Two months in…

Hello,

Like so many of you, I can’t believe I’m here. I suppose I’m looking for some words of advice. I found out just over 2 months ago that my now husband had a ONS with someone a few weeks before our wedding. It was someone he worked with. We were married in the summer last year and I thought everything was perfect.

He owned up to it after 6 months. I think the guilt got to him. I was of course extremely shocked. I’ve never seen him or anybody so distraught. I absolutely believe him when he says it was the biggest mistake of his life and I truly believe it’s only happened once in the 9 years we’ve been together. It’s so completely out of character.

To give our relationship some perspective, it wasn’t perfect. I certainly have been difficult to be around in some ways. I refused to be intimate a lot of the time, I have nagged at him for stupid things, argued about money a lot. Planning a wedding FOUR times due to covid really affected both of us and there’s generally been a lot of stress. The biggest thing is our work - I work an office job and he worked in restaurants with long, late night shifts. We rarely saw each other, never had days off together. We were ships in the night. He said he was lonely. He was also extremely drunk - I know of the exact night it happened, he was with a group of work colleagues as he was actually leaving this job to move to a normal day job like me. Now I know that absolutely NONE of this is an excuse and he should have spoken to me if he felt lonely or unseen but I strangely almost understand.

Here is a big reason as to why I do understand. About 10 months prior to him doing it, I had a night out where I was very close to doing it myself. In fact it was one of my friends who had to stop me. Now I’m not proud of this in anyway, and I felt ashamed of myself for it but I was pulled out of the situation before I was physical in any way. I didn’t kiss someone else - just very flirtatious but also very drunk. I woke the next day feeling sick about it - knowing that I didn’t want anything to ruin my relationship because I love him so much. I’m sure I’ll have a few responses saying being drunk isn’t an excuse - and I know that - but people do stupid things when they are drunk.

I’ve since found out that before this, I was the only person he’d slept with. We met when I was 22 and he was 20. I’d had my suspicions he’d never been with anyone else, but had never asked. Again, not an excuse but I (maybe naively) understand why when someone has thrown themselves at him (again, I believe him when he says that’s how it happened) his drunken brain has allowed him to do it - last chance of someone else before you get married etc.

I guess that’s the gist of it. He has done everything he should do since telling me. He cut all ties with the person and hasn’t seen her since. He’s been there for me, listened, and I know we love each other very much. We have talked more about our lives and I do feel like our relationship can be stronger. The only person who knows outside the two of us is his mother. She has been a huge help for me but I haven’t told any of my family and friends as once I do, I can’t take that decision back. My overwhelming feeling since day 1 was that I was staying and we were going to make this work. I have good days and bad days of course, but I feel in a decent place since I’ve found out.

I’m not sure why I’ve joined. Maybe just to get this off my chest because I’m mostly alone in it. We’re looking into counselling but getting a space is a nightmare at the moment.

Thank you for listening if you got this far. I hope you’re all doing good ❤️

7 comments posted: Wednesday, February 1st, 2023