I think it's important for everyone in a relationship to recognize their contributions to the successes and failures of that relationship. Affairs confuse that logic because the affair is a huge lightning rod that has a tendency to obscure all the other failures (and successes) present in a relationship.

I had an affair and ended up getting divorced as a result of it. What led to it? PPD (mine - I'm a woman), a relationship that was already emotionally unhealthy and disconnected, a partner who didn't take those things seriously, and someone who seemed to appreciate/understand me more than my husband did. It did not take long for me (and my AP) to realize that the affair was not what either of us wanted long- or short-term. I told my husband, and we separated. We tried to reconcile, but like OP's husband, I was morning the loss of the affair and was not able to get past or conceal that. Our reconciliation was not successful, and we have been divorced for several years.

In the aftermath of our final separation, my ex and I spent a lot of time hashing out Why This Happened. To his credit, he was willing to listen to my reasons for doing what I did, without blowing them off as 100% moral failings that indicated poor character (or any of the other things that people on this forum say about people who cheat). To my credit, I have never shied away from how damaging what I did was or how I hurt him. I have not blamed him, except in so far as that my decision to have an affair didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened in the context of an already crappy marriage that was not 100% my fault.

Affairs cloud everything. It's hard to see good aspects of your marriage (and there are almost always at least a few, even in the crappiest of marriages). It's hard to see the flaws of your AP as well. It does not sound to me like he is compartmentalizing well at all. Compartmentalization would mean that he was emotionally available to his wife, if he was interested in his child, and then had this other thing going on. He is not walling off his feelings. He is shutting his wife out and keeping his feelings front and center, while minimizing her feelings.

There are ways to reconcile, but it does not sound like the OP's husband is actually invested in doing that.

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like his affair has emotional elements too (meaning it wasn't just sex). In order to become emotionally involved with someone else, he had to convince himself that you were not right for him. Some of what he told himself in order to mentally detach from you is probably correct (because no person and no marriage is perfect--please understand that this is in no way an indictment of you). It's hard to unconvince yourself of that and just check back in to a relationship.

And he is going through a breakup, just like PP said.

I am sorry you're going through this, and I wish you the best.

This. I'm happily married, but recently met another woman who's absolutely perfect for me, the only time in my entire life other than my wife I've felt that way... And she made it known the feeling was mutual. And you know what? I didn't feel *any* inclination to cheat on my wife whatsoever, because my wife is equally perfect for me, I met her first, and she became the love of my life. In-the-moment one time stupidity is one thing, but to have an affair partner long term, you have to be telling yourself that your spouse isn't necessarily the right one for you. That can be unwound, but it'll definitely take some time to do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It takes a special kind of a**h** to have an affair on a wife with a newborn and PPD.

Seems like those things would make a guy somewhat more likely to have an affair.

Don't get me wrong. I think affairs are dishonorable no matter who is having them and what they're excuses might be. But the causes are somewhat more understandable (by which I don't mean excusable) in this situation than on average.

She had PPD and his reaction to it was, not to help her get out of it, but not only to resent her but keep an affair going for a whole year. It could have been that an affair would have been understandable if he was compartmentalizing and was available and helpful at home when not with his mistress, but according to OP, he behaved miserably towards her during this time, coped to thinking of his mistress the whole time even when he was at home, and now that the affair is over, he still is not available emotionally to even his baby !

WTF???

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I don't know if he compartmentalized or just began to have serious anger and resentment towards me. From what he has said, he did think about his mistress all the time, while he was with me. And he compared me to her constantly and decided she was better (she paid more attention to him, lavished him with complements, validated his feelings that I must not even want to be a mom if I wasn't overjoyed all of the time). Instead of being a true friend and trying to help him work through things, she demonized me too and told him he deserved so much better (her, of course). So it's not like he totally loved me while he was with me -he actively resented me.

Now he is just very walled off. He doesn't feel safe around me, he says. Like I might really be this bad person he made me out to be. There's nothing I can do to fix that. I just am not that person and the PPD is gone. I have apologized till the ends of the earth for my role in what caused our initial marital issues but I do not think I can open his emotional door and I don't want to be the one doing all of the work. He says he knows he is at fault for the affair but I think he doesn't really believe it, that instead he still blames me for the majority of our marital issues. In reality, we were both to blame for the problems pre-affair.

Honestly, he needs to deal with his feelings for himself. I'm not going to stick around forever and feel constantly inadequate and unloved. It is a horrible feeling. I can't tell him that or it will push him farther away, but every day is torture and a little bit more of me disappears. That sounds melodramatic but it's true. I'm going to start just focusing on me and healing myself and just try to accept that my relationship with the person who I thought was the love of my life may well be irrevocably damaged beyond repair.

20:22 here: OP, this guy is destroying your self-esteem. You need it in order to raise strong, healthy kid/s. What's more: he's a lousy role model for them. By blaming/shaming you, cutting you off, isolating you -- OK, I'll say it outright -- subjecting you to emotional abuse on top of all the lies and deceit and time he spent outside the home when you needed support through PPD, he's being a total jerk. If you can do it, maybe leaving him is the best thing you can do for yourself. It would certainly set a better example for your kid/s, particularly since DH is taking time off from the child/ren when he has affairs or "mourns his AP."

You worry that the love of your life is irrevocably damaged, but how about you?

Look, imagine your child actually digesting the information that he has told you. He feels like he loves his child less because he can't be with a MISTRESS. He made a baby and then he left that baby to be with a MISTRESS because you had PPD! That whole year of firsts with a newborn is tainted because he was thinking of his MISTRESS the whole time, not his wife and child!

He said he loves his child less because he can't be with his mistress. Honestly. OP, you know what do here. He is not a husband. He is not a father. He is not a man.

Don't let him mope in the house one more second. Pack him a bag. He can grieve elsewhere.

Anonymous wrote:
It takes a special kind of a**h** to have an affair on a wife with a newborn and PPD.

Seems like those things would make a guy somewhat more likely to have an affair.

Don't get me wrong. I think affairs are dishonorable no matter who is having them and what they're excuses might be. But the causes are somewhat more understandable (by which I don't mean excusable) in this situation than on average.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I don't know if he compartmentalized or just began to have serious anger and resentment towards me. From what he has said, he did think about his mistress all the time, while he was with me. And he compared me to her constantly and decided she was better (she paid more attention to him, lavished him with complements, validated his feelings that I must not even want to be a mom if I wasn't overjoyed all of the time). Instead of being a true friend and trying to help him work through things, she demonized me too and told him he deserved so much better (her, of course). So it's not like he totally loved me while he was with me -he actively resented me.

Now he is just very walled off. He doesn't feel safe around me, he says. Like I might really be this bad person he made me out to be. There's nothing I can do to fix that. I just am not that person and the PPD is gone. I have apologized till the ends of the earth for my role in what caused our initial marital issues but I do not think I can open his emotional door and I don't want to be the one doing all of the work. He says he knows he is at fault for the affair but I think he doesn't really believe it, that instead he still blames me for the majority of our marital issues. In reality, we were both to blame for the problems pre-affair.

Honestly, he needs to deal with his feelings for himself. I'm not going to stick around forever and feel constantly inadequate and unloved. It is a horrible feeling. I can't tell him that or it will push him farther away, but every day is torture and a little bit more of me disappears. That sounds melodramatic but it's true. I'm going to start just focusing on me and healing myself and just try to accept that my relationship with the person who I thought was the love of my life may well be irrevocably damaged beyond repair.

FWIW, I think you have the right perspective and you are very open and introspective. Not to say someone is more at fault than another in an affair situation, but your DH does seem to be the one who needs to come around towards you. Your best options are probably just to heal yourself, to better yourself, to be the person that your husband wants to be around, and if he decides for whatever reason he doesn't want to be married to you, you will be in the best possible position to meet someone worthy of your time and love. Good luck, tough road ahead.

Slight correction here : Please do not wait for him to decide, if he wants to be married to you.
Work towards healing, be a great person and meet someone worthy of your time and love. If that worthy person is him, great, if not, no great loss there.

Anonymous wrote:He actually sounds like a horrible person. I'm sorry, OP. I wouldn't try to continue a relationship with this person.

It takes a special kind of a**h** to have an affair on a wife with a newborn and PPD. How dare he continue to blame you? And you are supposed to also understand that he is going through a breakup and STILL cannot be there for you?
I am sorry but I do no see much worth saving here. Even if the marriage could be saved and he somehow becomes a decent DH and human being, you would be left so hollow and empty. Hang in there OP.
It is tough that you pulled yourself out of PPD alone, and are now having to deal with an unremorseful husband moping around for his lover.

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I don't know if he compartmentalized or just began to have serious anger and resentment towards me. From what he has said, he did think about his mistress all the time, while he was with me. And he compared me to her constantly and decided she was better (she paid more attention to him, lavished him with complements, validated his feelings that I must not even want to be a mom if I wasn't overjoyed all of the time). Instead of being a true friend and trying to help him work through things, she demonized me too and told him he deserved so much better (her, of course). So it's not like he totally loved me while he was with me -he actively resented me.

Now he is just very walled off. He doesn't feel safe around me, he says. Like I might really be this bad person he made me out to be. There's nothing I can do to fix that. I just am not that person and the PPD is gone. I have apologized till the ends of the earth for my role in what caused our initial marital issues but I do not think I can open his emotional door and I don't want to be the one doing all of the work. He says he knows he is at fault for the affair but I think he doesn't really believe it, that instead he still blames me for the majority of our marital issues. In reality, we were both to blame for the problems pre-affair.

Honestly, he needs to deal with his feelings for himself. I'm not going to stick around forever and feel constantly inadequate and unloved. It is a horrible feeling. I can't tell him that or it will push him farther away, but every day is torture and a little bit more of me disappears. That sounds melodramatic but it's true. I'm going to start just focusing on me and healing myself and just try to accept that my relationship with the person who I thought was the love of my life may well be irrevocably damaged beyond repair.

FWIW, I think you have the right perspective and you are very open and introspective. Not to say someone is more at fault than another in an affair situation, but your DH does seem to be the one who needs to come around towards you. Your best options are probably just to heal yourself, to better yourself, to be the person that your husband wants to be around, and if he decides for whatever reason he doesn't want to be married to you, you will be in the best possible position to meet someone worthy of your time and love. Good luck, tough road ahead.

He actually sounds like a horrible person. I'm sorry, OP. I wouldn't try to continue a relationship with this person.

OP, I think you should try not to care about him that much. I honestly think judging from how you feel you should start talking to him about divorce or separation. It's just too much for you to take and he just does not seem to either be mature enough or not care enough.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I never stopped loving my husband even though we were having tough times. I am having an extremely difficult time realizing that, in the tough times, he resented me so much and engaged in an affair and basically squashed his love for me down. I believed in marriage - that it's for better and for worse and that when bad things happen, you talk about it and try to work on things. He did not give me a chance to work on things, he never talked to me about his feelings changing. And now it feels like not only did I endure the same tough times he did, but I also have to deal with an affair and how mean he was to me during the affair (he was very cold and unfeeling and insulting to me during that time) AND I am supposed to be able to work on our marriage now and the underlying issues. I am supposed to somehow not be destroyed when he tells me that his love for me is "muffled" and that his full range of emotions seems inaccessible. There is a limit to what I can take, and he doesn't seem to be doing much to unearth his feelings. Maybe there's nothing to unearth and his love for me is just not as strong. But it seems like it's somehow my responsibility to make him feel safe enough to be vulnerable. And that is just monumentally unfair when I feel completely insecure and unloved.

And as far as the PPD goes, he was not supportive at all. He thought I just didn't enjoy being a mom and he feels deprived of super happy time with the baby. The times when I would ask him to look after the baby and I would take a walk he refers to as my "me time." That "me time" (which was maybe an hour every other day) was the time that I would be able to breathe and cry by myself. I got myself out of the PPD via therapy, with no assistance from him. He just now seems to understand this a little. But I was going through tough times individually as well as in our marriage and it seems like a lot to ask me to do basically everything now.

He is in counseling with me, he does say he is very sorry, and he is acting loving now. But then he goes and says he feels bottled up. I just hate it. And the idea that the bottling up is due to mourning his mistress, as suggested by a PP, makes me sick.

Tell him to man up and stop mourning his mistress in front of you. He shoul not subject you to that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I don't know if he compartmentalized or just began to have serious anger and resentment towards me. From what he has said, he did think about his mistress all the time, while he was with me. And he compared me to her constantly and decided she was better (she paid more attention to him, lavished him with complements, validated his feelings that I must not even want to be a mom if I wasn't overjoyed all of the time). Instead of being a true friend and trying to help him work through things, she demonized me too and told him he deserved so much better (her, of course). So it's not like he totally loved me while he was with me -he actively resented me.

Now he is just very walled off. He doesn't feel safe around me, he says. Like I might really be this bad person he made me out to be. There's nothing I can do to fix that. I just am not that person and the PPD is gone. I have apologized till the ends of the earth for my role in what caused our initial marital issues but I do not think I can open his emotional door and I don't want to be the one doing all of the work. He says he knows he is at fault for the affair but I think he doesn't really believe it, that instead he still blames me for the majority of our marital issues. In reality, we were both to blame for the problems pre-affair.

Honestly, he needs to deal with his feelings for himself. I'm not going to stick around forever and feel constantly inadequate and unloved. It is a horrible feeling. I can't tell him that or it will push him farther away, but every day is torture and a little bit more of me disappears. That sounds melodramatic but it's true. I'm going to start just focusing on me and healing myself and just try to accept that my relationship with the person who I thought was the love of my life may well be irrevocably damaged beyond repair.

Are you sure the affair is over? It sounds like you are bending over backwards while he still has his head firmly in his ass. Frankly how reliable will he be when things get tough again, if he bailed when you had PPD and blamed you for it. That he is that weak is for him to fix, not for you.

And how rich of him to say he does not feel safe around you!!! What about you, how safe does his betrayal make you and your child feel?
I would focus on my well being and my healing, go to counseling alone, and make sure I will be OK whatever happens to him and the relationship.

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I don't know if he compartmentalized or just began to have serious anger and resentment towards me. From what he has said, he did think about his mistress all the time, while he was with me. And he compared me to her constantly and decided she was better (she paid more attention to him, lavished him with complements, validated his feelings that I must not even want to be a mom if I wasn't overjoyed all of the time). Instead of being a true friend and trying to help him work through things, she demonized me too and told him he deserved so much better (her, of course). So it's not like he totally loved me while he was with me -he actively resented me.

Now he is just very walled off. He doesn't feel safe around me, he says. Like I might really be this bad person he made me out to be. There's nothing I can do to fix that. I just am not that person and the PPD is gone. I have apologized till the ends of the earth for my role in what caused our initial marital issues but I do not think I can open his emotional door and I don't want to be the one doing all of the work. He says he knows he is at fault for the affair but I think he doesn't really believe it, that instead he still blames me for the majority of our marital issues. In reality, we were both to blame for the problems pre-affair.

Honestly, he needs to deal with his feelings for himself. I'm not going to stick around forever and feel constantly inadequate and unloved. It is a horrible feeling. I can't tell him that or it will push him farther away, but every day is torture and a little bit more of me disappears. That sounds melodramatic but it's true. I'm going to start just focusing on me and healing myself and just try to accept that my relationship with the person who I thought was the love of my life may well be irrevocably damaged beyond repair.

Are you sure the affair is over? It sounds like you are bending over backwards while he still has his head firmly in his ass. Frankly how reliable will he be when things get tough again, if he bailed when you had PPD and blamed you for it. That he is that weak is for him to fix, not for you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He's morning the loss of his lover. It's natural. Give him time. Back off or you won't have a marriage. He will come around.

This is very true. He liked who he was with his AP. He wants to be with you, but you can't turn feelings off (or on) like a tap. Stick around. Do date nights, figure out what it is you need and the things he needs to feel loving (e.g. the 5 love languages) And do them, even if they feel awkward. Eventually, they will become more normal, and not forced.

Yes, the affair was his fault, completely. He knows that. But there was something in your marriage that allowed that space to open up that allowed him to go outside your marriage for emotional and sexual comfort. You both need to work on that.

This takes time. Lots of time. I can tell you if I'd moved out after my affair I would not be married right now. Because that constant "together time" is just helpful. Awkward. Unpleasant sometimes. But necessary.

Right, but you felt awkward and unpleasant because you cheated. OP is a complete mess over this, and watching her husband mourn the loss of his lover is making it worse. He needs to do that in private, because it's hurting OP even more. And again, if he can't use this separation to repair himself and his marriage, OP is better off without him.