No, I am not.

WOW. That was a lot to digest in one sitting. Perhaps because it's 2:30am for me?

Well written and well thought out. I can definitely appreciate the defining (or redefining, as the case may be) of love(s). I love how well you were able to describe how easily eros love can die if not fed/tended. I watched a movie called Take This Waltz that beautifully played out the story of a woman leaving her husband for the thrill of another man only to find herself eventually in the same humdrum of daily life that she had been in with her husband. Even those who do not have affairs can be guilty of thinking, "Well, maybe things would be better/spicier/more exciting if I were with the RIGHT person," not realizing it's not who we're with but how well we fuel the fires.

I also will be chewing on your explanation of agape love for awhile. I have really only ever heard of it in spiritual/religious terms - love for God - so having it described as a selfless/giving/sacrificing love made more sense to me. I guess one could say, loving LIKE God?

I truly believe THAT is the main love I lost for my husband prior to his affair and the love he most needed from me. He needed to know I would fight for him/us and that I would sacrifice to make things work. I wasn't feeling that way, much less showing it. It would be interesting learn more ways in which one could nurture and build agape love.

Good thoughts, Allora. That's what I'm hoping including this article in my book will do, get both CSs and BSs to think through what love really is, and evaluate what they've experienced/are experiencing in light of it all. Both what was missing, what they have, and whether the love they did have was complete.

I think a lot of people, when they get married, base their understanding of love almost entirely upon eros and phileo. The storge happens naturally over time. But often agape is missing. So their love for each other is based on "as long as s/he makes me happy, I'm in love." Problem is, those loves fluctuate with time, and if that is all a marriage is based on, with either partner, it opens up the temptation to fulfill that love outside the marriage: "I don't love my spouse anymore. I've fallen out of love with him/her."

I've talked about how Gabi and I had a growing distance, living in parallel worlds for at least 20 years or so, intersecting here and there, but for the most part, our eros and phileo loves had been greatly weakened. Despite that, if you asked either of us whether we loved one another, we would have unreservedly said, "Yes, very much!" We certainly didn't feel like we didn't love each other as much as we should have. I think this is in part due to storge and agape love still being strong. But during the affair, the eros went crazy with her. Yet even in the middle of her affair with any of them, she made it clear that she would never leave me. That if I found out, it was over. She didn't realize how hard that would be to do, but she did follow through on that. Evidence her agape love for me, even if it was shoved in a closet for the most part to let eros run free.

Well Cole50, that may be true, but I can tell you I was in love with my H, I knew what to expect and I thought he did too, we even spent a lot of time talking to other younger couples or couples in trouble, explaining the things we had learned, as it turns out , he still got "lost" and now I am the loser....we are both losers, we have lost so much in this marriage....he read your stuff, and now thinks it falls on both of us, however, I couldn't make him love me, or stay faithful, that is on him, I did get hurt by his behaviors before and obviously during his affair, and I pulled to a protection place...as I had been abandond before, and he knew the whole stories of my life and promised to keep me safe and NEVER do anything to hurt me, and I am not naive to think that our marriage would be PERFECT or that he would always do everything right, but i did tell him over and over what I expected, and how I felt and I gave him musice/songs to remind him, and scriptures, books.....I did everything I knew to do...and I am still the loser and he still wants to blame me for my shortcomings....he wants me to give him consideration for his huge mistake, and he gave me nothing, no credit for who I WAS, who I was as his wife or as a person......this just sucks, and I don't know how much longer I can hold on, what I will be at the end of this and what do I have to look forward to, an ok life until he does it again because he thinks I am not "filling" his needs, what about my needs that were going un met because he was taking care of himself....

Shegave, I hear you. Perfectly understandable. I've used an analogy in my book, not sure I've mentioned it here or in my articles or not...I think I did.

When you get in an auto accident, and are badly injured because someone ran a red light, and you end up in intensive care, you do nothing buy lay there. Everyone one works to heal you enough you can survive and get out of ICU. When a spouse discovers an affair, usually they and the marriage end up in emotional ICU. Until the spouse can get out of ICU, there is not much they can do for their own healing, much less the marriage. But at some point in the healing process, you do get out of ICU, then they start taking a more active role in healing. Getting up and moving around. Eventually you "work out" to regain the use of your limbs, etc.

So, yes, there is something to do for both parties, but understanding the following:

1. While the BS is in ICU, they will usually not be in a position to offer much in healing themselves or the marriage.

2. How long a BS is in ICU varies. Some were fast, like me, others may take months, or even years if things don't progress well.

3. The primary activity during the ICU time is mostly done by the CS. They caused the hurt, and if rebuilding is to happen, only they can do what is needed to give it a fighting chance.

4. Throw expected time-tables for all this out the window. Doctors can give estimates based on past history with other patients, but none of them can predict how long healing will take or whether it will heal for *you*. Everyone is an individual and unique, and doctors are regularly proven wrong.

5. At some point, however, upon getting enough healing and security back under your belt, the only way rebuilding will succeed is if you are as invested in it as he is. Both spouses need to be 100% on board with rebuilding the marriage into something new, and if it is to succeed, better in many ways. If either partner holds back, it will be hard to rebuild the marriage.

6. Healing from the affair and the marital problems are two different issues. They intersect, and having a thriving, loving marriage will greatly aid the healing of the marriage (like a patient having a positive attitude tends to make healing from injuries more likely), but the BS or CS will cause problems if they link the two together as one issue. This is where most of the blameshifting or perceived blameshifting comes from. By one or both spouses conflating the two issues into one. It is all well and good to identify weaknesses in the marriage that may have contributed to the temptation, like the issue of how complete you love was for each other, but neither spouse should interpret that to mean, "If you'd met my need for X, the affair wouldn't have happened."

7. And this one may be the hardest to follow but becomes critical in evaluating the marriage. Avoid judging the other person and focus upon yourself. Two reasons for this. One, you only have control over you and your actions. You can't make the other person do anything. Sometimes you can provide the motivation, like making clear the consequences of not being fully transparent is you leaving, purely by way of example. But in the end, you are responsible for your behavior and actions. BSs and CSs tend to focus on the other person's wrongs, mistakes, sins, shortcomings in an attempt to avoid looking at their own (not saying this is what you are doing, only that it is common). As long as you are judging/blaming each other, no matter how right factually you or he may be, healing cannot happen. But will shoot forward when we deal with ourselves.

Two, while he is responsible for doing that which will get the marital healing off the ground after an affair, you are still responsible for your own healing, no matter what he does. Whether the future means staying with him or not. You can't rely upon him for healing yourself. So all you can *depend* on is your own behaviors and outlook. Healing involves focusing on what you do have control over, yourself. Not on what you don't, him.

Okay, maybe a third one. It moves a couple out of the blame game and into cooperating together by each working on their own issues. It takes the relationship out of the "him vs. her" and into seeing it as a team effort to make the relationship better.

An illustration of what I'm talking about. I've related before some of the reasons Gabi and I had grown apart over the years. It would be real easy for me to look at things like her disagreeing with my discipline in front of the kids and thus alienating me from that part of raising them, and her distancing herself from my sex life (respect and sex, two key areas most men need to have fulfilled to feel loved) as the cause of our marital parallel lives for 20 years. She wanted me to participate in family activities more, wondered why I was so distant, but it was a distance she had created. No matter how I tried to talk to her about these things early on, she wouldn't listen. Then, this emotional distance we'd lived with for years became the fertile ground of temptation for her affair. It would be oh so easy for me to point the finger at her.

Likewise, she could point the finger at me pretty easily as well. But on dday and since, she didn't do that. And for my part, I've not intentionally made the above blame on her, though identifying it as a dynamic may feel that way to her. While she had some "blame" in that, I look at it from what I did or didn't do.

Reality is, I gave up. I could have sought help, counseling, read books, worked to solve the problems when it seemed I'd hit a road block talking with her. But what did I do? I *chose* to give up, and live a parallel life. I *chose* to avoid disciplining the kids anymore than I had to, and let her raise them without me. I *chose* to not get help in dealing with these things. I don't know if I had whether it would have made the difference or not, but there is a good chance it would have. The thought processes that were subconscious might have been identified overtly like I'm doing here, and we both would have made the changes to correct course.

So instead of pointing the blame at her, I point it at myself for not doing what I should have done. For not fighting for a full marriage and settling for what I knew to be substandard. I had options I didn't take, but should have. This doesn't excuse her for her actions. She has to do the same to herself as I am. I look at my sins and she looks to hers. But me pointing the blame at her failures only serves to distract me from my failures and to put her on the defensive, and no healing will take place from that.

If there is one thing the affair did, it opened us up to seeing our marriage wasn't what we thought it was, and could be a whole lot better, and use this negative time to focus on ourselves and our marriage.

But like I said at the beginning, you have to get out of ICU first. That means feeling a level of security that you are not going to get hit with this again. Admittedly, it was easier for me because my wife only had this one 7 month crazy period in our entire 29 years of marriage, where as you have a man who you know has cheated on all his relationships in the past, and so gaining security he won't do this again is much harder. He'll have to realize this is part of the difficulty he faces. It is going to take you a lot longer to get to the place of security where you feel free to invest yourself into rebuilding the marriage. It can be done. But it isn't easy.

An example is the author of the book, "Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction." The man was a sex addict by classical definition. He cheated on his wife as a pastor of a church. As you can imagine, the beginning was pretty rocky, but he did heal and become "sober" and wrote his book, at least 5 but I'm thinking it was 10, years of being sober, to make sure it was sticking. He's probably the exception, but it can be done even in extreme cases. It all depends on whether your H does all he can and needs to do, including intensive counseling to identify and heal the issues from his past and core that contribute to his past infidelities.

But the love article only uses one aspect of all this, love, in general. Any individual situation will have its own twists and other issues that play into it. This is only one piece of the puzzle. But whether it is a CS who thinks they've fallen in love with their AP or a BS who can't understand why they still love their CS even while hating him/her, it can help discover the weaknesses and strengths in a particular situation as it concerns what a couple perceives as love, and whether it is the fullness or perversion of it.

I am still deeply in love with my H. Dday was 5 months ago and we are hanging by a thread. I actually suspected something 8 months ago, but he didn't come clean for 3 months. His A lasted for 2 years. But despite the A I am deeply in love and can't imagine my life without him. I have shared your chapter on love with my H, which he says he is reading. I have gotten through the part where you describe Eros. He has expressed his love for the OW and that is why I have asked him to read this. I think it will help him get over the OW and possibly help him to come back to me.

Ponder, we can pray and hope with you that it will "turn on a light." If he is overtly proclaiming his love for the OW, though, sounds like he is still in the fog. When there, reason takes a back seat, even when it is obvious. Recently one person we know of was trying to convince us that she wasn't the other woman, even though hew new boyfriend was legally married to another, and no "promise" to divorce her for at least two more years. On anyone's radar she would be the OW to a cheating husband, but she'd convinced herself she wasn't. Go figure. The affair fog is a murky place to be, when one's judgment is clouded by infatuation.

Thanks for your comment Cole. He is still in the fog. But only says that he still thinks of her and how she's doing. I ask him what he wants and he just doesn't know. My patience is wearing away, but I continue to see my therapist while he doesn't do anything outwardly obvious to help with our rebuilding. It feels like he is waiting for the ticking clock to ease him through. I know that there is not one recipe for healing, and I know everyone has their own pace and process, but I worry my clock will run out before he can make a contribution and it will be too late. Thanks for the support you and Gabi provide to all of us. Reading group discussions on DS has been a major source for my own personal healing.

Well said, Cole. Blaming each other heals nothing.

It was really hard for my husband and I to dig around in our marital basement and look for cracks in the foundation without taking it personally. It hurts for me to see and acknowdge the ways I have hurt my husband and pushed him away. It was easier, but far less productive, to JUST see the affair and just focus on that mistake. The work it took to dig deeper and see the bigger picture was painful, but definitely more productive.

How's the quote go? Something like: if you're not helping work toward a solution then you're part of the problem? It took awhile of nursing my pain (in ICU, I guess?) before I could start actively working toward viable solutions to our problems.

right now I just want to fade away(numb I guess) because it will never go away the facts will never change and they are far too painful for me to get past....I am ready for no contact I guess, I have tried the cling to my CS thing because I didn't want to let go, I did not want to lose anymore of him to her, to his selfishnesss and now I feel like I have just been rewarding him with all of the great sex, even better than it was before the affair because I in my head just acted like the whore he was looking for, someone to just lavish on him...but forever he has FIRSTS with her, he has EXCLUSIVES HE SHARED WITH HER, that we will never share and will never be ours because they are theirs, I HATE HIM FOR THOSE, hate may seem like a harsh hard word but I HATE HIM FOR WHAT HE HAS DONE, HE DID IT, HE CHOSE IT, I did not and would not and I can't get the nasty feel off of me, her bodily fluids on him and brought to me without a care, you know the old adage "do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" well he does and did kiss his wife with THAT MOUTH AFTE WHERE IT HAD BEEN THE NIGHT BEFORE, makes me sick, and I hate him for that, for what he did, and would have continued doing if I had not caught him GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Cole great post. Very similar to an analogy I just used. There is the trauma phase, stop the bleeding. Then their is the healing and recovering and relearning part.

Shegavehim, I went through the hyper sex in the beginning then we fell into mundane point where he was frustrated that everythingb kept circling back to the A (3 year and resulted in oc). The more he wanted to put it all in a neat little box and put it away, the more I hated him. I really began to hate him and the ow who I had never even met. I hated any photographs taken from that 3 year period. It included my pregnancy and first year of my daughters life.

My decision was to take a few months alone. No relationship and minimal contact (other than dropping kids for visits). I had to rediscover me. Decide if and how I would forgive him. It was something I felt I needed to do for my own healing. I was becoming an angry robotic being. I was sad or pissed at everything everyday.

After 3 months with no pressure from him and really reconnecting with God I came to a place where I could begin to see the man again. And he had time to realize that justvendingvthecaffair and saying sorry sorry so sorry wasn't enough. He had to look and see that there were multiple other issues tat were there tat he needed to change. When he was able to see thatcandcwas willing to work on those things so was I. That is when we really began to heal. That was over a year after dday.

My story is complicated because we were already seperated on dday. I was ready to end the marriage for all the other crap we had put eachother through and the string suspicion of an old affair. Dday sort of pushed everyhingvelsecaway and was like Coles car accident analogy. Suddenly nothing else mattered. I finally the truth I spent years begging for and he was humble, remorseful and very willing to give me all I was needing. That caused the beginning stage of hyper bonding. We remained living separately untilv 15 months post dday.

We are now almost 3 years post dday and working regularly in keeping our marriage in good shape.

I am a true believer in rebuilding but only you can know how much you can handle. As cole said, each persons healing time is different.

Allora - we have had to dig through 30 years of marital basement and examine all the cracks and there were more than we ever knew. We both understand the ways we each contributed to the emotional distance we had and the family disconnect. We were both blaming the other and not able to really see the dynamic for what it was. It has been a hard thing to examine in some ways and it has hurt to know how much I hurt him in the earlier years of our marriage by not meeting his needs. Sometimes, I just want to slap that younger me around and wake her up. Then there is the me in the A's. I slap her too. Good thing the me now is working so hard to keep her priorities straight and be the wife she should have been all along.

Shegavehim....remember the message I sent you. This is one of the phases you are going through. First the disbelief, the shock..then the denial..and then ANGER. I went through that phase for a VERY, VERY long time. Seething, raging, blind hatred and ANGER. You are there right now. Some of us go through it quickly, others stay in each phase as long as we need to.

Believe me, I truly understand.

All normal and understandable feelings to feel, shegave. The pain is not easily dealt with. But I pray you will find a way to do so, and work though it. It's rough and a horrible place to be.