Update and I Guess I Am Done after 50 years?
My D-day for WH’s 7th and most recent affair was June 2023. He had a texting, online, and phone affair with a former fellow bandmate and longtime fantasy sex person. She was always flashing him, walking around naked in front of him back in the 70’s. He always wanted to sleep with her, but didn’t back then.
Fast forward, he and he reconnected via emails and letters, start sending nudes, and for 3-1/2 to 4 years this goes on, with plans to meet up for the real deal. COVID prevented that, but if D-day had not happened I am sure it would have worked out for them somehow. She’s in another state.
So we go to counseling after D-day. I’m reading, he reads whatever I ask, answers all my questions. Counseling seems good, except I just know in my gut that he’s lying about one past relationship, from back in the 70’s, and it just hangs with me. It always has.
So this June 2024, a year into "recovery" I lose my sh*t. I finally tell him that the bull is enough, I’m done, and I cannot stay if this continues. And he admits he lied, tells me the truth about that PA, and then drops the bomb that he also had a PA with a neighbor friend of ours (who has since moved away).
So restart the recovery clock, because damn.
I was obviously shell shocked. And he has again trickle-truths me to death. I told him that I cannot take it anymore. He became somewhat more open, and then stopped, backed up, and last night went back into hedging on what he has said.
"Maybe" he was going to see her for sex, he was only "hoping" for sex, it wasn’t "really planned" - this after he confessed to it all, and I read the actual f’ing PLANS.
And today I asked him "have you yourself done any kind of reading on your own, looked for any help on your own, looked for websites, anything?" He says no, he kind of just relied on me to do it.
I told that this explains exactly why we are nowhere, 18 months into this mess.
His expectation is that it’s my job to fix what he broke.
I told him that since he sees no need to do any work on the marriage at all, NEITHER DO I.
I am done.
I told him he is free of me. I don’t have any more questions. I don’t care what he does. Since this isn’t important to him, I an mo longer going to put any effort at all into it either - I will treat it EXACTLY THE WAY HE TREATS IT, AND I WILL TREAT HIM THE WAY HE TREATS ME.
He doesn’t want me to do that, he says.
"I don’t give a shit." I said. And I feel better now. I am just done. If anything changes, it will be because he changed it.
I’m not going to row this boat anymore, because when only one oar is in the water, you only go in circles.
20 comments posted: Thursday, October 24th, 2024
Affairing down? - or am I just not his type?
My WH has had multiple affairs, all but one physical.
Thing is, you could almost swap out these women, one for the other, in terms of the type of person they are.
All but one were married when they cheated with him.
All dressed very provocatively.
All openly talked about sex, their interest in sex, their sexual abilities, and their sexual conquests.
All flashed him their body parts.
All willingly had sex with him in risky places, initiated it in fact, such as other people’s homes, on the beach, or risked getting caught in my home.
Basically, he prefers what he calls "nasty" women.
I am not this type of female. Nothing like this (although there was a time when we weren’t together and I was much, much younger that I sowed some wild oats, this really isn’t me).
So, why is he even with me at all? Why bother with someone who isn’t remotely your type?
8 comments posted: Saturday, July 13th, 2024
Now what do I ask?
Yesterday my WH confessed to yet another PA with a former neighbor, who I considered to be a friend of almost 25 years.
Not friends since yesterday for sure.
I just called her to get "her truth", and thought that maybe she would at least give me the honesty of telling me how long they saw each other, or how many times it happened, or was this what he said (just twice, about five years apart, drunken and awful).
But nope.
She says she doesn’t remember anything happening AT ALL. "Was he drunk when he told you this? I don’t remember anything like that happening. Sorry. I wouldn’t do that to you."
She says she "just can’t remember it happening".
I will say this: she is an EXTREMELY heavy drinker, and at the time was very much sexually promiscuous. She was drinking about 12-18 beers per day - this is not an exaggeration. Is it possible that she did this and actually cannot remember it at all?
This drinking level went on for about 6 or 7 years before her husband left.
Her husband only left after she let another affair partner (the fifth one I know of, counting my husband) move into a tent on their property - and then was demoted for having an affair with her boss (who got fired for his affair with her). Codependency continued after their divorce, as he helped her with everything afterwards and still does, even though she lives with another man now.
But I am so stupid for calling her. If their affair was a longer term one, he’s protecting her and she’s protecting him STILL, or she’s lying to just stay out of this mess, or she’s just a liar all around, or she’s an alcoholic who can’t remember.
Any way it goes, this wasn’t worth the data on my cell plan.
11 comments posted: Friday, June 21st, 2024
Another DDay-It never ends
My story very briefly. I don’t post often because I have been deemed a "mad hatter" and this makes things difficult on this site in ever possible way.
In 1975 we got married. In 1976, he wanted to try swinging, but arranged it and didn’t let me in on the plan. I rejected the deal as it unfolded. Shortly after this, in my 19-year-old stupidity, I had a ONS (my illogic was that if it was okay to swing, I was choosing the partner, yes I own this, yes it was wrong, yes he knows, yes I immediately confessed). In his illogic, he had a revenge affair almost immediately thereafter. I have NEVER CHEATED AGAIN, NOT ONCE. NEVER.
We worked through this stupidity. Sort of.
In 1977, we were relocating to another state. He went ahead to get an apartment, etc. While there, he slept with another woman twice (he only recently admitted this, full details today but I have pretty much known anyway). In 1978 we briefly separated, but upon getting back together, he slept with two other women - one I knew about that he confessed to at the time, but the other he disclosed last year on DDay 1.
He was faithful (I am told) until 2005 when I caught him with a friend in a 4 month PA, which was a sex-only, no emotional involvement deal. Immediately after I found out, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and our recovery focus shifted to surgery and cancer treatment. So that wasn’t a proper affair recovery at all.
And so it explains this: he failed to disclose the other affair he also had around the same time as this 2005 PA, that he just disclosed today. It was a one-time attempt at sex, but he says he was very drunk and had ED (likely true, prostate cancer was affecting him at that time) and couldn’t perform. He was also abusing alcohol a LOT at that time, which is a running theme in his affairs.
He recovered somewhat from cancer and we were able to begin sex again, and he tried again with this same person - but tried again while drunk and failed. He hasn’t had the best result post surgery, but with the two of us, I know what works and what doesn’t, and I suspect he’s telling the truth because alcohol doesn’t work for him at all. He also just disclosed this today.
Finally, he had the EA online and over the phone from sometime in 2019 until DDay June 9, 2023 when my iPad updated and all of their texts and emails crossed over onto my device. No, I cannot explain it, but it was the worst day of my life.
Until today, when the rest of the story came out, because he told me that he tried to have sex with a good friend of mine twice, and she’s also a betrayer, and
I am broken.
I have been married to him for 49 years.
Today, I told him I just wanted the truth of my life, I screamed at him that he was killing me, slowly, painfully killing me, by trickling out a piece of truth at a time.
I begged him to stop doing this, to FOR GOD’S SAKE treat me like a human being and tell me the fucking truth of my life so I can make decisions based on real information.
So he sat with it, and told me things he had held back. They hurt. But I think I have what I think is truth now. I’m sure there will be some more details, but at this point I at least know the big picture.
I’m numb. I never expected that one of my best friends would be in the mix, but looking back, she was in a weird place, cheating on her husband with other men at the time anyway, and her husband knew about them, so it’s not altogether shocking she would do this. She’s blocked at my end. I have nothing to say to her. She’s single, her husband left her years ago.
I have no idea what I plan to do. WH wants to reconcile.
I want to heal and figure out what reconciliation would mean.
13 comments posted: Thursday, June 20th, 2024
Wrote WH a letter as recommended, now he’s very hurt
I’m working through a program that has the BS write a letter to the WS. The letter is to talk about how the affair has affected the BS in terms of feelings about themselves, feelings about the wayward spouse, how it has affected the BS behaviors and attitudes in the relationship, and talking about how feelings/behavior and the relationship before/during/after the affair.
This is step one of many. The WS will also do this same letter, so he will get his turn. We will also be exchanging letters about how we have read the letters, and what we have learned about the other from them.
At this point, he’s really hurt. He has been crying. He can barely talk to me. He won’t look at me hardly.
I feel awful, but I was honest about the devastation to my emotions, and my sense of security in the relationship, how he feels about me, and whether he should just go on and leave the marriage for what he professed to her was a 50 year "love". I don’t know, he says now that was all bullshit, but his letters to her were full of romance and love that he has never expressed towards me. I’m heartsick over this. This emotional affair has broken me more than his PAs ever did.
Anyway, seeing him cry and his being so hurt by what I have said now makes me think I have broken the marriage. That I went too far and it’s too much. Maybe he is broken now too, and we just won’t fix this after nearly 49 years together.
What a total damn mess. He says he will write a letter back. At this point, I might just give up. I can’t take much more hurt than I already have inside.
28 comments posted: Wednesday, January 31st, 2024
7 Months Out, Progress and the Rollercoaster
Brief history: we were married in 1975. Before our first year was up, we both had a ONS and without too many details we can chalk this up to a hippy lifestyle and belief system that we both agreed was not workable for either of us. We recommitted and were doing well. In 1978 he was in the music industry and surrounding a 3-month separation he had 3 PAs (I knew of one, suspected one that he just admitted, and he just admitted one that I didn’t know at all). Things were good in the marriage until 2005, when he had another PA lasting 4 months with a coworker. About 3 weeks following that dday he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had to have surgery to remove it.
Our recovery shifted from affair recovery to cancer recovery. I believe we rugswept many aspects of the affair, and we focused on recovering his health first and sexual function after that. I admit that I put everything on the back burner and ultimately was just grateful he lived, and he was grateful we could get back to some semblance of "normal". As time passed, we actually were doing better, and had a renewal of our vows on one of our anniversaries on a cruise. Things seemed great.
Until they weren’t.
Around the beginning of 2018, I suffered a major accident and had a series of oral-facial surgeries. Over the course of 18 months I had 20 surgeries. My face and mouth was very sensitive, and I was unable to even bite a banana if that gives you any idea. To say it interfered with oral aspects of sexual activity is an understatement. We definitely had less frequent interactions, but were still active. However, we were back to normal around the middle of 2019.
At some point in 2021, it became very painful to have intercourse (I am in my sixties, seems common) so I had to seek treatment for that. I got the treatment and told him it was better, we could resume - he just looked at me and walked away. I had no idea he was deep into the affair by then, but when he did that my thought was that he must be seeing someone…like intuition. I didn’t look for evidence because it never dawned on me that I should check his phone or anything. I never thought of spying. I wish I had.
That said, he began to stop being interested around the end of 2019. I couldn’t get him to be interested, and he didn’t initiate. In fact, he seemed to avoid me. Things seemed to almost stop altogether, and then by 2021 when it began to hurt, it was down to maybe once a month but only if I worked hard.
Turns out, he started his online contacts with his EA sometime around the end of 2019, she sent him a nude in May 2020, and he was using a lot of porn during that time until DDay June 2023.
I found out because my ipad and his phone crossed over and I watched them sexting in real time.
Since then, we had a brief time of him TT, but he realized I would leave without the truth. He has been doing the work. Reading, answering questions, telling me the unfolding and story and emotions of the affair, discussing his growth and observations of how he was thinking during the affair vs how he is now, discussing what he knows he has done to our relationship and his remorse, regret, and need for repair, as well as taking the lead in sharing what he has read and is learning as he goes.
He is open with emails, phone, computer, everything. He stopped all porn use.
We have talked about his changes, and he is surprising me. He is showing me insights that he has never talked about before.
Things are better. I am not healed, not by a long shot. But he is different than he was. I’m watching.
3 comments posted: Friday, January 19th, 2024
This recovery is a lot different.
My husband is much different this time around. Our recovery last time (in 2005) was essentially short circuited by his cancer diagnosis, then the surgery and recovery, followed by a major surgery I had. By the time we went through all of that, a year and a half had passed, and we had faced looking into the abyss of cancer. Looking back, we worked on a lot of things, but other things were passed over because we had our focus ripped away.
His recent EA brought all of that back into sharp view. One of the things that is very different this time is his response and actions.
He is doing things differently. The last time we did the "his needs, her needs" thing, and basically it was emphasized to me that I failed to meet his needs, yadda yadda.
This time we know that’s just BS, and we’re not talking betrayed spouse here, but bullshit. And he said so. He has repeated, daily, that his behavior is 100% his fault, and that none of it had anything to do with me.
He has answered every question truthfully, and we went back to day one of our relationship - something we didn’t do before. I learned things I didn’t know, some good, some bad. But truth has been told, openly and honestly. No holds barred, and it has been hard but remarkably freeing for him. He has talked more about his feelings than ever before.
We are using EFT approaches, and working through the conversations and concepts. It works for us. Definitely works for him!
I have seen huge changes in him.
We went to eat at a restaurant the other night, and we were just talking about something (I don’t remember what it was even) and he started to answer me. It was a simple thing, I thought, and it triggered him. He took my hand and tried to speak and just began to cry, right there, in the restaurant. He took a minute and gathered himself. Then he said, "I don’t know where that came from. I do that every day, from time to time. I just get triggered when I am reminded how I hurt you."
That never happened before. Recovery before was about how I needed to focus on meeting his needs.
This time, his focus is on changing himself and how he interacts and behaves in our relationship. He’s doing a lot of work, and I’m seeing results.
This is the person I married, peeking out at me again.
3 comments posted: Monday, August 14th, 2023
Yet again he cheated
New here.
Most recent D-day 5/24/23 or thereabouts, I can’t say for sure
OW is single
Married 48 years.
My husband had a physical affair about 18 years ago. We did the work and recovered.
Things were going well, or so I thought. I had a serious fall and facial injuries in 2018, and we couldn’t have sex for about a year, but recovered. About two years ago, I developed severe pain in intercourse, and we weren’t able to have sex for about 16 months. I underwent treatment and was healed about 8 months ago or so.
I told him I was ready, and he looked at me as though I wasn’t there and walked away.
I knew that he had found someone else at that point. I just didn’t know who or where or when.
He stopped touching me. All this time he was kind and acted loving toward me, just no intimacy at all.
Flash forward to May.
I was on a trip, and had an update to my phone. That update somehow made it so his text messages came to me, but I didn’t catch on right away. It took me until about June 8 to figure it out. Anyway, he would text me, like sending me pics of our cat and a flower, stuff he had cooked for dinner, etc. I would click a heart emoji or smiley face. We talked by phone daily, so I didn’t think anything of the texts.
And then I realized something didn’t make sense. On one of the texts someone else replied.
So I scrolled up.
And there were sexts, nude photos back and forth, and stuff I about choked over.
So I called WH and told him that I have the texts, the emails, and all the rest.
He immediately texted her that he thought he did something wrong, apologized to her, and told her I found out.
I joined that text message with "the thing the both of you did wrong was this ENTIRE THING"
OW, who has been what I thought was a lifelong family friend, began lying. She replied it was all a game, they had no feelings for each other, blah blah, and started telling me exactly how I should feel and what I should do. Then she tells me that she isn’t into men anymore anyway, is gay now, and sent me a pic of her an a woman. She’s so full of it that she could explode at any moment and cause a hazardous spill event.
I cursed at them both and that was that.
Came home, and started looking through his stuff. They had exchanged nude photos at least three years ago, numerous "I love you" emails and references to phone calls and phone sex.
His first lie was "I never said I loved her", so I knew that was his major concern. He tried lying and minimizing. I told him that I cannot decide ANYTHING in my life based on lies - and I already knew the truth so just stop it.
He stopped lying. He gave me passwords, accounts, and began talking to me about a concern about overuse of porn. He says he cannot believe what he did, feels like he has been in a fog or something. He has NC, and is answering any question I have. He said he knows I have PTSD from the things he did, and understands that the future of this marriage depends on total honesty, stopping any porn or contact with OW, and he is devastated from his own behavior.
I cry. He cries. He is waiting for IC appointment now.
I have the expected turmoil, anger, sadness, rollercoaster emotions, and fog.
He told me today that he realizes that none of his behavior is my fault. He apologizes frequently, and appears truly remorseful.
I’m a mess. I keep searching stuff and have deleted and shredded files on his emails, he told me he thought he found every email but there were still a couple left from a long time ago. He is supportive of deleting stuff. He said the thought of her makes him sick now, and even thinking about her and their exchanges cause him to be nauseated.
All of my searches revealed he is not contacting her in any way, and I look frequently.
I guess I’m posting because I just need to get this out.
I hate this. We’re old. Hysterical Bonding has happened. What a damn mess.
36 comments posted: Friday, June 23rd, 2023
