Continued from not expecting a pat on the back... TotallyAstray: I tried to take stock of my life after that. Realizing that I gave my wife everything a man could give his wife. More attention than she needed, more compliments, helped out more than any other men I know. In fact even got crapped on from time to time for opening my mouth in front of other guys wives about how much i do around the house. My wife has never acknowledged this and thinks I'm just looking for attention. I help people out all the time and I am very good with the kids. I have no bad habits, I drink only socially and rarely, don't smoke, I'm in quite good shape, I don't have any sports hobbies and I do a ton of stuff around the house, I don't watch a lot of tv... maybe 5 hours a week. But at this point I'm chatting online a lot.
Shortly after that, I'm working on a job site and meet a woman there. She comes on to me and I'm eating up the attention. We meet for coffee at her place and all i can think about is giving her some personal attention. Again I have an affair/sex. So now twice my wife doesn't know about it. But my lack of feeling for my wife, has me lacking the guilt i know I should have and the lack of "any" of my needs being met, physically, emotionally, spiritually, has me in total limbo. I meet this woman twice in one week and then its over.. no further contact.. nothing.
At this point (before it and after it) there is absolutely nothing going on between my wife and I and every attempt I make to give her attention is met with a rejection of some sort.
I meet another woman online, who is single and pregnant. I get together with her too... only this time it goes on (sexually) for about a year. The whole time feeling like my marriage is over for sure now but not taking any steps to do anything about and actually thinking that my wife will be taking the first step to saying its over. Things start to get really busy in my life with my work and I decide that I need to make a change in my life. I change my physical relationship to one that is non-physical (I know.. its just as bad) By this time this other woman realizes that I might not ever leave my wife and starts to actually give me relationship advice about how to make it work... like.. "did you try this" or how about saying it this way to her"... things like that. Then I decide to go to councelling.
The whole time my wife never knew about the affairs and didn't seem to care what I did with my time. She didn't want to go to councelling at first and i had to give her an ultimatum to get her to go.
SO her we go. 2 hr sessions at our house 1-2 times a month. Then it comes out about chatting online and getting emotionally invovled with women online. I don't have the heart or the intestinal fortitude to tell her that i actually had sex with other women. The emotional affair at this point is bringing down on me the same consequences as the first affair did... times 10! I feel like scum about all of it, but dont' think at this point that our marriage is going to work. I decide to make some changes... I quit chatting altogether, took all the chat software off my computer and start going to bed early. I don't expect things to change overnight and know that I'm not exactly an angel in this relationship and have to wait for her to come around. SO I do... after about 8 months of councelling, we decide to have a turning point weekend away. We get babysitters and head off to the mountains for an intimate weekend. It truly was an amazing weekend. It was physically intimate and very emotionally intimate. I truly believed that it was going to be a really big turning point in our marriage. We had never done anything like it, we were both very excited about it and we both looked forward to it.
