Today I am in the pit. Having received the detailed disclosure of my wife's affair today, I find myself upset angry frustrated, etc. Not an abusive type anger just anger at the betrayal of what I thought was real commitment in spite of struggling marital circumstances. Feeling unwanted, rejected. Gut punched. I made mistakes and I tried to show love. But here I am. I don't know what to do, but I know what to do. I don't want to be naive but I do have hope and I will put hope to work. It is my willing obligation to present my wife as a spotless bride before Christ so I will do just that to the best of my abilities so long as she is willing. No matter what it feels like now, .... the glass is half-full.

We are 20 months out from DD#1 ... he, from all accounts, is "over it" and ready to move on. I'm stuck in the memories and can't seem to see past the past. I would love to do Harboring Hope to finally start feeling normalish again!

It’s been 2-1/2 year since I found out about my husband’s affair. 2 years since he left (2 months shy of our 20th wedding anniversary). He says he loves me but our marriage was a mistake and he will never return. Only through God’s grace have I been able to learn to love my husband in a new way, one that is unconditional. I am committed to my covenant and do not want or need anyone else. I am blessed that we have a good relationship right now but I want to make sure I do not fall into the trap of trying to “win him back”. Only God can change his heart, not me. I also want to keep working on myself and understanding my part in the failure of our marriage (although I take no responsibility for his affair). I want to take my mind off of reconciliation and on to my own recovery.

I am about 6 weeks out from Dday 1, the betrayed spouse. My UH deflects to marriage issues anytime we discuss the affairs. He is not interested in counseling, says he can think on his own. He also feels I should be over the affairs, I have had over a month to process it. I would love to do your online course to start my own healing process.

I’m just so sad about how my like has turned out. Happily ever after is a cruel joke.

Harboring hope can help me get thru all this pain from the infidelity I found out about on 3/1/19and help me to understand why and how this happened and to heal

My husband had an emotional affair almost two years ago. He almost had another one 8 months ago. He also slept around when we first started dating. We have been together 6 years and I never got over that he was sleeping around in our first months and I had trust issues with him for 4 years befor he had the emotional affair. We gave our lives to Christ 5 months ago but I am still having daily panic and anxiety attacks about this. I become depressed, angry, rageful and violent. I have made myself sick with this marriage and now have an autoimmune disorder. I have punched him and I have punched a window. I need help. My father also had answer no drug addiction and my mom left him when I was barely one year old because she caught him sleeping with her friend high on drugs. I know this root of iniquity is why I have such a hard time recovering. I am a stay at home mom and homeschool and do not work. I am in two bible studies and was seeing two christian counselor but they have concluded they cannot help me. I need God. Please help for the hopeless.

I never had a clue that my husband was cheating or that he had cheated 3 times in our 20 year marriage. Let me start with D day number 1. I was working and I got a message from a person I did not know on Facebook. I opened the message and could see my husband but I did not play the volume. He was standing in someone else’s bedroom. I immediately called him, he was getting ready to meet me to go shopping for Thanksgiving, I said, “did you have an affair?” He paused and said, “yes.” I then said, “with who?” He told me it was a girl from work. I was floored! But wait, the worst part for me was when I asked for how long. He said, “two years.” I hit the floor. I immediately left work and called him when I got into the car. I asked him how old she was and I wasn’t prepared to hear she was half his age. Our daughter’s age. I then asked if he loved her. I wasn’t expecting him to say YES. I went home to talking, screaming, crying and fighting for 4 days straight. We didn’t eat or sleep for 36 hours. THERE IS NO HANDBOOK FOR THIS, until I found Affair Recovery!
He turned my world upside down! He turned my children’s world upside down. He literally turned himself upside down. I had made a decision to stay and allow him to stay. We recommitted ourselves to making it work. Little did I know that that is impossible to do alone.
Our first counselor was inexperienced in real hard core infidelity counseling and wasted some time but it was a start. I started watching Samuel and we were always a step ahead of our counselor. Then the other shoe slowly dropped. I found the phone records and realized it was a lot more involved then what he lead me to believe. Little things would slowly leak out, it had been devastating.
Then we had a second D day and his affair partner spilled everything he was hiding. Gifts he bought, money he had given her and all the time he had spent with her. Not to mention, their future plans to be together. He chose me, he kept telling me. But, that’s not completely true. He was given an ultimatum and I was the better choice. He never thought I’d find everything out, so he was going to coast by like he had for years. His affair partner was the one that told me of his other affairs. It had started about 5 years into our marriage. WHO WAS I MARRIED TO...???
It’s now been a little for 4 months since the original discovery day and we have a great experienced counselor but it is still a struggle everyday! I have watched every video from Affair Recovery and now listened to every podcast and it helps me get through the day. I can’t imagine how helpful Harboring Hope would be for me. I know we are going to come out of this better than before and I continue to believe my kids will too. I thank God for all the help and I know he’ll put others in my path to get us through this season.

My husband and I attended Marriage 911 at our church last spring, 2018. Although he says he’s not viewing porn and looking at women, he is not accepting of the fact that I’m still grieving 28 years of lies and deceit. He is not progressing forward. He doesn’t care about continuing to work on him being trustworthy again. So, I need to work on me only.

Hi, I'm interested in being part of harboring hope because my wife and best friend of 20 years betrayed me twice in the last years and it has devastated me. She has lost feelings for me, but stopped the affairs right away and is trying to move forward the best she can. We've both lost hope, but are managing to move forward taking one day at a time. We have 5 amazing kids (ages 7 to 16) and we are both tired of this battle we're fighting. I'm praying for a miracle and am hopeful God is not finished with our story, but will write an amazing 2nd half.

D-day was Jan. 5th, 2018. It has been 15 months, I am I still really struggling. The pain is overwhelming and I have so much resentment.
We went to counseling for 12 months, which was helpful but was not with an expert in infidelity. We decide to attend EMS weekend, which was great, and have continued with our small group and mentor for the past 6 weeks with weekly assignments and conference call, and have agreed to carry on with our group for the next year.
Although those group calls and weekly assignments are good for us as a couple, I really feel like I need other women in this situation to talk with. I’m having trouble moving forward and have days that I am so overwhelmed with emotion.
I am concerned that my husband has never gone to any counseling alone. I think he needs to work through some things to address how and why this happened, and since he won’t don’t that it just adds to my fears.
I just desperately need to get healthy for me, and then decide what’s next.
Our mentor recommended Harboring Hope and I think it might be really good for me, at this point.

Please help. My husband has served me with divorce papers this week and I don't know if there is any hope. We have so much history, both good and bad, but he has ever tried counseling. I'm on my own. I feel I have no choices, now that he has filed with the courts.

I would like to take HH because the only way to heal and get my life back is to heal me. I am 7 months from DDay. I caught my husband with the AP. You shouldn't plan a vacation with your wife and girlfriend in the same vacation home.

We are 4 weeks from completing EMSO. It appears that my UH still wants the marriage, he just has stated and he also has demonstrated by his actions that he doesn't want/desire me. I think I need to move on and would love to take the Harboring Hope class, but cannot currently afford the cost.

I desperately need help! I feel so alone - even though seeing a counselor. I have no one to talk to who can actually understand what I'm going through and why I am staying in my marriage. I caught my husband on January 11, 2019. At a strip club. I have now learned that he had been going to strip clubs about 3 times a week for 2.5 years!! We will be married for 38 years this coming July! We have four grown sons. My blood pressure won't go back to normal and all I want to do is sleep. I am having a very hard time concentrating and keeping up with my tasks at work not to mention finishing out my two classes this semester in grad school. If I could just be shoulder-to-shoulder with other betrayed women who are holding out hope for their marriages!! If I could just learn how to heal and what all of this looks like on a day to day basis? These unchartered waters are getting the best of me.

I confronted him the next day and he was beyond remorseful and repentive. It broke my heart. I agreed to stay in the marriage. Ten days later, he went back to the strip club during the day and upon me confronting him returned to the strip club for the remainder of the night. He moved to temporary housing for 2 months. He was repentive and remorseful. Forty-one days after that, he again went back to the strip club. He is now in an apartment with a one-year lease.

I was certain that I wanted to end the marriage, but the Lord has not released me from it, and in fact has given me a love for my husband that I did not know would be possible after this. Trust, on the other hand, is not happening for me. My husband is shocked that I still love him and wants this marriage to be reconciled. But old patterns of defensiveness and stonewalling still rear their ugly heads from time to time. WE do not know how this is supposed to look? Do we see each other? How do we heal our individual brokenness but also reconcile this marriage?

Finding Affair Recovery has been such a blessing and help to both of us. I have finally admitted to myself that I don’t want to ‘walk’ through this. I just want to ‘move on’; to get beyond all of this. But I realize through the vlogs that this is NOT what is needed and will only give a very temporary restoration at best. I am afraid that if I don’t recover ‘soon enough’, my husband will get tired and restless deciding divorce is best. I know this is unhealthy thinking on my part but don’t know how to think otherwise. I desire to learn how to walk through this, learn about myself, get stronger, and ultimately be the individual God planned for me to be and hopefully have a new marriage with my husband that God planned for us to have. I truly believe that Harboring Hope can help me walk through this and actually come out alive and whole on the other side!

Praying to heal

Hello. We have been married 15 years and have five beautiful children. My husband has had more affairs then I can count, most have been casual encounters that he immediately distanced himself from after the “act.” He has always been repentant and begged me to give him another chance. And I did, though I feel like a fool. Three years ago, he was involved a nine-month affair with a woman until I caught him. He immediately broke it off. But two and a half years later, this past November, I found out he had been involved with her again briefly. The day I found out he had been seeing someone (took her to lunch at one of our spots) and confronted him, he was so horrible to me. He denied and lashed out at me, turned off his GPS locator and did not come home that night. I knew what he was doing, He went to her house and stayed the night. Later he told me that she had plans for them to start a life together which he claims he did not contribute to but I don’t believe that. He came home the next day and did not go back to her and shortly after we discovered the affair recovery program immediately did Boot Camp and signed up for the EMS weekend. We gained a lot of traction with Boot Camp and the EMS weekend and after. He was making a real effort to be safe for me and connect with me, and our level of intimacy flourished. I felt so much love for him for his willingness to be vulnerable and patient with me. We completed the After EMS and are doing the Married for Life and participating in the weekly calls. We have couples counselors that are very good and individual counselors as well. But yet things have started to slip. He’s been very defensive with me for what he has done, or rather the way that I’m trying to cope with what he’s done. I have really made an earnest effort to not be abusive toward him, however I have slipped a few times and said some nasty things. I’ve even hit or swatted him a couple of times in anger. And of course he doesn’t hesitate to remind me of it. His defensiveness, pride, need to be right, his lack of consistency defensiveness make me feel unsafe again. So instead of trying to make him do what I need to feel safe I’m just going to do whatever I can to try to heal. And I hope that he will do the same for himself, and for us, but if not I still need to heal.

Healing sounds great right about now

Recently our son discovered inappropriate text messages between his wife and my husband. After our son confronted his father (you can imagine the hurt on both fronts for him as well), my husband fully confessed and he and I spent a whole day crying and talking and crying again. My son and daughter in law have gone through a lot over the past few years with cancer, extreme health issues and business challenges, and daughter in law fights depression. My husband recognised the depression and knowing it himself feared for her in an unhealthy way. He is a Highly Sensitive Person (only began reading about this lately but explains a lot about his very sensitive nature) and feels very deeply. He also struggles with anger at God. Not sure where that originated but he has experienced a lot of pain and loss in his life, seeing a friend lose young daughter from cancer, his mother and father passing and many other things over the years. I wonder also if he has a father wound. Anyway they made a connection that developed into a very inappropriate relationship. Our hearts are aching because our relationships are so torn apart. I am so very sad and continue to pray for restoration and healing for all of us. Our relationships have been torn apart in so many ways. I miss the grandchildren so much and it's painful to see how much my husband is hurting because of all the pain he has caused out family. We are blessed to have found Affair Recovery and have been watching many of the videos together. I would like Harbouring Hope because I feel so all alone in all of this with no one to talk or pray with besides my husband. I feel the support would be very good. At this time only our counselor knows besides the four of us about the affair.
Anonymous
Our daughter in law and son have been able to get counseling with Caring For the Heart locally and have begun some deep healing . We look forward to doing the same soon.

I am confused and unsure. My husband now says he wants me and to save our marriage. He says he wants to be with only me. He has attempted suicide once. He has lied over and over. We are now separated. I need to move. Staying close to his AP is not an option for me any longer. He checked himself into a hospital 2 1/2 years later for suicidal thoughts after he promised he would not hurt himself again. After his second time in the hospital things seem to have changed for the better. I don't know if they will keep going this way. I don't know what to believe. I feel like I can't even trust myself since I believed the lies for so long. I don't know what to feel or how to feel. I need to find a healthy place.

Its been a long 8 years, holding in to God’s truth about marriage abd adultery. While my husband still sees his affair partner. I have asked him if hes going to leave and he's said no but when i ask him to stop seeing her, he does for a whike but then starts up again. For some reason though they both know the Bible well, they have this notion that Hod will reveal his will for what should happen. Even though to me God already has. He hasnt given them permission to be together. My hisband is very involved in our church in a number of ministries snd goes to church often yet somehow his so blinded. As a catholic the only way to dissolve our marriage is by annulment, which breaks my heart. I keep hoping that God will convict his heart. I would love to win Harboring Hope, as i dont feel strong or brave enough to give an ultimatum and beed to learn these tools.
Vanessa

My wife was contacted by a professional romantic-scammer based in Russia that began liking the pictures of her flowers. He preyed on her through various social media accounts and little by little caused her to realize that this unemployed Muslim, 14 years her junior was her 'soulmate'. After all, why wouldn't a 26 year old college student in Russia want a 40 year old housewife with four kids? Within three months of first contact, she sent him $200 dollars for an "emergency operation". He has completely brainwashed her over the last year and a half. No factual information about the nefarious activities or other female contacts of this individual will cause her to reconsider. She is only more and more secretive and the lies get stranger and stranger. She has been completely brainwashed in this psychological campaign over the last year and a half. He has poisoned her mind with mind-control techniques. This is only the intro. The story is so bizarre, so twisted and so sad that it would make your head spin.

You may ask why I would want to stay with someone who has so absolutely destroyed our family and so traumatized our 4 innocent kids? Well, I remember who she once was, and is, on the inside. I see that person dying on the inside, but she refuses psychological assessment. Kind of like a drug addict that doesn't want to get better even though they know they are dying.

The divorce filing as been at the courthouse for three months, but it hasn't gone anywhere YET. That could happen today for all I know.
I've been trying and many times failing to keep it together for a year and a half of this, and I do so because my kids need me, her mother needs me, and someone has got to keep it all together.

The reason I am interested in the Harboring Hope is that I need some self-care, otherwise I'll go nuts.

My husband and I are 60 years old and we have been married for 38 years. My official D Day was January 24, 2019. My husband got arrested on January 21 for solicitation of a prostitute. He offered assistance to a woman who seemed to be in an unsafe area in the city where he was working. This happened are 5:45 pm. on January 21. He had just called me that he was going to this tool store to purchase a special tool for his work. The woman that he offered assistance to turned out to actually be he an uncover posing as a prostitute. In his vulnerable state, she offered her services. He agreed but he told her that he was going across the street to a hamburger joint. No money was exchanged. He did see her text something on her phone. Come to find out this was part of a prostitute/john sting where over 200 men were arrested. When he drove across the street, he was arrested. When we were finally able to communicate, our world came crashing down. We agreed not to tell our grown children, but it leaked out to our daughter-in-law by the bondman who had promised that they would not contact the references I had to chosen. Of course they did contact our daughter-in-law. It was awful. Our son and his wife have barely spoken to us since. Our son told our daughter who knew nothing about the ordeal. Our youngest daughter and her husband knew about everything because I was on the phone with her when I got the call that my husband was arrested. I read the arrest report so I know he is telling me the truth. Since then he has gone to court 3 times but each time he goes the evidence has not been turned in. It turns out that my husband has disclosed several sexual encounters he has had over the last 18 -2 years he has worked away.
He is now home since the middle of May. We both are trying really hard to heal from all of the infidelity. He has disclosed so much to me. We have been reading and watching many AR resources. Presently, we are working in a program suggested by our church. At the end of June and for the next 13 weeks that follow we will be attending a recovery program very similar to EMS weekend. We have purchased access to Recovery library as well. He starts counseling next week. I desperately want to join Harboring Hope but can't seem to get in. Please help.

I took the pain for myself and turned it inward. I couldn't help it. I'd come from a family who only dealt in pain. They installed so many traps, tricks and devices in me that any wounding sets off a myriad cruel machines that snake around my body and mind causing more damage. I never felt like I was good enough before this happened, and a previous relationship with a sex addict burned a hole in two decades of my life.
My partner was sexually abused as a child by a priest. His acting out was due to stuffing this horror down deep in himself, a compartment that he sealed around himself. He is working on himself but I am drowning, when I get up I have to be his support as he comes to terms with his actions and how they have kept the abuse going. I alternate between being his therapist and being his accuser.
I would like some support and some peace. I'm carrying the weight of two, along with our kids.
I wonder how it would feel to not be in fight flight mode, I wonder what I could do with my life if I wasn't constantly fire fighting. I wonder who I could be if I could like myself again.

On October 25th, 2017 my entire life was shaken upside down when I discovered my husband was in an emotional affair for the past 8 years that turned semi-physical. We had been married for 23 years and have 3 children, our youngest going on 6 years old at the time. I was so devastated because I never thought my husband could do such a thing. I had suspected in the past but I always believed him when he said there was no one else and ‘he swears to God’ he’s telling the truth. I couldn’t understand why this happened, we had our problems but overall I felt we were a happy couple and family. I felt so betrayed, humiliated, deceived, I had no self confidence, and I was robbed of my peace. I had so many questions but they weren’t really being answered and he would react with so much anger. I was getting little bits and pieces, and that was torture because I never knew what was going to come out next. He finally told me who she was and she was 12 years younger than us, so that was another blow to my self confidence. To top that off, there were 4 others he would frequently visit to get his ‘thrills’ (as he put it), all between 20 years younger to 12 yrs younger. At first he said nothing physical had happened, it was just flirting at her place of employment. Then sometime later it came out he bought her 1 gift, then later it wasn’t only 1 gift he also bought her clothes, then a few months later he went to her house to drop off some items she asked him to take for her, then it came out he also drove her car to pick up food for her and bought her kids gifts. After about a year from Oct 2017, he told me they had met up at a few bars during those 8 years and that he ‘only’ kissed her once. I felt like I didn’t know this man I had been married, the man I knew wouldn’t do any of these things and with a married woman as well! I felt so lost and I was in a dark place. As crazy as it seems we decided to try to make our marriage work. He promised me and everyone else that knew if our situation that he would do whatever it takes to make our marriage work; this was in January 2018, and again I believed him. In January 2019 I decided to plan a little family getaway to start the new year off with a fresh start. We had a wonderful time and for the 1st time in a really long time I was starting to feel peace. Then in mid January, not even 2 weeks after our trip I found out he had been googling this other woman for the past year, he even called her with the intent to hang up when she answered. I couldn’t even comprehend why he would do this? Why would he betray me again after seeing all the hurt and pain I went through. He says he just needed to grow up and gets it now. The thing is I have been left with so much anger towards him and at times I even feel hatred. This isn’t me, thus isn’t the kind of person I was before. I didn’t realize what it was doing to me until a friend told me she misses the old me. I’m told I need to forgive and I’ve tried with everything in me to do this again, but I’m struggling so much and I need help.

My hubby And I NEED these courses! Please oh please oh please. I can’t bare to watch him twitch, toss, turn, and panic all night EVERY night anymore. Please draw our names

Like all the betrayed spouses out there, I never thought this would be my story. Never. But here I am and I don’t want it to be the end of my story, but rather the beginning of our best days to come and above all else a testimony to God’s love and redemption. My husband and I are currently in the EMSO program. The material has been very valuable. I find myself longing for more tools, guidance, and community through HH to help with the healing process. I’m hopeful for healing.

Harboring hope is what I wanted to do. I told my UW about affair recovery and showed her some of the videos on YouTube. I told her about EMSO AND HH, we couldn’t financially do both so I asked if she wanted to do it, she said yes so we started. She participated to some extent, without giving a really solid effort. “We” are on week 12, she stopped right before relapse prevention, and she is back in her affair.
I feel like she has been wasting my time. I just want to heal myself and move on with my life.

Married for 17 years, two amazing children and the woman of my dreams cheated on me with 8 different AP’s over the past 6 years. D Day 1 was accidental as the Bluetooth switched over to my vehicle when we stopped at a red light next to each other. This caused us to split. We sold our house, our children had to switch schools, and life was the worst it has ever been for us. After 1 month of fighting and hurt feelings, we decided to try to reconcile. Our first day of marriage counseling, my UW disclosed that she had affairs with 5 other men during the past 6 years. Devastation. Total devastation. To make matters worse, our marriage counselor fired us as they were not equipped to help us. We were fired by the next two marriage counselors as well. Still we were committed to reconciliation. My UW registered us for the EMS weekend which was going to be in June of 2019. I have devoured all content on the AR website. I was extremely active in the forums as I was in search of anything that could make me feel any fraction of relief. In May, there was another disclosure. Talk about falling right back into the dark hole! However, this time, I realized that the hole was deeper as I had the weight of the now 6 AP’s, plus the new disclosure (additional times with the existing AP’s) to contend with. Although I’ve been dealing with extreme anger, disappointment in my UW, pity for myself, and the worst pain possible, I was hopeful that the tools learned at the EMS weekend would help me heal. I’m naturally a forgiving person as well as an optimistic person. The EMS weekend did not disappoint. We gained so many valuable tools. My UW wife also expressed interest in being mentor couples later once we’ve healed. Obviously, this pleased me. However, on the 3rd day of the EMS weekend, my UW wife disclosed the last bit of betrayal. She had 8 AP’s. I spiraled and completely missed all the content from day 3. Back at home, I am struggling to let go of this anger. I can’t seem to find my way to acceptance; which is preventing me from reaching forgiveness. I’m seeing an individual counselor; however, have not been able to find one that understands the level of betrayal and pain that I’m experiencing. My UW is 100 % on board with fixing herself and saving the marriage, which is exactly what I want; however, I am stuck and can’t find the path towards my goal of reconciliation. Please consider me for the free HH drawing.

It's been almost a year since I discover my husband was seeing a prostitute on a regular basis. We'd been married for 23 years until then. Friends told me it's better than him having a relationship with an AP, which may be true but it came as a huge blow in my head since I didn't suspect or even any slightest doubt. I was devastated and broken, but slowly started picking up pieces and continue to work on healing for myself. I've learned great deal about myself since would like to continue working on myself regardless of our marriage. I also realized how co-dependent I was and am trying to make a change for myself to positive direction with God's guidance.