One of the results of our survey that we conducted a week or so ago that stood out for me was that nearly 20% of the respondents were unsure as to whether or not their cheating spouse’s affair was indeed over.
Catching a cheating spouse can certainly prove to be a challenge as their are so many different ways for the affair partners to “hook-up.” And I think that it’s been said on this site previously that as time goes on cheaters only get better at covering up their activities.
So our discussion this week is going to be an attempt to help the 20% or so who need to know for sure whether of not their cheating spouse is still conducting his/her affair…
How did you discover (or uncover) your cheating spouse’s affair? If you are a cheater, please tell us how you were discovered.
Did you use spying methods? If so, what worked and what didn’t?
What advice would you give to a betrayed who desperately needs to know for sure whether or not the affair is still going on?
Please respond to others in the comment section.
Thanks to everyone who comments and shares their experiences! We think we have a really great community here.
Linda & Doug
88 replies to "Discussion – How Did You Catch Your Cheating Spouse?"
I discovered one random Sunday morning, I was still in bed and my husband had popped down to the store. I heard a phone vibrate in the kitchen, thinking it was my own I let it go to voice mail. Then it rang again so I got up to answer it and saw that it was my husbands phone… ‘weird’ I thought to myself ‘he never leaves his phone lying around’… and I was about to find out why… I didn’t recognize the number and curious as to who was phoning my husband on a Sunday morning I looked as his message inbox, there were so many messages all from the same number, I clicked on one and the bottom fell out of my world… I had read them all before he came from the store, I was in shock, when he got in he looked from my shocked face to the phone in my hand back to my shocked face and he went pale…
At that point the ‘s#!t hit the fan’ to put it bluntly. I totally lost it, I was hitting him, crying, hyperventilating, screaming all at the same time… I think my reaction took him by major surprise. After a couple of hours when they first wave of shock died down a little he told me he was glad I knew, that he had been deeply uncomfortable in the whole mess etc… I believe that much but it doesn’t make it right.
I didn’t use spying methods then nor have I used them since, but I had enough know how to get into his online bank account, email addresses, phone records etc so managed to gather all the evidence like that… I think it scared him that I was so resourceful in getting into his accounts that even today he still wonders if I’m reading his email. I don’t tell him that actually it was easy to guess his password, I let him think that I’m some type of wizz kid.
He received an ultimatum from me then that any future contact with this woman will result in an immediate divorce, an opportunity to even explain himself will not be granted a second time. And I mean this. Likewise he knows that any future indiscretion (even the smallest) will result in divorce papers. He now knows that its an affair or his marriage, he cannot have both.
I guess its watching the actions of your CS that best determines where they are in regard to your relationship. My husband is now extremely attentive, home every evening before me, no more phone in the evenings or weekends, no more late night meetings, he is engaged, he wants to hear about my day, he is interested in what I would like for dinner, lunch, breakfast, he bends over backwards now. Which is sad because if he had made this effort in the first place instead of getting involved with the other woman we would be in a wonderful loving trusting marriage right now. Whereas we are doing great there is always the small voice, a little nugget of mistrust, the shimmer of resentment…
I don’t know if that helps.
I am happy for you that your husband finally gets it, Kate. So wish mine would have.
It took quite a while for the penny to drop for him RCR… it didn’t happen overnight… there were many days that I almost packed my bags and left.
This is one of the most interesting parts of my story as I reflect on it now, and I know not everyone will understand. That’s okay, we all have our own stories. The discovery of my husband’s infidelity was progressive, but both of my D-Days were the result of a lot of fishy things finally adding up. I asked him straight up if there was someone else, more than once, and he looked me right in the eye and said no. I found him texting a few times in a really sneaky way, and he lied about who he was texting. I never tried to look at the texts. Finally, the night before D-Day 1, he disappeared outside the house for more than fifteen minutes. I couldn’t find him anywhere, and actually got scared that maybe he had had a heart attack or something. I finally called his cell phone, which he answered and said he’d been out at the end of our long driveway, talking to someone. Very vague and suspicious. The next night he was supposedly working on something on the computer, but as I looked in from outside, he was texting. He did eventually admit there was an affair going on, but he lied about many of the details, and didn’t really tell me the truth unless confronted with an apparent lie. We were separated for three weeks, but he immediately began pursuing me; after taking him back I told him I would do this once (meaning no more AP, no more contact, you have one and only one opportunity to show me that ours is the relationship you want, forever, period). As the months went on, and I did everything possible to learn about affairs and their causes, what I may have done to help cause his, what I could do to be the best wife for my own husband despite my devastation and pain…I started having the uneasy feeling that he was not doing his part, or even was seeing her again. I admit it was even some of the posts here from other BSs that made me wonder…but truthfully, it was my gut that told me the truth long before I actually knew the facts. Here is the part that may be tough to swallow: I asked God to show me the truth. I didn’t want to be the detective (admittedly I was still checking the phone and even looked at some spyware, but decided against it). D-Day 2 happened because of something really unexplainable: a couple of weird bank charges, an attitude and emotions that didn’t add up, and amazingly, even then I was fed only partial truth served up with a healthy scoop of CR*P. Kind of explains the pain, as this was what H chose after 4 decades of relationship with me, who really adored him, raised his 4 kids and supported him totally in not only his career choice but every other bad mood and unacceptable way of blaming me for his brokenness. No more.
Oh, and p.s. after D-day 2, he admitted that only a short time after our reconciliation she began emailing him at work, and bought him a secret cell phone. So much for no contact.
Are you still active here? I identified so much with four story. Happened upon it in a google search. I’m looking for comfort I guess as I now find myself in the same situation.
The first time, he changed dramatically. He was distant, grumpy, picked fights, critisized me, our relationship etc. He got a lot of texts, and had stange explanations. He was protective of his computer and his phone was with him all the time. I confronted him and he confessed right away.
The second time, I got a mail from the husband of the woman that he had an affair with PREVIOUS to the first affair I discovered. Before that, I found some strange mails, but he calmed me with some kind of explanation (I can`t believe I swallowed it).
You can not know if the affair still is going on. You just have to believe your partner, and deal with it if it shows that they have continued to keep in touch. But my advice is to be prepared of it, even though you want to believe that it is over. Be trusting, but not naive.
I had no idea what was going on. I wasn’t suspicious. I just thought he was being his usual grumpy and unsupportive self. One night when he was out of town,we were texting each other before I went to bed when I received a texted that said “wow you just blew my mind,i’ll send you a pic soon”. I asked what that was about. He played dumb for a moment. The seconds in between texts fetl like hours. Then he said ” I guess we need to talk when I get home.” and that was it. I tried calling and texting. No answer. He was visiting his parents who lived in the country anf legitimately had bad/no service. It took 20-30 minutes to actually hear from him. Those were the longest, most agonizing moments of my life. I was in panic mode. I didn’t know what to do or think. Oh and did I mention my MOM was rigt next to me the ENTIRE time this was happening. I had to tell her that I had received a text that wasn’t meant for me.
When he FINALLY called, I calmly asked what was going on. He said he didn’t want to talk about. I firmly told him he needed to and so he did. He told me he was cheating on. Had been for th past month. He had needs and I wasn’t meeting them. What followed was repeated phone calls, crying – hysterical crying, not sleeping and so on. I’m so thankful my mother was with me bc otherwise I would have had to go through this moment alone. It was a couple more days before he came home. At first I was angry that he missed the really ugly emotional part. But having that space allowed for more productive conversations. A week later,however, he saw the ugly rage when I caught him lying ab texting her – bc she texted him while I was going throug his phone. I kicked him out right then. Yadda yadda yadda,bumpy road,yadda yadda, we’re still together over a year later.
I did the phone and email checking. I still do everyonce in a while. I creeped his co-workers on facebook which allowed me to catch him in a previous lie. Cell phone records didn’t even occur to me. Isn’t that strange? It took many months for me to realize I needed to see the phone records which also resulted in more information coming out (ex: he spent the entrie day after I caught him on the phone with her. She was trying to hlep him find an apartment).
Moral of the story – get the phone records. For me, it helps to have an objective record of events. You can delete texts and calls from a phone – but not from a bill. Just don’t get sucked into internet stalking/searching. Research is part of my job, so I’m good at it. I wasted sooo much time and resources searching for answers that just weren’t there.
(Hi, I just found this site about a week ago. I’ve been reading lots of the blogs and comments. This is my first post.)
In my case, my wife found her old high school (boy)friend when he contacted her through email on Classmates.com. She doesn’t have a paid account there so she’s not supposed to be able to send/receive email. Somehow his email got to her. She took that as a “sign” of the special relationship they are to have.
In the beginning, I was not concerned. I know they were good friends back then (I knew him too, but wouldn’t call him a “friend”) and this started as an occasional email that she would even talk about letting me know what he was doing, etc.
The communication moved to phone calls that I found about by looking at cell phone records. I began hinting that I was not comfortable with the amount of time they were talking and how she never talked to him when I was near her. She explained it all away as “just friends”, blah, blah, blah.
She did tell me several things that later, after I started reading about emotional affairs, hit most every bullet point I’ve read as to what an emotional affair really is.
Her “friend” is not on FaceBook, but she became friends with his brother and a couple of his adult children (which I thought was kind of strange). I kept hearing this internal voice saying “your answers are in FaceBook”. (I later told her that “voice” was my own “sign” that I was to find out.)
I knew her FaceBook password because she often wanted me to upload photos to her account for her. I felt extremely guilty as I logged into her account to “spy” in her messages. I read ONE thread of messages between her and his brother. Through the exchanges, she told his brother how much she loves him, has always loved him, will always love him, how they consider each other their soulmates, and how the fact that “even though they are both married, that is not going to stop them from being together one day, even if that means waiting until they are both in heaven.”
I copied and printed the thread of messages so she couldn’t delete it. I thought that once we were both back home from work, I would confront her and tell her to go be with him. After cooling off a bit, I went to our pastor, put the printout in front of him and asked him to tell me why I shouldn’t kick her out. Our pastor talked me off the ledge and started trying to help by giving advice on things to do to save our marriage.
That night was our “D Day”. There is a lot more to the story, but that is how I caught her in her own words. They are still talking but they have not met in person yet (he’s 500 miles away). She is still playing the “just friends” card even though she admitted they are in an emotional affair. I guess she thinks that as long as it doesn’t get physical, it’s all ok.
I could go on and on with more that has happened, and is still happening, but to answer the question of this post, lots of little things added up, but the main “discovery” was that FaceBook conversation between her and his brother with her declaration of her love for him.
Man, you’ve gotta nip it in the bud. I told my wife that since the other guy was her best friend, she could have him, that I wanted her out of the house by morning… That I wanted a divorce. That’s when it finally registered with her how serious I felt about it. That’s when she repented of her “friendship” that was wrong, and made serious moves to fix things, removing all contact with the guy, even ordering magiage building material for us to go through and scheduling a counselor. Those moves convinced me she really wanted “us” to work. The longer you let the other guy hang around, the less odds I give your marriage. First step in recovery is for her to cut off ALL contact, periood, and if she really loves you she will! My stomach was in knots reading your story.
Me to, my wife did the same thing, old flames are dangerous and you cannot be friends with them, ever.
I initially posted this in a different thread, but here’s my story:
On July 26 of this year I came home to find my wife’s email open on the office computer. She had been in a rush to leave the house for a meeting that evening. I normally don’t snoop. I have always respected her privacy and tried to give her space. I knew she spent a lot of time on Facebook, catching up mostly with family and old friends. I also knew that she had kept in touch with a couple of old boyfriends—guys with whom she had shared a lot of history before our relationship started.
I decided to search her account for emails to/from both of these guys. In one case I found a handful of messages. Most were chatty and a wee bit nostalgic, but nothing too threatening. When searching the other guy’s name, however, I found about 150 different conversations, some containing several emails in exchange, dating back to 2007. The most recent message had been about four months earlier and it did not seem overtly inappropriate. Yet, I came across exchanges from February that referenced their disappointment at not having “consummated” their relationship at the “hotel.” That exchange was followed by messages from her to him a couple weeks later saying how she was driving to work and the song “I Need You Now” came on the radio and she thought of him the rest of the way in to work.
I then went back and read as many messages as I could, forwarding some of the most offensive ones to my email as evidence and for later review to see if I had misunderstood. When I got to the end of the list, in 2007, it was clear that the communication predated those messages. That evening I confronted her about it. She said she was sorry that I got hurt, but then talked about how frustrated she was with our relationship—essentially saying it was my fault. We stayed up very late talking that evening and she answered many of my questions, but each answer seemed to create more questions from me. Several hours and three Martinis later we were both exhausted and she was drunk, so I helped her into our bed. I couldn’t sleep so I went into the kitchen with her laptop and loaded spyware on her computer. I just had to know the extent of her contact with him and when/how it started. Within a couple of days I had passwords to her email accounts and her Facebook account. What I saw sickened and saddened me.
Her contact with him had actually slowed down quite a bit after 2007, but it never completely stopped. I learned that he found her on the Internet in November 2005 and that they had started their exchange then. The earliest email messages I could find, however, were from April, 2006. From April, 2006 to October, 2007 there were well over 500 exchanges, many containing multiple messages. There were also several phone calls, which she made when she left the house under the pretense of going to her office across town to “work.”
I then discovered that she had created a special email account for communicating with him—one that I didn’t even know existed. Many of the messages I was reading had been pasted from that account. The pasting made it difficult to follow the discussion thread as many of his emails were missing, but I was able to follow the arc of their contact, including the build-up to and aftermath of a visit that occurred in July, 2006. Apparently he was driving through town after dropping his wife off at the airport (he lives about 300 miles away). She came to see him at his hotel room and then they spent much of the day driving around town, her showing him the sights. They both referred to “respecting physical boundaries” which means that they kissed and held each other passionately, but did not have intercourse (something my wife points to as evidence that the situation wasn’t as bad as it could have been; as if they were noble in their restraint). The emails following the visit were full of “I miss yous” and “the next time we meet, etc.” They both expressed regret at having respected the boundaries—a theme that was also part of the February, 2011 exchange.
Since then we have spent more time together, having many conversations about the EA and about us, our current relationship, and our future together. Though I still have questions I’d like more or better answers to, I haven’t pressed her to talk about the EA for almost a month. I am pretty sure there has been no contact since before D-day, but must admit I don’t think I will ever return to 100% confidence ever again.
I believe we may need to revisit the EA sometime in the future, but for now (almost 4 months since D-day) we seem to be making slow, but steady progress in redefining what we want and what we mean to each other.
I found out one Monday afternoon after he was feeling guilt about an exchange we had the previous Friday evening. I caught a text from the OW that said “wish you were here” and I told him that I was not about to have another woman trying to get in my husbands pants! Up to that point he had been careful to not text in front of me or the kids, but for some reason that evening he was talking to us about their exchanges. I asked him that night if he was sure she wasn’t feeling things toward him that he didn’t feel toward her. He gave me some assurance that he “didn’t acknowledge her comment”. The guilt from that exchange finally came to a head on Monday when I told him that I was having a hard time reading him. It took me to ask him if he was having an affair. He admitted it. Since then, after many attempts to talk it out, he has moved to his parents house and has overcome many suicidal thoughts. The guilt he is feeling has put him in a deep depression and he is in therapy alone. I also was in therapy for a time but was asked to discontinue with the therapist I was seeing since it was putting her and her partner, who is his therapist, in a difficult position. I am healing on my own by talking to my friends and family, and reading online. Your blog is helping me a great deal! Thank you! I love this man and want to mend our marriage, but he is not ready to try counseling together, so I am trying to respect that. I want him to heal and am doing my best to be supportive of his journey alone. I don’t know what is right or wrong at this point but am putting my trust in God to help us find our way.
When you have a life changing event like discovering that your spouse is having an affair, you always remember the exact place you were at when the bomb dropped. My husband and I were in our vehicle, going out for Friday “date night”. This was something that we always did and it was a special night we set aside each week for
” just us”. We were passing by the university and had stopped for a traffic light. For some reason, and I still don’t know why, I reached over and picked his cell phone up from the center console and just looked at it. I tagged onto his email and the very first thing I saw was an email from her that ended with ” love you, hugs and kisses”. The look on his face is embedded in my brain! I immediately asked to be taken home and remember how I was thinking that there had to be some mistake and he would straighten it all up when we got home. We had been married for 17 years at that point, and I was not aware of any problems. We were the couple that everyone thought was perfect together.
That night started a 36 hour period of going without sleep and in the following month I lost 22 pounds. I just never thought that MY husband would do this. Not because I am so great, but because he was always so upstanding, moral, and supposedly lived at the foot of the cross. Oh well, guess I was sadly mistaken!
My D Day happened on Jan. 3rd…Actually I suspected something on the 1st when I saw a comment on FB…it was on my H’s cousin’s wall…something to the effect that her cousin was one of the greatest men she had ever known and unfortunately it’s men like him that aren’t LOVED AND APPRECIATED like they should be!
It was about 2:30 in the morning, I wasn’t sleeping because we had had a HUGE argument earlier in the evening, my H had been very cruel to me…something I had noticed in the months previous….he had never been like that before, guess I should have realized something was up :/ And that he ALWAYS had his cell with him, and it was on vibrate…A LOT…he’d never done that before!
Anyway, my H was sleeping, so I woke him up and asked him what in the world would make her say that? His response was, “Well, you know how she can be…she’s a loose cannon…just ignore her, I’ll talk to her tomorrow and ask her to remove it”….well, I was crying and telling him that that’s not the right answer, that HE HAD to have been telling her stuff about me to make her write that…he tried to put it off as no big deal…but in my gut I KNEW better!!
After he went back to sleep, yea, my H is like that, nothing disturbs him enough to interrupt his sleep :/ It really does bother me when I read on here that some other CS had sleep or health issues…not MY H and that really shows how deeply he buries things!
So of course I then decide to check his cell phone records….he had a work phone separate from the family acct….and what I saw blew me away!! Repeated calls and text to 2 different numbers, all within the same area code….and that was just in the month of Dec. I later looked at Sept,Oct and Nov. and discovered 1000’s of texts and pics and phone calls everyday, for 2-3 hrs each!
So of course, I wake him up AGAIN and ask him who was he is calling and texting so much…he told me it was just his cousin….and I asked why was he texting and calling her when I wasn’t around, what’s the big secret that I couldn’t be part of?
I was sooo hurt that he was in contact with his cousin and doing it behind my back…it wasn’t like I didn’t like her…I did!! We were FB friends and even though we weren’t real close, I couldn’t understand why he’d keep it a secret from me….well, as we all know now…he was lying…it was the OW he was in contact with, and had been for 4 mos…It started right after he came home from a weekend trip back home to attend a family function…I didn’t go because of finances, but encouraged him to go, even searched online for the tickets and had him take an extra day’s vaca so he could spend extra time with his family!
So for the next 2 days I walk around crying, feeling so upset that my H was in such close contact with his “cousin” and left me out…I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t tell me, and also, I had remembered that his cousin had deleted me from her FB in Nov. so of course I THEN think that she was really upset with me because of what my H had been telling her about me…come to find out, he wasn’t telling her MUCH about me…bad wife, not loving, etc….he was telling her friend, the OW and she was passing it on to his cuz…He finally confessed who he was REALLY in contact with in the early morning on the 3rd…I hadn’t been eating or sleeping, I felt so betrayed….I now wish it HAD been the cousin he’d been in contact with….THAT pain was nothing compared to what I’ve been going through ever since!
I found out because they got caught by the nw’s husband,i was coming home from school,i stopped at my Fathers house to have a chat because i needed someone to tell me, what i was feeling,was just in my head,the feeling of lonelyness,the fact that he wasnt telling me he loved me,His drinking,the distance(he was pulling away at a great speed) the cruel comments,the snapping at the kids,Not touching ect ect ect.My Father told me to calm down that it was prob down to his work and that he was stressed and to give him space.I listend and left and started walking back home.I didnt check my phone(i should have)I walked into our house and he was home,he asked me if i recived his text,No i said then took out my phone to read and it said” Hi baby i am on the way home as i dont feel to good,plus i have had some bad news about a friend i met on the train and it has upset me”So i asked what friend,i didnt know you met someone on the train.He said that she was upset and asked her if she was ok and then she just blurted out all that was wrong in her life,and he was overwhelmed as she was telling him about her not being able to have children,even detail onto why she could not,opperations, IVF procdures,very personal details.My Stupid Partner googled her problems,so he could help(duh) and when he started to try and council her and got more out from her,she turned and said “i think i am falling in love with you” he responed by giving her his mobile Number.Anyway she started asking him about himself,he told her that he had children and just got married that was it,thats all he told her about his life and she soon quickly dismissed our children and me and started with the affair process.I found out that in a short 6 week period that they texted each other over 300 times. That her Poor poor H had picked up her phone and found some of the texts he had sent the NW,my stupid partner then told me that nothing was going on and that that they were just friends,and that the Poor poor husband accused him of having a affair with his wife,and that he had to tell me incase the Poor poor H followed him home and got to me.I was upset,confused,because some of the things he was saying like “you wouldnt understand when you meet someone special and your the mother of my kids ect ect ect.This time i followed my gut instinct and fell silent for a week,untill our Dday,he knew i was on the verge and my outburst would come,the saying goes Hell has no fury than a Woman scorned, he told me the truth and that he had kissed her and it was full of passion.I Was the last to know,the NW the NW’S Poor poor H,My stupid partner,the NW’S friend.Its been a year n a bit,but what have i learned.To trust my Gut,To trust the other forces that was trying to tell me show me.He knows that he has no more chances,and out of this i have become stronger(still a emoyional hot pot) and that Our children and myself can survive without him…… Sorry this is a wee bit long x
What advice would you give to a betrayed who desperately needs to know for sure whether or not the affair is still going on?
If you have a feeling in your gut that your spouse is cheating, you’ve confronted calmly and been met with denials over and over again, but that feeling will not go away – I suggest doing anything possible to find the truth, even if you have to pay someone. Sadly, chances are that your gut instinct is right on. The agony of not being able to prove it, not being able to put an end to it, and the feeling of losing your mind are unbearable things to live with. Stop living in denial like I did for way too long and get the proof and confront with it in hand.
SORRY – This is extremely wrong – first time I have posted and I have so much that I wanted to get off my chest.
I wish, when I read these stories, that it was just phone calls or 600 texts or Facebook (we don’t Facebook). No, for me, it was the little over 6000 (yes, 6000) texts exchanged over a 5 week period (yes you read that right – 5 weeks = 35 days) and 14 pictures sent to my husband’s cell phone, five of which he saved. Of the 5, two of them were of the OW naked – in a bathtub full of sudsy water. I stumbled on all of this by accident. DD night he was taking an abnormally long time getting ready for bed. From my vantage point I could see him standing looking at his cell phone – no biggie, but for such a long time, I asked him what he was doing. Nothing he replied, but it got my radar up enough that when he was asleep I checked his phone, no texts, he had cleared the sent and received. I thought that was funny, but no problem – I had never checked his usage or his phone before, but he averages 400 or so texts a month so I thought it was a tad unusual. Then, I sat down at the computer to pay the cell phone bill (which ironically enough was due the next day) and there it jumped out at me, 4800 +\- for the current usage (they had exchanged 1300 +\- on the bill that I was paying which I glossed over and didn’t catch). I went back to his cell phone, no – nothing there, that’s when I started digging around on his phone and found the pictures. Only you who have experienced it know that my heart dropped to the floor, I was devastated. I was up until 3:00 am searching the cell phone website (the phone call information came later, plus other stuff) trying to get it altogether. We live in a small town and I have no family around – I would have left right then and there, but I had nowhere to go in the middle of the night. When I finally went to bed, he woke up and I point blank told him I was trying to figure out why he had exchanged over 5000 texts with the OW. He had the nerve (as they all do) to say they were “friends”. I asked him what was going on, was he having an affair? He said no and then got pissed because I didn’t believe him. We had (at that time) been married 34 years and have two adult children and a grandchild. He knows the OW from a local board which he volunteers – he’s the president, she’s the secretary. She is 36 (so half our age) and divorced last fall from her ex who (my spouse says) has alcohol issues. When you see 170, 250, 380 texts per day exchanged, I honestly can say I never saw him texting. Hindsight is always 20/20. She works nights as a nurse and nearly all this texting was during the day, but in the evenings as well. First thing in the morning 4:45 AM to 8:30 PM (which is typically his bedtime), during the middle of the night (3:00 AM), I could go on and on. First he said their communication was related to their board positions, then the excuse was she was having issues with her ex, then she was buying a new vehicle and wanted his advice. Really, because of all the vehicles we have ever bought (at least in the last 15 years) I’ve been the decision maker and the deal maker. I told him I didn’t know how either of them got anything done during the day. But I noticed this texting all began the weekend they attended a convention (along with about a dozen other people) that I didn’t attend. They both had hotel rooms to themselves. How do you explain what was going on? Then, true to the CS form, he turned it on me. He said that he asked her “how do I get you to love me again?” Implied he complained to her that we didn’t have sex anymore and other complaints about me. I was floored because he never, ever asked me that same question (why don’t you love me anymore) or addressed to me the lack of sex directly or how he thought our relationship was lacking. He had resorted to snide comments “I’ll just go find someone else” to have sex with. I told him I didn’t understand how a 36 y/o divorced woman with a 9 year old daughter could give him marital advice and could understand what I was going through. I had no idea that he was so unhappy. Let’s just say, I could go on and on, but like most of the CS I’ve read about, he refuses, absolutely refuses, to discuss it. He says he did “wrong” he’s apologized more then once, but he won’t discuss it or answer questions and he does not think that we (or I) need to go to counseling. Just like the rest of you, just when I think it’s buried, then it comes back (the trigger) and I’m back to square one. To demand that he break off contact is not possible as their positions on the board (he has one more year left), although on DD he offered to resign, but only if I agreed not to tell anyone – sounds like a guilty person to me. I am almost (at least 99.9%) positive that this was an EA and not a PA – although he admitted, when I asked if I hadn’t found it and it had continued would it have turned into a PA, he said probably. I finally confronted OW 5 months after DD and she saying “nothing happened” and that all the texts were “innocent” (which is what he said), but it’s hard to reconcile. When they’re around me, they are very reserved and don’t look at each other, very little speaking, but I have observed them when they don’t know I’m there and they interact as two people would normally interact, talk laugh etc. If they are “avoiding” each other for my benefit, it just makes my feelings stronger that they’re hiding something. Do I think it’s still going on, no I don’t. I told him on DD I wanted all unrelated “board” texting to stop. All texting stopped for a few days, but started up – not to the massive extent, but by this time I was checking his phone, checking the cell phone website every 15 minutes to see to what extent they were communicating. After several arguments, it finally stopped until June 2nd when they exchanged 14 texts not 45 minutes before a board meeting. I didn’t find out until after he had left the house for the meeting. I lost it and left. I texted him (evidentally his preferred mode of contact) and told him what I had found and I was leaving. He did not leave the meeting to try to meet with me to try to work it out. He actually stayed at his meeting and even had a followup meeting. It was over 2 1/2 hours later that we talked by phone. He told me I had it all wrong, the texts were “innocent”. I got to the point that I hated hearing the word “innocent”. At that point, after arguing, all contact between them stopped, saved a couple of phone calls she made to his cell from her work number and the board’s office number that lasted less than 5 minutes each. I called her out on that too when I had my confrontation with her. Don’t use another phone, use your cell phone, I am not stupid. She said she doesn’t get reception with her cell at work, and I pointed out to her that she managed to text him just fine from work. Point = Me!
Of course, my self-worth as a wife, partner, confidant has been destroyed, but I feel that he’s being “rewarded” for what he’s done. Our sex life has greatly improved – ironically now he’s having “performance related” problems ( ED) – there have been changes made to our relationship (which admittedly had settled into what I thought was comfortable – watching TV in separate rooms, had routinely never gone to bed at the same time). I now go to bed at the same time as he and we cuddle – because that’s what he wants. I no longer read after going to bed because he said that it hurts his feelings when I do that. I have changed my life to make him “happy” again. So as I said, he’s got his life where he wants it, he thinks therefore this is where I should be in the relationship too.
We have had argument after argument about this, about how I can’t forget and “just move on” (as I had said I would two days after DD – stupid me). I told him just two days ago that I forgive him, because that’s what he wants to hear, but I don’t really think that I have.
I ache everyday for the relationship we once had. We’ve had a good life together and he’s ruined it all. I have no trust in him and I have lost all respect for him as a husband.
Becky, I’ve said the same thing to my H…HIS life got a whole lot better…while mine fell apart!! Sex, 4-5 nights a week, new sexy lingerie, going to bed when he does, though I DO read or I’m on the computer….he says that doesn’t bother him :/ But I’ll tell you, NOW, 11 mos later, I’m coming out of all that!! Sexy nightgowns, not so often, only when I feel like it!! Sexy undies, yea, still do, because I’ve lost 25 pds and feel sexier So I LIKE wearing them…maybe if our H’s had made us feel sexier, extra pounds or not, WE would have responded better!! Sex, when I’m ok with it, NOT because I feel desperate to keep him happy!!
This EA recovery is a process….and I learn more as we go along!! I can say, at least my H didn’t make excuses and try to blame me..well, in the beginning he did, but from what I’ve read, that’s pretty normal…for your H to be making all these demands on you, but not giving anything in return…well…selfish comes to mind!
Are you in counseling…for you?
I went once…it didn’t help me…If I find the right person that I feel comfortable with..I’ll go again!
We had a good life also, I have hope we’ll get back there once again…one day! But the memories will ALWAYS be there, ready to rear their ugly little heads!!
Becky-
All I can say to you is, there is nothing “innocent” (sorry, there’s that word again) when she is sendind your H naked/sudsy bath tub photos…..nor is over 6000 text messages in 5 weeks!!!
Also, it really doesn’t really matter whether HE thinks it was wrong (we can all try to justify bad behavior!). What matters is whether YOU feel its WRONG for your relationship. In other words, if it isn’t comfortable for you, that’s what counts, as you have a vote in it, too!
And as to his board position, I’d take him up on resigning–to me, this would show his good faith toward moving to a no contact situation.
So much of the story to tell, but so little space. 2 days after D-day (which was Feb. 10th) I called the OW to find out what the hell was going on – I wanted to hear it from her. All I got was they were “good friends” and “we talk a lot” and “I’m so sorry”. It was on impulse that I called her. That resulted in an email from her two hours later (to joint email account that my husband and I share) which basically said she had made “bad decisions”, the texting had “gotten out of control”, and that my husband loved me and “neither of us would risk ruining ” my 34 year marriage. She also volunteered in the email to resign her position as secretary, she said she would “do what ever it takes to make this right because I do not want to see you hurt”. I was in such a fog that I responded back with one sentence, that her resigning had never entered my mind and I didn’t expect her to. Fast forward 5 long months and I had a change of heart and during my one and only face-to-face confrontation with her told her I wanted her to resign. First she said okay, then maybe, then she’d think about it. But end result, about 4 weeks ago she sent an email to the entire executive board resigning her appointed position. Her “term” ends now, but she will still sit on the regular board as a member. She blamed her resignation on her ex and lack of child care for the meetings. There will be no reason for them to have any kind of contact that isn’t witnessed by other people (at meetings or functions). I am very happy with this. It make this next year better to deal with. Now I don’t have to worry that when the board meets on a twice monthly basis, just what the hell is going on.
Ditto! Make him resign. ALL contact needs to severed for healing to take place, if at all possible! it’s hard enough to try to trust CS even when all contact has been cut, much less when they are still in contact. Put him up to the test. Everything I’ve read says cutting all contact is a crucial step they need to take. My wife wanted to continue contact and simply use more “appropriate language,” but I found that there was no way I could live with that. Her willingness to cut all ties was a huge healing step for me toward trusting. Still, that knowledge that they can always stay in contact, just smarter the next time around is always worrying me. I’ve got all the conversations hidden away in case it ever happens again. If it does, I plan to expose the whole affair to both our families. Having her and my family read what she and he wrote would humiliate her, and I’m hoping that threat is enough to keep her straight! That was her greatest fear on d-day, that I’d expose her affair to the whole family on both sides. She doesn’t know I’ve copies to pass out, just that if it happens again, I’m telling the whole family!
Sorry – I meant “long” – not “wrong” – at the beginning of the post
I have the complete story on my blog, but basically it is very similar to others here. My D-day occurred in two phases. My husband and I were on a trip – he had planned an extravagent third honeymoon for us. I now know he was trying to allay his feelings of guilt by buying me expensive things. We only took one laptop – his – on the trip. One night he fell asleep at his computer. I got him up to go to bed and I sat down to check my email. Right there on the screen was a set of emails they had exchanged. He had been writing to her during our honeymoon. But the letters were not romantic. Just comfortable – like they had been friends a long time and knew all about each other’s families. But there were acronyms I didn’t understand and they used pet names for each other.
I knew her name because she had been his first love. I raged at him for having a relationship with her without my knowledge. What were they to each other? He assured me that they were just on their alumni email list and often sent forwards around to bunches of people. I countered – email contacts do not know all about families and about each other’s work schedules and use pet names for each other. But he insisted that was all there was to it.
We finished the trip with a heavy cloud over our heads. On the night we got home, October 17, 2010, we fought again over it. He yelled and screamed, “Relationship? What relationship? There is no relationship!” He acted like I was the one betraying him by even thinking that he would have an affair. He marched off to bed and was asleep in no time. Yes, my husband is also one of those who sleeps his problems away.
I couldn’t sleep. I took out his laptop and searched it. That’s when I found hundreds of emails going back 6 years, all the way back to the first ones they sent each other. Such declarations of love and longing! … of regret for having married other people, of waiting for the day they could be together. The sickening talk of desire and wanting… plans for him leaving his family… I could not believe I had been so blind.
I confronted him in the morning after I had read all the emails. I hit him, called him names, screamed out in pain. And so began my journey through hell.
DJ, FYI…I added a link to your site in our Blogroll yesterday. Everybody, DJ writes some good stuff on her site. It’s at: http://notoverit.wordpress.com/ Please visit when you get a chance!
Thank you – I appreciate that. It helps to tell the story, and tell it and tell it and tell it until the hurt is not so bad anymore. My therapist said that is the current methodology with trauma. And this can certainly be classified as trauma.
Anne Bercht talks about this in a slightly different light in her book “My Husband’s Affair Became the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me.” She says she talked and talked and talked about it until there was no more pain. I doubt I’ll ever get to that point where there is no more pain, but at least it should get better. We all share and support each other and share some more, and at some point we’ll feel like we’ve moved on. Hopefully…
To those of you who have a SI that sort of admits to EA how were you assured that it was not PA? The only things my H has admitted were things that I had substantial proof about?
Still Stuggling
I didnt at first because he Led me through the swings and roundabouts to try get me distracted,i had no proof.I am fortunate that the NW got impatient,and set up her chance to take it further.My Stupid Partner fell hook line and sinker,but he also said that it was a wake up call,becuase he could not understand how it Happend(duh).He would not tell me anymore didnt want to talk about it.So what did i do,i rememberd who i was,Not The mother of his children,not the cleaner,cook,not all the Negitive.I am a Altruism,a thinker,And most importantly a Woman,so i switched roles,and brought everyday things into a lighthearted conservation,planted seeds in his head and waited untill they grew.It is not a easy process but in time i found out all (most of) what i needed to know.All i can say to you Still Stuggling is remember who you are,never forget it,never let someone tell you different.
I sat here and read the posts, amazed at what we have all gone through. Before the EA I never gave much thought to how many people suffer through affairs, either EAs or PAs. There are so many similarities to what we have all felt or suffered that it just boggles my mind. The one thing that I did notice was that our CSs all treated us very unkindly while they were participating in their little affair. I wonder if that is because of guilt or whether they truly did not like us at the time. I can remember, now, so many incidents of just plain cruelty which I chalked up to my H not feeling well. Just a question, among many, that I have been thinking about lately.
The weekend I caught my husband we had attended a football game. We are alumni and haven’t missed a game in years (National Champs last year for those of you who know the team). Anyway, we have a condo there and I had gone on to bed after the game but he stayed up, talking to my son. My son noticed that my H was very agitated because his phone kept vibrating until my H jumped up, mumbled something about the car and then ran outside. My son was suspicious and tried to eavesdrop but could hear nothing (if I hadn’t caught my H my son was going to talk to me on Monday). Any way, I was dead to the world asleep (and here is where you can all make fun of me) when this voice in my head told me to get up and look out the window. It was not my “head voice” but a stronger, deeper male voice. I immediately got up, looked out the window and there walked my H by the window at that exact time, holding a cell phone to ear at one in the morning. I calmly sat back down, stunned, and waited on him to come in. I asked him who he was talking to and he said he was talking to himself, stress from work. (another question – do they honestly think we are all stupid?). I asked to see the phone and he wouldn’t let me. We travelled 4 hours home the next day in total silence. I didn’t really know what to do. When we got home I pulled the cell phone records up and there were the calls and texts. So the nightmare began…
Notoverit, I did think about how this affects people before this, I had experience with some of it, through parents and far too amy friends, and I thought I understood and empathised with all of them, but I didn’t have any idea how this really hangs on for so long, and how it just renders you into a million pieces that you can’t seem to glue back together in the right order
Yes, they DO think we are that stupid…they are the smartest CS in the world, didn’t you know that? They are lying and getting away with it…for the time being, and we are the dumb “trusting” ones!! :/
I’ve learned over the past two years that 80% of the time we have a problem with someone else it’s usually a problem within ourselves. When we were treated poorly by our CS’s I’d hazard to guess it was because deep down they were disgusted with themselves and their behavior. My wife made herself physically ill from the stress, guilt, and shame.
I suspected something was amiss with her but since our sex life was sky-rocketing I thought it was merely some strange hormonal explosion, part of the aging process that women go through where they finally reach their peak (and about time, too). You can bet I wasn’t about to rock that particular boat. After a year into it though she started to withdraw, pick weird fights with me (which she later said were meant to give her a reason to confess), and seemed to be in a deep depression, which, of course, she was.
Many times during the affair my wife tried to break it off only to go running back when the addictive quality kicked in. Her intention was to end it and never tell me about it (as if that won’t eat one alive.) But when the OM’s wife found them out she felt it was better to tell me than for me to hear it from someone else. Oftentimes I think I’d rather have the satisfaction of catching them myself so I could reveal it to them on my own terms to my own vindictive satisfaction. But I’ve read often that it’s better to have it confessed than to find out so I know I’m better off.
She had planned to tell me over dinner in a restaurant (in case I wanted to cause a scene, I’m guessing), but when in the quiet of that morning I told her how much I loved her, how proud I was that we seem to weather so many storms together, that we have such a strong friendship, she had to tell me then and there. She said, “I have something to tell you.”
Deep down I knew. All those signs I thought I had seen before but dismissed because I was being paranoid came flooding in on me. “It’s another man, isn’t it?”
I wished I had the backbone in that moment to tell her to pack a bag and go figure out her life, but all I cared about was how much pain she was in.
D, this strikes a chord with me because I have often been amazed at not just my feelings of sympathy for my cheating husband but my willingness to allow him to completely demolish my heart while I worry about how he will negotiate his life now that I’m not a part of it. Thankfully I did have a very clear line in the sand, but I often battle my emotions which want to betray my own decisions and get sucked back in. Lord, please help me stay where I need to be!
I agree, I feel for my OH, deeply, and how desperately unhappy he was, and I keep thinking how hard it is for him now, too. His actions were bad, I know, but I understand why he acted the way he did, and how he has tried his guts out to make it all better since, but this doesn’t magic any of it away …..
RCR, you will stay strong, you’ve done so very well, keep it up, we’re behind you, he will be okay. With time, you may be able to have some kind of friendship with him, but not now, just one foot in front of the other for today 🙂
Man, you and I were in the same boat! I honestly love her so much that I told my wife that if the OM really made her that happy, I wanted her to pursue him… But that if so, I wanted a divorce so she’d be free and that I wanted her out by morning! That’s when the lightbulb went off in her head about just how serious I was about the EA… And we’d always agreed that divorce wassomething we simply would never consider!
Thanks you are right about remembering who I am. My head keeps telling me that but my heart won’t let it go. I don’t know how to forgive if I don’t know for sure what I am forgiving.
Notoverit. I heard the same voice for months but ignored it even though all the signs were there. I wasn’t ready to face it at the time I will post my story later when I can do it from computer. Phone lags a bit too much for all I need to write.
Hey Still struggling – I would like to hear your story.
So much wisdom, guys.
I didn’t really suspect a thing, didn’t know until nearly a month after he ended it with her, she told me, via text, we were at a party, and I calmly carried on, showing him the text when we were almost home. He melted before my eyes and said he would get his stuff and move out then and there (2 am!) I said no, thinking we still loved each other, he’d ended it, how bad could it be??? To be fair, at that time I thought it was a friendship that had crossed the line, maybe once. It wasn’t til later that I found out it had gone on for 15 months (from first sex) and that she had come on holiday with us, boating, BBQs, parties, I had gone out with her, just the two of us, etc, whilst this was happening. ifeelsodumb took my user name!!! Still gutted, still feel hollow, and still not coping quite as well as I’d like to be, however, the outbursts, the talking, talking, talking has stopped with anyone outside of this relationship, over a year ago, but it still occupies my mind 24/7. I am firmly of the opinion now that I am here at least until my youngest leaves for uni, and I just have to suck a lot of it up until then, as all the other work I have done on myself, and all of his remorse, and transparency hasn’t healed me, at least not yet. This decision isn’t bitter, or sad, we are still each other’s best friend, but I am pretty empty and cored, and our children are not “suffering” because they have incredibly unhappy parents (I keep things pretty stable at home) it is best economically for us all, if I stay at the moment. I am going to do a lot more for me, back to uni next year, life is not all bad, I just have this pain that I have to drag around, and it only gets really unbearable occasionally, I can cope most of the time, fine, mostly thanks to this little lifeline 🙂
When I read from day one that healing takes about two years all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and hibernate until then. I never thought I could make it. Yet two years later and I’m stronger than I ever could have been otherwise. You’re halfway there.
Same here D…when I read that on here….I started crying and didn’t come back on this site for 5 mos!! I just couldn’t handle it! The thought of 2-3 yrs of this…my gosh! AT times, I have to say…I feel I HATE my H for doing this to us! The holidays start next week…about 5 weeks of trying to just not mention the EA so that everyone will be happy…except me, of course…I’ll still get in the car, drive up the road, have a good cry so the kids don’t know…and then come home and act all bright and chipper…D-day Jan. 3rd…how much you wanna bet me that my H doesn’t remember, and instead of doing something nice to make a BETTER memory for that day…he’ll act like nothing is wrong? I already KNOW the answer to that one… :/
Paula,
You know, it’s funny, I’ve been thinking about changing ifeelsodumb to something like….a-trusting-naive-wife…because My H is the DUMB one!! We were the partners who loved our men, and loved the life we had with them! THEY are the DUMB ones!!!
IFSD, feeling dumb and being dumb are two different things. Sometimes I feel like my emotions are what is dumb (see what I wrote to D above). I don’t believe that anyone who cares about commitment and is willing to go through a personal trial by fire to attempt to stay married is dumb, but incredibly brave and admirable.
I’ve got a whopper of a discovery story! My husband was FIRED from his job over inappropriate behavior having to do with the OW! It involved a cell phone pic that was interpreted as sexual harassment. Was it reported as that by the OW or did someone else find out and report it – not sure what actually went down, but this affair got his ass fired! So that’s how I found out – a double shocker. Oh yeah, and guess what? He’s STILL unemployed! 13 months later! Not only did this EA bring our marriage to the brink of ruin, but it’s killing us financially. Why the hell am I still here, will someone tell me?
Wow! That IS a whopper! I have a question…have you looked your H in the eyes yet and asked him…Was she worth it??
No, I have not asked him that. Maybe I will tonight.
Beats me! Any of you think of going out and having an affair just so the CS can understand what this hell is like? It could have been much worse for me, cause, thank Jesus, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt it never got to the point of a PE. I can completely understand murders over PEs now!
MadMD,
I heard in the radio a few weeks ago that forgiveness is a process…and that even God didn’t forgive right away…remember David and Bathsheba…the children of Israel…Jonah? Well, God knows and understands that we WANT to forgive our CS…but we have to process and grieve what has been lost….and that takes time!
If you lose a child, you don’t bury them…then go on vacation to Disney World the next day with your other kids!! You will need time…lots of time…and God knows this, after all, he created us and knows these emotions that we have!
Our marriages are supposed to be sacred, a covenant between two people and when that trust is broken it is going to take years for it to be rebuilt. And if you have a spouse who won’t do their part, it may NEVER be rebuilt!
And I have THOUGHT about paying back my H by talking to some male friends a little more than I normally would, just so he can see how it feels…but I can’t bring myself to do it….I love my kids too much to put them through anymore turmoil! And that”s one of the things I’m having trouble forgiving my H over….that he didn’t think of the affect this would have on me…but also our kids! How could he throw away THEIR stability, just so he could have a “fun” time?? :/
IFSD,
Its the cheating spouse’s behavior thats inappropriate for a marriage. The betrayed spouse is just that (betrayed).
We are not dumb or naive, or anything. When we married we believed the other person would behave in a manner that was
appropriate for a marriage. Their inappropriate behavior belongs to them. It has nothing to do with us, we feel the betrayed because we thought they would follow the rules of marriage.
Its what inside the cheating spouse that needs to be addressed.
An affair is never the answer to any problem.
The cheating spouse needs to address why an affair vs marriage counceling?
Also why they made such an inappropriate choice?
The hardest question of all did they marry for the right
reasons? If the marriage for the right reasons why the infidelity? Why did they lose self control? Do they now trust themselves not to cheat again? If they now trust
themselves what happned inside them to change from
unfaithful to faithful?
Anita, I was thinking about the same thing this morning. Three years ago today, after our first d-day, I took the day off work wanting to reconnect with Doug. He suggested we watch a movie, while I had more intimate ideas. Looking back I feel so stupid and naive that I “persuaded” Doug to go up to the bedroom with me, while his mind and heart was apparently someone else. This morning I was beating myself up for being so stupid, then I thought to myself, Linda you were not stupid, what was wrong with inviting your husband to be with you. Isn’t that what a relationships are about. Instead at being angry at yourself for not seeing the signs or being naive you should look at the other side of the story. You spouse chose to betray you, something you had never thought about or prepared yourself for. Linda
True Anita, very true!! Think I’ll ask my H that question this weekend!
“If they now trust
themselves what happned inside them to change from
unfaithful to faithful?
Oh how I can relate to beating myself up over all the affair-related ‘things.’ But you are correct Linda, one day, I hope to stop blaming myself for NOT noticing the ‘signs.’ I can honestly tell you all – I was distracted. Without the ‘distraction’ I have to believe I would’ve seen what what going on – sooner:
One week after our son was arrested following a traffic stop whereby he had indulged in drugs due to his depression over being asked not to return to his selected college (just couldn’t keep up,) – my H began his affair. As traumatic as you could imagine your CHILD going thru such a horror, his then being ostracized from work (innocent before proven guilty, following the ‘police blotter’ noting his arrest in the local paper,) then his continued drug use and thank God, the drug counseling I was able to get him – right away – I just did not know I did not ‘have’ my H with me. I knew he was freaked out by this unbelievable trauma that had descended upon our family- but to use that time period as a time to go outside our marriage? I NEVER would have thought that – EVER… but it was true.
I know I was distracted – but I just had to save my son. And I know I did that. But the 10 weeks ‘they’ were together while the rest of us suffered thru my son’s ordeal, proved SO damaging…to this day…it is just so difficult to fathom.
Unfortunately, I discovered the affair thru my other 2 children – with whom my H had brought the OW into their lives, behind mine.
13+ months since DDay #1
5 + months since DDay#2
hanging on…..
Don’t know how you guys with more than one D-day can NOT kick their sorry butts to the curb! You’ve got way more forgiveness than I think I could muster, then I remember that God took us back when we go a-whoring and even forgave us for Crucifying Christ! Remembering that fact would probably allow me to forgive twice… but three strikes and she’d be out, I’m afraid. I just don’t think I could take it!
My H just blurted out that he had visited his ‘friend’ while in her city and that she was in love with him. When i asked him if he was in love with her, he just sort of nodded and said, ‘i think so’. so started my punched-in-the-stomach devastation. I read conversations they had on FB. they are seared into my brain. His mournful lament that he ‘just wanted to be with her’ still sucks the breath out of me. But he also realized that this was an infatuation leftover from adolescence (they hadn’t seen or talked since they were 16 and 18, he had a crush that she didn’t reciprocate) So, he knows that this is based in fantasy, that the issue is HIS and that our marriage is worth fighting for (after witnessing my raw determination to fight for MY life -and marriage if it was to be). At least that is what the evidence tells me, he is still here…we are talking and working.
I have really bad days (stretches of days) where i wonder if it’s worth it, if i’m worth it, if the EA is still going on…2 years huh? well, i’m a quarter way through…God, i pray and hope that the 2-3 years is real, that some day i’ll have some security, that i can wake up and not be consumed by thoughts of infidelity, insecurity.
D-Day #1 was Feb 22nd. I had noticed his phone was always on vibrate, he would not lay it down around the house and kept it locked with a code that only he knew. We took our children to Disney and he was agitated and mean the entire time. So I try to diffuse his anger by having him sit with the kids and wait for me to get lunch to avoid them standing in line and upon my return my daughter tells me daddy was talking to a girl from work on his phone while you were gone. Imagine the look on his face! I couldn’t react the way I wanted at that point because of where we were. But when we got home I demanded to see cell phone records. What I saw disgusted me & still does to this day. Too many calls and texts to count. Important dates in our lives, holidays, everyday they were in constant contact. Boy did I feel stupid. She’s a coworker and I knew they had a work relationship. (Guess his version of that and mine are two different things!) I was not prepared for this. We have been married 14 years, have two children and I thought had a perfect marriage. Told him then it had to stop, I could forgive him if he would come clean and let’s start trying to work it out. He has NEVER come clean, he blames me everytime the subject comes up and I have no idea how far things went between them. I stayed and thought he ended things with OW. Much to my surprise in June (two days before our son’s 3rd birthday party) I was talking to his brother about our son’s party and he said he would not be able to make the party. When I asked why he broke down and said he didn’t want to see his brother. (They work together and he knew what was going on.) He told me they had not ended things like I thought in Feb. I left my husband that day. We have been trying to reconcile, but he refuses to go to counseling or even talk to me about the whole thing. He still works with her and I don’t know if they have ended things or not. If I ask he gets very angry with me. I have been getting myself financially ready (I’ve been emotionally ready) to file for divorce in January. I’m sorry to all of you who have dealt with the same heartache. It is hell! But I am a new woman who knows I don’t need him to be happy and my children and I will be just fine in our new life. Maybe his married OW will make him happy? Maybe she will drop him and move on to her next one? I don’t care either way. He will never have a chance to hurt me again!
Two D-day’s for me…The first one my husband left his email account up on our computer and I found correspondence re a Craigs list add in which “Dave and Sarah, both tall and athletic, were looking to have sex with another man” my face was white as a ghost when my husband entered the room. Hastily we deleted all of the correspondence however his shaking hands did not go unnoticed. Your hands don’t shake when someone has hacked your computer. I demanded access to the phone bills and after about a month of excuses, forgotten passwords etc…I finally gained access. D-day #2…. my husband had calls to and from one particular number over the past year. There were various other calls to and from men. Called the most frequently called number and asked for Sarah (got that from the Craigslist add) and to my surprise guess who answered? Sarah!
$1600 in marriage counseling, no apology, no empathy for my feelings and no remorse yet so I think we are still in the affair fog. He will not even discuss the Craigslist add only agreed to marriage counseling. Not sure what to do at this point because I am still miserable. Broke down at marriage counseling because of the upcoming holidays and all he could do was roll his f______ little beaty eyes like he was sick of me talking about it and being sad. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Bewildered-
So sorry to hear you are going through this. When you say you think “we are still in the affair fog”, is it that he had a sexual affair? And is he having these relations with both men and women? How much has he opened up about it in your counseling sessions, if any?
And yes, I’d say $1600 in counseling without his engagement in the process is way too much to have spent! What does your counselor say to him to guide him in your sessions? Certainly they aren’t supporting the idea that he has no empathy for you, are they?
I know that there are no black and whites in these kinds of painful situations, but if my H really felt no need to apologize (particularly because its possible he has also put your health at risk!), had no remorse, and didn’t get why I was making such a big deal about it, he would be my soon to be ex-husband. He made his choices for what ever reason, but in a marriage between two people, there are consequences for this kind of acting out–and one of them is that when you get caught, you now have a responsibilty to your partner to speak the truth. No more games, no more deception, time to talk about Craigslist…..time to MAN UP!!!!!
Take good care of yourself.
Lynne – At the very least an emotional affair (since I learned it spanned 20 years…our entire marriage). Still not sure about the Craiglist issue as he is too defensive to even discuss. You are so correct he made choices, he was caught now man up!! I spapped in our last counseling session and said he needs to take some F____ responsibility. He is a narcissist so anything that remotly resembled an apology would be a blow to his ego. I shouldn’t let him get away with it but of course we go home and he starts in with his everything is completely normal life again. He can’t apologize and fess up for what he did wrong this will be the downfall because I will not be married to anyone who can admit their mistakes when they make them.
Bewildered, my heart bleeds for you. My parents were happily married for 18 years when my mother discovered he was being unfaithful, with men. Mum says their sex life was brilliant, she never guessed. They tried to stay together for a year after she discovered this (we kids had no idea during the next year) and my mother finally made the decision to leave ( I was almost 18 by then, my brothers 16 and 14) she realised that his overwhelming sexual preference was gay, and staying together would mean him denying himself, and her feeling miserable – never very big, she lost a hell of a lot of weight, ending up around 48kg. He fought and fought this, but is an out and open gay man now. It was devastating for my Mum, she had a very emotional next year or so but she eventually flourished, even re-marrying, a wonderful guy, some years later. Our family all kept in touch, spending Christmas and other special occasions together (my stepfather was absolutely fine with Dad, and Dad always missed my mother, as they were very close, he did love her, so he was happy that she ended up with a lovely man, who adored her, and he her, Dad had a huge amount of time for my stepfather, and was very sad when he died almost a fortnight ago.) I hope your H and you can come to some happy outcome here, I’m not sure my story applies, but if so, please know that it isn’t the end of your happiness, there’s plenty more out there, it will be a long and painful journey, whether you stay together or part, but one day, you will be okay again, just try to hang onto that thought, I wish you strength and wish I could help.
Wow…thanks for sharing. I am at a complete loss. We can’t even really discuss the Craigslist issue because he gets so defensive (HUGE red flag). I won’t however be married to someone who can admit when they make a mistake and someone who is so shallow they can’t comfort me when they hurt me.
So this is my story.
Facebook got to love it! (or hate its stinking guts!)
I knew something was going on but he kept denying it.
I got to the point that I did not have concrete evidence so I let it die and sat back and simmered. On June 17, 2011, dumb ass finally slipped up and forgot to log out of our 2nd conputer that we rarely use and I FINALLY had the solid proof my husband was indeed cheating on me emotionally and physically and had been for over a year. It was all there on Facebook. I got to read all the messages he sent to his adult children using them to cover his tracks of the affair.
Monalisa is so right – you never forget the details of when you found out. I had 2 D Days. The first was after 7 months of being told my H had been unhappy with me for a couple of years and that he was doing some soul-searching. That soul-searching involved lots of happy hours with folks at his new job, as well as having to be on his blackberry constantly for work. He lost weight, was really bitchy to me, and was very critical about aspects of our life together that he’d never mentioned any issue with previously. I tried to change who I was to make him happy and content in our marriage. I bought him a IPod Touch for Father’s Day, and he was on it constantly. He had passcode locked it, which was odd to me. I was so suspicious that he was possibly emailing an ex-girlfriend, but I could never guess at the passcode. Finally, one day while he was swimming with our kids and I was folding laundry, I clicked to open it, and it magically opened. I found dozens of emails to the OW, and his sent folder kept refreshing over and over and over, producing hundreds of them to her work email address, which was the same firm as his. I flipped out and pulled him in the house to ask who she was. He said just a friend at work but finally admitted he was having an EA with her and she was almost half my age. I lost it. I demanded no contact, which he promised, but he refused to leave his job and continued to work with her. I had evidence only going back a month, and he only admitted to that. He was still an ass to me and it was awful for another 3 months. One evening he was out with our kids, and it struck me so hard I lost my breath – check AT&T for the bill for texts. Holy hell – it was going on for 10 months, had never stopped to that day, and there were THOUSANDS of texts, including pictures back and forth, including middle of the night texts, including during our anniversary dinner, Valentine’s, our family vacation, everthing. That was my D Day number 2, and I thought I would die. I texted her that if i ever saw any communication from her again, i would confront her boyfriend and I called him by name, which i had gotten off FB. My H bawled and cried to please not throw him out, he didn’t love her he loved me, etc. We are still together and it’s hard every day not to think about them togehter.
In retrospect, I wish I had checked text records much sooner – like right from the start when he said he was unahppy with me. i also wish when i did find those emails that I had locked myself in our bedroom to read and read and read until i really saw the extent of their realtionship – I flew off the handle and showed all my cards when, had i known how deep it really went, I would have thrown him out then. The extent of their affection was not known to me until months later after we were already patching things up. I wish i’d handled things differently.
Finally we were having some great time together again and I was happy that he was back to his old self. He was the wonderful man I had married again. SO, one morning after everyone left home, I, rushing out to work, picked out the post and opened an envelop addressed to me.
Even as I type now I can feel my stomach churning inside and my blood running cold in my veins and the absent feeling. Why and how was I not prepared for what I saw? How did I failed to read the signs? How could I have been so STUPID!????
In my hands I had, copies of sexy e-mails, photos, etc…. I wish that my heart had stopped then. I called him, he came home, but I could not talk to him. I just asked please that he should leave me alone. I had ALL I need in my hands, I had nothing to say. Later the same day the w***e called me too, but I was so much in shock that I did not know what to ask or say, but what I said hit her hard, and I am proud of myself for how I handled it; shaken but with great strength.
He cried and begged me to not leave him, because he always loved me. He had been trying for months to end things with the OW, but she was not going to have it and threatened him and became abusive and would not leave him alone. Off course I am not naive to also understand that he kept going back to her. He said that what started him was the way she showed so much interest in him, and the trill of the stolen moments was what drove him to carry on, but most of the time he was so consumed with guilt that he did not enjoy it. But there he was, for months enjoining it all.
When he finally gave her an ultimatum, she promised to destroy him, and so she started the process of threats to him and soon after the destruction of his family – by targeting me. She is a person modeled by a dysfunctional family. The word ‘family’ means nothing to her. She gets what she wants attitude has driven her to get him, but apparently she fell in love with him. I don’t buy it. Would you destroy someone that you say you love? ‘I love you but I will destroy you!’ Is this love?
This feelings goes to my husband too. I can not understand that you can do something so destructive to someone that did not deserve it. He says that to me now, but he did it, didn’t him? He says he never intended to leave me and he regrets what he did deeply. That once he crossed the line he did not know what to do, it was too late. Since DDay he has done so much to prove how much he regrets what he did, and he recognizes the damage he has done to our relationship and he is so sorry. But I can not get to this better place people talk about. I want to have this better marriage some people are able to get to. This last 18 months has been an absolute hell for both of us. We have done all the things we are ‘supposed’ to do. Counseling, weekends away, date nights, working on our communication, reading books, reading this site. He changed job, I changed location of work to be close to him. I threw away EVERYTHING that bothers my feelings of healing. Nothing makes me feel any better. I have period of positive feelings but it is difficult and tiresome job trying to avoid falling into deep sadness. We sometimes reconnect deeply, other we despair, and we try to help each other out of it. I usually feel distant, because then It hurts less. This is no life!
Ever looked up Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)? She sounds like it. These people are self-destructive and will hurt others (like your husband). The one book I read was “I hate you; Don’t leave me.” They do not suffer a mental disease; it has been described to me as being a personality disorder (my therapist said liken it to they are just bad people). Read about it or narcissism. If she fits BPD, you have to tread carefully. These are definitely dangerous people. There is a line of thought – direct legal threats makes them back down. It worked with my OW. Haven’t heard a peep out of her since I told her I would LEGALLY destroy her so go ahead and make all the threats you want. It worked. I honestly could not blame my husband for how she acted after he ended it with her – as the Brits on this site say “She’s nutters.”
And you are winning! He is making an effort and so are you. No marriage (even those without an affair) is without swings, good and bad. We BSs just have more to be upset about with all the memories. Keep up the good work! You are doing everything right!!!! My thoughts are with you!!!
Thank you. I will read this book too. You are right. Our counselor told us the same thing: ‘be careful’. The other woman is single, lied her age to be at least 12 years younger. So in the end she is only 3 -4 years younger than me (H felt at the top of the world because she was so young and wanted him! shattered :-). At her age I already had teenagers, a home and many years of what used to be a good marriage. She is a loser. I hate her with all my soul, and he told her that he does too. He hates her in such way that he is embarrassed that he ever got involved with such a ‘person’. I am just sorry for the next family she will try to break for her own sick pleasure. My husband has been great at supporting me against the rage of the S**t. But I think that she is completely out of our life now and I hardly think of her this days, and this is what I want. She is not worth any of my thoughts. I am trying to concentrate on me and my husband.
I read your post the other day about realizing that is time to stop beating your husband with anger and questions, I had this light bulb moment too. I am 18 months into this, I think that we realize some feelings at around the same time line. Obviously without generalizing too much! Wishing you all the best
tryingtoowife, I wish you the very, very best of luck, I’m in the same hell, had the same kind of OW, and I was determined that her nastiness would not destroy us, letting me know AFTER he had ended it, etc. However, even with OH doing everything he needed to, trying so desperately to recommit, show me he loves me, etc, I’m still in an emotional hell, too, having lost the ability to believe anything anyone tells me anymore, and it drives me insane. I also don’t understand how someone who says he loves you can put you through this kind of wringer, and how you ever get back on an even keel. Starting to really lose my ability to function properly, I think I’m coping, then small things (and large, eg sudden death of family member) tip me off the scales, as I just have no resilience. I don’t know where I’m going to end up….
Paula. So much you wrote in this site struck a chord with me. I believe that my problem is that my way of understanding how to love someone has been challenged to the deepest of my core, and now I don’t really know what loving should be like. I loved him, truly, blindly and totally, the way I knew. I lost the ability to give myself to love, because my H husband’s attitude showed me that he said that he loved me and yet lost respect and hurt me to the core, because people change their minds when presented with certain situations. In his case he says he never stopped loving me, but he must have forgotten that, while loving himself more and involved with the OW. So, love in this instance was just a state of mind, changeable according to HIS needs. He loved me, and then he did not love me enough, so to be with her. So my view of, love=respect=honesty, does not fit with us anymore. For me, the best thing that it could happen now is, if one morning I wake up and feel great, and think: Wow! I don’t ‘love’ you anymore, and I am now ready to part on my own, and so are you. The truth is, – I actually don’t want to want someone that did not want me enough!
But I know this is too simplistic way of thinking of my part. And it does not help us and it is a form of scape of the pain he caused us. And I need to value his efforts in healing us.
I should not forget the years we had when things were good, and we were so good together. I love our family and how we just are great together (pain apart). I am just so tired and lost. Here is the only place I vent this feelings.
I am actually doing rather well for anyone else that knows me. Only few months after the DDay, I went back to further my studies, so I could have some other things occupying my mind, take me out of the house, and meet people that does not know anything about my life. I invested lots of my anger, into powering my work. We reorganized our finances, freeing some money to spend on this hard work of reconnecting with each other. I changed my attitude from only US, to more ME, and I like it very much! I traveled abroad by myself to keep some sanity in place and practice some alone time (not lonely!). I still respect him a great deal as a professional, he is truly an amazing person! I also know that I can not give up, not yet, I still have to get my youngest to uni and that is my motivation. Give her the best of our family for now, then we will have to do a check up and stock take and see where we are.
Hopefully by then I would have learn to love again. You mentioned in one of your post that you are going back to uni. I think that is a great idea. And that you will wait until your youngest go to uni too. I think that is wise too, all the while making changes to better your situation. You are an amazing person Paula, and I am also wishing you all the very best. Lets hope that something very good will happen to us.
My wife had been going out pretty frequently. Im considerably older, we have kids, I’d stay home knowing that she needed social time and let her go with total trust. Twice I saw small texts left on her phone when she would come home drunk from a number not listed as a contact and the text would be deleted in the am. I happened to see the last one after a very serious talk between the two of us where I recommitted to her and us, where I felt I had saved our relationship, so seeing this really got me. I gathered the phone records and was floored. She had been texting him every AM as soon as she left the house to go to work. She communicated with him frequently through the day. She communicated in the evenings, many times while I was with her. Texts and phone.
In April of 09, I discovered that my SO was having multiple emotional affairs. Some were with co-workers, some with old girlfriends, some he says were strictly platonic friendships that he chose to keep secret. When I confronted him, he denied everything. I felt like I had no other choice but to find out the truth for myself. I was able to see his cell phone records and text messages, Facebook account (also kept secret ) I was completely devastated. Didnt think I could physically or emotionally survive the pain. He told these women that he was unhappy, he told them I wouldnt have sex with him( not true – it was he that lost interest in sex. He made up all kinds of stories and lies about me and about our relationship. He would not “confess” to anything. I literally had to present him with every bit of proof. He begged for a second chance, and I agreed to try to work through it. I have done everything in my power to get through this and to make our relationship better than before. I have read everything i can almost every single day since May of 09. I forgave him. We have spent countless hours talking, crying, arguing. We saw a counselor. I had access to all accounts except for his work email. I never felt, though, that he was trying as hard as I was. I found again by accident that he was still in contact with one of the women with who he claimed to have a platonic relationship with. That was a huge setback for us and among other things, I made him call or email everyone of these women to let them know that there would be no further contact. I caught him in several lies since then. Had him sign a contract similar to the one mentioned on this site. Found out after that he lied about one of the co workers he was involved with, telling me that she had been fired when she hadnt. Tried to talk to him about it and he continued to lie. Again had to investigate. Last night he confessed that he had resumed contact with the co worker, asking her for nude pictures, sexting. Etc.From his work email. He told me he loves me more than life, wants to finally make things right. He has made an appointment to see a psychiatrist. So here I am again, deep deep down in emotional hell.I know that I am in no frame of mind to make any decisions right now, dont know how long it will take before I can think clearly again, but I would so appreciate any comments or suggestions.
Kelly – our situations are strickingly similiar. I am at a complete loss as well all of the way down to the sobbing husband. My biggest mistake was not making my husband leave our house….that would have been the biggest reality of his nonsense. So, we go on, without him even suffering any consequences for his actions. Don’t make this mistake – because he will do everything in his power to get things back to “normal” and then it will be too late. I am half in and half out and it is a miserable place to be.
Kelly,
Are you married? If you are married, your dealing with a spouse that doesn’t appear to understand the concept of marriage. His repeated lies and you having to chase down the proof that he’s cheating, and yet he doesn’t want you to leave him, then he turns around does more. Him seeing a psychiatrist will give you some idea the magnitude of what his problem is.
If you not married, count that as a blessing and leave the relationship, unless you want more of the same thing.
My D-day was sometime in June this year. I can’t even remember the date, but it was probably around the 8th or 9th. My husband always leaves his e-mail open (a fact he later used to claim that he had “nothing to hide”) and I saw a suspicious e-mail that said something about “coffee date”. Of course I got curious and opened it. I realized there were many, many messages from the same e-mail address, some dating back as far as 2010. The e-mails were long and intimate and wistful, and eventually led to in person meetings and coffee. I couldn’t find any incriminating evidence about an actual affair, but the tone was certainly flirty and too close for comfort. In some e-mails the woman dropped hints about taking a “soaking in a hot tub” or how her husband was out of town and she had a lot of free time – as if that was information that she should be sharing with my husband.
I confronted my husband right away. He explained that this was just a “friend” and they had been in contact for a little over three years. Unfortunately, I never actually found the earlier e-mails to find out how this all started. But a year worth of e-mails was enough proof of their emotional involvement.
I asked my husband never to see this woman again, or at least not to see her alone. If this was really a clean “friendship”, then she and her husband should be able to visit us. He promised he wouldn’t see her anymore, but two days later they agreed to meet for coffee – and what is more, he deleted the e-mails so that I wouldn’t know what was going on! (Too bad for him, I’m a total hacker and once I got suspicious, there was nothing he could do to hide anything on his computer.)
I showed up to the coffeehouse and confronted them both. She acted innocent, but I could tell she was mortified. My husband tried to act non-chalant. Like it wasn’t a big deal that I was there. He even apologized to her and said he was embarrased about his “jealous wife”. I thought I’d murder them both right there.
Since that day, my husband promised to stop all contact with her and as far as I can tell, he has kept his promise. She did contact him over e-mail last month, but as far as I know he didn’t reply. (I still check his accounts/phone once in a while.)
The past 6 months have been hell. A blur of tears, sleepless nights, and loss of apetite. I lost about 15 lbs. I didn’t need to lose and have been suffering from panic attacks and palpitations. There are days when I feel nothing but hatred for this woman and wish I could hurt her as much as she hurt me. I realize the anger is misplaced.
I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now, but every once in a while I still feel the rage and the pain of betrayal.
D-day = office Christmas party! I was so humiliated! And here come the Holidays again.
@SamIam – I’m so sorry to hear that. I was actually thinking the other day that I feel very different this year. Usually, I really look forward to the holidays but right now I’m feeling no enthusiasm at all.
Thanksgiving is definitely going to be a trigger for me, since I found e-mails that were sent that day (last year) and some very deep feelings/thoughts being shared about “gratitude”. What a bunch of hogwash! Just thinking about this makes my blood boil. Ugh.
Anyway, I hope we can both find some enjoyment this holiday season. It’s supposed to be full of “joy” , right?
Hi so first I just wanted to say thanks.. I am new to this site and have been devouring hundreds of posts nightly.. I spent the past month devouring the internet for facts, materials, buying books, but nothing seemed to quite match what i was going thru.. All the sites are dedicated to ppl already thru the fog or to divorce. This is for the ppl stuck right in the middle.. LIKE ME..
I have posted on a few other sites trying to just talk to someone about my story.. Someone who isnt right in the thick of my life.. But have so far got no replies.. Everyone on here seems so compassionate and caring.. Ive decided to go for it.. Sorry for the long post.. I have been with my H for ten years.. Im 29 and we have been married for 2 years. Lived together for nine years. We also have a beautiful 3 yr old son who is sturggling with all this.. In the past year we have had some struggles, my H got a second DUI in Oct 2010.. he had one nine years prior he does not have an acohol problem.. This seemed to bring us closer together things were great or so i thought… We beleived that my h was going to lose his job because it requires driving, and he seemed to get more down as the court day loomed closer.. Easter 2011 he was begging me to expand our family.. I hesitated due to the uncertainty of our future. Things were moving along fine until this june his court date came in the mail.. All hell broke loose.. he started staying out late at nights, going away on softball trips, spending all the money we diligently saved for his DUI. So needless to say i was being a wife and was upset over some of this adolescent behavior. All this time i thought he was just sowing his oats before house arrest.. In PA house arrest is mandatory for second DUI offense.. So I let this behavior go.. Court date came and he got the minumum of everything… It was the best case scenario exactly what we were hoping for. I was looking forward to my life settling back down. Sept 22nd he went on 30 days house arrest. Oct 1st he told me that he wanted a divorce. I was blindsided. Devastated I didnt believe it. Four days later he told me there was someone else. WTF!!!!! SO cliche but they work together.. He came clean on everything and I checked cell phone records to prove it. Mid July they started sending a few texts here and there. Second week In Aug. it really strted heating up. He stayed a night with her over Labor Day. Then left me on Oct 21st. the moment his house arrest was over and moved in with OW. He slept with her and two weeks later he left his wife for a girl he has only known for two months.. Now he lives with her an hour away, je doesnt have a license so she has to take him everywhere he hardly sees his son because I won’t let him go to the OW’s house. Even though he is pushing so hard for all this.. I told him if he is still with this girl in six months then my son can go there, but its unaaceptable to introduce your son to your 1 month girlfriend. Am i horrible for keeping my son away? And am i crazy to think that his relationship is doomed because its unreal to leave your wife for someone u barely even knew?
i could see if this was a months long affair but a coupla months? i feel crazy?
Hi Toddlermom, So sorry to hear of what you are going through. In my opinion, though I think that your husband has the right to see his son, he should have to do so in your home and on your terms. You don’t know this person and you don’t know what kind of a household she runs, etc. Error on the side of caution. I think that you are accurate in your thinking that his relationship with this person will eventually fizzle out , but take this time to work on you to become strong both mentally and physically and be there for your child. Both of you will need all the strength you can muster.
We had our first ever Christmas at our holiday home at a lake, as we had milked cows for a living, previously, and had never had the holidays off – those girls don’t take a day off, lol! I had just lost all of his extended family (big family falling out) who I was close to, we always had a huge family Christmas, with about 50-60 people every year, at our place (third generation farm, “home” to many!) and we were on our own, with my mother dead since 2001, and all my siblings living overseas. I was really needing a positive one, and it seemed quite nice, I made a huge effort, taking a beautiful tree down there, and preparing a gourmet feast – until I later realised the reason he went off on a couple of long walks alone on the day – time to talk to the OW, gag. Holidays pretty tainted for many reasons now, just have to keep it up now for the kids.
Had a pretty good session with counsellor today, I went on my own, OH had a prior commitment (not a very good look, lol!) Was reminded of who I am, and some helpful tips about remembering and building on that, and got some stuff off my chest that counsellor didn’t have prior knowledge of, and he was very supportive, and he now understands more about why I have got so stuck. He reminded me that my shutting myself off from friends, etc has been detrimental to my recovery. I now need to carefully assess which one I can have a bit of a heart to heart with. The main reasons I stopped talking to my BFF are that I felt I was “dragging her down” by telling her how I felt, after about a year, and she spoke with her H about a couple of things I told her (which is not surprising, I don’t keep secrets from my OH, we talk about everything) in confidence, and he told someone else, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah, so I didn’t feel “safe” in discussing things, as I felt my community was “judging” me for “not being over it.” I guess I wanted to try to hold my head high again. Better day today, needed it 😉
Thank you so much for the reply. Just want to say I havent been limiting my sons contact with my husband my son desperately needs him. I have just been making sure its at my MIL’s house. I have not been actively pursuing seeing my husband. In fact I avoid contact like the plague.. LOL! My H is having a hard time with this because his parents are old fashioned and he has to see his reflection in their eyes. They are not being very supportive of his decision to leave his family. So he has been renigging on his duties because it is uncomfortable. That being said I just want to say that two weeks ago i decided that i would not allow myself to be a victim anymore. I made the mistake of confronting the OW and came away feeling terrible about myself hearing all the things my H said about me. Good possibility that this was all not true cause she wants me to feel exactly that way. She is not prettier or even skinnier than me which I find hilarious. Once I made that decision to be nice though it was like a ten ton elephant was lifting off of me. I refused to be pulled into petty arguments and fights because I was the one coming off crazy. It was justifying his decision to leave me. I was inadvertently making all the horrible things he said about me true. Now when he tries to pull me in I simply use all the phrases I heard from him in the beginning. For example I say things can only get better, and we just need time to get thru this and we will all adjust and be the better for it. I tell him I will not fight with him that unless we can have mature adult conversations there will be no contact.. I feel better being nice the fighting drug me down made me feel crazy, not in control I have the power to not engage in petty behavior that ultimately makes me feel bad about me. I am a great mom a beautiful, smart and funny person. I am worth it. It has also changed his behavior towards me he is the one reaching out and making contact, trying to pull me into fights sending messages that say I still love u guys. Its working.. Hopefully it will work i am not sure I will still be here when or if he decides to come back but at least I have my dignity. And a treasure in my three year old son 🙂 I have also enrolled in school, trying to find God although havent been a religious person in the past, also i have had some therapy sessions, but havent really found a therapist that I liked.
Well it sure sounds to me like you’re doing all the right things. I would take what the OW said about you with a grain of salt. I know it’s tough to hear but look who it’s coming from and know that your husband is rationalizing his actions by tearing you down. Hang in there!
You’re doing great, TM!!! Way to go, to figure this out so soon!! I found when I pulled back some, my H responded better also, so do things for yourself…you’ll be ok!! ((HUGS))
Oh gosh! it is so difficult to write this~ but I did get to see it up close and personal at the his office Christmas party. As we we sitting *she* came up and inserted herself between us, snuggled her b**bs into my H’s shoulder and said “I just wanted to let you know I am here!” Strange indeed but all things I knew about her it seems she was needy. Later in the evening I was sitting at a table of couples, some have been friends for years, others just co-workers of his. I was alone because my H was off mingling (not his usual style) The table was laughing and telling stories when suddenly everyone fell silent and looked opposite of me~ there was my H and the OW at the other end of the table, she was placed nicely under his arm and snuggled into his chest, he was whispering in her ear then threw his head back and laughed a good old fashioned belly laugh. (we never laugh any more). I was stunned. But almost immediately she left the party. Right then, the DJ called a couples dance and started calling couples by name, each went out and danced but when our name was called~ all I could see was my H walking away from the table. So there I sat, all alone at the table. I held my composure and visited a few more minutes , then went to find my H. When I found him, the look on his face was the “oh sh*t~ I’ve been caught” look
That night I sat up and recalled all the business trips he had taken with her, he told me what she ate, told me about not finding the hotel and laughing, calling to say he only had a minute because he was meeting her for for wine in the bar, telling me about her marriage, the phone calls he took in the garage, the evenings he left our home because she was flying in and needed a lift to the hotel, the lunch dates and dinner dates when she was in town (all in the name of the business), the company picnic with me seated on one side of H and her on the other!
The next day I asked him to sit with me and he said he wanted to watch the game, so I just blurted out “I made a plan to leave you!” He left me in our bedroom and went to watch the game for 2 hours before he came back and asked why!
We are now 10 months out and looking forward to another office party in 8 weeks~ ick ick ick.
As if all that was not humiliating enough, on Jan 1 I injured my knee and was in a knee brace from thigh to ankle~ I couldn’t leave! The party was mid-Jan. and I had to where that brace to the party. I was not embarrassed but I sure think he was!
It’s funny how a little distance can make u feel so much better. I started to realize that i was actually believing the things he said. Nothing he is saying or doing is rational so why take his word for what kind of person I am. On a happier note I saw a group of my hubby’s best friends last night. And they were actually like he is crazy and he has lost all respect in this town.. We live in a very small town and have had all the same friends since high school so its good to hear that i am not the only one who thinks he is crazy… LOL! i am pretty positive that the joke will be on him. Noone in their rigth mind not even single ppl go out three or four times sleep together once and and move in together that is just a recipe for disaster.
I just found this site. It’s my first visit. My husband is 41 and has been having an EA with a 23 year old girl he works with. In the span of 3 weeks, there was 900 text messages, over 400 minutes of phone calls from his cell and who knows how much contact from other phones and work emails. It supposedly lasted almost 3 months and is supposedly over. My DD was after a few weeks of having a knot in my stomach about his behaviour. I remember staying up one night to check his cell phone when he went to sleep… nothing. He cleared his sent, received and deleted files. He became distant, combative and extremely selfish. One Sunday afternoon he received a text. I asked him who it was from and he said ‘no idea.’ He said he would call the number to find out and it turned out to be this girl. He acted surprised and there was a cool conversation. At the end of the call, she said “Say hi to (your wife).” That seemed so off.
The next night I checked his cell phone bill and that’s when I found out about the emotional affair. He has never fully confessed all of their behaviours, and like most of you, he blamed me for being unavailable and unapproachable. That’s why he developed this ‘friendship,’ as she was someone who would ‘listen’ to him. If I hear it was “just someone who would listen” one more time, I think I’ll self-destruct. I’ve ridden this horrible roller coaster of emotions this past two months. We have 5 and 6 year old girls who have overheard some of our conversations, and my 6 year old is questioning whether she’ll have a ‘new mom.’ In my heart (and gut), I know there’s still contact. He is travelling right now and after a late night conversation, he said he needed to sleep. I called him a few minutes later to remind him of something and the room’s phone was busy. He said he fell asleep and the iPad knocked the phone off the cradle. The biggest challenge for me is whether I spend time trying to repair our 14 year relationship and move forward, or do I cut bait and start over while I’m 39 and able to bounce back (relatively) easily.
I find I’ll be walking along the street having a great afternoon, when suddenly a song or a smell will trigger my current circumstance and I’ll break down in uncontrollable sobs. I’ve realized that I can make it with my daughters on my own and I know I don’t deserve to live a life of suspicion. My husband will only admit to events that I have clear evidence about (ie. phone bills) and I don’t want to live a life looking for the evidence to try and find out truths.
When is enough, enough? When do you say that your spirit and your soul is so badly broken that you need to leave your spouse to make repairs? Do you think cheating spouses ever take full responsibility for the hurt and pain they cause everyone around them?
Foolish…this is a terrible place to be and I’m sorry to see you on here…I think before you make ANY decision, read over this site, asks LOTS of questions of us…and then make a decision.
I can say that the no contact rule is the number one thing you’ve got to demand! You cannot recover form this, if he is still having contact….and if he refuses, then you need to make a decision based on that…
We are here for you, this is NOT an easy road to travel at all…just read, educate yourself, cry when you need to, and find someone you trust that you can confide in! I kept my H’s EA a secret for awhile,(other than my mom and she’s old school, just forgive and forget) and looking back, it was the wrong thing to do!
So find someone to talk to, someone who will NOT tell you it’s no big deal,someone that understands that this can destroy a marriage if let alone!!
Here is a link that was posted on here…you might want to give it to your H to read…and see what his response is…http://www.positivearticles.com/Article/Emotional-Affair-Have-You-Entered-a-Danger-Zone/46224
Also, in a posting on here from April 28 2011…there is a GREAT article on Shifting Responsibility to the Cheater…it’s a great article!!
It really opened my eyes up to the fact that I was doing EVERYTHING to heal my marriage, while my H was sitting on the sidelines, doing nothing!!
So read this blog and educate yourself first, then make a decision…
Sorry for you Foolish…foolish. The first rule he has to abide by is COMPLETE transparency; meaning nothing he does, texts, calls, etc., is without your knowledge (no deleting – you can check the cell phone records every day – I did at first to make sure he wasn’t lying to me). He has to come clean about his whereabouts and who he is talking to. Then you can begin to work on yourself. Make yourself strong by taking care of you and the girls. If he is still in the “fog” then you will have to be tough and tell him that he has to make a choice, you or the OW. That will be hard but it only makes you look weak if you beg and plead for him to stop. Draw the line in the sand and then see what he does. It’s hard but that is a first step. Something about these CSs is that they blame you if you are weak – do not accept responsibility for his choices – tell him that. Until he is out of the “fog” I don’t think it is productive to start looking at how there was a problem in the marriage. You have to get his attention.
If you make it that far, can you afford counseling? I have found it wonderful to keep me from hammering and obsessing about the affair. It has also helped me understand my part in the mess (I didn’t cause him to look somewhere else but I had withdrawn in the marriage). Also, reading as much of this blog will give you insights on your behavior.
As for knowing when enough is enough…well, that depends on what you want. I don’t get where he is – does he want to stay with you or has he said? Has he shown any remorse? What does he say? How do you feel about trying to repair the marriage? This is a difficult journey and you have to decide if he is worth it. It’s just a personal decision that, like Paula said, you’ll know. For right now, take the tough approach and see what his reaction is. That may give you some clues. Read Linda’s regrets about how she acted at the beginning – we all have. Learn from our mistakes and be strong!!
Good luck!!!
Foolish…foolish, Firstly, you seem such an emotionally intelligent woman. You already seem to understand to trust your gut about your suspicions, and they are probably right. I think all you can do, at the moment, whilst your H is “in the fog” is keep looking after yourself, and your girls. He may well wake up and sort it out, I feel like it is quite helpful if you have a time frame in mind, and work towards that. By that, I mean things like, if you feel counselling would be helpful, if he won’t come by a certain date, or if he is asked to change his phone number/stop contact with her, etc, be prepared to think about separation. He needs to know that even if (in his mind) it is “just a friendship” it is hurting you, immensely, and if he loves you, he needs to show you that by halting his contact with her.
In answer to your final question, you will know when enough is enough, this is a very painful journey, but you will know, and yes, I do think CSs often do take responsibility for their actions, my OH looks back on this trail of destruction and shakes his head in disbelief, wondering WTF, and desperately trying to repair anything he can, but not all will come to this place, unfortunately. You know who he used to be, is your gut feeling that he will recover, is this a kind of “madness” or was this always lying in the background of his psyche (upbringing, past, attitudes to other people’s affairs, etc)
I really wish you all the strength and love, you’re so right, you will be alright,whichever way the cookie crumbles, and I certainly understand your thinking, about being 39, and not waiting too long to start again, if you need to. I’m in my early 40s, but with much older children than you, and it resonates with me. Economically, and having the last vestiges of my youth (lol) lingering about, you definitely see the advantages to cutting out the rot, and trying to create a better future, without the pain, only you will know. Take care xxx
Thanks for the responses. What a wonderful blessing this site is for people trying to figure out yesterday, today and tomorrow.
It sounds like your husband has an acute awareness of the pain he has caused to both you and your children. What do you think helped him get there? I struggle daily with the fact that the man I married was honest, loving and committed. After his affair, I don’t see him as that person anymore. The reason I fell in love with him in the beginning is no longer relevant and I don’t know how to re-build a new kind of love.
While I’ve had many wonderful and appropriate words as of late from him, acknowledging his lies and affair, I see little action. He still makes sure that his needs are met and everything else seems secondary. There hasn’t been a special evening planned for us, an appointment for something special, a breakfast in bed, a kind note or letter… nothing. Maybe this was part of the reason he had an affair in the first place – it was all about him.
We’re going to counselling and I’m going to find a counsellor for me to work this through. Are there suggestions for the kinds of questions to ask with a counsellor? Lately, I have trouble coping and want to just grab my girls and go for a drive and long holiday. I don’t want to live the life I’m living with him and know that I deserve so much more.
Hi guys, I had issues in my relationship. (Cheating husband) , he played the good guy for so long, I decided to follow my guts. I hired a hacker ([email protected]) to hack into his phone so I can see for myself, and boom. My instincts were right. He is the scumbag I thought he was, let me know what lengths you guys have gone To get the truth.