Need help as an ex-Cheater

[Endeavourer]

Sometimes it takes many years to get past this, and in many cases marriages even if the decision is to stay together never fully recover, but most can get to where you can trust the person ENOUGH, that you can still enjoy life together.

It is possible to have a wonderful marriage, post affair. In a marriage, a glorious present helps us forget about a miserable past.

If your wife chooses to reconcile, you owe her just compensation, which is:
a) establish extraordinary precautions so that an affair can never happen again, and
b) provide the foundation for a mutual relationship of extraordinary care to each other.

The checklist I gave you is a start for extraordinary precautions.

Here is a link which describes how to set a foundation for extraordinary care:
Love Busters (Marriage Builders®, Inc.)

Click into the links for each behavior at the bottom.

 

[JackP]

It is possible to have a wonderful marriage, post affair. In a marriage, a glorious present helps us forget about a miserable past.

If your wife chooses to reconcile, you owe her just compensation, which is:
a) establish extraordinary precautions so that an affair can never happen again, and
b) provide the foundation for a mutual relationship of extraordinary care to each other.

The checklist I gave you is a start for extraordinary precautions.

Here is a link which describes how to set a foundation for extraordinary care:
Love Busters (Marriage Builders®, Inc.)

Click into the links for each behavior at the bottom.

Thank you very much and I appreciate your support

 

[Endeavourer]

Go to Barnes & Nobles if you have one nearby and buy "Surviving and Affair" by Dr. Willard Harley. He has studied the most successful ways to recover from an affair and consolidated his research in that book. In his research and experience, couples who do not follow a certain methodology do not successfully recover an affair.

Silverback described quite a few of them in his post, but you need to read the book in its entirety - study it. It will be the roadmap covering the things couples did who have successfully navigated out of affairs (and by that I don't mean stayed together and stayed miserable).

You need to study everything in that book and meticulously follow the patterns that have proved to be successful.

Here is a summary, but you need to get the book for the 100+ pages of detailed information:
Four Rules to Guide Marital Recovery After an Affair (Marriage...

If you can't get it locally, here is the book on ebay for less than $4:
Surviving an Affair by Harley, Willard F. Jr.; Chalmers, Jennifer Harley 9780800719548 | eBay

 

[JackP]

Is this still happening? This is incredibly disrespectful and needs to stop yesterday if it is still happening.

Please read this link:
Love Busters - Disrespectful Judgments (Marriage Builders®, Inc.)

Your wife doesn't need to be told that your 'facts' trump her feelings. Her feelings are God given protections and she should listen to them. For you to suggest to her that your perspective is more factual or logical than hers is abusive.

Has this behavior stopped entirely?

Please let me clarify something. When I stated that "Some of what she says really isnt true of the facts but I get what you are saying. It's just very heard to keep my trap shut when I know that what she is saying and what I felt or did are not the facts. " I meant that this is what happens when we talk and not relating to anything she wrote on this forum. Just a clarification.

 

[Endeavourer]

I meant that this is what happens when we talk and not relating to anything she wrote on this forum. Just a clarification.

So your talks should be pleasant and marriage building, not arguments. Please take great care to not argue with her or make your conversations unpleasant. Set aside a specific time to answer her questions and talk about the affair. Do not be dragging out the sordid subject during your other times of conversation.

Here is some great material on how to purposefully have conversations she would enjoy:

Conversation is Boring (Marriage Builders®, Inc.)