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Within the last week, I found out my wife of 8 years was having a revenge affair for the past year. She claimed to have only had sex one time with her AP. Since last August, the month she had sex with him, I was being ridiculed for working so much and being barraged with negativity for being distant. I am so heart broken and don’t know what to do. I don’t have family or friends to talk to.

Welcome to SI.

Sorry you are here and that you had to find us but please know this is a safe place for you to start to wrap your head around your WW's infidelity.

Saying she had a revenge affair do you mean you cheated on her previously?

Please head up to the Healing Library in the upper left hand corner and read all you can.

Post often and know you are not alone. We understand your pain and heartache.

(((hugs)))

In 2014 3 years after initially being married I moved out because I was unhappy and dated another girl. This girl I had know through high school. 2010 I got out of the military with ptsd. During my 2014 time with the another person, I was using them for emotional support that I wasn’t getting at home, so I did have an emotional affair. Once I realized I was wrong I left her to move back in with my wife. I never had an intimate connection or relationship with another person. Thats just not who I am. So to find out my wife had sex with another man devastated me. So now I am living with knowing she went out of her way, planned the attack, and intentionally hurt me out of spite and revenge. I’m not sure if I can get through this alone. I just don’t have anyone to talk to, so I came here.

Devastation is normal. This is traumatic, not in the way that war is, but it's still traumatic.

One thing you can do is apply the methods you use to manage your military PTSD to your feelings about being betrayed. Another is to feel your feelings in a safe place at safe times - cry, beat a pillow, scream (if you won't heard, so no one calls the cops), write. Yet another is to find a good IC. Once you start processing your feelings of grief, anger, fear, and shame, you'll be able to find your path to recovering.

Was she planning her RA for 4 years? That seems farfetched, IMO. It's more likely - again, JMO - that she used your A as an after-the-fact justification for her own cheating. Calling it an RA is her way of blaming you for her failure.

You say you didn't get emotional support from her after leaving the military. You describe her attacking you last Summer. Does she give you a lot of the support you want at other times?

One thing I found very useful was https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/healing_library/reconciliation/what-every-wayward-spouse-needs-to-know.asp? - it helped me define what I wanted from my W.

If it makes sense to you, print it out and ask your W to read it. I recommend as strongly as possible that you not tell your W about SI, especially since she's angry at you. If she knows you're here, she can track you and do damage.

With a history of PTSD, I think it might be wise for you to be talking with a therapist. Intimate betrayal very often results in symptoms of depression as we process the grief. It would be a good thing to get out ahead of that. It's a matter of brain function, the sensitivity of the amygdala and all that. You might be at greater risk, I don't know. SI can be great moral support, but it's not the same as being assessed by a professional.

In the meantime, you'll find The Healing Library in the upper left corner of you screen. There a lots of good articles there to get you started. The biggest priority, of course, is engaging in good self-care; eat right, sleep when you can, avoid alcohol, stay hydrated, and get some light exercise. See your doctor for STD screening and to talk about stress management. Emotional stress takes a toll on the body.

Don't be surprised or hurt if your post gets moved to the General forum. If this is a "mad-hatter" situation, where both parties have transgressed, JFO isn't the best fit. If memory serves, there is a "mad-hatter thread" in the I Can Relate section where you might find some thought-provoking reading. Do give some thought to getting IRL support as well though.

We are glad you came here. Sorry for the reasons why but we welcome you with open arms.

Nothing you did or didn't do made your WW cheat. She made concious choice to cheat (that is all on her).

Now, how do you move forward?

Is your WW remoreful? Does she want to actively invest in this marriag? What do you need answered to start to TRY to heal?

It is a lot, and I am so sorry. But fundementally is is not about the "blame game" but about WHY and WHAT can and are willing to do to move forward?

(((hugs)))

Let me see if I got this right? You left the military in 2010 with PTSD. In 2011 you jump into marriage. In 2014 you move out and start shacking up with a high school GF which you say is an EA only (which is also cheating). You don't give a timeline of how long you were living with the GF. You then feel guilty and move back in with your wife only to find out she cheated most of 2018. Does this about sum it up?

I feel bad for you. Your wife was wrong to have cheated before getting D first. But you had to know that with your previous actions something like this could happen. Put yourself in your WW shoes for a moment. She had to deal with all the baggage that you brought into the marriage I know PTSD is not your fault but it is baggage nonetheless.

Marriage is a hard proposition at best. IMHO you got married way, way too soon with the difficulty's you came home with. You aren't emotionally ready for the rigors of marriage. With PTSD you needed a therapist...not a wife.

During my 2014 time with the another person, I was using them for emotional support that I wasn’t getting at home, so I did have an emotional affair. Once I realized I was wrong I left her to move back in with my wife. I never had an intimate connection or relationship with another person. Thats just not who I am.

Hi AZ. Welcome to SI. I am also a madhatter, though I primarily identify as a WS because my A was a four month EA/PA and my BH had two ONS, one of which was an RA. We both feel that my A was more serious, though it was good for us when we finally stopped rugsweeping his brief As and acknowledged their impact on our relationship.

One of the generally (though not universally) accepted maxims of SI is that IC needs to come before MC, so that both parties can heal themselves before working on the marriage. This is an especially tricky business if you are a MH. Unfortunately, as a WS, I see a lot of wayward thinking in your post. You blame your A on the fact that you weren't getting emotional support at home. Gently, that assertion is not any more valid than your WW blaming her A on your working hard or being distant. Nothing in the marriage justified cheating for either one of you. You need IC not only to help heal from the devastation of being betrayed, but also to face the reasons why you feel entitled to be the betrayer. Again, I say this as someone who has been through it personally and understands that you may need to triage the order in which you take these tasks on.

I also echo the advice to keep SI private if you can. Sometimes it works to have both partners on at the same time; my BH is here reading, though he rarely posts. However, there have also been recent instances where it backfired spectacularly, especially when the OBS got into the mix. For now, at least, think carefully before compromising your safe space.

I'm glad to see you here.

Hello AZ,

As others have pointed out there are alot of holes here.

You say you left the ow to move back home to your wife after an undisclosed amount of time. Does this mean you were living with her? And you claim it was not a physical affair? That seems a bit farfetched to me, i cant imagine your wife believed it either.

So what i see here is so much hurt. You had your affair bc you were hurting and couldnt turn to your wife for support. If she blamed her affair on your cheating years earlier it may be that she has been in such pain for all those years building resentment and torturing herself, never processing. Now you are back in that position of pain though now as being the betrayed and this cycle needs to stop.

Counseling is the most important thing now, for you both. Learn to communicate so you can turn to eachother succussfully, or discover that there are reasons you cant turn to eachother to which separating will be key. Either way, you have to work throught it to discover.

Good luck

AZ,

If there was no addressing your EA prior, there needs to be some balance if you two proceed. I know you feel betrayed by your WS’s PA, but remember that generally, to women the EA is a worse betrayal.

Helping your Spouse Heal highlights that in the instance of RAs there DOES need to be a venue to address both sides. But, it CAN’T happen simultaneously- So bottom line is there needs to be some ability to draw lines between the two As...

Likely the best way to get to this point? IC. For a while. And then MC to help devise/mediate an action plan for how/when to timeshare on discussing these competing events, among other things.

I can tell you what she's thinking, bc it's what everyone here is thinking...

You moved in with your EA partner, and claim it never went PA?

Yeah...if you were here telling us that these were your wife's claims, we would all be telling you she was a liar.

It's not actually clear that he was living with the OW, just that he moved away from his wife. He says he and OW "dated," which didn't sound like cohabitation to me. Actually, the whole sequence is vague. I can't tell which came first, his leaving his W or his reconnection with the girl from high school. Because he termed it an A, I assumed she was a contributing factor, but that is an assumption.

ETA: the "once I realized I was wrong" comment also confuses me. It's fairly obvious that you can't move out and date other people while staying married. What was the nature of the realization?

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 5:42 PM, May 11th (Saturday)]

Thank you all for the replies. Clearly I didn’t explain enough before I started to be judged.

I never said I was an angel and didn’t have some EA of my own. I needed emotional support and someone else besides my wife was giving it to me. When I left, I moved into y parents house and “dated” someone, as in hung out and talked about my mental health and went hiking and did stuff to help me get through the downward spiral I was riding. It never turned into a PA. As mentioned before, that is something I would never do. My EA was absolutely wrong and I feel terrible about it, this last for about 3 months. Part of which I was still living with my wife.

I have been dealing with depression for a long time.

She admittedly had a PA in revenge for my EA. This is one of the worst things I have ever had to deal with. I thought I would come here to find a resource to help me understand the psychology of why people intentionally try to hurt someone they love, and hopefully get a better understanding of how to handle it and what I can do to understand the next steps.

Either way, this is what happened. This is what I deserve.

Thank you for your input but I will be signing off from here.

I hope you will reconsider leaving, AZ. The community just needs to understand what happened in order to give appropriate advice. Some posts will be harsher than others, but there is much empathy and support to be had here as well.

(((AZ))) nobody deserves to be cheated on. Nobody. Does your wife want to reconcile? Do you?

Reconciling is an option. Though I’m still having a hard time seeing why someone would intentionally hurt someone.

Reconciling is an option for me if she could get counseling or therapy. This is something she refused to do as well.

Reconciling has not been determined an option for her.

I am here to help me understand this whole thing.

To be honest I'm not sure anyone can ever really understand why, it's more about coming to terms. It doesn't sound like she's remorseful. Have you read in the healing library? You can't reconcile with her blaming you. Is she still in contact?

I am here to help me understand this whole thing.

The quick Cliff Notes answer is that she is a person with poor boundaries and poor coping mechanisms. These existed way before you ever met her, and there is NOTHING that you did....even with your poor prior decisions....that made her have an affair. That is 100% on her.

The reason(s) that she deliberately went through with these actions were not to punish you. These are merely the excuses. The real reasons that she did this? See above paragraph. Did she mind hurting you? I don't know. That is something that she will really have to figure out herself. But ask yourself this--if she was only having a revenge affair to hurt you, why did it go on for so long? Why did she hide it from you? Wouldn't the more likely answer be that she used your affair as an excuse for her poor behavior?

AZ I’m so sorry you’re here. I understand your wife is calling this a RA but I call bull on that. She’s using it as an excuse to minimise her behaviour and put the blame firmly at your door. I’d agree with others who say she has poor boundaries and coping mechanisms.

Your wife will need to dig much deeper than that to work out why she hurt you so badly. Right now it seems it’s clear she has no guilt and no regret just anger.

Read up on the 180 and try to get some emotional distance from her as I should imagine you must be in pain dealing with the affair and her subsequent lack of empathy.

No one deserves to be cheated on. No one. Please keep posting, this is a fantastic place to find support.