SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello Everyone,

Like most here, I truly never thought I would find myself in this situation. I cheated on my wife. It was a foolish, selfish, and impulsive act, and I am remorseful. I have a difficult time even believing what I’ve done. I have resolved to use the guilt and remorse that I feel now as motivation to work on myself and be a better man and husband. I come here humbly asking for any support and insight you can offer.

The incident was a single, brief encounter that will never be repeated. It occurred a little over a month ago. I met with an escort while traveling abroad. While this doesn’t mitigate what I did in the slightest, I will mention that it was legal in the country in question. It was a few minutes of selfish stupidity and I’m never going to let it happen again.

My wife and I have been together for 9 years and married for 5. We are both in our mid-30s. My wife is an angel, my whole world. She is the most kind, caring, fun, and vivacious woman I’ve ever met in my life. She is very outgoing and expressive with her motions. I am extremely introverted and reserved. We make an incredible team and have an amazing life together. I credit her with everything that is good in my life. We are in a great place financially and (aside from whatever is wrong inside of me that led to this) are in a wonderful place in our relationship. We both have our individual issues, mine most apparent now, but I have absolutely no major complaints with her or our relationship. Probably our biggest shared passion is travelling. We love to travel abroad and are fortunate to be able to do so several times a year, often for extended periods.

This past summer, I decided to leave a very toxic job after dealing with burnout for a couple of years. My wife was very supportive of this. We did some travelling over the summer together, and spent a couple of months in abroad while I studied language and she worked remotely. The travelling and studying were wonderful for me. It kept me occupied. When we returned home, I started struggling with my self-worth. I started to feel depressed, feeling like I wasn’t contributing enough. I was more or less a house husband. All I did was the shopping, cooking, and cleaning most days. It didn't feel like I was doing enough to earn my keep. We have my family nearby, but our relationship with them is quite limited, and most of my friends live in another city. I felt very isolated, lost, and adrift. My wife has been nothing but supportive during all of this.

I finally started going to therapy in the fall to address these issues. Aside from being depressed, I was diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety. The diagnoses and going to therapy have helped considerably. One of the issues my therapist identified was that I had become nearly completely isolated and therefore dependent upon my wife. In order to work on these issues, it was decided that I should take a solo trip so I could work on being on my own and try and find some clarity with what I wanted to do moving forward with my life. So, I took a 10-day international solo trip earlier this year. While certainly productive to those ends, I ultimately screwed it up by being a selfish fool and doing what I’ve done.

One night while I was on the trip, some madness overcame me, and I started looking at ads for escorts online. As I said previously, it is perfectly legal and (unfortunately) easy to find in that country. I will admit that I had been tempted to look them up before out of arousal-fueled curiosity in the past, but never took it any further. I was overwhelmed with my solitude, arousal, and curiosity, and in a moment of selfishness and weakness, I contacted one. We met and had sex once. Obviously, it was just a physical encounter, nothing emotional. Protection was used, and everything was as safe as possible. The whole experience was absolutely bizarre. It felt like I was outside my body watching someone else do these things.

After it was over, I immediately felt terrible and guilty. But, I was able to avoid confronting those feelings for a while. The travelling made it easy to stay distracted. I met up with my wife in another country a few days later, and our trip continued on for a couple more weeks. During this time, I didn’t struggle much with what I’d done. Again, the travelling kept me distracted. I also started interviewing for a very promising job.

Once we returned to our home, and the guilt and remorse hit me like a ton of bricks. Combine that with the jet lag and the stress of job interviews after being out of work for so long, and I was a mess for about a week. I couldn’t sleep and could barely focus on anything other than my feelings of guilt and shame. I felt this sickening, "call-of-the-void"-like urge to confess often. I’ve had to fight to keep myself busy and push through the negative emotions. Now, as I write this, I’ve thankfully reached a point where the feelings are much less acute and distressing. I’m sleeping better and have started going on long walks to think and get exercise.

I’ve been reading a lot online, watching videos, and doing a lot of introspection as I’ve started to work through all of this. As I said previously, I’ve resolved to use this failure as an opportunity to do better and work on myself. I’ve gained a considerable amount of perspective on areas where I’ve been selfish or lacking as a husband and I’m working on being better there. I’m trying to put my wife needs first in everything that I do, and I’ve reinvested myself in taking care of her and our home life, and it feels good.

I’ve really tried to zero in on why I did what I did, and aside from just being selfish and stupid, one of the things I’ve identified is that I have a lot of unresolved trauma and sexual repression that I need to deal with. I grew up in a very conservative, repressive religious environment. I have a lot of trauma from this time, and it is the primary cause of the strained relationship I have with my family, though they don’t seem to realize it. My upbringing deeply repressed me sexually, and built a lot of shame and self-hatred into my views on sex. This, coupled with my introverted, passive nature, made it very difficult to have a healthy and fulfilling sex life for many years. Even after I left home, away from the church, and went to college, I still struggled. I lived like most hormonal young college guys, but I didn’t have much success with girls. I tried to put myself out there, but my issues made it difficult. I often felt shame and disgust for my desires, and I think it made me hesitant to really embrace my sexuality. I had a few encounters in college, but they were almost all one-night stands that nearly always left me feeling worse afterwards. The closest things I’ve had to a relationship prior to my wife were a couple of brief flings. Things always seemed to die out as I inevitably felt the weight of my sexual shame come crashing down on top of me.

My wife knows most of this and has been very supportive of me in this regard. We have a wonderful sex life. My libido is higher than hers, but we have sex at least 3 times a week, often times more. So, I really have no room to complain there. I struggle with my confidence in initiating, and since she can be somewhat passive as well, it has led to some minor issues of frustration at times. All this is to say we generally have a great sex life.

As I’ve worked through all of this these last few weeks, here’s what I’ve come to. First and foremost, my failure has been caused by my own foolishness and inability to control selfish physical urges. This is a major issue that I need to address and find a way to address in a healthy manner. But, a big underlying issue is my unresolved trauma and sexual repression. Even though I have a wonderful sex life now, the years of repression has often made me wonder if I was missing out on anything. I think it was these wonderings that led me down the path of looking up escorts and ultimately acting on my urges. I learned, quite clearly, that there is nothing I’m missing at this point. A physical encounter will always be lacking if there is no emotional connection. That is what truly makes it special, beautiful, and fulfilling. While it was a lesson I unfortunately had to learn the hard way, and I regret the way in which it had to be learned, I’m glad I’ve finally learned it. Now, I just need to work on letting go of the trauma so I can focus on moving forward and being better for myself and my wife.

The last thing I’ll say is that I’ve decided not to tell my wife. I know many people will disagree with this decision, and that is fine. Certainly, I’m fearful of her reaction and everything that I could lose, I won’t deny that. But, my perspective given the realities of my specific circumstances, is that telling her would do more harm than good. My urge to confess is another selfish desire, driven by a need to alleviate my feelings of pain and guilt. Doing so would not relieve me of any of my feelings and would only cause her pain as well. I’ve already screwed up enough, and I want to contain the pain and damage this has caused to myself as much as possible. I know some people will point to ethical reasons why I should tell her, and I don’t necessarily disagree, but I’m focused most on harm reduction now. I know I messed up and have a long road ahead of me. But, I’ve resolved to do the work that I need to do. Thank you for reading all of this mess. I would really appreciate any advice and feedback you can give me.

I’’ll add that I am seeking additional therapy to address my religious trauma.

So, I can understand why you do not wish to tell. But, the longer the lie goes on the more it will likely affect you in ways that will prohibit you becoming the man she needs and the man you are in essence saying you want to be.

I understand your rationale, and can see what you are saying. I just do not think you are factoring in if she does find this information out, the life between that day and the date she finds out she may very well question all the married living in between making her feel she was forced to live a lie. And, Despite using a condom you at least owe it to her to get an STD panel.

I also think you may be using not hurting her as a way to feel integrity "I will bear the burden of this and not let it touch her". But I think you also need to acknowledge that you are afraid to do it. I know, because I waited two months to confess, and like you I put myself in therapy immediately.I don’t think from the moment I felt remorse I was at risk of cheating ever again but that doesn’t mean I was healed or healthy.

Okay with that out of the way, the only other thought I had here is that you mention having one night stands and how it made you feel worse when you were young. I suppose you thought by visiting a professional there would be some answer as to whether or not there is some ultimate experience to be had.

But I wonder if in some way the reverting to past behavior of having a sort of anonymous sex was "being at the level you see yourself as" meaning still seeing yourself as that guy in college that only could get anonymous sex.

I definitely understand that this was driven by sexual urges and curiousity. But going deeper than that, this is still in some ways boiling down to the theme I am reading here where you do not Have a lot of internal validation of your worth.

My experience with cheating was that I too reverted to a younger version of myself. Subconsciously I didn’t feel good enough for my husband. I would have written the same things as you- that I credited him for everything good in my life. There is a lot to that statement because it means you don’t think you would have procured it on your own. You do not see the good in you that likely exists that drew her to you in the first place. You do not feel like her equal because you have not stepped into your power, which in essence is self love, self acceptance, self worth. You simply do not know how to create that or how that is the root of the issues you describe having with yourself.

My advice is no matter what you do, you need to find a way to be that man you feel you wish you could be. And that doesn’t come from tearing yourself down it comes from building yourself up. Because there are likely aspects of that which will always impact your relationship. Not feeling worthy led me to not being able to receive love, it made me hold back my authenticity because I couldn’t accept I was great how I already was. This impacted my ability to be vulnerable, which hindered having true connection making our relationship rely more on attachment.

I think that what I am trying to say is the thing that made you cheat is deeper than you have yet been able to go (normal if you just recently began therapy). The problem is I don’t see how carrying around this terrible secret lets you feel that self love and acceptance you need to feel. Maybe in time I have no idea, but likely it will hold you back from seeing that you deserve your wife and walking into being the confident self-loving man that has hindered you this far.

So in essence, never truly fixing the very thing that likely propelled you to cheat.

Those would be my concerns. Healing after infidelity for us who strayed truly requires a radical self revolution. We can hate what we did but the ultimate goal is to reach self love and compassion. Hurt people hurt other people.

I completely understand your line of thinking as well regarding telling her. But, I am absolutely certain that there’s no way she will find out if I don’t tell her. I recognize that that carrying the guilt inside of me does pose risks to my progress and growth, but that’s something I willing to live with. I freely admit that being afraid to do so, and having to then deal with the consequences, is a major factor in deciding not to do so. I recognize that and own it. Telling her would be a horrible experience. I’m terrified of what would happen. I don’t feel it’s in any way me reaching for some feeling of integrity. I’m trying to look at it from an objective lens, and what I’ve determined is that I feel it’s the least harmful course of action at this point is to not tell her and deal with this issue myself.

I’m definitely planning to get an STD test as soon as I have an opportunity.

I do think you’re spot on with deeper issues for me. You’re exactly right in that I think I was chasing some "ultimate experience". I know now, obviously, there is no such thing to be had. I’ve already got it in my wife.

And, you’re also spot on with the self-worth issues. I’ve often felt like I wasn’t good enough for her. And I especially haven’t felt like an equal to her since I left my job. It’s been very hard. I think the religious trauma played a big part in that as well, making me feel like I was in general, a bad person and unworthy, both in general and specifically because of my sexual desires. This is a major issue I want to work through in therapy.

Thank you very much for all of your advice. It means a lot that a person I’ve never met cares enough to invest the time in sharing their experience and wisdom with me. I am going to do everything I can to move forward and be the man, and husband, I know I am capable of being. I know carrying this burden inside of me might make it more difficult, but I’ve resolved to do so and use it as the motivation I need to be better. My hope is that one day I will be able to look back on it, and see how much progress I’ve made both in loving myself and her.

Again, thanks for all of your advice.

I hope you will keep posting as things progress. There is still a lot ahead to navigate.

I will say shame, whether it be from religion or otherwise ha always been an issue with me as well. The affair added a lot to that. But shame keeps us avoidant, like you mention with initiating sex and in some of your other comments.

I would recommend the book Rising Strong by Brene Brown. It helped illuminate a lot of specific things that I have worked on since I read it.

I am glad that you are committed to your own progress. We will see what happens. I didn’t think I would confess either, but as time progressed and I did a lot of introspection that did change. I am not trying to harp on it but I am glad I told my husband in many ways. I often have wondered if I went your route would it have been better since I too was very committed to my recovery, healing and growth. In my case there was emotional stuff with the Ap and it was too big really to keep it hidden and I could not get pst the idea of not letting him decide if and how he wanted to handle it. Giving him the ability to make informed decisions won out.

Anyway, I am not here to tell you what you should do. Keep writing for yourself because this place was very helpful for me in that regard.

Really, truly, thank you for your advice. I will definitely be posting more as I navigate all of this.

Thank you for the book recommendation. I saw you mention it in another thread, and I've got the audiobook version queued up to listen to over the next couple of weeks.

I guess the one silver lining I can find right now is that there aren't any issues of emotional connection to an AP for me to navigate as part of this. It was only a physical encounter and the only emotional issues (albeit many there are) are my own internal ones.

Thanks again.

Hi TryingToBeBetter1116, Welcome to SI. I don't think we have had many men in your situation before (I believe it's called "emotionless infidelity" on SI) so I also hope you will continue posting, so that your perspective can contribute to the community.

When you think forward ten years from now, in what ways do you want to be better? (your username is such a giveaway). What kind of man do you want to become?

I am very sorry about the religious trauma. It's like people who have had IC trauma, it means that a very helpful avenue might be cut off for them. Are you open to reading Wild at Heart by John Eldredge? Or prayer to a non-specific creator? Or do you find yourself in atheism? There are people who know how to live a peaceful and engaged atheistic life, but that's not my path so I don't know who to recommend. I do think it's important while you are working on the micro to check in on the macro.

Hi Pippin,

Thank you for the warm welcome. I'm finding the same. On one hand, I feel a little better about my situation knowing I don't have to deal with any emotional issues with another person. But, it also makes me feel a little worse knowing that there weren't any issues with my relationship that influenced my actions. It was all me.

Ten years from now, and hopefully sooner, I want to be the husband my wife believes me to be, and wholly deserves. I'm going to work every day to live up to that image. I know I won't succeed every day, but it's the standard I will to hold myself to. I want to get to a point where I believe it as well, where I believe I am the wonderful, worthy person that she sees. As I've worked through all of this, I've found that my lack of self worth and years of internalized shame and repression contributed quite a bit to my behavior. I need to work to fully process that, come to terms with what I experienced, and let go of it so I can move on from it.

I am very much an atheist. The environment that I grew up in was a very fundamentalist, evangelical Christian sect, and it destroyed any illusions I may have had about a benevolent, loving higher power. While I've since encountered other churches that are far, far better/healthier, I've found that my worldview just isn't consistent with any form of deity. I know a lot of people find a lot of value and peace in their spirituality and I'm happy that works for them, but it's just not for me.

Hi TryingToBeBetter1116, I think that's a good image of yourself to work toward. I might put more specific words to it, like I want to be a faithful, trustworthy, truthful, courageous husband who can be vulnerable with my wife and allow her to help me. For me, it would be helpful to have those words at my fingertips, so I would see and notice places where I already was those things (and places where I wasn't) and work toward them.

I agree with HikingOut about telling your wife, but I understand that seems impossible or terrifying right now. Can I ask you to hold a little bit of space in your mind rather than making a final decision right now? You have two experienced people telling you that you, your wife, and your marriage will be better off in the long run, and you also acknowledge that you see risks and downsides to not telling her. So instead of a final decision right now, perhaps you can say to yourself "I don't trust that my wife loves me enough to be able to handle all of me right now. I am not courageous enough right now to see her in pain." The "right now" leaves space for a future TryingToBeBetter1116 who is more trusting of his wife and more courageous. I also encourage you to read the thread "For Those Who Found Out Years Later" in the I Can Relate forum. I understand that you think there is no risk of your wife finding out. There is never no risk when there are pesky facts in the world (the escort might decide she desperately needs money and look you up and blackmail you, you might talk in your sleep, you might accidentally leave SI open one day. You cannot be sure she will never find out).

I also think you should look for some kind of moral, ethical, or philosophical teacher or system. We are not meant to make it up on our own, our ego will sneak in there and tweak things to make them convenient for us rather than principled. Eckhart Tolle or Brené Brown are popular on wayward, or Buddhism or perhaps Stoicism. I can't straight out recommend these things because it's not my path, but I am totally confident they would get you a long way toward better. I would also mention something that I realized about Christianity but also works for any other system. It is embedded in a little story. I went to see my oldest daughter perform in her college orchestra Beethoven's 2nd symphony, which I didn't remember hearing before. They were not that good. They were, in fact, pretty bad. Halfway through the scherzo I leaned over to my husband (who is a trained musician) and whispered "is it supposed to sound sad?" Scherzos are sometimes angry and sometimes jubilant but I've never heard a sad one. He whispered back, "the brass is really out of tune and half a step behind the strings." If that was my only experience of Beethoven, I would have thought that Beethoven was the problem. He's a bad composer. But that's not true - it was badly played. That helped me so much when I was in the middle of a difficult situation at my first church, which I only attended for a year. I didn't have the upbringing and submersive culture you had, and it was bad enough to be surrounded by people "playing" the Bible poorly. But I realized in that moment - these things are always being "played" by imperfect people. Whatever path you choose, you have to expect that.

Hi again,

Thank you. I do like that idea quite a bit. I’ll have to put some thought into exactly how I’d like to frame that. I’ll do my best not to just completely plagiarize your words.

I will concede that I haven’t completely ruled out the idea of telling my wife. But, I will say that I have heard from a few others (both here and in other places), who’ve shared their experiences as waywards who haven’t told their partners and had success. I know that viewpoint and experience and experience is far from the most common in these forums, but I think it bears considering. That’s not to say that I don't see the validity in the experiences of all those who have disclosed and had that work for them. It’s an incredibly nuanced decision that carries an immense amount of weight and requires a lot of introspection.

To which, with the introspection I’ve done over the last few weeks, I still believe - right now - that the best course of action is to not tell my wife. The fact that it was an incidence of emotionless infidelity is a big factor in that decision. If there had been some deeper, more involved emotional connection to it, I think I would feel very differently. Doubly so it that was due in any way to a deeper issue I felt in our relationship. And, to just quickly address the risk of her finding out, the risks are as minimal as they possibly could be, and I’m willing to accept those. The only means of contact with the escort was via a temporary local eSIM that has been deactivated, I don’t talk in my sleep, I’m very careful about closing SI, and even so neither my wife or I are the kind to look through the other’s devices.

I’ll come back to my decision to not disclose in a moment, but I want to segue into addressing your next points first, as I think that will provide some necessary context as to my thought process.

I’ll say first that I’m not the kind of atheist who dismisses or derides Christians (or anyone of any faith for that matter). I know many who are wonderful, ethical people, and I’m glad they’ve found a belief system that works for them. Over the years, I’ve been exposed to a wide variety of Christian traditions beyond the sect that I was raised in. Some are considerably better and more aligned with my worldview than others. But, for me, it comes down to the fact that I have never encountered any clear, consistent, verifiable evidence to support the existence of a deity, Judeo-Christian or otherwise.

That’s not to say that I lack a belief system entirely. If I had to point to one that I could call my own, I would say I’m a modern humanist. I also tend to align with utilitarian ethics (when I have my head screwed on right and am not acting like a selfish idiot, that is). A major facet of this is choosing a course of action that maximizes net benefit and minimizes net harm. Again, I realize that doing what I’ve done in the first place doesn’t align with this, and that’s a big thing I’ve resolved to work on, making sure that I’m more careful in the future about checking in with my morals and ethics before making poor choices.

This brings me back to my decision to not tell my wife. For me, it has less to do with trusting vs. not trusting that my wife loves me enough to handle my issues. Maybe you could say that I am not courageous enough to see her in pain. But, the way that I view it is that the best, most ethical thing that I can do at this point in time, given what’s already been done, is to minimize the pain and harm done. I’m sure a fair amount of people will counter that with the notion that the harm to her has already been done, but I don’t see it that way. As far as I can tell, the harm done has, so far, been limited to me. While I’m very unhappy with that fact, I am glad that it hasn’t affected her. I would much rather suffer the consequences of my stupid choice on my own than share it with anyone, let alone her. I won’t go so far as to say I’m being courageous or anything of that ilk in trying to protect her, but I am trying to contain the pain as much as I can rather than spreading it. Someone in a private message posed the question to me, "How would my wife benefit if I tell her?", and I haven’t been able to come up with an answer that is compelling enough to sway me to tell her. So, right now, my decision to not tell her is firm.

Instead, I’ve reflected a lot on the pain I’ve been feeling, tried to sit with it in those moments, and think about how I can use it to be better. Whenever I feel the pain, I’m doing my best to feel it, remember what I did that led to the feeling, then set it aside, and think about what I can do to be better in that moment both for her and for me. At your suggestion, I'm going to have to give some thought to exactly how I define that. And, finally, as I've said, I’ve resolved to use it as the impetus I’ve been lacking to confront the trauma and self-worth issues that have gone unaddressed until now.

All that said, I really appreciate you sharing your perspective with me. It's comforting to know I'm not alone. It’s very encouraging to have you all invest your time in helping me on my journey to being a better person. Even if we don’t necessarily agree on everything, it’s not something I’ll ever forget or take lightly.

It's comforting to know I'm not alone.

Amen to that.

(I am of the camp that waywards need to sometimes engage in humor. It's good for the soul. Though you are a new wayward so probably only a little bit is in order and then you need to get back to serious work, and if humor doesn't work for you at all, please just read past my little attempts)

[This message edited by Pippin at 1:50 AM, Tuesday, March 11th]