SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi, there. First post. I’ve written about 2/3 of a long form essay telling my story (and this is super long itself!), but I tabled that because I need to just.. start asking questions and getting support.

Shortest version for the purposes of this post is that WH and I (BW) got together when I was extremely young and he was much older, but still young. We’ve been together more than 25 years and are in our 40s/50s. A year into our exclusive relationship, he had what was essentially a ONS with lots of added horribleness, and I "forgave" him near-instantly, mainly because I was in shock and didn’t want to lose him. For the record, too, regarding this DD#1, he confessed (in a weaselly way, but still with intent to confess) within days of cheating. I wouldn’t have guessed and may never have found out otherwise. Now, we did talk about it and work on it SOME— shortly after it happened and again some years later, and it has never been a verboten topic. But it was also never fully resolved. Plus, as I stated to him in recent years, and he agrees, it was a huge mistake for me not to have broken up with him at that time, even if we might have gotten back together in a better place. I basically taught him he couldn’t do anything to make me stop loving him/clinging to him/supporting him. It was absolutely terrible for my self-esteem, even though through the years, I made slow and eventually steady progress on that front.

Recently I’ve come to realize how much damage was done to me and our relationship by my so-called forgiveness— and by not fully dealing with all the ramifications. WH and I had lots of fairly productive discussions over the past month+ about this and other issues, in which he has been impressively non-defensive about 95% of the time.

But then… I thought, could he have cheated again? Sometime in these many years? I had been thinking of other cheating-like things he did over the years— nothing very recent, but at least within the past ~12. Gambling money away, lying to me about job-hunting when he was unemployed, etc. These seemed to be semi-isolated events, and we’d been to MC since then. (A short course, not the best therapist, but a bit helpful.)

Anyway! I am "not a jealous person" but I am trying to trust my intuition more and thought I’d make a quick list of people my gut said he COULD have cheated with. Four people/occasions popped up pretty quickly, at least one surprising me, that it even popped into my mind. But next to two of the four I wrote, in parentheses, something like: "ehhhhh I don’t think so."

I asked him and he said no to all of them, and to any other possible infidelity, ever. I very specifically phrased the question as "Did you ever cheat again, in any way that you might consider it a betrayal had I done it to you?" So as not to only mean some very narrow idea of, IDK, PIV intercourse. He seemed to sincerely answer, "No." I think I asked a follow-up question about one of the two my gut felt most strongly about, who was a cam girl I had thought he was "friends" with years ago (I know, I know!) And he confessed to having seen a little more of her show, one time, than he had ever told me before. (Believe it or not, that was the one that had surprised me by popping into my head!)

Friends, he was absolutely and very consciously lying. It was TT.

A couple of days later, while reading SI, I went into his computer. I have the PW for normal spousal reasons, like it was the only computer we had brought on a recent trip and I needed to use it to check in to flights and so on.

What I found in his Messenger chats and the emails he never deleted was (to make a long story slightly less long), an online/EA with the cam girl from 17 years ago. And with continued communication— maybe 10-20% inappropriate but less egregious than in the start— more or less through present day. This was by far the worst I found.

But also, with the other most suspicious person/group on my "suspects list"— there was not OBVIOUSLY an affair-affair, but extremely graphic "jokes" with just the thinnest possible veneer of joking, made in Messenger group chats and elsewhere. About 12-13 years ago. Absolutely a betrayal, absolutely he would have been horrified and rightly hurt and angry had I done this to him, though perhaps we could say that this stopped short of an affair per se. Imagine saying all the sexual things you were going to do to a person you also very obviously had a crush on, but couching it in "everyone knows we’re just joking." From the various messages and emails I’ve found it’s possible, perhaps even more likely than not, that it never progressed further than that. But at this point for me, anything’s possible. And definitely, absolutely a betrayal.

I confronted him, he told me many more details about the "cam girl" that were pretty bad, and seemed genuinely shocked at how he had recast the conversations with the second person/group and had remembered them as much milder. Because of this, and especially the TT, I am currently separated from him just to clear my head at a minimum. He’s started IC and gone a couple of times, seems to be doing a lot of right things (NC with the cam girl), giving me all the space I need, we’re seeing a MC also, next week, etc… There’s a lot more, but…

To get to the title question!

I am naturally feeling like my world is upside down, that I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me, etc. And both that 1) I should not have been doubting my intuition all these years— it’s spot-on!!, and 2) who knows what’s true anymore— anything could be true!

I’ve only been away from him for a handful of days so far, but it recently occurred to me that— no kidding!— there is NO WAY I know everything now. At absolute minimum, there are 1) known unknowns, like the specific, literal content of every "love letter" he wrote the cam girl, though I get the gist— romantic and sexual fantasies, plus 2) some minor but illuminating or more hurtful additional details about one or more of these incidents. But that’s just the bare minimum, the stuff I’m basically 100% sure exists that I don’t yet know.

But with a significant degree of likelihood, say 70-80% (or maybe 99%), there must be more than even that. Either major details about these incidents— like he actually slept with the main "joking" person of ~13 years ago, or he sent money to the cam girl— both of which he denies. Or even whole additional incidents.

So I once again started brainstorming other possible opportunities, times, places or people*, really trying to broaden my mind, since I’m "not a jealous person" (sigh). But suddenly, it struck me. I thought again of my very first list of 4 suspects, 2 of whom I’d mostly dismissed, and the other 2 of whom I was right-on about.

And I asked myself this question:

What are the chances that the ONLY TWO PEOPLE I genuinely had a gut feeling about and discovered evidence "against" were also THE ONLY TWO PEOPLE he betrayed me with**?

Like, wow, I may be a genius, but that’s awfully coincidental. It’s true my intuition is strong, because all these years, I didn’t really suspect cheating with either of these people/groups, but they still popped up quickly in a gut-feeling brainstorm. So yes, my gut is awesome in that way— if I have a feeling, I’m probably right. Specifically, I actually had a feeling, and was proven right in those two cases.

But just because when I DID have a suspicion, he turned out to have had an affair of some sort, doesn’t not mean that he couldn’t also have had an affair with someone I DON’T particularly suspect!

I mean, WHAT ARE THE CHANCES? What are the chances that I got these two right AND there were no others?

My answer is in the title, right? Statistically zero. Like it’s theoretically possible, but if true, wow, what a laser-beamer I am. I suspect ONLY the real betrayals and ALL of the real betrayals? Hm.

Among other possibilities— because there have been dozens of possibilities over the decades— I revisited one of the "other two" from my initial list of four. One that had popped into my brain, but I had mostly dismissed pretty quickly— a ~gut inclusion, but also a gut dismissal, I think.

But I came back to it because I had been thinking of other things WH’s betrayals had in common with each other, plus some things common across his relationships with people he’s close to, and factors in common among people he’d been with before our relationship… And this one person from my original list of four just checks alllllll the boxes. I still don’t have a gut suspicion about her… yet she did make my top four brainstorm, so maybe there’s a gut suspicion there somewhere. But when I made a list of points in favor of some sort of affair and points against, there was a long, smart and highly-specific list of reasons in the "he did it" column and only maybe two items in the "he didn’t" column. One is "not his type" (LMAO, pretty weak) and the other is "I don’t have any sort of smoking gun" (of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence— but I did search her name when I was looking into old emails and messages, and there was nothing suspicious— not that those couldn’t have been deleted).

Thanks for letting me get all that out, and thanks for any support.

If you have a similar story to share, please do! Basically if you knew you didn’t have ALL the information, and then came to find out there wasn’t much more, or there was a LOT more… I’m all ears. I mean, I guess that’s everyone, ugh. But any insights on how to process this are appreciated. Thanks again. This blows.

*I know this may not be entirely healthy, but man, it’s so early in this, I am looking for a small base of control, I think, even though I know I will be blindsided again— at least when we meet for MC next week.

**Besides the initial incident more than 25 years ago.

I had hinky feelings about several people and then other people, who I saw he was very close to, but I didn't have a bad feeling about, turned out to be affair partners or attempted affair partners too. And there were legions more that I didn't even know existed. Such is a serial cheater.

What's sad here is that we have to rely on our intuition and elaborate investigations to get the truth from our life partners, the people who promised to protect, love and cherish us. That alone tells us all we need to know. The way you carefully asked him if he'd cheated - wording it just perfectly so he couldn't get off on a technicality is telling. We trust our spouses with our lives, quite literally in the emotional sense, and yet we have to strategize like a Scotland Yard investigator to maybe get an honest answer.

The other thing I will add is that gambling, which you mentioned, and sex addiction are often co-existing.

I hope you find what you need to heal.

[This message edited by skeetermooch at 7:56 PM, Saturday, October 29th]

I am right there with you! I'm only 7 months out from D-Day when I discovered his 2-year, full-blown sexual and emotional affair. They were screwing and "dating" right under my nose, even in my own house! I questioned him several times over those 2 years when things just didn't seem right. He swore up and down that they were "just friends" and that nothing inappropriate was going on. When I confronted him on D-Day, I had solid evidence (emails) and he could no longer deny it. Still, he swore that she was the only other person he actually had intercourse with over our 34-year marriage. I always had my suspicions that he was screwing around on me and I had confronted him about various things many, many times over the years. He denied, denied, denied. There was one time in 1999 when I had evidence (a credit card charge for gas) when he had driven to a nearby city. When I asked him why, he finally said he had gone to "possibly" meet-up with someone he met online. He said he couldn't go through with it and told her in the parking lot. It just didn't add up. Free sex was standing right in front of him and he drove away? My mistake was allowing him to rug-sweep that entire incident, but I was struggling at the time with an infant and a toddler and he swore he would never do anything like that again. There was also what I thought was a "friendship" with a co-worker that seemed to be getting too personal. But he swore nothing was happening.

So after D-Day this past March, I demanded the truth about everything he's ever done during our marriage. I wanted him to lay out the whole truth. I was sick and tired of being lied to and kept in the dark about the state of my own marriage and the true character of the person I married. I told him I'd better hear the whole truth right now, but if I find out later that he's still lying, it wouldn't go so well for him. Here's what he told me: There was the 2-year affair that I just discovered (he swore he went no contact with her the day after D-Day and hadn't spoken to her except for one time that I knew of - this will be important later). Regarding the co-worker from years earlier, he confessed that they were meeting up for walks to "vent" about their respective marriages and began making out in parks. He swore it was just kissing and never went any further. She broke it off when she got pregnant, presumably by her husband. Then he said after that, he began paying for it by going to massage parlors for "happy endings." He said it was hand jobs and blow jobs, never intercourse. After deciding that wasn't safe (because, after all, it was a crime), he switched to online chat which sometimes turned into phone sex with strangers.

As usual, some of this just didn't add up. But he kept looking me straight in the eyes and swearing he had now told me everything there is to know. We started MC a few weeks ago and I said in a session that I thought he was still lying about exactly when he went NC with the recent AP. I didn't believe that he ghosted her the day after D-Day. He finally admitted, in front of the MC, that there had been about 2 more weeks of contact after that. AP "wanted a soft landing" and he didn't want her to end up hating him. So while I was grieving, burning with pain, barely eating or sleeping, he was trying to "let her down easy." OK. So that happened. At last week's session, the MC asked him if there was anything else he needed to come clean about. She said, "We have to get the lies out of this marriage and we have to do it now." He got all teary-eyed and shaky and nodded "yes." So she told him to take a deep breath and spit it out.

Here's what he said: "I told her I haven't had actual intercourse with anyone but her and the recent AP. That's not true. I did it with some of the sex workers in massage parlors about 20 years ago. I also met up with several people I met online and had sex. I was never with the same person more than once and I always used protection." So the MC asked how that made me feel. I said indifferent, numb. What was I going to say?

After the session, he was expecting me to rage at him, cry, bombard him with questions. I just stood up and went into the kitchen to get my dinner (our sessions are on zoom). I've only talked to him over the last several days when absolutely necessary. I think I have run out of shits to give at this point.

So, OP, to your questions about figuring everything out on your own - that's a tough one. In a way, I did have it all figured out. I knew things weren't right. I knew his explanations and denials over the years were a load of shit. But I didn't have direct evidence or the truth from him. In another way, I was completely in the dark until he came clean last week. Now, do I think he's come completely clean? Who knows? He's a master liar and manipulator.

My point is that there's likely a lot more than he's actually admitted to. I've been told that by many people here on SI, and I am beginning to actually see that for myself. It's sad to know that our lives and marriages were not what we thought they were. They definitely weren't what we wanted or what we signed up for when we took our vows. The people we married were frauds. I know exactly how you feel. We're in the same boat and you have my complete empathy.

When there is smoke there is fire.

Go with your gut. 99 % of the time small "discoveries" like these are just the tip of the iceberg. The plain fact one has to be digging stuff like detectives from our half should be enough to make us think very seriously about what we are doing with said person. A healthy relationship is one where no doubt exists among both parties.

As said, go with your gut. Don´t be afraid to ask full transparency from him, and also don´t be afraid to step back, in the relation - being it emocionally and even sexually. Cheaters do LIE. And they do it A LOT.

Again, normally when something like those type of doubts arise there is way more to it than what seems at first sight.

Sorry you have to be here.

Take care. You will be ok.

[This message edited by justanotherperson at 9:40 PM, Saturday, October 29th]

Yes, you are correct that it is statistically unlikely that you have Sherlocked all of the betrayals on your own, so you might safely assume that there is more.

So, you might imagine the worst that is likely and ask yourself, could I live with that? If my significant other did the worst I can imagine...but was willing to own it and do the work needed on themselves and our relationship, could I live with that and try to reconcile?

However, for me the more burning question became the invisible assumption in that scenario. The assumption is this: you believe he has now looked you in the face and said "This is really it. Now you know it all." Yet, you assume you do not know it all and there is likely more.

So, can you live with someone who you know is capable of the betrayal they have already owned and who you believe is still lying to you?

[This message edited by BreakingBad at 10:06 PM, Saturday, October 29th]

The problem with serial cheaters is they take advantage of opportunities and there is no proof when those encounters happen because there is no planning, no history that will point to the hookup/relationship. You’ll only ever know about opportunity hookups if they utilise their phone for memento sakes.

If you have a serial cheater on your hands I would say tap out now with investigating and trying to figure it all out, its an easy cliff to fall over into obsession because anyone could be an OW when it comes to serial cheaters. When I finally found hard proof of my serial cheater I was shocked to see some OW that I would never link to WH, still clueless how some of them crossed paths. Uncovering what you have, listening to your gut, was good enough to get you to examine your needs in a relationship and partner. A cheater’s moto is ‘lie until you die, deny deny deny’, no BS ever uncovers it all. Some in R will disagree but serial cheaters is a different type of beast. Don’t drive yourself crazy, don’t let other areas in your life suffer because you can’t stop investigating.

Utilise what you do know. Use it to either heal the M or detach.

Watch out for minimisation and “I forget” answers.

[This message edited by LostInHisFog at 11:05 PM, Saturday, October 29th]

Here’s a few "tells" from your post.

Your H cheated and admitted it the first time.

He then lied about other things - job hunting, gambling etc.

Then you found evidence of another affair.

At this point everything is suspect. There may be innocent people who would not be the OW but HIS intentions are now under investigation.

Trust your gut. If you think he’s had an affair, he may have. Now it’s possible he tried to have an affair with certain people and they declined. But HIS intentions are what matters - not whether the actual affair occurred.

You are not off base here. Trust your gut.

To The1stWife's list, I will add:

How can a customer have an EA with a cam girl? She's in it for income. Isn't it likely that she's playing him - and denying it if he confronts her?

Is a guy who writes love letters to a cam girl a good candidate for R? Especially if he's lied for decades?

He's not going to change unless he decides to change. You can't change him. Your MC can't change him, especially since she's coming in on the same channel that cam girls use. What is your H doing to change himself?

I hope for his sake that he does change from cheater to good partner. At the same time, I think he may have a harder time at that than most people, because he has wrapped himself in so much fantasy - an EA, years of lies, gambling.

As for forgiving him years ago, that was your choice. Now you see it was the wrong choice, and you're moving to correct it. That's your choice, too. I urge you not to beat yourself up - you made a mistake, recognized it, and are correcting it. That's good stuff. That's not beat-yourself material. It's reason to congratulate yourself.

As a guy, a guy who works with a bunch of other guys, the whole Cam Girl thing is just f..ing pathetic. I would almost rather have my wife catch me cheating with a real life AP, or even a prostitute, than catching me "interacting" or flirting with a virtual Cam Girl.

It seems a guy this desperate for marital escape wouldn’t hesitate to bust a move on any willing real life, flesh and blood, non-virtual gal at every opportunity.

I mean, to actually come up with a cool username, password you’ll never forget, log in, get your wallet out, open it up, pull out your credit card, enter your full name, CC#, security code, expiration date, etc, all the while, and at every step of the way, thinking how LAME you are, how lame and unfulfilling this completely transactional relationship is-THAT YOU’RE PAYING FOR, and what would happen if you got caught, AGAIN, after the last time…

Why doesn’t he just cut you loose so that he can freely pursue the real thing to his "heart’s" content? Is it because he can’t live without you or because divorcing would be a pain in the ass?

This is more than a guy rubbing one off to free anonymous porn on the internet to blow off some steam. He seems to need more than that and wouldn’t likely stop at that if the opportunity arises.

Thanks, all. I'm sorry I posted and ran. It was my first weekend with my kid since we separated (I'm in a hotel right now), so I was mostly focused on her.

They say that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

A couple of weeks ago, I think before I found the stuff on his computer, when we were in the thick of dealing with.... just years of crap we hadn't dealt with... I half-joked to WH that I certainly didn't LACK feeling for him. Meaning love and anger, and a whole bunch of other feelings, too.

But reading RealityBlows' comment, I noticed how little I felt about him and how little I felt like defending him. Yes, I'll give a timeline for clarity, but it absolutely is pathetic. And stupid! The "Cam Girl" (IDK, that honestly feels like a disrespectful term, but whatever) has blackmail material on him! There's not much now (I THINK!) she can do to me with it, but she could send it to his job, IDK. And she had it over him with regard to me for many years as well. WH agrees it was (is??) pathetic.

The original ONS was in the mid-90s-- that was DDay 1.

The thing with the group chat and the mini-HS-reunion that I think "stopped short of an affair" (but was totally terrible) was 2009.

The "cam girl" thing was... or started in 2005. WH says he can't remember how long the EA/online affair lasted, but it's clear from some clues it started in mid-2005 and he said he ended it ("let's just be friends") before we moved from the place we were living at that time. I asked how long it lasted-- weeks? Months? He said at least months, and if it "ended" before we moved, it could have been up to 18-20 months. I say "ended" because he's a fool, of course.

I found an unsent draft from mid-2005 that was innocuous but referenced her ICQ (FFS). In 2018, she forwarded an email from him from 2006 (not sure what exact date) that had a friend tone to it, in which he referred to her asking him not to contact her for some time around 2006, I guess. It was "sweet" so she forwarded it to him again in 2018. She has saved all these very old emails, because this year she sent him a message showing a photo of her holding what are easily 100 pieces of paper, emails of his from "that time" which she printed out and saved. I don't know for sure if all of those 100 pages are his (very well could be), but the top one is, because I flipped the photo over and read it as well as I could.

I don't think I found any emails he had saved before 2010. And there are references here and there from her referencing his having "ignored" or "abandoned" her over the years. In fact, of those emails I found, there's basically a gap between 2006 and 2010 and also between 2013 and 2018. And it seems between 2018 and 2022.

This could mean nothing, but just saying.

The emails since 2010-- and there are a few dozen including replies, yet "not that many" in the scheme of things-- are a mix. Some are kind of generic, like I feel she sent photos to various men and he was sort of on her list. Mostly he didn't seem to have replied to those. Many are specific, but friend-focused-- I went on a trip, I'm baking pie-- ooh, what kind?-- I tried making apple pie-- oh, I love apple pie. A couple more pornographic, a bit generic, but he DID reply. Somewhat blandly-- it's like you could see him (MAYBE!) thinking he should not encourage her. But a couple replies that were a little too "winky." Bare minimum he was stoking his ego. She would also not infrequently send depressive screeds about how much she missed him, how she fell in love with him, some sex and romantic fantasies that do seem they were at least tailored to him-- but I suspect sincerely about him, and him only. I'd say FROM WHAT I SAW he avoided giving detailed replies. But he never did cut it off. He sent photos of our kid when she was born, he mentioned me (positively), and other things in his life....

The thing is-- I knew about her. I can't remember the exact date he told me about her, but it was certainly in 2005, and perhaps, as he told it to me then, right at the beginning.

It made me a little uncomfortable, but I accepted it, because... IDK, look how I had stayed in the 90s, even marrying him?

He told me that he got curious-- this was fairly early in the days of webcams-- and he started poking around one of the sites, then started chatting (innocent stuff, the "free" stuff before you go into a private room) with one girl and then was like, "this is gross" and then chatted with her about non-sexual/non-romantic things separately and they became friends. He would tell me about her here and there, how she was doing. She is a cool person IMO. I mean, in a vacuum, of course. I was even going to send her some small American things she liked (very low cost, old magazines-- nothing scammy, like a friend thing). I was supposed to video chat with her, in a totally innocent way, but she begged off (I realize now because their talk had not all been innocuous). I was even the one who had him emailing her at a couple of points in the past 17 years to check in on her because of events in her country! I know, I know. But I really trusted him (WHYYYYY???)

A few weeks ago, when I brought up my list of four, mentioned her name, and gave him the big chance to confess, he "admitted" to having gone into one of the "rooms" with some other guys, she did some things, he was disgusted by the behavior of the other men, and that's it.

Of course, a few days later I went into his computer.

It was then very clear he had at least written some very romantic and sexual fantasies to her (I did read that one letter she had a photo of, from apparently two weeks after they met online), and then all of the above mentioned things I know about-- but just generally being pretty clear she genuinely fell for him in some ways. I also think there was some degree of fishing for money (very indirectly, mostly!) and so on, but I genuinely do think he messed with her heart. Which is so...

When he knew I had been in his computer, and we sat down, what was wild was that he wasn't angry and he wasn't defensive, but he also wasn't contrite. He was like, "Okay, well, what do you want to talk to me about?" Seemed sincerely not to have a clue. Not, "It's not what you think!!" or "I'm so sorry" or anything else! Like he genuinely didn't realize (or maybe he was acting) what I could have found. And not necessarily because he thought he'd deleted the emails (and chats, with regard to the other incident). As he told me later, he did intentionally delete the emails from at least 2005-ish (the email account dates back to like 1999). Oh-- I should add here that I did have to ask him for part of the password the night I went into his computer, and thus he knew what I was doing that night and gave me tacit permission. But he was just seemingly clueless about what I could have found.

I... I have to stop now. It's such a long, but ultimately stupid story. Every time I said some shit, he'd be like "Wow, that's terrible. I can't believe I did that. What's wrong with me?" Seemed distressed. He wasn't denying it was him-- I didn't let him get away with "Who was that guy?" But he was quite agitated that he couldn't remember it being that bad (though he agreed it all was that bad) and that maybe he was a sociopath or something (I shut that down, too-- I'm tired of empathizing with HIM and carrying HIS shame and trying to protect HIM from the weight of it!)

But the day after I found this, and before he gave me "the whole truth" a couple of days later, I was like, "Okay, well, you need to cut things off with Jane" (the "cam girl") and he was like, "What do you mean?" This seemingly-genuine clueless shit. My jaw dropped. Once again, I wasn't expecting THAT! I thought he'd (maybe) get defensive, or that he'd be like, "Yes, absolutely" or even that he'd say, "Oh, SHIT, I didn't even think of that, but you're so right!" But instead I had to draw him a freaking map. I said, "What do you MEAN 'what do I mean?'" And he didn't seem to follow. He said, "I already cut it off. Years ago." I looked at him like he was stupid (this is a very smart man-- and normally very caring! I thought!) I was like, "WHEN, YEARS AGO." And he said, "You know, like after a few months." (Remember this is all after I confronted him with all the emails!) And I said, "IN 2005?!?" He said, "Yeah, I told her we should just be friends." I was like speechless. I said, "I just showed you nude photos she sent you in 2012. I showed you a photo from this year of your (albeit old) love letters she kept. IS THAT CUTTING THINGS OFF??" And he seemed to realize "Oh, yeah." WTFWTFWTF

I said, "You need to tell her not to contact you, and you won't be contacting her again."

He said okay, and he did, and I saw this in his email because I went into his computer one last time that night to check a couple of other things. She replied, "Okay I won't contact you."

So the NEXT day I said, "Have you blocked her email?" Like, Helloooo, McFly!!!

"Oh, how do you block someone's email?"

*glare*

"Oh, that's stupid, I don't have to ask you, sorry, I'll look it up."

Anyway he later said he'd done that, but I'm tired of checking up on him. He probably did. Whatever.

But just WHAT THE HECK.

But I do think that gets to a bigger point-- lack of empathy and perspective-taking for me from a guy who seems to show it to others (and sometimes to me, at least when it's not about hurting me?) Like half of his brain cells fall out-- or maybe it's an act.

Anyway. After his first IC appointment, he seemed properly broken (he actually has been very open and non-defensive this whole time-- I mean even before this DDay, with all the deep work and talking we'd been doing-- like the past month or so).

So I asked him a bunch of questions and I had to like freaking... ask all these detailed, esoteric questions, because he didn't think to include every detail... Although he did include a lot of them.

In fact, he had paid to see her in a private room a few times. He said she made fun of him because he never talked dirty to her in the chat and he told her to do whatever she wanted, so she "just" did a basic American striptease/what you'd see in a strip club (I've been, I know). Then they spoke outside her work (with whatever romantic content) and she supposedly wouldn't let him back in to see her at work after that. And then it was like... IDK the Limerence Special for a while.

The gambling happened around that same time in 2005 too, and he sort of confessed the gambling (in like 2008?) after it was over. Of course his confession was by way of leading me down a path (as he did in the 90s)-- he's such a coward in that way.

As he was giving me "the whole truth," he couldn't remember what it felt like to be in 2005 and what he was thinking, so I pulled out a trick from my therapist and asked him where he felt it in his body. Just say it, first thing that comes to mind-- and he said "Oh, it feels like when I did shrooms one time." So... like a drug.

All of the times, with the group chat thing I referred to, and the saying he was job hunting when he wasn't (those two things happened around the same time as each other-- 2009)... all of these things happened at times he was feeling insecure, emasculated/out of work/whatever. Which are not most of the time, but I told him I don't want to feel like things are fine "unless WH is feeling insecure," and then who knows what he'll do? But then again, that explains why subconsciously I've been trying to build him up all these years. So he wouldn't feel crappy and hurt me. UGH.

And while my "support" was dysfunctional, he has benefited from it, while it slowly killed me. It's no accident this is all coming out after a year of extremely productive IC for me. My self-esteem is back closer to the levels it was at when I met him. I am not willing to put up with shit. Or I hope I'm not.

Thing is, he genuinely (????) seems to be a much better person in the past 10 years (kid is almost 10), and especially in the last 5, and even moreso in the past 2. In addition to fatherhood, I know this is in large part to his rekindling his love of something that forces him to do hard work and be more in touch with his feelings. Yet he never truly dealt with his FOO issues nor how he'd treated me.

I don't know what the future holds, but I am SO SO SO PROUD of me for leaving last week. I am sitting in my hotel room just thrilled to be away from him right now.

And that's... my best friend. My "soulmate." (I know, I know.) But not just my twoo wuvvvv but someone I have worked hard with over the years to build a relationship. Seriously. I'm not defending him, me or our relationship. But I did think it was real.

And yet, I had to be in his general vicinity today and all I could think was "Go away go away go away please go away."

It wasn't even anger or disgust. I've just lost so much of myself to him, I don't want to be sucked back in.

We are going to MC later this week. I'm not sure how it will be, but she is "Gottman trained."

So, we'll see.

Thanks so much for ALL of your encouragement and solidarity and advice.

I will watch out for "I don't remember."

I agree this Sherlocking business is for the birds.

I have been contemplating what it would be like if "the worst" turns out to be true.

Thanks, skeetermooch, FireandWater, justanotherperson, BreakingBad, LostInHisFog, The1stWife, sisoon and, yes, RealityBlows.

Oh, I just wanted to add, with regard to Jane, the "cam girl."

I think WH has a pattern of telling me just enough, pretty early on, to relieve his guilt and shame to the point he can kinda sorta barely live with himself. But then lying to others (sometimes) and himself (maybe) that this means I’m okay with what’s happening. He’ll tell me about 1/6 of what’s happened and then take my acceptance of a sliver of the truth as permission and run with it. He did tell me about Jane in 2005, I think probably within a week or so, before things got deep. I was like, "Okay, not thrilled, but kinda relate to being curious" and then like… collected magazines for her and asked about her. And he’d share innocuous details all the time. So in his mind, he… made me give him the green light? And you’d ask, Why? But what he said about the mid-90s ONS was that he so loved sharing EVERYTHING with me and he knew he had to confess because otherwise he’d be holding back with me and he didn’t want to do that. What was so important to him about our relationship (romantic, very close, maybe codependent) was how much we shared.

So though he lied to me about Jane, I believe he selfishly tried to bring me in just a bit so as to be able to pretend he wasn’t doing anything I didn’t know about. Even as, of course, he was also conscious that he was doing things I wouldn’t approve of.

IMO he did the same thing with the 2009 group chat/reunion thing. He would share stuff about the folks in the chat— I even met them the weekend of that mini-reunion— and he said it was like "junior high sex jokes." And I was like, "Fine, fine." Because I thought— and he knew or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that I thought— it was like some of their "haha late night infomercial for Viagra" jokes. But it was also "Very explicit, straightforward stuff I never actually make sure to say I WOULDN’T do IRL" "jokes." So he told me like 1/6 of what was going on, I said, "Okay, cool" and they were all like, "Wow, JellyPineappleFlavor must be a really cool chick!" And who knows what they actually thought I was cool with. (I am pretty cool with a lot of things… I’m not uptight. But not THAT."

So I think it’s a bunch of bull. But I do think that’s his pattern. Tell me just enough not to disconnect us from each other entirely. Just enough not to have to live a whole second life apart from me. Which is almost crueler. You can see why I’m so happy to have broken away at the moment. It’s like tentacles. Like Ursula’s poor unfortunate souls clinging to my leg so I can’t get away. It really is.

I told him recently (but still a couple of weeks ago), "I hate that I love you. Loving you feels like a trap." Yep.

Bumping for support.

We had MC on Friday and she was GREAT, and I'm so so SO relieved. She said we were firmly in the "atonement" phase (before "atunement" and so on) and WH had to answer any questions I had, and he and I should speak daily for questioning sessions, basically. So SHE is great, and we will see her this Friday, too. But... there's more.

I will share ASAP (probably later tonight), but I'm with my kid. Thanks for being here.

I am so happy you have found a good MC. Please make sure you don’t accept any blame for his cheating.

Your WH seems to have a lack of good boundaries in place. He flits along and does whatever feels good in the moment. He just goes along without thinking deeply about his actions. He continued to accept and respond to emails from the Cam girl without thinking about how it would affect you. He lies to you when it’s convenient to avoid having to deal with your displeasure and to avoid facing up to his poor choices. From what you have written, it doesn’t seem like he is super devious and calculating, but he definitely needs to work on himself to be a safe partner. Please correct me if my assessment is wrong.

Good for you for getting some space away from him so you can think clearly. How is your child handling the separation? How are you feeling? Sending strength.

TED talk Paula Hall. We Need To Talk About Sex Addiction.

icytoes, I think you have an excellent 30,000-foot view of the situation (for example, he has terrible boundaries, as do I). What I'm trying to figure out is whether or not he is too far gone for me-- in terms of his relative lack of empathy and simple understanding particularly for and of me, and particularly when he or his family members hurt me. He's such a caring, generous person... and generally kind to me, and certainly protective of me (problematic though that is). He seems to very very much like me, and "love" me, though I remind him love is a verb. But he either has a deeper problem with empathy AND less intelligence/emotionally intelligence than I ever imagined, or he has a major, also shocking, mental block d/t childhood trauma, particularly when it comes to me. More likely the latter. But anything is possible at this point, to me, with a lot of my major, nearly-lifelong assumptions, completely turned upside down. (~*~Tale as old as time~*~)

I... I just cannot hold his hand through "An emotion is..." "Empathy is..." "How would you feel if I did this to you...?" <<--and he doesn't even get that (??) "When you say you would do anything for me, have you tried doing anything... for me?" And so on.

I. am. so. tired.

I can't tell you how slackjawed, how flabbergasted I've been with this, because he's a genuinely warm, loving person the vast majority of the time. And thoughtful. Intellectually curious. Seemingly quick-witted. Imaginative. Creative. Even pretty emotionally open and vulnerable, especially in the past 10+ years.

And yet. I told him (from a thread here) that when BS are asked if they'd rather be the WS or the BS, they overwhelmingly say that, as INCREDIBLY, HORRIFICALLY PAINFUL as it is to be a BS, they would never want to be a WS, because of the pain that causes others! He was like, "Yeah, because they don't want to think of themselves as bad people-- I get it." And I was like... "No? Not really? A few people did also mention that, but most of them were focused on the pain it would cause a loved one." And he said, "I mean, but they would be the people who caused the pain, and that's what they're trying to avoid, right?"

what

i

what

what is happening

I guess I get that some people might struggle with this, but if you'd told me last year he would have this much trouble... or be almost pathologically performing-- I mean so terrified of facing shame or so narcissistic that he is lying by commission and lying even via his affect-- "playing dumb" or something... I would have told you that you had the entirely wrong man.

In the end, though... I think I projected a lot of my own capacity for empathy onto him.

He might be salvageable... especially if he's not still lying to me in a major way (I have doubts even without hard evidence, though I am hoping to get more clarity ASAP). But I don't know if I have the capacity to deal with the extreme salvage job, after 25+ years of making my life WAY more about HIM than he had any right to.

Yes, so far, the MC is awesome. She's keeping the focus on his infidelity and lies, and giving me the floor to say whatever I have to say. She is almost not at all asking me to reflect what he says-- thank goodness, because my tolerance for that is extremely low. Hilarious considering my natural (or built/exacerbated by him) tendency to take as much blame as possible-- and to reflect his feelings and "be fair" at a very bare minimum.

The kid is doing pretty okay. She's been with him a little more than half the time, and he's an excellent, attentive, mostly sweet father (when you discount the staggering lack of respect he has shown for her mother, I guess). But he is not a Disneyland Daddy. He's the one doing school and after school and doctor's appointments and homework and laundry and cooking for her and and and and. I am getting long weekends. I have noticed that she explodes on me the first night she sees me. Not right away, but she starts off partly irritable and it grows until we have it out a bit. I know, she's been holding it in with him, even though she doesn't feel entirely unsafe with him.

But it was MUCH better this weekend than last and we're doing really well right now. I just realized last weekend that the realer I keep it with her (without blaming her dad or telling her of the infidelity), the better things go. So I'll just be like, "Listen, this is hard and I'm scared of hurting you, and this is also really important for me, and I appreciate you." So... I'm patting myself on the back.

Thanks so much for listening.

Wow, this is really something.

I told him (from a thread here) that when BS are asked if they'd rather be the WS or the BS, they overwhelmingly say that, as INCREDIBLY, HORRIFICALLY PAINFUL as it is to be a BS, they would never want to be a WS, because of the pain that causes others! He was like, "Yeah, because they don't want to think of themselves as bad people-- I get it." And I was like... "No? Not really? A few people did also mention that, but most of them were focused on the pain it would cause a loved one." And he said, "I mean, but they would be the people who caused the pain, and that's what they're trying to avoid, right?"

I can’t think of a clearer example of someone who just doesn’t get it. Like you, the thought of causing someone else pain is so abhorrent to me that I could never cheat in a relationship. It has nothing to do with how I am perceived and everything to do with the devastation that would result.

You seem to have a really good handle on your WH issues. As you say, the question is: Can he develop enough empathy to be a safe partner? I don’t know.

I hope others will share examples of how they or their WS were able to develop empathy. You may want to start a new thread that asks for examples of people who were able to develop empathy as adults, to see if it is even possible.

Also, you mention that you have poor boundaries. How do your poor boundaries differ from your WH poor boundaries? Or are they similar?

[This message edited by icytoes at 4:40 AM, Tuesday, November 8th]

Well, icytoes, I thank you, and yet... as these things often go, some of the issues either become obviated or decrease in saliency with each passing day and new revelation. I will say that the lack of empathy, it's fairly clear to me as I type this, is not a lack as much as it was being severely blocked in some cases. By deep shame.

Trying to focus on the most important shift... after a series of conversations, it became clear to WH that the marriage we had was over. Whether we could possibly have a new relationship involving marriage might be an open (though narrowing) question, but what we had was fully dead. We shook on that. I basically (again) demanded the entire truth, if he had any care at all for me. He made a choice then (Weds, it's Sat today) to do give me everything. This was following a better conversation Weds, but during which I'd had to pull out some investigative tricks and a "wayward interview" that revealed I had information he did not know I had. (He has never stopped inappropriately texting many of his female friends-- stopping well short of affairs, but "keeping doors open" IMO.)

He said it was a combination of a few things that made him resolve to give me the whole truth:

-Our marriage, as we knew it, was over.
-I had scared him a bit with my investigative skills. He had also (I believe sincerely) not realized how creepy and inappropriate he was being with some of his female friends.
-Most of all, he saw that-- in his words-- he had already killed me, and withholding ANY PART of the truth would only kill me again.
-He really understood when I told him the truth (even generally) was my only priority, it was the only thing I wanted anymore in life. I had made it a part-time, even a full-time job, to get the truth by any means necessary, and he didn't want that for me.
-He knew that nothing in his life would ever go right, nothing would ever be worthwhile, if he couldn't at least attempt to free me from his burdens.

He knew what he needed to tell me and had a mild panic attack that night. He said he empathized a tiny bit with me, and people like me, who get them. He never does.

He told me the truth Thursday.

He said, "There are two people I need to tell you about."

(Don't you just feel that terrible sinking pit when you hear that? Even if you know it's coming.)

Folks, they're each terrible and freeing in their own way.

One was that he did have a PA with a woman ("four separate occasions") 16-18 years ago.

You might remember this from my OP:

Four people/occasions popped up pretty quickly, at least one surprising me, that it even popped into my mind. But next to two of the four I wrote, in parentheses, something like: "ehhhhh I don’t think so."

And later, I said

this one person from my original list of four just checks alllllll the boxes. I still don’t have a gut suspicion about her… yet she did make my top four brainstorm, so maybe there’s a gut suspicion there somewhere. But when I made a list of points in favor of some sort of affair and points against, there was a long, smart and highly-specific list of reasons in the "he did it" column and only maybe two items in the "he didn’t" column. One is "not his type" (LMAO, pretty weak) and the other is "I don’t have any sort of smoking gun" (of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence— but I did search her name when I was looking into old emails and messages, and there was nothing suspicious— not that those couldn’t have been deleted).

It was that woman. And it was all so very deeply stupid.

The other was before we were together at all, but devastating on many levels, in many ways. It also provided incredible clarity. It made my world make sense.

He had/has a very good friend from college who was a part of our wedding. We'll call her Anita. Anita and her husband and son were a big part of our lives, though we moved away and grew apart somewhat, and then in the past 10-15 years, they got divorced and I hadn't personally seen her in some time. She came to visit finally, about 3-4 years ago, and WH hung out with her-- but without going into it, kind of ran off before I could see her and she could finally meet our kid in person. In the past 5-10 years, she's struggled with drug addiction, even being arrested. She had grown up poor, but married a wonderful man who ended up becoming wealthy, and yet all of this... sort of left her in the gutter. Her most recent boyfriend, at that time, was 28 to her 54 years old... and had been her boyfriend for 6 years. For what that tells you.

When WH was in college, and 20 years old, he met Anita, who was 26. She had been married 2-4 years already to her husband, John, who was 34. Though WH was an adult, I would say that he had just essentially been abandoned then, by his parents, who moved halfway around the world for his father's job. The kids were all raised in the USA-- WH's parents moved 8000 miles away. They took WH's younger brother, who was in HS. WH had two older siblings who were also left on their own-- again, adults, but 22 and 23. They had gone off to college in other states and weren't with WH either. Without arguing about his parents' right or responsibility to do this, it's also fair to say he was vulnerable and alone.

Through the years, I had often pointed this out-- that he had, for many intents and purposes, been abandoned. He came quickly to agree and to process this. I had also called Anita his "college girlfriend," but meant chastely, of course. John and Anita became surrogate family to him in many ways.

WH and I started dating about 5 years after they had met, and about 2-3 years after Anita and John had moved back to their home state, not too far away, and had their son. They were both lovely to me, and particularly John. I was always so grateful how for he treated me-- as a total peer, socially and intellectually, though we met when I was not even a legal adult, and he was almost 40. WH had always loved and admired John as well-- noting John had treated him the same way when he was 20 and John was 34.

Friends. WH admitted to me on Thursday that he had fabricated a different woman he had claimed to have lost his virginity to. Instead, he had actually lost his virginity to Anita, having an affair with her for about 1.5 years. I still don't know every detail of this, but it explains... almost everything.

The first time he had sex, the first time he fell in love, he was absolutely, entirely filled with shame. He genuinely loved John.

WH didn't stand a chance. We never stood a chance. This was the base from which he began, as an adult. From which he considered sex, love and the institute of marriage.

I'm not taking any responsibility from WH here. Young and abandoned as he was, he was an adult. I also see that he was, at least in part, predated upon. I still don't have all the details (only because we discussed other things first, I will get them). But he did say that he was not even Anita's first affair, and that the man she had cheated with previously was also younger. Of that affair, she had told John, and John had forgiven her (so you also see, as I am realizing as I type, how this also informed how he thought of infidelity and about people who forgive it). And you do see her pattern.

My therapist says "shame is the ultimate hot potato." It is such an intolerable feeling that we try to get rid of it-- and many do so by passing it along to others. I have already been aware of this, and thought how I carried and ate WH's shame from his first infidelity in the 90s, before we were married. But I also see how Anita passed hers to him, and he passed his to me. AND IT STOPS WITH ME, by the way. I release it. I rebuke it.

When WH told me all of this, he was bawling. He was broken. He was...

I don't know how to say this.

The thing about our relationship is that it was actually based on incredible openness and vulnerability. Mine, for sure, but in many ways, also WH's.

Yet.

There was always something.

Something I tried to explain without seeing the full picture. And then I used those faulty explanations to explain the world around me.

Now that is lifted, I have so much work to do, to consider how the world truly is. Who I am. Including all of the good. I can say that my intuition is good, and I'm sad I was made to largely ignore it for my entire adult life. I am leaning into it now, which is why I believe I do have, essentially, the whole truth now, about his infidelity.

The truth is this:

-He was a very, very sensitive child, treated cruelly by his father, and alternately shamed and enabled in an unhealthy way by his mother.

-He lost his virginity to a married woman, whose husband was also his friend. And he continued to be friends with them.

-He met me and revealed so many deep, previously well-defended truths about himself. He deeply desired connection with me. And yet, he was so full of deep, deep shame, that could never bring himself to give himself fully to me. But I did. I was all-in with him. This was the theme of our entire relationship-- I had just thought that he was giving more truth and when he would be cruel to me to whatever degree, I never understood how deep the well of shame was, and how this was the cause, and not something I did, nor simply "his childhood."

-He cheated on me a year into our relationship, for which I attempted forgiveness, with some rugsweeping, and also some genuine, but not full, reconciliation work.

-He continued to harbor a bottomless pit of shame and an insatiable need for validation.

-A half dozen years into our marriage, in the early 2000s, at a low point in his career, he started a months-long online affair with a woman who worked at a cam site. He called that off after some months, but introduced her to me (without my understanding the affair). He continued to "stay friends" with her until weeks ago.

-Around the same time, he gambled away a significant amount of money. He also met and hooked up with this other woman I mentioned, four times, in person, before calling it off, over the course of a few months or a year or so (they lived far apart and met up via work conferences). It was opportunistic and lame. He continued to "stay friends" with her, and she stayed with us on a visit after the PA ended.

-He apparently was highly inappropriate with many-- though importantly and clearly not all of-- his female friends, in conversation at minimum, opening doors to possible affairs and keeping doors open as much as possible. This continued at the very least through 5-ish years ago, but perhaps to present day.

-Even the day before he gave me the whole truth, he admitted, by way of example, having been open to cheating physically again, had a particular friend made any active move towards him. This was only one example, but it was from just 4 years ago.

-So I understand-- between the way he lost his virginity, the incredibly, painfully, bafflingly banal circumstances of PA many years ago, and the through-line of inappropriate validation-seeking-- that for him, there never really existed any real barrier to infidelity. In conversation, it has become clear that he often (I suppose the vast majority of the time) chose not to act on his thoughts, but the question, "Why didn't he sleep with (nearly) all of his female friends and coworkers?" is best answered with these truths: "He could have, at any time," and "In most cases, he would have, had the women themselves been more assertive." I think, too... and I'm only connecting these two dots now... that I understand why he said, "I guess on some level, I think sex is the only thing I have to offer of value." But... did he not learn that from Anita?

I do think I have the truth right now, the basics of it, anyway, because I'm listening to my intuition. The truth does just sound different.

I reserve the right to change my mind about that.

I am in terrible pain, and yet it's familiar, since I went through this ~24 years ago after DD#1. But the familiarity makes it so much more painful, even as it gives me hope I can survive it.

He is completely broken, and I mean that in all ways. But particularly, I meant that he is no longer harboring these secrets. He is an open gaping wound right now. He is also, just so clearly, different. For now. I mean that only as an apparent fact, not as praise, not giving me hope. But something has changed. He's not acting like a shamed puppy, though he is in severe pain and is expressing absolute remorse and a flood of genuine-- and finally, FULL-- empathy.

All of those things, inexplicable barriers to communication, that weird exchange about WS and BS I detailed to icytoes... that's all gone for now.

And I am so, so free, and yet in so much pain.

I always saw there was a vein of something terrible running through a relationship that was actually extraordinary, in many ways. Now I know what it is. And for the first time in closing in on 30 years, I KNOW I am not crazy.