His guilt towards his mistress is misplaced. He should be feeling that towards you. It seems relatively common though in some (narcissistic) people. My husband felt compelled to apologize to an affair partner for ending things and for leading them on. I felt I deserved the same apology first and he should have gone straight to no contact with the affair partner. The honesty is good but he needs to explore why he feels this way about his mistress. Hopefully he feels even worse about what he has done to you. If not, you have a problem. And his remorse, guilt absolutely should be focused on you. Tell him how you feel about this and ask him to discuss this with his therapist.

Because I had an affair, I can relate to his feelings. People are complicated, and he has his own healing process to go through. It might be a more ominous sign about his character if he used and discarded another human being without any guilt.

That said, you might not be the right person for him to burden with such things. A therapist or his own trusted friend/family member would be better.

Thanks gravinggirl. He has finally gotten into therapy and hopefully he's having those conversations with his therapist.
Have you been able to move past those feeling for your affair partner?

Yes, I am definitely over warm feelings toward my former AP and mostly over the feeling of being somehow responsible for where he ends up in life. He made it easier for me to lose feelings by not respecting my choice to end the affair and work on my marriage (for 3 months, he kept finding ways to try to contact me and lay on a guilt trip or say negative things about my husband).

Our affair went extremely public, and that is the biggest roadblock to moving forward in my life and marriage. It's huge, really.

I'm sorry you are in this situation.

Thank you so much for being so candid. It's hard to process your emotions and feelings at times, and when I'm not in my therapy sessions, I still feel the need to vent or let go or ask questions and this site is very, on time.
I'm so very sorry that you are going through this as well.

I'm sorry to hear of your story.

You wrote, "He told me that he didn't have to deal with it before, because no one knew. He wants his family back and wants to be the man I deserve."

So he was okay with it as long as no one knew? This demonstrates an entitled behaviour. He would have gone on indefinitely with the affair, as long as no one found out about it, because he felt no guilt over what he was doing.

Of course he wants his family back and wants to be the man you deserve, but he doesn't have the character to make it happen. Now that he's in the dog house, he's doing and saying all the things he knows you want him to do, but it can't be genuine if he's feeling remorse for her.

The person who can get caught having an affair, witnesses the devastation they've caused to their spouse/partner, watch them writhe in agony, receive forgiveness, then take the affair underground, is not a person that can change in a month or two, or ever in many cases. It's ingrained, and they see no problem with it as long as nobody knows; this is sociopathic behaviour.


The fact that he said he feels guilty for leading on his mistress, shows you where he's at. It would take him years of weekly therapy before you would see an authentic shift in his character, and there is no guarantee that he won't relapse.

Protect yourself and your children. If you've made progress since D day, and you are feeling strong, it is a time to be selfish. You gave him a second chance when you forgave him a year ago, and look how he repaid you. Reconciling will require years of your own self therapy and introspection, before you can feel secure enough to trust him again. The road to reconciliation is a long one, and if you are going to give him another chance, be sure to read up on how to heal a grieving betrayed spouse, and what the cheating spouse needs to do in order to facilitate the healing process for a successful reconciliation.

I wish you well.

The part about going public is interesting. My husband got caught cheating 5 months ago and I wet public with it. We worked through it. Now he cheated again this past Friday. I want to keep it secret, but maybe I should share it? He says "he doesn't know why" he does this after 15 years of marriage

They do it because they want to have their cake and eat it too. All the benefits of a wife and all the thrills of their side chicks. They will keep doing it unless they truly want to change. We can't do that for them.

Betrayed Spouses, you did nothing wrong. Your spouse's A is not your secret to keep. These cheaters do not want any consequences for their behavior. They just want to be forgiven and for life to go on. Problem is they have not taken responsibility for the damage they have done. They need to see that their actions have consequences. Forgiveness has to be earned.

I think there is always an internal reason for the cheating (and it is often not as simple as a sexual thrill), and it is up to the CS to figure out what it is and work through it. It isn't the BS' fault or the BS' responsibility to fix. For instance, in my case, I'm extremely codependent and vulnerable to love bombing and manipulation by someone who is a mess of narcissistic or histrionic tendencies. I never want to be this way again, so I will do what I need to do to make it so.

Regarding going public, my husband and I both wanted to keep it between us and whatever support people we each needed because we have kids we want to protect and because we both believed it was no one else's business. Basically, input from random people doesn't help moving forward. My AP's wife decided to divorce him and go for scorched earth. It was her prerogative, and it was always a possible consequence of my affair (that I didn't really think through).

When I read things like this, "and it was always a possible consequence of my affair (that I didn't really think through)," it gets to the essence and mindset of a cheater, that for as long as there are no consequences, the game is on.

If every affair automatically went public upon its inception, I don't believe we'd see many cheaters today. The fear of everyone knowing seems to be enough of a deterrent, and if it can be used to stop them, I can't disagree with that.

I suppose I thought there was a chance it would be discovered that we were more than friends (otherwise, I would not have tried to keep it under wraps), but I did not envision it would incorporate hundreds of people and deliberately involve children (mine and his) in the gory details. The first thing AP's wife said when she discovered the affair was, "I'll ruin her," and she meant it.

If you ever read CA, you know I do warn cheaters and potential cheaters that you can be exposed to such an extent that it actually ruins your life, not just your marriage. Even if your marriage feels like it's at a point at which you have lost motivation to protect it, you should still worry about protecting yourself and your children. No one ever anticipates exactly how bad it will be.

I don't identify with my own affair as ever having been a game, though. It was deadly serious, destroyed my sense of self, and made me consider whether or not I wanted to live anymore. That didn't leave me in a strong position to help my husband and family in their recovery.

I never told everyone, with the intention of ruining him. I just wanted to lift the burden of deceit from myself. The fact that everyone in his family knew, made him deal with the shame and guilt of it all. Depending on the circumstances, I think it forces the WS to make a decision about the life they want to continue living.
I think it becomes messy when the other AP does the revealing.

I honestly think my husband thought he was virtuous by being faithful to his affair partner by rejecting me. How messed up is that?

You may want to read "more than just friends " by Shirley Glass.