You mentioned that OM broke off with his wife. Is this the reason why your husband has become much more paranoid? Is there anything in particular that is triggering him(other than you obviously). He seems to be losing it. Maybe a week long vacation or a couples retreat?
It's a great idea you have, but we're living on one salary, he doesn't want me to work since I had the affair, he feels my boundaries are still too weak.
Maybe,if it's not to hard for your husband he could put down on paper the things that trigger him when they do,aside from the obvious ones.So much time away from the end of my marriage and the name Steve still brings on a tinge of negativity.The minds a strange animal.
My two cents cause i got shot down the last time i mentioned it, when my sig other cheated on me, i ended up seeing two other women. To test if i was worth it and she truly wanted to reconcile , i payed attention to her, if she fought tooth and nail and dealt with the blow back, and i also lost the bitterness and resentment cause we now balanced things out and i was able to experience things and regain my self esteem by seieng the other women. If i didnt do thant( i did it 3 years later) i wouldn have suffereed mentally bigtime and break down with the triggers, mind movies, lack of self worth and depression, and keep reliving things and i questioned my self and her and kept self doubting. There is a thread on here where one guy talks about when his wife cheated, he ended up doing the same and he regained all that which encumbered him . If i didnt , things would have festered, imagine if i was 60 and still struggling with these thoughts?
Whoa there missy! Unless your husband has packed his stuffed, moved out and filed for divorce, it ain't over. And even then, the fat lady has to sing at the time the divorce it's being finalized.
Just wanted to thank people who have supported me (you know who you are).
My marriage is over, apparently infidelity is a deal breaker for my husband.
I may eventually post over at the separation side, but not sure they would be so accepting of me.
I know I'm truly sorry to hear this. He must have just hit you with it.
No one on this thread ever wished you ill-will. I know I don't. I hate to see any marriage end.
I think in the end you can walk away knowing you fought for your marriage, for whatever cold comfort that brings. And I believe you will keep on fighting. Just because your husband files does not mean D is inevitable. He could take it right to the brink and then decide not to go through with it.
Either way it goes, you have my sympathy and my respect. Good luck.
I will make an observation. The affair ended in Feb right? You were in the affair fog for sometime. Only in the last 2-3 months were you truly repentant and see the damage you did. Until then, your husband was the one struggling to repair and preserve the marriage. Only after the remorse that you showed him, confronting the OM's wife, apologizing him repeatedly did he process the entire scenario and realize the amount of pain you put him under. Until then he was in survival mode. Maybe the shift in the power in the relation and him anger to punish his wife for the pain she is causing him(hate to bring these terms) is what ultimately caused him to separate/divorce. I hope I am not making any scandalous statements here. I am just trying to understand
Just because your husband files does not mean D is inevitable. He could take it right to the brink and then decide not to go through with it.
Some advice for you to consider. Don't beg, don't cry, don't promise you'll make it up to him. Convey to him that you respect, understand and will abide by his decision, as much as it breaks your heart. Then leave him alone to ponder your words.
He has been fighting an inner conflict since D-day between two forces, fight and flight. Fight represents the love he has for you and pulls him to stay with you. Flight represents the anger he has for you and pulls him to leave you. Anger seems to have the upper hand, for the moment any way. This tug of war has left him emotionally spent.
Pursuing him will only make him want to leave you more. He does not need any pressure from you, the kids, not even from himself. Perhaps a separation may help him bring an end to his inner conflict and finally make a choice that he can live with and give him peace of mind.
And while I'm not trying to give you false hope, remember that between now and then (divorce finalized), ANYTHING can happen.
Some advice for you to consider. Don't beg, don't cry, don't promise you'll make it up to him. Convey to him that you respect, understand and will abide by his decision, as much as it breaks your heart. Then leave him alone to ponder your words.
He has been fighting an inner conflict since D-day between two forces, fight and flight. Fight represents the love he has for you and pulls him to stay with you. Flight represents the anger he has for you and pulls him to leave you. Anger seems to have the upper hand, for the moment any way. This tug of war has left him emotionally spent.
Pursuing him will only make him want to leave you more. He does not need any pressure from you, the kids, not even from himself. Perhaps a separation may help him bring an end to his inner conflict and finally make a choice that he can live with and give him peace of mind.
And while I'm not trying to give you false hope, remember that between now and then (divorce finalized), ANYTHING can happen.
This is good advice, Working. The marriage isn't over until it is notarized, stamped and sealed. You have the time, and so does he, to find a new marriage and a new outlook. Let him be for a while and see what happens. Always making sure that he knows that you will wait until HE decides.
grrrr, I seem to have a love/hate relationship with this forum, but I can't stay away too long...
A bit of an update....a bit of a break through....
My husband went to his sister's house yesterday, and came home around 4 in the morning. This is the first time he has ever left so willingly, so ready to move on if he needed to. I didn't beg or plead with him to stay, I was numb to it really. After the kids went to bed, that's when I felt it, "is this really the end to 25 years". I tried to sleep in the bed, but couldn't, so I just lay on the couch in the dark, just thinking about what I have done to him in the last year. I kept looking at the time wondering when he was going to come home. I really missed him, just his presence in the house is a comfort for me. It's like when he took me to my first concert (Billy Idol), we had crappy seats, and he said to me "grab my hand, we're going to the front row so you can see him up close". I was scared sh*tless, but when he grabbed my hand, I felt safe, I trusted his word. I was so in love with him. I remember working at a summer camp and we had to be apart for 2 months. I remember finding the biggest art paper I could find, and filled it up with "I miss you's" and just sharing every detail of my days away from him. I think I sent him letters almost every day, and then he drove 9 hours to spend 1 day with me, he missed me as well. I snuck him into my cabin, I didn't care if I got caught. We smoked cigarettes all night, and just talked, we had not even been completely intimate at that point.
When we had our fights, it was just as intense. We'd scream, and say awful things to each other. We broke up for a few days when we were dating. He was devistated, I wouldn't take his calls, refused to talk to him, I sat at home depressed, but stubborn as hell (I even forget what the fight was about). His mother finally called me and begged me to come see him, she was almost in tears. She told me she was worried about her son, and that she had never seen him like this, he was drinking heavily, and isolating in his bedroom. My heart sank, I thought he was going to kill himself, I begged my mom for the car (I didn't have a license), and drove over to his house. What I saw I still see even today, and how I ever forgot about that during my affair I'll never know. The way he was curled up in a ball on the sofa in his room, just sobbing. I held him for what seemed forever, I didn't want to loose him either.
I guess you really don't know how much you really love someone, and actually want and need them until they are willing to walk away from it all, even his kids. I realized at that point that because of my actions, and the level of cruelty I subjected him to, he was willing to say good bye. It had to be just as painful for him to leave, but it was too painful to continue the way we were.
When we finally talked today, I was discouraged, lost, I wanted to tell him that I love him, that I missed him last night. But again my pride got in the way, I wouldn't beg, I wouldn't plead with him to never leave my side again. We talked for hours, and without him yelling. We hadn't slept much in days, he was drained, fed up from the suffering of the last 9 or so months. I really didn't know what to say to make him see that I love him more than anything.
So I brought up a trip we took to Memphis 6 years ago. He was just starting a new career as a social worker, and just landed his first job. He was so proud to have a job after studying for 3 years, and being home on disability for so long. Unfortunately, it was a horrible job for him. A woman had it out for him the entire few months he was there. She was angry at a comment he made as a joke, she was an extreme feminist (he had no idea), and when he called her "princess" when she snubbed her nose at his coffee, she almost ruined his new career. He'd call me every day almost in tears, pacing the parking lot. Finally I said, quit that job, you need to get out of there. Years later he crossed paths with her, and she tried it again, this time feeling more secure in another job, he went after her and people finally saw who she really was. She lost all respect from her collegues, and almost lost her job.
My husband always loved Elvis since he was a kid, and his dream was to visit Graceland, I had just inherited money, I told him that day we were leaving in two days for the road trip. The radio barely worked, but it didn't bother us, we would cheer when we would get reception. I was so happy to see him smile again. It was all worth it.
So, as I lay on the sofa, I thought of these memories that I haven't thought of in a very long time. Did I just forget them when I had my affair? Where was my mind when making the decision to cheat on my husband? I know at the time I wanted to be selfish, I wanted something for me, where it came from I'm still working on. This is what I need to realize, that as intense as his anger is towards me, is as intense as his love his for me (as Badblood pointed out) I didn't feel that before my affair, I didn't feel he needed me, he was doing fine, he was happy in his job. I needed to feel and see for whatever the reason that he was devoted to us. But in reality he was, and this is where my own issues with myself won over, and therefore led to my decision to abandon my marriage.
So tonight he was sitting at the kitchen table on his laptop, and all of a sudden I hear my favorite Elvis song "suspicious minds". He had our daughter on his lap, and she was moving and grooving to Elvis, I laughed and grabbed my 4 year old son and made him dance with me in the kitchen. The kids loved it, and for the first time in a long time everyone seemed happy.
So I finally told him I wanted him to stay, we agreed it's going to be a very long road a head of us, we talked about patience. I don't always have it, but I also have a need to fix things immediately. I have to learn how to feel my own pain over what I did, and learn to live with it. Not just expect it to go away.
That's where we're at today.....sorry if it's sooo long, I used to journal as a teen and have a whole suitcase full of loose papers and doodles. I remembered it helped me get through some of the craziness of adolescence. Maybe this can help me again.
Working- I have been following your posts for a few days now and see a lot of my own struggles in both you and your husband. I am happy for you that things seem to be back on track. I want to share that things will be hard even though they seem better right now. I speak as both someone who cheated and has been cheated on (I had a sexual affair that lasted about 3-4 weeks, my wife had an emotional/sexual affair that started around same time as mine and lasted about a year). I have come to believe that although I was not emotionally involved the affair fulfilled an emotional need to be sexually desired and pursued so in that regard I would say mine was also emotional. You already know the guilt of having caused extreme pain so I won't add to that burden. What you ask about is triggers and I will tell you just how bad your husband has it based on my experience. Right now he has no control over the triggers. He can go from being happy and in love to being a broken spirit. Things that you see as totally innocent are like a slap in the face. Even a change in something that you do is going to be a trigger. If you decide to buy new underwear of a different color, cut, style or even material than your norm he will wonder if it's something the other man brought into your life. He is likely to question if you are thinking of the other man when having sex with him. The triggers are so extreme that he may go from being a raging bull ready to mate to not being able to get or maintain an erection. Or the physical may work but he has mental movies of the other guy making you orgasm and that will kill his ability or desire to enjoy sex. I think several others have mentioned it but the triggers don't just go away. And he may be similar to me and believe that we all make choices and that past experiences shouldn't be used as an excuse. So for him you choosing another man had nothing to do with your own internal struggles but was actually a rejection of him, his love and his manhood. I don't condone the behavior on either side (I'm guilty of it myself) but I tell you I can relate. You need to do a lot of mending and that means you have to help rebuild his confidence in himself and trust. I know you mention your kids in your posts and they are very important but you have to understand one very important thing. He needs to know and you need to prove to him that you are fighting for him. You want the marriage because you want him. Not because of the kids or because it's against your religious believes or anything else. When you cheated you didn't do it for the kids or anything else like that. You did it for your own selfish desire. Make him important enough to where you want him for just the man that he is and then show him and do it consistently.
I do hope this helps you. And I hope he gives you the same gift that my wife gave me, forgiveness and a second chance. I hope you can then give him the gift of patience, understanding, acceptance and love. Know that just like you are having your struggles with guilt he too is having his struggles. He has anger, despair, hope, love, emptiness, happiness, loneliness and many other conflicting emotions when it comes to you. I hope your future updates will carry good news. Keep working at the counseling, both of you need it, I know for my wife and I it has helped. Oh and please listen with an open mind and don't make my mistake......don't try to defend your actions/affair. Posted via Mobile Device
Like you, I'm not the most patient person in the world, I want everything done yesterday if possible. I don't even know how many times I literally demanded my husband move on because obviously, I had moved on. My thinking was, since I stopped cheating, he needs to stop hurting but it didn't work that way, not at all. Being patient was very hard for me but I finally got to a point where I knew the next trigger would come AND GO and that it wasn't going to be the end of my marriage if I could only shut up and stop demanding he get over it. He says today that he still has some issues to deal with and I know he will do it "his way", not mine.
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Re: When Triggers Spiral Out of Control.... 
