SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I found out my Husband was having an affair end April, I found the messages on his phone. I never look at his phone but there has been a few red flags over the preceding weeks and that particular day he was obsessing with it. The affair had been ongoing for around 7 weeks, it was clearly red-hot judging by the content of the messages. We have been together 27 years and I had been having some difficulty with a new Boss at work who was being demanding and difficult so working longer hours trying to manage situation, Husband is retired and has a lot of time on his hands.

He Immediately took fright went and ended with OW, we have talked it all through, he went for counselling, read books and he genuinely is horrified and disgusted with himself. He says he acted impulsively handing met the woman through a volunteering role he had, he says it became a bit of a fantasy world and he knew it was wrong and was trying to extract himself but it was a like a powerful drug.

We are four months on, he is doing everything possible to make me comfortable, giving me access to his phone, whereabouts, showering me with love tokens and messages, making an extra effort to arrange date nights - everything. It’s going really well, the counselling was a huge help and created a structure.

I am still struggling to get the OW out of my head, i think because I saw the messages. She was clearly smitten, they were full of words like ‘waited our whole life to find each other’, connecting on a deeper level, how they made each feel etc and I am terrified she will try and initiate contact. He has told me he has removed and blocked her and I can see that he has, so it’s more her behaviour and whether she could re-appear and try and make contact.

I know her address, I was tempted to write a letter to set out my side and essentially correct that we were not in a dead end, cold marriage - quite the opposite and that he could have left that day to be with her and chose not to. I have written down what I would say (it was actually quite cathartic), should I send it or should I leave it rather than disturb a possible wasps nest?

I would close that door to that and not open it back up.

I thought about sending my H AP a letter to clear the air too but I owed her nothing, I actually like it better that she knows nothing because to me she is nothing, we have no social media, he quit his job, and dropped her like a hot potato Much like your H did.
I think it would be desperate for us to reach out to them. Just my opinion.
Also APS lie, who knows what she would try to say to you in return or it could make her try harder to get your H attention back, nothing good will come from it.

[This message edited by Groot1988 at 7:44 PM, Friday, August 30th]

Never ever put anything in writing that you might regret.

The OW could take your letter and post it all over social media and try to embarrass you.

She could send it to your friends and family too.

She can harass you forever with it. Don’t do it.

You may look back and regret it. Always protect yourself against malicious attacks from OW - especially those that are dumped.

Writing it all down might have helped, but I agree: don't send the letter.

Some WSes turn on a dime. I know my W took responsibility and stopped lying from the moment I asked her if there was anything I should know. I don't she's told since she answered my question honestly.

But that's her. Her behavior didn't have much impact on me. I still had to deal with the immense amounts of grief, fear, anger, and shame that inevitably come with being betrayed. IMO, every victim of betrayal feels that pain to some extent or another - and a big betrayal means lots of pain. There isn't a much bigger betrayal than cheating in a relationship.

D & R ARE about the future much more than about the past. At the same time, the A is in your WS's past, but it's in your present, and it affects your future.

Further, for R to succeed, the WS needs to change themself from cheater to good partner. That takes a LOT more than love-bombing the BS for a few months and promising not to cheat again.

Something enabled the WS to cheat. Unless the WS figures out how to prevent themself from making lousy choices in the future, they are too likely to cheat again.

So what's your WS doing to change himself?

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:52 PM, Saturday, August 31st]

Welcome to SI and I'm sorry that you're here. In the JFO (Just Found Out) forum, there are some articles pinned to the top of the page that we encourage new members to read. The Healing Library is at the top of the page and has a lot of great resources. The list of acronyms we use are there, in case you struggle with some of the alphabet soup we use.

You both may wish to read Not Just Friends by Dr. Shirley Glass. It has some really good information. I really liked the chapter called Windows and Walls. It is a great analogy of keeping certain things transparent between the two of you and not being transparent with people outside of the marriage - setting boundaries.

I am still struggling to get the OW out of my head

This is very normal, but you should focus on placing the blame where it belongs - with your WH (wayward husband). He's the one who lied to her and said those things.

Write the letter but don't send it.

Let's face it - if the AP gave a damn about you or your reality/thoughts/feelings she wouldn't be an AP would she?

Write the letter as it could help you get your feelings out of your head. Then burn it.

NC w/AP goes for you too.

Mine had two: One strictly sexual for SEVEN YEARS once every few months, then a FA & EA for 3 years that he cheated on with Ashley Madison (or the other way around), before it turned sexual once and I caught him.

First, I get it: seven years, plus he maintained email contact during the past 2-1/2 years of
Reconciliation until I caught him a few months ago.

Why do they make it so f’ing MORE difficult than it has to be.

I honestly don’t know any truly "reconciled" happy couples. None. None in groups. "Second marriages to the same person," as Ether Perel likes to refer to it, haven’t seen it.

Betrayers fundamentally want to just GET PAST IT. We’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars in marriage and individual therapy. He goes through periods where he still blames me, has a list of grievances about how I let HIM down, but I’m the love of his life. And with exception if a therapist that fired us for his continued betrayal, no one has said, "do you understand how damaging your behavior is?! And if so, Why don’t you act like it?"

Kids, intertwined finances, families, business dealings, past memories that can’t be separated from the soiling…it’s easy to say, "just divorce if you can’t get over it!" without acknowledging that it is the BETRAYER who needs to do the hard work (and let’s face it: the BETRAYED do 90% of the work) yet they seldom do.

So this last time when I found he had continued to correspond with her to "get her to ‘move on’" for 2-1/2 years, he sent her the second "I’m so sorry, but I’ve hurt my family and can’t do this anymore" email, and I did the following:

I set up a new email account so she wouldn’t have my real one, and instead of invective and name-calling, I decided to show her that 1) she didn’t know him, 2) she wasn’t special to him, and 3) she was as fully to blame as he was.

I pointed out how much money he’d given her, and to only have sex once. I pointed out all the fantasy, not reality, in their relationship. I said I didn’t hold it against her until AFTER she learned he was married. I brought up her daughter by name and where she worked letting her contemplate what they might think of her and what she was "modeling" to her daughter (this let her know that I had read EVERYTHING.). I included screen shots of text messages he sent me "explaining" how she was so pathetic and it made him feel big to take care of her "bottomless pit of need." I pointed out that he was cheating on HER, too.

I didn’t threaten, or call names. I told her I pitied her that she had no options, while I was beautiful and wealthy and successful in my own right and knew SHE knew this, too.

I also pointed out that I knew that she was in a green card marriage that my UH told me. Two people with the same lack of integrity.

It was the most satisfying email I have ever sent, and I cc’d my UH. At first he was pissed; then he admitted I had extracted him from what he couldn’t.

He is horribly flawed and is now in EMDR therapy for childhood trauma. I expect no great changes.

You’ll get no judgment from me. We have been wounded and it may take YEARS to recover. And they really don’t help. They act like we hang on to this pain on purpose. Meanwhile, they won’t take a poly, they won’t address their lack of communication skills, their lack of emotional intelligence, and the consequences of their actions on their spouses, children, or themselves, really. Their discomfort is prioritized over our pain. And most therapists’ answer is the same: WE have to do 95% of the work and they won’t tell Betrayers the hard truth for fear they’ll run away.

This is the legacy of betrayal.

Mine had one. It was a double betrayal. OW was a "friend" and mentor. There were a couple of instances where we exchanged words. But, mostly it was harmful to me. Because she really just wanted to deflect her part.

Write it down. Get the feelings out of your head.

In hindsight now, I believe my best revenge in this awful situation is showing her how very little she means to me, my husband (now) and our marriage.

BruisedNotBroken did you really do

I set up a new email account so she wouldn’t have my real one, and instead of invective and name-calling, I decided to show her that 1) she didn’t know him, 2) she wasn’t special to him, and 3) she was as fully to blame as he was.

I pointed out how much money he’d given her, and to only have sex once. I pointed out all the fantasy, not reality, in their relationship.

??

I find it really strange you didn't get sued for harassment, this would have been the outcome in the country where I come from. Also if your information were incorrect, she would have a great laugh at you for believing the lies your spouse told you. The risk to empower them rather than weaken the AP is far too great. Remember it is sooo common for the WS to lie and diminish the amount of bull**it they did. How do you know FOR SURE they had sex once? And would it make a difference if they did it 15 times or 20? So ma ny of them said it was an affair of a few months when in facts it was years of double life.

I would never contact the AP because their aim is to HURT YOU and PUSH you to D because they know it is the only opportunity they have to get a chance with your spouse if they are now alone and vulnerable. SO they hope to offend you and put so much doubt in you that you can control the ship they feel is sinking over them. No, I would have never trusted what the POS FB could say but I would never humiliate myself telling her how much they hurt me, because that would only make them happy.

I agree some people contact the AP's spouse not as a generous act of kindness towards them but so that the other spouse keeps a short leash on them. That can work for some time but it could also mean the AP becomes all of a sudden a free person if their spouse divorces them. Not sure it is a great idea they become single.

In my case the POS FB divorced after some years since the start of the affair and changed the equilibrium between her and my husband to my advantage because she became pushy and boring.

I completely agree with Chaos. During an affair neither of the two gives a damn about the people who can be affected by the affair, be they the spouse or the children of the person they decided to engage with.

My children wanted to set up a trap (they had an amazing plan!) so that she would be sacked but I insisted they wouldn't do it, even if it would have been really pleasant for me to see her sacked and in jail.

Fantastic , I really did.

And I knew everything I put in the email was true, because I saw credit card receipts, emails, text messages, etc.

Perhaps you missed the part where I said I saw all that and didn’t rely on what he told me. I never learned anything that I didn’t discover myself.

It is not harassment in the US to send one email that doesn’t threaten anyone.

So I knew I had the facts because they were in own words, as well as actual receipts. 🧾

Thank you BruisedNotBroken for summing it up. I had not read all of it. And now that you sent it? Do you feel empowered? I can understand you may feel better and just venting it out and take that person by surprise can be a good feeling, but please please do not believe a word that person can say to you because their aim is to hurt you and bring you down.

[This message edited by Fantastic at 5:41 PM, Wednesday, September 18th]

Fantastic, I said my piece. I won’t contact her again. I wouldn’t believe a word she told me. But I found out A LOT when she thought she was texting him when I got ahold of his Google chat. I basically verified what he had told me as "him."

Very satisfying.