The first time he cheated on me I was 8 months pregnant with my daughter. I still remember the dull ache and that empty feeling in the pit of my stomach when the OW told me that they were more than just friends. We chose to reconcile but there was never true transparency about what,where and when from him. I spent a long time trying to figure out if I wanted the marriage back then and eventually decided that I wanted to make it work. It took 5 years to trust him again and another 3 for all the intrusive thoughts to stop. We had three kids and were more or less happy aside from normal disagreements and some recent intimacy issues.
Fast forward to 18 years later, a couple of weeks ago, I was walking by his phone and saw a text pop up from a guy’s name I did not know. This is not strange, since there are many people that are not our mutual acquaintances. What struck me by surprise is that it was a kiss emoji. From a guy. You can guess the rest…. He has been cheating on me for months with the OW.
It took a bit to get over the shock and I confronted him the next day. It went as you would imagine. Denial, deflect, rationalizing, etc. Took about two weeks for him to admit his cheating, and he continues to rationalize it and make himself the victim of circumstance. It’s "you haven’t wanted me in a long time", "I get more attention from women on the street than I do from my own wife", "You haven’t been acting like my wife for years", and more in the same fashion. It’s true we had some intimacy issues. It’s true that I said no a lot because I was exhausted and did not feel any connection to him. It’s true I emotionally checked out about 2 years ago because I was tired of mothering him, but before all that we have had hundreds of conversations about us, with clear asks from me for what I needed to feel loved again. His usual response was "I am fine. There is nothing wrong with me." At the end of it all I felt used, and spent.
He says he wants to make it work again. He says he loves me. And truthfully, I love him too. But I am not prepared to invest myself into another long reconciliation with him. I don’t think I have it in me to rebuild that trust again. Trust is a foundational must for me in a relationship and starting from scratch at 50 is a daunting proposition. He is not being transparent, again, and wants to just move on. It’s a non-starter for me. I asked him to go to IC. He has done nothing to find a counselor. I think I want a divorce but I know that right now I don’t really know what I truly want. Am taking time for myself, minimizing discussions with him, etc. I think about what it would be like to be by myself and I feel relief that I wont have to adjust to his moods and be a means to an end for him. I’m just so tired. I gave myself two years to get through this one way or another. Two years because my middle child is a sophomore and he will graduate and go off to college. For now it’s cohabitation. I guess I also have some hope that we will get through it together, but that hope is fading with every fight and every rationalization attempt from him. I am just so emotionally drained, I barely have enough left for my kids.
Thanks for reading.
