Me: 40 (BS) Him:48 (WH) 21+APMarried: 4/2016D-Day: 6/13/20222 kids 5&3

Scared to think ahead

Well, not exactly just found out, it's been 5 months and 10 days. I'm not AS numb but I'm still feeling out of body, lost, and completely unable to figure out how to move forward.
I found out that my husband has a sex addiction and over time have found out that there's at least 21 different one night stands with up to four different "encounters" with the same person. It was like peeling back the layers of an onion in the first weeks and months, constantly finding out that there is more and more and more. That it wasn't just an emotional affair. It was physical. I had to find out by calling and speaking with these women. He was saying "love you babe", calling them sweetie, hun, mi amor, all the pet names that are supposed to be my names. At least once ON my birthday!! In between texting me how tired he was!? At least one of them, from the gym only .33 miles from our house, told me " I have to tell you I fell in love with your husband." "He said that he was given the green light years ago after your son was born and that he'd been too nervous to act on it until now." "That after your son was born you just weren't into him sexually." I was very 'available'. I have text messages I sent him initiating sex late at night while he was in the bathroom texting the woman he was planning to meet the next time he was away for Army Reserve drill weekend and he said to me we had to wait for his next appointment, after drill, due to his hydrocele issues, which apparently weren't an issue when you're having sex with strangers.
Apparently this has been going on since 2016, three weeks before we even moved in together, when I was already pregnant with our first child. He proposed after these affairs had started. Two days before we were married there are pictures, the kind of pictures he took when setting up accounts online.
Yet he claims that those pictures were for me, that he didn't do anything then, that he can't remember. I hear that a lot. "I just don't remember. I'm sorry I'm trying. I just don't remember."
You know what I remember, being faithful, being loyal. Loving him and being afraid that he was cheating on me asking him "Please don't ever leave me. You and the kids are all I have. I have no one else in this world. Please don't do that to me." And him saying "I'm a one woman kind of guy" and then later "I've been so loyal to you. I would never do that to you. You're making me mad that you keep asking me this."
After the affair, my love language is physical, so we've been intimate, but unfortunately I've been self-medicating with alcohol so I thought that I was feeling ill and off because somehow I'd alcohol poison myself but I was actually pregnant and then horrifically, a week later I started to miscarry but my body didn't properly process it so I had to have a DNC 5 days ago. He gave me no sympathy. No empathy. He was just lost in his own feelings. On the drive to the hospital for the DNC I told him "it's crazy. There's a dead body inside me." and he said to me "yeah life is crazy" but nothing beyond that. No empathy, no "I'm so sorry you're going through this." The night before the DNC he had his men's group which gets out at 9 pm so when I get back up from putting the kids to bed I come out to see him, and he says nothing to me about his sessions or about how are you feeling with tomorrow's procedure. I eventually lose my cool and say to him "why are you such a horrible husband!? You haven't asked me how I'm doing or shared how your group went when you know how important it is to me to hear about your recovery. You have no empathy!" He starts hitting things and says "I can't do anything right! Everything I do is wrong! What do you want from me!" And in desperation for some signs that he loves me and wants to prove to me that he doesn't want to let me go, I say stupidly "I want a divorce." Hoping he'll say please no I love you ect ect but no he says "I agree, I think that's best. I can't see you getting over this."
He's back tracked some since then but he's still talking about a trial separation while we are moved down to Texas for active duty orders for a year come this spring.
I'm at a loss as what to do. I've been a sahm for the last 6+ years, so I have zero income, zero family support (toxic) and totally scared at trying to do this on my own as a mom of two young children.
I told him the day I found out I was pregnant I don't want to be a single mother, if I keep this baby we're getting married, I'm all in. He knew that and three weeks later, I have proof, he was on Backpage looking for women. How can I choose to stay after all that's happened?

14 comments posted: Friday, November 25th, 2022