SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I found out my husband has been having an EA since Feb 2012 (found out 3rd July) and that he met with her on 5 / 6 occasions when she was 'home' from working overseas.

Since then she has gone back home (overseas) and as far as I know there has been no contact. I have access to his phone bill online (he does not know this) so can see who he is texting / calling and when. He has not been in contact with her since very early July as promised to me.

He is trying very hard to be he model husband. Is very remorseful and understands that he may have messed things up beyond repair. Is giving me time to make my mind up etc.

I know it has only been 5 weeks, but I don't know how I will know if we can repair things.

I am scared I will never trust him again.

I am scared we will try to make things work and at some point in the future this will happen again.

I am scared about what will happen when she comes back from overseas - either to visit family or to live. I can picture an 'innocent' email from her saying she hopes everything is ok and hen things slowly staring up again.

How do you ever know what the right thing to do is?

Toni

You have not really said much about what, if anything, you are doing to figure out WHY the affair happened. Are the 2 of you in marriage Counseling? Are you in individual Counseling or are you working this out on your own? Are you relying just on the fact that you have discovered this A and have had a few conversations about it or are you digging in and figuring out why your hubby felt he could step outside of your marriage and have the A?

You can't move on from an A and truly know it is over unless you get down and dirty with your hubby's actions. He may seem remorseful but, like you said, that's because she is a LONG way away. And yes, you are right about that email coming in when she comes back to town, expect it. But have you asked for his email passwords? Phone locks? Could he have a secret email at work you don't know about?

Depending on how you answer these questions would be how I would handle it. My biggest advise at this point is, if you haven't gotten a sufficient explanation of why this happened get it and don't stop asking for it until you feel for sure you know what his answer to that email will be when it comes in.

You will know, deep down inside, what to do and if R can be achieved by constant and remorseful actions on your hubbies part. That's how trust is slowly and carefully rebuilt.

I ask my hubby to clarify his position on every gut reaction I have had and every trigger that has popped up over the last year. I tell him how things make me feel, I express my feelings for his actions and how those actions have changed my life forever. I don't hold back anything anymore. If I feel off on anything it gets discussed in a non threatening manner so that WH knows exactly the extent of his actions.

T

[This message edited by TxsT at 8:18 AM, August 12th (Monday)]

Ps......after retreading this I want to also add that you need to openly express that you are scared this will happen again......say it as often as you have to and until you no longer feel that way. Your gut is telling you that you think there is more to this story. It is only through these types of conversations , and your hubby's answers that you will slowly move beyond what you are feeling now.

It wasn't until about mounts 8 or 9 after my Dday that I started feeling like I had gotten all the info I needed to move beyond the nuts and bolts of the A and into cautious R. Now at almost a year I can honestly tell you that things have changed in our marriage so much that I doubt any A will ever happen again......and I have survived the OW just showing up at our door to collect her "man".

T

We have had many discussions about it. He felt we had drifted apart but acknowledges this is no excuse for what he did. He admits he became self centred.

He works long hours and we spent very little time together. We have seperate lives really which he wants to change. However i know that this is not a reason for him to cheat. He has been trying to spend more time with me (but at the moment I am reluctant to do much with him). He has changed the way he works, but the test will be next month when our jobs both get really busy again.

We are not having counselling. This may be something we look into but at the moment don't plan to (we are in the uk where the approach to counselling is very different)

I have password for his email and phone but of course he could have set a new one up. The problem is I will never know.

I just don't know how I will ever know what to do

The email and phone thing is exactly as you said.....you can never honestly know if you have all of the ways he used to facilitate this A of his. As a worrier I had a very, very hard time dissecting this one fact....I would never know 100% if he was contacting the other woman.

But at some point in time you will get to a point of.....am I going to obsess over this one point forever or am I going to just bite the bullet and get past it ? I finally got passed it because I was tired of living in a constant state of flux emotionally. I was either going to let this whole thing eat me alive or I was going to just start trusting again, even if it was at a very rudimentary level.

I came to the point where I was able to figure out that anyone could do this to me, my hubby or, if I chose to leave my M, a future love interest. That one realization made me try and just move on.

This is not to say I never think about it. I do, but just not at the same level as before. Case in point this last weekend. We were flying back home from visiting our son in Florida and we flew through our old home where the A had occurred. We were sitting in the lounge waiting for our flight and hubby was texting someone. I have no idea why I thought it was the OW but that just popped into my head instantly. Instead of brooding over it I asked my hubby point blank who he was texting. He could see from the terror look in my eyes I was worried. He showed me his phone immediately, and I might add without malice or hesitation, so I could see it was our boys he was texting with.

This is how I handle my fears when they rear their ugly head. I have explained to my H that I do not mean to do these things, they just happen. He gets it. A 4 year affair is not something you just put in the past!!!

My best advise to anyone is be open and honest about what you are feeling and how those feelings affect you. Tell them what you are going through. The more info you give them the more they will change their behaviour to help you. At least this is what happens in our situation.

T

It's not your job to find out the why; it's your husband's.

Is he in IC? That's really important. It would probably be helpful for you to see a (different) IC, as well. MC, IMO, is best approached a bit later, when you are certain that what you are seeing is remorse, and both of you have a few more tools in your coping toolbox from IC.

Sometimes, you'll see the advice given not to make a decision about your marriage for 6-12 months. I disagree with this; if you conclude, sooner, what you cannot live with your WH's behavior (now or in the past), or that infidelity is a dealbreaker, there is no sense in remaining even a moment longer.

But that's if you know---and you obviously haven't gotten there yet.

It took me several months to conclude that my husband not only did not have remorse or empathy for me (or anyone). At five weeks, I was uneasy, but he was saying the right words. It was over time I realized there were no actions behind the words. If I hadn't been as decimated by the infidelity, I would have seen this sooner---but I didn't. From the moment I discovered his affair on, I was very uneasy it would be continued or repeated--and, in fact, it went underground. there was a history. But I did not really KNOW until later. The details are not important--what was, for me, that there was an abrupt, unequivocal, "I can't live with this."

It just took time for me to learn that no, we couldn't repair things because a marriage cannot be repaired when one of the partners lacks insight, empathy, or the capacity for remorse.

In your shoes, I would take a deep breath, and just ....let things unfold. You don't have to make a decision today, or tomorrow, or even 6 months from now. You can approach your marriage as you would approach a new relationship (which, in a very real sense, it IS)---and assess whether this man, a man about whom you're learning difficult things, is a man with whom you wish to spend the rest of your life.

It's an enormous decision. It will likely hinge on how well he is able to address his issues and support you in your pain.

At five weeks out, you may have a remorseful husband on your hands. Or, you might have a man in the throes of the oh-shit-just-found-out scramble to make things better by "being good" and working to "get back to normal" (rug-sweep).

Time is a four-letter word around here. None of us likes hearing that time will tell, or help ease the pain. But it's true.

Take the time you need to determine whether you want to build a new marriage with this very flawed man.

(We're all flawed. But going into marriage we have expectations. You now know that he is able to breach one of those----and have to reconcile that with remaining with him. A decision to R may be eminently reasonable. Or it may not be. Only you will be able to make that decision.)

[This message edited by solus sto at 8:50 AM, August 12th (Monday)]