This is my very first post. Like so many of you, I never in a million years thought I would be in a position to join this type of community. I found out a few weeks ago that my husband was unfaithful to me in 2010.
My husband and I have been together for almost 20 years. Throughout that entire time, he has been my best friend and the person I have trusted more than anyone else in the world. To say that I am devastated by what transpired is a complete understatement.
Here's my story: About 3 1/2 years ago, I found several old/deleted email messages between my husband and another woman that had been exchanged a few months prior. I immediately confronted my husband. He denied any involvement and reassured me of his commitment to our relationship. I chose to believe him, and after that confrontation, our relationship began to grow stronger and closer.
During the months prior to discovering the emails, my husband and I were not physically intimate at all. My primary focus was on our children. I thought that this was a normal marital phase given the demands of raising young children. I thought that this is what happened to couples after being together for such a long time. I assumed that we would eventually get our intimacy back on track. I didn't realize that it would require effort to do so. We'd been together for so long and there was such a sense of security between us. I never feared that he would get involved with someone else.
Discovering those email messages was ultimately a turning point in our marriage. We began to reestablish our intimacy and grow stronger in our relationship. That's what makes the situation we're in now even more confusing.
A few weeks ago, I learned that my suspicions from 3 1/2 years ago were valid. My husband did in fact have a physical affair with the email correspondent, involving multiple sexual encounters over an extended period of time. The encounters were purely physical hook-ups and did not include any emotional involvement. These incidents took place in 2010 and ended a few months before I found the emails. He has not had any contact with the other person since that time.
So where do I go from here? I don't want to end our marriage and break up our family. But how can a relationship overcome this kind of betrayal? He is deeply, deeply remorseful and is devastated by the pain his actions has caused. We've started marriage counseling to understand how this happened and to learn how we can rebuild the trust that has been destroyed.
Can trust ever truly be restored? Can a relationship truly heal over time? I never imagined that the worst pain I've ever felt in my life could be caused by the man who has always been my protector and the one person I could always rely on, no matter what. I've always felt so safe and secure with him. Everyone who knows him (and us) would be shocked to learn that this has occurred. I've read that good people can have affairs. He's a good person. I now know that if he is capable of this behavior, then almost anyone is.
I do not take responsibility for his choices, but I can recognize how my actions back then may have contributed to the vulnerable situation we found ourselves in at that time. I was not very attentive and probably took him for granted, but still, I trusted completely that he would remain faithful to me and our marriage. He had many other options; he did not have to make the poor choices he did.
When I evaluate our entire relationship over 20 years, this seems like such an aberration. For that reason, and because of his genuine remorse, I am willing to pursue reconciliation and put forth the effort to understand what went wrong. He is willing to do anything to salvage our relationship, but what if I can't move past this? What if the pain is too great? It's only been a week since I've had the full truth of what happened four years ago. How much time does it take to heal?
Thanks for sharing your insights.
[This message edited by StrengthWithin at 7:11 PM, August 13th (Wednesday)]