Hi WW,

i'm not sure what to tell you about your original posts, but I can try to explain what happened with us.

My husband's original post here was made just a few days after he told me he had cheated on me. I knew what he had done, and I knew he wanted to post here. At that moment, he had left home, as I was unable to be around him. But we were still in contact and he informed me when he posted. I read his post: there was nothing really new to me in it but I think two things happened. First, because I had to read and couldn't interrupt him, I had to go through the whole story from his point of view. That was a good thing for me, because I could read the story, but with some sort of distance and at the same time, more vulnerability since I was alone and could react which ever way I felt like. Second, I understood, on an intellectual level, why it had happened. It made sense to my rational brain. My emotions however, took way longer to get resolved. But I think that this very early understanding from my rational part of the brain helped me get through the reaction of my emotional part of the brain. That's something I held on to when I had doubts while we were trying to recover.

I think your original posts, as well as the ones from today might help the rational part of the brain of your wife. It seems the medication truly affected your judgement and your personality. It might not explain everything, but it makes a lot of sense, at least to me. I think it resonates with our story: we had issues in our marriage, but the change in medication was the trigger that made my husband take the last step. It might be very helpful to your wife to read these posts, but you're the one who can decide in that case. Also, if trying to save your marriage is the path you want to take, you should tell her what happened and not let her find out. It will help for the recovery, and help her trust you again faster.

I therefore think you shoudn't be too hard on yourself for what happened. Yes you did questionable things, some of which you are responsible for, but some of which might just be due to medication.

And one last thing I had read on the infidelity forums, that made absolutely no sense to me at that time but that completely do now. An affair is usually a symptom that something was wrong in the marriage. Some people said it was actually a blessing it happened because it forced them to take a cold hard look at their marriage and take the measures to fix it. In our case, my husband had needs that weren't met in our relationship, which made us vulnerable to an affair. Was I happy to hear that from him? Hell no! But it made me realize that I also needed to change to make him happy. I guess one can see an affair as the results of multiple symptoms, like in a plane crash. It's rarely one factor that caused it. in our case, it was the combination of a disease, a change in medication, me starting working and our marriage not being comfortable enough for my husband to feel safe in it.

Best,

TeamBB