My wife had a year long affair with a mutual friend/co-worker. It's been 19 months since discovery. We've been married for 21 years. We've never separated. We both intend to save the marriage. We attend an EMS Weekend about one year ago.

I believe I've forgiven her; at least I've forgiven her vertically. I care for her and want to want her. Yet, simply cannot seem to advance past this stage of resistance. It seems like I have an inordinate amount of triggers and I find myself moving from a pretty good mood to one of anger, depression, and loneliness. I look at her sometimes and deeply wonder who that person is.

My personal preference would to be separated. I just want to be by myself.

However, I truly don't want to hurt her any more than she is hurting. And I don't want to hurt our four children (they do not know). Yet, if I tell her how I'm feeling in any form, it hurts her. She is unable to be supportive or encouraging. I'm not accusing her of anything. She simply does not have the ability at this point to be empathetic. So, I feel more alone when I'm with her than I do when I'm physically by myself. Being with her makes me anxious. I can get to a place when I'm on my own in which my heart feels tender and loving, but as I am returning home from a trip or time apart, I get anxious and would prefer to not be there with her.

I don't want to continue doing this to her. What should be my next steps to heal?

It has been four months since discovery of my husband's eight week affair (nine months if you include flirting and attraction). We attended EMS Weekend, are currently in Married for Life, and individually attend Harboring Hope and Hope for Healing. My husband is committed to our marriage and family.

I have gone from very motivated to saving our marriage to feeling ambivalent about our future. My husband was a pillar of integrity in our family and community. Now I am unable to see him as anything other than an emotional abuser and manipulator.

Oddly enough, I am struggling now with the hurt caused to his AP. His AP has dealt with a broken childhood home, a boyfriend 16 years her senior that threatened her life requiring a restraining order, followed by a one year marriage to an alcoholic man who she reports physically hurt her, followed by a pregnancy with a man she did not love following a fling when she was in the divorce process with her first husband. She married the man from her fling and was raising what appeared to be a nice family when she started seeing my husband.

What I cannot understand is how my husband could know of his AP's tumultuous life and promise to never leave or hurt her, yet once he was caught in the affair, he left her so fast I don't think she even knew what hit her! He was able to do this even after he interacted with her young children, tried to support her desire to get close to our older daughter, and even brought her close to a certain member of his family without their knowledge of the affair. He said he wished she would marry him after only 4 weeks of intimacy. Yet as soon as he was caught, she appeared to mean absolutely nothing to him.

While I understand that "affair thinking is not normal thinking'" I cannot get my mind around the fact that I am married to someone who could do such awful things to me, his own children, his supposed "forever love." and so many other people. While I don't think we started with the strongest of foundations (we both brought our own baggage to the marriage). The main reason I married him was his integrity and morality, and now I married to a man who appears to have neither.

I just am not sure I can see a future with someone that was able to do such awful things.

Dear Rick,

I am the betrayed spouse and found out about my husband's affair almost 6 months ago.

In the process of trying to heal over the last 6 months, I was reading and doing exercises suggested by books on Verbal Abuse, Narcissism, and Co-dependancy to help myself heal. As a part of the exercises, I wrote down a long list of over 50 or so wounds or offenses that my husband had said and done over the years that are still hurtful to me when I think about them. A few of these items were addressed at the EMS weekend in our small group and I received healing through my expressing my hurt and him validating it and asking for forgiveness. My question is: What should I do about these awful thoughts of things that he has said and done to hurt me? I don’t want to cause more harm to him or me. Should I go through each one of these items on the list following your format for wounds and offenses and share them with my husband to give him an opportunity to validate my pain and apologize? I fear that he would be overwhelmed with grief and discouragement if we did this all at once. Should I just address one per day or one per week? Or should I talk to an empty chair and express my pain vicariously?

Hi Rick,

My husband and I have been married for almost 13 years this is my first marriage and his second. I am the betrayed spouse and D-day was nearly 16 months ago. My husband and his ex-wife were high school sweethearts when they married at a young age. Two years into their marriage his ex-wife cheated on him with a coworker for nearly 4 months and their marriage ended 11 years later. I had never asked my husband about his ex-wife and her affair thinking it was none of my business. Yet before we got married he had told me that if I ever wanted to be unfaithful to him to have enought respect in letting him know that I was going to stray and leave the marriage. Two years into our marriage is when he started his affair that lasted 10 years. I can't seem to understand how someone who has been cheated on previously is now the cheater I asked my husband how he and his ex-wife had dealt with the infidelity issue at that time and he said that they patched up all the broken areas in their marriage and move forward. They did not seek any counseling they just decided to work on the marriage all on their own. He claims that the his ex wife's affair was not the reason why their marriage failed. He said he was just unhappy. I told him that it sounds like he just swept his wife's infidelity under the rug. He claims her affair had no impact on him whatsoever. My question to you is why would someone who has been thru this ordeal before, inflict what I believe is a life long death sentence to his current wife and children that he claims to love and make him happy?