SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

None of us have a crystal ball. I THINK I would have chosen to leave if I had found out about this in my 40s. IDK. I know I was very busy then two demanding kids, changing teaching positions several times, which basically means I was a first year teacher each time. I was overwhelmed. So IDK what I would have done.

In my late fifties, I was in shock at discovery. I made decision to stay because of finances, I was about to retire, had worked and saved all my life in order to have a comfortable retirement. I could have left and continued working. But things in schools were changing and not for the better. 37 years and I was just done. If I left him, I'd had half the savings and house equity. As long as he stopped the verbal and emotional abuse, and wasn't acting out with RL women, I'd stay. I wasn't willing to sacrifice more than I already did.

Now, 6 years into retirement, our financial position is fine, splitting everything 50/50 would leave each of us a comfortable life. So finances really aren't a problem.

He's working hard to truly recover. He's simply accepting the process and giving up any arrogance he held on to. It's odd, I don't trust him completely but I really don't care about his porn use. That's his issue, not mine.

While I do agree with the idea that staying with these guys means being vigilant forever it's so much more comp!icated...And very individual.

On the question why we stay?

My SA isn't absolutely horrible in all aspects. He has great work ethics, good credit, never denies me wanting anything materialistic. Whether it's a new car, hair done, etc. He doesn't do drugs or physically harm me. He seldomly drinks. He was drinking a lot more with acting out and realized this. He has placed his own boundary with this in recovery.

He takes care of his own crap that needs to be done. As in he isn't extremely needy. In fact he rarely asks for anything at all. Maybe that's his guilt or issues from childhood.

Yes, I am angry, disappointed and hurt. But I do love him. I am giving him the chance to prove to me he can be the man I deserve since this has been discovered. In the meantime I am working on me. And I won't allow him to rob me of the joy of life.

Been busy and haven't been on in a while.

I joined a group run by my H's CSAT and a betrayal trauma therapist. We are 5 women who have been hurt by our H's extramarital sexual habits. The sessons are Once a week for two hours. I have been twice and it's been an eye-opening experience.

One of the questions posed was why we stay; exactly what you have been discussing here lately.

Most stay because they have hope that their H's acting out is over, that they are doing the work by going to IC or joining a 12 step program. Most of the women also mention financial security, young children, and a strong commitment to their marriage as reason enough to stay and try to work it out.

I am new to the group and listen actively but haven't said too much so far. What I'm observing is a group of women trying to make sense of something that they will never really understand.

The CSAT tries to emphasize that SA is out of their control, that we should be focusing on ourselves, not obsessing, investigating, rescuing or trying to change our H.

I need to think about his way of thinking but I already feel liberated. I am still heartbroken over what he did to me and the children for all those years, but I am trying not to rob myself of any more of my time worrying about him and his nasty habit.

Perhaps he has stopped and will never do it again, perhaps he's continuing or will pick it up again. The point is, I can't control that so why obssess over it? My goal is to try to heal my broken heart, to focus on things that make me happy and stop looking to my H to complete my life.

While he may be by my side and doing all he can to make me feel safe and loved, I can no longer love him unconditionally.

He has forever changed me and I refuse to struggle to get back to my original feelings for him. I refuse to feel guilty about not giving him my heart 100%

He had that and took advantage of my love. My new outlook is a direct consequence of his cheating and he will have to accept that.

Perhaps he has stopped and will never do it again, perhaps he's continuing or will pick it up again. The point is, I can't control that so why obssess over it?

That was a large part of why I wouldn't have made it long-term trying to R. I would have had to stop giving any sort of a damn about him to have stopped worrying about it. I would have had to use condoms and stop kissing on the mouth to stop worrying about it. They endanger us with their activities when they're acting out.

I know that there's no guarantee if I'm ever in a relationship again that that person wouldn't cheat on me. Adding addiction into the equation makes it scary, though. That's a different level of risk. I think it takes a very strong person to live with that risk and make a life for themselves and find happiness. I don't have that kind of strength in me. That would have been a living hell for me. I could detach, but by the time I had detached I was done. Once I realized that I couldn't love him like that anymore due to his cheating, there wasn't anything left to save for me. I saw him reduce me to a nothing in his heart and mind and nothing has ever made me feel more unsafe.

And I won't allow him to rob me of the joy of life

That is admirable, and also not relatable for me. I put a lot into us as a couple and much of my joy was based on our relationship. We became empty nesters 4 years ago and while our youngest ( and most challenging ) D became better adjusted to her new life as a college student, it was finally time for US...however , I learned that he had cheated on me , had an addiction to porn and that pretty much through a wrench into our life and how I envisioned it would be.

@DevatatedDee,

I agree with you 100%. This phase in my recovery allows me to see more clearly. I am seeing things through my eyes, not through his. I have my own goals, my own objectives. Finding happiness by myself. Where he fits into that picture is to be seen. I am now able to see that his behaviour had little to do with me but his recovery and our reconciliation has everything to do with us. He is responsible for his side of it and I’m in charge of mine. Once that is stable, we will see if there is room in my heart for him. Right now I love him because he is the man I married and respect that commitment but At any point I can break that off very easily if things don’t progress for eitherir both of us.

@whoamI62,

He has robbed me of my joy in life long enough. For over 12 years I could never feel genuine happiness because he was irritable, mean, impatient and disrespectful towards me and the children. It affected all aspects of my life including my mothering.

I will not allow him to have any negative impact on my life any longer. My life is different from my marriage which was but an illusion for years.

My life is me, an individual with boundaries and feelings with a lot to offer the world. He can no longer take that from me.

That’s the kind of joy I’m after.

Sure, a happy marriage is part of that but it’s no longer my primary focus right now. He’s not getting that anymore from me and he knows it. If he wants it he has to work for it.

In the meantime, I live the best life I can with plenty of professional and group help.

It doesn't bother me that my relationship/marriage to my husband is conditional.

It always has been, though. Not with regards to addiction, because I had no clue. But absolutely with other behaviors that were important to me. I would only marry a saver. I wouldn't date people that did drugs, let alone marry them. My partner also had to be Christian, be pro-SAHP, and didn't want to use corporal punishment as a form of disciplining our kids.

I also take my vows to say "Hey, these are the conditions under which I will stay with you."

I think unconditional love is only meant for the parent/child relationship, assuming the parents aren't dysfunctional. If parents are dysfunctional, I don't even think unconditional love is appropriate.

Hi All,

My first time posting on SI. I am reluctant to post but I feel it is for my recovery. Reading your posts in this topic, I feel I am home. Many of you have posted your feelings and thoughts that I have felt and thought but could not put into words.

Thank you,

Marie

Hi Marie,

We are all here for you. Share as much or as little as you like. I too am very grateful to this group of wonderful people who only want what's best for each other.

I hope you are finding a way to feel better every day. It's not easy but SI is a good start.

May your journey begin with yourself. You are what's most important now.

Keep in touch.

Hi Marie--I would write more of my own words but Shocked has spoken ever so beautifully all the words I would like to say.

So welcome to our group. You are not alone. SI is a wonderful place that is open 24/7--journaling is one of the many helpful suggestions that is given to help process and overcome the trauma of discovery--many of us have found talking and journaling on SI to be of tremendous help. We hope you do too.

I have not posted in a very very long time. I'm about three and a half years out from DD at this point. At first I never thought I would feel better.

I think we're on the upswing of things....the first 10 months was the worst. Trickle truth and all that stuff.

Thanks to whoever recently posted the recommendation for the betrayed the addicted and the expert podcast, it was helpful and hopeful and put very specific wording to betrayal trauma and all the horrible I felt, still feel since learning of my husband's addiction and betrayal.

Things have gotten remarkably better over the years and I truly feel like the worst is behind us, although sometimes the pain still brings me to my knees.

Our current issue seems to be my spouses nightmares. He's had them periodically since he has been in recovery, but they seem to have gotten worse recently. He's terribly scared of relaps and what that would look like. It's been years since he's acted out/ relapsed/ white knuckled, but the torment remains. I think there's a spiritual element to it, like he can't let himself and his past be at peace. Maybe it's his way of holding on to shame? Not letting himself forget? I don't know. It's sad.... Has anyone spouse experience these things?

I haven't posted in a long while. Husband has a long-standing porn addiction. We had been on a 6-month sexual hiatus at the recommendation of our CSAT and just in the past couple of weeks resumed more active sexual activities. Thanks to the key-logger recording program on the computer he uses I can see that he is getting back into inappropriate youtube videos---some nudity, scantily clad women at car shows and porn conventions, videos of women giving reviews of dildos. He is also deleting the youtube watch history (but not the browser history or youtube search history, doesn't he think of that???). I'm just shaking my head at this. We just get back to being sexual with each other and he starts this crap. He's going to be gone for about 10 days because he will be driving his sister's car across the country because she is moving. There is actually a part of me that thinks his deleting the watch history is hilarious. Is that weird? I bust out laughing every time I see that show up on the computer recording.

Hello Marie yes please feel comfortable here. There is a lot of sharing and acknowledgment within this group.

Secondtime I agree staying is conditional. I have a lot of conditions now.

My HPV prompted cervical biopsy came back fine for now. I'll just need to stay monitored. Good news I guess. Just a warning that even if you and your partner pass all the STD tests with flying colors, high risk HPV can show up months or years later (as was my case.) There's no test for it until it shows up on your yearly pap exam...Ladies make sure you have your yearly pap/hpv tests! You can test negative as the virus lies dormant then becomes active. Once it is active it can cause cell changes that can lead to cancer. I have the high risk type that is believed to cause cervical cancer. Monitoring is crucial and the info on HPV is just downright confusing. Again, I urge everyone to keep up with their yearly well woman gyno exams. Just another gift, right?

Sleepless I think it's good that he's wrestling with these thoughts. I mean the unexamined life thing? Sometimes my WH doesn't seem bothered at all but then he is the one who is up at night unable to sleep and taking medication to do so when before Dday he refused medication for anything.

Allusions what is the key logger you use? Just curious.

Hi, back after a few weeks. My IC has suggested EMDR - I went to an intake appt with the EMDR specialist, it was very exhausting having to go thru all the history of my childhood and marriage again.

SAWS is still telling dumb little lies - he is sober sexually, but the need to cover up little lies is still there. He for the most part admits them quickly, but not without being called on it. The disturbing realization is most of the little lies are as ,ugh to himself as to me.

Eg - he filled in his portion of the intake paperwork, I finished my part the next day. He was sitting with me while he did it. I saw (and triggered) when I saw he’d written down his old phone number and scratched it out. He hadn’t had that number for a year, it’s the one he used for his whore and he changed it because she was stalking him. I said to him when we met - “I just noticed on the ...” And he interrupted me, the phone number. I’m sorry.

I thought he’d say he didn’t realize it would trigger me. Etc, and instead it was - “I felt ashamed and it bothered me - so I scratched it out as fast as I could and tried to forget it”

I was sitting with him. Why when he’s ashamed couldn’t he have shared with me?

The best and weirdest part of this is my IC and I asked him to go to her for his C during the time I’m going to EMDR. She seems to have a very good affect on him, he seems to hear her, and his CSAT - I honestly have lost confidence in him.

It was someone on her who told me - a bad therapist can be as traumatizing as the betrayal. It is!

sami1234 the keylogger I use now is called "pc tattletale". It records keystrokes and shows a picture of whatever is on the computer screen when the mouse clicks even if there is no keystroke. Installation was easy and I didn't have to hide it from antivirus like the other ones I've used. It will save 7 days worth of info or 30 days if you pay for the upgrade.

Is anyone else going through IHS on the way to D? I just really could use some support. I'm absolutely spiraling and in a shitty place. You know how you feel when you don't believe it will get better? Yeah. That.

Why when he’s ashamed couldn’t he have shared with me?

Because he's deathly afraid of that kind of intimacy. It's a perfect example of what Sex addiction is all about.

I’m not completely sure why I am feeling this way, but I have been really struggling with guilt and blaming myself for my H’s actions and what caused him to have his affairs. The only thing I can figure is that it is almost a year since D-Day.

Lionne - I feel like if he won’t share the little shameful moments - he’s unlikely to share the larger ones.

I need this to stop to feel like he’s really working on himself.

The sad part is, if he’d share I’d feel as though we had a chance

I have not read many posts on this forum and topic, so I'm not sure this is the right place to post this. I believe my WH has become a SA over the years, thanks to Internet porn. I never had an issue with porn, but after d-day, I soon realized my WH's porn and masturbation habits had taken over during past years of our marriage...maybe contributed to his A because he couldn't be satisfied with porn or masturbation or me any longer. Well, these days, he can only stay hard and finish with rough hand jobs or oral. He says he has lost sensitivity, that it's normal, because he is early 50's. BS!!!

I have done a lot of research on this topic and I think that excessive porn and masturbation have desensitized him, physically and mentally. He is in excellent physical condition; he had his testosterone level tested (during A) and it was perfect! His inability to have sex with me makes me feel so unattractive; I am competing with porn girls young enough to be our daughters, who had multiple plastic surgeries

At one point, he told me he would stop watching porn. That maybe lasted a week? Then he told me he watched porn but didn't masturbate...yeah, right. Watching porn just for the heck of it, not getting off? He told me months ago that he agreed with me, that he understands porn is not healthy, nor is rough masturbation, but things haven't gotten better. My gut/logic tells me he is still masturbating roughly with or without porn, but I don't have evidence. I read on this site about all the men who can masturbate and have sex multiple times a day (in their 50's) without any problem, makes me question myself