How to rediscover love?
Maybe my time away from the forum here did me some good. I have had absolutely no one. So... loneliness became more just... a fact of life. Like rainy days. Loneliness has become humdrum. I am accommodating it "better" now.
I read over at "Just Found Out" a new post by ouchythishurts:
...real love is being scared to hurt someone, not just scared to lose someone. And I know he’s scared to lose me, but it doesn’t feel like he’s scared to hurt me.
Not all of what ouchythishurts wrote applies to me, but enough of it did that it got me thinking about those two sentences I just quoted. Something about the 1st sentence feels not quite right to me. Like: there are times when the loving thing to do toward a spouse indeed will cause hurt. Potentially... calling a spouse out on alcoholism or such. But that's ultimately tangential because my W isn't an alcoholic. There's still something in that expression that caught my attention. So... when I ask myself: do I love my W enough to be scared to hurt her--my honest answer is: no. And, yes, that bothers me.
Certain folks here have encouraged me to find what would stop me from ever pursuing infidelity again--under any circumstances. As nearly as I can tell, my final answer is: loving my W sooooooooo much that she could treat me like dirt and I would still want never to hurt her again. But am I "there" yet? Nope.
Now... does she treat me like dirt? Well... maybe not that badly. But mostly, I just hardly see her. We live in the same house. In 24 h, I have seen her for less than 5 minutes. That's not unusual. She got up and got up the kids and got them ready for school. I worked on getting ready for clinic, showered, and went off to clinic. On my way out the door, I called "Have a good day! I love you!" out to her as I bustled out the door to my car on my way to work from across the house. I got home to an effectively empty house at 6 PM. I took care of the family dog. I reheated some dinner that my W had cooked. I skimmed the site as I ate. Then I chatted with ChatGPT again. It asked me if fear that loving my W enough might make me less inclined to reconnect with my OW was holding me back from loving my W to the extent captured in the two lines I've quoted. Interesting question. Um... maybe? I mean... I've constructed this whole rational underpinning according to which all arguments lead to the conclusion that accepting my W's suffering for the sake of my authenticity (read as: recalling my OW to friendship) is morally imperative, albeit an "unpleasantry." But... can marital love properly be so anemic that I just... accept that outcome? Don't I want a M filled with passionate--even mad--love?
I began to think what I will merrily allude to only as "dark thoughts." So... I went to sleep early--before my W & kids got home--rather than ponder... methods.
I woke up with the memory that I had promised my W that, during the current period of NC with my OW, I wouldn't organize my life around my OW or R with her. In fairness to my W and alignment with that sincerely offered commitment, I realized that--my platonic love for my OW notwithstanding--I have to be willing--maybe even... eager--to love my W enough that--logic be damned--I might find it necessary to forego R with my OW to spare my W pain. That was quite a gut punch, I can faithfully report.
So... that begs the questions: if I don't feel that mad passion for my W spontaneously, can I cultivate it--and, if so, how?
Now those are questions to which I don't have answers. It seems a taller lift than I know how to manage to fall in love with a distant memory of the woman I fell in love with back when we had time for each other. Mostly, that's all I have of my W. We live together, yes. But we hardly see each other. My W's schedule is hard, with the kids. My schedule is hard, with the work.
To be clear: I still insist my OW is a wonderful and good woman. A blessing to the world at-large. I still treasure the time God afforded me with her. I can still carry forward from that time the happy memories and value of having been made--through contact with my OW--to feel lovable again. My OW will always have my gratitude and respect and even--I hope--my platonic love. She is irreplaceable. I still hope that God somehow finds a way to reunite the two of us--as friends. But maybe I have to accept that hope as existing like the hope of someone buying a lottery ticket? A wish... but not a likelihood and not an outcome that my own determination and/or effort can materialize? It's increasingly the case that I don't see how I can resurrect that friendship--invaluable as it was to me. If my W wasn't so adamantly opposed to my OW and me reconciling, maybe. If my OW was willing to friend me "on the down low," maybe. But their positions are increasingly looking irreconcilable and I'm only already married to one of the two women. It hurts, though, to be so disempowered by others "vetoing" what I just know could be a beautiful--and even healthy--friendship for me (surely, one of the dearest of my lifetime). (Side note: I initially wrote there that my W was vetoing the friendship, but my OW's insistence on friendship being on top of the table means that she, too, has contributed to the "veto" I'm facing, although more passively.) Y'all have been right that I have had to trust in God to look after my OW during at least this period of NC--so why not indefinitely? I owe it to my W to place on the line the possibility that I might some day love my W so much that the thought of harming my W by bringing my OW back into my life might even some day seem abhorrent if it would still hurt my W. I emphasize: I'm not "there" currently.
Can I get "there"? If so... how--when I hardly see my W?
15 comments posted: Thursday, November 12th, 2026
Sex as an Expression of Love
My W (the BS here) of over 2 decades told me about 2-3 weeks ago that: (1) she was abused sexually by a now-deceased male family member when she was a child, (2) in consequence, she has never been able to experience sex as an expression of love, (3) she has experienced sex as pleasurable physically and—although she’s too mad at me right now for us to engage in sex, she remains open to sex between us again in the future, (4) she anticipates never being able to express sex as an expression of love, (5) she didn’t disclose any of that to me previously because she didn’t trust me to hold that information, (6) She has never told anyone before what happened to her as a child, and (7) I am forbidden to tell anyone—our marriage counselor included—what happened to my W as a child—that that secret is hers to disclose or not as she—and only she—sees fit.
This revelation from her has shone a whole new light for me on why my W defaults to "compartmentalizing" and bottling and stifling her feelings.
Separately, I am realizing that my strongest attachments to her and to my OW have been rooted in service to distress those women bore. My wife is an anxious person and used to lean on me over her anxieties. I think that’s part of what drew me to her in love in the first place. A big part of what made me vulnerable to relationship disordering is my wife’s having withdrawn from me emotionally over years.
Those facts are colliding for me in a big way these days, and I am not sure how to proceed. First of all, lest otherwise be suspected of me: I do not blame my W for the sexual abuse she sustained in childhood. The night my W told me what I’ve said she said, I spent hours finding mental healthcare providers with the right sort of credentials to help my wife—and eventually she and me as a couple—work through the hangups her traumatic experience created. In the morning, I proudly presented her with a list of 3 providers with the right kind of credentials so she could choose among them. My W has refused to call any of them. She is now wanting to return to compartmentalizing her abuse and move forward without addressing the wounds.
That doesn’t feel OK to me!
By telling me what she told me, my wife made her trauma our trauma!
This post isn’t finished yet, but my phone battery is dying. More later today!
I intended to continue this post by editing it, but with replies having already started, I chose to just add another post onto this one instead. So… scroll down a bit for my continuation.
221 comments posted: Monday, November 2nd, 2026
Reconciliation x 2
I'm new here and suffering a little confusion about navigating around, but I would like to believe you can read in my profile the full context behind the questions I'm asking. In "brief," however: I--a socially-isolated monogamously-married male healthcare professional with AuDHD whose healthcare professional wife and he had long grown distant emotionally--rapidly amd intentionally cultivated an online long-distance friendship with a single woman into what became an "emotional affair" before I knew that term or accepted its significance. Romance/sex was never an in fact part of the affair--at least partly because I never actually wanted to be an adulterer and that element was what I once thought constituted the line between healthy and hurtful. (Full disclosure: for 1-3 days in the middle of the relationship, I found myself harboring such thoughts, but I immediately squelched them and they never recurred.) The breakup of the affair a couple of months ago almost destroyed me, but--thank God!--I'm clearly still here to tell the tale.
I have apologized earnestly to my wife and to God for my sin, yet surreally, I simultaneously feel grateful for an affair that rescued my once-poor self-esteem (by making me feel seen and appreciated for attributes over which I have long held shame) and arguably even my marriage (by jolting my wife out of long-entrenched apathy toward our marriage). My initially immense grief over the loss of my emotional affair has softened, but I still encounter the loss of that relationship with genuine sorrow. After much internal wrestling, however, I have conceded that reconnecting with my affair partner at this time--while my marriage heals--would be unbalancing and unsafe. Since I met my wife 28.5 years ago, I have never stopped loving her, and I want most of all (just not exclusively) to protect the marriage. My affair partner and I legitimately have honored full "no contact" over the last couple of months. My perfect behavioral compliance has sustained my wife and me in ongoing marriage counseling.
At the same time--very much counter to established marriage counseling advice--I feel quite adamant about at least trying to reconnect with my affair partner (strictly in friendship) eventually--once my wife and marriage have healed enough to bear that strain. Only at that point, and only if my wife is then able to grant me permission to do so, I intend to resuscitate as much of that extramarital relationship as I can without threatening displacement of my wife from being--rightfully and undeniably--at the center of my emotional world. Although not trained professionally in marriage counseling, I have meticulously autopsied for the factors that once led me astray and ruminated to develop powerful safeguarding strategies I can follow to resurrect 90% of my precious extramarital relationship with virtually 0% risk of affair recidivism. I sincerely believe I have developed a sustainable framework, but I am humble enough to acknowledge the frightening possibility that I could have overlooked a vulnerability. Because life is too short to learn only from one's own mistakes, I am seeking wisdom from you who have walked where I hopefully am heading.
I realize that all mainstream modern theories/models grounding professional marriage counseling insist that perpetual "no contact" with a former affair partner is necessary for a monogamous marriage to recover from an affair and thrive. Far be it from me to allege that those models can't work for many couples, but here's an uncomfortable truth: despite overwhelming consensus among models and counselors endorsing that premise, there is no actual empirical and intellectually rigorous evidence supporting its validity. n.b.: It was once also believed widely that the Sun orbited the Earth and that the Earth was flat! Overlooked, is the fact some couples heal from affairs despite children having been born from the affair--necessitating ongoing collaborative contact between a once-wayward spouse and an ex-affair partner! No claim is here made that such success stories are common; proof of concept is enough to inspire my questions and my course.
What are best practices in engineering bounds likely to ensure that a friendship with a former affair partner doesn’t again endanger a marriage?
What signs or timelines guide when a marriage has healed enough to accommodate an extramarital opposite-sex friendship--especially a friendship with a former affair partner?
Is the permanent sacrifice of a deeply meaningful friendship with one’s former affair partner emotionally necessary for (not just ardently wanted by) a betrayed spouse? If your answer is "yes," what are other choices where emotion can necessitate a sacrifice contrary to logic/reason? I'll start. This is the best case example I have brainstormed of a choice where emotion might necessitate a sacrifice contrary to logic/reason. A man's dear wife requires a liver transplant. The man could donate half of his own liver to his wife, but only at significant risks to his own health. Viewed in the harsh and cold light of logic, one might conclude that the man should keep his liver intact and hope his wife gets offered a cadaveric liver. On the other hand, emotion might well prompt the husband immediately to make the alternative choice and donate half of his liver. In reality, I might well also elect that latter course. However, the crux of my question as applied to my imaginary example is: would any of us fault the man if he withheld his liver? If we wouldn't fault the man for withholding his liver (and I wouldn't), then: can emotional ties or experiences ever truly necessitate a weighty sacrifice?
141 comments posted: Saturday, September 12th, 2026
