Train,
Yep, you're officially "normal".

Trust takes a long to to rebuild. He must earn your trust little pieces, and sometimes big chunks, at a time. I was a live wire with internal worry at first too. I was crystal clear with my wife about what worried me, and she made every effort to assuage those worries. As you may have read, get all of the details of the affair out in the open now. All of your questions answered by your H, as painful as that is, and absorb it. Do not get angry or he will shut down. Accept it. Once that is done, put it away and never revisit it again. You don't want to beat him up forever or he will begin to feel ashamed and hopeless.

You must start living whatever you want your new marriage to be RIGHT NOW. if you want transparency, then ask him for it (I'm sure you already have). If you want affection every day without him looking for sex, then ask for it. If you want intimate conversation, you guessed it.... At the same time, your H will have things that he wants too, you should know what those needs are and meet them with enthusiasm. I make a concerted effort EVERY SINGLE DAY to meet my wife's most important needs and she does the same for me.

Will the A, your husbands old words, the OW etc. plague your thoughts in the future? Yes. I'm just being honest. Don't lose hope, however. At first, I would think of those things just about every minute of the day. Then every ten minutes. Then a couple of times an hour. Fast forward over a year and a half and thoughts (sometimes brought on by a trigger) still come to me several times a day, but they are much more mild and are gone as quickly as they came. That's the trust bucket filling back up. One day I hope to go a day or a week or longer without a thought of it. Visiting these boards to "pay it forward" certainly doesn't help, so I disappear from here periodically for a month or so to take a break. To be honest, I've been considering going away from here for good, soon. I've helped some folks here, like you, so I've done my work wink.

Will your H stray again? It's certainly possible. Anyone can cheat- no matter what their morals are. I'm a man. I recognize that, married or not, I find women attractive. Sometimes their beauty is accompanied by a great personality too, and when I find that, I run like the wind! I don't ever want to become unfaithful, so I guard against it. Your H needs to do the same. I think that if you continue to be open and honest with each other, ask for what you want, and meet each other's needs with enthusiasm, then your risk for another A is very low.

These are very important and precious days for you- don't put aside the hard work for another time or place. Has your H read HNHN?

-HS