I have posted here sometime ago...under a different name. I lost my user name and password.

I read the posts almost daily...it has been over a year since d-day.
A few weeks after d-day I was able to find her OW after looking around the internet on dating sites.
I had no idea what she looked like...just a vauge description and area that she lived, how many kids and kind of car. My H told me little. He claims he did not know her last name. I knew it my gut it was her...I paid for a membership to the site to talk to her via-private email. I knew in my gut it was her! I found about things about her..but it only lasted a couple of days she was pushing hard to meet in person and had no interest in email. I was tempted to set up a meeting but i do not match the manly description I gave her!
He confirmed that was her...he was so shocked like he was about to faint.

I am afraid I have developed OCD.

SO over a year later I was still digging for info on my own.
The Ow was on and off the dating site(has 5 different names with the same decription and pics?) I never saw her out and about. I was keeping my eyes open everywhere I went.
Then one day i thought of facebook..I entered her first name and BAng there she was!!
I was thrilled!! Strange I cannot stand the sight of her!
I was able to see her last name..her friends..
So I 411 her name and got her address.
I drove by there a few times...it is a mile or so from my new home. i found out through some records that she lives with her parents now that she is divorced. He son died recently..I normally would feel so sad for someone with that loss..but I felt that she deserved it.WHY?- (She gave my H a serious STD and he gave it to me)

My H cannot deal with this( I have told him everything I found)...I feel crazy somedays.obssessed..somedays SHE is the first and last thought of my day!
He thinks I am bored?!
I think I was desperate to find info because he claimed he did not know much.He did not/does not want to talk about this anymore. I felt as though I would find my answers come hell or high water...and I did find many.

So where does it end? How can i get this OW out of my head? I just want to feel normal again.
Has anyone else felt this way? How did you change your thought patterns? Did you need medication?
I feel so weak..
Thanks for reading.

I am not a medical doctor, so I can not diagnose you as having or not having OCD. However, as someone who has OCD, I can tell you that if OW is the only object of obsession you have, then you probably DON'T have true OCD. What you have is normal obsessing for the circumstances.

I think many of us BS go through a time of obsessing about OP. When my H refused to answer my questions honestly, I obsessed about OW. For the entire first year after DDay #2, I kept telling my H that I believed there was more to his story that he wasn't telling me. He insisted repeatedly to the point of becoming angry with me that there wasn't. I didn't go quite as far as you did, but I did look obsessively for any signs of OW on the internet, looked up her home address and phone, etc. It wasn't until after I send OW an email one year after DDay #2 and told my H that I had done so that he told me the truth.

In the years since that time, there has been a direct correlation between my H being honest, both of us going to IC and MC, our working together to heal ourselves, our family, and our marriage, and my obsessing about OW. When my H put his focus on honesty and working hard to discover his problems and deal with them, the OW's importance in my life slipped away.

Today we are 3 1/2 years out from DDay #2. I seldom think of OW, and when I do, I know that she was nothing special, that my H didn't love her--he used her, just as she used him because both of them had really awful coping skills.

If you and your H are not getting both IC and MC, I believe doing so will help you both immensely. In fact, I will go so far as to say that getting help and facing your individual and collective problems are the keys to rebuilding your lives and your marriage.

Encouraging fairy hugs,

fairyfriend

Thanks for your response.
I think that due to the fact he did not want to talk about this ...it made me determined to find the truth/facts.
He is the kind of person that just wants to forget bad things and move on like nothing happened.
I think I went too far...I mean really how does this info help me?
MC is not an option because of his job.

I guess if I truly had OCD it would be apparent in other parts of my life...but it is not...just when it comes to the OW.
I needed to read that from someone else. Thanks

Ah, so his method of coping with unpleasantness is denial. Well, obviously that method is not working in this situation. If he REALLY wants a healthy marriage, and if he REALLY wants you to stop obsessing, then he needs to act in a way that makes you feel safe and no longer feel the need to obsess about OW.

If MC is not an option, there is still a HUGE amount he and you can do together. First off, I suggest that you check out the information in the helpful links. In addition, there are some great books out there on the topic of men and anger and acting out (like "Good Men Behaving Badly").

I hope that your H can come to see that getting angry with you is only going to reinforce in your mind that he cares more about OW and her feelings than he does about you and that the more he refuses to deal with the problem, the bigger the problem will get.

Unfortunately, you can't change him. Only he can, but you can change yourself, so that you can become happier and stronger. Don't let his horrible choices wear you down any further.

ff

I know that he is coping by wiping this whole thing from his mind.
He keeps telling me it was his fault..not her's.She meant nothing to him...he was lonely.She knew we were not divorced..she was pushing him to divorce me and him move in.
(we were separated at the time, with hopes of working things out)
He just wants to forget this...move forward in our lives.
He claims that it is my fault we cannot move forward...I simply can't just forget this.
All the lies..I never asked for this.
I have been feeling a little better lately.
I am blocking her from my mind.
I have always been a strong person...been through alot in my life...
How can I put this behind me...or will it always be there???

In a strange way, I agree with your H. It is your "fault" that your marriage can't move forward. Why? Because HE is NOT doing what he needs to do for you to feel safe! Seriously, he is blaming you for his actions and failing to do what he needs to do to heal, heal the marriage, and help you heal. That is why you can't move forward and feel committed to your marriage. If he wants to point fingers, he needs to remember the old adage about how if I point my finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at me!

Sad to say, I don't believe you will be able to put this behind you until your H proves that he wants your marriage to succeed. To do this, he must first stop blaming you and accept responsibility for HIS choices. You weren't asked if you would give him permission to cheat. He did that all on his own.

If he were serious about working out things with you while you were separated, he would NOT have gotten involved with OW.

WS use all kinds of justifications and excuses for their behavior. It is not at all uncommon for them to blame the BS. Refuse to accept that blame. When we BS accept blame, we feel even worse about ourselves.

Second, he needs to answer your questions honestly. You will figure out what you want and need to know about his A. Some BS want all the details, as we feel that knowing removes any secrets between the WS and the OP. Situations that may have seemed exciting when they were secret have a way of not being so wonderful when they are not longer secret. Other BS don't want all the details, and that is OK.

Third, he needs to discover how he was able to give himself permission to cheat. Doing so will help him understand himself better and make you feel more secure. His assurance alone that he won't cheat again will NOT make you feel safe. After all, you believed when you married him that he wouldn't cheat, and yet he did. So if he doesn't make changes in his life, just gives you his word, you won't feel safe. He needs, and you need, to know WHY he could cheat.

Often the list of reasons includes one or more of the following: he was not as committed to the marriage as you were; he thought what you didn't know wouldn't hurt you (or he tried to convince himself this was true); he felt entitled to cheat--you weren't meeting his needs (in his mind), so OW would; he was overbenefitted in the marriage while you were underbenefitted; his father cheated, so he was following his father's role model; he had skewed beliefs about sex; he had horrible coping skills. There are more reasons, but those are some of the common ones.

Regardless of why your H had his A, you will NOT feel safe until you understand why because if he doesn't know why, how can he put effect safeguards in place? Without effective safeguards, your marriage will continue to be at risk.

If your H hasn't done any reading on A, doing so will help him.

The more he resists working on himself, the more you will feel uncertain about the marriage, and the more his actions will make you feel unloved and unwanted. He must do some really hard work if he wants your marriage to succeed.

It's time for him to stop being selfish and start showing you remorse.

Just know that his behavior is not that unusual, sad to say.

Just my fairy cents' worth and sorry you are hurting.

ff

I don't know exactly what you should do to improve your situation, but I wanted to offer a few things.

First, for a betrayed spouse you are normal. Any person who has been betrayed normally experiences a great emotional trauma. The normal reaction to trauma is to 'obsess' about it, try to learn as much as possible about it, and to try to understand it. Unfortunately affairs are very difficult to understand and the process of 'understanding' seems to take a fairly long time. At one year, you are still in the middle of gaining that understanding.

In addition to the basic trauma, the fact that information was not made available to you, such as the name of the OW puts a burden on you to find that part out. It's important information because gaining the identity of the person in some strange way helps us understand the why, the how, and something about our wayward spouses.

I can tell you that a wayward spouse who tries to forget about the affair while their betrayed spouse is "obsessing" over it is not doing anyone any favors. Their not showing their desire to help the one they've hurt, to try to help the healing process along, to provide comfort to the injured. It can prolong the recovery process when that aid is not rendered.

Eventually you will need to put your desire to learn more about the OW away. You might have to take control over your desire to learn more to effect that change. At the same time, you shouldn't do that prematurely, but you should also make sure that you maintain some boundaries over what you'd do or you can get yourself into trouble. For example, while it might seem relatively minor, lying to the OW in order to talk to her is something you should refrain from. Who knows how that could end up blowing up in your face if you were caught. Evalutate some good boundaries for yourself and keep evaluating what you're doing against those boundaries and others as situations arise. Don't allow yourself to do something you'll later regret because the situation got out of control.

Recovery takes time. It's very much like a grieving process. As such it really helps to have the support of your spouse as you go through it. Hopefully over time he will come to understand his need for taking responsibility and working with you in recovery.

TomJ