SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I think this is ok to post here (just figuring out the ropes)? I've been with my husband for 20+ years, married for 19 and it hasn't been easy. He's verbally abusive and instead of addressing it, after 18 years of marriage I finally reached a breaking point and allowed myself to get emotionally/physically tangled up in my male friend of 6 years who was also very close to my children (ages 2.5, 4, and 7 at the time). So many times I swore I'd leave my husband but at the same time I worried about splitting up our family (ik, ik, already headed there with the affair). He found out, friendship ended, and now I'm in therapy (husband had already been in therapy for a year prior for his anger issues). Couples counseling next week to see where to go from here. Husband feels responsible bc he's been so awful and wants to work through it. I'm trying to find the love I lost to make it work. Has been 3 weeks since discovered. 10 month affair. Just here to introduce myself and tell my story. Hope I did it right.

[This message edited by Elliebellie at 9:14 PM, Friday, June 7th]

Elliebellie

Suggest you create post/thread in "Wayward" forum - and note the default is a "Stopsign" - the purpose is to restrict posters posting only if they are former (?!) waywards.

Look for the "healing library" and read

Weekends tend to have fewer posters so be patient.

You might find describing your "affair" as "emotional" (EA) or "physical" (PA) or both.

Also post what you are doing to inform husband of all you have done - no "trickle truth" and NO LIES.

Consider creating a written timeline of you affair from first chat to "the end." - which I hope is really ended.

NO MORE CONTACT with "friend" - period. Zilch. Nada.

Get the book

How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair: A Compact Manual for the Unfaithful Paperback – November 24, 2010
by Linda J. MacDonald (Author)

Post your thoughts and questions - the members will respond with what they have learned.

Also be advised some may post in a manner that offends you - try to see the message and not so much the choice of words.

- long path to healing and entails a lot of work - perseverance will get you there - I hope

Welcome to SI. You may wish to have a moderator move this to the Wayward forum. (Open a new thread and say Mod, please.)

In the Wayward forum, there are 2 posts pinned to the top that you may find helpful. Also, about half way down the Wayward page is a thread called Process of discovering our true "Whys" and Admittin it vs Getting it vs Owning it vs Living it that are both really good.

The Healing Library has a lot of great information and includes the list of acronyms we use.

Hopefully you have sent a letter of NC (no contact) to your AP (affair partner). Electronic transparency is a must, and your BH (betrayed husband) should let the OBS (other betrayed spouse) know of the A (affair) so that they have the opportunity to make informed decisions on their life that are based on the truth.

You both should be tested for STDs/STIs because there are some nasty diseases that are out there that can endanger your BH's life.

Husband feels responsible bc he's been so awful and wants to work through it.

The A is 100% your choice. You had other options that you could have chosen but instead your choice was to betray your husband. There are others on here who have had abusive spouses (me included) that didn't cheat. Please be sure to read the thread about getting to your true whys as getting to the bottom of it can be like peeling off the layers of an onion.

  Moving to Wayward Side

Ap and I are not contacting each other but Husband has not asked about it, just if we were "done". Im not sure you have to cut it off for spouse to see? He doesn't want anything to do with that. I feel still in love with ap but i think with time it will pass. The problem is, I had already checked out of marriage years before affair and had wanted to divorce at least 3x do there is more to repair than affair, it I'd essentially 20 years of a toxic relationship. Ap has the qualities I'd want in a partner so I also wonder what exactly I'm fighting for wrt the marriage and ik it's bc he wants yo be with me and I feel shame and guilt but also gratitude that he is willing to have me. Those are not sound reasons imo. I'm not attracted to him. The fallout was due to years of abuse and I just fell out of love with someone so angry and hurtful. So, couples therapy is to see if it's salvageable regardless of the affair as that was obviously just a product of something more toxic.

[This message edited by Elliebellie at 10:33 PM, Friday, June 7th]

Welcome, Ellie. It takes a lot of guts to seek help as a wayward, I admire that a lot.

A couple things jump out at me. Whatever was happening in the relationship before the affair, you can not and must not conflate them. The bad marriage did not cause you to cheat. You had other options. That is yours and yours alone to own.
That said, you don’t have to try to reconcile if you don’t want to. If yours was an exit affair and you truly do not want to be with your husband, adding an affair on top of that will not make things better. If you don’t want him, then leave. Reconciliation (or R for short around here) is a grueling wringer in the best of circumstances. If you don’t love him and he is actually a danger to you due to abuse, just walk away now. You will save everyone an immense amount of heartache.

No stop sign. BS here.

Not that you have to make a decision right now or tomorrow or next week, but you do need to decide if you really just want to leave or attempt to R.
Deciding to R does not mean you absolutely have to stay, it just means you are all in on TRYING to recover the marriage. That means dealing with the affair and the previous abuse in the relationship.

I've been very upfront with my husband. I explained I am very confused about what the marriage is and we should look at couples therapy as a way to heal and not necessarily a means to stay married. My therapist is making me look hard at the dynamic and not allowing me to minimize the years of abuse and I'm trying to heed her advice. Mostly, I'm trying to justify staying for the kids when he is verbally and physically abusive to our middle child. Not what I would call abuse but my therapist said it is (forcefully picking him up and using hurtful words). It was one thing when it was just the 2 of us but with the kids it breaks my heart if they are suffering.

[This message edited by Elliebellie at 12:15 AM, Saturday, June 8th]

If you feel that you are being abused then you are. I never think anyone should stay in an abusive relationship, ever.

I will be upfront, it is a very common tactic though to claim abuse or to make things worse than they really are to justify an affair. You have no reason to lie to anyone here, but you also have no reason to tell the truth either. It isn’t unheard of to come to these forums to paint a story about how awful the marriage was to get validation for cheating. For sure in other places your story would absolutely do just that. I read your post and see a lot of justification for having an affair, which automatically makes me skeptical. Plus you are allowing your BH to take the blame for your actions. On the other side, he has been in therapy to help change himself and is blaming himself for your affair because he recognizes that change is needed. That’s pretty rare for an abuser. It’s very rare for them to take any accountability, usually it’s a cycle of pretending to change and then back to the abuse.

. The traits you admire in AP are probably no where as real as you think they are, just are heightened because of the affair and all you can see are the good things. AP looks
Amazing and BH only bad, because it’s justification for cheating. Truth is AP has no shortage of negative traits, here’s one, he is a cheater. He is willing to play house and nice with your BH while having sex with you behind his back. Oh and the kids too. No problem betraying them by befriending them, and then risking their welfare so he can have sex with you. That’s a winner right there. He’s not a knight riding in to save you. He’s a snake who has no problem hurting you. Here, if your husband really is physically abusive as you say, did AP ever worry about you or your kids safety if you were caught? 10 month affair, I’d say no he didn’t.

Consider the full scale of the man you are "in love with" vs the life you have. AP isn’t really anything special.

I have to add something else about AP because I see this all the time.

If your AP was actually a good friend (hint: he never was because he willingly had an affair with you) and someone who cared about you, then he would have waited until you divorced and had gotten your crap together before having a relationship with you. Instead he took the path to have sex with you. Not to help you, not to allow you to escape abuse or whatever, just to have sex with you.

Those are the traits that you want with a partner? And yeah, you went along with it. Is that who you want to be?

I am finding this board very confusing to navigate. How does one respond directly to a comment? What does stop sign mean?

Anyway, yes I agree about justifying with abuse and like I said I never felt abused but in therapy she is insisting I and my middle child are. I am only using that as a means to reevaluate my marriage. I am also not allowing him to take the blame. Yes there are problems and I chose to fall for someone else but ik he is in no way to blame for my actions. Yes, he knows he's an asshole (his words) and I gave him an ultimatum last summer that he needed therapy or I was going to have to leave. He has been doing better. I would not call him an abuser, either, but he definitely has some traits (yelling, bullying, being critical, moodiness, and being physical). Therapy is to try to figure out WHY he's like this and to give him tools to change. As far as AP, I completely agree. We were both lonely and not in a good place. Him not being able to ever see the kids again is worse than the affair honestly bc they are innocent and don't deserve this. I don't believe ap is any worse a person than I but, yes, obviously, the right thing to have done was for me to leave my marriage and then see what happened. I came close many times but selfishly the security and comfortableness of the known was much stronger. I did ask for a separation at one point but it never materialized. I do not plan to leave for ap (or if we divorce go to him) what I was saying is that it made me realize what is missing in my relationship. Therapy for me is trying to figure out why I'm so complacent and just kind of letting life happen to me instead of taking charge and making my own path.

Just want to add, yes, husband is getting better but does lapse back into harmful traits. I assume that is to be expected. He has been in therapy almost 1 year. He asks me to monitor his behavior and I've told him that's not my job but I will hold him accountable when he deviates. Grabbing our son is an example. Then someone will say you should leave immediately if he is touching the kids and I'm thinking that just seems over the top. Middle child has just started therapy, too.

I also want to address the "just having sex with me" comment. It definitely was a 2 person endeavor and I in no way was used anymore than he was. No, an adulterer is not who I want to be, but I wasn't used. I'm in no way a victim here in terms of the affair. There is also no abuse to save me from imo. That is my therapist's take. He definitely did not like the way my husband treated us for sure. As a friend it hurt him to see it. I wish it could've been different and we were both stronger and could've remained friends.

[This message edited by Elliebellie at 12:43 PM, Saturday, June 8th]

You never felt abused but your therapist is insisting you are? Not all therapist are created equally, that's for sure. Your AP is objectively not a good person and you see him so, maybe you are poisoning the well about your betrayed husband and maybe not.

Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned my husband at all. It doesn't matter either way, I'm the one who screwed up. As far as AP, it is difficult to see him as a bad guy. Yes he made a terrible choice to become available to me but he also does care for me and my kids. I think he formed an unhealthy attachment to us (his ex wife is an addicted and out of his kids' lives) and me to him (he was caring, used kind words, and the sexual compatibility was mind blowing). I won't mention my husband again.

I think my therapist is trying to make me see that I'm minimizing my husband's behavior so I don't continue to rug sweep.

[This message edited by Elliebellie at 2:17 PM, Saturday, June 8th]

As far as this community goes, your BH doesn’t really factor in to anything. No one here will support anything along the lines of "my spouse did this so I had an affair"

Your original post was "my husband was verbally abusive so I hit a breaking point an had an affair" those are not the exact words, but a decent summary.

But you never felt he was? Your therapist is making you see that you were? That is confusing, and honestly you need a new therapist. A good therapist does not try to force their patients into a point of view. They are supposed to be objective. A good therapist does not try to convince their client about anything.

I never said you were innocent in the affair, what I read from your post was the common belief that AP is ideal, and that you still had feelings for him. especially since the affair just ended, most cheaters still tend to view their AP with exaggerated positives. I stand by my opinion that he cared more about sleeping with you than he did about you. If he really cared he would have waited until you were no longer married, that is the cold hard truth. Yes you both used each other, you both are selfish.

Now, in the bloody aftermath you don’t know what you want. Affairs aren’t what you are missing in a relationship. Affairs are only the lie of the best parts of a relationship. New, not tied in to any real world issues of kids, bills, being sick, or the 1000s of other things that come with being in a real, long term commitment. AP never actually had to be dad to your kids. It’s really easy to be the fun uncle, but being their actual father is a complete different experience. You and AP hurt your kids to have an affair and you need to accept that. You both betrayed them. You think they would be cool with knowing about it? Though they probably know more than you think anyway. My WW did the same thing, even post DDay she tried to tell me AP cared about our kids (don’t ever say that to your BH btw) turns out her AP is an actual abuser and hurt my son.

Your relationship with AP needs to be examined, you don’t go from 6 years to having sex if there was never any attraction to start off with. I’d bet long before there were a lot of hints and small boundaries crossed.

If you do decide to R with your BH, what is your stance on having guy friends going forward? I will tell you that you shouldn’t, ever again. For both of you. He will never be able to trust you with any "just friend" and clearly you have major boundary issues.

I will never say anything along the lines of someone has to stay in a relationship, regardless of their actions. What I will say is that you don’t need MC. Your marriage Didn’t cheat, you did. If you actually want to try and repair, then all of the problems in your marriage have to take a back seat to the affair. Affairs are like putting out a fire with a nuke. For a long time going forward your affair is the number one problem, and you will have to put him above you, a lot.
Do you think you can?

I suppose it's neither here nor there but it is incorrect that he only wanted to sleep with me and does not care about me because I 100% know that is not true. If I left my husband today he would want to be with me. Of course this can't be for all sorts of reasons but that is why I fell for him.

The other piece to this is my marriage has been a shitshow from day one so, no, it is not only about the affair because we should have been seeking marriage counseling probably before we even got married. So there is a lot of baggage here that really has nothing to do with the 10 months that I was sleeping with my friend. Everyone says to go to marriage counseling when an affair happens so I'm just following protocol. My therapist is not telling me I'm in an abusive relationship I told her how my marriage was very matter of factly not even thinking about anything specific and she said those behaviors are abusive. I have noticed those patterns in the past and I have looked up emotional and verbal abuse and yes he does fit into that category so she is not blindsiding me she is just helping me realize that that is a very serious issue in my marriage that needs to be addressed. To add to that friends and family have also spoken to me about his behavior towards me.

I'm taking husband's lead on this and if he wants marriage counseling I'm going to do it. If he wants to move forward and work on us and not the affair I will comply. We'll see where the therapist wants to go, obviously, but it's something we should've done a long time ago and the affair was a huge wake up call.

[This message edited by Elliebellie at 4:32 PM, Saturday, June 8th]

Actually no, we always suggest IC first before MC. MC is for down the line when both WS/BS have healed and dug in to their own personal issues.

Sure there is a lot of baggage in your marriage. Every marriage has baggage. Nothing special about that. Don’t minimize the length of your affair. It doesn’t matter if it was 10 minutes or 10 months. The damage is still the same, and it’s way more than you think. Your BH is suffering deeply. He is very likely seeing you having sex with your AP in his mind daily. He is thinking of all of the intimate moments you share with AP, he is seeing all the times you lied to him to be with AP, he is seeing the times where you chose to have sex with AP over him. Or maybe even seeing the days where he had sex with you after you had sex with AP. There’s a lot more he ks dealing with I promise, but if I had to make a bet, those are the things at that top of his mind.

You can keep defending AP, but if you actually want to save your marriage you are going to have to take the glasses off and see the truth. You committed to your BH pre affair, not AP.

And all of the problems pre affair, they don’t compare to the affair. At all. You destroyed your marriage by having an affair. That is what I am saying, that has to be fixed first before all of the other problems come up. Hardest thing for a lot of cheaters to do is to humble themselves, and stop being selfish and realize how bad they hurt their spouse. You can try it your way, address the other problems above the A. That is still focusing on you and being selfish. It will fail. You will kill what is left of your marriage by doing that.
.

Ok, I understand. I'm going by what husband wants that is all. Ik I hurt him. I cry most days and feel it's unbearable to think how my husband is hurting. We have not had sex in 3 years (my choice) but, yes, I'm sure he is thinking about me and ap. I'm in counseling. That was asked of me day 1. It's been a month of 4 sessions and I asked if he would want to try marriage counseling and he was concerned they push you into divorce and I said no they don't so we go next week. We both feel my transgression could make our marriage stronger. We are already getting along much better bc both of us are worried about our relationship. Perhaps we are codependent. Individually, I need to work though my resentment, which is probably the reason why I'm not attracted to my husband anymore.

he was caring, used kind words, and the sexual compatibility was mind blowing

Caring and kind words are cheap. They might be signs of a good man, but they are also tools used by players to get women’s defenses down and get sex. And it is alarming that you added this piece about mind blowing sex here. You clearly didn’t know that before you had sex with him, so what does that have to do with anything? And if you want to R, you are going to have to look your husband in the eyes and tell him that.

The impact of an affair is a nuclear bomb in a relationship. You are sending some strange signals here about abuse from him. If you don’t want to be with him because he’s abusive, then walk away. But if you have a desire to R, then the plain fact of the matter is the affair will have to be addressed first, likely for years before those other things can even start. Even if your husband was magnanimous enough to look at those things in this time, he is too traumatized to deal with that. The affair has blown a hole in his soul. You telling him his sullenness needs fixing will not work, not for a long time.

You have a long long journey to recovery if you want this marriage. I’d be really thoughtful about how you approach this. And MC right now is likely a really bad idea. If you do go, and you want the marriage, then use it 100% to address and process the affair until your BH is ready to talk about anything else. Do not try to make it "fair and balanced". He is destroyed. You destroyed him. He needs all the oxygen in the room for a long time.

Thank you. I will do whatever it takes to help him heal. The mc knows I cheated so that is going to be on the table 100%. I'm also confused about the abuse piece bc I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be in this marriage bc of that but bc my husband showed that he was willing to work on himself the least I can do is see it through woth him. Maybe he'll decide tomorrow he can't do this with me or maybe the mc will show him it's not worth it and that will be that. I'm scared but hopeful.

The sex part was just an example of the connection. Sex with my husband was always good from what I remember but 14 years of basically being pregnant and/or breastfeeding and then all the resentment really killed my libido with him.

How do you get over feeling unworthy to be in the relationship? That is another thing I'm grappling with. Like, maybe I should leave bc of what I did and let him have a good life with someone else. He has also been cheated on with someone else that I didn't know about.