SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Yes, I am sure in my heart he has cheated before, now that the light has turned on for me. At one point years ago he accused me of cheating, at the time I was utterly mystified. I wasn't, and I had just given birth, and he had been resentful and absent throughout my pregnancy. A huge jerk really. He keep saying he was trapped. At that point we had been married for years. It made no sense, until fast forward a couple years when he started being a huge jerk again and I found out about his girlfriend, sigh.

I see some red flags in that 20/20 hindsight.

But really, Mr. Trac-Fone is an extraordinary liar, and does so with amazing alacrity.

I can see now that there were times when, really, I just wanted to believe him. But for most of our marriage, I did.

I can very clearly see, now, that there was almost nothing else that COULD have happened, given who he turned out to be. I was not always aware of that---he is personality-disordered and worse a very convincing mask that only started to crack a few years ago.

But he took it off now and then in earlier years and gave me a glimpse; I simply had no context in which to frame the information.

Now I do.

I saw the writing on the wall. I told him our M was in trouble, our communication was not good -talking to him about it made he be 1) in denial 2) created avoidance and 3) annoyed that I doubted him. He refused to address it or go to counseling. I'd bought martial books & DVD. He watched part do the DVD, but that's about it. His overly flirty / friendly self-centered behavior continued. He thought i was just nagging too much. Told me I was just jealous & insecure. Then he began an EA which which turned to PA and he wanted out - all in the space of 2 weeks!

So, yes I saw it coming. Actually shocked it hadn't happened sooner. Dumbfounded how in such a short time he thought he "loved" her and was willing to throw way our marriage, family & destroy our business for someone he barely knew without even trying counseling.

2 years later after 10 months of MC we are in recovery. Are you ever sure it won't happen again? If so, I have gotten there yet.

Oh yes. My WH has always thought that he was right about everything (politics, money, porn, the kids, etc). We usually agreed about most of these things. I think his enormous sense of entitlement and selfishness led to the A.

One red flag was that after a political argument I gave him a Valentine about squabbling but loving each other anyway. He wrote horrible things about my political views that echoed talk radio all over the Valentine. It nearly broke me and he STILL thinks the things he wrote were justified!

No. My WS was not a flirt. Did not use porn. Did not hang out or go to strip clubs. We just had out first child which he wanted. Our marriage was in a good spot. We were starting our family life together. He was in agreement with all of this.

PS. He was also worked in a mostly all male domaint enviroment. Until he hired the whore, there are no woman that do this type of work, except one who he hired.

[This message edited by 2oldforthis at 8:52 AM, September 6th (Friday)]

If I am looking at this in a healthy, helpful way: Yes, I look back and now see that our marriage was in a bad place, that I was depressed and anxiety ridden and so was H. But I trusted him. I did not think he was capable of doing something like this. And there was really nothing I could have done other than realize that we both needed help and to go to a MC.

NOW, if I am pain seeking and not being healthy about this, there were TONS of signs along the way and I put up with being treated horribly. H was a rebellious teenager and I was his parent who had NO control over what he was doing and was afraid to try to control him.

I can do a lot of damage to myself if I only focus on what I should have seen and when. The truth is, for whatever reason - denial, blind faith, laziness- I lived through it and did not act in accordance with my gut. I can't go back and I am NOT going to beat myself up for it. The A happened because of two selfish people who were ONLY thinking of themselves and did not consider the consequences of their actions. It's unbelievable to me that they carried on like this for 2.5 years but they did and we all have to live with it. H and I are trying to reconcile...I am not sure what value is added to the process by causing further mental anguish to myself for agonizing over every detail I missed in the past.

I guess I might be different. Or at least it isnt mentioned here. I did look, and see. I was worried, for years. I saw all the signs. I saw the first sign. I saw middle, end and current signs. I prayed. I talked to him. I asked questions. My H works out of state, all the time. Most of 20 yrs. I could only do so much. sit in fear. I grew up in a violent, alcoholic, unfaithful, neglectful family. I have never been naive. I have experienced it all, on every level, already. I felt helpless, raising the children alone, insanely busy because I was raising the children alone. I just kept thinking, sooner or later, I will know. I looked and investigated, but I have zero access. Until then, I focused on my kids. Its the perfect profession for cheating. I do not think he has done it often. He is not a complete and total bastard. He seems to have some level of love for children, but now its habit for me to deal with everything. He has provided for us nicely, he has a mental checklist of all the things he must meet towards family when hes here. Its just kinda planned and empty, and eases his conscience. THere was never any urgent clues, or reason to act right now. I keep waiting to know something. That is, Until this coworker, that blew it up. I still have no admission. I have no proof, other then her bad behavoir, which he claims to not understand. But,,,,,, I have never been naive. Now, H still works out of town alot, I am alone alot, I have no proof or admission, I am depressed, but I have no urgency. I am already alone alot. And I keep my eyes wide open.

Yes. After my H retired from the military, where there were few interactions with women co-workers, he ended up in a job where he worked closely with 3 women. He talked to me about them all and he had a protectiveness towards them because the boss was a misogynist pig, among other things. I was actually quite proud of the way he looked out for them.

I also started to notice a weird thing. After years of marriage where my H never left the toilet seat up (this was not really a huge thing to me, but it must have been to his mother) he started to get lax about this. It occurred to me that it was a form of taking me for granted, although I didn't feel that in other areas. But added to this there was the one woman co-worker my H spoke the most glowingly about. I teased him about it even.

One day he had a softball game that was rather far away. I offered to go with him, but he practically begged me not to. When he left I began to stew about it and was convinced he was really meeting with someone else. Imagine my surprise when he called a couple of hours later to come get him and take him to the ER. He was really at the game and got injured! Ended up getting ACL surgery eventually. I realized that all my fears were silly nonsense.

A year or so later my H left that job, at my urging, because the boss was making him miserable (although he sure enjoyed being the KISA with those women co-workers and it was hard for him to leave them). He met OW at the new job. They were both new, had orientation together and training together. Within a few months they were in the A.

It took me a long while to realize the A because his cell was riddled with calls to the women from the old job (still talking about the boss until eventually they all left), but then also new women (yes plural) at the new job. We had a talk about it and he cut down the calls (all made on his hr long commute). I trusted. I'd had that silly notion with the SB game, remember? It was a while before I noticed that all his calls were then to one woman, every day, day and nite....well you get the picture.

When the A finally came to light my H insisted that there was no involvement with any of the women from the old work place. But H did agree with me that those relationships (with all the validation and KISA elements) had become a gateway drug for him to move onto an actual A. For one thing, those relationships had allowed him to trust friendships with women, so when the OW befriended him his boundaries were flimsy. He fell hook, line and sinker for all of the OW's manipulations and was in the A before he even knew what was happening. He was like a babe in the woods.

My H's behavior towards me during the actual A was so completely different than when he worked with the 3 women that I eventually did believe him that nothing happened with them (although one of them I think actually did have a thing for him but never made an advance). But I still wonder about that day with the softball injury. It was like a foreshadowing of things to come....

I understand that we all had a gut feeling during our ws's a. But post a I can clearly see now that the signs were there from the very very beginning of the marriage. Looking way way back I can see the signs were there even before we ever met.

Now granted, we all do stupid things as we grow up but shame on us if we don't learn from them. A good example of this is what I heard from h's lifelong friend some years after h's a with our neighbor..... When h was 20 years old (way before we ever even met) he had a very bad breakup with the girl he wanted to marry who dumped him for another guy she did marry. So they both decided that the best thing to do was to screw each others brains out all night long the night before her wedding. She was so proud of what they had done that she told him she wasn't sure if she could walk down the isle that afternoon at her soon to be wedding because she hurt so bad from screwing all night long every way possible.

So there you go. I just wish I had known this prior to my meeting him and marrying him years later. That would have been my first clue that he was capable of doing just about anything and not really giving two shits about it.

It's actually to bad years ago the two of them didn't actually end of marrying one another. They both deserved it.

[This message edited by TICKED OFF at 2:30 PM, September 6th (Friday)]