SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So many things and reading these just breaks my heart. There are so many things he did that hurt incredibly badly. I guess if I had to pick one, what hurts the most is a love letter that he wrote her 3 weeks after D-Day. I was in major sleuth mode at that time and I found it on a USB stick. He swore to me that he never loved her but the language in this letter proved otherwise. I was in such pain/shock that it took 2 months for me to even bring it up to him. The day that I told him I had it was the most raw, emotional conversation we have ever had. He still tells me he never loved her and he doesn't know why he wrote that. I had never received a love letter from him so I asked him in MC to write one to me. He said he loved me so I asked him to write down why. He said he would when he felt "moved" to do it. Guess what--it took him 18 months to write one to me. The words haunt me and taking 18 months to write one to me is beyond hurtful. I won't ever get over it.

[This message edited by TryingT at 4:29 PM, August 9th (Tuesday)]

It's hard to pick just one. The things that have stuck with me for the last 6 years are as follows:

He allowed her to write a blog about their "relationship" well before I even knew about it. His entire office saw it and saw how she described sex with the guy who happened to still be my husband.

Her blog also described gifts that he bought for her AND her children. Those gifts included brand new bicycles. Meanwhile, my kids got used bikes that he picked up on the side of the street for free.

They went on an exotic vacation, also described on the blog, before I even filed for divorce. He hadn't taken us on a vacation in years so it was like this was his trip to celebrate his new found freedom.

The worst one and the one that still gives me a pit in my stomach when I think about it was when I hit an all time low and essentially begged him not to leave us. I still didn't know about OW at that time and was so hurt and confused that he said he wanted to leave, pretty much out of the blue, because he didn't feel like he loved me anymore. He told me that he HAD to leave and I asked why. He looked me square in the face and said, "because everything I ever felt for you is dead." I felt like someone had shot me. I wouldn't have said something so cruel to a stranger on the street and yet, here was my husband of 15 years and the father of my kids, telling me that he had not one ounce of feeling for me. After all that time, he couldn't muster a tear or even a half-assed apology. He didn't even look bothered by it. It was just a matter of fact statement that he was done and he needed to toss me away. I can't think of too many other statements that are designed to hurt someone so much.

Most things relating to A hurt a bunch, but the strange thing that haunts me the most at this stage is where she specifically chose to have most of their encounters. Not just our home, and not 'our' bed but hers.

Our relationship began as high school sweethearts. Her bed from her parents house was one of 'our' first places but still her bed from her room. That bed became our 'guest room' bed once we married. It was like a special choice for her new 'special' person.

The bed is gone, but for some reason it is a detail that stands out among the pain.

Too many to list. One of the ones that stands out though was when we visited her family for Christmas who lived 3 hours away and she went back Saturday afternoon because she had to work Sunday morning. I stayed an extra day to spend time with her family since I hadn't seen them in a while. Saturday night she spent with her AP while I was spending time with her family. Wish I had pulled my head out of my ass and realized what was going on so I could have spent Christmas with my family instead of hers who listened to her lies and completely shut me out when I asked for help in talking to her after I finally realized what was going on. That was just a week after I spent the holidays with them.

What hurt the most was the moment that I realized that I'd lost my future. Everything I've ever done since we married was focused towards achieving a happy retirement together. Where we would live, what we would do, hobbies, etc, not to mention all of the sacrifices that were made to be able to achieve those goals (I get 8 weeks vacation a year for my job, and spend 6 of them working over the holidays in Alaska for another company to help build retirement so we could afford to retire the way we wanted to- guess what I'm not doing this Thanksgiving/Christmas?). Basically, my entire adult life was based upon a plan for the future that no longer exists.

The fact that he took away my chance to have children- something that can never be fixed. I was always supportive of him due to a medical condition but to find out it was because of the affair kills me!

Yes, there are so so many, and agree that it is immensely heartbreaking reading all of the replies, and so many that I relate to.

I guess the biggie is the fact that he told me before we married that I needed to think about how important it was for me to have children, because he was "too old to have anymore". Later he told me if I truly wanted a baby, that we could have one, but he really didn't want anymore kids. I sacrificed motherhood for him. I had always hoped I would have one child, but decided it was not THAT important, and I would focus all of my attention on him. And I certainly did not want him to resent me for the rest of our married lives.

We used condoms for the 1st yr together, but he couldn't use even one rubber with OW, and it took her a year, but she finally was able to conceive. I only know this because she was my best friend and I knew when she had the 3 yr implant put in right after having her 2nd DS with her BS. I even remember asking her why she wasn't on bc if she didn't want anymore children (like she said). She told me at that time, that she hadn't had sex with her H in over a year. A few weeks later other BS told me and WH that "they" were pregnant!

I, having no filter between brain & mouth, said, "How did that happen?"

His response was, "It just takes one time!"

So Hurt14, I definitely know how you feel.

Have a couple of more that hurt the "most".

Sitting across from the 2 of them, while they sat on his couch under a blanket. Yes, I know how it sounds, but we had helped raise this girl, since she was 15. She was like a daughter to us (and my BFF), so it didn't seem any stranger than when his daughter was over and sat under the same blanket with him. (A blanket my mother made for him, embroidered his name on and gave to him one christmas.)

Anyway, they were sitting under said blanket many times, "fooling around" aka jacking each other off, while the 3 of us sat around watching tv and talking. When he admitted this, I rant to the bathroom and puked. He then tried to back out of it and say they didn't touch under their clothes. No No NO, not what he meant. "My God! I couldn't do that!" LIAR!

His XW found out before I did. She always thought I was a young airhead, totally stupid, and that he was a complete a-hole. I'm sure she got smug satisfaction in the news. In fact, at least 50 -60 people knew before I did, many of them were people I considered some of my closest friends.

I could go on and on and on

my WBF told his APs that he was in the process of divorcing. Not me, but his EXWIFE, the mother of his kids. I never even factored into the story at all.

One of the most hurtful things was reading the texts he sent to one of the APs while I was out with the kids buying Mother's Day presents for their mom (my time and money!). He told her how he was out shopping with his kids because he felt it was important that they learn about showing respect and love to their mom.

There are hundreds of little things, but the worst, I guess, is that when I found the phone numbers of his APs along with their nude pictures in his phone, he begged me not to contact them, said it would be "rude" to them, that they'd never done anything but send pictures and he didn't want to embarrass them. Swore to my face that nothing had happened. When I had contacted them and confronted him, his response was, "I told you not to contact them!"

That he continued even after I found out I had Stage 3 breast cancer. He even fucked one of them the weekend he attended a benefit FOR ME. He doesn't know that I know everything, but here in the next few weeks....I will be confronting FOR THE VERY LAST TIME. I've had it.

Finding out how many OW he had EAs with and that all of them either knew me or could have contacted me. Of course, I found out later he told many of them that we were in an open relationship and that I knew what he was doing.

There were two things that hurt the most.

1. The way he abandoned me and our newborn daughter at the hospital in order to spend the entire day with OW. I had asked him to come to the hospital that morning because we were being discharged. Instead, he dropped off of the face of the earth and was totally unreachable all day. He didn't show up until late that night. The hospital kicked us out of our room and we were forced to sit in a wheelchair in the hallway until he showed up. We had no family in the area for me to call for help. It was the absolutely most humiliating experience of my entire life. Then to know that he found it much more important to take advantage of my vulnerability to be with the OW was icing on the cake.

2. I was once again at the hospital (only the second time during our marriage) to have a solid mass tumor removed along with have excisional surgery done to remove large areas of diseased skin from my skin disease. I was scared and hoping beyond hope that the tumor hadn't metastasized. Plus, I was terrified about having so much skin removed and I didn't know if they were going to have enough skin left to close the wounds or if I would wake up needing skin grafts. My WH stayed at the hospital that time around. While I was under the knife fighting for my life, he was out in the parking lot having sex with my sister.

It varies depending on when I'm thinking about the A.

Primarily, the source of my pain is that he took my power away from me. My decisions about my life during the A were based on what I thought was honest interaction. I was essentially his puppet because I believed his lies about how he felt, where he was and what he was doing. I will never forgive him for that.

Like others it's hard to narrow it down but I'll try:

During the A, I went back to the US for my mother's brain surgery and he took that opportunity to plan a ski trip for himself and the OW. It was presented along the lines of "poor me I've had to hold the fort while you support your parents and I would really like to go on this ski trip by myself as a reward for good behaviour." I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive that.

And then following the discovery of the A and the false attempt at R whereby he continued contact with the OW and lying to my face about that repeatedly, the thing that hurts to most is that he never gave me a chance to know what he fuck was going on for him. He lied to manipulate me and because he thought that if he told me that I had wound her up and that she needed protecting from me and my rage. Yeah...that hurts. That he basically took her side against me. But it was also the absolute last straw for me, and I ended the M because of it. So maybe it took that last stripping away of any semblance of hope, that last hurtful thing, so I could set myself free.

It's a difficult thing to describe THE ONE THING that hurt me the most... this is not really the part that hurt me the most, but it will make you think that she's an awful person the most.

I was traveling and out of town. We talked every night while I was gone and every night she talked about how much she missed me and how much she wanted to wake up in my arms in the morning.

Then, on my last day away... I called her at 9:06 pm (thank you verizon and your detailed records) to talk and we talked for 47 minutes, during which time she told me how much she loved me and how much she wanted me to come home. When I arrived home the next day, she immediately initiated sex with me, telling me how much she loved me and she missed me. In reality, she texted him "Come on over" and 9:04pm and she ended the call when he knocked on the front door.

After reassuring me repeatedly that he was ok that we couldn't ever have children, not only was he currently sleeping with AP, but was telling her how wonderful it would be to have

"Beautiful babies" with her.

During his A, I had undergone several rounds of IVF and had a miscarriage. He was lying through his teeth when I needed him the most.

Not certain this is an offence that can ever be forgiven....

He didn't respect me enough to learn from his mistakes the first two times and the third time broke us.

For me, it was the struggle reconciling the different options. No matter which direction it goes, it's painful.

It's hurtful to me if she gave herself to this guy so fully if she had no emotional connection to him.

On the other hand, it's also hurtful to me if she felt a deep emotional connection with the guy and felt love towards him, making her behavior at least more sympathetic, but then still very hurtful.

Make sense?

That he did it with a friend, the wife of his good friend, in my house, over and over again.

That he showed OW our daughters wedding pictures ...

he had gotten upset with me when I showed my Bff my daughters wedding dress ....DD didn't want anyone to see it until the wedding...he actually told me I had betrayed her trust!!!

oh man how many times have I brought this up in the early days after dday!!!