SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am new here, I have been reading through everyone’s posts, and it make me feel a little better that I’m not the only person in this situation (although it would be a lot better if none of us were!!!).

I now feel like I need to get my ‘story’ off my chest before I suffocate under it! Sorry for all the little details, but I feel like if I write them down they might start to make more sense!

On July 10th 2013 I stumbled upon an email received by MY iCloud email address (which I don’t really use) from a woman from my OH’s work. She works in the US, and we are in the UK. The email was a reply to an email which he had sent her, saying that he would change his flight when he got into work the following day, and asking her if she could recommend a good hotel for them to stay in. Her reply said that she would have to think of a story to get away from home, so it would be best if the hotel was less than an hour away so she could “run away to him with ease”…..

I knew instantly that they were having an affair. I got my car key and walked out the house as my OH ran the bath for our 2 year old daughter. I felt like the bottom had fallen out of my stomach – and still do, TBH.

He tried calling and then texted to ask what was going on, and I texted him back asking how long he’d been messing about behind my back. He acted like he had no idea what I was talking about, but I knew from good old iCloud that he had deleted the email, and had even gone into my Yahoo email and deleted the copy I had send from there too. I had, however, taken a screen shot of the email, which I sent him, and he proceeded to give a load of BS about nothing actually happening, etc, etc.

But I knew. He had been over in Oz to watch a rugby game at the end of June, and I knew that he had rearranged his flight to come home via the States instead of the Far East. Not something you would do to sleep with someone for the first time – so it must have been going on for a while!!

I eventually went home to have it out with him, and he confessed to his affair when I said that if he didn’t tell me the truth, and I found out, that he would never see me again. He told me it started at a work conference he had been at in Paris at the end of May. He said he only slept with her 3 times during the 5 nights he was there, and that nothing else had happened.

He told me he would never see her again, and that I could check his emails/phone/anything I wanted. He told me that he was sorrier than he had ever been in his life, and he broke down in tears telling me that his life wouldn’t be worth living if I left him. He said he knew it was wrong, and that he was weak when she asked him when he was drunk if he would come up to her room.

I love him more that anyone in the world (bar our daughter), and couldn’t even imagine living without him, so I agreed to stay and try to make things work.

Things were going OK, but after a few weeks I began to feel like I was the one making the effort, and I instinctively knew there was something he wasn’t telling me. I assumed that he had been back in touch with her, but when I asked him he swore that he hadn’t, and said I could check. I managed to get into the deleted messages on his phone, and saw a reference to Ireland (where my OH had been for ‘work’ after Paris and before Oz). I had asked him several times if she had been there, and he’d always said no, but when I asked him about the text he confessed that he had been lying.

He swore that the whole thing was over, but revealed that it had actually started in April, in the UK when she was over for a conference. He said that they didn’t have sex, just kissing etc – just!!!???

Then in Paris they spent all 5 nights together – including the night that I told him our daughter had said ‘I love daddy’ for the first time. He said he was welling up, and was going to have an early night, for a change. To think he meant ‘with her’ makes me feel physically ill!!

He then met up with her again in Dublin. He was supposed to only be there for one night, but he texted me to say that the conference ran late, and he’d missed his flight, so would have to stay an extra night. I now know that they didn’t even book separate hotel rooms. She booked a double room for 2 nights not long after they got home from Paris.

I think finding out that he had lied to me on d-day#1 was worse than what had actually happened! He said it was ‘damage limitation’ as he thought I would leave him if he told me the truth, but now I feel soo stupid for believing him and trying to get on with things. He says he loves me and wants me and only me. He says that he’ll never go away, not even for work, unless I can go too, and he has told her that he wants nothing to do with her – not even work, if possible.

She is also married, to a guy that works with my OH sometimes, and they have 4 yr old twins!! I am soo angry with her, and would love to tell her husband what kind of a person she is, but my OH’s company has a very strict ethics policy, and they would both lose their jobs if it came out. I’ll be damned if my daughter’s future is going to be ruined because of her!! But, not being able to tell anyone is driving me nuts! I have cried every day since I found out, and feel like I have become a terrible mum as I just can’t seem to concentrate on my daughter as much as I know I should. My OH tries to pretend like nothing has happened, as I get upset if something makes me think about it, but he doesn’t understand that pretending it didn’t happen doesn’t make it go away!!

I just feel so betrayed that I can hardly breathe! Everything makes me think about them. He ordered a pint of Guinness the other day and I had to go to the restrooms to cry for half an hour because it just made me think about them in Dublin together!!!

It hurts so much that I feel like everything that happened between us during their affair was just a lie. Our daughter’s birthday party, our holiday for my birthday, the perfume he took me home from Paris, the presents he took home for our daughter from Oz – everything just makes me think of them together, and I can’t cope!!

Is it even possible to get over this?? I can’t stand the thought of my daughter growing up without her daddy, and I love him so much, but I hate him for what he’s done to our family. What he went out of his way to do with HER. How can I forgive someone who can say they love me, but do that to me at the same time???

He has said he is willing to go to MC, but I feel like I need to get my head around things before we get a 3rd party involved. Is that stupid??

I know things could be worse, but I’m really struggling to cope at the moment.

Is it even possible to get over this??

I don't think you ever really get over it, but you can live through it and there are even people on SI who are flourishing on the other side.

I'm somewhere in the middle, so the only thing I can assure you of is that it will start to get better. I'm in such a better place now and I wouldn't have thought it possible right after DDay.

It takes time to get there unfortunately and there doesn't seem to be any way to rush the process. So in the meantime, focus on yourself and your daughter and just getting through the day. Check out the healing library (link in yellow box to the left) as there is some very good stuff in there.

Hang in there and lean on us.

amc80, so sorry you find yourself here.

I'm shocked at how many of these cheating husbands all claim they were 'drunk' and 'weak' and that the OW was the 'aggressor' and they were the hapless victims.

From the sounds of his email - planning on changing his flight and asking her for recommendations on hotels they could both easily meet up at while he's in town - doesn't sound very drunk or weak to me. So blaming his OW for his own actions is utter nonsense - he needs to man up and own his shit. That's just for starters.

And telling this woman's husband is the right thing to do, amc80. He deserves to know the truth, just like you now know it. And sadly, if he does lose his job due to this, it's not her fault - it would be his. But the right thing to do is tell him. Otherwise, you're keeping their dirty secret FOR them.

Your husband's desire to sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn't happen is not only completely unfair to you, but it retards the progress of your healing and worse, teaches him that he can basically get away with this wrongdoing and there are no consequences for his behavior. That's dangerous in and of itself because that just makes it that much easier for him to pull this crap all over again if he doesn't understand the severity of what his actions have done.

If you're not ready for marriage counseling, then seriously consider individual counseling (unless you are and I missed it in your post). Just being able to talk about it to someone (since your husband wants to ignore it and pretend it didn't happen), might ease a lot of your frustration and pain.

Going to ask you some hard questions first:

In what way is your daughter’s future based on THIS job he has now? People change jobs and even careers all the time but tend to try to stick to one family. Is the job so unique that there is no other company that might hire him IF he lost this one? What’s more important to you – the marriage or the income? How would losing this job impact your family? Do you generate an income? Would a possibly lower income be counterweighed with husband spending more time at home or travelling less?

Look – We here on SI have seen hundreds of cases comparable to yours. Not the same (I’m not generalizing your case) but comparable. We can with remarkable accuracy foretell what will most likely happen:

Chances are your WH is honest in wanting the affair over. Chances are he will respect that for now. It might even work. Chances are he simply wants this to disappear and doesn’t want to talk about it. This is actually very common and A LOT of BS fall in for it. Who knows – three years from now you two can be relatively happy… But there will always be that white elephant in the room.

This is the path HE wants to take. DO NOT ALLOW HIM TO!

I’m going to strongly recommend you let the OW husband know.

There is NOTHING you can do that will improve your marriage chances of recovery more. NOTHING. It might cost WH his job, but then I doubt it. HR departments dread these cases because if the infidelity does not directly impact company, resources, profit, chain of command etc. then a dismissal opens a can of litigation. Chances are though that both you and the OW husband will keep this within the respective families but it lessens OW and WH ability to reconnect.

Once again hard questions: How will you know OW and WH won’t work together? What assurance will you have next conference? Next time he has to go to Paris, Dublin or whatever? How do you know she isn’t hiding in the bathroom when he Skype’s you from his room? There are ways to deal with this but it has to be dealt with. Your husband’s promise isn’t worth the breath it wastes.

Involving a third party? Well – that is possibly the best step you can take right now. Start phoning MC’s and look for one that has experience and specialization in dealing with infidelity. You don’t want an MC that focuses on the “issues” in the marriage; your WH didn’t cheat because of you or your behavior. He cheated because of HIM and his boundaries. Not saying he’s a nutcase but the MC has to work on why your WH did this and how you two can rebuild the marriage.

There is no shame at all in getting outside help. None at all.

And can you recover? This site is founded by a couple that recovered. Many of the admins and moderators are in happy recovered marriages. So yes – you CAN recover. But recovery and learning to live with the pain are totally separate paths. Aim for recovery.