SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am glad to have found this resource as I navigate this new topic in my life that I never wanted to know anything about. In June my husband returned from a work trip, after a month of acting really off and saying some alarming things in regards to our marriage. I went through his phone and found three weeks worth of messages with his AP. A woman he had met at the end of April on a work trip works in his industry. They met up in person two times after that also on mutual work trips and talked in between.

The utter shock I felt seeing those messages still shakes me to my core to think about. Her initials "KG" Labeled the chat and are seared in my brain and my hands shake just picturing that moment. I left the house with his phone without telling him what I had found, called my oldest, best girlfriend and met her and we scrolled through them. He had realized within five minutes of my leaving what had happened, and was calling me to bring his things back. I ignored him. I had no idea what I was going to find out, if he wanted to leave our marriage, anything. But I just had the strangest, most shocked calmness throughout. I messaged the woman and told her what I had found, I corrected some of the lies he had told her in regards to his and my marriage, our (active) sex life, etc. And I finally went home and faced him. He admitted to everything, told me that he wanted to stay in our marriage, and owned it all of this was because of him. And the few days that followed we met with our marriage counselor, who we had met with once prior because I had found him due to the crazy things my husband was saying during the month of May. Obviously in that first meeting the therapist and I were unaware that my husband was being unfaithful, but he has been a great resource since. In the first week following the day my husband seemed to realize a lot of things about himself which seem crazy to me he could possibly not have known. That he has a lot of the behaviors of a sex addict, especially around pornography. That he has had such an avoidant attachment style and has stuffed down his feelings for so long, that he had become completely emotionally disconnected from me, and more recently our family life. But he realized this recent affair and the one-week affair he had on a trip three years ago that came out in the d day period (she was seated next to him on a flight To London) was the result of him creating this false narrative to himself that these women basically fell into his lap who were attractive and attracted to him and that they had some sort of special connection, "this sort of thing doesn’t just happen". He was in full on limerince with the most recent woman, and after in the first hour of our D-Day talk he expressed that he should maybe call her and explain that he wouldn’t be talking to her anymore, and my telling him that that was unacceptable and if he had any hope of us working on that he would never have any contact with her again, she agreed. He blocked all of her ways of contacting him, and even got a completely different work phone with a new number. He has taken a brand new job in hopes of establishing less travel and a better work life balance. He enthusiastically is meeting with our marriage counselor, has found himself an individual therapist who he sees weekly, and has An appointment next week with a psychologist at the sexual wellness center in our city, to learn more about some of the sex addict characteristics of his behavior. He says that this felt like a near death experience, that he has been living his life in an increasingly foggier state over the past three years and that for the first time that fog is gone. He says he had convinced himself our marriage had fizzled out, but realizes now that was just another false narrative he was telling himself. He has given me full access to all his technology, he has stopped watching pornography. He spends at least an hour every day listening to podcasts and audiobooks about affairs. In short (actually in length sorry for the novel) he is "doing everything right".

But none of this changes the devastation I feel 95% of every day since this happened. None of it stops the intrusive thoughts. None of it stops the obsessing about the other woman. None of it stops what feels like my out of control mind and out of control emotions. I wish there was a roadmap for what comes next. Because I mostly feel stuck as I try and figure out whether his transformation is enough for me to want to stay in this marriage. I told him on D-Day in that weird state of calm that I don’t know where it came from, that I would never tear our family apart without knowing I had left it all on the table. I am committed to trying and staying around to watch him try. But I often feel stuck. This was so long, thanks for reading.

It sounds as though your H had his "it’s a wonderful life" wake up call.

My H had the same experience. One day he’s D me and the next day he’s realizing what a huge mistake he was about to make. He thought he was going to take the affair to his grave but I found out on dday2 that the affair had been on-going.

I’m not saying it’s easy but it may be that your H is truly remorseful and realizes the mistakes he has made.

You are not obligated to R or make any decisions at this point. You need time to process and accept what just happened. My H begged me to R while I had planned to D him (I had run out of options at dday2). So I made no promises either way.

But here a few things I did to protect myself.

Counseling for me.

I refused to go to MC b/c I had no issues - and I had been begging him to go during the months of his Affair but he refused.

Separate bank accounts and credit cards.

I don’t do his laundry or cook his dinner or do his errands. I stopped being the maid service. As I willingly did all those things for decades and apparently they were unappreciated, so I stopped. 9 years later I still don’t do those chores.

Post nup. My assets are excluded from a D for any reason. So financially I am protected.

My car is in my own name. Paid for.

If we ever did D, my exit strategy is I leave with just what I need and move on. Let the lawyers handle the rest.

I am so sorry you are here. I won't have too much to say because my DD was just one month ago and I also am still in the shock/trauma phase. I also spend a huge portion of my day going down rabbit holes, reading books, etc - anyway - thinking about this event.

Please know that all the advise on here is well intended and not always easy to hear. I have found it invaluable and have felt less alone. I am reading "How Can I Forgive You?" by Janice A. Spring and am finding is calming and helpful.

The1stWife (and others, of course) is a wonderful resource and support (thank you, The1stWife.) Please take care of yourself and heed to her advise.

Best of luck.

Of course you still feel shock and pain. That is perfectly normal.

I don't think it gets said enough around here: your husband cannot heal you.

He wounded you but he is not qualified to treat that wound. You are qualified and sadly, you alone.

His work on himself is just that: work on himself. The upside to that is that it allows you space and time to heal and figure out what you want. If he was still head up his ass you'd be too busy protecting yourself from further trauma (e.g. playing marriage police or trying to convince him of your pain) to focus on you. That's about the only gift he can give you right now.

My recommendations:

IC for you. You've been traumatized. Professional help is usually needed.

See a lawyer. Not to divorce him but to know your rights and show YOURSELF that you are capable of facing this head on.

Create a support system for yourself. Friend or friends, trusted family member(s), etc. You need people to talk to but more importantly, you need love and care.

Radical self care. As hard as it is to shift your focus off your marriage and on to you, really, really, really force yourself every day to check in with yourself. What do you need today? A nap? Your favorite tea? A run? A good book? A hot bath. I know how silly it sounds but you have to physically and mentally take care of your needs. This is a long road and you need your strength. But more importantly (to me), the stronger you get, the less it hurts. Trust me. The stronger you get, the less it hurts. Build that strength one moment at a time. Strength comes with time and effort, even small efforts. Care for yourself like you would a sick child or a hurt friend.

Keep posting. The love and care you need might come sometimes from folks right here.

He says he had convinced himself our marriage had fizzled out, but realizes now that was just another false narrative he was telling himself.

I hate to be a buzz kill, but this is probably the only true thing he said in all that word salad (reasonable-sounding excuses).

Oftentimes, the WS convinces himself that the marriage is valueless and then gives himself permission to act outside of it. This does not necessarily mean that just because your WH was finally able to see his own mental gymnastics that he's somehow incapable of repeating them though. What needs to be repaired is his CHARACTER. The actual problem, if you ask me, is somewhere in the gap between a cheater's stated values and his actual deeds.

The cheater has an out-clause in his vow of Fidelity. He stood in front of God and witnesses and swore his oath to it, but he doesn't truly BELIEVE. He's got a "but..." in his core value of Fidelity. ie. "He believes in Fidelity, but... not if he makes a 'connection' on his airline flight."

You see how that works right? You and I don't have a "but..." in our value of Fidelity. We can't just chuck our integrity aside when it suits us. We've got more of a "so..." ie. "I believe in Fidelity, so... I don't look at other people as romantic/sexual possibilities". It's an organic boundary, circling our core value like a fence. We don't put a whole lot of thought into it. We simply protect what we value.

That he has a lot of the behaviors of a sex addict, especially around pornography. That he has had such an avoidant attachment style and has stuffed down his feelings for so long, that he had become completely emotionally disconnected from me, and more recently our family life.

None of that would have taken more than an hour to suss out online. Whether he did it himself, or it was provided to him by you or the therapist, none of it has anything to do with his character and why those boundaries weren't there. And I'll be honest, for me, any claim at "sex addiction" makes a cheater into a LESS desirable prospect in terms of R. What they're saying essentially is that they just can't help stabbing you in the back. It's beyond their control.

I mean, really think about it for a minute. The porn/sex/romance encounter hits the reward center of the brain, not terribly unlike what goes on with video games or chocolate. Add in some excitement and you've got a more potent biochemical cocktail, but still, as addictions go, there's no withdrawal to speak of. No one gets the DT's from refraining to text their mistress while they're watching TV on the couch with their wife. No one spends hours puking if they can't find a good enough excuse to get out of the house and screw their mistress. When we put it in context, yeah... we've all gone for that second piece of cake or another helping of dumplings when we KNEW we couldn't afford the calories. Some of us have even found ourselves communing with our game controllers at 4 am on a work night. But those poor choices don't have nearly the same outcome, do they? We're not destroying our spouse's serenity and risking our children's security when we do those things.

My point is that these aren't good enough excuses when you tear them down. Your WH's "attachment style" didn't cause him to cheat. If it did, the vast majority of other people with that particular profile would also be cheaters. When you tear down the excuses, they don't hold water.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to crap all over your hopes of preserving your family dynamic. I'm in R myself so I do believe that change is possible. But you have to know what kind of change you're looking for so that you will know if your WH is making acceptable progress, right? He needs to own what he did. He needs to look in his mirror and not be able to tolerate for another second being the kind of asshole who would cheat on his wife and kids. He has to want that change more than anything else, even the marriage. Otherwise, he's just buffaloing you and I can't even begin to describe to you the alarming regularity in which former BS's return here with another incident of cheating because their WS had them fooled.

My best advice to you would be to read voraciously and hold your WH accountable, even if he balks. Get your ducks in a row so that you have a plan in your back pocket. See an attorney and get a post-nup to make sure he adheres to his promises. It's so tempting to believe them when they're saying what you want to hear, but in a post-adultery marriage, trust needs to be earned.

Anyway, I'm so sorry you needed to find us, but glad you did. Remember that you're going to be okay. We're all still here. It sucks and it's awful, but you'll be okay.

((big hugs))

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:13 PM, Sunday, August 14th]

My husband is the glass half empty person. Years ago he was once again moaning about one thing or another and I told him it isn’t my job to make him happy. That is on him. Your WS needs to fix himself period. I agree with Chamomile. It is up to him. Intense therapy beginning with EMDR to figure out what squelched his ability to look after his own emotional needs. Those are not your needs….they are his.

You have excellent advice above. Read that several times. You'll be in a trauma shock state for a while and I know things just didn't "stick" in my mind sometimes in those early weeks. It was like having short-term memory loss.

The trauma though...that seems to stick with the clarity of a lightning strike!

The utter shock I felt seeing those messages still shakes me to my core to think about.

This is SO relatable! My suspicions were confirmed when I texted the AP I knew about (turned out she was AP #3). She was single and thought my WH was single too. As I confirmed the online affair and we texted back and forth, I apologized that my texts were somewhat garbled because my hands were shaking. (BTW, that AP was very kind because she'd been lied to by him also...it was a VERY rare situation. )

I wish there was a roadmap for what comes next. Because I mostly feel stuck as I try and figure out whether his transformation is enough for me to want to stay in this marriage

A bit of a road map about what you might expect to feel:
- Circling around between
"Who is this person married???"
"How could he???"
"This is not who I thought he was!"
"How did he ignore the pain this would cause...me...himself??"

I know I also got hung up on some magical thinking for a while, focusing on wishing I/we could magically go back to some point in time and have conversations or take actions that would have avoided all of this.

Ultimately, I had to really accept this is IT. This horror show happened.
So now, can I stay married knowing what he's capable of? What can he do and what is he doing to demonstrate real change? How can he show me that he is the kind of man I would stay married to?

For me, part of it was him acknowledging his whys...but a bigger part has been him demonstrating consistently that he is changing those behaviors.

He's avoidant? Detached? He needs to demonstrate he is attached and willing be vulnerable--willing to initiate and stay in conversations that are difficult for him, conversations that make him vulnerable.

He was self-centered? He needs to demonstrate empathy and a pattern of understanding your needs and putting them first.

Your husband needs to be diagnosed by a CSAT..certified sexual addiction therapist..to find out if he is a sex addict.

Having a few characteristics doesn't make one a sex addict.

It's also one of the excuses a man(usually) typically tells his wife, when he's been caught cheating. They think if they can blame a disease, their wife will feel sorry for them and they won't have to deal with consequences.

If he is a sex addict,then him continuing to cheat will be a lifelong challenge. One they often fail,repeatedly.

He sounds like a run of the mill cheater.

What is he doing to become a safe partner? Was he tested for stds? Do you have full access to everything, all accounts, and both phones? Is he answering your questions honestly?

Consider a polygraph.

[This message edited by HellFire at 2:42 AM, Sunday, August 14th]

I am so sorry you are here too. I am always rooting for successful R. I read your post and I am aware that sometimes a stranger like me can read a post and maybe get something a little different then what the poster meant to share. I want to say that before I say go a little slow with your R and watch you WS carefully. His reaction seems to eager to fix things, almost too self aware of his betrayal.

Like I said it could be me just reading into things, I hope so <hug>