SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi All,
I'm new to posting on forums and am generally a very private individual and it has taken a lot to post here!
I have been married for 34 years this month and found out I had an STI recently after some health issues prompted my specialist to test for anything and everything. I was confused and horrified to say the least.
My other half worked in Thailand for 22 months 8 years into our marriage, returning home every 5 weeks for one week. We have two kids who were 2 and 8 at the time he started contracting there. I trusted him completely and never imagined he would do anything to hurt me and the kids or risk our marriage. When I confronted him with the STI result he buckled and told me he had a one night stand with a tourist while working there. I was devastated, only to be drip fed more and more about strip clubs, lap dances, prostitutes and finally a 3 month affair with a local colleague. He confessed that the tourist story was a lie and thought he would get away with a one night stand cover story. It took 4 weeks to extract the 'truth' from him and he has given me all the grim details that I can never forget and I have been experiencing intrusive images daily. From what he has told me it appears that the AP was in fact a 'disguised prostitute' who target married western men to extort money out of them. The story comes straight out of a Thai romance scammers playbook. He is mortified and said he thought she was safe and didn't use protection when they had sex. He was giving her money and buying clothes and jewellery and would take her out for street food. He told me that his male Thai colleagues shunned her and it is likely that they knew who she was and what she was doing and didn't want to tell him due to the Thai culture of not getting involved in other people's business at work. He told me when he refused to hand over a large sum of money to her so she could buy land for her family her behaviour escalated and she threatened to throw herself off his balcony, and then threatened to overdose and leave a note saying it was his fault, and wrecked his room on 2 occasions. He had no idea he was being emotionally blackmailed. On returning home permanently, he called her from a public payphone to check on her a few times as he was worried about her mental health, but then the boxing day tsunami happened and he could not reach her after that.
I am devastated that he only told me when he was caught and did not consider the consequences on my health (HIV was rife in Thailand in the early 2000's) or let me decide if I wanted to stay in the marriage or leave at that time (I would have left back then). Now, after 24 years I feel like I have been living a lie. We have always had so much love for each other and both of us agree it has been a good marriage. He claims he never stopped loving me and compartmentalised his double life and over the years has not thought about it much and pushed it down as far as it would go and never intended on telling me. I have never experienced pain like this in my life and am finding each day a struggle. He is embarrassed and ashamed by the choices he made and his actions and said he has never done anything like this before or since leaving Thailand. He said he was blind to the fact that women were used, coerced, and trafficked over there and feels disgusted with himself for buying into the sex trade.
We are supposed to be retiring in 2 years and have plans to travel and move to a coastal region and spend quality time together. I don't know if it's possible to get over the scope of this betrayal. I am not even sure I know who he is anymore. I would really appreciate your thoughts and support.

I am sorry that you find yourself in this position. It's awful, we all know.

I don't know if it's possible to get over the scope of this betrayal.

One thing that my therapist said when I was seeing one was that there are horrible things that happen in your life that you never get over, and maybe you don't seek to get over them, per se, but rather they just incorporate into your life like everything else that has happened in your life and you just learn to walk beside it. I dunno, it spoke to me for some reason. It took a little pressure off to "get over" something so monumental, gave me permission to not "get over" it. At the time, I felt like yes, maybe I can walk beside it, I don't have to forget it. I also had a visual that in walking beside it, I can decide how safe it is or not to walk closely beside it, you know what I mean? Like maybe at this fresh point in your learning (or mine at the time), you can consider that what you're trying to walk beside is not safe, and maybe you need to be prepared to scoot away, maybe you need to wear an imaginary helmet or other protective equipment until or when it is safe to walk near it.

It would be, perhaps, safe to walk near it when your WH does the work to make you feel safe. And when you feel you have gotten all of the information about this time in your life to be able to process what exactly it is you're dealing with. You've gotten more out of him about what he was doing, but you've got to be prepared for more, unfortunately.

FWIW, my FWH also used prostitutes. I found out in 2013, we are reconciled. I wish I could say I'm not wary. I wish I could say I'm entirely happy with that decision. I think that I will always be at least somewhat on alert although I'm not checking phones routinely or going through every move he makes at this time. We all have to decide if it's in our best interest to stay or leave, and everyone's circumstances are different.