"I'm having an affair.", and more...

[ThePretender919]

@amorali

We only hear his side of things, and honestly he seems to have bad judgement and to be very self focused.
This woman sounds like she too is miserable. Something is very wrong here and you can’t just assume that someone who is having an affair is giving you an accurate picture of the marriage.
People in affairs will do anything to justify their actions including completely rewriting marital history, finding every thing wrong with their spouse, making the spouse the bad guy to assuage their own guilt.
You can find the same thing repeated on many sites, in many books. I am active on marriage forums and I have literally seen this hundreds of times. It’s like they are reading from a script.

"Next begins a repeated internal dialogue of rationalizations, over and over again in their minds. The Wayward Spouse needs to rationalize with themselves in order to cover up and minimise their feelings of guilt. They may convince themselves that their marriage was already bad and that it had been for a long time, that their spouse doesn’t really love them, and that the affair partner must truly be their “soul-mate” because he/she is the only one who understands them. They may tell themselves, and the Betrayed Spouse, that the Betrayed Spouse is “better off without them.” Frequently this rationalization leads to inventing reasons for having the affair in the first place, including that the affair is like “therapy,” something they do for themselves. They say it makes them a better, happier spouse — “If I am happier, then how could that be bad for my marriage/family/spouse?”

Loss of Empathy

After a short time, they cease to think of anyone else’s feelings — not parents, not spouses, not children, not friends — only their feelings and the feelings of their Affair Partner. To a foggy Wayward, the Other Person is without flaws, weaknesses or selfishness. Soon the cheating spouse begins to believe the lies they’ve been telling themselves. They, therefore, act accordingly, treating their spouse with anger and hostility, and their affair partner in a loving and affectionate way. Despite all of this, the Wayward might not want out of the marriage. They enjoy the familial comfort of home, with the added excitement of the affair. It is as if they become addicted to the affair, needing the constant high it brings, no matter the total disregard for the Betrayed."

http://www.marriageadvocates.com/2012/07/10/coping-with-infidelity-understanding-the-wayward-fog/

He is not a reliable source as to the health of his marriage. I know of many former waywards who can’t believe how foggy and brainwashed they were.

The only way out is for the spouse to find out and go nuclear on exposure and consequences or for the wayward to initiate divorce and get hit with the reality of divorce and the problems with the new relationship.

I get it, people end up marrying affair partners. But in the end if there is a way to save the marriage I would highly recommend that road. Many people are able to create a much better marriage and reconcile and heal.

One of the best marriage sites:
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/

Was I a reliable source as to the health of my marriage four months ago, before the affair?

I have no problem admitting to being disconnected and not putting in 100% effort over the last few months. But everything I’ve described up to that point has been my honest portrayal of how things got to where they were.

[ThePretender919]

@SaharaTea

I get that you feel hurt and rejected by your wife, but no amount of rationalization is going to convince me that screwing around behind your wife’s back is okay. You need to man up and divorce her or end the affair now.

Again, I have never tried to portray it as right or okay.

[Procrustus]

@ThePretender919

I want to elaborate on something I said in the OP. I guess I held the details out just for not wanting to put too many specifics out there, but it’s probably not a big deal. Maybe it provides a little more of a look into what’s going on, or maybe it’s just me wanting to type it out. Either way.

I mentioned she gained a lot of weight. Partially before her pregnancy 3 years ago (slowly over the years), and a large chunk during the pregnancy. Well during the pregnancy she got swollen to the point where she had to take her engagement and wedding rings off. Fine, no problem, it happens. Well, she never lost the weight, even in her fingers, so the rings are still just barely too small.

She never took the time to get them re-sized over the years. I didn’t bug her about it, but mentioned it a few times. It never got done. So, the night I broke down… poured my heart out to my wife, I asked her to do something. I looked her straight in the eye and told her very specifically that it was very important to me that she go to the jewelry store and have her rings re-sized. She told me she would do it that week.

A week passed, two weeks passed. Nothing. To this day, more than four months later, they are sitting in a jewelry box.

I try to avoid making a big deal out of little details in my life.

But, as a guy who rarely gets emotional, when I open myself up like I did, and don’t get the smallest token of love and respect in return, it hurts. A lot.

Getting the rings re-sized is an admission that she will stay overweight. She’s probably unwilling to do that, and is holding on to the hope she will return to her previous weight. I think on this issue, you should be more understanding. In any event, of all your complaints, this seems the most irrational. Who cares if she’s wearing her rings or not?

[amorali]

@ThePretender919

Was I a reliable source as to the health of my marriage four months ago, before the affair?

I have no problem admitting to being disconnected and not putting in 100% effort over the last few months. But everything I’ve described up to that point has been my honest portrayal of how things got to where they were.

Obviously your marriage wasn’t healthy. But you are doing the same thing that every cheater does. And I would bet that you have thought about having an affair for a long time. Were you in an emotional affair with your partner first? Were you cruising dating sites and affair sites? Did you tell yourself “I’m going to cry to her and ask her to resize her rings and if she won’t I’m going to go meet soandso at the hotel”?

[ThePretender919]

@amorali

You rarely get emotional? Women love that. You two have been disconnected for a long time. She is probably really confused. You tell her you aren’t attracted to her and expect her to attack you when you get home? Really?
About the rings. You told her you aren’t attracted to her and how unhappy you are and then expect her to magically be attracted to you and French you when you get home, then you tell her basically “look you are fat and we both know you are never going to lose weight. So go get your rings resized because you are going to be fat for the rest of your life.”
That’s what women think like. She probably couldn’t bring herself to do it because it’s like admitting failure.
You seem to know almost nothing about women and yet you see yourself as an expert.
Go get help from an expert.

Heh, I don’t think you like me.

1. “Emotional” in that context refers to being moved to the point of sitting on our bed, crying, sobbing. And yes, I rarely get emotional in that context.

2. There were two years (at least) between the conversations. The first conversation had nothing to do with attractiveness or anything like that. It was what should have been a healthy discussion about our relationship and improving it. The result of the conversation, which started with the discussion of love languages, was that I’d give her more words of encouragement and try to do more “little things”, and she would show more affection. I held up my end of the discussion, she did not, no matter how much you don’t believe me. So you’re put down about expecting her to come home and attack me after I told her she’s unattractive is completely off base.

3. I’m not sure why you are searching for reasons to justify her behavior in that specific instance of the rings, and then pinning the whole thing on me “not understanding women”. When your spouse looks you right in the eye and tells you something is very important to them, you listen and you act. That is beyond “understanding women”. That is “understanding a relationship”. Sometimes you put whatever insecurities you have away for the sake of what should be the most important relationship in your life. Or if you have those insecurities, you talk about them.

[Rachellelogram]

Sounds like you’ve done everything you could to salvage the relationship. So it’s pretty much over, you did your best, and that’s OK. Marriages have been ended over less. I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea to wait until you have a bird in hand before leaving your old bird in the bush, but that’s not really relevant. Just don’t count on things going well with your new squeeze, unless she’s getting divorced too.

I do think it’s telling that you don’t really mention much about your kids in your post. How many there are, what ages they are, what interactions you have with them. But I’m a divorced kid from a loveless, abusive marriage and I did better than I would have if my parents had stayed together. They’ll adapt.

I’m also fat, but even I understand that gaining a significant amount of weight since meeting one’s partner (along with lack of physical care, lack of sex, lack of affection, and lack of doing things/caring) are dealbreakers for many people. They SHOULD be. Honestly it sounds like your wife is depressed, but you don’t have to stay with her if she won’t accept that or even try to get treatment.

[ThePretender919]

@Procrustus

Getting the rings re-sized is an admission that she will stay overweight. She’s probably unwilling to do that, and is holding on to the hope she will return to her previous weight. I think on this issue, you should be more understanding. In any event, of all your complaints, this seems the most irrational. Who cares if she’s wearing her rings or not?

It’s not about the rings. She didn’t wear them for years and it didn’t really bother me.

It was the fact that in that moment, she didn’t listen and care about what I had to say.

But in that moment it was important to me. I’ve never, in all our years of marriage, asked her to do something so specific, and told her how important it was to me.

And in the grand scheme it’s still not a big deal. But combined with everything else it just really got to me.

[ThePretender919]

@amorali

Obviously your marriage wasn’t healthy. But you are doing the same thing that every cheater does. And I would bet that you have thought about having an affair for a long time. Were you in an emotional affair with your partner first? Were you cruising dating sites and affair sites? Did you tell yourself “I’m going to cry to her and ask her to resize her rings and if she won’t I’m going to go meet soandso at the hotel”?

I had never met this woman, gone online looking for anyone to meet, or anything like that.

I don’t know when the first time I thought about it was, I really don’t.

[ThePretender919]

@Rachellelogram

Sounds like you’ve done everything you could to salvage the relationship. So it’s pretty much over, you did your best, and that’s OK. Marriages have been ended over less. I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea to wait until you have a bird in hand before leaving your old bird in the bush, but that’s not really relevant. Just don’t count on things going well with your new squeeze, unless she’s getting divorced too.

I do think it’s telling that you don’t really mention much about your kids in your post. How many there are, what ages they are, what interactions you have with them. But I’m a divorced kid from a loveless, abusive marriage and I did better than I would have if my parents had stayed together. They’ll adapt.

I’m also fat, but even I understand that gaining a significant amount of weight since meeting one’s partner (along with lack of physical care, lack of sex, lack of affection, and lack of doing things/caring) are dealbreakers for many people. They SHOULD be. Honestly it sounds like your wife is depressed, but you don’t have to stay with her if she won’t accept that or even try to get treatment.

I mainly leave out the information about the kids just to stay relatively anonymous. I love them and spend as much time as I can with them. Anyone who knows me would say I’m a fantastic dad. They are in the forefront of my mind while I’m trying to figure everything out.

Weight itself is not a dealbreaker for me, in and of itself. My wife has never been skinny, and she hasn’t been her wedding weight for a long time. It’s the other things that, over time, have just broken me down. The recent more significant weight gain has just compounded the problems.

[scootergirl]

It will be interesting to see where your relationship(s) are in a year or two from now. If your marriage was salvageable, or if you parted ways. Be prepared for an emotional roller coaster. If you decide to divorce, do your best to do it in the most civil way possible for the sake of your kids. It can be done. In the end, how you and your spouse handle this will set an example for them.

[amorali]

@ThePretender919

I mainly leave out the information about the kids just to stay relatively anonymous. I love them and spend as much time as I can with them. Anyone who knows me would say I’m a fantastic dad. They are in the forefront of my mind while I’m trying to figure everything out.

Weight itself is not a dealbreaker for me, in and of itself. My wife has never been skinny, and she hasn’t been her wedding weight for a long time. It’s the other things that, over time, have just broken me down. The recent more significant weight gain has just compounded the problems.

Honestly I’m trying to get you to open your eyes to what you are doing. You say you have done everything but you haven’t. You haven’t gone to counseling and you haven’t told her that if she doesn’t try to change with you that you will leave.

Maybe your wife is a horrible person who never loved you and she wants to be rid of you just as much as you do. Speaking as someone who has been through divorce, I can tell you there is nothing more should crushing than to be tied to another person you can’t stand until the kids leave the house.

I did literally everything to save my marriage and it wasn’t salvageable. I hate that I can’t get away from him, that my daughter has two homes, that I only see her every other Xmas, that she cries about missing her father, that she sometimes blames me for the divorce and I can’t tell her what an abusive crazy pothead her father is.
I am happily remarried but it doesn’t change the fact that this SUCKS! And not only do I deal with my ex, but his ex. And she’s a crazy bïtch too.

All of our kids have suffered more than you can imagine from this. We have been in counseling a lot.

I think if there is any hope to save your marriage you should. Don’t let your temporary euphoria fool you into thinking that things will be rosy and beautiful because they won’t.

[GrizzRich]

FYI, I’ve not read all of the responses just yet…

-First, have a heart-to heart with your paramour and table (or outright end) the affair; and you both must agree not to speak of it with others. Doing so now, or in the future, will only serve to make things worse. Perhaps agree that, if you both end up single and have a chance of being together and happy again, that you’ll give it a shot; but don’t hold your hopes on it.

-Then, have a herat-to heart with your wife. Determine if this marriage is salvagable to BOTH of your satisfaction. If so, then you both need to WORK on it. If not, then make this split as amicable as possible.

-Finally, the kids should never be used as weapons or pawns against the other party.

And a post-script (I will probably regret having posted this)… sometimes a spouse in a relationship where intimacy has gone away may just get permission to be allowed to see others covertly. But this has been known to backfire terribly.

There’s a right way to go about this… and you’re not doing it, friend. Best of luck to you and your family.

[ThePretender919]

@amorali

Honestly I’m trying to get you to open your eyes to what you are doing. You say you have done everything but you haven’t. You haven’t gone to counseling and you haven’t told her that if she doesn’t try to change with you that you will leave.

Maybe your wife is a horrible person who never loved you and she wants to be rid of you just as much as you do. Speaking as someone who has been through divorce, I can tell you there is nothing more should crushing than to be tied to another person you can’t stand until the kids leave the house.

I did literally everything to save my marriage and it wasn’t salvageable. I hate that I can’t get away from him, that my daughter has two homes, that I only see her every other Xmas, that she cries about missing her father, that she sometimes blames me for the divorce and I can’t tell her what an abusive crazy pothead her father is.
I am happily remarried but it doesn’t change the fact that this SUCKS! And not only do I deal with my ex, but his ex. And she’s a crazy bïtch too.

All of our kids have suffered more than you can imagine from this. We have been in counseling a lot.

I think if there is any hope to save your marriage you should. Don’t let your temporary euphoria fool you into thinking that things will be rosy and beautiful because they won’t.

I don’t think that I ever said that. I am sure that I didn’t. I don’t think you are reading what I say with an open mind.

[scootergirl]

Follow your heart, but use your head. Let it lead the way. Make sense? And when I say “head,” I mean your big one.

[Rachellelogram]

@GrizzRich

-First, have a heart-to heart with your paramour and table (or outright end) the affair; and you both must agree not to speak of it with others. Doing so now, or in the future, will only serve to make things worse. Perhaps agree that, if you both end up single and have a chance of being together and happy again, that you’ll give it a shot; but don’t hold your hopes on it.

This is good advice. If you’re going to end a marriage, you should endeavor to go about it with a clear head. And you shouldn’t count on her ending her marriage. If she doesn’t, you can’t likely maintain the relationship long-term.

Not to mention, now that I’ve read the whole thread, making out in a public park is borderline retarded. What if an acquaintance or friend sees you?

[ThePretender919]

@Rachellelogram

This is good advice. If you’re going to end a marriage, you should endeavor to go about it with a clear head. And you shouldn’t count on her ending her marriage. If she doesn’t, you can’t likely maintain the relationship long-term.

Not to mention, now that I’ve read the whole thread, making out in a public park is borderline retarded. What if an acquaintance or friend sees you?

We live 45 minutes away from each other, and when we’ve met publicly we have met in places in between where neither of us knows anyone. And even then we’ve been very careful about it.

[Tom_Tildrum]

@Leaffan

You selectively left out the last line of his post:

“I don’t think I entered the affair with that mindset though, so I’m trying to reign it in.”

That negates your post altogether.

The fact that he thinks he’s reining something in about his affair only reinforces my view, frankly.

[BigT]

[quote=“kambuckta, post:101, topic:679867”]

And nothing shits me more than people like yourself who see the world as black and white, haranguing a confused schmuck in the midst of some personal turmoil.

You’re a real piece of work Inna Minnit. If the world and human emotions were that simple, then advice like yours would have a place. As it stands, they’re not, and your words of admonition reek like sanctimonious

Emotions have nothing to do with right or wrong. Having an affair is wrong, full stop. It is a betrayal of trust, doing something for yourself without regard to how much it will hurt the person you pledged not to betray in this manner. There is no new moral argument that an affair is okay.

The fact that I can understand why the guy had an affair has nothing to do with my saying that it should stop. It is a bad coping mechanism that most likely will only hurt him and the people he loves in the long run.

If he is unwilling to end the affair, there’s no way to save the marriage he claims to want to save. His actions contradict what he claims to want. Sure, he may want to have an affair more than he wants to save his marriage, but he needs to admit that to himself, and stop rationalizing the affair.

But, honestly, I don’t think he should live his life by the emotions of the moment. If he truly loves his wife as he says, he owes it to her to try his absolute best to save the marriage. And that means putting aside the gratification of the affair, no matter what is causing the feelings. Affairs and marriage are incompatible. And it also means counseling, finding a neutral third party to settle the dispute they are having.

I’m not insisting on something I don’t have to do, either. Surely I’m not the only person who is put off by the guy describing her as being unattractive because she’s gaining weight. That’s going to happen in every marriage. It has no bearing on either whether you should get a divorce nor whether it’s okay to have an affair. It’s really hard after reading that to try to stay neutral and not start seeing him as “the bad guy.” Especially when he admits she’s even tried to deal with the excess weight and failed, just like the other 95% of the world.

Yet, in order to decide what’s right and wrong, I have to put aside those emotions. Emotions may make things difficult and complicated, but they don’t change what is right and what he needs to do. Emotions only obscure morality. They don’t change it.

And, no, I do not have to have experienced any of this to know what needs to be done. This isn’t one of those types of questions. My going through it might change how I say things, but not what needs to be done. There really is only one course of action here that aligns with what has been claim. End the affair, and do everything you can to keep the marriage. If that fails, get a divorce, and only then should you see about being with someone else.

Well, unless there’s the possibility of creating an open marriage, but I’m sure the OP would have thought of that if it were possible. An affair is just not going to work long term.

[BigT]

@Rachellelogram

I’m also fat, but even I understand that gaining a significant amount of weight since meeting one’s partner […]are dealbreakers for many people. They SHOULD be.

That’s a problem, seeing as that happens in pretty much every relationship. People gain weight both in relationships and when they get older. People get less attractive over time. If that’s a dealbreaker, then a lifetime commitment isn’t for you.

And, yes, you do have an obligation to help out a depressed person that you love. Sure, there are limits to how far you can go, but seeing someone you love hurting and not doing something about it is a problem.

And don’t get me started on the idea that people can fall out of love. You can fall out of romantic love, but marriage is based on a whole level of love beyond that. And if the OP wants a healthy marriage with anyone, he’s going to have to learn that.

[This_Just_In_2]

@ThePretender919

I mainly leave out the information about the kids just to stay relatively anonymous. I love them and spend as much time as I can with them. Anyone who knows me would say I’m a fantastic dad. They are in the forefront of my mind while I’m trying to figure everything out.

If your kids are really truly forefront in your mind & decisions the best thing you could do for your kids is to table/end your affair and resolve the problems with your marraige (either fix it or divorce).

If you divorce you will probably still have a relationship with your kids. If you’re caught cheating those relationships could easily become more complicated - and is a cheating father something you want your kids to associate you by?