Thank you for this post. We are currently in the Married for Life phase, we are a lot better than when we began EMSO. I just feel we are stuck. Yes we are talking about every day things and we do a couple of activities each week, but our emotions are stuck. I believe we both are committed, but being the hurt spouse, is it up to me to plan things to bring us closer emotionally? He does the classes, but that's about it. Any suggestions as to what anchor to cut, and where do we go from there?

The sentence about seeing a counselor who's had experience in this really resonated with me. My husband's counselor is a very nice, very Christian counselor, but I don't feel he's really discovering much about what it was within himself that set him up for this- his background, his family, etc. All they seem to discuss is the spiritual aspects of why he fell in this affair.His counselor advised against a 12 step program because he feels it centers around failure and doesn't center around Christ. (!!) How do I encourage him to cut that anchor and seek out counsel that will help him discover himself and address this five year addiction to his AP without beng controlling?

Samuel, it helps to know that I am not the only one trying to drive the recovery bus. We have been dealing with this for a very long time. I am positive that communication with the affair partner was severed long ago, but he could still be holding on to the memories He has done the work for class, but doesn't apply what he's learned. For example, he hears my wounds/offenses but doesn't try to change or improve them. I don't think that he realizes that we can't go back to the way things were. I think he can't forgive himself, or fathom that he was so far removed from our marriage that he did what did. He is quiet and passive anyway, but I feel like he is afraid to put himself out there.

My unfaithful husband has a track record of lying to cover up the extent of his betrayals. When we have conflicts, they revolve around my gut feeling that I have not been told everything about his latest affair (and for that matter, every other illicit liaison he has had in our 22 year relationship). Whenever this comes up, he becomes belligerent, cold, and basically stonewalls my concerns. He then accuses me of hanging on to things that don't matter, and hates being asked questions he feels he had already answered. The problem is that his answers are inconsistent at best... I never got a timeline for his affair from last year. I didn't know when exactly all contact ended, because he refused to allow me to witness anything around it. He lied about the affair partner's identity for four months after D-day, and he refused to give me access to the means of communication they used to get in touch with each other. To this day, he claims he doesn't remember the user ID of the email heused to sex chat with her.

He claims my need for the truth is an anchor stalling our progress... I agree, only, not in the way he means it. I believe we can't move forward while towing all those secrets of his behind us. I feel like one day, one of those secrets will come to light, and we all be back to ground zero again. Case in point: when I asked how much money he'd spent on his affair partner, he claimed he only took her to lunch once and that he bought a birthday card for her daughter once, nothing more. That child's birthday is in January... The problem is that he claims their affair only started in late March, early April of last year and only lasted through mid-June when I discovered the thousands of text messages between them in our phone bill. So, either he is lying about how long the affair lasted and when it started, or it wasn't a child's card he bought at all, but probably something he feels guilty admitting to buying for the affair partner's own birthday or for mother's day, which both would have taken place in his alleged timeframe. I'm inclined to the latter as it'd be especially insulting that he bought nothing for me for either my birthday or mother's day, and instead was always telling me we needed to tighten the belt because we were close to the red during those months. I have no way of checking into the finances because he always withdrew cash as he paid for groceries in order to cover his tracks.

I just discovered this a few minutes ago and I am feeling quite lost as to how to handle it. I've called our MC to schedule a solo session for myself, but I haven't heard back from her. I'm about to lose my cool and demand answers from him, which I know will only backfire on me. Am I wrong? Is my need to know the truth truly toxic? I feel it's more detrimental to have things like this pop up and destroy my trust in him yet again.

For replying, Samuel. I understand all that you are saying, and believe me, I've worked very hard to curb the anger some of his confessions have stoked in me. A lot of it was very humiliating to hear, especially because much of it was untrue... all of it was disappointing, to see the man I admired so much for his set of principles, discipline, and faith, be so unlike any of it. To hear him say it, I was the worst being in the planet. I often felt unworthy of him, felt guilty for suspecting him through the years, and felt I deserved some of the things he used to say to me. And then this came out, and much of the rest of it followed. Nothing was as I believed it. I felt very much like the world was ending, my reality had imploded, and all those years of emotional and mental abuse and rejection crushed me to a tiny, tiny speck. Then I reacted a lot like you describe your wife did. I'm a trained martial artist, and believe me, he'd have gotten seriously hurt if he hadn't been able to block my kicks and punches, or if someone hadn't come to intervene. I was lost for weeks... I almost ended up involuntarily committed for suicide prevention. As a medical student, that would have ended my career before it even started. So I understand the concept of not weaponizing the truth... it got me nowhere good and instead, I suffered more verbal lashings from him. It was actually the articles on the free resources section of this site that turned the light back on for me. I read about the dehumanization process he put me through in his mind, turning me into an object, instead of the woman he swore he'd love for his entire life. How that helped him compartmentalize his life. How he used unsound logic, sophistry, and outright lies she fed him to turn off his guilt. I then understood, when he confessed she wasn't the first time he betrayed me that she was merely the worst kind of relapse, that his conscience was so hardened by years of his selfish behavior that it was so easy for her to talk her way into an affair with him.

I have been trying to convince him to sign us up for EMSO since June, but he is suspicious of anything he doesn't choose himself. I've shared articles with him that you and Jack and Rick have written, but I doubt he gives them more than a cursory glance. I even brought up a polygraph test. He scoffed, said it was a waste of time, money, and progress... he said it'd be useless thanks to his bad memory and that he'd rather never think of her out the other women ever again and concentrate on us instead.

It makes me incredibly sad, because there is a lot of trauma for me in the years leading up to this revelation, I feel a lot of the issues we have began years ago, but neither he nor our MC wish to go there. Our youngest son ran away from home last night. Thanks to the Lord, a police officer heading home spotted him walking in the dark with his bags and immediately detained him and brought him back to us. I know it has been bad, neither of us has handled this properly, and seeing it affect our children is breaking both our hearts. I believe he is sincere when he says he loves me, but I am afraid he is still too arrogant in his ability to control his weaknesses, he doesn't handle my triggers or sad moments very well, and resents the fact that I need him to hold me when I am upset. I am starting to feel alone and unable to trust him enough to share my feelings openly with him... I've long since stopped yelling or blaming him. Sometimes I just feel sad or insecure because of a memory or because I've run into his ex AP... he doesn't seem to get it, though.