SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Nope.

They say love is blind and mine sure was...

I never saw it coming.

Like everyone else, I have to say never in a million years. He has had a hard time believing he would do this as well. It is so not his character.

He's always been an awesome dad, a loving husband, volunteer church leader, has a great reputation in the community, has always kept his distance from women at his work who flirt with him--usually was oblivious because he never looked, etc.....he always builds me up, supports me, tells me his great I am and how lucky he is to love and be loved by me.

His mom was a cheater. His step-dad was a cheater. He knows.

So the only thing more surprising than him having an affair was my reaction to it. I'd always said I'd do a Lorena Bobbitt, only better. They'd never find the body. And I meant it when I said it. He often "joked" that he believed me. So when I chose to fight for our marriage, that surprised us both, too.

I would have bet my.life, No way!! Even when he had all the sign and my sisters and close friends, said, do yiou think he could have a gf? For at least a year, I shook my head, absolutely not. The next 2 yrs, I was really thinking he did but then I would tell myself, not him, its just not something.he would be capable of. It's like.I knew it but didn't want to believe it. I've known him for 30 yrs but the.last ten, I feel like.I really don't know a damn thing about what makes this man tick. He's a stranger now.

Ostrich 80- ditto everything you said!!

I remember an interview that I saw many years ago with Paul Newman. The interviewer was probing- and asking really personal questions. You could tell that Newman was irritated. The interviewer asked-

"With all the beautiful starlets you've worked with over the years- how come you've never strayed and cheated on JoAnne Woodward?

I loved his response!!

"Why go out for hamburger when you have prime rib waiting for you at home!?!"

He was probably a man a great integrity!! But- what do I know!! I used to think the same way about my wh!!!!!!

Somanyyears Made a really good point. I feel like that is the only explanation in my situation. I also never ever thought my Heould cheat. I guess it was nice wearing the rise colored glasses before they shattered..

Never. We were forever. He even introduced me to the person who became the OW and I never thought twice about it. I was so naive.

I think that is what I miss the most...that safe and secure feeling that I was enough. I didn't have to worry about other women. Now that's gone.

I knew all along-I was stupid enough to M a "former" cheater, thinking she had changed.

I was completely blindsided.

XWW grew up with a serial cheater mother, with whom she had an emotionally abusive, love-hate, codependent relationship. She hated her mother for this...but not surprisingly, would leap to her mother's defense if anyone else - including me - ever said anything against her.

So while I was blindsided, after I thought about it, it really made sense. She'd made the same shitty choices as her mother, for the same shitty reasons ("I'm just not happy", stated AFTER the fact, with no effort or engagement to fix anything before her multiple As). And in a really sick way, she'd reconciled her relationship with her mother. Oh, and her younger sister, who was also having her own LTA.

So very glad to be away from THAT scary coven.

No.

He always was judgmental about his father's A and the trauma it caused his mother. He had to step in as a high-schooler and provide emotional support for his Mom. He was estranged from his father because of the A and the divorce. He also condemned his brother and sister for their As and subsequent divorces.

It turns out that he's been acting out sexually for a long time. I think the A was just the culmination of years of dysfunction. Apparently, the way he was thinking was that since I disagreed with him politically, "contradicted him" about politics and wasn't a porn hottie, he deserved an A.

I was sucker punched!

Before we were married we talked about cheating quite a bit. My first wife had cheated on me and as a result...I ended my first marriage. She knew how devastating it was for me to go through and promised so many times that she could never do something like that to me. She talked about how cheating destroyed her parents marriage and her childhood. In fact she expressed so much hatred and disgust for cheaters through out our marriage. We promised to always be open, honest, and faithful with each other.

Fast forward 13 years. I was constantly being reassuring that we had a good marriage and she was happy but I started to suspect that there was something wrong. My gut was screaming at me. My gut was right. She was cheating.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. There were red flags...here are just a few.

Her dad was an alcoholic, cheater, and emotionally unavailable. Her mother had revenge affairs on her dad as well. They finally divorced. Her mom started hanging out a bars, picking up men and bringing them home. This was right in front of XWW and her younger sister. XWW and her sister both got pregnant as teenagers...her sister was only 15! I cant imagine growing up like that. My parents have been married for 50 years..no cheating.

[This message edited by Decimated at 2:48 PM, February 14th (Friday)]

Totally blindsided even when the OW was anonymously sending me texts telling me my H is a womanizer. I defended him and had zero doubt that it was someone telling lies just to get back at him due to his profession. He allowed me to defend him and to remind him how much I trusted him... then the package arrived from OW to my office and I thought I was going to die of a broken heart.

No! I figured the Born Again christian woman I married would take her vows before God and family seriously. Turns out she found another Born Again to have an EA with. How hypocritical is that?!

My wife was not the prettiest woman I ever dated, not the smartest or most educated, either. What she WAS, was the nicest, most caring and big-hearted woman I've ever known. The single biggest reason I asked her to marry me was my belief that she was a genuinely good person. Over the years she grew less and less interested in intimacy, even becoming a bit prudish and uptight. Right before Dday I would have described her as extremely sweet, empathetic and caring, but kind of closed off sexually.

So when I read her texts to OM (a family friend) telling him she wants him to come in her mouth, yeah, I can honestly say I did not see that coming. I must have read those texts (and oh yeah, there was more) a half dozen times before it sank in that they were real.

[This message edited by hikingwithkoda at 4:04 PM, February 14th (Friday)]

Say what? Modern neuroscience indicates that the same brain region we perceive human beauty (the loved one) is the same area we calculate goodness. So, the one we love is good.That's the way we are hard wired.

So maybe I wasn't so stupid. Was completely utterly blind-sighted. When I had absolute evidence, I still couldn't believe it, MY wife? My WIFE?

God, god, what a dope.

Sadly, no. I should have, however. Wh's last marriage ended due to what he had me believe his ex-wife's infidelity. He seemed so hurt that she cheated on him twice. One of the first things he told me about the situation was "We both cheated at one point. We made mistakes but when she did it a second time that was enough. I couldn't get over it again." I felt so bad for him and I honestly believed since he had an idea how damaging infidelity can be he would never ever do it to me. Well....come to find out his ex-wife's last "infidelity" was an EA, he made it out to be much more and turns out he was already involved in an EA of his own for over a year BEFORE that. That EA he carried over into our relationship which at the time I rug swept because we were just starting out and he promised he would no longer contact her. He lied about that, I didn't find that out until after I discovered the EA with a COW. *sigh* I feel like I should have known but I was "blinded by love".

No, never. I was utterly blind sided.

Nope, Never suspected, never thought about it. Even though the last 10 years were not good for us it never even crossed my mind.

But, then, four years ago my world came crashing down and I learned over the course of two years (TT'd to death) that he has been doing this for the last 37 years!!

It has taken me a long time to come to terms with this and I don't think I will ever really get over this anytime soon. He has been

in intense therapy, and SA counseling, and group therapy for the last two years and I now see a remarkable change in him.

So, that's good for him but i still struggle.

I will NEVER fully trust him again.

YES! There was always something a little off? A few different incidents that my brain was telling me to question! The thing is I did question them but always got the answer of NO! This was the only time that I had the proof! I was right on the money about it too. I asked him he denied but I knew there was someone or something going on! I asked in May, found out in August! I will always trust my dam gut next time!

Never ever esp after 30 years of M. And we were starting to make some dreams come true.

I was totally blindsided and even initially thought OWs emails telling me about him cheating with it was a hacker. Funny huh?

Im living proof that "love is blind".

[This message edited by whattheh at 4:45 PM, February 14th (Friday)]