there's some great legal things in my state that if there's a specific type of deception that risks your health, the other party is responsible. So most of the counseling costs for me and the kids were on his balance. And from what I understand, I wasn't even close to being brutal with him.
My lawyer suggested that he could get an order that my ex would have to get at least two or three years of sexually transmitted diseases tests, but that the orders would go through their HR department along with the people he worked with. He said that there's a way to write something where you don't disclose any medical information, but it's worded so you know that person needs to be tested for hepatitis in a very embarrassing way, and more than one scorned wife was all too happy to pursue it.
