I feel like I’m living a nightmare

Three weeks ago I found out that my husband of 22 years has been having online affairs for the past 10 years. Unfortunately my teenage daughter was the one who had to tell me as she saw him messaging her. I logged into the messaging app on his phone and discovered he has been messaging and emailing them multiple times a day every day for years. He calls them his mistresses. This has been going on in our house, while I’ve been sat opposite him and whilst we’ve been away for special occasions, even on our wedding anniversary. He’s even been messaging them when he’s been with our daughter. He’s been sharing sex chats, images, voice notes and videos. There is at least 50 women that I know of but I’m guessing over 10 years there’s probably even more. One woman he’s been messaging for the past 2.5 years and he has told her he loves her and would have to visit her if he could.

If it wasn’t bad enough finding out all of this the content of the messages is horrific. He has been sharing rape fantasies with this woman which involves her raping me and there are many messages and voice notes that I have had to endure the pain of listening to. I have heard such awful things said about me that no one should ever have to hear. He told her he wanted to defile me and abuse me whilst they gaze into each others and make love afterwards. I have heard him say these things in the voice notes. I can’t unhear what I’ve heard and when I close my eyes I see the awful things he said about me. I keep having flashbacks. He has also sent her intimate photos of me which just enhanced their fantasies and allowed his mistress to describe how she would abuse me. I feel violated and exposed. As if someone has read my personal diary. They have seen images of me that were only ever meant for my husband, the man I loved. I never imagined it possible that he could betray me like this. I am scared that people have looked at my photos and violated me in their minds. I’m also scared as to where the photos could end up online. As well as the intimate photos he has been sending women photos of my face so they know what I look like. He claims this is because he thought I was beautiful and wanted to show me off. He sent her porn videos acting out their fantasies and they imagined it was me in them being abused. I feel so vulnerable that these women know so much about me, what I look like, what clothes I wear and what our sex life is like yet I know very little of most of them, just that one of them fantasies about harming me.

He claims all of this is fantasy and make believe. Like interactive porn. He says he didn’t consider it cheating because it’s all online and he had no intention of meeting any of them in real life. He says he wanted to stop but couldn’t. He says the fantasies were just fantasies and he doesn’t want to hurt me in real life which I do believe but I still don’t know how he could say those words and get off on the fact that someone else wanted to do that to me. In one of the videos she said to him that she knows he loves me and doesn’t want to do this in real life so that is something. He says he had a connection with her and was able to open up to her but claims he didn’t love her. He said a lot of what he said to these women were lies and just what you say. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. I feel like he was supposed to protect me and I’ve been thrown to the wolves.

Day to day he is an amazing husband to me and the last person I ever thought would do this. Reading this he sounds like a monster but this isn’t the man I know. He’s a loving husband and father and would always tell me how much he loved and adored me. I have never had any reason to distrust him which I guess is how he’s got away with this for so long.

When I found out I threw him out and he so he’s not living at home. I am very worried him as he is at rock bottom and suicidal. He is extremely remorseful and ashamed and knows he has destroyed his life as well as mine.

Part of me still loves him and the other part of me despises him which is something I could have never thought possible. I feel like I love the person I thought he was and not who he really is. I don’t know this person. I think he’s a sex addict and a porn addict and became addicted to all of this and it just got darker and more twisted. I just can’t get over that he still made the choice to do this to me and destroyed our family. I feel like I’m in some alternative universe or a horror film because none of this feels real. It has tainted everything we’ve done over the last 10 years. I don’t know how I can ever recover from this. I know I deserve so much more than him but I also know I could never trust another person again so if we don’t reconcile I will be on my own forever. I also feel I’m a damaged person now and I have fundamentally changed as a person. I’m a shell of a person and I feel so vulnerable and alone.

147 comments posted: Friday, November 3rd, 2023