Last week I posted on the impact of my affair on my wife, as I saw it. So today I thought I’d post on the impact on me. I know I brought this upon myself completely – but I still thought it would be helpful to write this – in the hope, maybe, that someone considering infidelity will stumble across this and it might make them think again.
So the impacts on me are as follows :
- worries for the future. I am very worried about what will happen to us in the future. Specifically, I am terrified that I’ll lose my wife. She is the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I’d hate to not have her in my life. She has said that she’d still be my friend, if we were to split – but it wouldn’t be the same, I wouldn’t have her to hug and hold and to be there with a loving smile just when I needed it.
- anger about what I’ve done. I hate what I’ve done. I hate seeing my wife hurt and sad. I hate how I’ve caused her to doubt the very foundation of our marriage. I am so angry with myself for causing all of this.
- confusion. I’m confused too – over what I’ve done and how I could jeopardise my marriage.
- Doubting who I really am. If you’d asked me, some time ago, whether I’d ever have an affair, I’d say no of course not. But clearly I have so I have started to do counseling to understand who I really am. I guess most people don’t dig into their upbringing much but as I’ve dug, I’ve uncovered things that have not really been that pleasant.
- ruining my ability to concentrate. I find it almost impossible to concentrate on things at the moment – especially on work. I keep thinking about everything – about what I’ve done, about the things I’m worried about. So far it doesn’t seem to have caused any issue with my client – but I know I am not giving 100% to them when I am working.
- Knowing I’ve let my kids down. I know the last few months haven’t been great for our kids. There has been a tension around our house and this has affected them quite a bit. I feel that i’ve completely let them down. Kids deserve a dad that’s there to look after them and their mum – to protect them and be thinking about their safety. Not a dad that does what I did.
- money. I agonised as to whether to write this – as I don’t want anyone thinking that money has been top of my mind recently – it hasn’t. But in the spirit of being complete in my post, I should point out that the last few months have been costly. Days off, afternoons off for counseling, the cost of counseling itself, etc etc. The cost is considerable. I say this in the hope that someone that might not be swayed by the emotional arguments might be swayed by the hard cash argument.
Like I said above, I brought this all on myself – but I thought it worth writing a bit about how I’ve felt these last few months.
I’m not going to address any other issue here except the financial one. That’s not to say the other things aren’t important but I think most people don’t think about the financial implications of an affair. Everyone can guess what the emotional implications might be, but i don’t think anyone thinks of the financial ones. Right now each week we spend £46 ($70) for couples counselling. Another £46 ($70) for one to one counselling for my H. £70 ($110) for one to one counselling for myself. £500 ($800) for a couples communication course. £2,600 ($4,000) for a week long intensive counselling course for my H, plus £5,000 ($8,000) in lost earnings for that week. I’m planning on going on the same intensive course so that’s another £2,600. Not to mention the several days my H has had to take off to deal with all the fallout from his affair (he’s self employed so he loses money when he doesn’t work). You will definitely need counselling/therapy after an affair, so before anyone embarks on this destructive path they might want to ask themselves this – can they really afford it?
Sorry for the repetition at the start, I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine at a friends house this afternoon
I detest UNREPENTANT WSs & APs, but I respect the inner HONOR of REPENTANT & REMORSEFUL ones, such as you, Mr B.
Seeing your inner remorse, honor & courage to rebuild keeps Mrs B w/you even more so than her love for you does…
b/c people often divorce people they still love, such as a brokenhearted BS who divorces an unrepentant WS, for example.
(Of course, I’m on my antique phone that only lets me post limited-word snippets.)
We need to club together and get you an ipad/laptop!
That’s good news! No more traipsing through the snow to the library!
It’s ironic I’m so archaic, as I earned my adm asst salary on computers back when others were still on typewriters!
I find the financial comment very interesting – and relevant. We are reasonably comfortable, not an overly wonderful “cash” position, but with large assets that would be difficult to liquidate in the current market, we earn more, and spend less, living together than we would apart. I worked for the five years before we had children, and then full-time, “unpaid” in our joint business for 17 years prior to my boy making unilateral changes (ie buying, selling, moving us) without consulting me fully, almost a year to the day before he first had sex with his AP, my old friend (it was fully into a sexual affair, no EA build up.) I had him make some leap-of-faith changes to the way our businesses were structured, legally and financially after I discovered his affair – and he did these straight away, not knowing if I was staying or leaving – that was very helpful to demonstrate his remorse and good faith, he had the potential to see millions walk out the door with me (money that I am entitled to as joint property, in reality, but our legal structure would have made it nigh impossible for me to “get my hands” on any of it, with legal trusts in place to expedite many of our business decisions/acquisitions, but cutting ME out entirely, not on purpose, I just – naively – trusted I would always be “looked after” appropriately, good, one!) I still struggle with the financial question – I now work outside of our home and businesses, as well as running the accounts for our joint businesses, but the financial situation does still worry me somewhat, NOT that it is the reason I stayed, but in the latter part of this journey, I know it has played a bigger part than I would have liked to imagine it would, for me, as I imagined myself not being particularly ruled by money – again, naively!! With two children still to complete secondary school and tertiary study, and one young adult still “finding herself” – lol – and the implications of helping her out from time to time – to ignore the money aspect would be selfish. We also spent over $20K on our “heads” – therapy, shrinks, drugs, etc. I even paid a hypnotherapist for a few months, trying to stop the obsessive thoughts – she was expensive, and it didn’t work!
Just to add to your post, B, the confusion over who you are, I think this is so under-estimated by society. We are conditioned to think that cheating only happens to bad people, not so much the “bad” betrayed – although, that happens, I mean, I know people talk, and must say, “well. Paula must be some bitch/slack in the sack/cold/insert-insult-here,” – but mostly the “bad” cheaters, but even “good” people have affairs, weirdly – and see how many books almost have that exact title. The weird part for me is, I don’t know how you get to that point, I mean, I KNOW what happened, WHY it happened, WHERE it happened, HOW it happened, WHAT he was thinking/feeling/assuming, but I can’t understand how you can’t do the extrapolation to see the end result. I have been in the tempted person’s shoes, many years ago, and I didn’t go there because a) I knew I personally couldn’t live with the guilt, b) should I be discovered, I would have completely ruined our love, the way it once was, and c) he was married – and I didn’t know his wife, but I couldn’t do that to her, even though I didn’t know her. (I fessed up to my partner about the close shave immediately, and we TALKED about it, and we have re-visited that in the aftermath of his affair, was he angry, sad, or vengeful, jealous, anything like that – BTW, nothing happened, it just got close for a brief moment – and my CS said he was never worried, or jealous, or sad about any of that old stuff.) That is how I saw it, it seemed easy – and don’t worry, I was in a vulnerable place, and VERY attracted to the man in question. I just saw the train wreck before it happened, and I don’t get why cheaters don’t seem to? Very frustrating stuff.
I’ve thought the same thing. I found myself in a similar position. I had some online friends whom I’d met while my H was away on business (I went through a time of deep loneliness and spent too much time chatting online to men). I’d gotten a bit too friendly with a guy who lived just a few miles away from me. He asked me virtually everyday if I would meet him for coffee. I knew why he wanted to meet me, it was clear from the pictures he’d sent me of himself – he was always in various states of undress. I’m not going to say that I didn’t like the attention, i did and that was the whole point i guess. but it wasn’t the attention that i wanted. i wanted my H’s attention. i wanted him to spend time with me. Anyway, I would always make an excuse as to why I couldn’t meet him and thank god i did! Eventually he got fed up and stopped asking.
While I can understand the whole attention thing – I looked for it myself – I just cannot understand why I knew that going any further was wrong and would have been a very bad move, but my H did not. Like you the guilt would have destroyed me and of course our relationship. So why if I could stop myself from taking that next step couldn’t he? Perhaps it’s a man/woman thing? Perhaps I have morals but my H doesn’t? I don’t know why I didn’t and he did and I know I’ll never understand it. It makes me feel incredibly angry!