SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I've read a lot of posts, but I don't find one like mine. It can't be all that unusual.

When I got married H told me he was bi-sexual. I didn't mind because fidelity is what matters to me. He said he had never been romantically attracted to men, only physically, and his feelings of love had always been towards women.

Well, on New Years day 2014, he was hung over and I see a text wherein he has invited his married lovers to get together for a 3 way F*ck.

I was astounded. I never would have thought this of him. He's a very responsible man who I also thought was honest. I asked him how long this has been going on and who they are. He said it was a man and wife and they met together through Craigslist just a couple of times in the last couple of months.

Well, as the story trickles out, the contacts had been with 7 different men, 2 of whom debased their wives by having them participate in a 3 way.

My skin crawled at the details that I insisted on having. He TT after every bit of evidence I found so I am now even less likely to believe anything he says.

He also acts as if I should be grateful for him telling me about some of the people because there's no way I would have found out with out his telling me. I wanted to pin a medal to his chest with a steak knife!

We went to MC. Thank God for her. She is practical and doesn't put up with any of his crap when he tried to blame it all on me because I wouldn't give him enough sex.

I pointed out that I didn't think he really wanted the kind of sex I could give him so we would sit in front of the TV drinking too much wine so he couldn't perform sexually and that gave him the excuse to go on Craigslist and troll for men.

I believe him that none of these are emotional affairs, just physical. I've check out the text messaging and that seem to bear it out. Somehow it's a relief that no EA was involved. The lying was enough. I see the other posts where the BS has to come to terms with the WS's affection being engaged with another partner. That would definitely be harder that what I've endured.

The hardest part is that he is so arrogant when I get angry or I question him. He thinks if he answered a question once then that's enough and I should be over it. One day he yelled "How much longer are we going to have to go through this!" I replied, "How about the same amount of time it took you to plan your soirees, act them out, and then come home to lie to me? That took about a year--so I say that is at least how long we are going to have to go through this." He didn't like that response

Right now he's off to a sex addict retreat for 3 days which will cost us thousands. I've been wondering as he's getting ready to go if he'll do what many dieters do before they start a diet. Is he going to try to hook up with a couple of me prior to treatment. I don't know that he would, but I didn't know he' do any of this stuff.

Is there anyone else out there who has a bi-husband who is apparently a Sex addict--whatever that is. If so, how did you deal with it?

In my case, I found out a year after I married my second husband. He swore he wasn't bi - he just liked to frequent the park every sunday and participate in the activities. But he swore he was straight. Yeah, right.

He also was into swinging in his first marriage. 3 ways. Couples. Orgies.

That marriage didn't last long.

I am aware of several female members here who's husband was into same-sex encounters.

Craigslist seems to be rife with married men looking for encounters with other men.

I have a close friend who caught her husband messaging other men for "catch-ups", he was looking for women on there too apparently

From what ive gathered, bi-sexual men in particular seem to have a huge problem keeping it in their pants!

Oh honey. I'm sorry - huge hugs to you.

I'm in your boat. I'm 6 months in. My husband also is bisexual, only interested in men sexually and not romantically. And last year I found out that my perfect husband was a secret sex addict, or at the very least, compulsively acting out sexual behavior. He was hooking up with anonymous people and browsing Craigslist, having an affair, having one night stands, using prostitutes, and a whole, whole lot of other things. It is absolutely heart-breaking to be here - but I'm stronger now, and I can share a little of what I've learned.

A few things I've learned in the last 6 months:

1)

My WH, one month into this process, said the same thing yours did. "Why can't you just let this go?" Turns out there was way, way, way more to the already very sordid story. I only had a small part of it then.

If your WS is getting angry with you when you bring things up, there's only one single reason: he's still got a huge mountain of lies under there (yes, EVEN MORE STUFF than the huge mountain of lies you've already uncovered, though it seems impossible). If he is being arrogant about what he has told you, he's protecting a lot of things he hasn't, and when you find out what they are, if you do, you will be completely floored. You think that stuff only went back a year? It didn't. I'm so sorry, but brace yourself for that.

Think logically: this kind of behavior does not magically appear in someone's life in a year. No one goes from healthy, sane, and faithful to rapacious, brazen adulterer in 12 months. Can you imagine yourself one year from now having had encounters with 7 men in 12 months? No, because no one degenerates that fast. It takes years to build up to betraying your spouse this blatantly and this frequently. Which means you are - I'm so sorry - looking at the tip of the iceberg.

Because of the high liklihood that there is more going on than you know, please, be very careful with your heart and expectations. I received the following advice from a friend early on in the discovery process, and I didn't listen. And not listening to his advice almost cost me my sanity. He said:

"Don't make any 'safe spaces' for yourself in your head, this situation is just flat-out bad." For example, don't say to yourself, "He may have cheated but at least he used a condom!" or "He may have cheated but at least he didn't have any emotional affairs, because that would kill me!" I was doing a lot of that kind of thinking, but every time I would make a safe space for myself mentally, like "At least he never brought anyone to our house", or "At least he never told anyone he loved them," it would turn out later that he had, and then the little castle I built for myself was shattered. That was emotionally devastating, and I could have saved myself that pain in the beginning by not doing that.

If he's still getting angry with you, he may not be ready for that retreat, though hopefully it may get him closer to a point where he can tell the truth. He'll only stop getting mad when the whole truth is out, and he's still protecting the truth. The question is whether or not you can stand it that long.

2) Someone else on SI showed me this link, and it has been a total life-saver (we'll see if it ends up being a marriage-saver or not). My husband is doing this program: recoverynation.com - it's free!

They also have a program for spouses of sex addicts, and reading on there has helped me immensely. I couldn't BELIEVE how much I related to all the spouses there, and how much our stories matched up, how accurate the description of the sex addict personality is - incredible. Check it out. The advice is absolutely invaluable and all of it has been spot-on for me.

3) I don't know how much you've read about sex addiction yet, but get an STD test. Sex addicts will lie and lie and lie and lie and lie about using protection. Make him get one, and get one yourself. Don't have sex without a condom for six months.

4) Everyone says this on here but "take care of yourself first". Treat yourself - there never was a better time and you need it. Sleep, eat, rest, get that box of Godiva for yourself, lean on your friends, and concentrate on YOU first. I know this is impossible advice to take right now when you're so wrapped up in the whirlwind of his crap, but focus on YOU. Your happiness, your mental health, your physical health, your enjoyment of life, your job.

5) In some ways, I felt that my husband screwing around with THAT many people freed me somehow from worrying about me not being good enough. He clearly has a problem that has absolutely nothing to do with me: the same goes for your husband. This is not because you are not pretty enough, nice enough, or a good enough wife. He is just a vastly screwed up guy.

The Recovery Nation site has way more great advice than I can type here, but just know that I hear you, I sympathize. This road is insanely hard, but you are beautiful and strong and loyal, you didn't deserve this, and I hope your husband pulls his head out of his ass and starts being a better person.

[This message edited by Thessalian at 4:51 AM, February 19th (Wednesday)]

Sorry this has happened. Before my current wife (who betrayed me), I had along term girlfriend,from college, for 5 years. She was bi.As a writer/artist, I've had many male gay friends.I can only quote them : if you are really,essentially gay and bi only as a sideline, you will never give up on your gay nature, you will always a desire a gay lover.If you are the straight partner with a gay person, you (and that person if they are honorable)are under tremendous pressure on the fidelity line. I personally do not know a solution to this,for long term mutual happiness.Not trying to be a downer here,this is just my testimony.

I can only imagine your shock and pain from my own, different case. You will get through this.

Ok so your situation is nothing like mine in regard to the circumstances of it. However there are some things that are universal about infidelity. Please take this information to heart, and consider it coming fro someone who has been there done this, came out stronger, and smarter, and healed.

1. Cheaters lie, and liars cheat. DO NOT BELIEVE HIM in regard to limiting the involvement of his actions, and the number of times, and how many times he did it. Protect yourself by assuming the worst, and if it proves out to not be so, you are that much farther ahead.

Now that you are assuming that there is much more to it, it becomes obvious that you and he both need a FULL STD work up. Blood, smears, and all. Call and make your appointment today.

Do NOT have unprotected sex with him again until he can prove in written form that you are clean.

2. Addiction is a horrible thing, and the only person that can help an addict heal is themselves. You can beg, plead, bargain, and do back flips for him, but until he realizes this is destroying his life recovery from this addiction will be difficult at best. This goes for any form of addiction, sex, drugs, alcohol.....Many addicts have more than one form of addiction, if that is the case here, I would urge you to get him to an IC that specializes in addiction, and have him worked up for ADHD, as often we with tend to self medicate to quiet our minds, and act impulsively, and if left untreated may make recovery near to impossible as well.

3. We all deal with lies, and a decision to stay or go. Many choose to stay due to financial reasons, please don't make any assumptions, and feel stuck in your situation, this why I tell EVERY SINGLE NEWLY BS to see a Divorce Attorney. Find out what your rights are, what his obligations are, and how things would play out should you want to or need to D.

4. Know that his actions have ZERO to do with you. He is a broken man, that needs to heal himself. He didn't do this because you didn't have enough sex, or too much of the wrong kind, or were to fat/thin, bossy/passive, etc. HE chose this because he gets ego kibbles, and he is dealing with a real addiction.

In that vein, start focusing on you. You have a lot of healing to do as well. Read about the 180 here, consider Alanon meetings (addiction is addiction) start making yourself first, and him second.

As far as his anger, frustration go, that is not remorse for what he has done, that is more regret, along the lines of "oh shit, I got caught, gotta behave and do what she wants until she forgets about it". Which is very different from real remorse which would be along the lines, "Damn, I am messed up, and I have possibly destroyed the one single greatest thing in my life, I will do anything and everything in my power to make it right, and never cause this pain again. "

For some WS's they get this relatively quickly, however for the majority it takes time for the fog to clear, and devestation they have created to clear, add in addiction, and it can be even more difficult.

Keep reading, keep posting, and know that we are here for you.

Thessalian

Thank you so much for your response. Your situation sounds a lot like mine.

I have been creating those "safe places" like the one that you described of thinking "at least he didn't love any of them" and a few others. I've tried today to discard them, but it's horrible not to have that refuge. It's scary to think all of this could be much worse than I thought. However, as I searched those safe places, I realized that I have no reason to believe they are true. All of them are based on what he said which can't be trusted.

Yes, it is outrageously painful to lose all your safe spaces, but I finally figured out that it helped if I thought this way:

"A whole lot of horrible stuff went down. I don't know everything, and until he proves, through consistent actions and total transparency and a willingness to make his shit right on his own determination, that he's finally being honest, I won't feel that I know everything and won't let myself believe him. It was an all around bad situation filled with all-around bad things. The nature of those things is a question mark, but I know what I need to know for right now: he cheated on me, repeatedly, with no regard for my heart and feelings whatsoever, and he lied about it repeatedly, and is probably still lying about it."

Again, read some of the partner materials on Recovery Nation, I can't recommend that enough. It's really enlightening and you'll get a good sense of what you're dealing with.

I guess what I mean is that if you can avoid clinging to specifics right now, avoid it. The situation is just blanket bad. Assume he is lying.

Personally, I made coming completely clean a requirement for ANY further contact / communication / even considering R. I told him he was either going to come completely clean, then make amends for the havoc he wreaked on our lives and my heart, while working on himself through therapy and other means, or I was done. It took me moving out, threatening, being nice, cajoling, many dinners, many D-Days and many glasses of wine to get the entire truth, but I got it. I would even give him "amnesty" zones where he was safe to divulge the rest without me freaking out - he squandered them all and tried to use them as a way to convince me he really was telling the truth. Recovery Nation says that forcing the truth out at the early stage is the wrong way to go - that you should simply not even expect to hear any of the truth and until he is well into his recovery, but I couldn't manage being with him and trying to "help" him while he was still lying to my face, so I made total, radical honesty a baseline. Once we got there, things started getting better immediately, though I was a total emotional mess by then. The jury is still very much out on whether or not we'll stay together - he has to do all the work. But he is doing it - he finally got to the point where he spends every spare minute working on us and on himself - so we'll see.

During the TT, he wriggled like a fish on a hook. He tried everything not to have to tell the whole story. First he avoided talking about it at all costs. Then he tried telling me parts of it to make me feel like that was the whole truth. Then he started trying to "nice" us out of the situation by taking me places and buying presents. Then he started spitting back to me a bunch of trite passages about honest and integrity, and how he's learning to become a better person (nope - he was just regurgitating stuff from books). Then he started telling me that he was "in the process" of being honest (I told him there's no process - you are or you aren't). Finally, finally, after a very painful meltdown on New Years, he told me the last bits of it.

Ouch.

You are dealing with a Gordion knot of his crap right now - childhood crap, adolescent crap, past relationship crap, and it has culminated in this very painful experience for you. It's not fair. But it has happened. I don't wish this on anyone.

The best I can tell you is: as soon as you are able (and it may be a while before you are, because if you're like me, you still feel this deep, desperate question mark in your heart - why are you doing this to us? Surely this will stop soon and everything will go back to normal? Surely he'll save us from this mess he made and act like the man I thought he was?), strap on your bitch boots, demand respect and honesty, and keep demanding it until you are done with the nonsense or he gets his act together.

Hugs!

[This message edited by Thessalian at 11:15 PM, February 19th (Wednesday)]

I, too, created false safe places. At least he wasn't into prostitutes. Oh wait, found out he was. Okay, so, at least he isn't into drugs. Oh wait, found out he was. Alrighty then, so at least he wasn't into kids. Nope. That was false, he was into kids after all. Okay, so at least....

When I first got into IC and talked about sex addiction with my counselor, and this was our first session, she had me read a book about SA and we talked about the possibility that things might turn out worse than I could imagine. That was exactly how it played out. Things just kept getting worse & worse. It was like peeling an onion layer by layer. Things were worse than I could imagine. In fact, I didn't even know that people could be as perverted as I ultimately found out my ex was. I didn't think people really did that kind of stuff. Each new discovery would trigger memories of conversations & events which I'd buried deep in my subconscious. Things which didn't make sense long ago now were crystal clear & terrifying.

And then there was the realization that if I'd been so blind, what did that say about me???

Be very gentle with yourself. Protect yourself.

Thessalian,

How were you so certain he wasn't completely telling you the truth? How are you certain you finally got the truth?

You information is very helpful. Thank you for your time.

Warning, this is long!

Hm, well, I've tried to put this down in words a few times, but I've failed before. I'll try again. It's easy for me to say now that "I demanded the truth until I got it", but the reality was nowhere near that clean. I'm still not 100% certain I know everything, but I know enough. For the first two months, I assumed he was telling the truth every time he said, "That's the whole story". I believed and trusted him so much that it was a complete, gut-wrenching, baffling shock every time I found out he wasn't. Finally I realized I'd better just assume he was lying all the time.

The actual process was more like this: I made a mental list of things I thought an honest person would do in this situation, and how someone who was being totally transparent would behave when confronted with this crap. Then I measured how WH was behaving against that list. Usually, he would tell me some new element of this mess, and I would feel better, and he would feel better, and we'd hug, and he'd say "that's all, I swear," and for a few days everything would be great. I'd tell myself that I finally had the whole story, that we could finally start repairing. Then, a week later, we'd get into a conversation about another aspect of his affairs and he'd say something that didn't add up, or I'd notice that he was still behaving in ways that didn't match my "honest people meter", and I would start demanding the whole story again, and I'd keep demanding until I got it. There was always more. Sometimes I wasn't sure there was more, but I learned to trust myself. If I thought there was more, there was, and I would just not listen to any of his "no, really, that's it!" stuff until he confessed.

What I finally realized was that the only way to get a real sense if he was still lying or not was to judge his behavior towards me, his attitude towards what he did, and his attitude towards his own actions. Before someone can accept the reality of what they've done to someone else, they have to admit the reality of what they've done to themselves. Tallying up your own sins is not easy, many people can't do it when they've screwed up that badly.

Here are some of the ways I determined if he was lying (I was almost always right when my spidey-sense started tingling):

- The easiest way: after seeing him lie so damn much, I started noticing some physical tells he had when he told a lie. I noted these down in my own head. He didn't always use these, though, but when he did, he was definitely lying.

- I started listening VERY carefully to his language and the words he used. When he is lying, he would masterfully construct vague answers that seemed like they had addressed my question, but they hadn't. He would avoid detailed specifics like the plague. He still lied using specifics when his back was against the wall and I was nailing him to it, but the amount of vagueness and avoidant language he used up until that point would clue me in that there was more going on there.

- "I don't remember" is almost never true. Period.

- I realized that people's habits are people's habits: he will have carried his core, unconscious habits and day-to-day behaviors into these relationships with other people. Though it feels like you don't know him at all right now, in some ways you know him better than he thinks you do, so if he says he did something that doesn't seem like something he'd do, you're probably right. For example, my WH lied for several months about whether or not he slept with the main OW in our bed. I asked no less than 50 times. He always swore he didn't. I asked what happened when she slept at the house. He said they were drinking, and then she got up and walked into the bedroom without asking him, and crawled into bed. He was angry that she had "invaded his marriage bed" (PUH-LEASE, he's the one who brought her over!), so he didn't follow her into the bedroom, and he went to sleep on the couch alone. If you knew my husband, that is totally not like him at all. I told him that sounded like total bull, he would definitely have gone in the room with her. After a few months, he finally admitted it: yes, he followed her in there, and yes, they slept together in our bed. But he lied so, so many times about that so convincingly, I almost believed him. I just knew him too well to really buy that.

- Lies will get stuck in your craw. You can't stop thinking about the answers. They seem... off. You won't know why. I once asked WH if OW had ever been over to our house. He'd been saying "no" for a month. One day, I was telling a friend of mine over coffee, "At least OW has never been to our house!" and right then I realized, "Why do I believe that? Of course she has. My WH loves the comfort of our home and I've been out of town twice recently." I just knew. No proof. But I knew. I was right.

- He would try to convince me that illogical things were logical. They're not. They never are. Example: on one occasion, he told me that when OW slept over at our house, they had done some light drugs and he was a little buzzed but not that high. On another occasion, I asked him if they had sex in our bed that night, and he said he couldn't remember. I stopped him and asked him which one it was, because he was either so high and taking such serious drugs with OW that he literally lost 2 hours of his memory, or he did remember and didn't want to tell me. No one forgets an entire sex act while relatively sober. His response, "You're so binary! Why do things always have to be one way or the other with you? Why can't you accept the third possibility, that I wasn't very high and I also just don't remember?" I couldn't accept it because it's totally illogical - I've never just an entire sex act before. I knew then that he was lying, and he was.

- Tiny details of stories would change. Really tiny details that are easy to convince yourself you just misheard last time, or that you misunderstood - but you didn't. I'd make him walk me through detailed accounts of something I could stand to hear. Pay close attention to minor details, and ask a ton of questions - I tend to find that a liar has their own story straight in their own head, but they don't have the story straight as it relates to answers to unexpected questions you might ask them. A few weeks later, I'd ask him to tell the same story again, with all the specifics. And guess what? Tiny details would change.

Here are some of the ways I think an honest, good person would behave (I'm not a psychologist, this is just the baseline I used for WH):

- If an honest person is accused of lying, they will go out of their way to prove they're not. They will actually stick on the topic longer than the asker. They won't just try to get off the topic as fast as possible, they are willing to offer explore an issue a bit more because there's nothing there to hide. If someone says to me, 'You're lying!" when I'm not, I will usually offer MORE information, offer to be MORE open. I might respond, "No, I'm not lying. How can I prove it to you? You wanna see phone records? You want me to take a polygraph? I will." WH never said this stuff until the very end.

- Honest people can talk about a situation in-depth, with specifics. They will volunteer more information than you asked for, if that's what you want. They will not confine their answers to the smallest possible satisfactory vector.

- Someone who's done lying has their mind freed up for other things, like taking responsibility for what they've done. Once the whole truth is out, they're not spending mental energy focused on keeping parts of themselves secret. They can focus outwards - on you, on the situation - they have nothing to fear from poking and prodding.

- The pieces add up neatly, and you can see the humanity in the build-up of the problem. Example: when I first found out, WH told me the cheating started 6 months previously. But the sheer audacity and level of the cheating was so outrageous, I just kept thinking how weird it was that someone who had been faithful and happy and honest our whole marriage had just snapped one day and decided to throw his entire moral code to the wind and start screwing everyone on the block. How does that even happen? Seemed so abrupt and sudden? When I found out later that he'd been cheating our whole marriage, it made way, way more sense. A slow, small build up of lies and secrets until the problem got so outrageous it took over his life, which is when I found out.

How I determined I had the whole truth:

- WH started taking even more responsibility for what he did. Every day, he reads a list of the wrongs he did to me to himself. He says he's determined to make up for everything on the list, one by one. The list is 70 bullet-points long. I don't push him or monitor him on this at all.

- WH started gaining empathy for those around him, because he wasn't so focused on his own bull.

- WH volunteers information, constantly offers to talk to me about anything I need to know (only got this one after the whole truth came out). I'm not saying it's comfortable for WH to talk about what he did, he hates it, but he absolutely will. And when I ask him a question, it's not just "yes" or "no" answers, he answers fully, to the best of his ability.

- WH is self-determined in fixing the problem, he doesn't sit around waiting for me to demand things from him.

It didn't happen all at once, it happened in increments: tell more of the truth, behave a little better. More of the truth, behave a little better. And the more truth he told, the better he behaved. Again, I'm not a poster child for having the perfect WH. We're 6 months into this and he's not living with me: I asked him to work on his Recovery Nation program from a rental house a few minutes away, and I see him once a week. But for the last month he has consistently, daily, non-stop worked his ass off. No more anger, no more whining, no more complaints. So that's what makes me think I have the whole truth, at the very least.

[This message edited by Thessalian at 10:08 AM, February 20th (Thursday)]

Wow to Cloe and Tess..

My WH has also been into anonymous encounters(Craig's List, AFF)..

Once I extricate myself from this marriage and live separately from him, I don't think wild horses would drag me back into living with my WH or remarrying him even if he started behaving remorsefully..

I think one of the pillars of remorse is gratitude...The remorseful WS is grateful for whatever he can salvage in his relationship with you as long as he is still in your life..Even if he doesn't get to be in your life as a spouse or lover anymore he is still grateful that you would even speak to him..

How does one take the risk to R after infidelity, especially if the WS is a sex addict...I would definitely want to be in a position to be able to walk away any time if things didn't work out..

[This message edited by doggiediva at 11:05 AM, February 20th (Thursday)]

Thess

U have been so generous and helpful with information. It has made a big difference to me to know there is someone else in this situation who is intelligent and insightful. I started to doubt my intellect and ability to see reality. Thank u so much

ChloeandPrimo - Check out COSA it is a 12 step (similar to Al-Anon) for people who are codependent with SA. I am a member of COSA, unfortunately there are no IRL meetings in my area, so I content myself with on-line. It's not the best, but still so helpful. I am in IC and a Divorce support group IRL. Please get as much help as possible dealing with you and how you deal with his SA.

btw, please change your tagline ... you really are NOT BORING!

Chloe:

My WXH had "bisexual tendencies" (so I'd thought at the time - he turned out to be flat-out homosexual). Our relationship ended when I caught him with another woman. A couple of years later (after we were divorced), I'd found out that he'd slept with his best friend (male) - and had done so for YEARS.

The reason why I am chiming in here is to implore you to get tested for STDs. Please. I don't want to add on to your heartbreak and worry at this point in time, but it is IMPERATIVE that you do so. This is good advice for anyone, but especially for those of us in this particular situation.

I am emphatic about this, because my XH's best friend has been HIV-positive for YEARS (and was at the time). I lived in UTTER FEAR for years because I had been exposed to it - over and over and over again. Even today, I have an HIV test regularly, every single year, because I've been SCARED into it. (It's really not necessary these days - but I've LEARNED MY LESSON.)

Again, I don't want to add to your burden - I know you're hurting. But it's so, so important that you take care of yourself right now.

(((hugs))) Hang in there. You have a LOT of friends in your corner. All 42,000+ of them.

please ,please get tested-------do you want to spend the rest of your life thinking if today is the day your husband will infect you with aids-----why are you giving him such power over your life-----you will die of aids because you stay with him----that is your future ----why are you bothering with counseling----he is not going to change his desire for men----why would you stay in this death sentence----I hope you think about hoe precious life is and what an awesome gift it is----why would you throw it away like that-------love life----love yourself