I cheated, we survived, now my wife's cheating

[JC08]

The therapist I see talked about the process of healing and dealing with the trauma I caused. She said first would mainly be work with my W, talked about EMDR, and just talked about the healing process for my W and what I would need to do to help with that, then overtime we would start working on us as a couple again, work on communication, bonding, and so forth. That was what was discussed in the one and only session.

We got a schedule set up, the rest of the day my W seemed a happier and more herself, talked positive about therapy, that she was excited about how the therapist described everything, plus it would lead to a lot of time of just us, and us working on us. Her mom even told me that my W brought up what the therapist talked about, the process, and she seemed excited because she wanted closure and how to cope and move past, the triggers and all those types of things.

I really don't know what the OM was saying to her, but it seemed like things went in waves. Because we talked about therapy and she had a good outlook on it for the rest of the weekend, our first appointment was a Saturday morning. Then once she went to work Monday, I think they talked a lot more when she was at work, things went back downhill because she wouldn't stop talking to him.

So yes you are right, she was in pain, I didn't realize the depth until it was to late. If we would have found help earlier maybe we could have worked through some of that pain. I talk to my priest often also, he mirrors what you say to a lot of degree. He believes she is in a lot of pain, that she just swept it under the rug, that the OM is just an escape, that her pain and undealt with issues will come out in their relationship/affair and cause issues after the new wears off, but he does believe once she is ready to heal then that is we can try yo try putting our marriage back together, but he believes it will take a lot of time. My W actually talked to the priest right before telling me she wanted to separate, the priest said that they talked a lot about healing, and what needed to be done to get that, but said just they way she described how she felt, what she was thinking, and how she described everything, that he was extremely surprised how quickly things changed after that, because she just didn't come off as wanting to separate or leave.

My wife comes from a very religious family, my W has moved away hard from that, same as I did, but her parents and the priest hope and believe that as time goes on that she will start returning to her beliefs, and maybe there will be a chance of R, I know I can't have expectations, that this is just the beginning, and in that time I need to follow the advice here, and that if she looks back my way she will see changes.