SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I(F 41)never thought I would be here like some bad relationship movie, but here I am. My partner of 16 years (M 44) had an affair with a woman for a year and a half and would have continued but one night I couldn’t sleep and I found texts and pics on ph while we were on vacation. I had some clues over the years but never believed he could be THAT person. He’s the "perfect guy" personality wise-intelligent, hard working, considerate, calm, rational, caring, handsome, has close ties to his family, loves kids and animals, finished a masters degree, a good boss and co worker, well traveled, quiet, loyal—- well so I thought. I trusted he could never deceive me in this way, that’s why I never questioned when he would stay over night in NYC for work occasionally before pandemic, and then this last year - playing poker every Thursday till very late with a few buddies from university. And then going to PT for his shoulder on Sundays from 11am till 4/5 pm ( he also said he was visiting his professor) I brought the evidence and confronted him very gently . I did this within a few days after discovery to figure out how to address this for myself. I wrote a letter telling him I was hurt and know about this woman her name, where she works/ schooling, number and know they went on trips together etc, but in spite of all this I want to still work on our relationship with him. He didn’t have words looked confused as I was reading my letter to him. I then asked him point blank about seeing this woman and he said yes. I then asked if she has been the only one and he said no. He had been sleeping w someone else in NYC around 2018/19. He said he did this because I fulfilled all his other needs except the sexual need, and he said theses were NSA relationships and he could have ended them any time. I admit our sex life was not good and that’s definitely truthful in our relationship, but it’s still not an excuse to cheat. So this woman I found pics/ texts of was also what he said was a NSA relationship but I told him I don’t believe that based on their texts, making dinner arrangements, spa and couples massage arrangements, vacation arrangements, buying gifts( he bought her earrings) (she bought him a shirt) , he celebrated her b day and went out to dinner w her. That to me is not NSA behavior. But when I questioned him he said he would end it and he did yesterday with a text. But I can’t believe that he wasn’t also emotionally cheating. He had bought tickets for later in the month tO go see a show at the theater before I had found out. To me it’s all premeditated romantic gestures. We had our first couples therapy session via zoom Friday. He actively is doing this. Is there hope for us?

Is there hope? There is always hope IF the cheater is committed to change, will take necessary measures to address the issues in the cheater’s life, wants to make amends and wants a monogamous relationship.

It is possible to heal and reconcile if the cheater is truly remorseful.

The cheater needs to understand it’s not ok to justify an affair by blaming the betrayed.

He cannot use you or your sex life or your bad cooking or your humming incessantly etc as a reason to cheat.

The cheater has to own up to the poor choice that they made when they chose to cheat.

BTW it was NOT NSA sex. He was having an affair/relationship.

Is there hope for us?

There is hope, but it takes a lot of work on his part. Don’t rug sweep this or it will come back to haunt you.

Him calling this NSA is typical minimizing, he was in a full blown A with feelings. Drop the couples counseling, that is you taking responsibility for 50% of his actions. You both need individual counseling (IC). None of his cheating is your fault, it falls squarely on his shoulders. You have to see him for what he is now and what he is capable of. He’s not the perfect guy anymore, he threw that away. If you aren’t married then this guy has failed the interview. He’s not M material.

Also A’s are highly addictive, watch for him to try to take it underground and continue contact with the AP.

Sorry he has done this to you

It is unfortunate that you confronted him "very gently," and immediately offered reconciliation,and even took some of the blame for his actions.

First..no. Not your fault in any way. He had a hundred other options if he wasn't sexually happy with you, options that didn't involve affairs. Options that didn't risk your life.

He thinks you aren't going anywhere. He knows you think he's the prize,so you won't really hand down any consequences.

He also didn't end it yesterday. After a year and a half, one text and he's done? No. He will use another phone, and he will take this underground. He will just be more careful.

So what do you do? Get angry. Tell him you are the loving,faithful partner,and YOU are the prize he must earn if he wants you to consider attempting reconciliation.

No couples counseling. The relationship didn't cheat. He did. And he's a serial cheater,at that. He needs therapy,and lots of it,before he is a safe partner.

What requirements? At minimum..

Full transparency. You get full access to everything,all accounts, the phone,and passwords to all.

He is 100% accountable for his time away from you. He must prove he is where he says..he can do this in a number of ways.

A full panel of std tests..you too.

He calls OW in front of you,and says no more contact,he does this immediately.

He answers all of your questions without anger or defensiveness, and doesn't blame you.

He gets into therapy. Alone.

He drops all friends who knew of his affairs. They aren't friends of the relationship.

He gets rid of any gifts she gave him.

He understands this is a very long process. You will never fully trust him again. Healing takes 3 to 5 years and that's with a remorseful WS, who has given you the entire truth,and is doing the work.

This is just a start.

All you should be doing..

Std tests. No sex until you see his results from the doctor.

Finding a good polygraph administrator, and schedule a test. You must have the truth before you continue, and cheaters never tell you everything when confronted. Never. He's still lying,about the extent of this affair, and you know it.

Eat,drink,rest. Be kind to yourself.

This is not your fault. You can not fix this.

Watch his actions. Forget his words. He needs to do more than love bomb,and housework. These things are nice,but won't fix the problem within him that said cheating was ok.

Call her husband. He deserves the truth. Don't tell your WS. At all. He's supposed to have NC with her,so if he comes to you with knowledge that you called her husband, you know he's still in contact,and the affair has continued.

Is there hope? With a serial cheater, it's not likely. It's also not impossible. It all depends on him.

Do not share this site with him.

He may be great is many areas, but he's also an abuser. Infidelity is a form of abuse.

[This message edited by HellFire at 5:30 PM, Saturday, October 15th]

he said he would end it and he did yesterday with a text.

I am very sorry you find yourself here. Of course you're shocked and hurt. People here will give you the best advice you will ever get.

I do want to say that he didn't end it with a text. That did not happen. I'm sure he worked out w/the AP what would happen if you found out. I'm sure he sent a text that would pacify you (did you even see it?) and alert her that he would not be in touch as regularly scheduled.

They will be in touch because she wants to know how badly he's getting it at home. He may truly want to end it with her, but he certainly didn't by text. I mean, he knows she's going to get in touch with him demanding to know why, how could he do this to her, etc.

Cheaters lie.

CC can be useful 1) if the CC addresses the A first and keeps addressing the A until it has been covered to your satisfaction and his, and 2) if the CC puts responsibility for the A where it belongs - totally on the WS.

You say your sex life wasn't great. What, if anything, have you (both) done about that? Did you talk about it? If so, did you make changes? If so, how did the changes work out?

I don't ask the questions above with the expectation that you talked about sex. Those are very difficult conversations. My W and I didn't talk about our dissatisfaction until after d-day.

Jojorabbit80-

I'm really sorry that you had to found yourself here. But glad that you have. Everything that Hellfire said. ALL of it. You are not at fault. And to reiterate: he hasn't ended it. They've gone underground and/or are waiting for things to "cool down". Because the affair is not over and your husband is not currently afraid of losing you. MC is not appropriate at this time, the marriage didn't cheat, your husband did. You both should be in individual counseling. And while you love and adore your husband, he's still abusive and has shown an utter disregard for you. Inform the other betrayed spouse. It seems counterproductive like it makes her more available to your husband, but it's just the opposite, informing the OBS will be the singularly best thing you do. And they also deserve to know.

There's hope but only if you re-read Hellfire's post and follow that advice. AND, and this is important, only if your husband truly wants to reconcile and have a marriage that consists of respect. Reconciliation requires you both to want it.

There is nothing to work with here. He has told you you don’t meet his sexual needs and then tells you he will go NC?? How is that meeting his need if he does that? That issue is still there. That has nothing to do with the marriage, that problem is his. He feels entitled to satisfy himself, he has been selfishly doing so behind your back for years, do you honestly think, with that selfish entitlement swirling around inside him , he will stop now you know? He has been lying to your face for years, he is an expert liar now, do not trust his words, he is only telling you what you want to hear. You’re just the domestic maid he wants to keep around free of charge, you the roommate, he doesn’t respect you to give you honesty and safety. He will not reveal himself to you. Do not trust his words.

🚫 marriage counciling will not magically make you or teach you how to meet his needs. It’s most likely he will use MC to convince you to open the marriage up, if you get a bad MC they might agree. What will you do then?

To help manage there are some methods you can try that will allow you to regain some foothold while you assess what you want out of life. You can try the 180 method but from experience with serial cheaters you’re about to face months worth of trickle truth, lying, gaslighting, deflecting and emotional torture so I would skip 180 and use the grey rock method instead. Detachment is a godsend when dealing with serial cheaters, they never cold turkey, you need to step back, detach your emotional response and reactions to his words, see and hear that his words are manipulative bullcrap and learn put yourself, your needs first. He has told you point blank he cheats because you don’t fill his needs, he is not remorseful about that, so ask yourself if you truly deserve to be pigeonholed into the role of house maid forever more, are you willing to lose a partner and gain a roommate who doesn’t share himself, his true self not just body, with you? Because therapy, even IC, will not solve anything if he believes to his core he has the right to do this to you.

Even if you want R your marriage is not in a safe zone for it. I would recommend IC for you however, there is shock and fear during this time, IC will give you tools to empower yourself regardless of R or D.

NSA? Bullsh*t! At least you have an example here of ‘words vs actions’, truth is when they sync, lies are when they don’t match. Betrayed spouses can trust actions, we cannot trust words because as you now know there are a 101 ways to lie.

[This message edited by LostInHisFog at 11:15 PM, Saturday, October 15th]

Thank you all for your comments they are extremely helpful and supportive! It is very difficult to endure all these emotions and thoughts without support from family as I have read not to tell family about affair if we decide to stay together, and also it could influence my decision and how they view my partner. Also I’d like to clarify that we have been living together in a monogamous relationship, but we are not married, and the woman he was seeing was single. I really thought couples therapy was the way to go, but after reading the comments it seems IC is the way to go about this. I really didn’t like the counselor we saw ,he kind of let us just talk with no real direction and we both started talking more about family background and those issues more than the affair. the counselor really didn’t ask us many questions about the affair or asked why my partner had the affair . I wanted him to guide us in a cohesive direction but didn’t feel that happened. The thing that kills me most about all this is when he started to have the idea to have sex with other women, it was right around the time after my grandma had passed and a year or so later there was a huge family fissure and some relatives cut off my family from them. It lead to a huge depression for myself. I was also going through a toxic work environment and was just really sad during those years he decided he needed to cheat because we didn’t have sex. It makes me so angry.

No ma'am. He didn't decide to cheat because you were too depressed(for clearly very good reasons) to have sex. A loving partner would have understood,and supported you through that time...and he would have taken care of himself sexually.

No,what he did was take advantage of the fact that you were distracted, dealing with your loss,and the family issues, and used that to his advantage. It is a terrible thing to do to someone. A very selfish,and entitled thing to do. And a very unloving thing to do.

Please stop allowing him to blame the lack of sex(due to your depression..therefore he IS completely blaming you) as his excuse to cheat. You were dealing with some things. Major things. Things a man who loves you would understand, and help you through. He is blaming you,because in his mind,he's hoping you will accept that excuse,rather than see him for the shit he is. Choosing to start an affair during a partners time of grief, paints him in a horrible light. He hopes to avoid being exposed for what he is.

It's ok to tell friends and family. If you feel they will be supportive of you,it's actually a very good thing. IRL support is very important.

I agree that it was not NSA, as the woman he cheated with sent texts that said she felt insecure once when he had to cANcel their hook up, and didn’t believe him when he told her he was visiting family. Which makes me very worried about her now. There is no way she took this abrupt break up well. He texted her pictures of his fam to her and a selfie of the airport gate and the ticket stub to prove to her he was flying to his location. Also in a few texts he said he missed her, sent pics of our cat to her, and texted her "for the record -you’re the person I want, the whole you, all of you. Every part that’s good, every bit that’s a little crazy too. Just you."back in the summertime. He also texted her when we were together! He took a selfie and sent it to her when we were on vacation! She would text him just to say hi and called him "boo". He is in denial.

He is not in denial. He is in CYA lie, lie, lie mode.

Do you know how to tell when a cheater is lying?

Their lips are moving.

I'm sorry you find yourself amongst us.

I just want to say that he's not in denial. He knows exactly what the affair entails (or "entailed"). He wants you to take all of the blame for "not meeting his sexual needs" so it won't be his fault. And if he sticks to this pg version, he increases the chances of you staying, vs you divorcing him.

At the end of the day, your partner wants you to accept the deal, no matter what. You already were coerced in an "open relationship" without your consent, when he had "business trips" or "poker nights", "meeting his professor" etc. He is now passing the affair as something meaningless - "just" an NSA. The last thing he wants you to do is to make an informed choice, whether or not this relationship is acceptable TO YOU.

And no, I don't believe for one minute he didn't stay in contact with the OW. He will just be more careful to not leave any traces, and so will she.

My ex husband also told the OW he didn't want to talk to her anymore, after I found out about the affair. It actually took me to chucking him out for him to want to "cut the ties". Sounds really good, right? The guy who wanted to make things right. Only thing was, they both still worked on the same floor in the same company, so it was like before, when I was unaware that he had an OW at work. It was just done to keep me quiet.

Best of luck. Infidelity is a shit show, and you will see exactly how keen your partner will stick to his "truth".

On one hand, he did tell you about another woman/relationship you hadn't (yet) discovered.

On the other--much larger--hand, he has done this more than once and is now minimizing it...likely even to himself. Chester's lie to their significant others, but also to themselves.

Finally, you now know something very scary about his character: in your time of need (family and jobs stresses all converging), instead of empathizing and rallying to focus on your needs and support you (and letting sex go to the back burner for a while), he focused on what he felt he was missing and went and got it at the expense of trust and loyalty and your physical safety (STI-wise). You should be angry.

As you already know, this is so hard. It's great that you reached out to this awesome community of people who really do understand your pain and have a wealth of experience and wisdom.

every bit that’s a little crazy too.

This is not a good quality to have. Especially if they get dumped via text.

He said he did this because I fulfilled all his other needs except the sexual need, and he said theses were NSA relationships and he could have ended them any time. I admit our sex life was not good and that’s definitely truthful in our relationship, but it’s still not an excuse to cheat.

Damn right it's not an excuse to cheat. You know, when you put that in plain language, what he's saying to you is that he is entitled to sex and that if you're not putting out, he's going to get it wherever he can. That means in terms of priorities, entertaining his penis outranks the whole of you; who you are, any kindness you offer him, your thoughts, your dreams, household chores you do, income you bring it, all of it, all of you... less important to him than entertaining his penis.

That's not a very nice way to put it, but when a cheater tells you "it's just sex", THAT is what he's saying. It's ugly. It's demeaning. And insult to injury, it's oftentimes not even true. LOTS of BS's who are having frequent sex in their marriage get cheated on anyway. Hell, some report getting MORE sex while their spouse is cheating. You're an easy target if you've been sluggish in the bedroom because you're already feeling like you haven't done your bit for God and Country relationship-wise, but the sad, sad truth is that it's usually NOT about getting some sex. It's more often about getting variety and making conquests, feeding one's ego so he feels attractive and sexy. There's the added rush of adrenaline that goes with the risk of maybe getting caught. There are so, so many examples of that sort of thing.

Bottom line, don't be so quick to take the blame here. This seems like a frequent message for me tonight, but we don't always have to believe everything we hear from our WS. Sometimes, they're bullshitting us deliberately, and sometimes, they just haven't dug deep enough to realize that they're bullshitting us. They're messed up people, hence the lying, cheating, and betrayal.

Reading more and more of everyone’s input and thoughts about him being a cheater makes me so sad and mad at myself. I prided myself in finding someone like my partner. Never in my dreams would I ever have thought he would/could do something this hurtful to me ever. If you asked any of our mutual friends, any of his co-workers, any of my coworkers, my family, his family, hell , people in town at local businesses if they thought he could ever do this, people would say no never. If I told our close friends they wouldn’t believe that he did this. I come from a divorced family. in the beginning of the relationship I did not want to consider marriage at first and why I have never wanted having kids was because I never wanted to put any potential offspring through the high conflict divorce my mom went through w my dad. (He was physically abusive and verbally abusive. )He knew this very early on in our relationship. I thought I had found someone who would never hurt me like this. I prided myself on being extremely keen on finding the right personality and demeanor and what I thought what we had was openness and honesty. I thought my honesty and openness about my fears, traumas, insecurities in the relationship would allow him to also be that way with me. I’ve always implored him to share anything w me over the years. I sometimes became very frustrated w his lack of empathy. He did acknowledge that he felt bad he couldn’t always emphasize with my situations I grew up w thus feeling certain ways/emotions about things. I never felt truly comforted by him, but chalked it up to him being a man and eventually kind of lowering my expectations of him for feeling supported emotionally by him. I should have sought therapy a long while back when I was very depressed. When I found out about this affair, I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want that person I discovered on the phone to be that person standing in front of me.

I understand your situation. People have based their opinion of him on what they have seen and I know how it is that your friends & family would find it hard to believe he’s been cheating.

I remember telling family members about my H cheating. They told me I was crazy and he "would never do that". Until I told them HE admitted it - he told me he was cheating.

I then made a mistake and felt that since he told me and he was honest, I had something to work with. Ten days later he wants a D, is kicking me to the curb and is dumping me for a much younger OW.

Soo….my point is that I made a critical mistake by trusting my H. By believing he wasn’t like others who cheat. He admitted it to me.

He turned out to be your common everyday nothing special cheater.

Don’t overlook the fact that he’s been cheating for a long time. Don’t believe he "texted the OW it’s over" because my H told the OW it was over too.

"Over" in my case lasted a few weeks. In that time he had me auditioning to remain his wife (after 25 years) and I stupidly played along. He played me like a yo-yo for 6 months. He wants a D, then he doesn’t. A few weeks later he wants a D then he doesn’t.

Stand your ground. Get counseling just for you. Dig through the issues and address them. Confront them. Unravel your thoughts and months from now you can decide the best path for you.

Your cheating partner should be doing the same.

You may think you want to R right now but honestly, a year from now you may decide you want to end the relationship. Counseling can help you navigate all of this.

We all thought we had good partners. (big hug)

I was pregnant while he started his affair. We bought a bigger house together during his affair. He got promoted during his affair. We had a good social life and had lots of bbqs with our friends. Went places every weekend. I really thought we were in a really good place, bare his snapping, which I put down to stress with his new job. But to my or our friend's faces, yes, he was the family man who enjoyed being with me and his kids. To Ow he was the poor victim of me, who had "mood swings", "never smiled", didn't appreciate him. Had his name not been on top of the emails, I would not have believed it was my husband who was emailing the OW. Even worst was that she was married. He was always playing the guy who was uber considerate of other people. I know for a fact that, if her husband had emailed me about the affair, I would have forwarded him the email and asked who he had pissed off at work, with a lol. I would not have taken it seriously.

Cheaters are very good at acting. And running away. I only twigged there was more to it because of his reaction, like asking me if I was reading "his" text, or making as if the OW was a friend, who he never told me about. When I asked him why, "I" wouldn't have approved. But once I knew and understood it was an affair, all bets were off, and no more playing Mr Nice Guy. He became nasty, vile and disgusting, and with no restrains on the insults.

It was awful. But on the bright side, it gave me the impetus to detach and accept who he really was.

Today was rough. My partner and I talked more about the affair and he wanted to show me a TED talk he had watched a couple of years ago on why people have affairs. We paused throughout video to talk about the points and questions the presenter talked about. Finally he was honest and said he had these affairs because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to stay in the relationship. And that is how he feels now, but still wants to work on it.we both were crying. But later after taking a shower, I finally broke like a damn w emotions. Felt so sick to my stomach. Cried so much. Lied on the bathroom floor cause I wasn’t sure if I was going to vomit. I’ve been rationalizing and numb detached to this point. I want to tell my mother. I can’t keep this a secret anymore.