Our M was fertile ground for my A. I was weak and was not honest with my wife about my thoughts & feelings for fear that she would just make the decision to end our marriage. We have been together for 7 years and most of that has been filled with strife and blame. My W frequently brought up the Big D (even before my PA) even though we love each other dearly. My sister said it best, she said, "You two obviously love each other intensely, otherwise you wouldn't have kept trying to work it out."
We became pregnant with our S (2nd child) during a time that we were having VERY infrequent relations. During the first 3-4 months into the pregnancy, my W kept saying that she thought it was terrible that we were pregnant again without having smoothed out our relationship and that she regretted it.
Of course I felt awful with the revelation of her feelings and the distance that persisted between us emotionally. This is when I made the awful choice for the affair, which was over as quickly as it started. My thoughts have become more clear with reflection. I felt shut out, pushed away, not heard, criticized, not valued, ignored, unloved, etc. I had always had the feeling that my W was one foot in, one foot out in our marriage. As I stated, the D word was frequently brought up by her in response to our difficulties. No excuses, no justification, though. None of my ill feelings gave me the right to do what I did. My feelings just helped put our already struggling M on a slippery slope to nowhere.
You see, I am certainly to blame for half of the problems in our marriage. I am by no means perfect. Unortunately, my W saw my contribution to our troubles as more like 99%. And that was PRIOR to this fiasco.
Regardless, I understand that I need to keep apologizing for my mistake, keep expressing that I am open to talking and reconciling, keep loving our children, and keep working on me to insure I do not make this type of mistake again.
Thanks for reading. Again, any and all direction, thoughts, and prayers are greatly appreciated.
