New Here- My story

[25yearsmlc]

You wrote:

I don’t know what to do any more. I haven’t read any of the DB books. I guess one of my questions would be will the books help me since I’m the one that wants him to leave and he wants to stay and make it work.

The answer to the question about DB, is Yes, it will help YOU. For me, Dbing is about letting go of the past and what I cannot control, which is a LOT.

And going "from this day forward" as the vows suggest. (More and more I think that line was brilliantly inserted into most marriage vows) I am a better woman and a happier person, b/c of what the DB process and looking inward, "revealed" to me.

Two main thoughts come to my mind. First, I cannot tell you that you should or must stay married. No one can.

An affair is too much for some folks to get over, ever, no matter what their spouses do to make up for it. I don't begrudge them for that. Even if they forgive their spouse and mean it, for some, the trust just does not come back.

I don't know if that^^ is your situation but it's something YOU will need to eventually know. B/C truly, truly, if you cannot forgive him at some point and trust him again, just end it, if & when you know that's you.

Second, a case in point. Growing up, we had neighbors including a retired AF Colonel who had been a POW for 7 YEARS in Vietnam. I was a teenager. I'd ask him questions about it but his w would interrupt or change the topic.

I really assumed she was protecting him. One day she was not around but he made a comment about his release day, and I asked him if he was reticent to discuss it and he said "No, not at all"...however--

I knew he'd had an affair some years earlier...

Oh, what's that? How did I know he'd had an affair before we ever met?

Everyone in the neighborhood knew b/c his w would somehow leak it. Her kids knew too.

I believe She wanted to keep punishing him. She never forgave him. But she stayed married, and they were mostly miserable together, til the day he died.
They had 5 kids.

Today, 30+ years later, ONE is married, 3 are divorced (2 of them are twice or thrice divorced) and one never married...some legacy she left them.

She could have shown them a legacy of: commitment, loving forgiveness and redemption.

Instead, She made the worst choice she could have made. She chose to stay married, AND stay miserable.

OTOH The Affair spouse has to know that at some point down the road, the Sword of Damacles won't be hanging over their head, nor will the affair be thrown in their face the rest of their lives every time they argue or every time he's late from work.

And the LBS has to believe it won't happen again (KEY) and

that real remorse is shown and felt (which seems to make it less likely to happen again).

Sounds as if your h does feel remorse. But you don't know the rest yet, correct?

Might that just take time & effort on both ends?

Oh, there's a book called "After the Affair" I've heard is very helpful.

Yes I have seen marriages recover from affairs.
In my experience they recovered after AN affair was discovered. (I don't know if more than one A had happened.)

I DO understand why starting fresh is appealing. But the thing is, that's what most WASs say (WAS=Walk away spouses) too. They'd rather start fresh than work on their m. But if you never learn to resolve a conflict, you are missing a life skill. Like never changing the oil in a car, then it breaks down and instead of learning to take it in for oil changes, you keep trading it in for a newer car...never learning to maintain it!

Back to your/my questions....How is he as a father?

And YES DB books will help you put the focus on what YOU CAN CONTROL, and off what you cannot control,

(such as changing the past, which none of us can do but a lot of us seem to want to...SO not a productive use of our time)...

DO read the DB book (Divorce Busting was the first one, and Divorce Remedy is more or less the 2nd edition). You don't need to read both, though I did. And without this site and my coach, I could and would not have stayed married. But that's ME.

Hang in there. This is a great place (site) to be, for a lousy reason.

Keep posting (numbers of your first posts matter somehow, so at first you should post more often -shorter posts, so your posts will generate more responses faster).

Just For now, can you hang in there, read the book and get support here?