A
female
age
51-59,
anonymous
writes:My husband and I have recently separated. We've been together for 23 years and married for 18. We have two children. My husband initiated the separation, but, for reasons I won't go into now, there are many things that I have done to help create the problems. Basically, we had a very good marriage, but I had major issues that I didn't own up to or see until this all came to light. I have been in therapy for the past year, attemtping to attone for what I have done. I regret it in ways that I never thought I woudl regret something. I totally screwed up and have been trying to understand why I would do something so hurtful to a man I so desperately love. Five months ago, my husband said he wanted to separate. Two months later, he got an apartment but didn't move out. Then, his father passed away. Everything seemed to go on hold for that. Eventually, however, he explained that he still needed to move out. We told our children five months ago, but then went through this period of no movement for several months. Now, he has moved into this apartment and is coming home on the weekends. During the weekends, things seem so normal. We spend time together as a family and a couple, but he still leaves every week and I feel rejected and despondent. I don't know what to do or how to act. I want, desperately, to save my marriage. I am looking for help on how to interact with my husband when he is home and away.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (12 April 2011): I understand that your situation is tough. Good of you that you are fighting on. I really hope that you soon find a way to take you back to your happy marriage. I have a tip on a page of good articles that might help. It helped me anyway. Good luck!
http://keeplovingme.com
A
reader, anonymous, writes (18 March 2011): If you've been readin posts here for a year, you probably read mine about how I had an affair which destroyed my 15 year marriage (20 year relationship). It isn't easy, adn I know what you're coping with.
First, I see you have to give yourself some credit for owning up to your mistakes and telling your husband and wanting to make wrong things right. You made a mistake...a very big mistake, but we are human. Humans make mistakes.
Your husband probably loves you very much but feels totally betrayed and lost. I've had many long talks with my ex wife about how she felt, and if the feeling are similar, your husband is feeling like he needs an answer from God. I would suggest YOU be that answer. Make HIM know how much you want to save the marriage. He probably needs help more than you think...maybe get him to counseling with you. A counselor may be able to be the catalyst that lets his heart back into you, because right now, it's shut off to you because despite your desire to be good to him, he will reject you on principle. Love needs a translator of sorts in situations like these, and a marriage counselor may be that voice. Or, maybe faith. If you are both religious, get to church. See your priest or minister and let them help you. The one thing you have to remember is failed or failing marriages are very very common, and there are many modes of help. DOnt sit back being melancholy and helpless for too long. Get help. Time has a way of severing a weakening thread. And if, after you've done everything, your marriage still fails, at least you will have the dignity and peace of knowing you tried everything. You have no idea how immeasurable this is...even for the one who caused the problems. Maybe even mostly. Most of all, listen to your heart. It NEVER lies to you in times like these. But follow it, and take action. Good luck to you!
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A
female
reader, GeeGee255 +, writes (18 March 2011):
 Good for you! I am glad we were able to help....
So from now on I hope you continue to move forward from a place of inner strength, and not weakness anymore. Because that is when the real healing can begin.
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reader, anonymous, writes (18 March 2011): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionIn all my life, GeeGee, I have never felt such comfort at being called "normal". Thank you. I don't know who you folks are, who take the time to write notes of support to a struggling stranger. C Grant, I appreciate your suggestions on how to manage the weekends. It reiterates a lot of what I have been thinking and nice to get confirmation that my stance of trying to make things pleasant and positive might be the right course. I don't know why it means so much to me and provides such needed comfort, to present my story in very real terms, and have people offer suppport, reflections and suggestions. But it does. Thank you for taking the time.
I have found myself often directed to this site over the past year, when entering key words of what I'm struggling with on a search engine. I have found some comfort in reading others' stories and feeling that I am not alone in facing such challenges. This is the first time I have ever posted and was so afraid to do so, but now, so happy that I decided to.
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female
reader, GeeGee255 +, writes (17 March 2011):
You just described all the most comman reasons a good woman
gets pulled into having an affair, without ever intending to have one.
You need to stop thinking of yourself as some strangely flawed woman that normal loving wives can't relate too.
Because you are NOT!
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A
male
reader, C. Grant  +, writes (17 March 2011):
 Oh my. You're on quite the journey.
It sounds like you've got a good start on understanding why you did what you did, that you've had some sincere and effective introspection. There's no guarantee, of course, that that will be enough, but it's a certainty that you can't fix things without it.
I don't have any direct experience with your situation, so I'm just taking a guess about how your weekends should be. Your family time should be as pleasant, relaxing, and normal as possible. It should be an environment he is happy to be in, and looks forward to. That's good for him and good for the kids. By all means wear your hair shirt in private. When it's appropriate to do so let him know that you're still contrite, that you know what you did was wrong, and that given another chance with him you would never stray again. But that gets old and it's essentially negative. So fill the family time with as much that's positive and constructive as you can.
I'm pretty sure I could forgive my wife a one-off. But I think I'd find repeats over five years a pretty tough row to hoe. I hope you guys can work something out.
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reader, anonymous, writes (17 March 2011): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionIn regards to looking at why the cheating took place in the first place, I have spent a LOT of time on this. In some ways, I think I had fallen victim to what a lot of moms do. I had a professional life that I gave up to raise my kids. My husband's career was soaring and I was very supportive. But, somehow, lost in the middle of that was...ME. Who am I now? Other than just a mother? I think I didn't feel appreciated enough by my husband for all that I was doing at home and all I had given up. Now, after a year of looking at this, I think that I had actually boxed him into a bit of a corner - there really wasn't enough appreciation that would satisfy me.
Now I see that and realize that probably the problem rested with me needing to find a way to appreciate myself and be okay with enjoying my life rather than waiting for this bottomless hole to be filled with appreciation from someone else. In all honesty, I think I was also jealous of my husband. Having this great career, getting to travel, and knowing I was at home to take care of everything there. Unknowingly, I think I was building up some resentment and it provided me with some sense of entitlement in engaging with his friend.
I think, this guy presented himself. I had known him for as long as I knew my husband. I never desired him. In fact, I actually never thought he liked me very much. But, he had a wife who I adored and kids the same ages as ours and we did a lot of traveling together as families. The first time a line was crossed involved a lot of alcohol (in fact, all of the times we crossed the lines involved that). It confused us both and we just kind of chalked it up to weird circumstances and both agreed that nothing would EVER happen again. But, it awakened some devious, desirous part of myself that became some kind of self-propelling fuel. We thought we were getting away with it, when it continued to happen, each time feeling like it would never happen again. But it was like we had this clean slate. Kind of like some drug - okay...one more time. It was out of control, but it was so private. This person who I thought couldn't stand me now somehow desired me, and there was something powerful for me about that. I think it kind of carried me away, and, because it was so secret, and because we thought we were getting away with it, it was like I didn't have any big hook coming in to shake me out of it.
I guess I write this all out now because maybe someone out there is in a similar circumstance and doesn't know how to snap out of it. Quite simply, if I had this to do over again, I would have told my husband about it sooner. There would still be consequences to suffer, no matter when it came out, but doing something like this is a clear message that something IS WRONG. The longer this went on for me, the deeper I burried the problems. Ultimately, this went on for five years. Only a couple times each year, when we would see them. It turns out that my husband suspected something all along. HE was afraid to rock the boat, and was just hoping it would stop and go away - also not healthy. He ended up confronting me about it finally and I owned up to everything. And THAT is when my journey began to understand myself, how much I had buried, how many past issues I had not resolved. I would give my left arm (and I'm left handed!) to go back in time and stop the spiral that happened, but I know that isn't an option. How I get through my days now is to realize that it is only through this incredible pain and owning up that I actually am finding myself able to see "me" in a more whole and complete way. Wish that I had found some other way to get here, but I didn't and only have where I'm at today to work with.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (17 March 2011): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThank you for that response. It felt very comforting and was nice to be reminded about the "sorry". I've said it so many times and in so many ways, but, as one friend said to me, you can never say it enough. One of the things that I'm learning by going through this process of self-forgiveness is that it isn't about letting myself off the hook. And, it isn't about doing enough "good" stuff to tip the scales. It's about accepting actions, taking responsibility for them, and allowing yourself to stop being held captive to the guilt and shame. True growth, I'm finding, is beginning to come when I can be really vulnerable and accept that I am not perfect and that my past actions (productive and destructive, good, bad and indifferent) make up the person I am today. I have an obligation to learn from my actions to ensure that some mistakes are never repeated, but that doesn't erase them...from reality or memory. After reading the response, I wrote an email to my husband to say, again, that I'm sorry. I shared with him a bit about my process of self-forgiveness and reiterated to him that forgiveness can't and won't remove the sense of sorrow and regret I feel.
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A
male
reader, sam44 +, writes (17 March 2011):
Thanks for elaborating your story. From the tone of your message, you seem like a really nice lady who just got caught in the wrong place, which i believe is forgivable if you really go all the way to your knees to show how much you are sorry. don't be ashamed, its the last thing you need right now. This is the time you need to strip of all your pride and ego to the ground. This man loves you, but you teared down his ego, he probable feel inferior and humiliated... and its understandable considering its his friend.
Don't give up on apologizing, giving up will show how much of a troll woman you're. I know whats going on in his head, he wants to see if you're a devoted woman, and if you actually have changed. Its not easy to make someone back after such a thing without great conviction that someone is truly sorry, not just ashamed and feeling guilty. So what does that mean? Change, NEVER EVER do that again. if you have a feeling you will repeat what you did. Leave the man alone and let him have his peace. Cheating is a devastating act that shouldn't be taken lightly... understand?
Another thing, evaluating why you cheated in the first place, wasn't he satisfying you? where you just giving up on loving each other? work stress? Whatever the case. Look through it and resolve it before you go any further.
The biggest consequence of your act is that your kids will lose respect for you if they learn you are the causer of the divorce, they might grow up to hate you. So be careful how you handle this, you might lose everything including the kids. Good luck and remember we all make mistakes. Cheers:)
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reader, anonymous, writes (15 March 2011): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThank you for the responses. I guessed that folks would probably need or want more information to make thoughtful responses. I find myself scared to share the details of my story, even in this online, anonymous way because I fear the judgment of others that would only serve to make me feel worse when I am already hurting so desperately. Yes, there was infidelity involved on my part. I had a series of sexual encounters with my husband's best friend. I hesitate to call it an affair because the incidents were isolated to only times that we were together as couples. I never saw this man outside of those situations. Yet, I don't want to minimize the severity of what I did. It sounds so terrible to write it out this way. It was terrible. It was the worst thing that I have ever and will ever do and I'm uncertain how much to go into explaining how and why it happened. It was kind of like falling down a rabbit hold of deceit. I didn't think my husband had any suspicions and so the encounters continued to happen. There was no love involved on either side of this. I've spent a year of therapy trying to understand how and why I could have done this. I've gotten to a place of some clarity and have begun some self-forgiveness just so that I could go on with living and not be completely consumed with guilt each minute of my life. I realize that, for my husband, this is something incredibly wounding. Yet, he continues to show me love and tells me how great of a person he thinks I am. I think that the realization of this thing was just too overpowering for him and leaving became the only thing that he could do to find some sanity for himself. I get this. I even get if he needed to divorce me and end any relationship with me. The challenge for me now is that we continue to kind of "play" family when he is around. I don't know how to manage this. I feel compelled to back off from him and provide him space. I have been supportive of him moving out and have continued to stress that, no matter what happens between us, I will always facilitate his relationship with our children.What happened is so out of character for me and for our relationship. We've told our family and some friends and the response has been utter shock. To the outside, our relationship looked wonderful. We have great communication in many ways, but I had tremendous issues of defensivenss that weren't really uncovered until all of this came to light. My husband is truly a great man. But, he also has some past issues that he is also dealing with through a therapist. I'm not sure what else to say. I guess I am just looking for advice from anyone who may have experienced or known someone who experienced this level of broken trust in a relationship and how they found a way to move forward. I'm also looking for ways to interact with my husband that can be constructive. We've had so many years together that falling back into this place of comfort with him is very easy.
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A
male
reader, C. Grant +, writes (15 March 2011):
I'd like to help, but honestly, without knowing what you feel you have to atone for, I don't know what to say. It sounds like he's trying to make this as easy as possible for the kids, which says *good guy* to me.
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male
reader, the_phoenic  +, writes (15 March 2011):
if you are seeing a therapist
tell him/her what to do to restore your marriage health,
i suggest though to give him his time to release the pressure and the hidden agony
show him that you have changed and regret what you have done by then if he still loves he well return back to you
...is there any infidility involved in you story?
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A
male
reader, sam44 +, writes (15 March 2011):
What did you do, its hard to give objective advise without knowing what you did. You are not the internet, no one knows you! Until then you will be lost because no one can help what they don't know... goodluck however!
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