Reply to If you cheated and stayed married

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You show completely remorse - an understanding of how your actions impacted your spouse and kids (directly or through the impact on your spouse).

You provide transparency and answer honestly any questions your spouse wants answered. You make sure that if you are holding some info back (to protect your spouse) or if you have lied about anything - that you come clean. Finding out new or changed details later is often the nail in the coffin.

You accept that you swung a wrecking ball through the house that is your marriage. Whether or not the foundation is still intact enough to rebuild on takes time to determine.

Realize that for the first 2-3 years after discovering the affair, your spouses processing of the event and feelings about it will continue to change. You need to accept that months from now there can be periods of mistrust or anger or a need to revisit it. It is a loss and there is grief and it takes time to process.

Visit survivinginfidelity website. they have a forum on reconciling and first hand experiences from people who have been both successful and unsuccessful at reconciling. [/quote]

Thank you, this was helpful. One of the issues I struggle with is answering the questions, particularly the ones about why it happened - I truthfully don’t know. I can identify that I had poor boundaries and got caught up in some stupid feeling of excitement, but it’s not like I was seeking this out. I was not unhappy or unfulfilled in the marriage, which my spouse is having a hard time with (understandably). I was just a really stupid thing to do, and I can’t identify with what I was thinking/feeling at the time. [/quote]

You need to dig deep and come to a conclusion as to why you broke your vows, since you said you weren’t unhappy or unfulfilled, and work on that or else you just may repeat it. You asked in your original post about straying again. Do you think you’d stray again?[/quote]

No, I wouldn’t stray again. It was stupid, and I regret nearly throwing everything away. Maybe I already did throw everything away. I don’t know how to repair this. I don’t think I had a deep reason for doing it, just...stupidity. Taking everything for granted. Letting myself get carried away. I would never do it again.[/quote]

Are you in individual therapy? That is where you are going to figure out the why. And it seems like the why has to do with you and not your marriage. It’ll probably be a combination of “I’m getting older and she made me feel young again. even if she herself isn’t young. The jolt that sexual energy makes every feel young. “It felt good. No underlying reason other than it felt good. And I compartmentalized married me from selfish me.”  Or “real life is messy and complicated. And affairs are easy and uncomplicated. I wanted to step away from real life.”

Go talk to a therapist. When doing root cause analysis, ask 5 whys. Meaning, every time you think of a reason, ask why. Once you answer it, ask why again. Keep going until you get to the heart. She can’t move forward until she knows why because if you don’t know why, how can she ever trust you won’t fall into another affair? [/quote]

NP here. I think the reasons you cite ... "it felt good" "It made me feel young" and most importantly, "I wanted to step away from real life, this husband, and challenging children and have some uncomplicated, selfish me time ..." resonate with me. I have excuses, of course. I have some resentment directed at my husband for action/behavior that let me and our family down. I'm still married, but shouldn't be. I'm still married, but not a loving wife. I'm still married and faking it much of the time. Husband is a fine person. No plans to divorce. Hoping I'll curl out of the U-curve of unhappiness and discontent soon. [/quote]

Whatever you do, please model respect towards your DH. I lived in a home that the two people showed in little tiny ways just how much contempt they had for each other. It really f-ed my up. Yes, my parents stayed together, but it still damaged me. The goal isn't to have an intact family. It's to have a happy loving intact family. I would suggest reading some John Gottman books. Maybe even go to a weekend workshop (given by Gottman trained therapists). Your children deserve to see two parents who love and respect each other. [/quote]

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