This is my first post here, even though I've been an avid lurker for two months. I wish I'd found this forum sooner.
I'll give a run down of my story and try to be as brief as possible. I am a BS but have also been the WS. I cheated almost 11 years ago. My husband and I were married 3 years when I royally f'd up. A family member of his had been hanging around since we were married. This man was a manipulating viper that developed very inappropriate feelings for me. He introduced my husband and I to drugs and as we experimented with coke and ecstasy, things began to deteriorate. At the time, my husband and I had discussed opening our marriage to include another partner. It was a stupid drug filled time, and even though we never acted on it, I felt emotionally betrayed. Somewhere in my pity party, I let another male friend become a fixation. The family member that was constantly pushing drugs, became jealous of my attention toward this other guy, that he had also introduced us to. At this point, nothing inappropriate had happened. The family member was constantly whispering to my husband and telling him that I was cheating when I actually wasn't. If anyone has any experience with the paranoia that coke can inspire, you can imagine how my husband was handling this. The divide between us continued to grow and I continued to further confide in my new friend. The inevitable happened, and after being accused for months, I slept with this "friend".
The family member pounced on this, recorded the guy saying he had slept with me, and played the recording for my husband. I handled it horribly. I did break all contact with my "friend", and the family member stayed around gleefully watching the pieces of my marriage crumble further. A month or so later, I overheard the family member on the phone with a 14 year old girl that he had been molesting (he was in his 30's). I turned him in, which caused all hell to break loose in my husband's family. At first, no one believed me and thought I was just being spiteful because this guy had outed what I had done. When police questioned the girl, and the family member took off to hide out of state, I at least gained a small bit of credibility in my husband's eyes.
Somehow, over the years, I thought that my husband and I had gotten passed all that had happened. We both sort of rug swept as he isn't the type to talk about his feelings and he shuts down if I try to get him to. I tried to show him that I was sorry, but I see now that I made many mistakes and I never really owned my own shit. No amount of drugs, bad thinking, or manipulating from an outside source should ever excuse what I did.
Well, last year, my sins caught up with me big time. I was going through a lot with a teen daughter from a previous marriage. She moved in with her father after a costly court battle. My family turned on me during all this and I was at the lowest point of my life. I was depressed and distant, crying all the time, getting very little sleep. I had no idea that my husband had created a POF profile and was actively seeking some excitement of his own. I had not ONE clue that anything was off between the two of us and I never would have believed it if he hadn't called me from work on October 3rd.
He told me to check my e-mail, that there was something he wanted me to read. I was busy with housework, homeschooling my youngest daughter, etc. He called again later in the day and I finally sat down at my desk. I read an e-mail that said he had a "friend" he had known for a while and that he was having lunch with her that Friday and for me not to "freak out". I did freak out. To my knowledge he had NO female friends and never had. It took just a few minutes and he was calling me to let me know that in fact he'd been sleeping with this woman. My world stopped that day.
I demanded that he immediately come home. I sent my daughter to my mother-in-law's house. It all seems like a distant nightmare now and it's hard to even write about. He and I had the longest talk of our marriage. We were up all night long, and by morning, he was on Facebook in front of me, messaging this woman that it was all a mistake and he was going to work on his marriage. She called his phone the next day, I answered and asked her if there wasn't something she didn't f'ing understand. She hung up like the spineless worm she is. That was on a Friday, the same day he had planned to be meeting her for lunch. Instead, he was home with me, neither of us had slept, and were still talking about what had happened.
Of course he brought up that he'd never gotten over what I had done. He mentioned other things, excuses, that were down right petty and stupid. He was too ashamed that he'd met the skank on POF,so he lied and said they'd met in a Christian chat room.
It took months for all of the truth to come out. At least all of the truth I'll ever get to know.
I got std tested, and had to worry about herpes for over two months. I contracted HSV1, and because it was so recent, they couldn't tell me for certain which type it was. When my husband was tested, it became clear that it was just the fever blister type, which also makes me disgusted but at least I can live with it.
So now, we are in recovery. Good days outnumber bad ones for sure and my husband is completely transparent. He volunteered to get a phone with GPS, and just yesterday he mentioned a web site that keeps track of his work hours so that I could log in at any time to see that he is at work when he says so. I've let my guard down a lot lately, and my trust is growing. He says now that it feels like he was a different person when he was cheating and that he was totally in a fog. I believe that he'd do anything to take it back, but like I've read here, ya can't unfuck the donkey lol.
I'm still not doing so great when I'm on my own during the day. Our family dr. prescribed me a strong benzo to help with sleeping. My anxiety is through the roof every evening around the same time of day that I first found out on DDay. I usually take my sleeping/anxiety pill at that time, instead of before bed. The HB sex hasn't stopped yet, my husband texts me throughout the day with sweet and caring messages, and I feel closer to him than I have since we were first married.
I guess the biggest issue I'm having now is anxiety. I'm a smoker and I've stepped up the cigarettes since all of this, which causes me to worry about my health. The medication I'm on isn't controlling the panic but does help a little. I still check the skank's Pinterest almost daily and she loves to post things on there to torment me. I know I need to stop looking, but in a way, seeing her act out like this confirms that she's miserable which gives me a bit of joy.
Neither of us has much interest in counseling, but I have been reading every book, blog, forum, etc. since DDay. I've passed along the things I find that are relevant for my husband to read. he does read them, but he still isn't very comfortable discussing what he did or talking about the past and what I did to him.
I am curious to know if others here have been in my shoes? I can't be the only one who was a WS and is now the BS.
