Hello everyone!
Getting over an affair is a struggle. It’s a struggle with respect to how you approach the wayward spouse, and it’s a struggle with respect to how you approach and manage your emotions.
Our discussion for this week centers on your struggles…What are your greatest struggles at the moment with respect to the affair, and what are you doing to deal – or at least cope – with those struggles?
Please feel free to explain your situation and also offer help to others!
Have a great day!
Doug & Linda
13 replies to "Discussion: What Are Your Greatest Struggles After the Affair?"
I think my biggest struggle is feeling like i may not have the whole truth from my husband………i feel i had to pull it all out of him and he would keep it inside out of fear and therefore i am recovering but based on lies or what i dont know…………I am a need to know kind of person………
That is exactly how I felt when my wife cheated on me. I had to pull the truth out of her everyday. For a whole month I kept catching her in lies everyday and now a year and a half later I feel like there is still the truth hiding in her mind that she is not sharing. I too am a need to know person and it wasn’t just bad enough that she betrayed me but it destroyed me when she just couldn’t come clean and tell the truth. It was like a double betrayal and it hurt worse because she knew that she was hiding the truth and she knew that I knew she was not telling the truth and she just kept trying to decieve and that hurt worse than her actually sleeping with him.
Actually, I don’t trust her to this day and it was a direct result of her lying and not telling the truth when that is all I asked for after she got caught. If she works late I don’t believe her. She totally and completly destroyed my trust in her. I really don’t even know why I am still married. Had she been honest about everything I would have been more hurt in the begining but at least I would have been able to trust her now. I can’t keep being married to a woman that I will never trust again.
Hands down biggest struggle- No Team Effort.
A little over 3 months post D-day and biggest struggle is communication. We’re past that period of showing remorse and discussing EA but unable to move forward and communicate (never our strong point) effectively. Am now reading everything I can about communication in marriage.
Previously I would withdraw and be silent – which now I know sent/sends a negative message. But how to communicate positively? I obviously have no clue.
That I am never going to get over it.
Biggest struggle? Good question. My biggest struggle, as the one who cheated, is wondering if I will ever live this down, if he will ever look at me the same way again, and if I will ever feel like I have rights within the marriage.
Its been 3 years and my husband still does not feel that what he has done is wrong. The relationship ended 3 years ago but the contact only ended 6 mnths ago. Trying to keep up my self worth for the past 3 years has been impossible.
What are your greatest struggles at the moment with respect to the affair, and what are you doing to deal – or at least cope – with those struggles?
1) My struggle is that how will my husband learn to love me again and let go of his love for the other woman. He is determined what he has with her is LOVE and that she has made him a better person and that when they are together he is not hurting, where when he is with me he does.
2) I am terrified of D day coming up, it is in March, so still a little way off. However I am scared of the looming day as it will mean we have been separated 12 months and he can then have grounds to divorce me, even though he makes NO mention of divorce, he never has.
3) Me not asking questions as I know that pushes him away and how do I try to build my self esteem so I become more alluring and interesting and a happy person to be around.
4) I guess just looking for the positives in why my husband still wants to work on our marriage when he is so in love with this other woman. I struggle as to just not to tell him to go and do and be with who his heart wants. I need to stop tellin ghim what to do and let him do the hard work of rebuilding himself and our marriage.
5) I need to pull back from trying to fix our marriage and fix me instead. I just don’t really know how to do this! I am LOST and confused!
Biggest struggle – like Brokenhearted – is not knowing the truth or at least as much of the truth as I need to make a decision about my marriage. The horrifying nightmare that my husband might die and leave me with all the questions he refuses to answer.
Knowing that he has been terribly disloyal to me. Not being able to get past the fear of what he said to the OW, whether he still feels the same about me as he did then.
Knowing that my H has recently lied and kept secrets again (same issue) and might never change. No expressed remorse from him, he still ‘hasn’t done anything wrong’. What he really feels deep down, God knows, but he won’t say it.
Knowing that things can never be the same as they were and being afraid they will never be as good (even though it so obviously was a fantasy at the time).
Feeling trapped in an imperfect marriage and not being able to make a decision either way: do I stay or do I go? Why? Can I accept the imperfection? Are the good things, the shared past, the companionship worth staying? Not knowing what I want and not knowing whether I will ever know what I want. And not knowing what he wants deep down: is he just happy with a so-so marriage an an ‘OK wife’ or is he really happy with me and with ‘us’?
At this point in time my biggest struggles are the following:
1) My husband still works with his EA lover. His affair lasted (per his recollection 9m) and ended in July. He has apologized. He says that it’s over and he has learned his lesson. He says that he has changed and I see many different things about him to support that. However, she has never shown one ounce of remorse or that it was wrong and treated him much different (I see the e-mails as he has become transparent to all email). I am still very frightened that as long as she’s available I am still “Up against her”. He has applied at other places for jobs but his job is so speicalized that it’s very difficult for him to get another one. As a result there’s the two of them working together.
2) Then the other side of me doesn’t know if I should just live one day at a time and if I do my best and we continue reconciling through openness and honesty, transparency, and meeting needs then if another affair occurs that’s all i can do and quit. I know this has been a struggle for me and I lost over 25lbs, considered suicide (leaving the kids alone stopped me) so don’t want to fight through it again.
3) I wish there was a way I could help my husband also deal with issues or anger at her, and guilt about the issue.
Knowing that he could be contacting her or she contacting him and I would never know. That they could be meeting still and I would never know. That they could have a secret plan to get together when the smoke clears and when her situation improves. That everything he and I are doing right now is a big, fat joke on me.
I feel the same way. If i missed it the first time, what’s to say i am not missing it again. The only thing visible is the drinking has stopped, I don’t find texts to her, but he is 40 miles away from me everyday, and two miles away from her. I can feel the whole truth has not been said, for fear i would pack and go. Women just sense these things, and I know for the most part, I am usually right about them. I just got a promotion, so i can take care of the kids and myself without him. But I find myself feeling sorry for him, because he has legal issues attached to his betrayl that may scar him for life. why do we feel we have to look out for them? even after they decimate us? I am so confused, tired, hurt, sad, lonely, I try to read my bible to keep a foundation under me, but I feel like I am in a bubble inside myself. Like my walking world is not me. I am embarassed to turn to anyone, because they all told me he would do this..but i believed him, now i know better…peace of mind…….waiting