SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My WS and I have been in recovery for almost 3 years. In October 2023, I discovered his affair. It was long distance/online-messages, phone calls, etc.-but it was both emotional and sexual.

We spent a long time in counseling. He was doing all the "right" things. Things seemed to be going well. I really thought we were in a better place.

Until yesterday.

I found out that he has sent inappropriate messages to my sister. Yes, MY SISTER. It was mostly bad memes and inappropriate jokes (which I don’t care about), but there were a couple sexual comments thrown in. Apparently this has been going on for months, since at least December. At least once, she told him that the comments made her uncomfortable.

What makes this even more awful is what was happening in my life while this was going on. My dad had major surgery, and I was helping care for him. I was furious with my sister because she barely bothered to visit him, even when he was in the hospital five minutes from where she worked. My WS was the person I leaned on. He comforted me and agreed with me about what an ass my sister was being…while apparently sending her what he now calls "flirty" messages.

My dad died in March. Within a couple of months, my FIL started having serious health problems, and I spent a lot of time helping and visiting him. He passed away in August.

The past year has been incredibly hard, and I’m sure I haven’t been as affectionate or supportive toward my WS as I normally would be. But that is not an excuse. He could have talked to me. We could have gone back to therapy. There were so many better choices available.

Apparently he told her he was drunk when he crossed the lines, and honestly, I don’t doubt it. He is an alcoholic. Not a drink all day alcoholic, but the kind who comes home from work and drinks 10–16 large beers between then and bedtime. And regardless of whether he was drunk or whether he considered the messages "just joking," it’s not ok.

Now he is telling me how sorry he is and how badly he wants to make our marriage work. He says most of the messages were jokes, but he admits he crossed the line a couple of times.

It’s humiliating having to face my sister now. I know this is about his choices and isn’t a reflection of my worth, but I feel like she’s going to think I wasn’t enough for him so he needed more.

I don’t know what to do. I love him. But I told him that if he ever had another affair, I was done. I feel like if I make another attempt at reconciliation, I’m telling him that this is okay. I know this technically wasn’t an affair, but he crossed boundaries. I also may be blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Most of

He keeps asking me what he needs to do to fix this, and I honestly don’t know. I don’t know if this can be fixed, or even if I want to try. But after 30 years together, I’m also not sure I’m ready to give up.

I guess I’m mostly looking to get this off my chest and maybe get some advice. I’ve thought about sharing this site with him, but he would immediately know this post was mine, and I don’t know if that would make things worse.

For now, my intent is to do the 180. I was doing okay with that until he tried to reach out and touch me. I completely lost it and told him that his actions had taken away his right to touch me.

I’m just…lost.

TL;DR: Nearly three years into recovery from my WS’s previous emotional/sexual affair, I discovered he had been sending inappropriate jokes and some sexual messages to my sister for months. He blames being drunk, he is an alcoholic but that isn’t an excuse. I feel betrayed, embarrassed, and inadequate, and I don’t know whether to try reconciling again after 30 years of marriage.

Get it off your chest sister for it is the most therapeutic thing you can do as an initial step.

People who haven’t been through infidelity don’t understand how deep the abyss of the trauma is , here you find both sides of the adultery knowing exactly what you are going through.

You have been heard.

Trickle truth, minimization, blame shifting are a classic deflection strategy for a cheater who is unremorseful yet.

Basically, he doesn’t care no matter how much you suffer. He is blaming his dopamine and betrayal addiction to another addiction like if it were a uno reverse card.

And all this from a guy who would be more than happy to fuck his wife’s sister given the chance.

I am not going hard to hurt you, I am calling the girl inside you who is loving and worthy of love and is now bleeding to raise her head up and say out loud that she deserves better, respect in the first place.

You are the prize sister. Put yourself first and clearly state your boundaries.

What you want in your relationship. What things can never be accepted as they will cross your boundaries.

Put it on paper as a small excercise, it will help you to sort through the emotional chaos that is suffocating you right now.

It is also a first step into action, you will feel better.

Breathe deeply, diaphragmatic breathing, do some light excercise, yoga, a walk outside in the silence of nature, keep your head up and look at the trees and the sky. Feel your body, eat and sleep if you can.

It will help immensely to get you good chemicals to fight the bad ones that are flooding your system.

Put yourself first.

You deserve it.

And voice your emotions, we are here for you.

You have been heard.
You deserve inner peace.

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 8:09 AM, Wednesday, September 16th]

^^^What BFTS wrote!!!^^^

Two little words are what your WH "needs to do to fix this:" STOP DRINKING. The bigger issue within him is that he is an addict making selfish choices, and if he does not decide to address that core issue, there isn't much point in arguing about the effects of his addiction on your M. He will need to decide to make that difficult decision and nobody else can make that decision for him.

If you are more or less okay with his drinking, so long as he doesn't commit adultery, please know this will affect how things will continue. And things will deteriorate one way or the other if his drinking doesn't change. He likely will need to stop alcohol completely if he is truly an alcoholic.

For you, deciding you will not live with an active alcoholic might or might not jolt him into taking whatever steps he needs to take next. My father was a serious drinker and like you, my Mother reached a point where she would not let him touch her and she asked him to sleep in a different bedroom. Their marriage ended several years after that when she gave up and fled. He later "hit bottom" and was told by doctors he would die soon unless he stopped drinking and miraculously he did stop.

I am also very sorry about the deaths in your family you have recently suffered. Please know it is at such times that people can find out further unpleasant things about their family as well, because illness and death test everyone's coping mechanisms. This also occurred in my family when my father died at 88 years old, 38 years after stopping alcohol. His heavy drinking throughout our childhoods had left a legacy of fractured relationships among us and my brothers both became substance abusers; I ended up having to cease contact with one of them.

This is all a part of our grief. I'd advise you to seek a supportive IC and your WH could benefit from some peer support to help him control his urge to drink. Don't be his therapist, however. I meant some kind of group therapy or AA.

[This message edited by Superesse at 4:30 PM, Wednesday, September 16th]

This sucks I am so sorry. You are definitely not blowing anything out of proportion. Take some time to recover yourself and put yourself at peace - you don’t have to make any decisions right away. A question I have is did you see the messages? Or were they recounted to you ? I would investigate further to make sure there’s not more going on. There’s no reason your spouse should be texting your sister at all. He definitely is crossing boundaries ; and it shows his lack of commitment to reconciliation. If he is actively drinking that much , he is not working on himself. If he is not working on himself, he’s not going to be able to take care of your heart the way that you deserve it.