GhostRider72
Welcome to SI. First, some standard stuff. I strongly recommend you read a book called "how to help your spouse heal from your affair" by Linda McDonald. You can find it online, or if you look, you can find it as a PDF (for free) online. It is a quick read, the entire book took me about 2-3 hours to read cover-to-cover, and it is essentially "the handbook" for waywards such as yourself to start understanding what your spouse needs from you right now, and how you need to focus your thoughts. Another "must read" is "Not just friends" by Shirley Glass, and that book applies to your situation in particular.
The other resource I highly recommend is "The healing library" which is linked to at the top of this page. There are articles and stories there for both the BS and WS, and I suggest you read both.
So my path forward seems two-fold. First I need to get over the A. Put it behind me. And second, I need to engage more in my marriage and work through the problems.
While both of these are true, the real work you need to be doing, now and in the potential future, is to work on yourself. More specifically, figuring WHY you cheated. You are on the right path already, having acknowledged a need for validation, attention, and escape. But those things are the "end of the story". In order to change the end of the story, you need to go back to the beginning, and rewrite the story that exists in your head currently.
The thing is, everyone here, even the BS's, have a need, to some degree, for validation, attention, and escape. The difference is, they have found ways to obtain those things in their lives without using infidelity as the tool to get them. Emotionally healthy people need those things, but they are able to live without them as well, or simply provide it for themselves. In the most basic terms, what they have is "Self-love" and self-respect. They have a sense of integrity that is primary to their lives, and they have empathy for others that directs how they treat others, and themselves.
For example, I am going to assume that you are not a murderer. But why not? You probably have the brains and the ability to kill someone if you wanted to. But what stops most people from killing others is simply the fact that it goes against every fiber of their being to do such a thing. They could never live with themselves if they hurt another person in such a way. It would haunt them day and night in fact. But... every WS here, including you and me, chose to cheat, chose to lie, chose to do something we knew was wrong and that would decimate the person/people in our lives. We chose to put our own needs over the welfare of the people who loved and trusted us THE MOST in this world. We broke their sense of safety, of trust, of reality even. If your own spouse could do this to you, treat you like shit and kick you to the curb with a knife in your back... can you trust anyone then? Relatives? Friends? Community?
So the real question is, what about you, about who you are and what makes you "you", allowed you (and motivated you) to have an affair? This isn't about your marriage or your spouse. Had you married someone else, you most likely would have cheated on them too, simply for the fact that it is "who you are" and "what you are capable of". You cheated on your spouse, yes, but even before that, you disrespected yourself. People who love and respect themselves, who have integrity, decency, empathy and compassion would never be able to sleep at night even at the mere thought of an affair, much like the example of murder above. You would never consider murder. Most people would never consider infidelity. So why did you? Why did you not only consider it, but do it?
For me, this took years to answer fully. I had to see a therapist, go back to my childhood, and begin to understand why I was unable to love myself or have the simple self-respect to not be a bad person. How did I go from thinking I was a good person and a great guy, to being a liar, cheater, and emotional abuser? That is the work you have before you.
Last thing. I can't promise you'll save your marriage or not. No one can. But what I can promise you, is that if you don't figure this stuff out and do something about it, then every relationship (or even if you remain single) will be impacted by brokenness that led you to this, that still exists, right now, today, in you. Your spouse has no reason to forgive you or accept you unless something changes. Promises mean nothing, she's already been fooled once. So you need to show her. And if she leaves? Then you need to survive and thrive despite that. So get to it.
Keep coming back and letting us know how you are doing.
[This message edited by DaddyDom at 6:53 PM, Wednesday, November 2nd]