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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, I was in your shoes not too long ago. I essentially did the same thing, even though I love my spouse very much. I had a weakness with this one person from my past who I should never have allowed back into my life, even as a friend. It took a good three months until we weren't talking about it and shedding tears about it every day. My spouse never wanted out of the marriage over it, though, that I know of.

What helped was for me to offer complete transparency, which I continued to do to this day, about 9 months later. I also answered all questions openly, honestly, and without being upset that the questions were asked in the first place. I think it also helped that my spouse saw how upset I was, saw the regret and shame I felt. I also went into counseling, which we are now doing together.

It sounds like the difference for you is that your spouse does not seem to want to work on the marriage. Is that true? Are there other major issues within your marriage that you have not mentioned? For us--and I know some people will call BS on this -- but we were actually pretty happy before this happened. Not perfect, but happy and in a loving marriage. What's your history?

If you're both willing to work on the marriage, to express yourselves openly, and to show vulnerabilities, you can heal from this. Dig deeper in order to get to know each other more. Just a short 9 months later my spouse and I are doing so much better, but we have both worked for it. [/quote]

OP here. Thanks for sharing. This is exactly what happened with this particular person. [b]She doesn't really want to work on the marriage b/c she doesn't think she did anything wrong.[/b] It took several weeks to get her to come to counseling and it went better than I thought this past weekend. But out of the session, she is expecting that I am already planning everything out and jumping through hoops.

We were pretty happy in the marriage before this happened just like you. She will work on it, but only if I am able to demonstrate my love. I just need to know what she considers amends so that I am not grasping at straws.

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I am the PP you are responding to. The thing is, she didn't do anything to "deserve" your emotional affair or whatever the two of you have decided to call it. My spouse did nothing to cause me to have an emotional affair, either. My spouse did a lot of self-blaming even though I always take 100% responsibility, offering no excuses. Now, throughout the counseling process we have discovered the weaknesses in our marriage. We haven't focused on finger-pointing, but rather strengthening ourselves as individuals and strengthening our marriage. It has allowed us to focus on each of our needs within the relationship, and what the other can do in order to fulfill them. This was sure a shitty way to go about it, and I wouldn't recommend it, but we are ending up stronger because of my emotional affair and the ensuing work we have put into our marriage.

It sounds like the difference is that your wife wants you to just fix things. This is the thing that sucks about affairs. You are the one who betrayed your spouse, but the betrayed spouse, however innocent, has to do a lot of the work in order to heal things. The affair is your fault, but because it is a marriage, you can't fix it by yourself. You both need to do the work. That was the hardest part of what I did-- knowing that I could not just fix everything I fucked up, but that a huge part of the onus was on my innocent spouse. 
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Helpful response.  You are right.  Both parties have to want to work on it even the betrayed spouse.[/quote]

A good marriage counselor will have the cheater work on himself first, find the root cause. You can spin wheels for years if you jump into marriage counseling too soon. If the person who's first instinct is to turn away from the marriage as soon as he has to do dishes and "help" with his own child... there are issues that are not related to the marriage. Anxiety, depression, WTF is wrong with somebody who <6 months after his first child is born is cheating because he had to help out.

After individual counseling to understand your core issues, then you can work on marriage counseling.

If the cheater comes into marriage counseling with "I had to do dishes" and "I had to do a night feeding" and the marriage counselor is like "really, grow up" the cheating spouse will feel ganged up on. If he is in individual counseling, the counselor can find out why he things he should not do dishes and care for his own child. Once he realizes he is an equal partner and can actually be an equal partner then they can go to marriage counseling. 
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