SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Yes, you are right. He's lying to me. The truth is that he literally denied it but he clearly knows what he is doing. How could it be otherwise? It's just not possible, as much as I may have wished it wasn't so.

An update: I just didn't feel right about getting STD testing by my regular doctor. I wasn't sure if I could go through with it because my husband goes to the same practice, different doctor. So I made an appointment at the local Planned Parenthood clinic. Going this afternoon. Wish me luck. My first big step.

Be brave. You will get through this. Hoping and praying you are ok.

Don't be ashamed - medical professionals have seen this (sadly) more than you realize.

Proud of you for taking the first step to getting out of infidelity...

((((marinasurprised)))) from a fellow Marylander.

Good for you. Due to the realness of HIPAA there shouldn't be any concern about going to your PCP or shared office, but I get it.

Make sure you get blood work done too. Don't let them tell you older women don't need STD testing, if they say that then you respond with, then tell me why the Villages (a retirement community in FL) has the highest STD rates in the nation.

I was very anxious about getting STI testing. I thought I would be so embarrassed to have to tell the doctor why. She was so compassionate and understanding. She hugged me while I cried.

I can really empathise with you.

My husband lost his job then just a few months later I too was retrenched and in all of this I discovered he had been cheating for thirty years.

It was brutal.

This was five years ago. We have survived and best thing my husband did was take on a job that was a graduate position on a meagre salary. He was humiliated and humble and felt his whole life had imploded but they say when you hit rock bottom things can only get better. He has worked hard in the job proving that at 60 odd he can be a valuable worker using his experience to mentor his whole department. It was something pre d day he would never have considered. He was too smart and too clever to take a minion position.

He is a very different man today. He enjoys his job and he has a happy new marriage rebuild from ashes of his stupid life choices.

The best thing you can do for your relationship and more for your own worth is just get out of infidelity. EA or PA doesn’t matter....you are no longer yours husbands no 1. He needs a rude awakening.

Follow the advice here. It will save you.

Post often especially if you need to just vent.

You are not alone here and you are surrounded by so much wisdom. We have all travelled this road.

Good luck

Guys, I don't know how to reply to individual posts yet but thank you all for your support. It means so much. So I went to the doctor, so far so good in terms of visible signs but am awaiting blood work. I'm not gonna lie, I was nervous and a little nauseous, but providers were very discreet and kind. The only problem was that my blood pressure was high because I'm the type of person that holds my feelings in but lets all the pressure get to my body. Glad that part is over.

Oh Zenkitty, your husband sounds so much like mine. He just has reached the point where he is willing to consider a job that is "beneath him" but he get really upset when he doesn't even get an interview. But I think you're right. So long as he can rely on me he won't hit rock bottom with his own ego issues and I just can't go on being his door mat. I am studying up on detaching. I've started going on long walks by myself, going in to coffee shops alone with my laptop. Just getting out of the house. It frees my mind a little. I'm sorry you had to go through this.

Ugh, I think he was just standing behind me trying to read over my shoulder. Too bad.

Oh...so at least he is considering working beneath his experience level and that is a start. Ego is very hard to work on and these guys are getting their ‘ ego kibbles’ from the other women. It is a pathetic cycle. My husband felt unappreciated at home but meets a woman, any woman, flirts a bit, she flirts back, he feels good because a woman finds him attractive and the cycle starts. They have amazing sex because secret affairs are exciting but then as the afterglow of the fantasy recedes they start to feel a tad of guilt but quickly brush that aside and justify to themselves that they deserve to be appreciated....and on and on it goes until they come to their senses.

Not every cheater will come to their senses and for many they have to work their way through the affair ‘fog’. They need to realise that it is all fantasy land and many do not have the intellect to do this.

What you are doing by detaching is the best thing for you and everyone here on SI will advise you to do that.

Let him live in denial and in fantasy land.

Job hunting past 60 is just so hard. Since my husband took this lesser paying grad role he has continuously applied for jobs at his level of experience and I would say that maybe he has applied for about a hundred jobs over four years. Of those he has had two interviews. Of those he has had no offers. It is tough but he has to keep trying and one day he may get one but meanwhile he has had to change his complete mindset. He has had to accept that he is lucky to have this present role. He has had to stop any feelings of resentment taking over. He has gone from working in a corporate office in a city wearing suit and tie, travelling business overseas to working on a remote outback site wearing high viz gear and catching a company bus at 5.30 am working a twelve hour day. Harsh reality.

Strangely as the time has gone on he has actually found himself enjoying the job and the mentoring of the younger workers, he is enjoying the grass roots work and he is even finding the time to write academic papers.

You get knocked down....but you can get up again and he is proof of that but you need to have the intelligence to really think it through and maybe a clear thought process after the fog starts to lift.

As for you...well done. Long walks are wonderful. It is empowering and good for your well being. It is so important to look after yourself. High blood pressure not so good but you know it is expected. My GP would take my BP but if I was talking about my H then it shot thru the roof. I had to tell my GP about my husband as she was wondering why after years of normal BP mine was suddenly so high.

I found yoga to really help and keep my mind in balance. If I was having a stressful episode or had not slept or was finding myself angry I would just take myself off to a yoga class and feel so much better and top it off with a visit to a healthy cafe and indulge in a green smoothie and then find I could face the shitfest that my life was.

Ah....what a terrible journey it has been...yet, here we all are.

Hang in there Marina. Read the healing library. Educate yourself as much as you can and come here to SI for any advice or support.

Thank you for your kind words, Zenkitty. I see that you really do understand! One day at a time.

[This message edited by marinasurprised at 10:29 PM, August 17th (Saturday)]

Marina, I had always had low blood pressure all my life. Low to the point that I would get lightheaded and close to fainting often. Post dday, my blood pressure went through the roof. I tried for a year to get it down with exercise and diet, which I was already doing before, but it would not go down. I finally agreed to blood pressure medication. That's how high it had gotten.

About 1.5 years later, we moved across the country to a completely different climate far, far away from anyone and anything associated with my fch's cheating. My blood pressure dropped down to my normal and I stopped taking the meds. Just had my blood pressure checked this week and it was low, low.

That just shows how this shit can affect us physically.

cocoplus, I can totally believe that. Stress has a big effect on blood pressure. I'm really glad that the move helped to put some separation from the bad thoughts and memories. My blood pressure going up is one of the reasons I have been able to make a stronger effort to detach and focus on myself. It scared me that it was up so high. My blood pressure has been high for a long time because it's genetic so I've been on medication for about 20 years, but it was high even with the medication and that was a real wake up call.

MS. Be cute to be good to yourself. It’s important to mentally detach from his lies.

I find it infuriating when you know someone is lying to your face. Just know that person is so broken they cannot think of any other way to respond. So they choose to lie. Just like they choose to cheat.

Read a good book - that relaxes me or takes my mind off of things

A good Bath or shower relaxes me

I used to leave my home alone- to reduce my stress - even if it was for 30 minutes

Hope this helps you

I am truly sorry for what you are going through. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns with us. I am sorry because you are dealing with such difficult situation. Have you ever heard that when the people get married, they bring their own luggage from their own family? That does mean that they bring wound from their own families. No one is perfect; therefore, no marriage is perfect. I’m truly sorry that you are dealing with such difficult situation. Perhaps your husband may have wounds from his childhood that are affecting his behavior today. Have you considered to seek marriage counseling or therapy first for your and then with you? Counseling can help what is causing your husband to affect the relationship. Have you thought of forgiving your husband? Forgiveness doesn’t mean that they did was right to you. Forgiveness means that you let the problem go. It is the first step of healing and change. It will restore your peace and joy. Have you ever heard of the book, ‘His needs her needs by William Harley jr.? This author explains that the problem is not in communication but is to learn how to love. In the classic bestseller His Needs, Her Needs, Willard F. Harley, Jr., identifies the ten most vital needs of men and women and shows husbands and wives how to satisfy those needs in their spouses. He provides guidance for becoming irresistible to your spouse and for loving more creatively and sensitively, thereby eliminating the problems that often lead to extramarital affairs. This revised and expanded edition has been updated throughout and includes new writing that highlights the special significance of intimate emotional needs in marriage. I hope this helps. Sending you hugs.I will keep you in my prayers, my friend!

I have seen tremendous damage by sharing Harley's "His Needs Her Needs" with a wayward spouse. They create massive pressure via selfish demands, and minimize what they're doing. To recover from an affair, I typically direct people away from Harley's books; his concepts are not for couples where one partner cares little to nothing for his/her spouse's needs. Once there is a provable change of heart, then sure, bring it into play. but NEVER while one spouse is totally entrenched in selfish behavior and attitudes.

[This message edited by k8la at 6:49 PM, August 26th (Monday)]

Hi all, didn't mean to disappear. Just an update, nothing much has changed. I feel like he has either stopped seeing her or found another way to communicate with her as I still have his tablet. Guess which one I believe? The thing is that whether he is still seeing her or not, he just isn't into me anymore. It's almost as if he doesn't like me at all. Yesterday we were watching television and I turned to say something to him and he literally rolled his eyes (don't think he realized I had turned to face him) and then put a fake smile on his face. So the bottom line is that I'm sure he's still at least looking for other women. I can't find that he is communicating with the original girl anymore but I found an email he sent (on MY BIRTHDAY) to an old friend we hadn't seen in years in which he confessed to her that he had had fallen madly in love with her after he met her (which was about 9 months after our wedding). Since I saw the email exchange I saw that she gave him the brush off and she seemed to think it was weird. But he's looking so he's bound to find what he's looking for sooner or later. And I have discovered that I just don't want to live that way. I am about 95% decided to plan my way out and that divorce, even with all the financial problems it will bring, is probably the only way out because I am miserable. I can never trust him again and I don't even believe he means it when he says he loves me. Hell, he doesn't even seem to like me. So that's my sorry tale. The good news is that I think I'm past the heartache stage. I'm not young anymore and my life isn't worth living if I have to live it like this. So I'm moving on.

37 years is a long time. So much is invested. So much.

We are given only one life. Take yours, and remove it from his control. Not easy...with years of history and living together.

Let him experience what he thinks is his new reality. Unless he looks like Sean Connery or some other handsome senior, has money and star quality, he will soon discover his charms with the youngsters are fleeting.

Meanwhile, YOU are moving on and discovering facets of yourself that you weren't even aware of before, and loving life.

Ditch this fool and love yourself.

Marina. I am so sorry that you are going through this.

this is all about his problems and unhappiness. He is blaming you because he isn’t owning his actions.

It has nothing to do with you. His actions and unkindness towards you sounds like how my WH treated me. H e was cruel and selfish. It hurts after years of marriage.

I am sorry you are be treated this way. His kids would be so ashamed of him.

Big hugs, you are doing great.

[This message edited by Tallgirl at 8:20 PM, August 28th (Wednesday)]