SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My relationship has never been perfect but I thought that true love meant sticking around and helping the other person no matter what. Before I met my now husband, I never wanted marriage and I was very independent after seeing my parents cheat on each other for 27 years and it has never stopped... I didn't believe in real love.

When I met my husband, things changed. I felt like he was one you would chase after except he wanted to settle down and have kids and a house and live "the dream."

He has severe anxiety and he took that out on me everyday. I couldn't park straight enough, if he got nervous he would get angry, everything I liked or did was stupid, we could only watch sports, only eat pizza and burgers, and so on. I was extremely depressed from the constant yelling and destruction of who I was as a person. He made me get rid of all my friends because he didn't like them and I was also isolated from my family. It got so bad that I left him 3 days before our wedding date last year.

He agreed to get therapy and did, and eventually I moved back in and for several months he completely did a 180. Things weren't perfect but I could tell he really understood what he was doing and made sure he wasn't going back down that road. We got married December 2012 in Jamaica and it was awesome. I thought this would be the start of my forever. On New Year's Eve, he started a fight over nothing and pinned me and shook me against our couch. I was very scared but he didn't hit me. There have been a couple similar episodes since. He kept telling me that ever since we got married I acted like I didn't want to have sex among other things.

July 12, 2013 – 7 months married - D-day - He was out sick and had recently told me his work email password because we were joking about the silly passwords we had to come up with. I got on since I had suspicions about him and his boss who he had relations with before we met even though she was also married. I had caught him talking to other woman behind my back but they were always only friendly. I found hundreds of emails between them.. they were all day every day.. talking about sexual fantasies and things they had done. Talking about her coming over when he calls in sick, talking about meeting up at the gas station near our home and job, talking about how they wished I didn’t work here so they could do things at work. She was in it emotionally as well saying she only came to work for him because work was getting very stressful for her among other things. I saw this woman everyday. I had asked about them and he made me feel like a psycho jealous woman for ever thinking anything could possibly happen between them again. She had just left the company a week earlier so I could not report the issue to our HR department but I was left feeling absolutely sick.

I told her husband because he had been with his wife for 12 years and the first time my WH and the OW hooked up she cheated on him and I felt that I would want to know and he deserved to know too! Her husband confronted her and she admitted that the emails had been going on for over a year (right around the time we were supposed to be getting married the first time) and that she had been in our home once and they fooled around back in January (one month after being married). He refuses to admit to anything that was not in the emails. I found out after doing more investigating that he lied about several other things over the past couple years. He had an ex-girlfriend come over and pick up a pair of jeans to sew the rip in them and bring them back. He had been talking to an ex-girlfriend throughout our entire relationship. He lied about who he was living with when we first started dating, and just sooo many other things.

I am absolutely devastated and feel like my life has been ruined. I will forever be the girl that got divorced in less than a year of being married.. its embarrassing. I want a divorce but its hard to actually tell those words to him because although he has done all these horrible things to me.. I can’t understand why I still love him so much that I don’t want to hurt him by saying that. He keeps saying they were just emails and wants me to just be over this. It has only been close to a couple months since I found out and only about one month since I found out about all the other lies. Because of my family history with my parents constantly cheating and accusing each other I feel that I will never be able to trust or believe him again. He gets off work before I do and I feel like he is going to be meeting up with her during that time. He doesn’t want to change his hours because he feels they are ideal and I don’t want to pressure him into something either. He wants me to stay and I just don’t know if I will ever be able to be a good wife and not question everything all the time. I am at this place where I feel disgusting.. like every I love you was fake, every intimate moment we ever had wasn’t him meaning any of it. He tells me I am making him depressed because since I found out I do not want to have sex with him or say I love you to him. It’s like he doesn’t even care that what he did caused all of this. I just don’t know what to do…

Hey...(((hugs))) to you. I want you to know that I am involved with a serial cheater. Married for 17 years, and I can almost honestly say that I stayed 16 years to long. *almost honestly, because I guess if I hadn't have stayed I wouldn't have the two loves of my life (my kids) so maybe I stayed 14 years to long *

I want you to know that with his track record all ready, he won't change, and you will find yourself in the mess I am in right now. Countless number of flings (him), OW (him), sexting (him), weight gain (me), hair loss (me), health suffering (me), depression (me)...that is the world you will be headed for if you stay.

I am in the same boat as you, knowing the right thing to do, but actually doing it...it's really hard. I pray you do what I couldn't do all those years ago.

Thank you for responding. I really hope I can find the strength to finally get out too. I feel like the longer I am staying the more I make him think I am staying and the more I feel like its too late to leave now because I didn't leave immediately.

I'm so sorry. He's not the prize, you know. YOU are. Please look ahead to the upcoming years. You've seen the hell that your parents lived through and are still living. It's far better to be the strong, self-respecting woman who kicked her lying POS WH to the curb in the first year of marriage, than to be the abused woman with two children calling a woman's domestic violence hotline in the years to come, asking for shelter.

Sometimes gifts come wrapped up in bright, shiny paper. Sometimes they come wrapped in old newspaper spattered with mud. As sad as it is, you may have been given that mud-spattered gift. He's shown you who he is. He's shown you what he's capable of, and abusers (and do not doubt the fact that is he an abuser) only escalate their abuse. It's more than likely that what you are living right now, is the best it will ever be, for the rest of your life together with your WH. You deserve so much more. (((hugs)))

I think it is harder to stay than it is to leave. If you stay, then their mere presence is a constant reminder of what they did. I am choosing to stay, because we have children, and he says he wants US, and to make this work. It is difficult to wake up and see his face every day. Somedays I am OK, other days I cuss at him under my breath. Stay only if you truly believe he is remorseful and worth it. They gave me advice, which is hard to follow when you don't feel good about yourself after this has happened. But make you the priority, not him. Your feelings count, and he needs to spend all of his energy making it up to you. That is not being selfish on your part, it is self-preservation. ((hugs)).