It's been a while since I last posted. Quick update: progress is being made, but is slow.

I am posting this on OPEN in the hopes that I receive feedback from both WS and BS on the following:

In chosing books/resources to read on Affairs, my IC suggested that I read: After the Affair. I began to read it, and immediately was put off by the suggestion that that the WS was somehow also responsible for the A. One new step that my H and I are taking is that he is to read a book on A's within a certain time frame and then we are to discuss what he has learned. I asked him to read "after the affair" but then I remembered my misgivings about the book.

So, that lead me to an on-line search of reviews and i did find several, most of them negative. So, my first Q to everyone is: What book(s) do you suggest to read and why were they helpful?

I also have the Monogomy Myth and am a bit perturbed by the message that society doesn't support monogomy. I agree to a point, however, if that was entirely true than all of us would be in affairs for the last time I checked, I live in the same society as my H. (weak smile).

Second Q: I'm scared. In doing the research for above, I came across the following excerpt from a journal:

>>While real research (as opposed to therapists' assurances) on recovering from infidelity is not as good as we'd like, one of the better studies shows that about one marriage in seven actually recovers from infidelity. Nearly half of those "successful recoveries" come in cases of "one night stands," not on-going affairs.
But about two in three marriages "survives" infidelity. About three out of four "surviving" marriages are seriously crippled.
Chances are, then, that your marriage will "survive" infidelity, but the odds of surviving infidelity in good shape are extremely small--about one in seven--and in the case of protracted affairs that shrinks to about one in twelve. (Charny and Parnass, J Sex Marital Ther 1995 Summer;21(2):100-15) <<

So, my H was in a LTA (6 yrs--am I sounding like a broken record yet?). Do I really want to hear that of those types of A's-and the marriages that remain intact, only one in 12 will 'recover successfully'? I can only take solace that this research is 11 yrs old--and presumably based on data that is even older than that. Do you think that we (society) have come along since then? Do we not even bother and throw in the towel if the odds are that much against us?????
I tried to get the full article, but was only successful in getting the abstract. Has anyone else seen this article?

Lola

<<<Do we not even bother and throw in the towel if the odds are that much against us????? >>>

I think we throw in the towel for any number of reasons.

1) We just can't get over it. The pain outways what was and what could be.

2) Pride. Umm nope. F**k you. Don't love you enought for this crap.

3) Children.

4) Fear. We're all scared, fear is different. Fear makes you basically unable to do anything. I'll die without you. Well we're all still here so that one's out the window.

5) An unremorseful WS...either the A is still going on or/and besides a few "I'm sorries" they really aren't that remorseful. I'll keep letting you cook my food, do my laundry, fix my car cause I know....you are that desperate. That takes time because your natutral instinct is to hang on.

I sent your H a website to read Lola. Has he read it? Has he shared what he's learned with you? He's the one who had the A...what is he doing to get to the bottom of why it happen? He's the one with the answers.

6) We feel so lucky they wanna work on it. NO...they are the ones been given a gift. Don't forget that.

7) Time and a whole lot more. All of the above and we've done everything we can and its just not there anymore for whatever reason(s). Giving up at the beginning feels like defeat. So is hanging on when you aren't getting what you need...you decide.

I posted on this on another thread and so did G.T. a WS doesn't have all the answers ...at least at the beginning. But dammit at some point they owe it to you and the marriage to overturn every stone...whatever it takes to find it.

Words are fine for awhile...then you need to see some action and I mean proaction. Not you doing all the work and coming to me with an article or book I have to ...wow...spend some time reading. What books has he found for you to read? Lack of action on their part IS an action. You either get past the excuses and accept the marriage for what it is..or you don't.

I don't mean to be rough Lola. I just wanna know what he's doing for you. For instance...is he a people pleaser? They end up pleasing no one.

Besides the hugs and kisses which I know you need what is he doing to get to the bottom of this on his own... he can share it with you. So he can come to you...not you to him...

Regards,

Tex

I liked After the Affair (Janis Abrams Spring) alot. I thought it was one of the best books out there (along with the Monogamy Myth, Not Just Friends, and Private Lies). Almost all of the books written on infidelity make a point of not being judgemental. Many of them are so nonjudgemental that they imply that that they betrayed spouse is partially responsible for their partner's affairs. Private Lies (Frank Pittman) is somewhat of an exception. Pittman is quite blunt about betrayed spouses not being responsible for their partner's affairs. In fact, Pittman actually comes out and says (in another article) that if you're looking for "problems in a marriage" that "caused the affair", then you're probably barking up the wrong tree if you're looking at the marriage of the wayward spouse. You'll have more luck looking at the marriage of the parents of the wayward spouse. That's just his opinion but he's been working with infidelity for over 40 years. In my personal experience, he's more right than wrong.

Here's my take on the journal article - it's probably accurate based on what I've seen on message boards like this one. The books often tell you "after the discovery of an affair, you could have a better marriage". They studiously avoid telling you what your chances are.

Personally, I wanted to know everything there was to know about affairs, including my chances of successfully rebuilding my marriage. Knowing my chances wouldn't have made any difference in the way I went about trying to recover and I don't like being lied to even if it is done to make me feel good. I don't know anyone who gave up because they read a journal article.

I thought "Not Just Friends" was a good one.  This was the first one I read and it was hard to read when I was in so much pain. I think it was my favorite of all the ones I have read...maybe because it was the first and it gave me a lot of insights about how affairs happen and how you can still love your spouse and cheat. It gave me hope. It goes a lot into how affairs happen at work, and among friends. I gave it to my H to read but of course he didnt.  Look up some reviews.

The Monogomy Myth was my next favorite.  You have to read that one all the way through and take what you need out of it.  Personally, I love Vaughns advice, but I think she put up with more than most people would or should.  She ceratinly had a good head on her shoulders though to sort through things the way she has and to come out on top. Almost everyone recommends, sort of the "bible" to recovery of the marriage and healing after infidelity.

And as far as statistics go, who cares? I do not put much stock in them. All I can do is MY BEST and all that I can to save my marriage.  It will either work or not no matter what the statistics say...they're just numbers

Take Care,

Carol~

Lola...unfortunately stats are difficult in that there are many factors that influence them.

It is true that few marriages survive and prosper after an affair, but it can be done with hard work on the part of both of you (more by the WS however).

IF your husband is truly willing to do whatever it takes to save this marriage, then likely as long as you still want it you can make your way through the long road ahead together.

There are all different states of a marriage though...

staying together for children
happy/oblivious but never rebuilt/repaired
living as roomates
surviving okay
prospering

Lots of people fall in a variety of spectrums there so it is hard to say where you will end up. I think the key in my mind is remorse. Having a remorseful partner seems to have made all the differences in the cases I have seen.

The problem lies in the fact that you cannot force a person to do something they don't want to do. You cannot control another's actions, only your own. He will either come around or not.

Tex has a great point that keeps coming up.....he should look upon this as you GIVING him the gift of reconciliation. That to me is true remorse!

Kid

p.s. i read after the affair, not just friends, relationship rescue.....all very good

Lola....Don't try to read that stuff and put your own situation in the context of what you read. Each and every person is different, affairs begin and end for differeing reasons. I thik the best book to read is by Bruce Fisher....Rebuilding..... Again, I can't remember the title, but RedWolf listed a lot of books on another post and it was among them. Trying to fit your situation into one of those "categories" is wasting too much energy. It appears that you want to get your hands on a book that talks about your situation and how it ended...happily ever after...we all want to find those books, but they're not out there. What about this. Why don't you and your husband write your own book, something about the "etiology of an affair"...you both can write it and put what you need to in it. You could become millionaires, save your marriage, and help a lot of people in the long run. I think it is futile to try to get books that say what we want to hear, becuase no one's story is the same. I still appreciated the Fisher book because he worked with a large group of people who were struggling with their marriages and relationships and was insightful enough to write down what each person described as their stages during the r ecovery process. If you ahve decided to salvage the marriage, work in that direction. Informaton from your H about the need for the affair will certainly be necessary for YOUR recovery. you want to be able to provide him with the things he needs, and vice versa. Take the money you would spend on books, buy two laptops, sit across from one another and type away. Allow each other to read your entries. You will probably need a chapter on emotions/feelngs; questions you ask yourslef on a daily basis; what you have learned about yourself; what you have leared about your spouse, etc. How you would like things to be from this point on.......sounds much more productive to me than trying to fit your story into someone else's life. FWIW

I personally found books very helpful and I could see bits and pieces of my marriage in many of them including alot of relationship issues that needed to be worked on. It was those books that helped drive in my head that the affair was not about me. It was those books that explained what a remorseful spouse should do. It was those books that adequately defined the no contact and helped me establish appropriate boundaries.

Hmmmmmmmmmm remember this is just my opinion but I have a huge issue with the buy two laptops and sit across from each other and type.

Communication is about talking and actively listening to the other. You can say anything you want in print, but its just words. (this i have really learned by my online dating adventures......book soon to follow). Actually talking and expressing those feelings, emotions, etc is very important IMO. Actively listening to the other when they express how they feel and what they need and want is just as important. Of course even more important that talking and listening is actually following the talk up with action, but that is a comment for a different day.

Now journalling............that is a great tool I think. BUT and there is a but.......it should never replace communicating verbally.

And that's one woman's opinion.......haha

Kid

Thank you all for your advice and support.

>>Personally, I wanted to know everything there was to know about affairs, including my chances of successfully rebuilding my marriage. Knowing my chances wouldn't have made any difference in the way I went about trying to recover and I don't like being lied to even if it is done to make me feel good. I don't know anyone who gave up because they read a journal article.<<

Ok--that first sentence is me to a T. I am a knowledge junkie and feel secure if I know facts and can disect and apply to my situation. Thank you for the supportive words re: study or not, most people want to try. Having said that, trying is scary, because no one wants to 'fail'.

Thank you for your feedback on the books to read. I have ordered Private Lies and am looking forward to receiving it, however it is taking quite a long time to get here (I ordered it over a month ago). I have to say that I am continually amazed at the wide ranging feedback on "After the Affair". I had no idea. My IC suggested it to me. When I took my concerns to her (about 6 weeks ago) she admitted that she had not read the book herself (am I in denial that this should be a red flag about my IC?)...I think I'll be informing her a little bit about the feedback. I will read it, however, I think that my H and I should read it together, that way we can digest and discuss immediately all feelings/interpretations/lessons learned from the book and apply as appropriately to our situation.

I think that one of my 'take-aways' on your advice is that there is no perfect book (ok--I can hear the collective 'duh' all the way up north!) and that reading and taking from each source what is relevant to our situation is a best practice.

Sage--I had to smile at your advice to write our 'own' book. We often joke about it, because what he has done is so ludicrous (sp?) and if we survive and become happier and more well-adjusted, it will be a small miracle (fortunately, we're both spiritual and believe in miracles...said with wry smile). i think that everyone on this forum should get together and write chapters on their experiences--a compiliation of situations and the outcomes--A "Chicken Soup for the Cheated"...

My H is doing many, many things--A over, no contact, no 'privacy' for him (one example: we exchange cell phones if he goes out on an errand by himself), docs, meds, and IC, entirely willing to undertake MC (I'm the one not ready for that yet) etc. HOWEVER, as Tex pointed out there are more things that he can be doing. We did have a 'mini-breakthrough' IMO yesterday. I called him (he's away on business) and told him that I felt he wasn't doing 'enough' and that what he has undertaken to date are the 'passive' or 'easier' things to do. I want him to initiate looking up resources or even to start a conversation about the A (ok--it's only been 8 weeks -- today) etc. We were actually able to discuss without fighting...that is amazing for us (even before the A, before we married--we often 'bickered'). So Tex, thanks for the gentle nudge...you may have mail.

Funny on the 'gift of reconciliation'. I have told him that--that every morning he should be waking up and thanking God that I am willing to work with him to overcome the affair and ulimately work on our marriage. He agrees, says he thinks it everyday--and is learning to express it daily to me. Steep learning curve for that man.

And one more breakthrough--since d-day I have averaged about 4 hrs sleep a night. Last night--got a full 8 hours!!! The world seems a little clearer today.

Thank you again for all your advice. You all are a support like no other.

Lola

"and that reading and taking from each source what is relevant to our situation is a best practice"

Yes, exactly.

I also liked "After the Affair" the most as well. When I read it and told ex about some of it, we both agreed some things just didn't apply to our situation.

Charlie

Lola,

'After the Affair' was a good book for me overall.

"I began to read it, and immediately was put off by the suggestion that that the WS was somehow also responsible for the A."

I never buy that line. People/authors skirt around that touchy topic in different ways. Often times their goal seems to be an attempt to bring a mutual willingness to change behaviors for both spouses, and to strike some sort of better balance for the couple's recovery. I do not like the way it tends to level the playing field when one spouse cheated, and the other did not.

By the way, the book RESOURCES link we have here is down right now for some mysterious reason. I have someone looking into it.


~~Affair recovery theories and research~~

I don't know how a person would go about conducting this or how they would draw numerical conclusions.

'Recovery' can pick up, and look good 2 years after d-day. Then it can plummet to a disasterous low in year 4.

How exactly does a person rate affair recovery and when?

Year 2? Year 10? Year 25? Therapists don't track people.

"Do I really want to hear that of those types of A's-and the marriages that remain intact, only one in 12 will 'recover successfully'?"

I understand. However, the bottom line is that none of us wanted to hear about an affair. It's not so much about the statistics afterward, as the event which threw couples into this sometimes overwhelming challenge.

I guess my personal opinion after living it myself, plus reading and running forums on affair recovery for 6 years, is that adultery is more often than not really bad news for marriages.

I'm torn on my thoughts about "After the Affair". It made me feel better to read other examples of people in somewhat similar situations, but I was totally put off by the premise that nobody is above having an affair. I think that's a bunch of crap they say to make WS's feel better. Most of us have been through hell and back in our M's and have the best excuses, but haven't ran into anyone else's arms. In other parts of his life, is your H a big reader? My H has never liked to read so I don't know why I ever expected him to jump at the chance to read about affairs. I don't want to make that an excuse as he should ideally be willing to do anything you ask, but keep it in mind. I believe there are some audio tapes available - would that make it more appealing to him?

How do you feel about your IC? I only ask because counseling was a huge issue for me. When I first discovered H's second A I found a MC who I thought would be a good fit for us. She was worthless, never challenged H on anything, he lied to her the whole time, etc. so we only saw her for a couple of months. About a year or year and a half ago H found an IC who then became our MC. H seemed to like him, but I never did - H had been lying to him, not telling the whole story, etc. and he never challenged it or asked questions that I thought were pretty obvious. We saw him for almost a year and while it did help on a few issues, was pretty much a waste of time but I kept going because H liked him. In a fit of desperation I finally found a weekend therapy session for us and it was the best thing ever. It felt like the counselors we saw had known us forever after only a few minutes, and it was weird that they could almost see inside H's head and know when he was lying. I don't know if it was because of their prior experience working with couples in our situation or what. In a nut shell I guess my advice on the counseling issue is to make sure you're seeing somebody you are comfortable with and you feel has real insight into and experience with your situation. Don't settle for just "ok".

>>I was totally put off by the premise that nobody is above having an affair. I think that's a bunch of crap they say to make WS's feel better<<

I felt the same way at one time but not these days ... not so much. It seems risky. Almost everyone I know who deeply regrets an extramarital affair believed that they were immune.

I think there may be some people out there who could never have an affair but I don't think I'm one of them. Over the past few years I have found myself doing things that I never thought I would do. For example, ten years ago I thought that if my wife were to have an affair, I would work it out with her and we would go on. I realized that it would be difficult but I had no concept of how difficult it would be.

Falling into an affair seems much easier to me now than it did 10 years ago. There are good people who have made that mistake. Staying faithful for 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years takes effort.

 

"I felt the same way at one time but not these days ... not so much. It seems risky. Almost everyone I know who deeply regrets an extramarital affair believed that they were immune."

Funny how time does that to us, isn't it Q?

I feel the same way, esp. after knowing some very remorseful betrayers who are wonderful people.

Charlie

""""Staying faithful for 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years takes effort.""""

I've been faithful for 35. It doesn't seem like much effort to me to stay faithful if you allow your spouse to always come to the forefront of your thoughts. But I guess my perspective is different than most. Sometimes I wonder just how weird I am.

Quinn,

> ten years ago I thought that if my wife were to have an affair,
> I would work it out with her and we would go on.

Ten years ago, I thought if my wife had an affair, I'd call it quits immediately. I wouldn't have dreamed I'd stay in the marriage and try to make it work. I also had no idea it would be such a long and painful process, or affect so many aspects of my life.

> Falling into an affair seems much easier to me now than it did 10 years ago.

10 years ago, it never even crossed my mind. Sure, I was attracted to other women, but I had everything I needed with my wife. Why stray?

Today I feel a LOT more vulnerable. Our unbreakable bond feels broken but held together with duct tape. A part of me is jealous she experienced something I haven't. The whole mess wreaked havoc with my view of morality. And, it all left me very insecure and needing extra attention. So I never say never now... It now takes a conscious effort to be faithful, whereas before it wasn't even a thought.

H2C,

> allow your spouse to always come to the forefront of your thoughts.

That plays a big part in my own faithfulness. She's always in my heart and mind, so even when I'm attracted to other women, she's the one I think of. It wouldn't PREVENT an affair, but it makes it highly unlikely.

Anthony

>>In other parts of his life, is your H a big reader?<<

Nope--the guy hates to read. I honestly don't recall the last time he picked up a book. So I can give him some leeway. I think that we will likely read the book together--this way we can filter out what offends us and discuss the 'lessons learned' right away.

On the not believing in anyone being faithful.. I must admit that I am entirely jaded by this whole thing. A close friend of mine said upon finding out about the A "If I were to choose one of our husbands NOT to cheat, it would have been him" (out of a group of 5 friends). Who knew??

Thanks once again for all your help,
Lola