SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Honesty is so incredibly useful.

Something I noticed and hope you do, too: Even if your H dfelt jealous of your relationship with your mentor, I think it's important to realize that a phenomenon that looks one way to one person can look another way to someone else, and both POVs can be correct. I'm glad your H sees both POVs, and I'm also glad he sees his jealousy was out of line. But I can certainly understand being jealous....

Taking responsibility is very positive for your WS's healing and for R. Knowing that it will take more action by him and at least a year for you to believe him is positive for his healing and for R. But none of that means you are required to R.

It's nice that a good R may be available, though, if you want it. Assuming the program keeps calling for honesty, continuing with it is a great choice.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:53 PM, Friday, February 2nd]

Hi @5Decades I'm so sorry you've had to go through the pain of betrayal and the trauma of your childhood and my heart goes out to you.
You are an incredibly strong and caring person and worthy of love that can be trusted.

Communicating to your H how you felt was the right thing to do and I truly hope that the program you've embarked on will help and strengthen you in your healing journey and true R for your marriage

Stay strong!

Bella,

Thanks so much for that. Your words telling me I am worthy mean a lot right now. My father spent the first 18 years of my life making it his singular purpose to convince me that I was worthless. I walked out the door at age 18, and somehow sprouted wings. My three living siblings , sadly, struggle still. I have moments, flashes, of those days, but I recognize them and have a dragon inside who slayed it all once when I fought it back in my younger years, and wins again anytime those things even try to peek out. My husband says I’m a warrior.

I’m fighting for this marriage because I believe in us. We have had many years together. We had a rough start, young, stupid. He fell down in 2005, and we failed ourselves in recovery then. And we thought we got back up, but we didn’t.

This time, we will. We are both on board.

Sometimes I think the rollercoaster is too damn much, but we have to be strong enough to yell for help. I yelled. He answered.

Sisoon,

Yes, I do want to recover this marriage. We are going on 49 years together.

His letter was really long. I kind of expected excuses, but there were none. His openness to feelings was surprising to me, because he hasn’t really been that way before. This letter was remarkable in that aspect.

It is like a wall broke down between us, and he took it down. He talked to me for about an hour last night, about what he was thinking during the affairs, his thought about this particular woman back a long time ago, during the evolution of the EA, how it went between them, and the fact that he knew it went bust before I found out because he figured out he was in a fantasy world and she was not mentally stable. And his anger at her regarding her treatment of me since dday, and since looking back at some of the things that have come to light since then. As well as his own anger at himself for the pain he caused me, and his own stupidity in all of this.

The letter covered this, and more. And I am feeling a sense that things have shifted somehow, for the better. Dramatic shift for the better. My inner self has shifted. I can’t describe it, but it’s there.

Please please please don't get sucked in by words. Action. Actions. ACTIONS. will show you his truth. If they match his words great. That us reassuring that he means what he says. Bit be very careful about manipulation his words making you turn yourself inside out to save the M but him not doing the work he needs to do. Him blaming you for all the downfalls.

Be cautiously optimistic bit do not be afraid to call bullshit put when you see it.

Tushnurse,

He didn’t blame me. At all. He actually did the reverse.

He took 100% of the blame for every affair. He wrote about each one, and told me how they happened, and his choices along the way. No excuses made. He talked about how stupid they were, his "justifications" to himself at the time and how his thinking was so very wrong. How his thinking around the time of our separation back in 1978 was about. Why he left, why he came back, why it all happened and unfolded the way it did. I have kind of known this, but to hear him put it in his own words has helped me a lot. It reveals his vulnerability then, and shows his vulnerability to me now - it pulls down a huge wall he has had.

This most recent EA ties back to our early marriage, because the AP was a band member from that time period. They were not involved back then. But she was always flashing her private parts to men, WH included, and would do sexually suggestive things toward men when her then-boyfriend was not looking. So her history with my husband dates back a long way, and it wasn’t difficult for her to light that sexual fantasy, given the visuals she gave him back then. I wasn’t her fan back in the day, either, to say the least - she would actually do this in my presence.

After DDay, I spoke to her on the phone. She said she wanted my husband, my kids, and my life - and SHE was the one who got hurt, not me. In his letter, my husband apologized for how this woman hurt me back then, and how he brought her back again, knowing this. He owned it. He described how she crept back into our lives, and he isn’t wrong about how she did it. I was aware of how it all happened (just not aware of the EA).

Since DDay we have found out that her marriage was likely a money thing for her. She married an elderly man who had been widowed. He signed everything over to her, and soon after she put him in a nursing home. He got COVID about four months later and died. She inherited his estate. They were married about 18 months (during which time she was cheating with my husband and sending him nudes). Her late husband’s family took her to court to recover some of the money, not sure how that worked out, but she did buy a million-dollar home so there’s that.

We now wonder if her statement to me about wanting my life was truer than we know.

Anyway, my husband’s actions since dday have been consistent with wanting recovery. I have been traumatized, and am not trustful, of course. This letter is honest and not flowery or disingenuous.

Your words of caution are heard. Trust, but verify. For sure.

I think he knows I am at the breaking point, and that in my heart I believe he truly hasn’t loved me, but has pined for her all these years. That our very long marriage has been one where I have been Plan B all along, and this realization is what is killing me now.

Maybe he has finally matured (in thinking) about what kind of husband he has been for how long? 48 years??

I don't see where you should be or there is any need to apologize for speaking (writing) your truth.

I do hope he can come around and you, some how, find (without forcing yourself!) staying married is going to be a good thing.

5 Decades,

While our stories are different, our experience of decades old betrayal from a S of almost 5 centuries is not. I was 20 when M. He was 22. We had been together for 5 yrs before M. We were just kids. I look at our C (37 & 40) and their M's. How much more mature they were. We had 3 kids before 30! We did plenty of partying in our youth, but I guess I just grew up before he did. DD was 42 yrs later. Hard for him to remember, but I've not let him off the hook. I believe he has carried this bag of shit our entire marriage. I believe it turned him into a bad version of himself. It affected his relationship with me and with his children. I'm pissed at myself for not calling him out on his behavior earlier in our M. But while I would love to go back and fix things, I can't. I brought up the loss of agency with him and it hit him like a brick. He was so focused on what a douchebag he was that he never really realized that he had robbed me of any kind of choice. He has fessed up willingly. While we have chose not to share any of this with our kids, he has reached out to both of them to apologize for his short comings as a father. (anger issues being one) He has given me full access to his soft underbelly. He is available 24/7 for whatever I need. He was seriously broken. You know how it is. We look old and weathered but inside we're still those young kids. I can forgive him for that bad decision, but only because he has become completely transparent.

It is like a wall broke down between us, and he took it down.

I pray that you and your WH can build a stronger & beautiful marriage.

[This message edited by Trumansworld at 8:32 PM, Tuesday, February 6th]

We finally talked through a lot of his letter.

I believe I have the full truth. Not many details are different from what I already knew. Just some things filled in.

He told me he never was in love with her way back when. This has been my fear since reading the emails, but it’s not the truth. What we have found out about her, and what he has filled in about the EA and his mindset has helped me a lot.

One thing we have found out is that the family of her late husband has sued her. She apparently married him under false pretenses, for money. They settled, and she wasn’t happy because she got less than she wanted. My husband said that she alluded to being "broke" and needing his help. Then she bought a very expensive home in a place known for high dollar homes, so that kind of made him wonder.

So as we were talking, we began to wonder about her statements to me about her being the "loser" in all of this, and that she wanted my life? Was this a catfishing scheme on her part, another older husband plan? It has us wondering anyway. We will never really know.

We talked about his father’s affair, that he left his mom and married the AP. His father then divorced the AP six years later and his mom and dad remarried one another. This impacted him as a young man, no doubt. His mom had to be put in a mental hospital over the affair. It was all so hard, and my husband did not want his father to come back home. He resented his father for it the rest of his life, even though his mother forgave it all.

This is having an effect on his own ability to sour out his emotions on his infidelity, and to see how I can move forward, too.

I can move forward. It is what I want, and I know what I am capable of doing.

I also know this isn’t a superhighway, but a rocky road ahead. I’m walking, not driving a Corvette, because that’s what this journey requires.