Like other newbies on here, I have been lurking for a few weeks, but felt it was time to post.
I first discovered the tip of the iceberg in March 2013 when on a family holiday in Hawaii. My H was on his phone more that I thought was normal and my suspicions were raised. I confronted him with a weird text I had read and he confessed that he was lonely, had joined an online dating service and had been corresponding with someone for a few months. I was livid, demanded he go into IC, I also was in IC due to post-partum depression, thought we were working through things. Since I truly believed that he would never cheat on me - in fact, didn't have time or much opportunity - I did not demand passwords, go crazy, check up on him. This was obviously a huge mistake.
In July, I had to use his work computer to view a legal document. Right before I was about to log off, I thought "maybe I should look at his sent emails..." and that is when my world imploded. I found not emails to OW, but a long trail between him and one of her friends, who was serving as a confidant, that he obviously had forgotten to delete. It basically laid out the affair for me, beginning with a golf trip he went on to Palm Springs in October when i stayed home with a 3 month old baby and a two year old, and continued over 4 months to when he masterminded a work trip to Chicago. Then there was a hiatus after the Hawaii reveal, then re-ignition, then it was over in April.
There was much TT at first, however an email exchange I had with OW that he wasn't privy to, along with a terrible 9 hour car ride to our fun family vacation at the end of July, gave me some time and resources to extract many details, including another transgression on a ski trip several years ago (someone is never going on another sports trip should we R?) I do believe that the affair was over in April, when he gave me all his passwords on the advice of his IC counsellor - though there was a fairly benign exchange, initiated by OW, as recently as July 12 wherein he told her "more fish in the sea, have a nice life" - but still responded to her.
There has been a great deal of remorse (I am reasonably sure of this), on the part of WH. He has had to tell his parents and face my family. He has block/deleted her email address from all accounts, changed his company cell #, which involved having to have all his coworkers update their contacts. He has written a NC email that I read, we are on a "wait list" for MC (busy summer here I guess). Even before the affair was discovered, he had stepped up parenting, was working on communicating, etc. He has talked about this in the past, but has recently revealed deeply disturbing suicidal ideation since high school, deep depression, self loathing and low self esteem. This is almost as shocking as the affair itself, because he wears such a normal-looking facade.
Except for initial contemplation of divorce, I feel like in my (naive?) heart, the best thing for our family would be R. I love him and I don't think my life would be better without him.
However - as per my username - I AM SO ANGRY. It burns inside me. As soon as I am alone with my thoughts, I go over every detail I know. I revisit every event of the last 8 months and think about what a lie everything was. I don't have a picture of OW, but every tall, blond, nasty cougar that I see, I wonder "is that what she looks like?". I feel like I am constantly being punched in the stomach with reminders. He has almost (almost) ruined "Hawaii" for me because it has come up so much. I feel deep hatred towards him when I think about how he could do this. How he went to work early, leaving me with a finally-sleeping infant and a very-awake toddler to deal with - so he could get some email loving in to her before his busy day started. I feel so ugly. I hate his OW and want to email her boss and ruin her life (because she has no internet presence and I can't track down her husband. who I would email for sure). I can barely look after my kids. He has minimized and whitewashed and I know that his claims that this was a burdensome, terrible time for him are not true. He told her that he loved her, he planned to bring her to Canada for another tryst, talked about feeling really conflicted about staying married and with his family - and while I know that this is all predicated on bullsh*t and they would not last a day in the real world (in fact I laugh to think of them spending a weekend with my toddler) - it still kills me. We had our 13 year wedding anniversary on Monday and he had the gall to wish me a happy one. Um, no. He actually was bewildered that I would never want to celebrate another anniversary with him. The only reason I have stopped screaming at him and saying terrible, cutting things, is because he is alone right now and I have real concerns about his mental health - which I have passed along to his parents to help deal with.
I know it is early days for me, but god help me, I have no idea how I will ever get past this. I feel like I have to return to the anger sometimes, because I start to forget about what a terrible thing was done to me and my family, and then I feel like that lets him off the hook and that I am weak for letting things start to return to normal. I have read so many hopeful things on here about the possibility that R could happen - but how do your start to do that without feeling like a total loser with no self-respect who is staying with a liar and a cheater? How can you ever believe a word that comes out of your WS's mouth? I know that forgiveness is about me and I don't want to be a bitter crazy enraged person, but that is what I am right now. TIA for any advice - this is such a helpful site and I can't believe there are so many good people in the same crappy boat.