SurvivingInfidelity.com Forum Archives

Infidelity, betrayal and attempting recovery is so hard. I love my husband and want to repair my marriage. Unfortunately for me it's so hard to hold onto hope after the last roller coaster ride the last 4 months. The gas lighting has officially come to light and it's hard to trust anything out of his mouth. He's working on actions. He says he'll do do what I call trust building actions but committing to follow through is like pulling teeth.
Dday #1 was September 6th. WH promised NC with OP. He sent her a text that night that he erased before I seen it. He said he told her that he got in trouble and they couldn't talk anymore. Discovered/confirmed a month later that he was using phone cards to contact her. Claimed it was all worked related. Started working on recovery though my gut said things still weren't right. Attempted MC but that only lasted 2 sessions. Neither of us thought she was helping. WS really didn't want to do MC anyways, was doing it for me he said. Plus, we really can't afford it. So we've been limping along but I felt we were making some progress. I had stopped "digging" for information but something triggered me to start periodically checking up again.
On Dec 23rd I decided to listen to his voicemail. I had checked a few other times but nothing. This time what I discovered shattered my heart and soul into a million pieces. A message full of sexual innuendo from her but not actually coming out and saying anything. It was the sexy/slutty way she spoke and the way she said what she said. I didn't say anything to him that day. I checked the next day (Christmas Eve) and she's wishing him a Merry Christmas and says I love you. I decide to wait until Friday so I don't ruin the kids Christmas and I can deal with it on the weekend. Friday I check again as he's driving home from work and this voice mail has me lose it! She's telling him she's wearing the ring he got her for Christmas (supposedly cheap $25 ring engraved with her name but whatever). She misses him and he's in her heart. And she loves him. Now its almost 2 weeks later and he's still claiming it was just a deep friendship and nothing more than 2 or 3 goodbye kisses on the lips happened (to discovery). He says, I guess the MC was right and it was an ea. I call bullshit on that. They've been secretly meeting for lunch every few weeks (or more?) Since March/April. They work in different districts for their company. She was mentoring him. They were meeting halfway between their homes (an hour drive for them both), not even in their own districts.
We're working on reconciling once again but I believe nothing that comes out of his mouth. I think me taking the kids to my parents house over that weekend until Tuesday shook some sense into him. We're back home now.
We had come to a compromise on NC letter. He was going to email it to her personal email after I saw it on New Year's Day. This was because she was on vacation and he wanted her to receive it the day she got back. Well he screwed that up! He called her, using a calling card no less! He said he tried to reach her several times before she called him back. Not on his cell though. She found him at one of his stores. I said your reasoning is f*ed up. He told me she's mortified and sorry. He says it's his fault because he contacted her back in Oct and told her it was ok to talk again. I said she must be mighty stupid if she thinks it's ok when she couldn't call your cell and you called her using a calling card.
He says he had the best intentions because he wanted to start the New Year off with a clean slate. Right now I've told him I will continue digging and if I ever find out they're in contact about anything non work related (everything is to go through company email from now on) it's over with us, I contact her and her BS. I'll let BS decide if he wants to contact their job. I have enough "evidence" including the 3 voice mails to prove what he did to both marriages/families.

I'm so sorry shattered. I know you will find alot of support here, and wish you peace and strength for what you are going through.

My wife had a 4 or 5 year affair that the OBS discovered more than two years before she finally called and told me about it. She also threatened her husband with revealing the affair, but her husband told her he broke it off, and then took it underground. My wife said she was trying to end it after the OBSs discovery, but this just wasn't happening. It wasn't until I finally found out about it that she began to come out of the fog and really ended the affair.

Please consider the other betrayed spouses life and feelings. They deserve to know now what their wayward spouse is doing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. I wish I had known so much earlier. I feel like I lost all those years of my life living in an illusion. It wasn't fair to me - I deserved to know, and so does your husbands affair partner's spouse.

So sorry for your pain.

[This message edited by Crushed15Feb13 at 2:15 PM, January 8th (Wednesday)]

I agree with you. I'm just so confused. I promised that if he did no contact then I wouldn't contact him. My husband is a very stubborn, proud man. I know he will leave me if I break my promise about not contacting him. I'm trying to give our recovery a fighting chance. I should've just contacted him immediately and let the pieces fall where they may. I also fear about how I OPBS will react. I know he has guns based on a fb picture I seen. He may shoot WS first and ask questions later. Why don't WS think of the repercussions and damage beforehand?
I just want to save my marriage...

I'm so sorry this is happening to you. I totally understand you wanting to fix your marriage. I hope you succeed. I want mine to work too.

My WW said that she was just friends with the OM too. And then they had sex. Kinda blew that idea out of the water. I know they're still emailing. I'm not stupid, but really I am trying to stick around. But at the same time I wonder how a WS is capable of hurting another human being so badly. I'm changed forever, for the worse, and I hope you aren't like me in that regard.

heartbroken303 I know what you mean. After Dday 1 I looked inside myself and truly understood my role in hurting our marriage. And yes I know the affair is not my fault. He owns 100% of that decision and his actions. I however own 50% in our marital problems. Virtually overnight I changed how I was in the past. And my husband noticed. The painful part that he admitted to after Dday 3 is that he didn't fully commit to change for the better too.
PreAffair he would say I wasn't emotionally available when he needed me and that I was always nagging. And those are true statements. It was my defense mechanism to shield me from the pain of always asking for him to be more involved at home and being shot down time and again. Work was always first. I felt like I was dead last. Ironically that's what effected his first marriage and (supposedly) his ex cheated on him. Go figure. Also he seemed to only need me when he hated his job. I would sit and listen to hours of him repeating the same negative things about work. Then he would ask me to revamp his resume, help him apply to jobs, etc. It has cycled this way for our whole relationship (13 yrs). He's had at least 8 jobs in that time. It takes its toll on a marriage and family. Last year he finally found his dream job and we moved 500+ miles. I thought things were finally looking up. So we were at a stalemate begging the other to work on their part of the marriage and change. I closed myself off and he had an EA ( PA? ).
After trying do hard these last 4 months I'm scared that I'll be "played" again. I'm trying to take hope in the fact that he owned up to not doing his part the last time. He's made some changes but not everything I told him I need to move forward and not look into the past as much. I live in fear daily that things will start up again even though I'm there for him in every way (mentally, emotionally and physically). I know some of it is like an addiction to the OW. I want to be enough for him...the only one for him.

[This message edited by shatteredapart at 5:37 AM, January 9th (Thursday)]

ShatteredApart, you can't reconcile with someone who CLEARLY is still involved with his affair partner and doesn't seem to give a fig about your pain or heartache.

The only one doing ANY work is you. He's the one whose supposed to be cleaning up the mess he made and instead, he's walking around STILL calling all the shots, continually lying to you, and looking out only for himself.

I hate to say it, but your husband didn't "screw up" when he called his affair partner (using his phone card) after emailing that phony NC email to his mistress. That was a very calculated move on his part to give her a heads-up and WARN her that he'd sent her an NC email and not to explode when she read it. He no doubt also wanted to beg her forgiveness for having sent it, and to tell her not to believe a single word in it. He likely also told her that YOU forced him to write it so he did it to shut you up, and he'd like her to ignore it and delete it.

His phone call to her was NO "screw up."

This is exactly why I have zero faith in NC letters. Most cheaters just contact their affair partner on the sly and warn them an NC letter is coming and they apologize for it and claim their betrayed spouse made them do it and that they didn't mean ANY of what they said in the letter, and on and on and on. Hell, alot of these cheaters also ask their affair partners to reply back with their own phony message claming they'll "abide" by the NC request. This, of course, is purely designed to fool the BS into thinking that the affair partners have now ceased contact.

Lastly, I'm amazed you're allowing your husband to completely manipulate you into NOT telling the BH about his wife's affair. Obviously, your husband is STILL protecting his mistress (and more than likely still in the affair with her.)

Not telling the BH is just keeping their dirty little affair a secret for them. Not telling the BH will ALSO insure that you don't have the benefit of HIS eyes watching his wife and keeping you informed if he catches them doing anything. So in essence, you're merely enabling them to continue sneaking around right under this guy's nose and will not have an ally.

Keeping quiet about the affair also doesn't allow the BH to make informed decisions about his own marriage and future, as you're able to do. The guy may be a gun enthusiast and has a few pictures of himself hunting (or whatever) on Facebook, but that doesn't make him some kind of psycho killer, for goodness sakes. It seems your HUSBAND was willing to risk getting shot by the BH over and over and over and over so apparently, he must not think the guy is THAT insane if he was willing to risk his life countless times.

You need to re-think telling her husband. Don't fall for their lies anymore and don't keep their dirty secret for them.

I understand that you want to save your marriage, but until he actually starts doing the right thing and stops the lying and cheating, it's going to continue being an uphill struggle.

I really hope you are able to take NeverAgain's advice, Shattered.

In my case the BW became a very important support for me, and DID help immensely with sleuthing facts and getting to the truth about the extent of the affair that came after DDay. My wife wasn't able to admit many things about the affair, and so twisted the truth or told me half-truths. The perspective and knowledge provided by the BW helped me a lot. I'm sure it was very difficult for her to make that call, and in fact took her more than two years to do it - but I still feel owe her a lot because in all likelihood the affair would still be going on if I hadn't learned about it.