SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi all, I have been reading through many of your experiences over the past week and I think I've finally got a clear enough mind to share my story and accept some support.

My husband and I have been married 14 years, have kids and run a company together. As I've been sorting through thoughts and emotions from individual counselling sessions, and marriage counselling sessions I'm realizing that our situation is incredibly complex and it feels overwhelming to think about how much work we would have to do to overcome this as both a couple and individually. Not to mention how our income is solely dependent on our business thriving, which means we need to be communicating effectively on that front.

2 weeks ago my husband was at the dentist and I was waiting on a go ahead for a project we are working on. I checked his voice messages (this is the norm for both of us to do) to see if the customer had tried to reach him by phone during his appointment. There were 2 messages- one from the customer, and another from a woman- "hey stranger, I'm coming to *city we live in*, give me a call, you have my number". My ears went up but I was making myself give him the benefit of the doubt. I got the number off the message options and searched it in his contacts, and it came up under a supplier's (he is a man) name. I thought ok, maybe this is supplier’s wife and it has to do with collecting a check that hadn't been issued yet. This guy's wife does his accounting for him. Far stretch, I know. But I was desperately trying not to jump to conclusions.

I waited for husband to get home and calmly confronted him by asking him to clarify what the message was about. Voicemail was on speaker, he turned white and told me this was a woman who worked for a contractor we had worked with on a recent project. I asked to see his phone and he didn't want to give it to me. He eventually did hand it over and was very defensive and wouldn't stand more than 2 feet from me. In a defensive outburst he told me this woman was giving him attention and he liked it and then tried to flip this on me and say our marriage hasn't been good for months. There was nothing to be found on his phone. I demanded details and he started giving me the run down of events:

- "She" was working in the building he was working in

- At first friendly and would come by and see progress on the job

- She asked for his number, he obliged and gave it to her

- They began texting and phoning each other, very flirty but nothing sexual at this point

- Job wrapped up 3 days after they met. He tells her he will be back in the next week or two for a day to do a walk through with the owners of the project

- He leaves, comes home to me and everything seems completely normal with him

- A week or so later he flies back to this city (just for the day) for his meeting. Leaves at 8 am

- Texts her to tell her he's on the flight and will be there soon, asks her if she's working. She says yes, see you when you get here

- He has his meeting and has to fix a few things on a very tight schedule to make it back to the airport for his flight home

- She comes in and tells him she's going to be coming to the city we live in next month, and will have a hotel room. He tells her she can't text or call him because he's married. He'll reach out to her when he can to make plans. She agrees. They then engage in very sexual texting for the rest of the day while he's traveling to the airport and back on his flight. When he gets back to home city, he then deletes all messages on his phone and blocks her from both text and calls. His version is that he didn't intend to go through with it, hence the blocking. He was very caught off guard that she was able to leave a voice message as he thought the block wouldn't allow that. I can verify she was blocked when I looked through his phone right after he came home from dentist. Still doesn't answer the question of why he kept her number if he had no intention of getting in touch with her ever again. I'm not buying it. I've told him that it seems to me he would block her to ensure I didn't intercept any messages. But obviously he could just unblock her to make contact for awhile, and then delete everything and block again.

**For context- he was working out of town with one other guy, they share a hotel room, site records prove they were on site 12-14 hour days, and the employee he was with cannot do any of this work without my husband, plus all meals/evenings were accounted for**

So all of this comes out of him and his demeanour changed from defensive to guilty. I could see the moment where he realized this was serious and separating was 100% on the table from this betrayal and breach of trust. He begins apologizing. He told me he fucked up, I didn't do anything to cause this, he could have shut it down along the way and chose not to, was justifying it by telling himself he wasn't physically cheating. When she approached him about taking it to the physical level he was very aroused. He admitted that if they had longer together in the same city he likely would have acted on it if given the opportunity. The sexting took it to another level for him and he said he blocked her because he felt tempted. Some of this lines up, some of it doesn't. He finds a way to recover iMessages and tells me the texts will verify everything he's told me, and he knows it will be very painful but maybe I should read them so I can verify what he has told me is the truth. I declined. I don't think I can handle it, definitely not now, maybe not ever. He's been completely transparent and gentle since all of this went down. When he gets a text he'll just calmly let me know who it is and what about, etc.

He told me he wanted me to see him put a definite end to whatever it was they had going on, so he unblocked her and asked me if I would prefer he do it over phone or text, and if I wanted to be there to hear it/see it for myself. I felt conflicted but said I'd feel "more comfortable" with a text. He sent the text, it was delivered, but no response and no "read" status. I don't know what to think. He figures it's not a big deal to her as they didn't have much time to "build" anything except anticipation and he hadn't returned her message. So that's just going to be a big question mark forever, I guess. It's not like I would ask him to phone her to confirm she received the message. He is keeping her number unblocked and ensured me he would show me any texts that come through at any point going forward. He deleted the number out of his phone so he can't contact her (as far as I know he hasn't written it down anywhere). I mean, there's so much I just have to trust him on which is so difficult.

I'm devastated. I feel completely blindsided. This came at such a delicate time as we just lost an incredibly close family friend in November and all of his timeline is right smack in the middle of when I was deep in the throes of intense grief. I thought we were connecting deeply as a couple because of this loss, so this infidelity is an incredibly deep betrayal. Do I believe this never got physical? I think I do believe him on that front. Doubt sometimes creeps in and I feel like I want to read the texts but I know I won't be able to bleach my brain once I've read them, and I feel like it could cause more harm than good when it comes to chance of reconciliation.

Despite all of this I'm still in love with him. I'm doing intensive individual therapy and our marriage counsellor specializes in infidelity and we have already had some big breakthroughs so I'm hopeful. He's been very open and apologetic. I've asked many, many questions over the last couple of weeks and he answers them gently, however uncomfortable some of them have been, and doesn't get irritated with me at all. The depth of our conversations has deepened greatly. I just can't get my head on straight, this is such a rollercoaster. I am seeing signs of true remorse and I suppose it's just a matter of consistency, time and healing, and the long term changes he's willing to make and show me he's willing to commit to re-building our marriage. It's very complicated when it comes to the nature of our business and him having to travel and stay out of town sometimes. I don't know how this is going to work. It's making me sick to think about it.

Thanks for reading my novel. It's somewhat therapeutic to write it all out.

[This message edited by anonymoose01 at 5:42 PM, February 22nd (Friday)]

I wish I could be more optimistic but I have read this and I believe it to be true, A woman intent on seducing a man can almost always succeed. Unless he is lying to you she seems to be the aggressor. If she is married her husband needs to know ASAP. I make no excuses for his behavior. He is a grown man and was on the doorstep of becoming a cheater physically because he already was emotionally. What possessed him to do something so stupid? You two own a business together. How does he think this is going to play out in his life if every single time he leaves town you have to trust him when you know you can’t. How is he going to fix this? I think you need to get some counseling where someone can whack him over the head ( figuratively speaking) to get him to understand just what he was going to lose.

Tell the OBS. Now. He needs to know about his wife/partner what you know about your husband. Exposure is the best disinfectant for an affair. Don’t tell your husband you are going to expose this to the AP’s spouse.

She is single. And trashy apparently. He wears a wedding band.

Duplicate post

[This message edited by pureheartkit at 8:37 PM, January 27th (Sunday)]

I see you just posted she is single. Tell him this is his last ever EA, you will not tolerate it and there will be consequences.

Wearing a wedding band doesn’t give anyone magical

powers to ward off infidelity. They need to use their head. And some people who are single get a kick out of having an affair with a married person.

Ya I’m fully aware. Just in the context of they avoided discussing if they were in relationships (don’t ask don’t tell). She could clearly see he was married vs they both played ignorant

It appears you got wind of it very early on. Good work. You’re one of the 2% who catch it before it gets physical.

[This message edited by Mene at 9:18 PM, January 27th (Sunday)]

You have some work to do with your husband. It appears he’s remorseful. Wishing you all the best.

He’s done some slick cheater moves.

OW name inderca guy’s name

Sexting

Flirting

Dishonesty

Glad you have a good support counselor.

I'm sorry you are here, but this is a great place to come for healing and getting out of infidelity.

Your WH was so very close to having a physical affair, but if he has told you the truth (a BIG IF) it appears that he actually does have a conscience and he put a stop to his wayward behavior before he actually engaged in physical acts with her.

I suggest you take his phone, install the app "Dr. Fone" and follow the prompts up to the point where you would be able to read any messages recovered. Then turn it off. Take it to your marriage counselor, who can read the messages and share an abbreviated version of their contents with you in a way that you can process without becoming even more traumatized by reading his and her actual words.

That way you are learning about the content of the messages without going through the filter of having to trust that he's deleted some but not others, and you are protected from being haunted to some extent.

It appears you might have a good chance of reconciliation, but I urge you to hold back for a while to think this over, go through the process of discovering the truth independently of what he says. Many waywards will only disclose or discuss what you already know and wont give you additional details. They will minimize and hide other parts of the affair to make it seem less than it really was. I don't know if that is the case with your WH but think carefully before accepting that you have the whole story.

I urge you not to do what I did which was immediately go into fix it mode and try to do all the heavy lifting putting the marriage back together. This just let my WH know that I was desperate not to loose him and he could keep on with his wayward ways and he wouldn't really suffer any consequences.

Have you asked him if he had ever done anything like this before? Is this his first rodeo with sexting or has he had an affair before this?

You can demand that he write down a timeline of this particular affair, and also write down any other contacts with women that could be considered betrayal.

Once he's written the timeline, you can demand a polygraph test and see what his reaction to that is. If he is defensive, deer in the headlights, then you may have a hint that there is more.

Another thing, my WH and I owned a business together as our sole income source, and the OWs were people I knew, customers of the business. It was awful, and I was completely terrified of the business coming apart. It turned out that it did come apart. I had to leave and separate due to his abuse. I lost my job, he lost a key staff member. It didn't take long for the business to tank without me there.

I got by on unemployment for a while, and then slowly had to put my life back together without him or the business. It can be done.

Don't make decisions about your marriage based on the business. Just don't. You can make decisions for yourself and your family that have you take a different path in life. You can choose divorce if this is a deal killer for you. Options include getting a different job and he can hire somebody else to take your place. If you were sick or injured and couldn't work, you'd figure out how the handle someone else doing your job (or his, not saying you should leave the business and he should stay, maybe its the other way).

Just don't talk yourself into believing you are trapped in the relationship because of the business. Keep those two issues separate. Believe in your own strength to make your choices about what to do, and give yourself the option of thinking about the marriage coming apart, and your future being different, but also successful in a different way. You can make a hard left if you feel that is the right thing for you.

It is typical for men to blame the OW. I find it hilarious that men claim to be so masculine and tough, but yet are so weak that they blame the woman when they get busted. Society has been that way for thousands of years. He knows just what to say to you. He knows the player game well. Men learn from other men, their experienced AP and online how to best fool their wife. This is not his first rodeo. Don’t believe anything he says. He will tell you she is single to keep you from going to her husband or boyfriend. Watch his actions. Get yourself a VAR put under his truck seat. He most likely has a cheap Walmart phone hidden somewhere. My OBS found four burner phones during my WW and her AP affair. She was not his only AP. Check in his tool boxes, under truck seats, behind truck seats, in garage, in shed, in boat, in four wheeler, in gun safe, etc. My OM (preacher) wanted his wife and a his side chicks too. He got away with it for 45 years, until he ran into a husband with some brains and willing to fight for his 28 yr marriage. Please do not confront him again unless you have solid proof. That retrieved voice mail was not solid proof. I made that mistake, the OM and my WW took it deeper underground. I became my own PI, but it would have been so much easier to let them play a while longer until I had solid proof. Trail cams, set on 3 min video, are very helpful too. You have to have “security” around your business, like I did. On his next trip out of town, have a family member or friend do some hotel/restaurant PI work on the first day/night and the second night. Business men (especially traveling), law enforcement, preachers, doctors, politicians....these men in positions of power, trust and authority love taking advantage of that to get what they want from women. I would check credit card bills and bank statements carefully, especially near all of his out of town trips. A cheap phone and data card cost around $100. Dinner for two around $40-60.

[This message edited by manofintegrity at 8:03 AM, January 28th (Monday)]

Thanks for all of your responses. I appreciate your insight.

I've done everything I can do on my end as far as sleuthing. It hasn't made me feel better, and I haven't found any conflicting information at this point. I'm cautiously choosing to work with what I have now. I'm hanging onto counselling (both marriage and individual for both of us) as my life line at this point. My husband has taken complete accountability for his actions and we are working through the trauma aspect of it. He understands that transparency is non-negotiable and any violations of trust, including small lies or discoveries, will mean divorce. He brought a lot of info to the table at our first counselling session together. He said he wanted a clean slate to build from and had to come clean about a few things. They were what I would consider minor things that would have seemed a lot more upsetting at the time they happened. Maybe they just seem smaller given what we are dealing with now. No past infidelities that he brought up. I've never seen him open up emotionally like this before and I truly am hopeful we can start from scratch and build back up to a better place. We rug swept a lot of things in our marriage that should have been dealt with head on. I think there's a lot more resentment than both of us were ready to admit prior to him cheating. This is going to be a really painful process over years and it's scary but the alternative of calling it off and divorcing doesn't feel right to me at this time. I think I'm at a point where I've decided I want to try. That's a big step forward because I had been going back and forth and now I feel like I can commit to this decision, for now, and with caution.

In response to the comments about our business, yes I agree. I can't feel tied to him for this reason. In counselling I've been able to define boundaries for myself and created a possible exit strategy if I feel I need or want to go that route. We have built this business from the ground up and it's a big part of my identity. I don't want to let that part of my life go, regardless of issues in my personal life. I've even determined that I'm open to still being business partners if we were to divorce, it would require restructuring of the company but would be possible if both of us agreed to specific terms.

BS only

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:17 PM, February 8th (Friday)]

You got some great advice here - but one thing stuck out at me that you said:

I URGE you - if you think you cannot handle reading the messages, then DON'T. For me, the words that I have read and heard are the hardest things for me to get beyond...I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about them now, and I declined to read about 99% of the messages I recovered. I didn't need to know the details...the sexting...ugh, don't read it unless you feel you need to. I can hardly look at my WH sometimes because I wonder "Who the f___ are you???" So sleazy and so gross and so pathetic...just barf.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 12:38 PM, January 29th (Tuesday)]

Hi @anonymoose01, having known the pain of betrayal and also the miracle of a marriage that was restored, I do understand your decision to work at your marriage. I'm always rooting for marriages to be reconciled but I know it's a journey that takes time and a life long commitment from both spouses. One thing I also learnt from my R journey was not to rug sweep issues in the marriage and to deal with it no matter how painful it is.

My prayer for you is that your marriage R will be one of the success stories and your family will be stronger for it. Wish you all the best.

I'm back with an update. We recovered the texts together and read through them and as much as it fucking stung the texts were able to verify that my husband told me the whole truth about what happened. It all lined up with dates, times, everything. Nothing physical, but that was surely the timing of it all, I 100% believe this would have turned physical if they had more time.

We're going to counselling together. Our therapist has been really helpful in teaching us how to communicate without escalating. I think we're on the right track. It's going to be a long road. I'm still a roller coaster of emotions but I know I'm committed to trying.

Next step is the polygraph. I feel like I need to know there are no skeletons in his closet before I can really commit to moving forward with our marriage. Sometimes I feel guilty for that, but I know it's what I need.

One question I have, and this may be more suited to starting another post, is how many of you were simultaneously going through marriage counselling and both going to individual counselling as well? I'm seeing signs that my individual counselling is not meshing well with the progress we're making together with our marriage counsellor. I'm really starting to get the sense that my counsellor wants me to leave my husband. She's said multiple times "I'm not a betting person but I would bet with all my money that this was a physical, sexual affair". I guess I just don't see how that is constructive given my choice to start building trust, and then go through the pain of reading "sext" messages to verify there was no physical. Btw it was the wording that indicated they had not yet even touched each other, and talk about how they wished they had... etc etc. So given the content of those texts I feel 100% certain they did not do anything physical or sexual.

Any thoughts or advice? Maybe new counsellor for me? Husband is not experiencing any issues going through individual and marriage counselling at the same time, and in fact said the individual sessions are helping him to open up more with me in our sessions together. It's the first time in our relationship he's been accountable and vulnerable. I'm just seeing huge progress here even though it's still very early. All indicators are pointing to him being remorseful and actively moving toward big changes for himself and in our marriage.

I’m a BS and also happen to be a therapist (and have also done plenty of my own therapy, as well). New therapist for you, stat. REALLY inappropriate for your therapist to conjecture in that way. She can believe your husband is a lying liar who lies and that he isn’t worthy of redemption, but she absolutely should not be letting her personal opinions or guesses be known in the therapy room. Yikes. Given your statement that you’ve seen evidence, believe you have all the info, and are choosing to move forward with the marriage right now... double yikes. Not good boundaries and also— bad therapy. :(

If you’re therapist shopping, I recommend a therapist who practices Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) or Somatic experiencing... both of these models often lend themselves well to managing the trauma of infidelity.