SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’m not sure what I am looking for here… alcoholism and infidelity both involved in this story - but if you are just going to tell me that we are both broken and need to move on, then please just move along. There’s a lot at play here but I truly feel that we are at a point in our lives where we can make the decision to be better for everyone involved, we just need to figure out how…

I am the WS. We were not M but have been together for 12 years. The past 4 years have been really rough for us. Since Covid, BS got really into drinking and broke a lot of trust with me, without it ever turning sexual (I do know this for sure). I just felt like I was not a priority, and on those nights that he didn’t come home, which became more frequent over time, I was lonely.

It started with me resorting to an online chat room. I was curious, and honestly bored, so I was looking into online sugar daddies. Not looking to pursue anything in person, but there were people in there that just wanted to talk and send money to anyone that would listen. I was intrigued. This was not something that I did long term. It was one long night on the internet, curiously reading through things, logged on a couple more times through the month but nothing really stuck and I came to my senses on what the f I was doing. I logged off and went back to supporting my (now BS) through his struggles. - writing this out the regret is eating me alive. I wish I had just come clean here and maybe we could have discussed how I was feeling and how his actions were making me feel insecure in our relationship and things could have been so different… sad

Moving forward a couple of months, we found out that I was pregnant and things started to feel good again for a moment. (I should also mention that between his binge drinking episodes, things were really good. We were so happy together and genuinely enjoyed each other) I had hope that he would come out of the drinking and we would have the family that we always wanted together. Sadly, the drinking continued, a lot happened over my pregnancy. But we did have our beautiful daughter and he is a great father.

Things were up and down with his drinking for a while. After our daughter turned 2, I was still going through spouts of feeling alone when he was going through his binge drinking episodes. He had seeked out help in a few ways but nothing really stuck. I tried to be as supportive as I could, but it was hard at times when I was alone with our baby feeling like we were not good enough for him to choose what was best for us.

Eventually, back on that app I went. This time I did meet someone and we did continue a chat just the 2 of us. It didn’t start out sexual, it was nice to be able to talk and vent to someone that was not connected to my life at all. I was able to share things with him that I could not share with others because I feared the judgement that would come from it. And at my core I knew that my spouse was better than his actions. So I continued having conversations with this person. He was nice to me and did send me some money here and there. Which gave me a little thrill… this lasted a few months on and off. We didn’t talk daily but when we did he would send me something. Looking back, I do see that it was manipulative for him to send me money when he knew how vulnerable I was. And I hate everything about this situation, mostly that I felt so low that I gave into this knowing that I knew better. I was looking for disassociation from my life I suppose but damn, I could have done things so differently…

Anyway. Towards the end of the summer, BS ended up having a pretty bad situation, that was caused by drinking and I hit a breaking point. It was at a point where I thought that things were getting better but this happened and everything came crashing down on me. I vented to this person again and he offered to have me come meet him in his city. At first I was thinking absolutely not, how could I ever? But things just kept feeling heavy in my everyday life to the point of me saying f it. And I went. Only for a day. I flew in in the morning and left that evening. In that time we had fun. It was nice to be disconnected from my reality for a moment. Although it also felt very wrong. I missed my spouse. I knew he didn’t deserve this and I knew that he ultimately wanted to be better for our family. I put a stop to anything sexual that day, flew home, and cut things off with him again. He would still send me money here and there but he was not reaching out and neither was I so I let it be.

About 6 months later he reached out again and his timing was always at a time that my relationship was on a dip. Sadly, I was vulnerable. I agreed to another trip.

This time I didn’t put a stop to anything. We started to get into something that night but did not finish. He didn’t spend the night with me, but came back again in the morning and we did finish again. I felt awful. But I also felt like I had to do something to feel something different. Flying home I realized this definitely wasn’t it. I needed to figure something out with BS. But I did not come clean. I so wish that I had. But I didn’t.

3 days later, BS read my texts. I came clean then. But now it looked like I was never going to come clean or stop until I got caught…

Since d-day, BS has moved out. He cleaned up his drinking and is doing a lot better. Which hurts me, because why couldn’t he do these things when I was beginning him? Some days he wants to try with me and some days he wants absolutely nothing to do with me. Unfortunately the latter is more frequent than wanting to try at this moment. And the cherry on top, I found out that I am pregnant, it is 100% BS’s, paternity test confirmed.

We are 4 months out from d-day and it has just been a roller coaster. I have cut all ties with the other person and done everything that I can to show that I want to reconcile, including starting my own counseling. Now I am just sitting in the waiting game and I’m wondering, will there be a time that I know for sure he is done? He has moved 4 hours away but we still have a 2 year old and are expecting another in 4 months, so communication is still there. Sometimes it is hopeful, others it is very discouraging. We have discussed starting MC, but at this point he is so up and down I’m not sure if he will actually go through with it. I have taken all of the steps to get us enrolled, just waiting on a day to start and will go from there. I have done my best to become an open book. Sharing all of my passwords and giving him complete access to everything that I have.

I’m not sure what I’m looking for at this point. I’ve just been up all night reading different stories on here, praying that I will be able to post about my happy, reconciled relationship at some point in the future. Things have been so hard for us. We were young and immature and now we are at a point where we need to figure out if we are going to grow up and get our stuff together. I hate myself so much for not being stronger for us when I could have been an example for him and started counseling myself when we were going through it with his addiction. That was really what I needed, but I went so low with it all that I am so scared that there is no coming back from it.

If you read this far along, thank you lol.

Hi,

Fellow ws here, this is such a painful time and I completely can feel where you are coming from.

Some of the advice that I would give may seem very unrelated or not helpful but you have to trust that at some point you may connect with it more deeply.

First of all, I think it would be helpful if you reel in your whys/how’s. There is a lot of correlation being drawn here between the relationship and your cheating. Things may go better if you take accountability that your cheating has nothing to do with the relationship, it had to do with how you coped with the situation.

I am not saying that to kick you when you are down but if you want progress this is absolutely your best bet because if you can take accountability then you can fix your part of it. Whether that brings him back or fixes the relationship, we don’t know. He is in control of his decisions and you are in control of yours. But if you can work this process it may change the response, but for sure it will begin changes in you.

So let’s look at what happened. Instead of leaving him until he agreed to fix the drinking you put up with it. Not shaming, just reflecting back the narrative. This is likely some codependency, which is common in a relationship where one person has an addiction.

So you didn’t feel brave enough for this option. This is an issue with your relationship with yourself. People who have a good relationship with themselves have boundaries. Boundaries are about where you end and another person begins. You take action based on your values, healthiness,

So cheating came in as a way to escape. You may have even felt entitlement to it because through your codependency you allowed yourself to become a martyr with a lot of resentments. These resentments belong to you. His behavior was bad, but you had other choices.

So from this framing you start writing down your whys. For me, a big one was about relying on others for my happiness. Needing validation outside of myself. And I mean everyone needs some level of validation, that is human, but an excessive need spells out that you do not have the self worth/self love to expect the right treatments and behaviors, and likely are missing coping skills as well.

I am sure that you are talking about some of this in IC. But I would recommend reading a post here by daddy dom on discovering our true whys. It’s like unraveling a big afghan, until you unravel section a, you can’t get to section b. It just keeps going.

So the questions to ask yourself is what do you wish you would have done instead and what prevented that as your ultimate path.

As far as with him, if you have accountability over your decisions without tying it back to him, that might be a good start. Be transparent, honest, do not be defensive or demanding. You might want to read the book "how to help your spouse heal from an affair". But I also like "rising strong" by brene brown because it taught me about shame and its effects on connection. I know you have a small child, get the audio versions and play them in your car if you need to.

Post here. There is a lot of wisdom to be found. I read a lot of bs stories and even just found out. Understanding the trauma of affairs is a big one.

Focus just on you and your issues, allow him to focus on his. Try to connect with his pain and don’t minimize your actions.

I don’t know if it’s too late, but I know it’s not too late for you to grow and learn from this and become a better version of yourself. This will be important if you reconcile and important if you don’t.

Think about what love means to you and what it doesn’t. I think your husband may be concerned in addition that you were searching for rich men. This is an added thing that may create shame for him.

I truly wish you the best and I will watch for updates and questions. I will bump the thread about whys that daddy dom wrote.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:12 PM, Wednesday, May 29th]

Turns out someone just bumped that topic. It appears right below your thread. I found another one that I have a request to re-emerge and I think you will find that one helpful too. Also the healing library is a great resource if you haven’t found it.

Okay, the other thread has been "woken up" and bumped by Lea (thanks!) it is the other post by daddy dom about owning it. I think it will be helpful. I didn’t realize you posted this in general. You are getting great support there from bs’s so far. This forum is a little more protected if you do find yourself in a spot where you aren’t ready to hear from the bs’s on something, you can leave the stop sign on when posting in this forum.