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Very relieved to hear this news.

He sees this as him being weak.

Personal restraint takes so much strength. He did well. I think he will look back on this later on and be thankful that he held himself back.

Wishing you both well, and keeping you both in my thoughts.

Your husband is angry, but not stupid. Good. I'm glad he didn't take the awful situation you put him in and make it worse.

What are you going to do to make tomorrow better than today?

Swinters,

For your BH and for you too:

Strength is not giving in to fear, doubt, and pain

You're both showing it, IMO.

Best wishes -- IDK

as a bs its somewhat normal, although not healthy, to go in and out of denial. seeing the texts may be a way of him 'proving to himself' how bad, extended, and brutal your betrayal was.

its a part of healing. stop trying to control him.

Thank goodness.

Thinking of you both today.

Nm.....I was reading something in your post very wrong. My mistake.

[This message edited by GoldenR at 7:02 AM, April 15th (Saturday)]

11 months out from dday and I look back and am grateful. Although it was painful, it was exactly what I needed to get my ass in gear and make the changes that I needed to make. Ultimately, we can use this experience to make us better or not.

"Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know." Pema Chodron

I read them. I needed to observe the real nature of their relationship. I wanted to see the truth. It was hard...really hard. I was a zombie for quite awhile afterwards (weeks). Waves of pain for months. The words are still burned into my memory. But I did process through it and I would do it again if I had the choice.

As a MHer, I remember the fog and the ego kibbles and the fantasy bullshit. When I read her words to my WH and his to her, I saw myself and I related back to who I was in my own A. This added to my pain.

I read them. I needed to observe the real nature of their relationship. I wanted to see the truth. It was hard...really hard. I was a zombie for quite awhile afterwards (weeks). Waves of pain for months.

This was the motivation behind my 'bartering' suggestion. Without bartering, how about you at suggest to him that the texts will be awful to read and that he should plan on therapy/EMDR after reading them?

I had an unromantic online EA and I deleted everything. BH assumes the worst and I can't prove otherwise. As much as it would have still killed him to read them I think in the long run it would have helped him heal. Not knowing is awful.

Swinters look at it this way he already knows. Yeah it's going to make things temporarily worse but it will be okay. There was a time when my BH was raging at me to the point where I was having panic attacks. Took him years to stop screaming at me but it did stop.

Hang in there.

I wanted to say that I was glad to read you gave him the information. Now be patient with him as he tries to process this. Remember that he hates what you did, the action, he does not hate you, the person.

He looked at me and said with full hatred and fear in his voice, "you're a monster."

It's a four letter word around these parts, but give it some time. His initial reaction is normal and understandable, a little time to process this new info and he'll be able to work through it.

I am a BS so believe me when I say I understand how he feels. My husband made love to me and then had sex with someone else the next day. What are we supposed to think? He claims the sex was no different... really then what is the point. It is hell to live through this.

We go through "how could you?" Because for the life of me I could not treat anyone any the way he has treated me. You are asking the BS to understand something that our brain doesn't work that way. I promise you when he was having sex with her, my feelings were the last thing on his mind. It takes time to recover from these blows. I call them kill shots.

Time.... sorry there is no easy in this. 😢

He looked at me and said with full hatred and fear in his voice, "you're a monster."

As others have said, give him time. He now has the full truth, which will help stop some of his mind games... the ones where he imagined what you said/did.

In all honesty, I would be doing much better if I had the full truth from my wife. So, I know that it doesn't feel like it now, but this is very good.

I would disagree, at this moment, he probably does hate you. He hates the other man and he probably hates himself.

But that is probably true regardless of you showing him the messages. If you kept them and didn't show him it would feel like you were protecting the om and that relationship. That you were still controlling the situation and not giving him say to know what his life really is, what/who his wife was.

You/he needs to know what he's accepting if he stays.

Last post from me.... best of luck to you. I pray you find your why and the two of you fix your issues.

For me personally... I never felt hate for myself. I know I did not cause my spouse to cheat. If anything, I begged him to let me help him during his depression. I see both the spouse and ow as two very messed up people.

Again ... best of luck in solving this.

Letting him read the texts is the same as being willing to answer all his questions. This is a question. He wants to read first hand the type of relationship you were sharing with someone else that you should have been sharing with him.

It is very true for most bus's that what our mom nds tell us happened is usually worse than what did.

Please know that it's not reading the texts that is hurting him, it is the fact that you wrote them and did the things you did. Him knowing the details is just giving him the information that he has a right to know.

Not giving him the texts will tell him that you are hiding something and if it were me, I would believe you were trying to keep that from him because you cherish that little secret life you had with ap.

I undefeated texts on wh phone. I found out myself how to do it. You should find out how to do it and give home a copy of whatever you retrieve. If my wh did that, I would have believed that I finally had all the truth and he was no longer hiding his dirty little secrets.

I only got some of the texts which clearly showed me how much he was lying. He finally admitted the truth. I was going to take the phone to a forensic tech lab and pay $500 for the to retrieve all the data on the phone but I let him talk me into wiping in clean. His intent was to put the year long search of mine for details (because I knew he was still lying) finally behind us and start to move forward because I apparently had all the details. It is one of my biggest regrets. I want to know what their relationship was like. I want to know what he was saying to her. Even though I know he was in a screwed up place and it was all fantasy l, I want to know what he was saying and thinking. To this day I suspect there are things he said that he says didn't happen. I want to read it for myself and I never will now

He needs to read them for many reasons and making sure what you told him is the truth is just one of them.

If my wh asked me if I was sure I wanted to read them and it was just going to cause more hurt, I would freak out at him because his actions are what caused the hurt, not me knowing the actions.

He looked at me and said with full hatred and fear in his voice, "you're a monster."

I'm so sorry. I know you must be crushed and hurting. I'm not sure what to say... I'd love to promise you that this will pass... I can't. But I can tell you that my BS has also viewed the monster I was and we managed to survive and continue to R. And in a weird way, sometimes those pain moments are what she needed to heal and trust that what she was getting was the truth. So there is hope.

Today may be a good day to go for a walk, hit the beach, go to a museum... anything to take some reflection and remorse time.

(((swinters)))

PS - I'm so relieved no one got hurt (physically) last night.

It took incredible strength, for your BH to walk away from a confrontation with the OM last night. I'm so glad that he was able to do that, for everyone's sake.

Even though you may have told him everything that he asked, and proactively told him about anything you thought about, there is a special pain when you "see" it, with your own eyes. It's yet another confirmation that this REALLY DID happen. Turns of phrases, names that you and the OM called each other, the documented intimacy all are yet another dagger thrust to the heart and mind. I downloaded my FWHs extensive correspondence with his on-line ho's and the discovery of words that I thought were sacred between ourselves had been so freely given to multiple people who just wanted to milk his wallet was one of the more horrifying things that I was presented with. Photos I had taken of him, in places special to ourselves, were used to present himself as a single, world traveler. I went back to those written words time and time again, trying to make sense of what was unimaginable. So yeah, I hated his guts for that. I definitely reacted to the reading and re-reading. However, on the other hand, it helped ground me in that those writings reinforced the fact that I could not, would not, rug sweep. That I would walk through this with my eyes wide open, and get to the other side without illusions.

Think of this as another dday. It's going to be bad for awhile. Likely very bad. And it's going to take time. Hopefully this is the last seismic earthquake wave that he will have to absorb, and the aftershocks will be less and less. Hang in there.