SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’m so lost. We closed on our dream home 1 week ago after surviving major financial infidelity 3 years ago. I had plenty of reason to divorce him then but my kids were young and I didn’t work.
Anyway a secret credit card came out in the closing process for the house. I found 2-4 instances of visiting massage parlors per year since 2022. He claims just HJ but the charges are $50 and $100 tip. Idk what else was happening in there. It also seems he hasn’t done it in over a year unless he paid cash. I can’t find any recent atm withdrawals though.

Anyway my point here is that I’m in the middle of moving into a home I can’t afford without his income. There are so many things with moving that are difficult and I do want his help with. So I’m letting him stick around until me and the kids are settled. We didn’t ask to be in the middle of moving chaos on our own. Then he’ll move in with his parents for hopefully a month. He doesn’t want to but I’m insisting he be uncomfortable.

I have told my bestie in NY but I haven’t told anyone in person. My therapist advised me not to "detonate anything yet". But I feel so fake when everyone asks if we’re excited about the move. I also feel so alone and want support of friends. But if I tell them and then we reconcile, it will be weird. It also might make him less agreeable in the divorce process.

How do you deal with this urge to lean on friends when you can’t yet?

I am not entirely sure if I got it right.

You are not speaking about financial infidelity now, but about your husband betraying you with prostitutes right?

Full blown adultery if that’s the case, no matter how minimizing the cheater is with "it’s just a…"

It’s just nothing. It doesn’t matter what sex act or emotional act is involved, once you cross that boundary is infidelity and it’s all the same.

The just thingy is a justification the cheater tells himself to deny they are a PoS and still a good person, if they can gaslight you into forgiveness by "accepting the is just a… new boundary".

And this guy also betrayed you financially before.

He doesn’t care about you, and for sure you deserve better.

Now you need to tell because the weight of feeling alone is crushing you.
Here you can freely get it off your chest and finding people who will hear you, understand you and advise you.

Anonymously so there’s also that protection.

Now friends and others.
They could be helpful or it could backfire.

People who have not been hit by infidelity tend to react differently than what you need because it is a very uncomfortable topic to discuss.

Best case you get stupid platitudes that help you nothing and make you feel stuck.
Worst case it gets out of control and you can’t get it back once it is out.

Therapist suggestion to wait has merits, you will share with friends (make sure the right kind of friend) when you have regained your center at least in part and have more clarity.

Not because friends are bad, betrayal trauma can only be healed by yourself, when you talk to friends what you do is talking to a mirror and the friend will somewhat mirror your own clarity engaging with it. This very moment they can only engage with trauma and that is not what you want to see reflected back. Not now at least.

Unless you have someone who went through betrayal already, in that case they can help you.

Here you also have a lot of people of that kind.
You have been heard and you will survive this.

How do you deal with this urge to lean on friends when you can’t yet?

Posting here sure helped me a lot. I've only told 1 of my friends about it, and no one in my family for reasons similar to yours.

Having a safe space like this with the support and wisdom from others who have been in our shoes has helped me so much. Just typing it out and getting feedback meant a lot to me.

I think you're right to be careful who you tell. If there's any chance at reconciliation it could go smoother if the whole world doesn't know about it. Your friends and family love you, and it's because of that you might get advice that's counter to your goal, and can make things harder to deal with.

If you end up choosing divorce, then I'd say all bets are off and you tell whoever you want to tell.

[This message edited by Pogre at 5:17 PM, Monday, April 20th]

Thank you for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully. That is so helpful and made me consider telling friends in a way I didn’t before. I was thinking I need to get it off my chest but hadn’t considered I will have to handle their reactions too.
I’m thankful to have found this board.

Here is self contained and you have direct access to people who are specifically going through, or went through your same ordeal, this is helpful (at any stage of recovery) because you receive understanding not managed and guessed empathy (friends mean well but you know, you know trauma only when you meet it. We ourselves seen infidelity differently until it hit us, is human)

The need to tell.

Is important. You have emotional chaos because of identity shattering, is natural.

Keeping in the storm will only shake the debris of your broken reality around and cause collateral damage (often ptsd follows).

You don’t need to hear from someone that it’s ok or it’ll be okay. This is one of those times when it simply isn’t okay.

You need to be heard, just heard. voicing helps to process and you will feel it.

You have been heard sister

Once I knew what was going to happen, D, I told my hairdresser the why. Pretty soon I had people coming up to me expressing sympathy, asking what I needed, offering to throat punch him, etc.

I live in a small town and used those resources!

Welcome to SI, sorry you had a reason to find us, but glad you did. This is the place to tell, us members have experience on the full range of things that will come up. You do not want this out in your friend group right away, most people that have not walked in our shoes do not understand.

Your are in the early stages, the range of emotions, decisions, and awful feelings that are ahead of you will blindside you. Don't accept any minimizing from him, anything he did in secret IS INFIDELITY. Stick around and share your journey. Best wishes to you.

First person I called was my oldest brother. I talked with him several times a day for weeks. He kept me from losing my mind.

I told my accountant. I gave up on my business finances, I just didn't care about anything. He took over my books and cleaned everything up.

I told several other people but no one in our circle. For me talking helps. IMO if you need to talk with someone then do it. If that makes him uncomfortable, oh well, actions have consequences.

You do whatever you need to to feel better

I'm sorry you are here, but this is a great resource so keep using the SI forums and this community.

I lived exactly what Pogre said in an earlier response. After D Day 1 when I was working toward R, I told no one other than my sister and one close friend. They both were tremendously helpful, but I also held back from contacting them as much as I wanted to (both lived several states and time zones away from me) because I didn't want to become a burden on them. Other than those two, I felt extremely alone and suffered by myself, and it was horrible.

After 12 years experienced another D Day and realized all of that R was false. I asked H to leave the house immediately and filed for divorce the following Monday. This time around, I was totally open with what had happened. I didn't go out of my way to tell people, but I did - for example - tell my team at work that H was a serial cheater and I'd chosen to divorce him. Shared not to bash my XH but in the context of "I'm not sure what the D process involves, so there may be times during the work day where I need to be on calls with my attorney or make appearances in court, and I'm going to need to be flexible with my work schedule as those things come up."

The experience the second time around was a million times better. Having all that support and so many people helping me through it was amazing. Of course, I wasn't trying to reconcile, and I agree that if you share with others and reconcile, you may have others' opinions to deal with. That's not easy, either, but it might still be worth the risk if your alternative is to go through this largely alone.

I am really feeling your pain - so sorry you have to go through this!

There’s really no clear right or wrong when it comes to whether, what, and with whom you share this kind of information. There are good reasons on both sides, and honestly, the answer can depend a lot on your specific situation.

For me, it was a huge relief to tell my closest friends what had happened. Without their comfort and their very real, hands-on help getting through everyday life after the trauma I honestly don’t think I’d still be here. Fact. But there’s also a flip side: now that I’m trying to reconcile with my WH, that openness comes at a cost. Everyone has an opinion, and that’s not always easy to deal with.

In my case, there was another factor: the OW was part of a community where we would’ve seen each other every week. If I hadn’t told anyone, my only option would’ve been to leave that community. By being open, though, the community ended up excluding her, and I was able to stay - and that gave me a lot of stability.

If you feel strong and grounded enough to get through this on your own or with the support of the amazing SI community there’s definitely a lot to be said for keeping things to yourself for now and maybe opening up to others later on.

Whom to tell? IMHO anyone and everyone that can help you and/or has a good reason to know what’s going on. So like if Jill from accounting – whom you know through work and you occasionally have a drink with, or eat lunch with, asks about the move – just fake happiness. If it’s your childhood bestie who has offered support through thick and thin and you believe could support you now – then share.

You mention financial infidelity, as in the past. The new discovery shows it’s still going on, plus the sexual infidelity.

"Only HJ" isn’t really an excuse. He got off sexually with someone else. You talk about kids (as in plural). Ask him if he would be OK with one of them (once they turned 18) paying for college giving hand-jobs at some seedy massage parlor. After all it would "only" be hand-jobs… Financially makes sense – get’s them a degree with zero student debt, and based on his present financial behavior then you two won’t have anything saved for their college…
If he is morally opposed to that idea (and the opposition can only be moral because the financial reasoning is pretty sound) – why does he think it’s OK to hire someone else’s daughter or son to get him off sexually?

IF you two decide to reconcile I have one very basic suggestion:
Make it a demand that finances are totally 100% transparent.
He earns a paycheck – you know when he get’s paid, the amount and where the money goes. Same to you – you become transparent too.
After all – in Texas and nearly all other states – income earned while married is viewed as marital income. That card he used for his sex-workers? Chances are that in divorce he could list half the outstanding balance as marital debt.
What access other than viewing privileges and what control you have over each other’s use of money is something you can discuss and adjust. If he wants to take 200 per month to place on his not-secret-anymore-card for "massages" then you can’t really prevent that, but at least you know and can decide what you want to do about that.

I can share that both me and my wife have access to every single dime that both of us make, and we know where every single dime goes too. Doesn’t mean I can’t buy fishing-gear, but it means I can’t hide it from my wife. One of us might ask the other about some transaction and the other will explain the purpose, but there is no way that either I nor she could get away with a transaction to the happyending_massage without the other’s knowledge.