Rebuilding Marriage After Infidelity Community Group
A community for those who have been through the heartbreak of infidelity and decided to stay with their partner and try to re-build the relationship.
am I a mad hatter?
about a month after dday , i was suicidal. my wife called my PCP, sister and best friend. the day after, my best friends wife took me to the Psych Eval center and i started into Intensive Outpatient Program for 10 weeks , 9 hrs of therapy a week.
During those first few days after I came back from the Psych eval , I stayed at my sisters place ( house were we grew up). Since my wife had found APs on Craigslist, Ashley Madison etc, I decided to go onto CL and started reading adds. At one point i decided to even post my own add and had 2 or 3 short email conversations with women who replied. I also setup profiles on dating sites and Ashley Madison (Not a paid for profile). I don't really know why, but I guess i wanted to see what would happen, and how things could happen from online mtgs
thru out this to date 21 month recovery , the times when I am at my absolute lowest, I will end up reading CL adds and every once in a while , i will respond to a few. Its all spam/scam so nothing ever comes from it, other than me wondering why, when i feel my lowest, i seek out this action.
back to 1st month after dday.... out of the house, staying at my sisters, waiting to start IOP in a few days....took a week off from work as well.... I post a CL add, and get a reply from a woman.... we talk back and forth, and tell each other what type of marriages we are in at the time. The tone gets more sexual, and then becomes completely sexual. At one point, she tells me she has been master bating thinking of me, and i decide to follow suit, but take photos, and send them to her. we talk about meeting up. I tell her in the emails that Im not sure I could really ever go thru with anything , even if we met in person. within 3 or 4 days, I say goodbye as I say, I cannot do something like this, even if my wife did.
a week later, i email the women and ask if she would want to meet up for lunch at the end of the week. a few days later , she replies and says yes, but asks if I still have reservations about meeting. I tell her , yes i do , and she says, then don't do it.....and we never communicate again.
I've wondered since i found SI a few months after that ( 4 months after dday), if i , in fact, am a mad hatter who had an emotional affair.
when went back home after a few days away, i told my wife the entire story. I told her, how for a few days, all i could think about was "i hope she replies to me...when will she reply to me?" and i said, i could see how that could become very addictive, as my wife spent the entire 15 month period in daily text/sexts with the first AP, even while planning and meeting and hooking up w the other 7 APs.
the times that i seem to crash in the last 21 months, that i go back on CL and read adds, then reply to a few, I will tell her about during our daily evening talks.
am i a MH who had a online EA?
Does your wife take it because of what she's done? Is your behavior something she's ok with because, well, what she did was soooo much worse?
Take away all that she did. Flash back to pre affair times. Back to when your moral compass was different, where her moral compass was different.
In that time, would you accept your behavior from her?
Being desired by our spouses is important. And IMO knowing that others find you desirable is nice. Acting in that and seeking that out, to me, is a form of cheating.
Maybe for your "former self" it was too, maybe not.
So, you are still going on CL, AM? Cause technically that rush you feel isn't really anything different than what she was doing, except she was taking the next step and meeting these guys--they can be persuasive and once you get in that life, feel that pull, that addiction it can be hard to step away.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
I think that you both need to sit down and after all these months/over a year.......are you really both making progress? Tangible, definitive progress.......(you having an active CL account to 'talk to' OW is now another issue)........progress that is leading to healing, forgiveness, and what you both want in a M.
And if not, maybe you both need to look at other options.
PS......CL is skanky, you aren't exactly finding the cream of the crop on there....just get off it. If you want the thrill, the excitement and the huge risk there are many, many other forums and if you take that step and do that, then really rethink your M.