SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello there from the UK!

I found about 9 months ago that my husband was having an affair. The affair lasted 3 months and was both a PA/EA.

He basically met her, there was a spark, he sought her out on social media - a week later they've kissed and two weeks later he's having sex with her. Fast forward 6 weeks later, he's telling me we are done, he left me and our girls (aged now 10 and 11 - I will never forget my eldest telling me she wishes she was dead when she found out her dad was leaving).

Naturally, he didn't tell me, nor anyone else that he was leaving his wife of 13 years and his daughters for some young girl he's known for 6 weeks. He told everyone, including his family that he had "snapped". He told me he didn't love me, and that maybe he never had loved me. The pain he caused me was inexplicable. I couldn't get up off the floor, I thought I was going to die of a broken heart. We had always had an extremely close, loving relationship, so this was so out of the blue - and for anyone who knew us.

A week later, he came back, telling me he loved me and he'd missed me and he was sorry. Yet for the next month, continued to be cold and distant. I came to the conclusion he was depressed, so I picked up all the slack at home whilst trying to look after two kids and work full time, struggling with the trauma he put me through.

To cut a long story short, my gut started kicking into action. I know things weren't adding up, and he was becoming more and more gaslighting towards me. I'd reached me limit where I just told him to go to his parents. Turns out he was turning his family against me, saying I wouldn't give it a rest and am acting crazy. Then I found evidence that he was having an affair, but instead of coming back and trying to reconcile with me, he went to her. I even received a nasty message from his dad telling me he knows his son wouldn't do such a thing, saying that I had destroyed my marriage with my issues and that I need help as I am hurting my children with my behaviour!!!!!!!!!

A week after I found out and he came to take the kids to school, I saw his eyes almost go back to normal. It's like he'd had an exorcism. He said he was ending things with her - and he did.

Move to now, and he is an absolutely completely different person! He is full of remorse, he had never once blamed me, we talk until the early hours, he is receiving IC and he is journalling. He deleted any social media and I'm offered all the transparency I need.

BUT, I feel this is not just an affair I'm getting over - it is the total and absolute betrayal and violation of another human being. During the A, he literally treated me horrifically.

It's probably easier to list the things that I am stuck on:

- He told me he didn't love me and probably never had.
- He left me and his children for a girl he had known for 6 WEEKS.
- He sought her out on social media and jumped into bed with her, with such ease. Not a thought for me and his children.
- He put me down to others and told lies about me, saying I was the issue for our marriage woes.
- unbeknownst to me, when he came back after that week of leaving, he was removing his wedding ring and actually telling friends and colleagues he was SINGLE and we were just living together.
- He told a mutual friend of ours about some childhood abuse that happened to me, that I had shared with him years ago in confidence. Using it to "justify" me having issues and being the problem.
- He told her he "has never felt this way before" - I know this was all during the fog, and it wasn't real, but it still physically hurts me.
- I don't drive and the year before the A, we moved somewhere fairly remotish, with poor public transport. So this kids and I were more of less stranded and I had to rely on friends (no family nearby) to get around.
- He violated my character to his family and they turned on me when I needed support.
- When I found out about the A, he continued it for a week, even after I offered an olive branch. I called him when he was there, and he was so awful to me, just saying we are done and to leave him alone!
- Then the cherry on top, was that about 2 months after the A, and we were working on things, I found out he had been messaging a girl from work 12 years younger, and then deleting conversation - this was after I said to him anymore secrecy and I'm done!!! He got screenshot of the messages, and they were perfectly innocent. He just has constantly needed ego kibbles and to know people like him. But at my expense.

Is all of this "too much" to forgive? I just don't know. I feel completely and utterly destroyed by the absoluteness of his betrays.

I'm trying, he's trying, but it just hurts so much. I'm getting EMDR on Thursday, in the hopes that helps with some of the trauma.

Whisky
Sorry this happened to you. It is beyond traumatic. Gut wrenching. Life changing.
I can’t say much about forgiveness. But what I’ve come to understand is that when people are in the affair, they say and do the craziest things. It’s as if they have been possessed by the devil. Nothing makes sense. And they don’t remember most of the things they said or did!!! They don’t think clearly when their brain is high from the affair. Some posters here talk about how their cheaters’ eyes looked different during the affair.
My WH also told me he didn’t love me. He said so many hurtful things that gutted me. Why be so cruel????
I try to lump all the cruelty and lies during the affair as one crazy buffet of demon possessed experience. Whether it was 100 lies or 10000 lies, it doesn’t matter. I guess it’s like if you had a devastating house fire, it doesn’t matter whether it destroyed three rooms or ten. You have to grieve the loss and move forward.

It sounds like your wh "woke up". Watch his actions. As he makes real changes and amends for what he did, you will start to heal. Give yourself time and not worry too much about whether you can forgive or not.

I'm so sorry for all that you've been through. To answer your questions though, I really do think that tolerance is subjective. For some people, "too much" is any cheating at all. We've all got our own limits. In my personal situation, I reconciled after treachery from my fWH that I'd have sworn was unrecoverable before it happened.

You're still in your first year, and even though nine months might seem like a fair bit of time, it's more typically a drop in the bucket for R. Two to five years is more common, and in the first year, we're still reeling from the trauma more often than not. There's a book called, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson, and even though it's more geared to people who have split, I found it probably the most enlightening thing I read un recovery. In it, the author does a pretty good job of explaining how both the brain and body deal with trauma, but she also goes on to expound on the fear of abandonment and how we are born with this innate reflex which we then carry into adulthood. It's kind of like a vestigial tail in that respect, right? We're no longer helpless infants who will die without nurture and care. We're adults who can fend for ourselves. But emotionally? We still feel panicked by the threat of losing our special person.

I have to admit, once I understood more about why I was feeling the way I felt, I started to have more patience with the process. For me, the trick in R was realizing that even though it was imperative that my WS do the work and make the changes he needed to make, the one I most needed to trust was ME. I needed to develop some faith that I'd be okay, that I could (and would) handle my business. At the end of the day, I needed to make investments in myself.

Abandonment wounds can feel cumulative in a way. For those of us who have felt these wounds in childhood, we suddenly find our fears and our panic multiplied by this new betrayal. It's like all the old scars have broken open again and it leaves us floundering like there's no one we can depend on. But there is... and there always was. We have to step into that arena for ourselves. Be our own best friend. Be the backstop and the protector. Once we've done that, it's so much easier to let the cheating be about the cheater and to disarm our fear of abandonment.

Good job scheduling EMDR, btw. I found that it really helped to take the edge off my triggers. It's not that it makes them go away. What it did for me was to take the heat out so that the visceral reaction improved and I wasn't getting that sick-feeling release of adrenaline and cortisol. It helped to limit sessions to bite-sized triggers though and not try to eat the bear whole as it were. Bear in mind also that it's a fairly immersive process so it wasn't always easy. After a couple of days, I would notice a lessoning of symptoms surrounding a given trigger. So, overall, I do think EMDR is a great tool.

When your child says she wishes she was dead. That. That right there is too much to forgive.

He came back,he left. He came back,he left. Now that he knows the grass isn't greener,he wants back to his safe place.

Your job, as their mother,is to protect them. He is causing them enormous damage with all of this back and forth bullshit.

File for divorce. Get the kids in therapy. Set a visitation schedule. Start the healing. Don't take him back,just so he can break their hearts again.

Love them,more than you love him.

You can forgive and divorce. Or not forgive and stay married (sounds like you’re there right now?). One doesn’t imply the other.

1000% agree with @HellFire. Your WH did things that made your child feel like she wanted to die. That is beyond forgivable. Letting him further traumatize your children by coming and going is not good.

Your WH wasn't possessed or having some sort of psychotic break during his A's, he was exactly the same person, just without the mask. When people show you who they are, believe them.

Please kick him to the curb for your children's sake, and as @HellFire said, get them into therapy.

A week after I found out and he came to take the kids to school, I saw his eyes almost go back to normal. It's like he'd had an exorcism. He said he was ending things with her - and he did.

Your husband didn't have an exorcism. He met with a lawyer, found out how much divorce was going to cost him, and then decided it was cheaper to keep you then to lose half of his shit + pay child support.

Another possibility is that things went sour with his sidepiece so he came home to Plan B: you and your daughters.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 6:49 PM, Tuesday, April 4th]

I second what ChamomileTea said. Especially this:

I'm so sorry for all that you've been through. To answer your questions though, I really do think that tolerance is subjective. For some people, "too much" is any cheating at all. We've all got our own limits. In my personal situation, I reconciled after treachery from my fWH that I'd have sworn was unrecoverable before it happened.

I will never forget my eldest telling me she wishes she was dead when she found out her dad was leaving

Did he know this at the time?

Thank you so much for all of the replies - I haven't overly gone into some of the details, so some replies might not be overly accurate.

FYI I don't know how to copy and paste!

Cedarwoods, I'm so sorry you also had these things said you. I keep reading about affair fog, and how the WS rewrites history in their minds by way of justifying what an awful thing they are doing. I can see my husbands remorse on a daily basis and I know these things do torment him. I just don't understand how he could have suddenly turned so uncharacteristically unkind. This is that man that once drove a 2.5 hour round trip to rescue a seagull! How did you come to not lump all these things together in your mind and heal? I keep focusing on all the different things he said/did.

CamomileTea, can I ask at what point in your reconciliation did you feel, yep I think this is something I can move forward from? Thank you so much for the book recommendation, I will definitely look into that. I completely agree that trauma/abandonment is cumulative and I feel like this betrayal has probably torn open a lot of wounds from childhood. I am so hopeful for EMDR. I don't physically know how much longer I can withstand the visceral pain - I need the edge taken off. I do trust myself in that i know whatever happens, I will be OK. But I worry I won't always be right in my gut feeling!

Bluerthanblue - he definitely did not meet with a lawyer and I know I was not plan B. I haven't gone into detail about what happened between when he left and then left again (or I told him to go which was more accurate). He came back the first time because he described it as a fog lifting, and it hitting him that he had made a massive cock up and didn't even really like the AP (they are not suited in the real world on any fundamental level). But being the people pleaser (coward - his words, not mine), he tried the old age phasing her out. Being cold and distant, saying he can't do this anymore, refusing to see her etc. But the more he pulled away, the more obsessive she became. She would ask for photos to prove where he was, stalk his last seen time on WhatsApp. Doing the job he does, he could not risk the catastrophic results to us as a family if she were to go to his job about the A - and that is something she hinted at. There was a time he saw no way out apart from suicide. Ive seen evidence all of this is true. Like I say, I got to the end of my tether with the way he was being so, I told him to just leave after about a month of coming back.

SSS - he was in no way expecting our daughter to say this, he played the tape forward in his head and thought they will be fine, happier even - as he Hadd justified his actions by convincing himself our marriage was crap and that's not good for the kids. He was mortified when she said that, and I know it haunts him. As it does me! I can't knock him as a dad.

HellFire - well her reaction is exactly what I fear her feeling like again! Like I say, he went the first time and I made him go the second time (we told the girls it was for work purposes, and the girl's were accepting - or at least appeared to be - of this). We are currently trying hard to reconcile, but I just am so stuck. He's doing everything humanly possible and the girls are happy as ever. I don't feel I could just turn their world upside down now, and divorce him. Almost especially because of how devastated they were before, I haven't got the heart to do that to them. I hope this all makes sense!

So much of what you listed in your first comment is quite familiar to me, and to a lot of us, I would think. It's fairly textbook behavior. Some WSs can get mean or aloof, and rewrite history when they're in the throes of infidelity.

I don't feel I could just turn their world upside down now, and divorce him. Almost especially because of how devastated they were before, I haven't got the heart to do that to them.

If you do end up deciding that it's too much to forgive, remember that HE turned his children's lives upside down, not you. I hope that your H can continue to work on himself and become a solid, trustworthy partner for his children's mother. If he can't, then you'll be modeling a strong woman for them by leaving.

Has he set the record straight with his family and with those that he talked trash to about you?

Doing the job he does, he could not risk the catastrophic results to us as a family if she were to go to his job about the A -

This is an excuse. He absolutely took that risk,the moment he had an affair. You,or the OW, could have gone to his job and told them about the affair.

Is she a coworker?

What work is he doing to become a safe partner?

At MINIMUM..

Std testing

If she's a coworker, he finds a new job.

Writes a complete timeline.

Is fully transparent. You get full access to all accounts,and phone. Passwords included.

He is accountable for his time away from you.

IC to figure out why he cheated.

Drops any friends who knew.

He must do whatever it takes to heal the damage he caused the children.

Is proactive in healing the damage he has caused you, himself, and the marriage.

And anything else you need to feel safe.

Trust nothing he says. Watch his actions.

Is she married?

Do not tell him about this site. This is your safe place.

Finally, don't lie to your kids. They will eventually figure it out. Don't allow his behavior to turn you into someone your kids can't trust. They already know they can't trust him. They need one parent they can trust.

[This message edited by HellFire at 10:00 PM, Tuesday, April 4th]

SsS - he has set the record straight with literally everyone. His mum now hugs me that bit tighter when I see her and I have had an apology from his dad (although that felt a bit half arsed - he's a very proud man who doesn't like to admit hes wrong).

HellFire - she wasn't a coworker, she literally just worked in the building connected. But yes, he found a new job within a few months regardless. She wasn't married, and he has actually now emigrated, much to my pleasure! He has done/is doing every single thing on that list, including STD testing. He already knows about this site. He introduced me to it several months ago, as he sends links to threads/paragraphs that he feels he can relate to (this is just something I asked him to do ages ago). I realise the girl's might figure out what's happened one day (the truth usually has a way of coming out), but I could definitely not go telling them, I couldn't risk alienating them from their dad. Adult business they don't need to know (definitely not at their ages!).

SsS - he has set the record straight with literally everyone. His mum now hugs me that bit tighter when I see her and I have had an apology from his dad (although that felt a bit half arsed - he's a very proud man who doesn't like to admit hes wrong).

HellFire - she wasn't a coworker, she literally just worked in the building connected. But yes, he found a new job within a few months regardless. She wasn't married, and he has actually now emigrated, much to my pleasure! He has done/is doing every single thing on that list, including STD testing. He already knows about this site. He introduced me to it several months ago, as he sends links to threads/paragraphs that he feels he can relate to (this is just something I asked him to do ages ago). I realise the girl's might figure out what's happened one day (the truth usually has a way of coming out), but I could definitely not go telling them, I couldn't risk alienating them from their dad. Adult business they don't need to know (definitely not at their ages!).

2 months after Dday he’s messaging a much younger woman.

🚩🚩🚩🚩

...at what point in your reconciliation did you feel, yep I think this is something I can move forward from?

Tough question because there's so many different aspects to it, isn't there?

Early on, I decided to give it a chance. Shortly after making that decision though, I realized I was going to have to treat that chance fairly. IOW, I would need to be true to my own nature and be myself rather than curling in on myself and refusing to take emotional risks. Just stupid stuff like buying him birthday cards, making his lunch, being thoughtful, that sort of thing, seemed like really hard choices in the beginning.

I think there's an element of "fake it 'til you make it" in regard to how much commitment I was willing to offer. Outwardly, I was very supportive of R and continuing to try. Privately though?... I was probably riding the fence for the first few YEARS.

At a certain point in R, I do believe we have to take full ownership of our choice. My fWH betrayed me and I felt victimized by that betrayal. But once my agency had been returned, every decision I've made since then is on me. I didn't have to stay. In fact, I still don't have to stay. Knowing that ultimately I am in control allows me to let those feeling of victimization go. Yeah, it's never going to be the perfect love story I had hoped for. There's always going to be this asterisk on our history. I can't say "he's never let me down" because he has. At the bottom line though, I've decided that I can live with that. I can survive and even thrive with that. And if I'm wrong about him, I can risk that... because I've learned to be right about ME.

Long and short, it was probably five years before I felt settled in R, oftentimes still privately on the fence. R feels messy. It just does. It feels like it's going in every direction at once sometimes. It's exhausting. The feelings you've described here though are very typical for where you are in the process. Just know that it WILL get better.

((hugs))

I feel like I can forgive a lot. I can have compassion and empathy and understanding for people even while being clear-eyed about terrible things they have done. And even if those things were done to me. I was sexually abused by a family member as a child, and I’ve forgiven that.

But to me, forgiveness is a very separate issue from deciding whether to remain in a relationship of any kind with a person.

I can see eventually forgiving someone who did the things your husband did. But I’m not at all sure I could remain married to them, especially with vulnerable kids in the mix. I think I would need a total 180-degree turnaround that involved complete remorse and complete commitment to transform himself. And complete transparency. Honestly, the texting a younger woman and hiding/deleting it after all this mess went down is as big a red flag to me as anything.

I don’t feel super qualified to weigh in though, because my situation was different, with less to forgive. And like CT said, it varies from person to person, and we often don’t know what we can accept or forgive until we’re confronted with it.

I’m sorry you’ve been served this pile of sh** to deal with. I hope you are able to take care of yourself and your kids and find some peace as you figure things out. Figuring out where you are emotionally with a relationship takes a long time after betrayal, in my experience. It wasn’t until about a year and a half after Dday that I started to find my emotional bearings, and I’m still figuring it out. And my situation wasn’t as messy and destructive as what your husband put you through.

CT - aah, thank you so much for that ((hugs)). I often feel like people think that because I have given him another chance that I should pretty much just be over this by now and moving forward. Unless you've been through it, it's easy to not appreciate how traumatising infidelity is! I can completely relate to feeling often on the fence. I sometimes wonder whether my feeling on the fence comes mostly from feeling a sense of shame in staying, IYKWIM? It gives me hope knowing that you weren't truly all in until 5 years into R (and even then still sometimes on the fence).

Grieving - oh, I'm so sorry that happened to you as a child. I had the same experience. I think of myself as a forgiving person also - although I'm not sure I've forgiven what happened, I just generally don't allow myself to think about it (probably extremely unhealthy for healing). He has honestly completely changed as a human being. He is so remorseful, he never stops thinking about what he has put me through. I think though in all honesty, the first few months of R, although the words were there, I was far too much in shock to really see he didn't get it. He describes it as he had spent the last month of the A full of anxiety and fear that his world was going to blow up, that when I all ended and I was willing to give him a chance, he said he was suddenly on cloud 9. The reality of what he'd done, didn't really hit him, although he was remorseful. The texting/deleting thing has been an issue throughout our whole marriage tbh. He's even had issues with deleting messages from male friends. I've seen a lot of these messages between friends and colleagues before they've been deleted and they were honestly perfectly innocent. He's done a lot of introspection as to WHY he has done this and it all seems to come down to this desperate need to be liked by everyone. To be the funny one, the cool one, the one people feel they can go to with their problems. As a kid he was hit about a bit, told he wasn't good enough, that his older sibling was the favourite (I never knew the extent of all this). And his feeling like he needs to delete communication with people comes from a relationship he had as a teenager. At 16 years old his then girlfriend made him disown all of his friends from college, and only spend time with her. She was extremely jealous, but again, the coward in him, didn't stand up to her. So, I know these messages to this girl 2 months after DD were innocent as he got her to send screenshots, he again justified doing it in his own mind because he felt well I'm not doing anything wrong, she's a colleague and I NEED TO BE LIKED. It's sad really 😞 when I found this out, I ended things. I told him I was absolutely done. I booked an appointment with a divorce lawyer. It was then that I saw the true changes, and that's why I gave it one more chance, all social media deleted. I've said if he ever deletes messages again, I will be done in a heartbeat. There won't be a discussion about it even if they're perfectly innocent, he will get his stuff and leave, and I will never speak to him again (only about the kids via email).

Pause the reconciliation and start the EDMR. His focus needs to be on his therapy and yours needs to be on yours. Your children need calm and stability which you can give even through a divorce if you are healed. You do not need to make a decision on your marriage now. You need to heal from the betrayal and only then will you know what is too much to forgive.

Saying they don't love someone is standard for an affair. It is very easy to create an alternative reality as it justifies their behaviour. It is easy to blame others rather then look at yourself in the mirror and hold yourself accountable for your child declaring they wanted to die. Affairs are betrayal after betrayal.

He has rectified with his parents and people he bad mouthed you to but he cannot put what he did back in a box. He betrayed you also by talking about your previous trauma. That and how he left you and your children feeling will be the biggest hurdles.

It is not right or wrong to forgive and it is not right or wrong to try and reconcile or file for divorce. I've come to believe humans are not meant to be monogamous. After all monkeys aren't and they are our closest species

[This message edited by DayDreamBeliever at 11:01 AM, Wednesday, April 5th]

Dear WB,

Our stories are very similar. My H needed the ego boost too. He’s been the go to guy for decades (especially with women) and long before texting etc.

His last affair was his 2nd. First was a 4 year EA. Total denial from him. Complete stonewalling. In his mind he didn’t have sex so therefore it was not cheating 😡😡.

His second affair was a typical midlife crisis affair. He was planning to leave me after 25 years of a good marriage for someone he knew 6 months. She was much much younger too.

Yes we have happily reconciled. Yes my H has changed. Yes I have forgiven him (took me tears) but we have a good relationship.

However………to protect myself I had to make changes. I have a post nup.

We also have separate credit cards.

I have my own bank accounts.

His name is on the mortgage— not mine. If we D I don’t have to worry about him ruining my credit.

I have my plan B / exit strategy just in case.

I redid all of our life insurance policies so I am the account owner and he cannot change beneficiaries. I did this to protect my kids in case we D — they would still be financially protected in case something happened.

And yes my H knows I can D him at any time I wish and I will do it too. It won’t necessarily be b/c of his cheating — it could be any reason.

That trauma will never go away — the fact he planned to D me with no discussion or explanation but b/c he met someone else and decided she was better. Best I can do is protect myself. So I did what I could to avoid being left broke in case of D.

Hi WB,

You have lot to unpack here. Your WH has not left much room for any further F ups. He will need to be a 10/10 for you to stay in the marriage. I would do what 1stWife says, make sure you are in control and ready to put your foot out of the door if he falters to 9. Separate your finances, get a job if not working, move to a big city with good public transportation.
Remember he was back because it suited him. That kind of crazy behavior 6 weeks into an affair reveals a very unstable personality. Stay in the marriage if you need to, but be in control. You can forgive him but never forget what he is capable of.

Take care of yourself, remember to put yourself and the kids first from now on.