9 things you should NOT do to recover from an affair and save your marriage.
By Linda & Doug
Over the course of the last year and a half or more, we have written about many different things when it comes to helping you recover from an affair and save your marriage.
Today we’re going to change it up a bit, and suggest some things you should NOT do in your own affair recovery process – in no particular order.
1. Keep your anger and emotions bottled up inside.
While it’s true that you need to learn how to manage your emotions and control your anger, it’s good – at least initially – to let them all out. Get angry, yell, scream, and do whatever it takes to release these emotions and feelings. Just don’t get to the point where there is any physical violence. Learn to understand what these emotions and thoughts really mean and how they affect you and your relationship.
2. Continue to obsess about the other person.
You definitely want details about the other person. What do they look like? What’s their personality? What did they share with your spouse? The questions are endless. From our experience, this curiosity is a major obstacle in affair recovery.
Staring at his or her picture on Facebook does nothing but make things worse. It’s natural to want (need) to know all you can about the other person, but you HAVE to let it go at some point. Don’t let the other person have all that power over you.
3. Don’t talk about the affair.
The cheating spouse will absolutely hate to talk about the affair initially and in many cases may never want or agree to discuss it. It is imperative however, that they do. Talking about the underlying reasons for the affair, what was lacking in your relationship prior to the affair and how (or if) you are going to fix things in order to save your marriage is a necessity.
4. Wallow in self-pity.
Yes you are devastated and feel immense pain, anger, betrayal and hurt. You feel worthless. Your self-esteem and self-confidence is shot. Doubt and uncertainty fills your mind every minute of the day. These are all natural and to be expected.
But we’re here to tell you that you have to pick yourself up. You need to work on you. Do things that you enjoy doing – with people you enjoy being with. Rebuild your self-confidence by doing little things that you know you are good at. Get in the best shape of your life. We promise that working on you will help in the long run more than you can imagine.
5. Not exploring your own self.
At some point you must analyze yourself, your vulnerabilities, your own happiness, and what was going on with your life that made you feel bored, unhappy, etc.
6. Ignoring the previous problems in the marriage.
Not discussing the problems in the marriage that had a negative effect on your relationship. It’s imperative that you discuss how each partner contributed to the demise of the marriage, though not blaming the betrayed spouse for the affair or justifying the affair in any way.
7. Devaluing the effects of the affair.
For the cheating spouse, not realizing how devastating their affair was to their partner and not appropriately feeling remorseful for their actions or asking for forgiveness. Additionally, they cannot rush any aspect of the healing process or suggest that the betrayed spouse needs to “just get over it and move on.”
8. Not being completely honest with your spouse about the affair.
The cheating spouse must not cover up details or only supply half-truths . Eventually everything will come out. Lying to your spouse or withholding relevant details only delays the rebuilding of trust.
9. Don’t get counseling or create other outside support systems.
Recovering from an affair is something that you cannot go through alone – as an individual or alone as a couple. It’s important that you utilize a professional therapist (which we highly suggest), clergy person, mentor or friend who can be an objective third party and help you recover from an affair. Just be sure to choose wisely. (Find a therapist here.)
The Affair Recovery folks have a nice video that provides some additional nuggets of advice to help prevent a person from doing any further harm to themselves, their spouse, or their situation.
As with all lists that we put together, we’re sure that we are probably missing some other important points. Please feel free to add any that you feel are appropriate in the comment section.
25 replies to "9 Ways to Not Recover From an Affair"
Some on this list I have done, the hardest has been to let go of the obsession surrounding the other woman and their time together…. it does get easier with time…..
Another ‘not to do’ (from my own personal experience) is try NOT to tell the whole world and their granny about what happened, while I didn’t inform the planet I did send a general email to some of our closest common friends and his parents (and sister)…. today his parents do not speak to me, in many ways they see it as MY FAULT that their son cheated on me…. this makes everything difficult and family get-togethers no longer happen, my family are all back in Ireland, I live in France so when I return home I go alone, when he visits his family here he goes alone….
Very sad and I don’t know if we will be able to get through this storm together…. I try to have hope, that’s the best I can do today 🙂
Great advice! As a therapist, I would caution about the complete honesty, though. The participating partner should be completely honest with their spouse but my caution goes towards the injured partner who wants to know everything at once. Often, they want to know all the dirty details like how many times they had sex, what positions they tried, if the participating partner like having sex in those positions more with the outside partner, etc. The injured partner understandably wants to know all and the participating partner should be completely honest answering these questions but it usually only does more harm (at least initially) to have this level of disclosure.
Thanks Aaron. You are absolutely right and we should have mentioned that sometimes you want to be really sure you want to know all of the details. Thanks for pointing that out!
Well, I thought last evening that we may be turning a corner, now I’m not so sure………
Last evening I reminded my H that anything and anybody related to his job was a trigger for me because he committed his emotional ‘dalliances’ there.
Last evening he appeared to be finally coming round to the fact that he’d caused a whole nasty heap of damage, that it’s changed me and the marriage forever and I won’t heal overnight.
I get home this evening and over dinner my H tells me he unerstands my need to be on this site as a release. He assures me that I won’t have anything else to worry about and that he’ll come straight home on Saturday after filming with the other girl he’s been inappropriate with. He says he’s read printouts from this site and seems all round understanding – ‘I know you’ll need time’ and all this………
THEN he informs me that when his dad / my FIL comes to stay next weekend there’ll be an extra person accompanying us to the meal that our FIL is taking us out for – one of my H’s colleagues. THE PSYCHIC WHO INTERVIEWED THE STUPID WOMAN WHO WENT ON ABOUT ANGELS, AND EVEN MORE STUPIDLY ADVISED MY HUSBAND TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THAT INNER CHILD OF HIS THAT’S RUN RAMPANT AND CAUSED CHAOS THROUGHOUT OUR MARRIAGE.
Suffice it to say I’m now incredibly pissed off. Especially as my H said he’d considered asking me if I minded but made the decision ON HIS OWN WITH NO INPUT FROM ME THAT I WOULDN’T MIND.
So I voiced my concerns and disappointment and he says ‘well you can always choose not to go!’ So I’d have to miss out because my H didn’t stop to consider me. AGAIN.
This is exactly why I’m so damned reluctant to let down the barriers and trust him.
Then he’s ‘I think you’re being unfair to my friend he’s done nothing to you.’ I remind him of my TRIGGERS. H says ‘well can’t you just contain your feelings’ and ‘you don’t want to spoil the evening do you’ and all this. Then he says he didn’t think and he’ll remember next time. And I’m left wondering what the hell I’m going to do.
I was looking so forward to the meal but I’m now really angry that my H and FIL have organised this affair trigger as extra company without even thinking about me. My H said he invited his colleague because FIL invited him. But this has also been a problem throughout our marriage – H and FIL organising stuff and just assuming I’ll go along with it and say nothing. BUT THIS IS A WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL GAME!!!
Can someone give me some input / advice on how to deal with this? Sorry but I feel like strangling someone right now – any constructive suggesitons? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?
Thanks once again for some great tips, Doug and Linda. I completely agree with both comments you’ve posted today, Aaron. When I have had questions all through this process, I have first asked myself “Why do I want to know this?” and “Do I really want to know? aka what will it do to me to know this?” We have had to dispose of furniture as a result of knowing what occurred there…
Alycon, I believe this psychic is no good for your marriage, your husband or anyone else. Why your H and FIL want to wine and dine him is beyond me, but it sure seems like the main thing is your H not respecting you and your feelings.
Doug, Linda, this is great advice. Like everyone I wanted to know ‘what she’s got that I haven’t, why is she so special, why do you think she’s the bee’s knees if she’s the type to hit on someone else’s husband?’
He said when they met ‘they just clicked’. He conveniently ignored the fact that she had (and still has) a boyfriend of her own.
I never asked what she looked like, it was an accident for me; I found out because he splattered photos of the two of them (and another VERY young woman) all over his public blog. (The photos were a gimmick – they called themselves the ‘Angels’ of the place they work at – a parody on ‘Charlie’s Angels’. But I can’t reveal the name of the workplace for obvious reasons).
Suffice to say accessing the blog became way too painful for me so I don’t bother with it any more.
What worries me is that our life prior to his EA hasn’t changed now. We still spend way too much time apart and he still only wants to talk about stuff he’s interested in – no discussions or talks about what went wrong with the marriage or what we’re going to do about it.
Rcr, thank you for validating my feelings. My H told me this guy did a reading for FIL and FIL invited him as a thank you. And my H asked him ‘because he’s my friend’. Doesn’t make me feel any better though. He should be thinking about the effect it’s having on me; I’ll remember next time’ really doesn’t cut it.
I’m currently sitting at my desk at work with a steaming cup of coffee in front of me (believe me I need it after the sleepless night I’ve had), and I’m struggling with trying to decide if I should attend this meal now; I know for a fact that my H, FIL and the psychic (or medium or whatever) are going to be talking all evening about their filming.
And my H expects me to just sit there sweetly smiling and suffering in silence?!?!? Seems more like he’s expecting me to take responsibility again.
This morning he’s ‘what are you going to do when I’m filming tomorrow?’ I’m ‘I’ve already told you – worrying about what you’re doing around the girl you’ve behaved inappropriately with.’ Then he says I don’t have to worry and he’ll come straight home and not hang around and all this. He says I’m not givnig him a chance. He had a chance when the issue of his friend joining us for dinner came up. He blew it.
I’m just going to throw my 2 cents in about the issue of total honesty. I believe that the spouse that had the EA should answer all questions asked by the BS honestly. To expand on that, I will say that the guilty spouse should not divulge more details than what was asked for (I hope that makes sense). And the BS needs to stop and think about questions before you let them fly out of your mouth. Like RCR said, do you really want to know and are you prepared to accept the answser? All things are revealed in time, I believe, if both parties truly want to save their marriage.
In response to Alycon…
I know you feel extremely frustrated right now. And what I’m about to say is probably going to come off as condescending but that is not my intent. I’ve been where you are and I understand what and how you’re feeling. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to control your husband’s actions. Instead spend that energy on you. Working on yourself is so important at this stage. Yourself is the only person you have control over. You must look out for yourself. Stay healthy, go shopping and buy you a new outfit, treat yourself to a spa day, have a girls night out. Especially if there are kids involved, I’m not sure if that is the case, but if so those children need the stability of their mother. If your H wants to save your marriage, he will see the positive changes you make in yourself without you having to say anything to him about it. Hopefully those positive things will make him want to fix himself.
I also wanted to share this quote with you. I read an article on another site, http://www.beyondaffairs.com I think it is. I think this sums up the whole issue of obsessing about the OP…
“When we harbor unforgiveness within our hearts it literally destroys us from the inside out, and it gives the offender power not only over our past, but over our future as well.”
Obsessing about the OP and living with all that hatred pent up inside is hurting no one but you. The OP is going on about their life. They are not thinking about you sitting around obsessing about them, nor would they care if they did know. Don’t give them that kind of power. The OP has stolen enough of your time and energy already.
Linda and Doug, thanks for this list. I had already considered all of these points when I found out about about H’s EA.
I certainly did find myself asking my H what she had that I didn’t, why he thought she was the ‘bees knees’ if she was the kind of person to hit on someone elses’ H. He just said that they ‘clicked’ when they met.
As for obsessing about what she looked like, I didn’t want to know. My H used to come home and describe her and her body and said she was ‘gorgeous’; however he now denies that he said those things.
I also found out myself by accident what she looked like when I went on his blog about his job and saw him posing in pictures of the two of them and another VERY young girl; they all called themselves ‘Angels’ of the place they work (a parody of the series ‘Charlies’ Angels’ !!! but obviously I can’t mention the workplace though I’d like to – and the two women he had his arms around / was having the EA with).
I stopped looking at the blog because seeing him posing like that with her and other girls was far too painful for me. Even his friends asked him if he’d thought about how it would affect me and one of them said it was as if he was ‘rubbing my nose in it’.
The worrying thing for me is that though my H made brief references to not being happy with the marriage as the reason he did this he has still not made a move to sit down with me and talk about it.
This has been a massive problem all the way through our marriage; every attempt I’ve ever made has resulted in horrible fights because he said it was my attitude.
We still don’t spend enough time together, he still only talks about what he finds interesting. There has been no real attempt to work with me to explore the best way to improve our marriage. It’s basically ‘business as usual’.
Basically I’m the one who’s been to counsellors and tried to ‘sort myself out’. I have never whinged about what I see is petty stuff like leaving the toilet seat up and squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle , or dropping a glass or plate and breaking them, or leaving the back door open and letting flies in; I focus on the fundemental issues that can damage one’s marriage – refusing to communicate, betrayal of trust, lack of respect, etc.
Apparently my H has discussed us with this medium but I’m still waiting for him to agree to see a marriage counsellor (he says he doesn’t want our private business discussed with anyone outside our marriage?!?!?).
This morning he asked me what I’ll be doing tomorrow when he’s filming with the girl he behaved inappropriately with (who’s also engaged and marrying next year!!!); I’m ‘as I’ve already told you I’ll be wondering how you’ll be conducting yourself around that girl’, and he’s ‘I assure you I’ll come back home as soon as I can’ and all this. Then he’s ‘you’re not giving me a chance.’ But didn’t he blow another chance last evening when the arrangements over the meal came up?
So I’m now sitting here at work and wondering where I go from here. One of the ladies on this site yesterday advised me to give it two months, maybe more, of ‘backing off’ time; unfortunately I feel my H has always taken advantage of the fact that I love him so much and let me down so often because he thinks I won’t do anything drastic. This feels no different to me.
Alycon,
Please don’t think I am siding with your H on this (as I am the cheater in my marriage) but he’s not over it yet. What he displays to me are actions that he doesn’t think before he jumps. Obviously you see this already but he doesn’t. I can tell you that the ‘fog’ he is in is disrupting everything that is valuable to him. I too thought work was creating a younger better more interesting ‘me’ and all I was doing was hurting my best friend of 24yrs. I don’t know your whole story but I urge you to get him to go with you to counseling. I hated it myself because I was the cheater. I was the one having to explain to a complete stranger (with my wife sitting beside me) details I had hoped not to. What I found though was that a therapist isn’t a stranger on the train, they see and have seen this situation many many times before and can speak from experience. They aren’t for or against the marriage staying together, they are there for you and your H and help to guide you along in the process. It has been 9mos since d-day and I am a changed person now who never wants to go back to ‘that guy’ again. This all takes time but you must remember YOU. This wasn’t about you, this was about him and his failure to seek you out.
I feel your pain @alycon – my own husband came home last night after having gone to a work function and he was a little tipsy…. these are the very reasons we ended up where we are now and he just doesn’t get why I’m angry…. I get closer and closer to tossing in the towel but he doesn’t even see it….
I’ve tried to explain that before I discovered his affair I could tolerate his long hours at work and could understand why he needed to be seen at events etc because the trust I had for him and our marriage helped to keep everything in balance, now there is no more trust so therefore something else has to change in order for the scales of the balance to ….. well….. balance.
Let us know how you got on….
Thanks to everyone who responded to my post, believe me, I don’t think anyone’s being condescending or siding with my H, I value every piece of input and advice from everyone on this site and I’m truly grateful to all of you. It’s kind of like having brothers and sisters looking out for you. I’m just so incredibly heartbroken that I had to seek a site like this out in the first place because, as TrulySorry said, he didn’t seek ME out.
But jeez, yes, I’ve always known I’m in a lot of pain and I am so so angry but when I read your affirmations of my feelings it really hit home just how powerful those feelings are.
I’ve never for one minute taken my marriage for granted and never been stupid or arrogant enough to think that it would always be plain sailing, which is why I’ve always tried to engage him in discussions when things needed tackling, and yes, I did approach them in the wrong way at times, but when you put your trust in someone and they do this good heavens, the shock, especially when you’re new to this kind of thing (as it hasn’t happened to me before).
I agree with all if your comments 100% and, RecoveringMommy, as soon as I realised that my suspicions about him and her were justified, when I got to work the day after I immediately rang our work’s counsellng service to arrange an urgent appointment with someone who specialised in this kind of thing.
By the time I got to see her I was so distressed that she calmly insisted that I get to my GP asap for some antidepressants. She also advised me to take some time off work and focus on me, which I did, and that is what I’ve been doing ever since though I’m back at work now. She did warn me that there’d be days when I’d probably hardly feel anything about it and others when I’d feel awful. I guess when I posted yesterday it was one of my awful days. But doesn’t it just show how damaging EA’s can be?
I’d love to be able to go to a spa or something like that, but I can’t afford it. But I do take time out for myself, I read, I’m in contact with my family, lunch breaks I leave the office for some fresh air, I browse the shops. Pity I can’t spend any money!!
As for the OP, I don’t want her mentioned in our house, nor the other young girl that my H feels the need to ‘cater to’. Unfortunately my H has this habit of talking with his friends about other women; when I got home this evening he was on the phone to the friend who ‘reprimanded’ him about his acitons and he mentioned this young girl. I had to ask him (no I didn’t scream at him) could he please not mention her or defend her on the phone in our home. I guess I’ll just have to get some earplugs or something like that. 🙁
TrulySorry, I appreciate the male perspective on this, and I so respect you for fighting your way out of the fog and taking the steps necessary for your marriage. I value your advice about urging my H to see a counsellor, you know something, I’ve been asking him for ages to see one with me, the last time was last week and I got another non-committing response – ‘that’s a big step, I’ll have to think about it.’
I suppose I’m like everyone on here, when that red mist of pain and rage hits it clouds all one’s judgement and ability to think with clarity, but now that I’m calmer I’m thinking that he’s reluctant because he’s scared silly; my counsellor said that if he was sat in front of her eventually all the layers would start to peel away…. out of interest, were you very resistant too? What made you decide to see someone with your wife? Can you offer any tips as to how I can achieve this? BTW please give my regards to your wife.
Irish Kate, I feel the same concern and apprehension when my H goes out in the evenings; he doesn’t take me out and he now attends spiritualist meetings with this medium friend of his and I never get to go even though I’d like to. Each time I ask if I can attend H makes up an excuse for me not to go – last time it was ‘it’s a boy’s night out’. He’s told me that everyone has a guardian angel and all this and I should try and get in touch with mine and ask for their help. (?) Make what you will of that one, folks, but I’ve told him that IMHO this friend of his (who I’ve met by the way and is a very nice person) is filling his head with eosoteric ‘solutions’ that won’t solve our issues. Neither will the tarot readings the guy gives him.
It’s so helpful being able to discuss this with other people, but so sad and discouraging to know that I’m the only person that can’t influence my own H or get him to listen…sigh:-(
Alycon, all just fog, fog, fog. It’s infuriating. I am concerned for you, for what it’s worth, my opinion is you need to start putting time limits on a few things, to try to help you to stay as calm as possible (sounds easy, doesn’t it, lol, I know it’s not) eg, if he hasn’t agreed to accompany you to counselling by ………… date, or started to change his behaviours, even a little, in this way ……………, by this date ………….., you can choose to either tell him, or have these “dates” in your own mind – be realistic about timeframes – it can take some time, but don’t let yourself be miserable forever. Then you need to try hard to let it go, and make a new and better life for yourself, without this ungrateful man, unfortunately, this doesn’t end the misery, but one day, it will begin to fade. In the meantime, no matter how hard you try, he is incapable of helping you at the moment, too selfish now (maybe always?) and we cannot make other people bend to our will, damnit!! You do need to try hard to do some “stuff” for your soul, I understand the lack of funds, me too, but culturing new friendships, reading, getting out and about with positive people, learning new skills, etc. It is REALLY, REALLY hard to contemplate, but sometimes, they just are not worth your time. I feel your heartbreak. My OH is doing all the “right” things, and I’m still heartbroken.
Appreciate the post Paula, rest assured that I’m not ‘playing the doormat’; I’m so much calmer about all this than I was in the beginning and I am slowly finding better ways to deal with it.
I totally get what you say about not being able to control other people, I have basically been honest with him about how it affects me as I imagine everyone on this site is with their CS, I certainly don’t take anti depressants any more either so that’s a positive.
H is taking me out on Sunday to Canterbury; the weather in Kent is apparently going to be rather nice and H has said he wants us to go and enjoy ourselves and get away from things for a while.
I hope everything works out for you (and of course everyone else on here!!)…
Alycon,
I agree with Recovering Mommy and Truly Sorry – your H isn’t over it. My H swore to me on three occasions he had cut all contact with the OP, and I found out afterwards he had not. In between these admissions, he treated me as if I were the one who needed to just “get over it”, and he continued flirtatious and rude behavior with female co-workers (rude to our marriage, I mean), such as inviting one female co-worker to his hotel room after he had called to tell me he was going to bed (this was during a trip they had together), and putting a female co-worker in between him and me at a Christmas work dinner that was specifically for employees and spouses. Everyone else sat next to their spouse, but this woman, who attended alone, walked up after he and I were already seated and said she didn’t want to sit at the head of the table, so he got up to move to the head seat and sat her in between him and me. He cut a piece of food for her to try during dinner, too. I felt so useless and stupid, and I was so confused about what he was doing. Why tell me you want to work things out and then do this to me? And in front of your co-workers and your boss?? It made me so sad.
I used to search his emails constantly. I found that his interactions with all women seem to be flirtatious, and I wonder why he is that way. I stopped reading the emails because it just made me feel worse and because he admitted to deleting emails he didn’t want me to see. So what’s the point in searching?
In the last couple of months, I believe I have seen a change. He continues to swear up and down that he has no contact with OP even though they still work at the same, very small, company. I don’t know whether to believe him. He says he feels so sorry for the pain he caused and he feels horrible for what he did and wishes he had come to me with his feelings instead of starting the EA with her. I see pain in his face sometimes when I catch him looking at me, yet I wonder if it’s from the pain he caused me or if he’s looking at me, wishing I were her and missing her. And I wonder if the reason I believe I have seen a change in him is that I’m not seeing his email daily where I have proof of the flirting. But, either way, I will say there is a definite change in behavior from a couple of months ago. I no longer see the arrogant, defiant, competely uncaring side of him, and he seems to feel embarrassed by having been that way. I would say if your H is still acting that way to you, he’s not over it.
why would you want to keep your spouse after an affair? obviously they aren’t trust worthy. they exposed you to std’s. the martial vows meant nothing to them. this isn’t what you deserve. theres no virtue in staying w/ a partner who does all these things just to say “i stuck it out”. your partner is a liar. its just stupid to trust a liar.
Yeah, that’s a weakness, we love our SO, it’s sad that we want to keep our vows even though they didnt, but yeah, we still love our lying cheating spouses.
also, why do you women blame the other woman? she didn’t make you any promises. if your husband didn’t honor or respect the marriage enough to stay out another womans bed; why would a stranger?
obviously a person who cheats is unhappy. its not your fault that they are unhappy and its not your responsibiity to fix them or the issue(s) they have. you can’t unring a bell. if your husband cheated WHY would you accept that and allow him to stay in your life? the lack of respect is outragous. once you “forgive” this, whats left? next time your spouse crosses a line what will you do? or do you not have any lines anymore, is everything acceptable because its better than the alternative of being divorced.
It sounds as if you’ve never been married or loved someone completely, trust me, if I could just turn off loving her I would in a second, but we all make bad decisions, I’ll let it pass once if she is truly sorry, the pain of never being with her again would be worse then her doing it again, hell, I love her so much I may even share before I left her, I asked if she wanted an open marriage, she said no because she don’t want me with anyone else, wtf. I told her let’s go to a sex party, that I think being with someone new would be exciting also, I found a guy at a bar when we were out of state and brought him home and asked her if she wanted to have a 3 way, I think she got the point, be faithful or I’m going to have fun also, I really couldn’t do that though, I want no one but her, she just figured out if she was going to act like a slut that I would treat her like one. I just got pissed off and went crazy for a little while, everything has been just great the last 9 months, she acting like the lady I married again, instead of the whores she turned into. That was a hard in your face lesson that should have never been taught, I was completely out of line but I didn’t care, just like she didn’t care for a while.
Thanks for your input JS, it would seem that you’re right; I don’t mention the woman he had the EA with as much any more but on the rare occasions I have if I criticised her in some way he says I’m being nasty, and this is despite the fact that he doesn’t bother to deliberately ‘seek her out for chats’ any more.
When I told him I wasn’t happy with him approaching her for the CD disk to give to the other woman he’s acted inappropriately around he said ‘I’m bound to bump into her.’ I just pointed out that if he was serious about staying away from her he had to ignore her and never approach her, but I’m through with all that now.
As one of our other regular posters has said, we can’t control them, and all I can do is communicate to him honestly how this affects my ability to trust him and prevents me from healing. I’m currenlty sitting here taking the advice of other posters and concentrating on keeping myself in as happy a place as I can and I’m not allowing myself to get worked up about it.
I don’t know if you’ve seen my previous post about my H coming onto this site and reading the stuff on here; he did say that he didn’t know how damaging EA’s could be, but he saw what it did to me and he had the feedback from his friends and family before he looked on here; I think his accessing this site and reading our posts just rammed home the fact that he can’t now escape or deny the damage EA’s cause because he seemed less ‘cocky’ afterwards.
Of course I’m getting assurances that he’ll stay away from the woman he’s filiming with when he’s finished this ‘assignment’ and if she approaches him to film again he said he’ll pass her on to someone else. I’m not going to breath fire on him about it, I’ll just keep cool and watch from the sidelines. As we all unfortunately know words mean nothing. It’s the behaviour that speaks volumes. And when the CS is saying one thing and doing something else that smacks of serious inner conflict, does it not?
I hope everyone who visits the site today is okay and you have a lovely day.
I wish that my husband loved me enough to get some marriage counseling with me. He is too embarrassed .I wish our old church members where he was the pastor at would know in their heart that I would have never said anything to the other woman (who was a member of our church)if I had not of had evidence. I wish they could take him off the pedestal they put him on and realize that I am NOT a jealous wife wanting to look to hurt her husband. He made a huge mistake and I will not tell a lie just so he can go back to be the man that knows all and never does wrong. they even have the OW on the new pastor search committee. I am so alone in all this. even with this site there is no one. I really feel I am loosing my self in all this.I really feel he doesn’t want me to get past everything. he says he does but he refuses to do what I need. So what else can he be doing?
Kathy,
He has to do this for you if it is to work. I am trying to get mine to go with me too. You go to counseling first, on your own. But do not worry about him being ‘found out’ or embarrased. Look how he made you feel that way. It’s not fair. Maybe he needs to be humbled and found out. I am glad you said something, do not feel guilty about it, please. I understand how you feel, I see you were up in the wee hours of the morning writing this 🙁
I understand completely, message me if you need to talk.