I had to go through the cold turkey cut off with my OM too. It was brutal, but I absolutely positively had to do it in order to not hurt my H again. I was determined to do the right things no matter how painful. It would have been very very easy to make contact with him and not get caught but I held on to NC (No Contact) for dear life. I held on to my H for dear life too and I hung on to God for dear life. These are hard hard days, but hold tight and you will get through them one day at a time. I actually took it a step further and told my H of every chance encounter. I still do tell him if I see OM in his car, etc... on any given day. I figured that by telling my H of things he would not have done otherwise, I would be building trust again that much faster. It was important to me to be authentic and transparent.

It is extremely common for the BS (betrayed Spouse) to say a lot of negative things about the AP. It is a "safe" place for them to vent some of the anger on when they don't want to vent too much on you. It is also extremely common to worry about the AP and to try to believe that it's not really the end and that there will be more some day. It is just so hard to think of never seeing them or communicating with them again. It takes the psyche a long long time to accept such a thought.

Please read Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass. It will help you a lot.
Read How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair: A Compact Manual for the Unfaithful by Linda MacDonald.

I can suggest much more to read, in fact my H and I wrote a book ourselves called Healing Infidelity by Rick and Lenita Copple about our own healing journey. We just passed the 3 year mark.

Sometimes in these painful days it is all you can do to just keep swimming so you don't drown.

Welcome. First you are really deep in what is known as the FOG. You may hear about the FOG from time to time on here. When you are sucked into the FOG of your affair it is hard to see or feel anything else. I'm a cheating spouse, but have been done with my A (affair) for quite a while. OM- (other Man is a term you can use for the other person). There are many acronyms used on here. First- you have to accept and face up to the fact that you did something extremely hurtful toward your spouse. If you want your marriage to work, you will have to remain NC (no contact) with your "friend". Secondly, in this situation there is no innocent email or contact. There just isn't. Any contact has the potential to open up the affair again. Trust me- been there, done that! You reach out innocently because it hurts like hell to have to let the person go, and then bam- you are back in the A. Then you have to break it off again. Go through the hell of grieving again- not fun!!! I went through a year of crying over my Affair partner- so what I speak of to you I have gone through. If and when you get through the FOG- you will look at your spouse one day and think- how in the hell did I cheat on this person??? What was I thinking? Okay so until- you get out of the fog- Read the suggested books on here (Gabby gives great advice!), Go to therapy- individual and couples, Pray - if you have a faith in God. Do what ever it takes to get your marriage (if you love your husband) back on track! It is not easy. My A was from 2010-2012, and yes I still struggle with missing my OM. I have to make a daily choice to do the right thing. Sorry there is no Parallel Universe. No, sadly we can not have our cake and eat it too! Bless you and good luck

Hi Welcome to the group. There are a lot of remarkable people on here who "just get it". Its not something you can always discuss with your "girlfriends" but here is a safe place.
I CANNOT SAY ENOUGH how the ladies' comments above are absolutely true. You are in the fog and this IS A HARD TIME. Quite honestly, probably the most difficult in my life.
Trust me when I say this rawness ends. It does. But NC works wonders. But, yep, just one slip makes it all come back. Sometimes if you can't take it one day at a time, take it one hour at a time.....
You need that time to think clearly, to heal, and to repair.
Your H is devastated. That is where he is coming from.
I would strongly recommend IC. My therapist helps me see so clearly. All those thoughts in your head...she can help sort them.
Someone once told me here......if you don't go to IC and find out why you did this, you will go right back into another A...and another.....My A has been over for almost only 4 months (seems like I've been through 4 YEARS of hell) and where it does get better, slowly, it does....everyday the temptation of something is there.
Surf the boards, journal, make some friends...you are in the right place.

from a guys perspective.....
happy birthday is not innocent.
from another women - nothing is in our mind.

Awkward spot you're in. Best wishes, hang out here for help and to help.

Cheers

Thanks guys. It has been very rough. We first had to stop the day to day contact back in October when his wife confronted him about a text I had sent (she had apparently gone through his phone and noticed that he had sent a "I love you and wish i could be there for you" text when I had to put my dog down and I siad "Love you too"). We walked a thin line still talking but knowing that our every day conversations had to go. January 1 we made a commitment to not talk privately anymore but remain FB friends and occassionally comment on each others stuff but otherwise no private conversations, phone calls, etc unless they were about the book we were writing together. And then in March, he reaches out to me and we are able to talk again more freely where he reminded me how much he loved me and he knows that we are both hurting (as i said, i truly feel that emotional and spiritual connection with him that I never got with my husband) but we are getting through. We had been rebuilding the trust with his wife (she was allowing us to communicate re: the book) and my hubby didnt know just HOW close we had become although he knew that this person and I were close friends and eve jokingly referred to him as my "boyfriend." But when he found my journal and read it and then went throguh my private emails, it was not good. It has been a month since we have had to stop talking and I truly sent the happy birthday email out of a friendship heart and nothing more. BUt now the wounds have been opened again and I just cant yet accept that its very real I may never get to see or talk to my OM again even as friends or co-authors. We have a lot of mutual friends who dont know we are no longer speaking and of course no one knew about the A. So today, one of them mentions to me if I heard about my OM's mother...of course not but apparently his mother passed away very suddenly today and my heart is just aching. I want to call and offer sympathy or just an I'm sorry card. The hard part is not being able to talk at all or hearing from others that he has appeared to have moved on and doesn't mention me much where he used to go on and on about me. Also, working to build up trust again at home, which is very important to me to do. I feel like I am stuck between a rock and a hard place because I love two men very very much and lost the balance.

Thank you guys for your advice. the Cold turkey NC is going to be very tough but after seeing his FB page through my friend where he has changed profile pictures (from several i had taken of him to a picture of he and his wife) and hasnt even mentioned the book, etc. I see where old wounds can quickly come open again. My goal is to go at least two weeks without looking at photos, book notes, mementos. And then in two weeks, go another two weeks, etc. I cleared everything I could and put it into some boxes in my closet. One day I will have the strength to go through them and maybe write about it or do something with it. But at this point it was hard enough boxing up all the pictures, the stuff his kids made for me (I was the fun aunt for a while), the funny post it notes we shared while working, etc. I am glad I have others here who understand....this is undoubtedly the worst 9 months of my life so far...lots of journaling and Stevie Nicks lyrics have been getting me through. I dont want to move forward because I dont want to leave him behind. But I know I must. I am going to try to find some of those books on Kindle to read on my vacation next week.

God bless you all.

Dear Silver, my therapist once asked me, why I had anger over the end of my A? I told him because I fought my heart out for a woman who I knew was my soul mate, and destroyed everything else in the process and hurt so many people including my ex –wife and kids. He told me yes this is true, but if you take all that away from it, what is left? He said even though you allowed your boundaries to be breached and you breached the trust and boundaries of those you love, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t FEEL love for your AP. It’s just that you never should have allowed yourself to be in a position where you COULD feel love for you AP. But the love, it can still be a beautiful memory. I was dumbfounded, and of course in my depression over everything that I had done, and all the consequences that I deserved and suffered I couldn’t see it. I could only see that I was worthless, and destructive. Now it’s been three years ago and I have moved on, but the memory of her and what we shared, the most intense connection on every level that two people can possibly share, I still feel. I still have that memory, and that memory is beautiful. I can appreciate that how beautiful that memory is. But it’s just that, a memory.

Imagine that you have a backyard and you notice in that backyard there are holes. Big holes. You know where the holes came from you know why they are there, some of them you dug, some of them were dug by others. So every day you look out the back door at your backyard and look at the holes longing to fill them. One day you decide that you can’t take it and you have to try to fill those holes. So what do you do? Well you need dirt to fill the holes, so you go out your front door to your front yard shovel in hand to get dirt. But when you try to come back through the house with your shovel full of dirt, you find that the back door is padlocked from the outside, the windows are nailed shut and there is no way for you to get to the backyard

The backyard is your past, no matter what you do, you can’t get to the past and change it. The holes in your back yard can never be filled. The front yard is your present and in trying to fill the holes in your past, you have unwittingly dug holes in your present.

The past is the past for a reason, it can’t be changed. But there are windows to the past that you can look through, and what I had done on so many occasions in so many applications, whether it was pain from my childhood, or contacting my AP, after she had been caught and trying to carry on a relationship which could never be, I was digging holes in my present, trying to fill holes in the past. If you are trying to move on with your life with your husband, then that is your present, and YOU can’t keep digging holes in your present.

But you know what? The holes in the past are there, but I don’t HAVE to look at them; I know that they are there, but so what? I have to live for today, in the moment and enjoy the life that God has given me for today. I won’t live spending every day looking out at the backyard anymore, and I love what I see out my front window with all of the beauty and possibilities. And the MORE TIME YOU SPEND LOOKING OUT THE BACK DOOR, THE LESS TIME YOU HAVE TO LOOK OUT THE FRONT! The front yard deserves my attention, and focus and I don't have to dig HOLES to be WHOLE!

But I thank God that there is a window, that every now and then I can take a peek out to that back yard, and have a beautiful memory.

I hope this helps some. I pray that you find peace.

As Always Be Blessed

GaC

Restore - THIS is the thread with the backyard vs front yard analogy....it actually tells some of my story too. Only really posted a month or so ago so not too far behind where you are now....

Thanks for doing that Silver :)

Wow. That hit home--- the back yard / front yard analogy. So it's 2am going into the 7th day with 2 or hours of sleep each night--that one ought to successfully keep me up another few hours.

You all are so good to me God gives you angles all the time. They come from places you never thought! Right now I'm a ghost of who I was just 30 days ago.

My AP has lost her husband and now two kind in 6 months. She is struggling w me and the new dude who she admits is filling the void. He says he loves her and wants her but yet she and I are still in love! On Tuesday when she kissed me she said I don't feel that with him. My response don't get involved with anyone long term if you don't feel that. And that feeling could come from someone other than me.

This is the worst worse than the death of my mom, dad and two brothers