Rick,

Married 12 years and my wife has had an emotional affair with one of her teachers at her college. We are 3.5 months from D-day. D-day came before they actually discussed their feelings. She is deeply in love with him. There has been nearly transparent honesty since d-day and we are actually communicating well. She has even apologized for hurting me with her affair. The thing that compounds her affair is that although he was obviously in love with her, he refused to act or even acknowledge(but at the same time zeror denial) his part in the affair when she confronted him to end it. She is now dealing with feelings of rejection on top of the shame of what she has done and is having trouble moving on. Her pain from this and thus her situational depression runs deep. She has had several sessions with Leslie Hardy and they have been very beneficial

My real problem is that I want to be able to help her. I want us to begin to heal and I know that cannot happen until she releases him from her heart. I know it is a process that she has to go through. I know that I cannot do it for her. But there has to be something I can do to help her through the process, right? There has to be some things I can do to help ease her hurting and help her move through it instead of being stuck. Any advice?

Rick,

As I stated previously, my wife had an emotional affair with her teacher. Because he was her instructor she had to continue limited contact for 1.5 months after d-day. In this time she limited her interactions with him. However yesterday she revealed additional gift giving that occurred on their last day of his class(a day I begged her to skip because it wouldn't effect her grade). Needless to say this revelation sent me into a bad spiral as 100% honesty was something I thought we had. She had been telling me that she was going to stay and work on the marraige and then gave him a sweet sentimental gift to "always remember her by". Am I wrong to feel betrayed here? She says "I told you the truth now, I could have kept hiding it". She says it was just her way of saying goodbye but I can't even look at this household item without flooding now. She is still processing the separation, I don't want to blow up on her constantly and hinder her recovery. I am hurting and don't know how I should proceed here. Any guidance for the hurting?

Rick, I recently discovered through evidence sent anonymously through the mail that my spouse has been lying to me about the two emotional affairs he had with a woman at work. I discovered that they became physical during both affairs and many many other things that he has been denying for the past 19 months, including a throwaway phone, expensive gifts for the AP on birthdays and holidays ( I was always told that he "never had time" to buy me gifts ---the AP and I share the same birthday), and the fact that he had stopped all contact. He admitted to me that they were kissing in her office just last month!!! We have attended EMSW, 5 different therapists, and done the Beyond EMS calls, in which he was successfully able to make all therapists and participants believe that all he had done was call and text too often and that was the extent of the affairs. The evidence I received in the mail and his resulting confessions have left no doubt of the depth and scope of the affairs and that he is capable of being a very smooth liar. I am shattered again and back to square one in recovery after 19 months of working on myself and my marriage. To his credit, he appears to be showing SOME remorse and has APPEARED to be trying to keep our marriage, but the small amount of trust that was beginning to return has now been nuked. I am back to zero trust. No belief in anything he tells me. I don't believe him when he tells me he loves me and just wants me now and that he is through with her. He watched me suffer and hurt for 19 months when all he had to do was be truthful. I do not believe he is through with the AP and my instincts tell me that as soon as he thinks the marriage is intact and will continue, then he will quietly go back to her. One thing this most recent revelation has taught me is to trust myself and my instincts. What are your thoughts on someone who has successfully deceived 5 different therapists, friends and family, and his EMS group? How likely is change and should I even stick around to find out since he lies and I won't ever truly know if what he says is truth or not? Is it time to say enough is enough? We have been married 36 years and he has been deceiving me for 18 of those years. I feel like our marriage has been a sham. Thank you.

Hello Rick. Can you please elaborate on what you mean by all people are scum as you describe in the EMSOnline and Married for life videos. Is this a professional conclusion? A personal opinion? A general consensus from counseling people? Thanks - Adam

Is hypnosis helpful for recalling details of an affair that happened 15 yes ago?

When I look back at my husband's affairs -- I realize that several 'friends' were aware of the affairs. No one informed me -- and I wish they would have said something. I realize that it's an awkward position to be the 'friend' who knows something that the spouse doesn't know.
Now, I look at my current situation. And I wonder if my mate's AP's spouse should be notified. I've been told that he has a bad temper. And that he could be an unreasonable person. I don't know if that's true; or if he was just "demonized" to look like he was the bad guy. How do I know if I should tell him about the affair?

My hurt husband came into our relationship with self-described low self-esteem. I have admittedly not done a great job over the years of pursuing trying to build his self-esteem - primarily because I didn't understand my role in it as I didn't need him building me up for my self-esteem to be high. (My parents thankfully stacked the deck in my favor, pride carried me for a while, and then I learned to base my worth on what God says not what people say, and I now hang on for dear life to those truths.) When I do try to build him up, my attempts are always rejected and twisted into blame, making it very difficult to continue trying. He doesn't believe the things I say, but then turns around and blames me for not making his low self-esteem high. If we were within the 2 year typical recovery window, I would expect for it to just take more time. However, both the affair and d-day were 16 years ago. At this point, what should my role be in trying to help him build/rebuild his self-esteem? How do I help? Or can I? He is not one to pursue counseling or read.