Cheated and need advice

[Gordie]

Pitiful,

You are brave and should be commended for trying to save your M. Some points that have not yet been brought up:

1. In addition to being angry, your H is on his own emotional roller coaster of sadness, betrayal, feeling like a failure and probably very alone. For the first month after my W's bomb drop, I felt like I was suffocating in shame and that I couldn't tell anyone including my closest friends what was going on. When it started visibly affecting me (a month of sleeplessness does that), I finally let it all out with one of my buddies. You are probably your H's best friend and he can't talk to you...so he may feel he can't talk to anyone. Until he gets to the point where he can talk about this with someone, it's going to be hard for him to be able to process his feelings and think about reconciling with you. If your H is like me, he has a harder time with feelings and has a harder time opening up to others, even his closest buddies.

2. If your H has some sexual issue, this is humiliating for a man and hurts his ego and his own perception of his manliness. And do you know what's it feels like for him to know that you were discussing this with the OM? It is totally and utterly emasculating. It's like you took a cleaver and cut his balls off! That is how I would feel. You were laughing about his limp d*** to another guy (or something along those lines). In your posts to date, I don't think you really get how he feels about this. How would you feel if you heard him taking to another woman about how sexually inadequate you are?

3. I ageee with others that you need to give time and space, but really think about these things so when you talk again (and you will) you can be more specific in understanding how your actions hurt your H. I am not good at apologizing, so when I have an important one to make, I actually write out what I am sorry for and how I am going to amend my life. I take this out and read it when the time is right and it shows my W that I have really been thinking about it.

4. You are still living together so there are little opportunities to create positive energy every day, little things. Observe what softens him or opens him up, write it down and do more of that. Observe what hardens him or closes him up, write it down and stop doing that. That may be things that are said, body language/touches, small acts of service. You can't control what he does, so this will give you a list of things you can do.