Wow, this thread just keeps popping up when I least expect it... One thing I posted about quite a while back but haven't really mentioned since is that the other woman, my girlfriend, lover, whatever you want to call her, did contact me again. I know from her facebook message, which I posted, and also from several conversations with a third party, which I did not post, that she had been following me closely online and was concerned about me, saying she was sorry, that I deserved to be happy, and that she thinks about me every day. If I wanted to try to get her away from the boyfriend and back with me, that would have been the time, but I didn't try. I probably said more than I should have in my response to her (posted in this forum), but I never made any attempt to get her back. For better or worse, my mind is made up on this issue. I can't say I didn't enjoy the time we spent together, but I put myself in the position of having to make a choice between trying to win back my girlfriend or trying to restore my marriage, and I chose my marriage. That choice has been made, and cannot be changed without a lot of hurt to everyone involved, including me.

Since it's been a long time since I posted in this thread, here's a quick update: my wife and I are on better than speaking terms again. We talk to each other on the phone several times a day, and see each other at least a few times a week. We are still living apart, but I get to the house to see her and the kids a couple times a week and sometimes she comes to my apartment, occasionally with the kids. We have started dating each other again as if we are totally starting over from when we met back in college. Money is a huge concern, so our dates are pretty simple, just meeting to walk in a park or have lunch at my place. The important part is we are starting to actually enjoy spending time together again.

My wife and I have both met separately with a T who does a lot of work with couples and is willing to help us. We both like her and trust her, but she doesn't think we are ready to work with her as a couple yet. We have been working through a textbook/workbook set on healing a marriage after an affair, and the T wants us to finish working through those on our own before we start counseling with her to avoid confusion between our book, her counseling, and the book she wants us to work through.

We are about halfway through the workbook, working now on the chapter where each of us has to write a letter asking forgiveness for our part in creating the marriage problems that made an affair possible. I also have to write another forgiveness letter not just for the affair in general, but for each specific thing I did. I have to apologize and ask forgiveness for fantasizing about an old lover, for making initial contact with her, for meeting her again, for taking her to places that were special to my wife and me, and many other things even before I get to the glaringly obvious point of asking forgiveness for having sex with her. I already wrote the "contributions" letter about what I did to damage the marriage; now we have to sit down together and read our letters to each other, ask forgiveness, then each write a response to the other's letter. Then I have to write the "affair" forgiveness letter, which is my responsibility alone. My wife doesn't have to do anything like that, just listen to mine and respond to it. That part will be very difficult, but I have accepted it as part of my penance for making the choices I made.

So that's where we are right now. Talking and seeing each other again, beginning to forgive each other (although she obviously has more to forgive than I do), dating again and beginning to rebuild trust. We are getting the help we can through self help books and workbooks, and preparing for counseling together as a couple as soon as we finish our own books and my T thinks I have progressed enough for couple's therapy. Our kids are gone this week on a summer church trip, so we will have plenty of time to spend working on our assignments alone and together. We even plan for me to spend at least one night at the house, which would be the first night I've spent in my own home since the middle of January. My major goal is to be able to move back into my house, while of course continuing counseling. Getting the marriage back to where it was before the affair isn't good enough. It has to be better, back to the point where we actually enjoyed being together. That's what we're working toward.