# Am I too proud to leave?



## Fallon (Dec 23, 2010)

Dow Jones - I understand exactly where you are right now.
It's been 9 months since my H told me about his affair. The way he told me was awful - had to have something to drink to build up the courage, and couldn't actually say the words that he'd had sex with her too - I had to figure it out. The first two months were a nightmare, and the lies continued. I found a lot of things out by accident. We went to a dinner that she was at as well, and he actually went over to talk to her, leaving me alone at the table. How the hell could I have just accepted that? One day I just had enough, and I said I wanted a divorce. Something inside me quite literally snapped, and I haven't been the same since.

It's been 7 months since this day, and I have been up and down a number of times. The most prevalent feeling is of immence loss and betrayal. I know that he is genuinely sorry for what he did, and his irrational behaviour in the first few months following the "grand unveiling", but it actually doesn't make a difference. He would say he loves me, and I wouldn't answer. Then one day he was working on the pool with our 4 year old, who didn't want to go inside to get his dad a t-shirt, so I went in, brought him one and, without thinking, said "at least I still love you". I think he saw the look of shock on my face as soon as I realised what I said. Since then, I've said "love you too", but it's empty and meaningless. I could just as well be saying it to a lamp post.

I have battled with all sorts of questions: what went wrong? How he could take me for granted? How coudl this be the same man I thought I knew and had been married to for almost 9 years? What had I done wrong? For some reason I blamed myself, or maybe I bought into his rationalisation of why he did what he did (he couldn't handle my anger, he said). I work a full day and have two small kids who need and want love just as much as he does. He and the kids always came first, he had nothing to complain about.

He celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary much the same way some people would celebrate New Years. A second chance, the death of an old year, beginning of a new one. Clean slate. I'm a pessimist when it comes to that. I haven't had a single day in 9 months that I haven't thought about what happened. I even changed the colour of my hair (but I changed it back about a month ago), because hers is the same colour as mine. I can't see a certain car and not think of her, and one day I managed to get stuck behind three of them at different times in the 3 hours worth of traffic I have to endure every day. The triggers are awful.

I battle with the distinction between an emotional and a physical affair. A few months ago I would have said the latter was by far the worst, but as I've stopped focussing on the physical betrayal, and the emotional betrayal aspect is sinking in. I can't speak of sex without emotion, but the effects on the loyal spouse of the two together is devastating.

I read Dj's last post about what your counsellor said about him still having hope, otherwise he wouldn't still be there. I'm still there, in the marriage, but I don't feel that I have any hope at all of regaining a genuine, loving relationship with my husband. I don't want to have intimate contact with him, and when we do, it's purely out of frustration, and then even that is hindered by images flashing through my head of him being with her. It still hurts, I still cry. I'll go from feeling intense anger to feeling as though all energy has been drained out of me.

Why am I staying? I don't want to throw away a good life, and a good future for the kids, because of something that someone else did. I'm know that I'm not afraid of being alone, although I must admit that the financial aspect of a single income household does scare me, and I can't afford the house we are in on my own. I know that from an emotional aspect, I would not want to put my heart out there, just to have an anvil drop out of the sky and destroy everything in it's footprint again. Besides that, I'm 30 with two sons, aged 4 and 6 - I have to protect them too. Am I staying because it's convenient? I suppose that to be honest, I'd have to say yes.

I feel like a stranger in my own body. I come across as a happy, bubbly, affectionate person, but as soon as we are alone, the walls go up, and he can't get through to me, no matter how hard he tries. I have sex with him out of duty, which is the complete opposite of what it was like before. I miss being intimate with someone that I love - to me, sex is something sacred, and is something that he defiled.

As much as I am hurting, even so long afterwards, and as much as I don't feel I could ever trust anyone again, the feeling I am missing most of all is the exhilliaration of being with someone that you love with all your heart and soul, even though you know their imperfections, and know that they feel the same way about you. There is a hole inside me that I don't think can ever be filled.

I'm sorry for the morbid post, but it's been simmering away inside me more a long time, and I just wanted to get it out, and find out if I'm losing it, or if this is normal. I still want to be able to believe...


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## AFEH (May 18, 2010)

Bless you Fallon. I wish you inner peace and tranquillity. It will come one day and you’ll know when it has.

Bob


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## Fallon (Dec 23, 2010)

thank you, Bob.


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## Indy Nial (Sep 26, 2010)

Fallon, I'm actually envious of your situation. Your emotional connection has been severely damaged, maybe even broken. 

If you don't/can't reconnect then you will end up in a soulless marriage which won't help anyone. Either be honest with him and give him a chance or walk away.

If my heart was where your head is then I would have left my own wife awhile ago.

Sure you won't have a big house and the lifestyle you want but at 30 you have plenty of time to rebuild your life.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## i_feel_broken (Jul 5, 2010)

hi fallon,

I wish everyone could read your post before they decide to embark in an affair! Everyone should be mindful of what it does to somebody and yours is a great description.

I'm really sorry you are finding it so hard to reconnect with your husband. Try and remind yourself that he is remorseful, it is in the past and that he is there trying to be what you need for the future. If he had run and moved away with OW how would you feel then? 

My wife and I have been on and off since I found out about her 2 year affair in May. I have tried everything but I have realised she is not willing to commit 100% to the marriage and I deserve better so I have declared myself out. Hardest thing I have ever done.

You are further down the line than me and have had more success so it's hard for me to give advice but one thing I will say is that when my wife and I were on it was so hard (my W wasn't as openly remorseful or dedicated to healing as your H). I thought it would be easier if we were off. I was wrong. Don't give up and appreciate that decisions are yours and you have your health and your children

All the best


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## Workingitout (Sep 27, 2010)

Hi Fallon, I can completely relate to how you feel. Today is the 10 month anniversary of D-Day #1 and my wife's suicide attempt after the revelation and my threat of divorce. We've since put our marriage back together. I've separated the "bad year" from the 24 years before it and the 8 months since she returned home from treatment. I focus on the good times, meditate, pray, distract myself with hobbies, take SAM-E (a natural "Prozac") to enhance my mood and go to counselling every week. I think that if I can have a great marriage going forward, then some good came out of my wife's dispicable behavior.

You must mourn the loss of fidelity in your marriage not unlike the death of a family member. That happens in stages and you can heal. I have good weeks, then bad days. Either way, not a day goes by where I don't reflect on some aspect of her behavior. The "whys" of every aspect just torment me: Why risk a marriage and family over such a stupid, meaningless affair? Why continue the behavior after you were caught twice (and lied your way out of it), Why not come to me and tell me that you were unhappy? Why not consider the pain you would cause me by stepping out?

My recommendation is to write down how you feel. Get every emotion on paper. Read it over a few times, then burn it. Consider that day to be your new birth of your marriage. Everything from that day forward will be sacred. Then work on your marriage as if it was brand new. I spent the past 8 months since my wife came home, really developing intimacy. She has revealed things that she's never told anyone, even her best friend. I've shared the same. We've held eachother, cried together and really grown as a couple. Our therapist says that had she not had the affair, our marriage of 16 years would probably have died a natural death on it's own sooner rather than later! The negative thoughts still haven't stopped, but at least I have real hope for the future. Goodluck and keep us posted with your progress.


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## disbelief (Oct 31, 2010)

Fallon,
I also can relate sadly most of us here can. My wife dropped the bomb in sept since then she has gotten worse I have found ways to cope. Through this board my counselor lots of reading soul searching. As painful as it all is at the moment I still find myself wanting reconcilliation and recovery. There are some good stories out there about those who have made it. I have been reminded it is a slow long process. As many have reminded me focus on yourself and your kids if you can't break the depression ask you councillor or doctor for help depression can change you. Be true to you first. There are so many voices here that will help. I have to say this if you feel this down and hurt and not emotionally there for inimacy with him why have sex. He had the A. My wife had the A and she is not offerring me any so you take care of you others will offer their wiser advice.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Fallon (Dec 23, 2010)

Thanks everyone - I'm going to try to respond to the points that struck me from everyone's posts.



i_feel_broken said:


> If he had run and moved away with OW how would you feel then?


I have mixed feelings towards that. I know it would force me to deal with the situation, which would mean coming clean to my family about what's happened. Most of my life has been about keeping the peace and covering up the ugly bits, so to have it thrown out in the open like that would be more traumatic initially, but I suppose liberating in the end. 



i_feel_broken said:


> I have tried everything but I have realised she is not willing to commit 100% to the marriage and I deserve better so I have declared myself out. Hardest thing I have ever done.


I can believe this - if he left me, it would take the decision out of my hands. I can deal with the fall-out, but I can't deal with being the one to cause the upheaval. As it is, my mother in law blames me for the fact that he had an affair - says he wouldn't have done it if he didn't have just reason to. Immediately after that, she says that it happens to the best of families (even the Royals!) and that we shouldn't get divorced over something "stupid".


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## Fallon (Dec 23, 2010)

Workingitout said:


> My recommendation is to write down how you feel. Get every emotion on paper. Read it over a few times, then burn it. Consider that day to be your new birth of your marriage. Everything from that day forward will be sacred. Then work on your marriage as if it was brand new.


We went to couples counselling for 3 months, and I carried on for individual councelling for another 4 1/2 months after that. He stopped, because he felt he's made his breakthrough and knew what he had to do. I got to a point where I thought everything was going to work out, just to get to a session at the end of November and spend the whole 50 minutes sobbing. 

I must admit that posting here yesterday helped in terms of taking the edge off for me. I got home and just lay on my bed for a few minutes with my eyes closed. The evening was fairly qiuet and uneventful, but once the kids were settled down, we lay on top of the bed in the dark and spoke. I told him how I was feeling - he'd obviously picked up that I have been distant over the past week or so - and told him how I felt in terms of my feelings towards him. I said that I do love him, in that if something was to happen to him, I would be devastated, but I would feel that way about a close friend. I somehow expected it to feel different between husband and wife. I expect there to be a feeling of tenderness, of wanting to be close and showing affection. That is how I felt before. Before, I would miss him if he went away on business, and I'd call during the day just to say hi, even when he wasn't travelling. But then he started getting ratty when I called, such as one night that he was working late and our house alarm went off - a motion sensor had triggered in a room with no access to the main house. It was 1 in the morning. I called him because I was scared and I wanted him to come home, and he actually got angry with me. What makes it harder for me to deal with is that they work together, although she wasn't there that evening. I believe him, but there's this little voice in my head that's jumping up and down screaming that I must be a frigging idiot to believe anything he says.

I'm not ready to let go. To me, letting go means acceptance - acceptance of the circumstances as they are, and acceptance of his behaviour in the past, and that I cannot do. It goes against every moral fibre in my being: Not only the fact that slept with another woman and felt what he thought was love for her, but also the fact that I stayed, and by extention, said it was okay to treat me like that, because I won't leave. I'm struggling with that as much as with the affair itself.

They say cheaters don't stop cheating, they just get better at hiding it. I know you can't brush all cheaters with the same brush, but it is a point of concern. 

I'm sorry, I've veered horribly off topic here. So as I was saying... I'm not ready to let go. So I'll do my best to distract myself, as I have over the past few months. It's more difficult now, because most of my clients are off holidaying, so it's incredibly quiet in the office, which gives me plenty of time to dwell on things.

Back to my discussion with my husband last night. I said to him that I felt empty inside, and that all I wanted was to be able to feel the same love for him as before, but that at this point in time I don't, and I am not sure when, or even if, I'll be able to again. He's willing to give me the time and space that I need, saying that he has no right to expect anything from me, and that he knows the whole situation is of his own making. All he wants is to see me happy, and if he himself can't be the source of that happiness again, then he'll provide an environment in which I can find happiness again. He meant this in two ways, either that he would leave, or we could continue building a life together, and give our relationship a chance to take hold again. 

The ball is in my court. And as RWB said - there is a kind of peace in knowing it will never stop. It's far less tiring to go with the flow than to try to swim upstream. I know I am the one who is not forgiving and forgetting. Time heals, so maybe it is an option to just let it follow it's course and take it one day at a time.


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## blownaway (Dec 11, 2010)

You seem to also be struggling with staying in the marriage because that is what us "good girls" are supposed to do, as opposed to closing the chapter and seeing if there is an opportunity for a better life out there. Time slips away very quickly and it seems as though you have a really good sense that time is going to go past and you may be missing out on something else really great. The ball is definitely in your court. I know this is horrible and it's a horrible way to live, always thinking about the trauma of the affair and existing in this numbing state. This is not my situation exactly so I don't have any first hand experience to share, but I guess I would try to give it some time to see if things get better and you are able to move on, bit by bit. If not, be honest with yourself and your spouse and try to realize what you will and won't accept for the sake of yourself. In all of this mess and all of this push/pull, you also have to remember that YOU matter. You need to love yourself enough to make the hard decisions or else this will eat you up and you will be keeping the status quo at the expense of your own well being.


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