Dating

Anne Bercht, the director of the Beyond Affairs Network, is co-founder, along with her husband Brian, of www.passionatelife.ca, a website dedicated to creating a healthy, passionate marriage. The Berchts are lecturers and authors of “My Husband’s Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.”

Your story sounded so familiar to mine since I, too, just discovered my husband of 13 years had an affair all last summer. It began with a woman from the same company in another state with just periodic “friendly phone calls” and then progressed to a very personal correspondence by phone and email. She flew to our city twice in four months and he met up with her in her city one time. On each of these occasions they met up in a hotel for several hours in the middle of a workday. She eventually got caught and my husband tried to break away from her. She went berserk and eventually sent an e-card, which was also sent to me so I would find out. It has only been about 10 weeks for me now and I'm still on a roller coaster ride of emotions! It's frustrating because he has now become the husband I've always wanted and wants to say and do all the right things. Sometimes that works for me and sometimes I just want to crawl into a hole. I cannot get devastating images out of my head when we are close and I don't know what to do about that. Sometimes we are great and I think I'm getting through this really well and other times I feel like I'm losing my mind. We have two boys, aged 10 and 13, and I applaud our efforts to keep the marriage together because it benefits the kids so much, but other times I don't know how I'm going to get through the day. I don't know how we can help each other, but it is nice to hear other women know how I feel because I have not spoken of this incident to any family or friends. My mother-in-law knows and she's great, but I don't like to keep talking about it to her because I know it hurts her. too. Sometimes I just need to get the words out to someone who can nod their head and say, "Yes I know, it sucks, doesn't it!”

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