Bruce: I have learned there are phases you go through; I guess they're steps of grieving, things like refusal to accept what's happened, then you move toward acceptance. There's anger, feelings of being betrayed, there's regret, all those steps. I'm processing everything that's happened. When one thing gets sorted out, I move on to something else. It think it's all part of the healing. Today, eight months later, I think about the future, which I never did a few weeks after Maya left me. There was no future then. It was just constant misery, days and nights of torment, thinking "What has that b-tch done to me?"

How to end an affair

The best book about love affairs: Best-selling and widely used by marriage counselors, After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful will help you understand why affairs happen, how to overcome the pain and betrayal, plus put you on the road to forgiveness and healing.

Weight Loss

How to help an overweight spouse lose weight by diet, encouragement, and fitness training

Question: Do you think there will be a final step for you, then you'll completely healed?

Bruce: Oh yes, I think I'm almost there now. It's a matter of accepting what happened, feeling healed, and being excited about the future, not constantly tortured about the past. I'd love to fall in love again. And then there are things I'd love to do that I didn't, or couldn't, do with Maya because she wasn't interested.

Question: What, other than the passage of time, has helped you through this?

Bruce: Talking and having good friends who let me vent. My mom and dad, bless them, listened to my boring rants. I have some great buddies who listened, didn't jump in right away with their own hard luck stories. Four months ago I met a woman online in a fitness discussion group. She's going through exactly the same thing. Sometimes we exchange 50 long messages a day. Writing long, long emails has helped enormously. You put all your emotions on paper, or on the screen, and you feel so much better afterwards. Often you don't even need to send the message.

Question: I'd like to retrace some steps to clarify a few things. Were there any times you felt the breakup coming, that things were not right in your marriage? Or was it a total surprise to you?

Bruce: That's interesting because there are things you are blind to at the time but which make sense afterwards. You think to yourself later, "Ah-hah, that's what was going on then" ... or "That's what she meant by that comment." I guess when you're in the middle of a mess it's easy to play the blame game, seeing yourself as totally innocent. With the benefit of hindsight you can look back and see that you were an active part of what was going on. Usually, you're not totally blameless.

Question: There are always reasons for a break-up ...

Bruce: Right, but when you're in the middle of something, you don't always see the patterns that are emerging. I guess our marriage was in trouble, but I didn't see it, or I didn't pay attention to it at the time. I thought a lot of our trouble was just normal marriage stuff. I never expected marriage to be perfect. I knew there'd be disagreements, conflicts, which would get solved as we went along.

Question: Yes, lots of young married couples think marriage is going to be conflict-free, perfect. Their first big disagreement can be a shock for them.

Bruce: Luckily we were both well into our twenties when we got married, we had careers, we had that maturity, so we knew life wasn't going to be all rosy and perfect. The hardest thing for me is I was married for five years and my wife was cheating for the last two of them. She was actually bringing the guy to our house when I was away on business. She was sleeping with the guy in our bed. In some ways, knowing about the cheating made this harder for me and in other ways it made it easier. I mean, I figured I didn't want to be with a woman who could do that to me.

Affairs can be a dead end

Question: Were you ever unfaithful to your wife?

Bruce: For the first three years, I was completely faithful. Then at a conference I got chatting to a woman, we were in the hotel bar drinking, swapping stories, talking about our marriages. We ended up in her room, had sex, I spent the night there. In the morning, it was regrets and "What the hell happened?" We both agreed it was a mistake, but we kept in touch and did it, oh, five or six more times before she moved out of state and we lost contact.

Question: Did you tell your wife about this?

Bruce: Of course not. And I don't think she knew, don't think she sensed it in any way. It wasn't that serious -- well, yes I guess it was serious when we kept doing it, but I didn't really think of it as impacting my marriage. It was a different thing, I didn't do it because I was unhappy.

Question: A lot of men say that. Do you know how your wife met the other man?

Bruce: "The other man", that's good. I call him "the guy who was screwing my wife". Anyway, she met him at an art class. Out of the blue she decided she wanted to go to art classes, learn to draw and paint. It seemed a dumb idea to me. Why start to draw at 34? It's not like you're gonna become an artist. She meets this guy there, a bit older, maybe 38, 39, and he doesn't even have a regular job. He's got maybe four different jobs, a hand-to-mouth, artsy kind of life. I bet he didn't he even make 20 grand a year. And she fell for him because he was artistic. And she's still with him.

Divorce leaves you empty

Question: You seem to have contempt for the man?

Bruce: Well, yes, he's screwing my wife, my ex-wife. He's a loser. Back then I was earning maybe $100,000 a year, maybe more, and she's with this guy who's got an old car, a one-bed apartment, no money. She left me for him.

Question: Do you feel she cheated on you with someone who is in some ways less than you?

Bruce: I am thinking about some of this stuff for the first time today. I hadn't thought about the artsy stuff before you asked me, but now I realize she always had that side to her: books, galleries, she liked to look at paintings. She'd stop and look at sculpture and I'd wonder what the heck it was all about.

Question: Are you interested in those things? Art? Galleries? Sculpture?

Bruce: Tell you the truth, no. Most of it turns me off. It seems phony. Some guy welds some rusty pipes together, puts it in a park and we're supposed to stand and admire it? No, I'm not into that stuff at all. At first, I figured she'd hooked up with the artist guy to hurt me.

Question: It's good that you're able to talk about your ex-wife's relationship with a distance to it. You're not in the middle of it; it's not causing you so much distress anymore.

Bruce: It varies. You can be doing well, sailing along, then the sadness or anger will hit you in the head, literally decking you and you have to curl up and lie down. Back then, I thought "How the hell could she?" Now, I figure good luck to her. I have this daydream of meeting this gorgeous woman who's making $250,000, great looks, long legs, and Maya splits with her artist guy and begs me to take her back and I tell her, "Too late baby. No frickin' way am I taking you back!"

Question: You must be feeling better if you're thinking that way.

Bruce: Like I said, it's a long process. At the beginning, just after your wife or girlfriends walks out, you think your life has ended. You see no way forward. You're just hurting all over. You can't sleep, eat, or concentrate. Then, a little bit at a time, it gets better, and yeah, you do recover.

Question: Thank you, Bruce, for an excellent and encouraging talk.

By Giles Devos

The stuff of life

Violent parents: Abusive parents damage their children in ways that carry on into adult life. Kids who have been hit develop ways of protecting themselves that become repeated in adult life as unhelpful retreat and withdrawal.

We help you deal understand how violence in the home impacts your adult life. We show a way forward so you are no longer a prisoner of a painful past.

Dude, link me to some fun