Sometimes I hate getting up in the morning, because I know it will be a struggle, and today has not disappointed so far.......

ok, So it begins, I know I what I did was horrible, and I do not deserve to be trusted for a long time, but everything I do it or don't do is analyzed by my wife. "Why do I text instead of call?" "Why do I call instead of texting", "Why do you have your running shoes and your regular shoes" "Why dont you call me before you go anywhere?" I know I deserve the third degree, but does that mean, I have to just take it and have no opinion or have a say anymore?

Sorry you're having a rough day. From what i read - and i do a ton of reading about this stuff lately -,your W feelings are normal. It's going to take her a long time to trust you again. She'll experience different things that trigger her and get her upset. Reconciling is a long hard road. They say you have to just be supportive, answer her questions - no matter how many times she asks - and show her with your actions, not just words, that you have changed and will not cheat again and are committed to your M.

Come here and vent. Stay strong. You'll get support here :)

Sublime - I am sorry you are in this position. It definitely is true that it is easier to stop things before they start...

To answer your question "does that mean, I have to just take it and have no opinion or have a say anymore" - umm, yeah, this is pretty much what that means.
Please read the book How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair: A Compact Manual for the Unfaithful by Linda MacDonald. It truly is compact so don't get discouraged.
See if you are willing and capable to do everything that this book says. This is the level of commitment you need to have to make it in your marriage without making your wife (and your marriage) even more miserable.

I wrote something on this subject. Maybe it will help you

http://affairadvice.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/why-cant-i-get-over-my-affair-partner/

I am a bs and was not intending to respond to anymore posts here but i would like to respond to this one.

Has anybody considered the possibility that the ow/om was in your life for a reason? Not as a permanent fixture but as a temporary eye opener or a life lesson. I believe that we are given people and situations to learn and grow from. Just like the drug to an addict. Many recovering addicts have learned to love better and understand life better because of their addiction but not until recovery.

Sometimes we make shoe term friends that we will likely never see again but have a profound effect on the people we become. Teachers who understood us and taught us aspects of who we are, that we would have never known. Jobs that failed and taught us how to succed.

What if that was the purpose of the A? What if they were meant to be a part of your life that is meant to be learned from and left in the past? If that is the case, what did you learn, and how did you grow from them being in your life?

My H A was not filled with love but more lust and opportunity. He chose to remain in the A because it fulfilled a void that was created by both of us but maintained because of his mindset. His A resulted in a child and years of painful deception. It taught him life lessons that he may never have really learned. He learned that he was married to somebody who was willing to see him through this and that the grass is not always greener. He learned that what he had with his family was much more than he was willing to lose.

My H learned how to love me more and be a better more involved H and father.

I'm not sure if this was helpful but I just wanted to share since I beleive that my H affair needed to happen in order for us to have what we do. It has been the path that led him to be the man he is today. It created years of pain and sorrow but we are happy and in a positive place now.

Pink

Wow, that really make sense. Thanks for that post. Never really thought about I in that way.

Yeah Pink, well put. having your perspective really helps. You are wise to look at things from different angles. It is not necessarily a failure on anyone's part, but something that came about to help us become who we are meant to be.

Pink - thank you for sharing. Thats very insightful and thought provoking.

I personally have to think that way that there was a reason or else i wouldn't be able to live with myself and look myself in the mirror everyday. Everytime OM would call me a "goody two shoes, worrier, over thinker" i hope that something made him stop and take a step back. Although its over, he continues to contact but i ignore, i feel horrible for his W and family.

I justify and rationalize that we were meant to meet because he is more than likely a serial cheat and i hope to God he'll take a step back and realize how destructive and disrespectful his behavior is. Regardless of how troubled a childhood one has, does not give them the right to this entitlement thinking.

I am trying desperately to leave him in the past before any more devastation occurs. But he keeps contacting me. So, did our A have a positive impact to make him a better person and stop his selfish ways? I dont know. I do know how utterly disgusted i am with myself and how i want to gain my self respect back. I do not ever want to find myself in a situation like that again. I am a stronger person now. Certainly not so naive. And i realize how fragile a good M and family is.

I will never let someone come between that bond again.

@redlegs, you said something about if it ever came out, then you'd let him decide if he can forgive you or not. What kind of partnership keeps him in the dark while you are free to make choices without him, or for him?

@rosewater, a stable home for a child and a solid marriage are not 'stuff' that are easily replaced. Leaving a mother to take a child and leave behind their home, that's not a short period of adjustment, that's abandonment. It doesn't lead to 'pow, happiness', not for the wife or the kids, and not necessarily for the CS either.

There was a point where I thought I could end our marriage, making room in my life for the OM, and keep the house for me and the kids. Turned out, only if my H felt like being generous. He wasn't willing to let me trash everything our family enjoys as a unit to follow my own selfish path. He made it clear that he would have his share of the house and the kids and I would have to move, and good for him for standing up. My affair brain would have had us all on the street, all for a guy who was never going to be part of my life beyond the occasional trust.

It's no small thing to break up a family, it's a big f-ing deal, and of course I have obligations beyond my own needs. I may not feel in love with my husband all the time, but that's limerance and it fades over time. It's a high that we chase like junkies. What I do have is the steady sense they we love each other, even after the highhas worn off, and that is worth some sacrifices.

Fiber-We have not had any sort of "partnership" for years. I turned my head to his cheating and hid mine from sight. On my end, it is all over, and I think it is on his end too, but I am not totally sure. I am wary, to say the least. I am not going to go all confession on him when things are already shaky enough. Keeping the family together has always been important, which is why i didn't leave him when he had an ongoing affair. He is no saint. I am cautiously trying to fix our marriage, which is more than he has ever done. We are making progress and I will take the A to my grave if things work out for us. That is just the way i think it needs to be. But like I said, if for some reason it comes out, I will tell him what he needs to knwo if he will do the same.

In some ways where you are at is very much like my OM#2. We loved each other very much. I am married and he is single. I got caught while we were still at a high point and had to go NC pretty quickly. It was brutally hard. I had a lot of guilt. I felt more at fault than him because I was already in the fog when I met him. Feeling playful and flirty. I knew he was hurting very very badly when I had to quickly cut contact. I know the void, the desperate longing, the vacuum that constantly pulls and tugs on you. the deep desire to make contact again. It is hard, hard, so hard. I also know about being constantly aware of the cars around you. We live in a small town. there has been some car to car contact with him. It used to really shake me up. Truth be told, it still has an effect on me when I see his car. I can't quite achieve nonchalance. I have never run into him in a store but almost. I still wonder what it would be like to just suddenly come face to face in the store. My Dday was almost 2 years ago.

So this is what I tell people who are struggling with NC. Hang on for dear life. stick hard to it. Don't break it no matter what. If you make contact it sets you back. There is no shortcut on this. The bond has to die a slow death of neglect. It fades slowly like paint fading in the sun. You can help it along by guarding your thoughts. I have worn a rubber band on my wrist since Dday. when i need to stop my thoughts, I snap it and say STOP! You will not believe how effective it is.

In the meantime, you must work hard on your marriage. Please read the book that was recommended to you. In fact it is part of my "required reading" list. Here is a link to that. It's a short list but, in my opinion, vital: http://www.dailystrength.org/people/602693/journal/4991850

As far as telling your W details, talk to her about it. She needs to lead the way on how much she can handle. Trickle truth is where more details come out over time and often sets the BS back over and over again. Again, read the manual. It addresses all these things and more. A counselor will also be able to help you both work through how much to tell and when. I told my H everything immediately. I held nothing back. There is something else I did that addresses another thing you mentioned. He did not have to ask me anything or micromanage me because I did that for him. I beat him to the punch. I made myself an open book. I voluntarily made sure he always knows where I am and what I am doing. I shared my schedule, checked in during the day. I told him of every sighting of OM as well. I wanted to tell things that he would have had no way of knowing on his own. It helps rebuild trust when you keep yourself so open and transparent.

As you work on your marriage and help your W heal and work on your own healing and guard your thoughts it will get easier as time goes on.

Same here, it's my job to be transparent without him having to ask. If I go out I tell him where I'm going, and when I get home I tell him who I saw. If the OM crossed my path, I report it. If he runs from the bar like a scared little girl while I feel nothing for him, I report it and we crow about it a little. When I met an old friend from church for coffee I went by his work to let him know where I was going and who with. He thought that was a but much, but I would rather over report than ever have him feel like I've hidden something.

It eases his mind, and at the same time keeps me on the straight and narrow.

Dear Sublime - First, I want to say that at 39 you're not too old to start over! I have children your age, for heavens sake, but I know that I could start over if I wanted/needed to. I have learned, through the years, that I can survive anything, no matter how much it sucks. This is something we all learn over time.

I also read the article "True Love vs. Affair Love," but I don't buy what they said. They make an interesting point, but there are times when affair love IS true love, not just an illusion. I have loved my OM as long as I have known him--40 years!--and I have no doubt that my feelings are love. We love different people in different ways. If the feelings stand the test of time, I believe they are true.

You really are in a pickle, and it will take awhile to see clearly what path you should take. Don't rush it. Seek counseling, keep reading books/articles, and you will find nuggets of truth in all of them, here too. In fact, this site is one of the things that has helped me the most. You have to decide whether you still love your W enough to make it work. If you stay just out of duty, you will be cheating her, cheating yourself, and cheating the OW too. In the end, we all must be true to ourselves.

I am one of those who thinks that not telling the spouse is best. Because your W already knows about the A, why torture her more with the full details? BTW, I have been both a BS and a CS, and I wish I didn't know all the gory details about H's A. Actually, there were a number of them. That is also one reason I never intend to tell him about mine.

The only suggestion I have is to set a time period for NC. Say three months? Six months? Just do your best to make it work with your W. Slowly, you will gain clarity. I can't handle the thought of going NC with my OM forever, but by breaking down the time into chunks, it might be doable.

My shrink told me that his goal was to make sure I was okay no matter what happened with my situation. That is all we can do, is to define ourselves and be strong in knowing who we are. In the end, you--or I--might lose both relationships, and then we will have to rise from the ashes on our own.

I might add that my OM lives 1,000 miles away, so seeing him involves a lot of planning. It's not like I might run into him in the grocery store. We have ever had an exclusive relationship, so there's no cheating on the A. He is involved with someone I refer to as the psycho woman because she is totally nuts (but that's another story).

We are here for you. Please reach out as often as you need to.