Roller, I am sorry you are "stuck" in this place of sadness.

I can totally relate, as my CS has used the " I can't remember" card way too often and it has bugged me many times.

Let me see if I understand this. Your CS had a 15 month affair meeting once a month. That was 15 encounters. It has been totally over for 2 years with no contact and he apparently told you about it 6 months ago...he self revealed, I assume you did not "catch" him and confront him. He has worked hard on rebuilding and even stopped drinking and got sober. Did I get that all correct?

Now, hear me when I say there was NO EXCUSE for the A, NONE. Not self esteem, not alcohol, nothing.

Here is what I can tell you from my own brief experience. I feel if I have chosen to stay and rebuild, then I have to show that is what I want to do by praising his progress, being watchful and having him be transparent in real tangible ways that I can validate in order to build trust again, and get the really important things answered.

I had some questions for my CS that he has had a hard time answering, sort of like your question which takes some reflecting and thinking. I put it in a journal for him and gave him a date by which the question needs some sort of answer that was thought about and not just something thrown out to satisfy me. I explained to him that the question, to me, was a core issue on how he could do this to begin with and until he dug out that answer, I had fear of re-offending on his part.

This question is on the table with our therapist and she knows I have given him a reasonable date to answer the question. I am certain I will have an answer. When I get an answer, then I have a decision. I either accept the answer, worked on by him in therapy, or I make it a deal breaker.

On your part, maybe you need to ask yourself why the length of the A is the key factor in your deciding to leave instead of him failing in some aspect of rebuilding or re-offending, lying, etc. maybe there is a deeper issue and you are assigning it to the length of the A. I, personally, think that any betrayal is just as harmful, no matter the length, situation, place or anything else.

Maybe this one thing is not really what is holding you back, maybe it is just the thing you have hung your fear on for the future being hurt-free, so to speak. Just a thought.

At some point we have to build enough trust to move on, never forgetting, but certainly forgiving, for our own sanity.

Roller - my H had a year long A with a co-worker and continued to work with her (even closer than he did before as their mutual boss assigned them projects that were to be done together - their boss did not know of their A) so I completely understand how you feel about the length of it. I also agree with HowCanThisBe - it doesn't matter if it was a hour or 5 years - a betrayal is a betrayal. I suspect that you migh tbe thikning (like I did) that wafter one encounter, if their marriage was so important to them, why didn't they stop it righ tthen & there? Why did they continue to have the A if they knew they wanted to stay with you? Those were my questions. My H's defense? I once said to him "As long as you come home to me" and he took that as the ok that he could do it. If that was the case, why would he hide it from me? What really bothered me? That he still worked with her - like I said - closer than ever. What did I do to help me move on? I called her H and filled him in on what his wife and my H were up to. I did it because I honestly felt that they needed as many eyes on them as possible. That even though it was my H that broke things off with her, they still saw wach other every damn day. They worked in a high security position in which neither myself not the OW's H could pop up at work & be allowed on the premises. Talk about going crazy! Thankfully, those days are behind us. I think you need to ask your self why the time is important - it may be for the same reasons I felt or maybe something else. But once you know, you can ask the question in a way that gets you the answer(s) you are seeking. Sending you support.

Thank you for your replies.

Howcanthisbe- Yes, except for I found an old e-mail from Oct. 2011 and that is how I found out.

I truely believe that if it was a one night stand or even a few months that I would have given him the rings so we can move on. You might be right that I am hanging on to that because of my fear. I have a lot of fear.

I feel so stuck!!!!

The general answer as to how is you work through the stages of grief until you reach acceptance.

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/healing-infidelity-through-faith/news/view/3869850

That can take a while, so be patient with yourself. Like a lot of BSs, I struggled over what I'd lost, the trust in her, the life we had before the A, that we were no longer exclusive to each other (until then, neither of us had ever been intimate with anyone else maritally). I was probably abnormally fast, but after going through a depression about 9 months after dday, I came to a point of acceptance, where I said to myself in effect, "It happened, I can't get it back, it is what it is, no amount of lamenting is going to change it, so I either stay in wish land for who knows how long, or I can accept it, look to build a better future, and move forward rather than staring into the rear view mirror.

I don't know what your H will eventually say that might answer that question for you, but I can tell you in general why that happens. It ties into what he said. Often when people have an affair, it triggers some strong addictive feelings. For him, that someone wanted him and sought after him was affirming. A lot of why my W got caught up in hers (7 months, two different men locally, several online sex-chat buddies). That attention becomes like a drug, and some people end up feeling it is inevitable and they can't stop it (which of course is a lie their brain is telling them). Due to that high desire, they ignore consequences, justify their behavior. They rarely feel guilt, and when they do, it feels like swimming upstream.

That mindset can last a long time, two years or more, until at some point the fantasy fades away. Of course it can end sooner than that as well, depending on the person and circumstances, as in your H's case it was under 2 years.

Most BSs want to know why so it can be fixed. While there are reasons he allowed it to happen, none of them will satisfy a BS. There is no reason that justifies what happened. Make it more understandable, maybe, but not anything that is going to make the BS say, "Oh, I see. Well then, that's acceptable."

He will need to work on his self esteem. He needs to be freed from the need for affirmation from others. He needs to set firm boundaries, like if a woman starts flirting with him, learn responses that will signal he's not interested instead of encouraging such behavior. He needs to identify what boundaries he crossed in dealing with her that led him into that emotional quicksand. Then make a firm commitment to stick to them, and practice them so they become automatic instead of something he has to think about. Because once the passions fire up, thinking goes out the window. That is pretty much true of all of us. It is amazing to me what a person will do to justify the unjustifiable. And the feeling of infatuation with another person or a feeling that a person or set of persons give them often drives that wrong thinking.

In most cases, affairs are not driven by love for the affair partner (if it was true love, they wouldn't be subjecting them to the pain an A will bring). Rather, they are in love with a feeling that AP is giving them. They tend to translate that into loving the AP, but it is selfish, not love.

What knocks someone out of that frame of mind varies. Some stay in it even in the face of divorce, some like my wife, are shaken back to reality by me finding out and confronting her, others actually come out of it on their own and confess (or end it and hope the BS never finds out).

So it is unlikely you'll get an answer that satisfies your fully. That doesn't mean he can't identify his vulnerabilities and seek to address them to lessen the chance of a reoccurence.

Sorry you have to deal with this. It is a life changer.

Idk if this will help, but i had an affair a long time ago.. I think when one does something this shitty, there is a certain part of the mind that allows you to disconnect from what occurred emotionally, as if it never happened. Then, of course, the fear of your partner finding out.
Then the rationalization and excusing yourself : " my bad marriage drive me to it " .
It is all a bunch of crap. There really are no excuses.
My exh had sex with multiple people over a year and a half. His explanation was " it was just something to do" FML

My husband is an alcoholic too. My counselor made a point that resonated with me when I described to her the things that I read between him and the troll (can't call her much else).. and about how devastated he was when I confronted him and he realized that I knew. She said that the affair behavior sounded very much like the addiction behavior of his alcoholism. While I hate all of this, something about this realization gave me a hair of comfort.. Up until this point I thought it was my fault, that our marriage was bad, therefore he cheated. Somehow this made it more about him and I felt a tiny (very tiny) shift in my self doubt over the whole thing. It is hard loving an alcoholic. I hope that one day mine will be in recovery again too. Just when you think things are okay and it's been awhile.. bam.. something terrible happens again. The whole family is sick. It's horrible.