I found out 8 months ago that my wife had a full-blown affair for over a year many years ago (which she had confessed as an emotional affair back then, and we had gone through a counseling and healing process at that time). She broke it off after maintaining secret communication and connection during our counseling, and has been faithful for 17 years. She has lied to me numerous times over the years about the affair, but the truth came out through a series of partial disclosures in 2023.

I have been more traumatized and broken than I would have even imagined before the confession. The layers of pain and confusion from the betrayal and subsequent faithfulness, of so many years of covering up and directly lying to me, combined with the fact that she chose to leave him behind and go through the pain of separating from him and recommitting to me without me even knowing, and the impact we can see this has had on our marriage and family - it is overwhelming. I seem to have all the symptoms of what is described as typical in betrayal trauma and recovery, with the added blessing and confusion of it being long in the past. She is truly repentant and is doing honest self-work in counseling and trying to support me and us in my/our healing process (except for the multiple lies to try and cover up the extent of what she did). I have been working on trauma recovery and grieving with my therapist, but I have been saying to myself and to my wife that I feel so alone I feel that I need to know some other men who have been betrayed. My wife and I have agreed that Harboring Hope seems to be the most likely course offering from Affair Recovery. I am broken and need some male support.

I see how she's struggling everyday and I'm trying to help as much as possible.

I would like to go through Harboring Hope. 12 years ago my husband and I attended an EMS seminar and I thought we both learned a lot and grew. Now during the last few months he left me and our family to "work on himself" but instead began dating a friend of mine. I feel betrayed by him and by her. I need to find my way again because I feel blind-sided. It is getting hard to leave my house and to participate in life. I tried my best to grow but right now I question everything. I wish I had done Harboring Hope back in 2012. I wanted to but made the marriage and family more important than myself.

I am entering the drawing for a chance to attend Harboring Hope. It has been just over two years since the discovery. We hadn’t been getting along very well and I was no longer putting up with this childish behavior and antics. I have decided that the tantrums, name-calling, breaking/throwing things, baseless, accusations, and blame for things I wouldn’t ever consider doing needed to be nipped in the bud. He felt that I was being mean and uncooperative with my new attitude and boundaries. Therefore, he thought it was a good idea to hire as a helper, a local lady who is a friend of ours ex-wife, and has quite the reputation for consorting with married men. I was unaware of this work arrangement as he was working an hour from home. The morning he left, he kissed me. Goodbye, told me he loved me and said he will be back in a few days with the money to pay the bills as they were getting behind. I wasn’t working because he wanted me to take care of the family at home. A mutual acquaintance that he confided in about this had been trying to give me hints the two weeks before this discovery. Finally, she said we should go down there and that would prove it either way. I agreed, and to my complete shock and devastation she was right. That night is forever etched in my mind like a slow motion playing movie. What I witnessed left me speechless, and I was instantly in survival mode, and believe I have been ever cents. He was gone for about two months. He came back on the premise of wanting to say hi and talk, but we really didn’t talk about everything like I wanted to. I patiently waited and would bring it up as I had found and read the texts, Snapchat, and messages between them. It read like a story. I found various papers with notes and information. Armed with this information, I began to question different events and timelines, to which he would get defensive and ultimately shut me down. There were a couple of occasions where he did talk about a few things, but never to my satisfaction. I have so many questions, and I can’t process what happened without knowing where his mind set was and basically taking that information and putting myself in his shoes and walking through it myself. As of right now I am unable to believe anything he says. I can’t even nail down who ended it which to me is very important. Her ex-husband, our friend, would stop over and visit me with his girlfriend and tell me what he had heard either through her or their kids. I can’t continue to live like this. I am completely devastated and I feel like my soul has been ripped in half. Some days are better than others, but it’s always in the back of my mind. I wonder about the different things I was told by others and many of the things he told me don’t line up with what I read, which leaves me in a place of confusion, because what I read, showed me the relationship from beginning to end and seem more realistic than what he has told me. With all the truth, I will never be able to move forward with him. He doesn’t seem to understand the importance or maybe he does but it’s more important for him to control how it looks. I filed for divorce once, but stopped it. I’m about to file again. This is no life, I think it’s cruel to not disclose everything necessary for me to make the decision on which way to go. I am hoping that your Harboring Hope course will help me deal with this and regardless of what happens with the disclosure, I’ll be able to move in whatever direction I need to confidently.

We had a beautiful family I thought ....... My children are wonderful but after many struggles, I now know believe my husband cannot be faithful to me. After stuffing my knowledge of this and surviving his addiction to porn and at least one prostitute that I know of and actually believing in his recovery, the evidence now shows signs of not a full recovery. I don't want to go through this again. I feel stupid. Why did I stay this long. I want out but can't see myself hurting my children with this knowledge.

Thank you for all your offer to help those of us in these painful situations. I would very much like to attend Harboring Hope. I have experienced severe betrayal trauma from my husband's (primarily) emotional affair with his coworker, whom he still works with! That is an ongoing open wound for me that they still work together. My trauma/ptsd cycles have been severe. It's been four months since Dday, and two months since he stopped lying about it (trying to protect himself). This created a situation where I can't really trust that I've heard all of it. He's gotten frustrated and his attempts to comfort me have dried up. While I believe, when I'm calm, that nothing new is happening, I still fear that it might happen again as well as suffer cruelly that it happened at all. We've been married 34 years and nothing like this happened before. Him still working with a woman who helped turn a wonderful, devoted husband and father into a man who risked everything and betrayed me and our marriage is a constant source of pain and fear. I need help! Thank you.

Just last week, I found out my husband has been in an online affair for almost a year. After finding this out, he also admitted to me that he had sex with a woman before we were married but while together. We have only been married just over two years (together for 7). I can't believe this is happening already or at all. I'm broken and shocked. I felt so safe with him. My ex was a cheater and I swore I would never stay with a cheater again. But here I am, I love my husband. I do want to fight for our marriage. I'm feeling like a crazy person most days so far, emotions up and down all day long. It seems like I am seeing signs from God about fighting for my marriage so I am hoping to be able to do the work and heal, move forward and have a better marriage than we had. I think this course would help me a lot. I hope to be able to join and heal.

It’s been almost 6 months since my husband of 15 years told me he was unfaithful a week before our wedding and all throughout our marriage with 5 different women, one who I thought was a friend. Never in a million years did I ever think I’d write that about us. I made the decision to stay and fight in the midst of excruciating trauma and while I still want to fight, I’m stuck in a vicious cycle of hurt that I can’t seem to escape from which is resulting in it continuing to hurt me over and over again. I’m absolutely exhausted. I feel so alone. While my faith is strong, my hope feels weak so from all I’ve read and the promo videos I’ve watched, I feel like the Harboring Hope course will help me break free from this brutal cycle so I can move towards building something new. Thanks for the chance to win some hope, it’s so greatly appreciated.

My husband and I have been together for about 5 years. Married for two years. Over the past three years I have discovered bits and pieces of his unfaithfulness that he lied his way out of. Shortly before our second anniversary I found women on his phone and got another false confession of half the truth. After that I found it all in his phone. He has lied since he met me. I do not want to divorce as it would betray my values but I can hardly look at him. I do not know who I am married to and I feel like I don’t know myself. This is the most painful and scary thing I have gone through in my life.

I just found out on Saturday that my husband was cheating, today is Thursday so the wounds are still fresh. I found out because he left a screen on his laptop open and I saw that he had a woman’s profile up. When I clicked on his profile, that’s when I saw he’d uploaded photos of his genitals and videos of him having sex with and getting oral sex performed on him by other women. It’s one thing to find out he’s cheating, it’s a whole other thing to see if with your own eyes. In your house. In your bed. Just writing this is dizzying and those images are burned on my eyelids.

Since then, my heart has been racing like I’m having a panic attack. I’ve been nauseous. And I alternate between deep, deep sadness and overwhelming anger.

I believe he knows he’s supposed to take responsibility, but he’s struggled with doing that while also reminding me that our marriage before the cheating wasn’t great and I played a big part in our unhappiness.

My faith is important to me. I know that God has forgiven me of so much—and sent his son to die so I can live in heaven—that I must forgive my husband. I know I will eventually do that, but I’m concerned that I will never want to have sex with him again.

I need help and this site and the videos give me a small glimmer of hope.

Seeking gratitude in brokenness, and a path forward from pain. It isn't an easy journey, and I'm seeking support and help to ease the grief and burden of the process. Thank you for offering this life-changing course.

My husband of 32 years had an affair for 3 months before I found out via anonymous letter. He does not want to leave the marriage for her but he did fall in love with OW and it’s been rough ending it with her. He also has incurable cancer and will need treatments and care and his life will be shortened. I still love him but I can’t help but feel like I’m denying him of true happiness during the last years of his life. Things have really not been the same during this reconciling period and we have been stuck in the middle for the last 8 months because he does not want to end our marriage, but he also does not want to end his affair. He keeps coming back and giving me hope, but then returns to her after realizing he’s unhappy with me. I still love him and think about the end stages of his life. It’s hard to walk away.

My husband and I have been married almost 17 years. About a year ago things really started getting rough in our marriage. He was upset over my manipulation and control and I became upset over his (I thought inappropriate) friendship with another woman. We had many arguments and he decided we should do some sort of a separation. Since then, he has continued to separate himself more and more from me, and is currently planning to move into a camper trailer. I very much want our marriage to be healed but last I knew, he feels very ok with his friendship with this other woman and feel hopeless about our marriage. I so need wisdom on how to be able to heal, whether to take a stand on if he wants a separation then he needs to really separate instead of sticking around, or to try to totally leave him to make his own decisions in his own time. I have drawn very close to God during this time. If it wasn’t for Him I don’t know how I could still be hanging in there.

Walking through the valley with community.

This journey has been a very long and difficult season in my life. Just over 5 years ago my oldest daughter (at that time age 16) came to me and said “mom, I need to tell you something..” I knew exactly what she was going to say. A few days prior she was at her boyfriends house, clicked the messenger app and it, for some reason or another, logged into her dads account and she discovered what I had suspected for some time, her dad was having an affair. This was a couple months before our 21st wedding anniversary.

We had just moved to a new state the year before, I had no close friends, just acquaintances, no family and no support.

This was the beginning of the most heart wrenching, devastating and unpredictable reality of my marriage and life. And something I’ve had to walk out alone even though I’ve tried to find consistent, compassionate and reliable help.

At this point I have little to no hope in my future, I’m full of insecurities, and I’m desperate to put this season behind me already.

Will I ever find healing?

Stuck in the storm

It's been a little over a year since I found out about my husband's infidelity. Though his affair was not long it left a huge whole in my being. Being a mother of two, finding out the affair in the midst of Post Partum depression with our third. I haven't had a chance to come up for air.
I am alive but I am dying instead. Everyday is a new question a new battle with myself. A new reason why I am not good enough. We are working on reconciliation and he has been far from supportive up until recent. He enrolled in the Hope for healing program as a last resort. He is making so many positive Changes and I still feel like I'm in quick sand. I've done courses. Reading. In group coaching. All of which have helped momentarily but I am right back to where I was.
With struggling with the infidelity I am also at war with anxious attachment and codependency of my spouse. All and all I feel like I'm drowning. I can't catch my breath. I am looking to get my life back. I need my life back. My children need their mother. I want to wake up in the morning and be at peace. Realize I'm in control of my life. That this doesn't have to be the end all for me. I need to feel free of this. I need tools that I can carry with me onto my children.
This course is my last hope. It's my only hope

I’d love to take this course based simply on the concept of “don’t let pain of the past amplify the fear of the future” when I read that in the resources it stuck with me. I journaled about that quote alone to jump start my grieving process. That’s the “hope” I’m now holding on to

Two and a half years ago I discovered a journal my husband of 22 years kept and found out that it had very little to do with me or the kids but was a record of 22 relationships my husband had a various times with women over a span of a a year and a half.

On summary, I was devastated and very scared. We have been Christians are whole marriage. My husband would not do anything to repair the marriage and we have had to move towards divorce because there was financial and emotional abuse as well.
My heart is broken and I would like to be part of this group for healing.

I was betrayed. I hope to take these courses b/c I am still in the throes of betrayal trauma and feel like Jekyl & Hyde. I want to heal - for the sake of our testimony in Christ, for the sake of my husband; for the sake of our children; and for the sake of living a full and purposeful life.

Our love was a deep well - our marriage a blissful one for nearly two decades. My God-fearing husband came to me and made a brave confession, knowing there could be consequences, but he couldn't have imagined the trauma it would set off. I wrote a poem about it that I want to share; maybe it will help someone else feel seen.

A Platter
By E.L.

A platter was set before me,
A feast I didn't want.
A feast I begged you never to make me eat.

I had been content, full, satisfied,
Nourished.
And you had been nourished, too.
But your hunger wasn't satisfied;
Eyes bigger than your stomach;
Such a meal was prepared!

It is forced in my mouth,
Fed to me spoonful by spoonful
Confession after confession.

Dry mouth; thick sharp lumps in my esophagus;
I gag. I need to vomit.
Every toxic mouthful is mine now to consume.

It is vile to the taste, but even more potent as it digests.

It is putrid to me, and sits heavy in my stomach.
I am bloated and cramped.
The poison makes its way to my bloodstream, enters my cells, clenches my heart.

Dejected, aching, sick.
I sit in shock
Digesting this forced feast.
A feast I begged you never to make me eat.

But what is yours is mine.
So I eat it with you -
The leftovers of your insatiable appetite.

What you have consumed
consumes me.

I can't stomach another bite.
I am nauseatingly full.

But I am empty.

7/7/2024

The person I dated fooled me into believing he has a pure & big heart. & a big plus was I felt I’d never have to worry about him betraying me. Right away I felt the disconnect, and possibly some of it due to his carelessness & lack of effort in any aspect of life/our marriage. Worked 4 hours a day, watched tv and played Xbox the others. I began to feel emotionally abandoned and betrayed early on. I suspected things were off but didn’t want to go searching for evidence until I forced myself. Porn, texting apps, emails, intimate pictures of his friends wife that he sent to himself off of his friends phone (this is so violating to so many people, & makes me ill). & later on attempts to get intimate snap chats from a coworker he had mentioned numerous times was “loose”, & must have thought it’d be easy. Yet it backfired when people reached out to me about the incident. He denied even then, and eventually confessed. My willingness to work towards building an entirely new marriage from the ground up, I suppose was an invitation to see how much more he could get away with before it threatened his ego until I finally leave. I have been in such a depression for years since everything happened & I become obsessive wondering what he is doing each moment to hurt & betray me. As I have since found escort numbers and other things that he only gets better at hiding evidence of. I have felt in a fog for 6 years lacking the confidence & finances to get out. Years and years of therapy and he seems to take nothing in. He genuinely seems to not care and just puts on a show enough for me to back off. I’ve wasted my youth on him, I’m now 30 and want children so badly but do not want them to have such a depressed paranoid mom, and completely checked out dad who can’t keep a job longer than a year at a time.

Google led me here.. in desperation, questioning if I will ever find healing or the strength to move forward in my relationship with my husband.. it's been a little over a year since part of the disclosure but it still triggers to as if it was yesterday. I felt so hopeful at first, immediately in fight mode to fight for our marriage but then ever since that crumbled for whatever reason I don't even remember, I haven't felt hopeful at all. I feel like even if we overcome this my husband will do something again, I live in fear and anxiety and it's just absolutely hurting me physically and mentally. I have a plethora of health issues, pent up anger, rage, constant irritation, and trying to conquer on while raising our two small children together with little support. I just want better for us all.. truly I do. I want healing and I want hope, not just for me but all of us and it starts with.. me. Please Jesus, provide to all of us here just what we need 🙏🏼

My husband had 2 affairs. The 1st one didn't get physical, but the 2nd one did. We tried another group to help our marriage but it didn't stick. I am tired of feeling sad all the time and not knowing how to handle my feelings of being a zero. I need help from people who truly understand my situation.

A little over 2 years ago my husband ran off with his new lover for about 2 months. When I came back, he did apologized and said he would never do it again but never really did anything to improve himself, repair the damage or prove to me much of anything. He tells me very little, but I did find their communications. There are too many discrepancies but when I try to talk to him about it, he gets defensive, tells me he already answered my questions, but he hasn't He, of course, wants to move on, but I can't. Now his heart is failing and he still won't talk about it. I don't want to seem selfish but there is an even bigger urgency for the truth so I can finally process this. I believe if we or even I can attend, it will help me with my extreme anxiety, flash backs, flooding, and intrusive thoughts.

Eight months after my DD (Discovery Date), which was 5 days after our 28th anniversary, we're still in need of guidance on how to process the aftermath and properly heal our marriage. Trying to piece things together here and there on our own hasn’t been as effective as we’d like, and for our marriage to thrive, we need consistency in our healing journey and a solid structured support program.

Our relationship started out as a lie. He needed someone to distract him so he could pull away from his ex and her daughter and dog. He considers her his daughter and justifys his actions with this. I keep catching him hiding and lying to me. With my own child hood trauma and personally a horrible 2024 I feel stuck in this hamster wheel of sadness/just surviving. I'm at a loss and dont want to feel this way forever. how do you start to love yourself again?

To whom it may concern.
Our marriage is in trouble. We have both been suffering for over a decade because of my affairs and betrayals with other women. At first it was an affair and we went on normally and didn’t really talk about it. My wife went into a depression and self medicated. For a couple years. I did not cut off ties to the affair partner. Then our older daughter died. No one knew about the affair but I look back and now our kids felt something was wrong. My affair came out and so did my shame. We both started reading a lot of articles but I wasn’t really trying. I was again in contact with my affair partner. A year later our other older daughter died. More chaos in our home and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be married. After this traumatic event I told our story to multiple people tryjng to get answers. Also, I was lying when I went to counseling and then my wife went to counseling because I was in contact with mg affair partner. We have both watched multiple videos and read multiple articles. We are in a pretend normal relationship. My wife set the terms which would make her comfortable with me forgiving her but I have broken the promises I have made to her and not made her safe. We are still, after 10 years after our daughters died and 15 after D day not ok. There is strife daily. Stress daily and our kids have felt the brunt of it and have suffered much.
Please help.
Please.

I would like to take the Harboring Hope course after discovering my wife’s infidelity because I am deeply struggling to make sense of everything and find a path forward. This course offers an opportunity to confront the overwhelming emotions of betrayal, hurt, and confusion that I am grappling with in a healthy and constructive way. Infidelity is not only a breach of trust but also a wound that runs deep, and it has left me feeling lost, uncertain, and questioning everything I once believed about our 22 years of marriage.

The immediate aftermath of discovering my wife’s unfaithfulness has been emotionally chaotic. I am torn between my love for her and the anger, sadness, and sense of rejection that this betrayal has caused. As much as I want to understand why this happened, I also struggle with the desire to rebuild my trust in her and in myself. The Harboring Hope course promises to provide the guidance I need to navigate this complex emotional landscape. It’s not just about healing from the pain of betrayal but also about understanding how to move forward, whether that means rebuilding my relationship with my wife or gaining clarity about my next steps in life.

I am particularly drawn to the focus on emotional healing and rebuilding trust. Right now, I feel emotionally fragile, and I am uncertain how to process these feelings in a way that’s productive. The tools and frameworks provided in this course seem like they would offer me the support I need to create healthier patterns of thinking and coping. I want to understand how to reclaim my own sense of peace and self-worth, rather than staying stuck in the pain of this experience. I believe that having access to a structured program like Harboring Hope can help me move through this period of emotional turmoil with more resilience and understanding.

Furthermore, I hope the course will give me insight into whether reconciliation with my wife is possible or if it is healthier for both of us to part ways. I am trying to balance the desire to save my marriage with the understanding that true healing can only happen if both partners are willing and committed. The Harboring Hope course offers the chance to reflect on the values that are important to me, both as an individual and within the context of my marriage.

Ultimately, I want to emerge from this experience stronger and more self-aware, regardless of what the future holds for my relationship with my wife. Infidelity shakes the foundation of any relationship, but I believe that with the right tools and emotional support, it is possible to heal, find clarity, and rebuild a sense of hope for the future. I am hopeful that the Harboring Hope course can guide me on this journey of personal growth, healing, and understanding.