SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My BH had always had what I considered a porn addiction. He knows it bothers me and has always been topic of fights. He tells me I'm over reacting that all his friends etc think im silly for getting upset over it. He'll stop for a bit and always returns back to it. This is his major downfall.

What category would that fall into? I'm not trying to justify my actions by any means. I'm simply trying to gather my thoughts and feelings and understand my life.

My BH had always had what I considered a porn addiction. He knows it bothers me and has always been topic of fights. He tells me I'm over reacting that all his friends etc think im silly for getting upset over it. He'll stop for a bit and always returns back to it. This is his major downfall.

What category would that fall into? I'm not trying to justify my actions by any means. I'm simply trying to gather my thoughts and feelings and understand my life.

If you want to try to reconcile your marriage with your BH then your objection to his viewing of porn is an issue that of course you'll address with him as you reconcile.

But at this point, because of your affair, no matter how you try to bring up the porn issue it will always sound like you're trying to justify your affair, or minimize it, or say that your BS did something almost as bad as having an affair when he looked at porn, or whatever.

The simple fact is, it's not the time to address it when you tell him about your affair. You have to own your actions completely. His potential porn issues are a completely different discussion.

So I hear people constantly saying if you really loved them you would've never cheated to begin with.

Is there truth to that?

No, that's not true. I love my husband deeply and I had an emotional affair. I love my husband the way you love family - that roots-deep, burning from inside feeling. So: no. It's not always true.

What causes one to become wayward?

Something inside of us. There's something we haven't resolved, or figured out. It's not about our BS. It's about how we see ourselves and others.

So I hear people constantly saying if you really loved them you would've never cheated to begin with.

Is there truth to that?

No, it's not true. My BW is the love of my life. To dramatically oversimplify: I strayed because I didn't love me enough not because I didn't love her enough. It probably can't seem that way from the perspective of a lot of betrayed spouses, but in my heart I know it for truth.

You are stealing your husband's right to govern important pieces of his life. You may have consented to having the OM in your life but he didn't and you are inflicting it on him. It's time to give your husband back his ability to choose. If you want to be with him, you need to figure out how to be worth keeping.

lillbug20,

Out of curiosity, have you paused to consider that you are cheating on both of these men? Your husband has the prior claim on a relationship with you, but you are in the process of blowing up both of these men's lives.

You have two ddays in your immediate future and you had better get to work. My advice: come clean and go no contact with your AP immediately and then put your efforts into your husband. Regardless of whether your marriage survives this, you have an ethical obligation to manage that situation first.

Good luck, you're in deep and the only way out is forward.

Not trying to justify my actions but I haven't told the AP that I somewhat reconciled because of what he did to me.

You have been given some GREAT advice, yet you keep trying to justify your actions.

Your husband knows something is going on - be honest and tell him. Write out a timeline with everything you can remember - dates, times, places. Then as circe suggested, make alone time. You can then use the timeline to tell him yourself or hand it to him.

Yes, all hell will break loose, but it is the ONLY way you can begin to look at yourself to see "why you became a wayward".

When we are deep in the A, it is easy to see the bad things in our M and in our BS because all of our energy is being put into the A and not on our own M. You honestly do not know if you can save your M until your 100% focused on you and your BH.

You will continue having this internal struggle until your A is exposed. You worry that your BH will leave you, but give him that choice.

Take some time to read the 'Betrayed Mens' thread down in the 'I Can Relate' forum here on SI. You can see the pain they are going through, yet many men there have made the decision to say and work on their M. Give your BH a chance. Talk to him

I understand how your BH porn addiction bothers you; always comparing yourself to the women on those sites. I have been there. But understand that he can change, just as you can. Give him a chance.

And as for the amazing, perfect AP - well he ain't so amazing for getting involved with a married woman. What makes you think he won't have another A once you two settle in together? I just read a statistic that when 2 AP's get together there is a 3% chance of the relationship working out. Both of you are broken.

And if you do decide to live with the AP - how do you think this will affect you kids? They will know about the A eventually. You don't just move from your BH into you AP's house with the kids and live happily ever after - it just ain't gonna happen...

Tell you BH; tell your AP with a NC letter (he may not even want you after he realizes you have been lying to him also)

Not trying to justify my actions but I haven't told the AP that I somewhat reconciled because of what he did to me

Why? What did he do to you?

[This message edited by SandAway at 6:38 AM, December 5th (Thursday)]

Not trying to justify my actions but I haven't told the AP that I somewhat reconciled because of what he did to me.

I mean really. Absent your involvement in the witness protection program, I can't see any compelling reason to live a double life.

If your husband did something to you that you can't forgive - then talk about your reasoning with him (your husband), confess your own bad behavior to him, and you can both walk away from your marriage honestly and openly.

The subject of your affair is a really narrowly focused one. It starts inside you and is a directed beam outward. You can't try to reflect it off someone else and then say they're the source.

If you are absolutely sure you don't love your husband, then in the spirit of your marriage vows just tell him the truth and leave him with dignity.

If you are still on the fence about whether you love him, then in the spirit of your marriage vows tell him the truth and see if he offers you the gift of finding out whether there is any hope of reconciliation together.

Either way, let the OM go until the questions of your marriage are figured out.

[This message edited by circe at 9:34 PM, December 5th (Thursday)]

Hi lil, welcome to SI. You have made a very brave 1st step coming here and posting. This is a site i wish i knew about sooner and a step i wish i had taken on my own. I am a WH who got caught and have spent the past 4 months fumbling around trying to earn a shot at reconciliation. I have not done so well and yet my beautiful wonderful BW has still been kind compassionate and loving. After affairs that began before we were married and lasted until dday. So you do not know what your H will do when he finds out. That is his choice. But you are certainly setting yourself up for a much more devastating and difficult situation if you do not take control and risk being discovered. He has a right to know. Come clean and tell him the whole truth. Send OM a NC letter and be done with him. Your H and kids matter more. You matter more. Stop living this double life. It is very liberating to be free of the lies and deception of the affair. Then go to IC, it helps. Figure yourself out and fix yourself, for you. And bc you have kids that need their mother to be there for them and a good example for them. Then maybe your BH will join you in MC. Sorry for the long post. Good luck!

How you doin, lillbug?

We are on your side & you were given some great advice.

I've been thinking about you & hope you are doing OK.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:43 AM, December 10th (Tuesday)]

Gotta choose one just like I do.

I'm still doing no better. I've been reading tons and tons of advice and life stories on here. I know what I need to do but I still can't seem to give myself that push to make a move. I'm still so stuck. I wish this so called fog would clear. I need a serious push.

Sat night was my husband's company Christmas party. I thought it would be a good time for me to reconnect with him and remember what I has with him before. I got all dressed up and we headed out for the night. We both felt so distant from each other. I felt as if he was someone new to me. Like I've forgotten who he is. It was really strange. It really made my start to second guess again that maybe I really do love OM. I know that is probably just the fog talking. Someone said previously if I really loved om I'd already been gone...right? Who knows. I really do want to do the right thing. I'm so tired of living like this...I just can't gather the courage. I'm scared. Just really scared.

I think it is not really a choice between people. It is a choice between mental health and not mental health. Lying changes the brain. It forces you into a state of cognitive dissonance, trying to have two logically inconsistent "truths" running in parallel. It requires a lot of mental energy. It distorts thinking. It makes emotional intimacy impossible. Empathy for the people being lied to is diminished. It becomes necessary to view them as less than, so that their right to make a reality based choice about who they want to be in partnership with becomes expendable without their ever even knowing it. It enables abuse.

My experience of it was that my choices leading up to and during the affair were fracturing me. Unwholesome is the right word. They literally were making me less whole. The less whole I became the worse my choices became.

I started getting better when I began to make wholesome choices. That made AP a non-option even though he was single and wanted to give it a go. I thought at the time that he loved me and that I had loved him, soulmates, bad timing, all that. It took some months of NC and a serious effort to learn about the true nature of infidelity before I began to grasp just how mentally unhealthy I had become.

As long as you're lying, you're going to feel fractured. Let go of unwholesome choices and start the process of rewiring your brain. The only way out is through. Don't give up.

Strength to you from a fellow EvolvingSoul.

I thought it would be a good time for me to reconnect with him and remember what I has with him before. I got all dressed up and we headed out for the night. We both felt so distant from each other.

Yes, you are distant from each other. You can't connect to someone who is living a fake life, and right now both of you are - you by choice, him by trickery. Your affair and lies are going to be a huge isolating space between you as you hold all the cards and have the ability to sit next to him while withholding everything real about yourself. There's no way he could breach that distance because you're the one generating it on the sly.

I don't know if your marriage would be salvageable if you were honest with him, if either of you would want to remain married, but I do know that you've set it up for failure and can't pretend to be "evaluating" it or "trying to reconnect" while actively sabotaging it. To make an insulting analogy it would be as if you pulled the battery out of a car and then sat in the drivers seat for a test drive, complaining that it wasn't working.

It really made my start to second guess again that maybe I really do love OM. I know that is probably just the fog talking. Someone said previously if I really loved om I'd already been gone...right?

No, if you really loved OM you wouldn't be lying to him, demeaning him and living a double life.

However, for whatever it's worth, I think you should stop looking at these two men as your two options, lying to both of them while wondering what's best for you. Instead maybe look at yourself and wonder if the person capable of this behavior is really prime relationship material right now.

I know I was a bad wife during my affair. I had to become a person who was capable of having an intimate relationship before my marriage became that intimate relationship. You can't have intimacy without honesty and vulnerability, and while you're lying YOU are the impediment to your relationships. While you are lying and withholding yourself, any relationship you are part of will be an empty one in the end.

So I made the first step. I ended it with OM. I need help staying strong and sticking with this. He's sucked me back in so many times before. I'm determined to get my life back this time, to make things better...It's just so hard right now. It's extremely painful. I really do care about him. I have no clue how to get they the next couple days.

Good, good, good! Did you tell OM the truth? This is going to feel crummy for a while, so buckle up and hang on. What steps have you taken to ensure that he cannot contact you?

I haven't taken any steps yet. I plan on deleting the texting app. It feels beyond crummy. My gut reaction is telling me to mend things with om. I'm resisting. It's just so hard. Thinking he hates me right now is even harder. I just want to run to him and everything be ok....but I know that would a huge mistake.

Well, sure it feels crummy. It's withdrawal. You have created some really unhealthy but stable (cognitive dissonance again) neural circuitry in your brain. Now you're pulling the plug on the input. There's going to be some chaos in there. BUT the only way to get through it is to get through it. One moment at a time. Delete that app. Right now. You can do this!

Tomorrow I'll dig out my first journal (I started journalling the day after d-day and am still going) and show you what I wrote that first day. I was a mess. It seemed like I could never untangle everything in a million years. But that turned out not to be true. You can untangle it. All of it. But it takes a lot of time and effort and willingness to sit with difficult feelings.

You will get much support here during the process. You can do this!

Thank you for your kind words and support.

I don't know how to deal with these thoughts of wanting to fix things with OM. I just want to run to him right now. It's taking everything in me not to. I told him the truth and he hates me. Hell, I hate me right now. Logically this is crazy that I'm mourning for a man that left me numerous times for his ex, over and over. It's such a vicious cycle. My head is spinning and I'm making no sense. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up. Thank god for my children.