How much of this do you own? I grappled with that question because I knew in my heart that I had done things over the years that also contributed to the breakdown of our marriage, but I had never chosen to step outside of my marriage to solve it. So as far as the A goes, I don't own any of it. As far as some of the problems in our marriage that lay un-addressed for years, I own 50% of my share). In many cases the affair itself is not about what was lacking with YOU but what was lacking in your spouse: self-esteem, ability to communicate, coping abilities, spiritual connections, and I even think family history (at least in my situation because my H grew up with divorced parents who separated due to infidelity).

The CS has the bulk of the work to do in the beginning by giving you confidence the A is really over, answering your questions, being transparent, showing remorse, apologizing and changing behaviors that are hurtful. But you also have some work to do....by taking time to address some of the problems in your marriage (ours is communication) and being patient too with all the forwards and backwards that you will experience with the coming months. They say it can take up to two years to move past an A - and for me, that may very well be true. So for me, the biggest thing has been learning patience with the whole process and trying my best to remain calm and paddle on despite days that still occur when I'd like to find the closest heavy object and hit him over the head with it.

Totally agree with beach here. I can honestly say that there was no "breakdown" in our marriage. When H told me of his A, he wanted me to know that he made sure that our "marriage" didn't suffer because he didn't believe anything was wrong with it. He simply was feeling old, unattractive and wanted to see if he still "had it". For a year, he needed to know if he still "had it". Really?

In hindsight, the problems that I see/saw were definitely in the communication department. Still struggle with those as is evident in my recent journals. I've actually heard that it takes 2-5 years to move past this. For me, I think it may take those full 5 years because of the fact that my H still works with TOW. It's a daily reminder.

AS far as your H's A - you don't own any of that. It was entirely his decision to go outside the marriage instead of working on what he perceived as the problem. Often, they don’t know and even more frequently, it's their lack of self-confidence that finds them in the A.

The work you need to do? Patience, patience, patience. Easier said than done. Sending you hugs!

It's overwhelming when you first find out, and that's an understatement! You love him and hate him at the same time. You waffle between wanting to run far away and reconciling. We so get it!

Like Beach and Destined say, it takes a lot of patience and time... and it's not an easy road whether you leave or stay. But hang in there. Don't make any life altering decisions while your feelings are in such a jumble. You have time and you have us to give you insight and support. I'm almost 5 months out, but with (both of us) determination, marriage counseling, and my friends on this site, I'm feeling the progress in my reconciliation.

You're not alone! Hugs and support to you!

Thanks ladies, you are both right, and my head knows, I DID NOT DO THIS, he did. I know it wasn't one thing, but many that got him there. The last 3 years really have been rough. we moved to new mexico from kansas to take care of my mother who was terminally ill,, uprooted kids , it was hard hard hard. H left his job here under good terms, with offer for job back whenever we back,, we knew would be back,, but while gone the economy tanked,,, he had several 'jobs' out there but nothing in his field,, just wasnt available out there where we were, when we came back, his old company had sold out to some outta state big corp and lost half employees, so he was still on unemployment. He is back to work now, thank God, for same orig comp, they've restructured again. He turned 40, and even though we teased n joked I know he took that hard,,,he's a year younger than me btw, a fact he is very fond of pointing out:)
While we were in new mexico my youngest daughter who was 13 at time had her finger amputated when a wind storm blew house door shut on her hand. That was very traumatic,, and very very hard taking care of her and my mom at same time. H was low on the totem pole at that time, Mom was at the top, kiids next and he was a distant 3rd. When Mom passed away last July, on my sons bday, I was a mess, and so was he,,,, some background there, he is basically estranged from his fam,, didnt grow up surrounded by fam,, and I have monster family , 4 sisters 1 brother, plus 2 step bro and 1 step sis,,,,so for 21 yrs off n on he has kicked at screamed at all the family involvement, lol. My mothers funeral was the first funeral my h had ever been to. He had never dealt with grief, he tried to help in beginning, but didn't know how and gave up.
I was sinking and pulling away. I was depressed, I see that now. This summer as the one year date of losing my mom approached and i was a basket case,was prepared for the one yr july 23 to be hard,, wasnt expecting to get slammmmmmmmmed on july 3 when it hit me that the yr before on july 4 was last time we took Mom outside and she got to see the fireworks and she was so happy, before that had prob been 9 months since had been outside , but we knew end was near,,, alll my siblings were there for the 4th and we just removed the doors and wheeled her whole bed out the door.
h first talk to tow like 2 weeks before the 4th and i know it did start innocently enough,,, he talked to lots of people in that time,, he is originally from Joplin and was right after the tornado,, and everyone was connecting talking about it etc,,,,,
we got into huge fight the 4th,
their conversations changed and became private.
we hadnt had sex since july 3, and even before that was sporadic, because i wasnt ever in mood, i know, looking back, more signs of depression, and after being shot down all time he quit asking.
august 21 he went to see her.
after that he couldnt even touch me,,, i would see it sometimes, he would reach out and then stop just short,, i knew something was wrong, but i didnt have enrygy to deal. his explanation after all this is that it was his guilt, his shame, his feeling unworthy to touch me.

I have rambled and may seem like im making excuses for him, I'm not, just trying to get at all the why's,,,,,,,he's still the sob who drove 3 hours to have sex with a memory of a girl he knew when he was 14.

oh I left out the part that while we were in new mexico a storm came through and uprooted several trees sent them through our roof, we had lots of water damage, so while a new roof was put on while we gone, when we got back we lived in brothers little 2 br rental for 4 months while we gutted and redid the entire inside of our house,, talk about stress!!! lol

One thing I had to hang (and still do) when I get down an out about WHY my H would have ever stepped out of our marriage, was that like you we had a GROCERY LIST of stress going on. From my H returning from a deployment to Afghanistan, to my mother having emergency surgery, to a son in college making poor choices plus a list of other things a mile long....we had a major storm of stress brewing.

The OW was an ESCAPE from all that because he couldn't handle all the pressure and major conflicting emotions swirling around at the time. He started on the slippery slope of allowing her glimpses into what was going on in our life and then her devoted attention she gave him became a drug. My OW is married to a surgeon, and does not work and had ALL DAY to check in and soothe him.

Of course, one of the biggest things to come out of this is the continued focus on communication of feelings and making my H aware that he has to share his problems with me too so I can be his sounding board....and I have had to work hard to stop my business and listen when he does share his concerns. It has been the topic of many conversations and we used to never talk about these things before. So we both are growing from this.

Both my W and I considered our marriage pre-A to be good. Not perfect, but none are perfect. So I figured some issues were expected, personality differences, etc. Which is in part why I never saw them as marital problems that could be fixed. I decided that from time to time we were just going to be cross ways on some things here and there, and there wasn't much I could do about it. Each anniversary I would usually ask her the same question, "How do you feel about our marriage and your life to date?"

I'd always asked that because I felt with more concentrated time together, it was a good time to check up in case there were things that bothered her and needed to be addressed. Each year, nothing was ever brought up that I recall. It was usually how much we loved each other and we had no big problems. There had been times for me that we had big problems, but I saw all those as in the past, over with even if never totally "fixed," I had become content with where they stood and didn't consider them as important enough to damage my love for her. We loved each other very much.

While all that was true, some of the issues that I tagged as being personality conflicts were really feeding unmet needs she had that said to her she was important to me, that I loved her. My actions didn't match my words, IOW. I didn't see that, I was just operating on my own selfish way of seeing things, not realizing all the while that what I was telling her was that I didn't love her that much. So much so, that as she knew our last son graduating and heading off to college was just a little over a year away, and our other son could be gone to, she saw the future as just me and her, and she was scared of it because I spent so little time with her, she felt like she would have little to no social interaction, and life would be boring and non-existent.

I figured she was worried about things that wouldn't happen. I figured in all the years we'd been together, that her constant putting the kids before me (which without thinking about it at the time, probably sent messages that I wasn't that important to her either), meant when the kids left he house, then she would have more time to once again focus on me, like we did before our first kid was born. I sort of looked forward to that time as once again it would be just me and her. I considered the first two years of our marriage, before the kids came along, to be some of our closest and best times of our marriage. I was looking forward to returning to that. As long as the kids were here, I figured I would always take a back seat to her attention. And that is what tended to fuel getting into my own world a lot, I think, because I wasn't part of hers that much, and I had to find my own interest and hobbies.

I'm not saying it was all her and not me, but I think you can see the cycle that fueled itself churning away there. By the time the A hit, we'd been living with these things for years, and nothing ever happened. What we are calling the "Perfect Storm" hit. She had always thought of herself even from teenage on, as fat and unattractive. When I met her, she most certainly wasn't fat. Not skinny or anything, but not at all fat. But she perceived herself to be. Once she started having kids, then she really did get fat, up to 260 lbs. When we were married, she weighed around 160. So a 100 lb difference. So a few years ago, I want to say 2008 or 09, she started to lose weight, all the way back down to around 180 at her lowest point. For the first time in her life, she saw herself as thin, and *sexy*.

I think that was the key. She started feeling good about herself, and without really thinking about it, started being more flirty with men. She is social by nature, so I never saw it as being flirty, just her normal fun-loving personality that attracted me to her in the first place. But I didn't want to make too much of her weight loss because I didn't want to make it seem I didn't love her when she weighed more. I didn't want her to feel like, "Oh, now that I'm sexy and thin, I find out you really hated me being fat!" Because such a conclusion wouldn't be true. I wanted my love for her to not be based on her weight and good looks, but upon her as a person.

But I'm pretty dense when it comes to flirting. I'm sure there are women that have flirted with me and I didn't even notice or recognize it as such. So it never crossed my mind she was being flirty. But obviously she was. Guys started noticing her, and the one guy at the place she cleaned noticed it, and drew him to her. When she told me they were flirting, I told her it wasn't a game, that to a guy flirting meant you were available and you wanted them. And it would be cruel to send that signal if it weren't true (it never occurred to me for her it might actually be true...she rationalized it as a game but didn't think she would ever do anything either).

And as they say, the rest is history. She didn't listen to me, and when the flirting turned into sex chatting, she no longer told me anything about what was going on between them. That's when she started hiding things from me and sinking into the affair fog.

Here's the deal. I own my part of the marital problems. Her having an affair isn't a cause and effect of the marital problems. I would rather liken them to increasing the temptation to do so. But the affair itself is not a marital problem. It is an unhealthy and destructive response to either marital issues they are dealing with, or personal issues they are dealing with. In many cases, an affair doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the marriage itself.

Deciding to have or allow an affair to take place was his incorrect response to dealing with whatever he was dealing with. Pure and simple. And because of that, you bear no blame or responsibility for him reacting to his issues inappropriately. If he acted responsibly and with the intent to address the problems in the marriage, his desire for the woman should have been a red flag that something was not right in him, and should have sent him running to you and an therapist, or some kind of help to figure out what was going wrong with him. But what tends to happen is they mistake lust for love, and because society conditions us to think this way, it appears to them that this relationship is exciting and fresh and new and the other one is old, riddled with problems and responsibilities, and boring. Comparing the two, the affair partner looks much more appealing, much more like "love." They don't tend to stop and think to themselves, "I'm not perceiving reality here correctly." Instead, they do what comes "natural" to them.

So his affair is at best an inappropriate response to the marital problems, but not caused by marital problems. It was his choice on how to respond to them, and his own personal problems, and is an unhealthy response which further complicates the marital issues and makes it more likely, not less, that those issues result in the breakdown of the marriage, because now lack of trust has been added to the mix, and that tends to be deadly if not effectively dealt with.

As most have said above, you don't have to own any responsibility for the affair because it was his bad decision, and no problem in his life or your marriage justifies it. However, I do think that rebuilding the marriage requires ownership from both of you. You didn't choose it, and you don't deserve it, but those are the cards we were all dealt. Now we are left with two choices, and neither of them are easy: Rebuild your marriage or rebuild your life alone. Rebuilding your marriage requires not only healing yourself from the emotional pain, but also working on all those other factors in your marriage or in yourselves that opened the door for temptation.

Cheating is absoulutely the wrong way to handle problems, but one thing is for sure, it brings all your problems front and center so they can be addressed head-on. It will require both of you owning the rebuilding process, and doing a lot of "the right things".