The story of my husband's betrayal

Me and my husband have been married for 22 years and started dating 30 years ago. We have 2 wonderful teenage kids. Friendship and respect were always present in our relationship.
I have found out that my husband had a relationship with a woman since October 2018. He started an account on an adult cam site and focused on a particular foreign girl, 20 years younger than both of us, with whom he started an intimate relationship online. They met several times a week during these almost 4 years and had sexual encounters and personal, intimate conversations about their life. He found her amazing and believed they had a very intimate and genuine relationship. He supported her financially, both through the webcam site and sending her money. He thought that she gave him acceptance and comfort and loved how she admired him, and wanted to please her as much as he could. Last year, more than 3 years after starting their virtual encounters, he made a plan to bring her to our country. He set up a company to hire her, so she could have a visa, payed her a salary, rented a flat that he furnished, and started meeting her there. After a while, he decided to stop the sexual encounters, because he felt guilty, but kept paying her everything and meeting her.
When he started having actual sexual encounters at that house with her, I started to get suspicious because he wasn't able to have sex with me (which we always had over these four years of the relationship with that woman of the web cam site). I eventually found out the whole story. I never imagined that he would cheat on me. And he is considered by everyone a very wise and respectable man. Now he says he is very sorry, he doesn't know how he did it and he tells me I am the woman of his life. I forced him to cut off all support and contact with her (he wanted to keep the financial support to that woman for another 2 years) and she went back to the country she came from. He gave me all the money he had gathered to support her.
We are separated now and I think I cannot forgive such a betrayal. That took so long and eventually led to him bringing her to live here besides our family. But now he tells me there is no point in his life besides being with me. He lost a lot of weight and cries a lot. When I found out about the infidelity, he kept himself under control, more distressed about no longer supporting her and worried about defending her and their relationship, but now he is very sorry and distressed that we might break up. I guess he thought I would never suspect and find out, because I trusted him so blindly. And, when I found out, he thought we would get over it quickly. And he tells me he has been having suicidal thoughts. When I found out, we started couple's counseling together. He already had a therapist, who started 4 years ago, almost at the same time his affair began. But my husband had never spoken to his therapist about the affair until some months ago, when the woman was already living here and he ended the sexual part of their relationship. I guess he didn´t want to question what he was doing.
Since the moment when I discovered the whole thing, he has changed the way he sees that woman and their relationship. Now he says he was living a fictional relationship in a fantasy bubble, that she was opportunistic and had nothing to lose, and pressured him to do things and send money and gifts. He wanted to reward her, because he felt so good with her and she gave him easy and immediate pleasure when they met. He wanted to please her all the time, because he needed her to look up to him and feel that he was her savior. He tells me that what's left is shame and a dark cloud over it all and he doesn't care about her anymore.
I feel a wreck. I lost my identity, my marriage, my family. My husband’s image crumbled. I have not been able to cope at work. I permanently have intrusive thoughts about what happened. Our daily life was full of situations that he set up to have time and space for his encounters with her. So I keep revisiting what happened in these 4 years, where I lived thinking we were in a two-way relationship and he lied to me all the time and had sexual encounters and high emotional involvement with that woman and romantic attentions that he never had with me. He behaved like a sugar daddy, which seems completely dissonant with his apparent way of life and principles. I need to take time to think what to do with my life, but my husband insists all the time in getting back together and tells me no one will love me the way he does. How could I deal with all this situation?
Sorry for such a long text. Thank you all. Kind regards.

28 comments posted: Sunday, May 14th, 2023