Forum topic: Hoping I am not alone

Thanks for your fast reply yesterday with further details about how many times you had slept with the other woman.  I'm sorry I wasn't able to get back to you last evening, as I'm sure this is a tough time for you, but I try not to write about big topics at the end of the day when my mind isn't working as well.  I know that people take what I say here seriously, and I try my hardest to be thoughtful.

Your situation is hard, but I'm hoping you and your wife will be able to overcome it and put your marriage back together again.  Though you will never have quite the same relationship as you did before you slept with the other woman, you can hope for a relationship in which you both have a better understanding of both your strengths and your weaknesses and that you love each other in spite of them.

I would not use ADD as a reason for your straying from your marriage.  I agree with your in-laws when they say that you are using your ADD as an excuse.  Furthermore, if you do pin your infidelity on your ADD you risk having your wife decide that since ADD is a permanent part of you she isn't willing to risk having her heart broken again.

And it doesn't seem as if ADD is the issue, in any event.  When you say that you thought before you slept with this woman that it might be an emotional affair, you suggest that you spent a certain amount of time getting to know her before you slept with her.  That means that it wasn't completely impulsive.  No, you reached out to her because you were completely, emotionally drained and needy from the trauma that you had suffered as a family from the loss of your daughter and your wife's medical problems.

What I hope you have learned from all of this is that you reached in the wrong direction.  There is no doubt that your wife was equally as devastated by the loss of your child and by her health issues as you were.  Hopefully, next time you run into emotional trauma like this you will turn to her...and work through the issue together.  As you may have decided by now, a better choice, if you are faced with a situation this traumatic again, is to admit your feelings of being overwhelmed, and seek professional help for yourself and, if she wants it, for her.  It is okay to be overwhelmed - everyone is overwhelmed at different points in their lives!  But make sure you show the respect your marriage deserves by dealing with it constructively.

Since you are in another situation that feels overwhelming right now, I'm going to offer some suggestions about how you might deal with this situation constructively.  Take those that feel right to you, and see if you can use them to start patching things up with your wife.  As you are doing so, remember that trust takes a very long time to build (and can be destroyed in a second), so don't expect her to suddenly act towards you right away in the loving way she used to.  She's going to be dealing with this for at least a year.  At the end of this note, I will also give you some insight into the process that your wife will go through as she heals from the hurt you have given her.

Some ideas for constructively dealing with your current situation:

• Accept that you did what you did because you were emotionally fragile, not because of your ADD.
• Apologize to your wife without any excuses or caveats.  Tell her that you know that what you did was wrong and stupid and that you are sorry that you hurt her so deeply.  Tell her that you have learned a great deal by thinking about the mistake that you made when you looked outward to address the emotional pain of losing a child and her health issues (and not being able to have a child again??this was unclear to me from your note) and that you promise never, ever to cheat on her again.
• Apologize for lying to her when she confronted you.  Tell her that your lying to her was a kneejerk response related to your fear of losing her and that you hope some day she'll forgive you for that lie.  Promise that you will always be truthful with her in the future.
• Let her know that you understand that you have violated her trust and that it will take a long time for you to earn it back, but that you fully intend to do so if she will only give you the opportunity.  You would like her input about how you can do so effectively.
• Tell her how much you love her.
• (At a different time) tell her that you have no feelings for that other person, and that you will never talk to that woman again (and stick by this one - it doesn't matter if this person was your best childhood friend.  Because you slept with her, your relationship is now OVER.  If not, you are in serious risk of losing your wife.  Don't even call this woman to tell her your relationship is over.  Just NEVER talk to her again.  This is an important part of earning back your wife's trust.)
• Ask your wife what she needs from you at this point, and listen to her response.  You are the guy in the dog house right now.  If she says that she needs you to stand on your head, you should seriously consider doing so.
• My only exception to this rule is that if your wife tells you that she needs you to go away, you should interpret that as needing space, but you should not disappear.  Instead, try to get at how you can support her need for space and healing (thus showing her how much you love and respect her) but demonstrate that THIS TIME you aren't going to abandon her in her time of need.  Again, ask her what she needs, specifically.  If she needs counselling, either separately or together, support that.  If she demands that you start to address your ADD symptoms, take that seriously and set up the proper appointments with doctors to do so.
• Consider talking with her parents and telling them the same kinds of things as I've put above.  Parents see a lot over the years, and they will likely appreciate your straight-forward, no excuses apology.  They will also be looking for demonstrations that you have learned from your experiences, and that you are ready to dig in and make things better for their daughter.

I promised that I would write a little bit about what it is like to recover from discovering your spouse has been stepping out on you.  First, your wife may ask for details...or she may not.  If she does, you should be 100% honest with her, with the exception that you DO NOT wish to say that the other woman was better sexually than she was, even if that was the case.  In addition, it is not at all in your best interests to show any remaining enthusiasm for that other woman if any exists (I don't think this is the case with you, but I could be guessing wrong.)  Now, some people will disagree with my statement about being honest about the other woman, but in your case your wife is making a big deal about your lying to her...and I think that she is going to be looking for you to lie to her again...and if you do, I think she will be out that door for good.  I have some experience with this point of view and so may be biased, however.  When my husband's girlfriend called me on the phone to tell me he was lying to me about her I made sure to get all the details about their relationship (where, when they had been together, etc) from her that she was willing (stupidly) to share.  I then asked him a bunch of pointed questions about the two of them.  If he had lied on ANY of them, I would have been gone.  At that point I would have been in a position where I would have felt that I could never have trusted him to be honest with me again.  Luckily, at that point, he knew better and their stories completely lined up.  I think the honesty thing (properly and gently delivered) is about "is this person putting "me" and "us" before himself.  If so, he can still be a good spouse.  If not, then there is real question as to whether or not we can repair our relationship adequately."  So that is the background of why I think you need to be honest, even if it is painful to you (and it will certainly be painful to your wife, so make sure that you are as gentle with your honesty as possible.)

Second, if she is like me, she is going to imagine what your having sex with that other woman was like for a long time.  Your sex life with your wife will suffer as a result, at least in the short term.  You'll need to remember that sex will sometimes bring anger to the fore, and rather than respond in kind, remind yourself to be patient and supportive.  Try to make sex special, and follow your wife's cues while pushing for as much emotional closeness as you can (it's a tough dance - making sure that she knows over and over again how much you love her, and also respecting her hurt and pain when she expresses it.)

Third - don't be tempted to blame your wife for your infidelity.  It does not matter that she was emotionally distraught or unavailable at the time (if she was).  There are a number of ways that you could have responded to your own hurt, including seeing a therapist of some sort.  You, and you alone, are the person who chose to have the affair.  When she gets angry some time in the future (and it will come up in spurts and starts for quite a while) accept and acknowledge that anger, don't fight it.  One of the smartest and best things that my husband did for us as a couple was let me be angry when I needed to be.  By respecting my anger, he gave me the opportunity to get over it.  If he had fought my anger by trying to justify himself or by pointing out how tired he was of my anger, he would have further fueled the flames, and we would have moved into permanent conflict mode (and probably divorce).  I respect his choices (and they must have been hard at the time) and thank him for them.

In my opinion, there are a few more things that you need to deal with.  You need to understand that in order to have your marriage remain successful in the future (should you repair it now, which I think you might) you must do the following things:

• make yourself remain faithful to her.  If you find yourself getting emotionally close to another woman, you should promise yourself that you will use that as a marker that something isn't right in your marriage, stop the impending affair before it happens, and go to marriage counselling with your wife.  If you cheat on her again, your marriage will be over.
• listen to, and respect, your wife's opinions about what she wants in your marriage, and try to work through those as they come up.  This will help you rebuild trust.  For some period of time (I think at least a year) you are the guy who must be resolved to reach out, ask questions, and pursue her again (think about how much fun you had when you were dating)
• as soon as it makes sense, start having some fun together again.  This will help alleviate the tension in your relationship.  Woo her.  Make sure she knows you love her.  Promise yourself to put yourself completely on the line for her.

Well, that's plenty to start with.  Let us know how you are doing.  I wish you good luck, and good decisions!  This does not have to be the end of your relationship, but you are in a critical point when you need to be ultra sensitive to the hurt you have inflicted and the pain that your wife is experiencing.  Having been on both the receiving end of my husband's having an affair, and the giving end of myself having one, I can tell you that the devastation and pain on the receiving end is 100 times greater than that on the giving end.  There is really no way to describe the intensity of that pain.

Melissa Orlov