SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Brief history: we were married in 1975. Before our first year was up, we both had a ONS and without too many details we can chalk this up to a hippy lifestyle and belief system that we both agreed was not workable for either of us. We recommitted and were doing well. In 1978 he was in the music industry and surrounding a 3-month separation he had 3 PAs (I knew of one, suspected one that he just admitted, and he just admitted one that I didn’t know at all). Things were good in the marriage until 2005, when he had another PA lasting 4 months with a coworker. About 3 weeks following that dday he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had to have surgery to remove it.

Our recovery shifted from affair recovery to cancer recovery. I believe we rugswept many aspects of the affair, and we focused on recovering his health first and sexual function after that. I admit that I put everything on the back burner and ultimately was just grateful he lived, and he was grateful we could get back to some semblance of "normal". As time passed, we actually were doing better, and had a renewal of our vows on one of our anniversaries on a cruise. Things seemed great.

Until they weren’t.

Around the beginning of 2018, I suffered a major accident and had a series of oral-facial surgeries. Over the course of 18 months I had 20 surgeries. My face and mouth was very sensitive, and I was unable to even bite a banana if that gives you any idea. To say it interfered with oral aspects of sexual activity is an understatement. We definitely had less frequent interactions, but were still active. However, we were back to normal around the middle of 2019.

At some point in 2021, it became very painful to have intercourse (I am in my sixties, seems common) so I had to seek treatment for that. I got the treatment and told him it was better, we could resume - he just looked at me and walked away. I had no idea he was deep into the affair by then, but when he did that my thought was that he must be seeing someone…like intuition. I didn’t look for evidence because it never dawned on me that I should check his phone or anything. I never thought of spying. I wish I had.

That said, he began to stop being interested around the end of 2019. I couldn’t get him to be interested, and he didn’t initiate. In fact, he seemed to avoid me. Things seemed to almost stop altogether, and then by 2021 when it began to hurt, it was down to maybe once a month but only if I worked hard.

Turns out, he started his online contacts with his EA sometime around the end of 2019, she sent him a nude in May 2020, and he was using a lot of porn during that time until DDay June 2023.

I found out because my ipad and his phone crossed over and I watched them sexting in real time.

Since then, we had a brief time of him TT, but he realized I would leave without the truth. He has been doing the work. Reading, answering questions, telling me the unfolding and story and emotions of the affair, discussing his growth and observations of how he was thinking during the affair vs how he is now, discussing what he knows he has done to our relationship and his remorse, regret, and need for repair, as well as taking the lead in sharing what he has read and is learning as he goes.

He is open with emails, phone, computer, everything. He stopped all porn use.

We have talked about his changes, and he is surprising me. He is showing me insights that he has never talked about before.

Things are better. I am not healed, not by a long shot. But he is different than he was. I’m watching.

The rollercoaster.

So, I was mostly down the first several months, of course. Devastated. His EA was with his former bandmate from so long ago. They wrote long emails back and forth, love letters, and spoke of their mutual admiration and love. I read them all - he gave me unfettered access to everything. I read all the texts. I called her.

They both told me it was all a "game". That really pissed me off. I told them that this wasn’t a game, they had made plans for him to travel to her state and consummate their "love".

He told me, and her, he would never leave me. She told me the same thing.

She is a classic narcissist - she said SHE is the one who got hurt in all of this. She lost him, the only person on earth who understands her. And she also lost me as a friend (yeah, some friend). And she loses the ability to talk to my kids, whom she loves.

She said she wanted MY LIFE. Wanted to have my life. So her plan was to basically take over my role. And she was hoping for that.

But it was a "game"? Sure.

My fWH has now dropped that game talk. He is angry at himself, and at her - for the hurt and the pain the entire thing. He says the "game" was that she was playing him for what she wanted, which was her narcissistic self pleasure, and he was playing her for sex and the admiration and excitement. And he might have thought he was in love, but it wasn’t love at all - it was all fantasy and stupidity and selfishness.

And I was the loser all the way around.

I go through phases where I am feeling okay, then flat, then depressed, then back to square one, then hopeful, then okay.

He shows steady improvement. He breaks down and cries, sometimes when something seems to trigger him and I can’t figure out what it was. Last night, something on a tv show triggered him. He said no, but I could tell he was holding back tears.

He said he thinks feeling guilty is selfish - that guilt is focusing on his own inner feelings, and that he needs to focus on my pain, not his.

I told him that the way out of this is for both of us to put on our oxygen masks, hold one another, and go together through this.

Counseling helps.

My W said she had always told ow that she wouldn't leave me. I was elated initially. Then I realized she did leave me, every time she talked to ow on the phone, every time she texted, every time they were together, every time she even thought of ow, every time she bowed out of something that was fun because her A exhausted her.

I used to get very angry - maybe even furious - when I thought I detected guilt in my W, because I thought it was a way to avoid responsibility. Your H's thoughts on guilt make me think he may be a winner.

Sisoon,

I believe his thoughts on guilt also indicate he is truly in the right zone now.

In the past, he never really got there. We just seemed to move on somehow. I believe that I was able to because of my past extreme trauma experiences, as I was able to learn some rather good (but in an unhealthy way) compartmentalization and blocking strategies for putting things out of my mind. This time around, after getting some help and better, more healthy approaches to my past, I don’t and won’t do that.

So his response has to be different. And it really is.

I think because my response is so different, and I am a stronger person now, he has had to make a change because he understands the very real risk this time is that I am strong enough to let go of everything here, and walk out.

Like they say here, I am willing to risk the marriage to save it. And he recognizes the strength in that. What surprised me is he met the challenge without any pushback. It’s almost as though he wanted me to fight for him. He says he was mentally in a dark place, he knew it, and was growing more depressed by the day. He says my catching him brought him back to the light.