Surviving Infidelity

[suzie]

Me and my husband are recovering after his one year affair with a colleague. She has now resigned.

I have known for two months now but she just seems to keep cropping up and up to two weeks ago he was still phoning so'see how she was'. He was not honest about the contact, I found out.

I found him at her house this weekend, upstairs and he dashed out of the bedroom with his zip undone. A huge scence ensued and we came home. He said that she had manipulated the situation so that he would go to the house by threatening to do harm to herself she was crying on the bed and he laid down to comfort her. My husband has no other experience of relationships other than our 12 years together with 8 years married. We have two beautiful happy children and up this I thought we were happy too.

Before I could manage to dismiss thoughts of them together, but now I have caught him in such a position all I can see in my mind is his arousal when I caught them.

How can I make it go away. I am positive (finally) that it is now over for good but am finding it so hard to forgive what happened this weekend when we were making such good progress.

I love my husband and want our marriage to work

[Liz]

Dear Suzie

It takes time to recover from infidelity and if this incident was that recent then you are likely to still be upset.

You may find a couple of articles on the site helpful. There is one on forgiveness (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/marriageclinic/relbasictopic/forgive/) and one on learning to trust again (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/marriageclinic/relbasictopic/trust/).

Some of the battle is in your mind - when you start thinking of catching them together try and think of some good times you had together and crowd the other images out of your mind. As you feel more secure with each other, hopefully these other images will fade. I believe that one of the things many people struggle with is wanting to relive what has happened in their mind in an attempt to make sense of it. Sometimes it helps to accept that some things in life may never make sense and try and let go.

In the infidelity section (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/marriageclinic/infidelity/) you will also find articles about how people can come to terms with affairs - you could have a look there too.

Hang on in there,

Liz

[suzie]

Thanks for the advise Liz, I have found it very helpful and we seem to be doing very well. Although my husband should not have had an affair, I realise that something must have been not quite right for him to be tempted in the first place. We have had some very painful conversations in which we have had to hurt each other and hear critisisms in order to move forward and I think we have. I am certain that we could be even better than before if we can work hard to get through this initial nightmare.

My husband has broken off the affair and severed all communication which has helped. I can only take his word for it, but I believe him this time. We have started to see a marriage guidance counsellor which is helping us both to field the feelings we are both having.

I had received some e-mails but had a virus on the computer and couldn't open them so if anyone wants to get back in touch that would be great.

[suzie]

I thought that I would give some positive feedback, as your site helped me at the lowest time of our marriage breakdown.

Me and my husband are still together and after a course of relationship councelling sessions I think that our marriage is actually better than it has been for years! (pre-kids!!) We are more honest about our feelings which in turn causes more 'arguements' but this only means that the air is then clear and we are not harbouring bad feelings toward each other. We have been back together now for six months and I urge anyone in a similar situation to seriously think about Relate/relationship councelling before they split up. We found it helped in both our individual lives as well, we are more assertive and honest and have a clearer view of life and relationships in general.

Thank you 2 in 1.