SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Married to the best woman in the world (period) for a quarter of century. We have 2 kids, 1 in college and 1 in high school.
Currently in A with a coworker (divorced) with a grown adult kid for a few years and turn PA almost 1 year.
Is it possible to remain friend with AP? Or transfer, quit my current job and absolutely no contact is the only way to go? Is it possible to bring it to the grave without telling my BS? How to be "in love" with her again?
I know I’m bad, really bad

You really want to lie to the best woman in the world? You want to fool her into staying with someone who so thoroughly disrespected her, betrayed her, stabbed her in the back, put her health at risk?

What would you do if you knew one of your kids' significant others was cheating on them for a year? Would you be cool with them continuing to screw your kid over? Would you be OK with them being friends with an affair partner?

If your wife was the one stabbing you in the back, would you want to know?

Thank you for your respond. I really appreciated.
Of course I know what’s the right thing to do. I’ve been lurking SI and TAM for years so I know

Unfortunately, you’re talking to a pos who want to make it right his way (for now)

A huge focus of this site, whether a betrayed spouse or a wayward, is to get out of infidelity.

My wayward husband had an A with a co-worker who worked at a site 3,000 miles across the country. He had to visit her site about once a quarter. When I found out about the A, most of his travel stopped, to her site and elsewhere.

My WH knew he could no longer be in any contact with AP and dumped her on D-Day. Friends? Hell no. She tried to contact him with so-called professional emails, he shut her down without hesitation.

My WH also found another job, took him several months, but he was willing to do whatever it took to help me heal.

If you truly care about your wife and your family, you will end the A immediately, go NC, AND look for another job.

Oh, and inform your wife that she has been betrayed for all these years. She has the right to know she is living a lie.

BTW, if you think your affair is a secret, guarantee you it's not. Your co-workers are more than likely quite aware of your shenanigans.

The thing is I’m so pathetic. I can’t bring myself to confess to my wife. I can’t imagine what will happen. My world will completely turn up side down, no question about it.
Maybe in the future, I may see the need to tell her. If I see it now, I wouldn’t have the A in the first place

A couple thoughts for you to ponder.

You cannot be friends with AP at all anymore. If you were an alcoholic, would you be able to still go to the bar and hang out with the bottles of booze all around and not be tempted? You need to get a new job block the AP in every way and never ever look back.

As for can you feel the love for your spouse like you used to? I think you need to get yourself into therapy to understand why you cheated on her in the first place. And I think you need to recognize that love is not a feeling it’s an action. It’s how you treat each other. That’s how you respect each other. And by cheating on her, and by not giving her the truth, so she can make choices about her own life, you’re not really respecting her. So it’s hard to picture you loving her when you don’t respect her.

Also, all we are hearing about is you and how you want everything, your wife, and your affair partner. But you’re not considering how your wife feels at all here. So you’re still in a selfish wayward mindset. Again, please get into therapy so you can address these issues.

You say you’ve only been in the affair for one year but that you’ve been looking at these sites for longer than that. Am I reading that correctly? Does this mean you’ve had other affairs or that you were researching before you got into an affair?

I believe every betrayed spouse has the right to their own agency, to make choices about their own life. And absolutely to understand the health risks that they’ve been subjected to so they can test appropriately and again make the decisions that are best for them. So taking it to your grave would also take that from her and aa another poster mentioned, if you think this is secret, then you are fooling yourself. If you want to stay with your spouse, telling her yourself rather than having her find out from your affair, partner, or from a coworker, or some other way, would be a step in the right direction.

I hope you’re serious about getting yourself and your spouse out of infidelity.

[This message edited by BearlyBreathing at 1:43 AM, Friday, July 28th]

I’ve been reading here and TAM years ago since I started to have feelings for the AP. It turned physical less than a year ago.
What I can do now maybe transfer my job to somewhere else and cut all contact.

I can’t believe I have the balls to post it here

As the time being, I just can’t confess. I don’t want to turn her life upside down. Can’t destroy our "perfect" family we have, as seen by our circle of friends and family members.
I’m sure there’re countless number of Wayward Spouse out there similar to mine that need help but afraid to post.
It’s hard, very hard to live double life. It’s hard to look at your spouse in the eyes

@Onebrokenman - You cannot remain friends with the AP. I think that others have also advised the same thing. You already know that you can't resist that temptation so why keep it around unless it's a self-serving need. No matter what you do there has to be NC immediately and that is the only way to go. My BS carried around her own A for 10 years before coming clean to me, but she says that it disgusted her for all those years. She probably could've carried that to the grave because I could never imagine that she would do what I did. I felt like she was so much better than that.

Your question about how to be "in love" with her again is a hard one. Do you really love her now? You are going around leading a double life. I know because I was doing that in my own life. I was a cake eater as they say. Yes, it is an adrenaline rush to have two women, but don't be fooled by that temporary feeling. It wears off and things stabilize in the world.

I can say without a doubt that I love my BW more today than I ever have at any point in the 20 years we have been together. I can also say that I did not love her enough to do the next right thing when the temptation was put in front of me.

I think you need to step back from the entire situation before things blow up on you. You are trying to control something that's out of control already. This only ends one way. I'm living that life right now and it is the most painful/miserable time of my entire life.

Cut out the A. Confess to your wife. Own your crap. Get into IC. Take a long, hard look at the reflection in the mirror to see if you can look yourself in the eyes. I know I can't.

Good luck!

Hi brokenman,

I'm a wonderful wife who was betrayed by my husband.

First, and I do say this gently, affairs are very self-centered choices and actions. You do it to fulfill your needs and create a fantasy world with your affair partner that never really needs to stand up to the real world. Both people can be their best selves (and also their worst selves--you feel what I'm saying here, yes?)

So, the playing field between the excitement of your affair partner and your wonderful wife is not even or fair. You're getting big feel-good brain chemical dumps when you interact with your AP...and it's pretty addictive. Which is why other posters have used the example of alcohol addiction.

But it seems like, on some level, you know all that.

Yet, you're lurking on this and other affair recovery sites and calling yourself broken and a POS. So, you feel some guilt.

On the other hand, you're not stopping the affair and not willing at this point to come clean with your wife.

So...you're still in self-centered behavior.
And, here's a new flash: even you being all balled up in guilt ("I'm a broken POS" talk) is STILL part of your self-centeredness.
You're focusing on how YOU feel and what YOU risk if you come clean.

What's missing from this picture? Empathy for your wonderful wife. Even empathy for your kids who are being raised by a man who isn't authentic and who lacks integrity and who is focused on the (false) APPEARANCE of integrity.

Your willingness to post here is glimmer of hope, so let me give you a nudge:

It would have meant SOOO much to me if my H had come clean and admitted to everything he'd done, been really honest, and been willing to roll up his sleeves and do the work from the get go. It was so much more damaging to discover on my own and then also to have him continue to lie.

Might you lose it all? Yes. But you might not.

So why risk it?
You are clearly feeling the discomfort of wanting to appear to have integrity and be a "good" man, while you know that it's all really just a hollow house of cards that could come tumbling down.

Why not start actually BEING the man you want to be? Live with integrity. BE that good man.

You could start right now.

Onebrokenman,

I'm curious. Why now? You've been having an affair for a long period of time. You haven't been caught (yet). I appreciate your comments about your love for your wife and your kids, but let's face it, you've been willing to put that love aside for a long time now, and it has paid off for you. You got to have the wife and kids and your AP too. You mentioned living a double life, but honestly, you've been doing that for so long now that it's likely to be your "normal" now. So it sounds like something changed, but experience makes me suspect that there is something you haven't said yet.

So... why now? What changed? You seem panicky. Why?

If you really have been lurking around here as you claim, then you know that honesty is a constant mantra for both WS and BS alike. So if we are going to be able to help you at all, you first need to be honest. With us.

I really appreciated all your responds. So afraid now after your responds. I'm a coward, I just can't bring myself to confess at the moment. Is it true that I have to confess? There's no other way around? I can't imagine my life, her life, our kids life after that...
Why now? Me and my AP is "fighting" for a bogus reason. I have to admit, it's not over yet. we don't even have "the talk" yet.
I don't even have the gut to change my routine yet (job wise). But I might have to do that first step soon. Should I have "the talk" with my AP before we end it? Should I mention about the job transfer to her before I do it? We still see each other almost everyday at work
Again, I appreciate your time. I thought a bad guy like me don't deserve any help.

Can you see I still have the tendencies to protect my AP?

You don't owe your AP anything. Nothing. Not an explanation for any of your actions.

All you need to do is tell AP it's over. You love your wife and your family, and you want to end the affair. That's it. Then you need to go NC, no speaking with her, no emails, no social media, no texts, nothing. Ever again.

You don't tell her you are looking for a new job or you are sorry, just it's OVER.

You must protect your family. Not your AP.

"As the time being, I just can’t confess. I don’t want to turn her life upside down. Can’t destroy our "perfect" family we have, as seen by our circle of friends and family members.
I’m sure there’re countless number of Wayward Spouse out there similar to mine that need help but afraid to post.
It’s hard, very hard to live double life. It’s hard to look at your spouse in the eyes"

Telling her doesn't turn her life upside down or destroy your perfect family. Your actions have already done that. You say you have lurked on here for several years. You've been physical with the AP for one year. So despite the fantastic advice you've seen here, the devastating consequences of actions you have seen during your years of lurking, you still took the decision to progress to a physical affair.

I'm afraid you don't want help with turning this round, you want help with avoiding the consequences of your actions. You are looking for the willy wonka golden ticket out of infidelity. For someone to tell you to end it with the AP, change jobs, keep quiet to the wife. And all will be okay.

If you really want help with getting out of this mess, there are plenty of fantastic folks on here that will help you. People who have turned their lives round. I would encourage you to keep posting, but also actively listening. And really listening to the most important voice, your own. Why did you do this, what do you feel for your AP, your wife, yourself.

I wish you well.

Let’s just start with one thing at a time.

Stop the affair. Period.

We can’t help you until that happens.

The rest can be figured out after that.

Thank you guys.
It’s been over a month since our last time together. I’ll be gone for a week vac with my family now.
I really want to have "the talk" with her one on one but but I guess that’s a bad idea. I think it’s not nice to just completely quit, cold turkey.

BS here.

You should leave your wife if you don’t love her.

Set her free. She deserves someone who loves her.

Brokenman

What you are doing is continuing to hurt your wife and family. They do not deserve that. The longer you cheat, the more painful it will be. Don’t make excuses, you clearly know what to do.

Stop being a coward, and do the right thing. End the affair and talk to your wife.

Not acting is a decision.

My ex had a 5 year affair. He told me wanted to finish it for over 3 years, when they started fighting because she wanted to marry him. It was a lie to me and himself. It isn’t hard to stop cheating if that is what you want.

[This message edited by Tallgirl at 10:32 PM, Saturday, July 29th]

You asked "What should I do?"

Well, you should stop your affair. But you already know that.

You’re talking about how you want to protect your AP, but you sure aren’t worried about protecting your marriage from the damage you are doing to it right now.

Whether your wife knows about the affair or not, you have ALREADY damaged the marriage. That’s done.

The question now is, "What are you willing to do to repair that damage?"

Your wife deserves to know the truth of her life. She has the right to make the decision about whether or not she wants to go forward being married to a man who lies to her every single day, and who chooses to devote himself to someone else every single day.

Meanwhile, she trusts you and believes in her vows.

You dishonor her.

She will find out. Either you will confess to her, or one of your children will find out, or one of your coworkers will tell her, or she will happen upon something that shines the light on your affair - but she will find out.

This devastation will happen. And it is 100% on you.

End your affair. Write out a timeline so your wife will know exactly when things happened and so she doesn’t have to drag the truth out of you day after day, painfully and in a trickle-truth manner.

Change jobs.

And the way to end it with your AP is to write her a letter, let your wife approve it and your wife is the one to mail it. And you call your AP’s spouse or boyfriend and expose it to them, too.

Grow some courage.

And get some counseling. You have some things to work out, one of which is why you would cheat on someone you profess to love.