My H and I are about to celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary, we have two grown sons that left home within the past 3years, and one early teen daughter still at home.
We have been on the reconciliation road for a little under 3-1/2 years now. We have both been feeling so weary and discouraged lately. A lot of our fights and misunderstandings feel like broken records that are carving deep painful grooves into our souls. The discouragement is not from the ongoing work of re-engaging our hearts, even though that can be frustrating, we are not above working hard for a valuable relationship. The discouragement and near-hopelessness comes from the fear that we will never have the easy-going love that we once had. That we have both put in an incredible amount of work and soul-searching and effort, yet the ease of our mutual love and happiness still remains elusively out of reach.
Background: in April of 2013 my H realized or discovered that I was having an EA with one of his best friends. I had only just begun to realize it was becoming an inappropriate friendship myself about two months prior and had literally made the decision to tell him the very weekend he found out. (At that time I didn't even know what an EA was)
I say that only to explain that even though I had emotionally bonded with OM I was still in the early stages of realizing the direction my heart was heading. So thankfully it ended early on.
One of the reasons I had been able to fool myself for so long was because we were couple friends with OM and his wife. He and I had started communicating at first just to plan outings for the 4 of us because we both happened to be the planners in our respective marriages. As we all got to be closer over the course of about 3 years, we found that we had other things in common and would text and FB msg here and there. My H was aware of our occasional chatting AND he had full access to my FB account which I assumed he was checking in on. In fact OM would often talk to H about the content of our conversations so things were really out in the open and no one seemed upset so I thought all was well. (They worked together)
The main problem, not just in this situation but with me in general, was that I didn't believe that my inner feelings mattered, unless someone else confirmed that they did.
It was one of my very best friends who after asking me some very pointed questions about my friendship with OM said to me, 'it concerns me that you are assuring me that nothing would ever come of this because he (OM) doesn't like you 'that' way and not because you would never want to compromise your marriage.'
She really shone the light on the deceptiveness of my heart. It took me a while to actually accept what she was saying as a signal that all was not well with me in this friendship, irregardless of how he felt. (OM)
At that time I felt that H didn't care what I did. He not only was part of the friendship, he encouraged it. (He had so much blind faith in me and had no idea that I was unhappy (my fault) so he didn't know that he was basically offering me an alternative to my loneliness.) I sometimes wondered if he was pawning me off on his friend because we were both natural talkers and it took some of the pressure off of my very non-talker H. (Another source of pain and disconnect for me in our M)
So basically I was very out of touch with myself and subsequently H was very out of touch with me. His description of what happened in 2013 was that he was on the party train heading for wedded bliss and out of the blue it derailed and destroyed his happy little world. It makes me weepy to think that I did that to him...but also glad that we got a wake up call because my perspective was that I would never get what I truly wanted out of marriage because I thought men were incapable of the sort of heart connection and understanding that I was starving for.
I wish the wake up could've come about in another way though. I would never, ever choose the pain, and undermining of confidence that this has brought about for my H. He has forgiven me for the betrayal but the worst part is he can't seem to forgive himself for being party to this and for not recognizing my great need and how it was being met by someone else. He feels stupid and foolish because he thought all was well and he paraded me out for his friend as an example of a wonderful wife and bragged on his relationship with me. He told me recently that he is ashamed that he allowed OM into the 'henhouse' and even ignored my pleas for help. (I tried to tell H early on that I did feel attraction to OM and so I didn't want him too close) my H's ultimate response was 'if he's into you and you're into him, I'm screwed.'
I've never made much sense of that, except to me it shows the amount of insecurity that was already evident in my H even before everything broke loose.
He always thought that the connection I had with OM was based on looks and physique so H felt he couldn't compete. I did not feel that way at all. I always felt OM and H were equally attractive, it was the willingness to talk, to be available, to notice the little things, to be kind and warm and attentive, all things that seemed to come naturally to OM and that we're lacking in my relationship with H.
Please understand I am NOT making excuses for my betrayal of affection, I am merely laying a groundwork for the things that are now the obstacles and pitfalls that H and I are navigating through in our commitment to reconciliation and create a new and healthy relationship together.
My time reading on TAM during the last couple of years has really helped me to own my s#!t and not act like what I did was because of what H did or didn't do. He never 'deserved' for me to leave him emotionally without at least telling him what I needed from him and letting him know that I was leaving.
It is because of reading all of the stories on TAM that I understand that am fully responsible for my choices and just because i allowed boundaries to slip, bit by bit through inaction, doesn't mean i didn't choose what happened even though it was all in my heart and never turned into anything physical.
(Thank God!)
Toward the end of my EA, OM and I were taking many times a day and OM would often know things going on with me before H. We did not ever profess any feelings to one another. And we never said anything negative about our spouses. We followed all the 'rules' of opposite sex friendships. I even asked him if his wife knew and was ok with us talking and he said she was.
Yet, even so, I fell hard for him because he was paying attention to me in a way I had not experienced for a very long time. (Since my teen years)
H was still pretty clueless and thought those little twinges of concern or (God forbid) jealously, were to be pushed aside and ignored.
My heart was completely given over to OM by that time and I had pretty much fully shut down to H.
What terrifies me about this phase of things was that H had no idea.
We were having amazing sex and doing lots of fun things and he had no idea that I was MIA emotionally. That just made me all the more sure that he had no real care for me but could be easily lulled by sex and fun times.
Now I understand that it was truly MY responsibility to TELL him! No matter how mad he got or how bad we fought afterward. Nothing is worth the pain of disconnecting with your own spouse and finding yourself open to someone else.
It still hurts my heart to think of the pain and embarrassment I caused him.
Not to mention his loss of his good friend.
I don't know if OM was into me or just had terrible boundaries. He never professed anything to me but friendship. Although he was pretty flirtatious when drinking. H told me that was the norm and that he had even flirted with ---- while drinking, who was a girl at work that they considered unattractive.
(What does a wife do with that statement?)
Ok enough history, if you're interested in my story and Ive left anything out I'm happy to answer questions.
I'm sure there are those who will feel triggered by my story and for that I'm sorry. My reason for this thread is to discuss the difficulty of true reconciliation. It's not the easy road. My H and i have been willing to take everything down to the baseboards and rebuild. It's been incredibly painful for both of us.
We ARE committed though and are hoping that if we keep going we will reap the rewards. For now the only consistent good thing is that we haven't separated and therefore our family is still intact, our friends aren't devastated by us not making it, and we haven't had to divide our finances and assets.
But our relationship has not been the source of comfort that we both are craving. At least not consistently.
We started counseling this month and have been to one session last week. We were both encouraged to discover that this is pretty normal for a relationship overhaul and that it IS indeed the hardest part. Our therapist implored us to not give up because it's at this point that often breakthrough is just around the corner.
We have seen her off and on since the EA came out so she knows us and our story.
Bottom line: we love each other...but just loving isn't enough, when something like this happens. You really DO have to leave no stone unturned and all this stone turning is really exhausting and at times demoralizing.
Thankfully we have loving family and awesome friends which makes for a great support system. I cannot imagine going through this alone.
I hope to share as we continue counseling and as we keep walking into what i hope will be a new and wonderful second phase of our marriage!
We have been on the reconciliation road for a little under 3-1/2 years now. We have both been feeling so weary and discouraged lately. A lot of our fights and misunderstandings feel like broken records that are carving deep painful grooves into our souls. The discouragement is not from the ongoing work of re-engaging our hearts, even though that can be frustrating, we are not above working hard for a valuable relationship. The discouragement and near-hopelessness comes from the fear that we will never have the easy-going love that we once had. That we have both put in an incredible amount of work and soul-searching and effort, yet the ease of our mutual love and happiness still remains elusively out of reach.
Background: in April of 2013 my H realized or discovered that I was having an EA with one of his best friends. I had only just begun to realize it was becoming an inappropriate friendship myself about two months prior and had literally made the decision to tell him the very weekend he found out. (At that time I didn't even know what an EA was)
I say that only to explain that even though I had emotionally bonded with OM I was still in the early stages of realizing the direction my heart was heading. So thankfully it ended early on.
One of the reasons I had been able to fool myself for so long was because we were couple friends with OM and his wife. He and I had started communicating at first just to plan outings for the 4 of us because we both happened to be the planners in our respective marriages. As we all got to be closer over the course of about 3 years, we found that we had other things in common and would text and FB msg here and there. My H was aware of our occasional chatting AND he had full access to my FB account which I assumed he was checking in on. In fact OM would often talk to H about the content of our conversations so things were really out in the open and no one seemed upset so I thought all was well. (They worked together)
The main problem, not just in this situation but with me in general, was that I didn't believe that my inner feelings mattered, unless someone else confirmed that they did.
It was one of my very best friends who after asking me some very pointed questions about my friendship with OM said to me, 'it concerns me that you are assuring me that nothing would ever come of this because he (OM) doesn't like you 'that' way and not because you would never want to compromise your marriage.'
She really shone the light on the deceptiveness of my heart. It took me a while to actually accept what she was saying as a signal that all was not well with me in this friendship, irregardless of how he felt. (OM)
At that time I felt that H didn't care what I did. He not only was part of the friendship, he encouraged it. (He had so much blind faith in me and had no idea that I was unhappy (my fault) so he didn't know that he was basically offering me an alternative to my loneliness.) I sometimes wondered if he was pawning me off on his friend because we were both natural talkers and it took some of the pressure off of my very non-talker H. (Another source of pain and disconnect for me in our M)
So basically I was very out of touch with myself and subsequently H was very out of touch with me. His description of what happened in 2013 was that he was on the party train heading for wedded bliss and out of the blue it derailed and destroyed his happy little world. It makes me weepy to think that I did that to him...but also glad that we got a wake up call because my perspective was that I would never get what I truly wanted out of marriage because I thought men were incapable of the sort of heart connection and understanding that I was starving for.
I wish the wake up could've come about in another way though. I would never, ever choose the pain, and undermining of confidence that this has brought about for my H. He has forgiven me for the betrayal but the worst part is he can't seem to forgive himself for being party to this and for not recognizing my great need and how it was being met by someone else. He feels stupid and foolish because he thought all was well and he paraded me out for his friend as an example of a wonderful wife and bragged on his relationship with me. He told me recently that he is ashamed that he allowed OM into the 'henhouse' and even ignored my pleas for help. (I tried to tell H early on that I did feel attraction to OM and so I didn't want him too close) my H's ultimate response was 'if he's into you and you're into him, I'm screwed.'
I've never made much sense of that, except to me it shows the amount of insecurity that was already evident in my H even before everything broke loose.
He always thought that the connection I had with OM was based on looks and physique so H felt he couldn't compete. I did not feel that way at all. I always felt OM and H were equally attractive, it was the willingness to talk, to be available, to notice the little things, to be kind and warm and attentive, all things that seemed to come naturally to OM and that we're lacking in my relationship with H.
Please understand I am NOT making excuses for my betrayal of affection, I am merely laying a groundwork for the things that are now the obstacles and pitfalls that H and I are navigating through in our commitment to reconciliation and create a new and healthy relationship together.
My time reading on TAM during the last couple of years has really helped me to own my s#!t and not act like what I did was because of what H did or didn't do. He never 'deserved' for me to leave him emotionally without at least telling him what I needed from him and letting him know that I was leaving.
It is because of reading all of the stories on TAM that I understand that am fully responsible for my choices and just because i allowed boundaries to slip, bit by bit through inaction, doesn't mean i didn't choose what happened even though it was all in my heart and never turned into anything physical.
(Thank God!)
Toward the end of my EA, OM and I were taking many times a day and OM would often know things going on with me before H. We did not ever profess any feelings to one another. And we never said anything negative about our spouses. We followed all the 'rules' of opposite sex friendships. I even asked him if his wife knew and was ok with us talking and he said she was.
Yet, even so, I fell hard for him because he was paying attention to me in a way I had not experienced for a very long time. (Since my teen years)
H was still pretty clueless and thought those little twinges of concern or (God forbid) jealously, were to be pushed aside and ignored.
My heart was completely given over to OM by that time and I had pretty much fully shut down to H.
What terrifies me about this phase of things was that H had no idea.
We were having amazing sex and doing lots of fun things and he had no idea that I was MIA emotionally. That just made me all the more sure that he had no real care for me but could be easily lulled by sex and fun times.
Now I understand that it was truly MY responsibility to TELL him! No matter how mad he got or how bad we fought afterward. Nothing is worth the pain of disconnecting with your own spouse and finding yourself open to someone else.
It still hurts my heart to think of the pain and embarrassment I caused him.
Not to mention his loss of his good friend.
I don't know if OM was into me or just had terrible boundaries. He never professed anything to me but friendship. Although he was pretty flirtatious when drinking. H told me that was the norm and that he had even flirted with ---- while drinking, who was a girl at work that they considered unattractive.
(What does a wife do with that statement?)
Ok enough history, if you're interested in my story and Ive left anything out I'm happy to answer questions.
I'm sure there are those who will feel triggered by my story and for that I'm sorry. My reason for this thread is to discuss the difficulty of true reconciliation. It's not the easy road. My H and i have been willing to take everything down to the baseboards and rebuild. It's been incredibly painful for both of us.
We ARE committed though and are hoping that if we keep going we will reap the rewards. For now the only consistent good thing is that we haven't separated and therefore our family is still intact, our friends aren't devastated by us not making it, and we haven't had to divide our finances and assets.
But our relationship has not been the source of comfort that we both are craving. At least not consistently.
We started counseling this month and have been to one session last week. We were both encouraged to discover that this is pretty normal for a relationship overhaul and that it IS indeed the hardest part. Our therapist implored us to not give up because it's at this point that often breakthrough is just around the corner.
We have seen her off and on since the EA came out so she knows us and our story.
Bottom line: we love each other...but just loving isn't enough, when something like this happens. You really DO have to leave no stone unturned and all this stone turning is really exhausting and at times demoralizing.
Thankfully we have loving family and awesome friends which makes for a great support system. I cannot imagine going through this alone.
I hope to share as we continue counseling and as we keep walking into what i hope will be a new and wonderful second phase of our marriage!