SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My husband and I have been together for 14 years, married for 3 years, high school sweethearts. Practically half of our lives have been spent together. Keep this in mind as you read, we both are working through it, we are NOT separating. I don't want to hear comments about how stupid I am for forgiving him and continuing in our relationship.

In January of this year, I caught my husband cheating on me. I literally walked up on them in her car and saw her giving him a blow job. I banged on her car window, he got out while I screamed at her, and went went home together. Meanwhile, she curled up into the fetal position in the driver’s seat. (I approached from the passenger seat.) This girl has always played victim and has driven apart many other couples.

This girl that he cheated with, I saw the warning signs coming from the moment he met her. We would argue because of her a lot over the span of the 4 or 5 years that she's been around. She drove a wedge between my family and myself due to me casually venting about their friendship long before the affair happened. Due to that, I learned my lesson not to speak to my family about the situation, leaving me with only my husband to talk to.

Here’s where it got tricky, and here’s where I know people will call me stupid. He wanted to stay friends with her. I told him, in order for me to be okay with that, I need to be able to trust both of them, I need some sort of closure that she respects my boundaries, our marriage, and our future plans of starting a family. She has never truly shown me that she respects me at all. Now to explain why I was considering letting them stay friends. My husband came from foster care, he lost nearly everyone that he knew, and the ones that he is still connected with aren’t always there for him anymore. I did not want to be the kind of person to forbid him from having friends, but this girl has me at my edge.

About a month ago now, the girl sent me the message that I wanted to hear. She told me that she respects my marriage, that I didn’t deserve what they did to me, etc. etc. She also told me that she and my husband are no longer friends. My husband told me that when I got my closure, he would just stop seeing her anyways. Well, after that, I saw that they were still messaging each other. It didn’t last much longer though. Shortly after that, I saw that he messaged her that they need to stop seeing each other because they want different things. So as of right now, it does seem that they’re not in contact. She keeps trying to message him, but he’s not responding.

My doctor has diagnosed me with PTSD from all of the crap I’ve been through with this whole situation. I’ve been seeing a therapist, I’m starting anti-anxiety medication today. My doctor has also told me that my birth control I was taking was causing my massive migraines and is likely what is aggravating my depression/anxiety. Due to that, my husband and I decided that I would stop taking birth control all together. We are still being careful, but if it happens, it happens. We wanted to start a family soon anyways and going back on BC will just bring back the migraines and worsen my depression and anxiety again.

Anyways, I’m just on here to have someone to talk to. Please no judgements. When my husband and I don’t talk about HER, we are perfectly fine! He is truly my best friend and I can’t see my life without him. Just because he cheated on me once out of our entire 14 years together is not reason enough for me to leave him. I love him with everything I have, there is nothing that anyone can say or do that will change that. We have been through so much together, so much happiness, love, loss. I would rather fix things a million times than start over with someone new.

First of all...WELCOME to the best club you never wanted to be in .

We are all in this unfortunate club...but we all HEAL differently. You have your reasons for what you are doing...and that will be respected on here . If hurtful words like "stupid" are thrown at someone...the Mods will take care of this quickly!

Having said all this...there are certain situations that can point to whether R will be successful or not. One of them is that R definitely cannot happen when the adultery co-conspirator is still involved. Thankfully this situation has been resolved on your case .

If your husband is as committed to you as you are to him...then R will be awesome !!! It does take BOTH spouses to be ALL IN for R to be successful...but when that happens...it is magical !!!

PLEASE...talk all you want...we are here to listen .

Just because he cheated on me once out of our entire 14 years together is not reason enough for me to leave him.

I definitely won't call you stupid, but I think it's unlikely that the one and only time he got a blow job from someone, he got caught. It's like someone saying they got pregnant the very first time they ever had sex, and had never had it before. Hey, my H cheated on me four times and I didn't leave him, so who am I to say you should leave him.

It doesn't mean that you can't reconcile from this, but you need to be prepared that you don't know the whole story yet, or that there hasn't been anyone else, DESPITE what he will tell you. Almost no one gets the full story the first time around - there are threads here that discuss that. So don't rug sweep. What happens when you DO talk about her? Is he forthcoming? Is he transparent? Does he ever try to shut the conversation down? Does he ever ask when you're going to get over it? Did he get tested for STDs? Those are signs that he's not ready to reconcile, and you will need to be prepared with some non-negotiables, such as individual and marital counseling with someone who works with couples where cheating has occurred. And you need to continue with your therapy, and be prepared for it to be painful.

I get the anxiety piece; if you search my posting history, you'll see how many posts I've written about my anxiety. I'm on several medications for it, including a PRN prescription for Xanax that I still have to take 2-3x/week (but a very low dosage) due to PTSD (I also have other PTSD issues non-related to the affairs).

Good luck, and be patient with yourself as you weed through the wealth of information here.

I echo what others have said... we are here to listen, you may hear things you don’t want to think could be true but they come from the experience of hundreds and hundreds. No matter how much we (most of us, as we landed here) think that OUR situation is unique because of X, Y, and Z... that’s typically far less true than we wish. Yes the foster history is an element that will play into how you handle it. But it may also be at the root of his choices. He needs therapy to explore that on his own. (Family Of Origin issues - FOO as some call it) Certain patterns are just very very common among cheaters of ALL sorts. Lying, trickle-truthing, rug sweeping because that’s easier than deep healing, etc. Even the best former wayward spouses do some or all of that at first.

Nobody should call anyone stupid for having hope and faith. But don’t do so blindly. Rule #1 is generally no contact (NC)

with the affair partner (AP). My gut reaction is oh hell no, build new friendships together (I say this as someone who lost a best friend because of their drunken fling, and I did mourn that loss despite how she hurt me). But for the sake of argument let’s say you feel strongly about this. If you allow it, any contact it should be fully transparent. If any further communication happens at all you are allowed to see it. Period. Even if you don’t ask him to give up the friendship, he gives up privacy around the friendship.

But what else is he doing, actively, to support your healing? There are great resources he could read. Is he in therapy? What, really, brings you to reach out for support at this point? Does something feel missing or unresolved?

Here to help, and wishing you the best!

Minka,

Sorry you find yourself here, hopefully you will be able to find the support you and your husband require to fully heal.

As a BS myself I understand your concern re individuals accusing you of being ‘stupid’ for staying and trying to heal. Through my reading here I have come to the conclusion that those who automatically provide this type of advise are usually still extremely hurt themselves and are hoping to prevent you feeling the same way.

Anyway, my advice for you is to ensure both you and your WS don’t ‘rub sweep’ the affair because you feel “]When my husband and I don’t talk about HER, we are perfectly fine!”

Unfortunately after my WS first affair this is exactly what we did and I am now having to recover from finding out about what has actually been a marriage full of affairs.

So if you and your husband are committed to one another you must also be committed to fully understanding and fixing the issues with your marriage (boundaries that need to be installed) and your husband (reasons behind his affair).

This forum is full of people both BS and WS who are happy to help with the task you have at hand, but you need to be able to read and listen to the answers given. Although they are sometime hard to hear, they are invaluable.

Lastly, my husband continued to work with his last AP for a while after the Dday, and it was an extremely large trigger for me on a daily basis. So you might want to consider this before letting them be ‘friends’, it is very difficult to get the image of your husbands penis in another woman’s mouth out of your head just because they say they are only friends. (This was my husbands excuse for a long time).

Good luck! Stay strong.

Your H is truly married to a gem. I hope he realizes that.

Welcome to SI.

I understand you want to R, and R is eminently possible if you both do your work. But R isn't guaranteed - and that is OK. You can heal yourself with or without your H. I urge you to give up trying to control the outcome. I urge you to focus on your own healing - to R, you heal you, your H heals him, together you heal your M.

One good read I recommend is https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=324250. This thread will give you a good idea of what a good candidate for R looks like. If your H is already there, great. If he reads the opening post in the thread and adopts the suggested behavior, that's great, too.

I urge you not to tell your H about SI. Keep it as your safe place. I suggest printing out the first post in the above thread, using scissors to cut out URL info, and telling your H it's something you find n the web.

I wish you the best - R isn't easy, but it's very rewarding when both partners do the necessary work.