SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I just wrote WH a letter... basically just telling him that he'll never love me the way I love him

I told him I'll never be enough for him and that he doesn't need to stay with me out of obligation

Why the fuck is he even still here? Why doesn't he just leave when it's so obvious I'll never be what he wants?

Oh, LP. I am so sorry you're here. I am familiar with some of the feelings you are experiencing. Firstly, I want to point out the above statements you've made. Your wayward does NOT deserve your love right now. As mentioned in the 180, he is not exhibiting loving behavior and 'I love you's' for his disgusting behavior are not deserved at all. YOU ARE ENOUGH. YOU ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH. YOU MATTER. YOU ARE SPECIAL. YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE AND EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED. HE just isn't able to give it to you, because everything you feel right now about yourself is likely how he feels about himself and he has thrown it onto you for the sake of not facing it. It was never you, you are not his problem. HE is. You are an innocent bystander to his sick escape from his own pain. You didn't deserve this, you didn't cause this, it wasn't because you are less than or unworthy of love. YOU ARE WORTHY. You have always been. He is just broken and hurting you in the process.

In all honesty, it is he that should be concerned about YOU not staying. You have every right and reason to walk away from him to protect yourself - not the other way around.

Why is he there? Because its comfortable. Because as much as he used his AP he uses you too...because he is the equivalent of a child right now that doesn't want to be alone and face himself. He needs external validations, security, comfort. Someone to make him feel okay about himself because he never feels ok about himself on his own. He won't willingly walk away from you unless he finds some AP that he thinks will give him as much as you have. In the mean time - he will keep you and get whatever on the side. It's what cheating is. All about the ego. The selfishness. The voids that need filling with people and more people.

You have to be strong for you. He failed you as a partner but you still have YOU. And you deserve not to abandon yourself in such a fragile time. I know it's hard. But you are worth saving yourself. You are worth showing up for yourself. You are worth your love. You are worth your care. You are worth giving everything you gave to him to yourself.

Telling me the truth about EVERYTHING is the only way I'll ever trust him again.

I don't think you'll ever think you've got the whole truth, sadly. My WS had an EA/PA many years ago and hid it because (he said) he thought it would break up our marriage. The most damage was the three years prior to dday in which he continued to deny everything. I finally found out from AP. More recently, he lied about his interactions with a female colleague, again, I found out from her. Due to this, I'm convinced there is more which I'll never know about, because anyone involved won't be telling me. This is the problem. Ws have no real reason to tell the truth. Even what they tell you is most likely minimized. WS has trickle truthed a few innocuous details, but would never tell me anything important, as he has demonstrated again and again.

Your WS is relying on you not finding out more. Is there any other info you can get, tell him you want 100% honesty, and test him with it? Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to trust mine again until I have info to 'test' him with, and he passes.

Thanks so much every one of you for all your responses... I have been reading and re-reading all of them. I barely got through the day at work and since I've been home I've been hiding up in my bedroom crying and WH is downstairs taking care of the kids. We've been texting a bit and he's just saying over and over how sorry he is, how ashamed he is, that he wishes so much he could take it all back, that he was stupid and selfish and didn't see at the time how much he loves me and wants me. I asked him what he had planned to do if she had come to the hotel and fucked him that night and had believed he wanted a relationship with her. He said he had no feelings for her and did everything out of desperation for positive attention that he didn't deserve. He said he would never have wanted any kind of relationship with her and she probably would've been pissed and told me everything. I guess she had her kid that night and couldn't go fuck him like she obviously wanted to. It makes me so sick thinking about their naked bodies together. I NEED to know if he fucked anyone. He'll take a polygraph if I want him to but I want to get some feedback first from those on here who have done them before. I don't even know what to do, I'm reeling right now. I can't eat, I'm having stomach pains, I feel dizzy and have this weird sort of "out of body" feeling. I have all this anger too and I want to destroy these bitches right now. I was the only one who didn't do anything wrong, yet I get all the pain and humiliation. I said that to my WH and he said he's so sorry, I don't deserve it, and he fucked up so bad. I do honestly see a change in him, he's acting much different than he did previously. He's not defensive at all and he's trying hard to comfort me. I want to believe in his love so much because he's all I wanted, but I can't even trust my own feelings anymore. I know I need to take care of myself. I'd been feeling better and now I'm right back to all this devastation. The most fucked up part is right now every inch of my body is yearning for him while I simultaneously feel so disgusted with the things he said to her. This is such a mindfuck. I want to let him comfort me because honestly it's the only thing making me feel any better right at this moment.

I'm only saying that to get him to admit it so I can leave him.

You don't need him to admit to anything to leave him. You know what you know. You feel what you feel. That is enough. If it's truly a dealbreaker for you, why are you waiting for him to leave? He won't. He likes it right where he is. You can leave anytime for any reason.

Same for you, justgetoverit. You're right. Your CH has no reason to tell you the truth because he knows you'll still be there if he doesn't. He's cake eating and you're letting him.

Set your boundaries and stick to them. "This is unacceptable to me. You can do whatever you want about it. I will act accordingly."

Coco, I'm honestly not sure yet if this is a dealbreaker for me or not. I love him and really want to reconcile but I know there's a chance I'll never get past it, even if he does all the work I need him to. I'm fairly certain he didn't physically cheat... even looking through all his message history he never made any plans to meet with his AP. It also was clear from the things he was saying to her that night that they had never had sex before. Physical cheating would be a definite dealbreaker for me. But if it was strictly EA's, I think there's a good chance we can get past it if he continues showing me true remorse and desire to change. I'm definitely not sitting around waiting for him to leave me... he is very afraid I'm going to divorce him and he knows there's a chance I'll ultimately decide to leave him. He's definitely walking on eggshells these days with me. I used to be afraid he would leave me, but now I see he never had any intentions to leave at all and he admits he only threatened it because he was angry.

Last night was really rough. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning feeling completely enraged. I woke him up and started questioning him and told him I hated him. He just kept apologizing and was answering my questions. I calmed down and let him comfort me. Now today I'm on the rollercoaster again with my emotions all over the place.

LP, I remember that your WS has a long history of inappropriate conduct online. Secret conversations with women on FB, that time you found a secret messaging app, etc. You focus a lot on this OW - one where he probably didn't get physical but wanted to and talked about it. What about all of the other OW where you never really got the truth/messages from because he had ample time to delete and hide them? It's worth considering a polygraph because there's an unknown number of OW that he could have slept with, not just this one. He may not be considering that you will ask about them if he takes one.

On the other hand, you could also go back over your own posts/any evidence of what you have or can remember and pin point out any time you knew or thought he was talking to an OW online and get him to fill in the details for you. The whole truth includes the other OW too even if he's being honest about this OW.

Bigger

ps: mammabear, I'm only a measly Guide but even I know that the mods of this site usually have a good reason for whatever limitations they place on us. Let's just respect their decisions...

I did receive a personal message after the fact.

I had no idea, I thought it was the right thing to name the source.

I understand now.

Nekonamida, there are 2 women I know he was sexting with. I did catch him sending friend requests to a couple of random attractive women on Facebook and he was liking sexy pics here and there, but I have no clue if he actually talked to any of them. Back in March, I told him I was filing for divorce and kicked him out. He stayed at a hotel for a week. During this week, he signed up for plenty of fish and tinder. I was able to access all his app history through his Google account and he deleted both apps before he moved back home and then never downloaded them again. I was able to hack both accounts and could see he had not logged on since he left the hotel and came back home. He downloaded WhatsApp as well around April but I found the app on his phone only a few days after he downloaded it. He deleted it right away and didn't download it again. He uses voice to text a lot and has no clue how to access his history (he's not tech savvy at all). Even after I discovered the recorded messages back in June to AP#2, he couldn't figure out how to access or delete them, and everything was still in there when I looked the other day. I didn't see any messages that appeared to be to a different AP. From the things he was discussing, I could tell all conversations after he moved back home in March were with AP2. Now there very well could be more I don't know about. I'm strongly considering a polygraph and will be making a separate post asking for feedback on that. He has already said he'll take one if I want him to. The most important question I really want answered is if he had any sexual contact with anyone else during our marriage. Anything else, I think we could work through it if he remains devoted to our marriage.

I've asked him to dig into why he did this. So far, his reasons are that he was being incredibly selfish at the time only thinking about his wants. This is a huge character flaw that he needs to work on. He said he convinced himself that I didn't love him or want him, and justified his behaviour by telling himself that. He said another reason is that during his childhood he was basically ignored by his very busy parents (he's the youngest of 6 boys) and also suffered through a lot of emotional abuse from his grandmother. She would constantly put him down and mock his appearance, calling him a fatass and other horrible names. He feels worthless when he doesn't get positive attention and he has a lot of self esteem issues. He is working through these issues in IC, but I know they will take a long time to get resolved.

He suffers from panic attacks as well, and came very close to a full blown one last night. He just sat very still sort of hugging himself, and was crying and kept saying to me how sorry he is. I think I am starting to actually SEE him... the real him. He's actually quite fragile emotionally although he puts on a front at times as a defense mechanism. He desperately needs anxiety medicine but hasn't made it to our family doc yet to try new meds. I'm still completely in love with him, and for the past month, he's really been trying to prove he's just as in love with me. I am having a hard time believing it, but I really am seeing changes in him that I haven't seen before. This discovery the other day has been a huge setback though... what bothers me the most is that he was talking crap on me to AP1 the night he was at the hotel. After she contacted him because I had messaged her on Instagram, he said I'm crazy and told her to ignore me. That bothers me more than anything else he said to her. The next day I sent her screenshots of texts he sent me that morning talking shit on her, saying she's trashy and a hoodrat and he's not attracted to her (he was also saying she was lying about him messaging her that night). After I sent her that, she told him to not contact her anymore. I guess she realized at that point that he had no respect for her and was just trying to use her to get laid.

When I was reading all the messages he was sending these two women, it struck me how fake he sounded and how different the messages were compared to how we talked when we first started dating. It was so weirdly obvious that he was only saying what he thought they wanted to hear to keep the ego kibbles coming.

He did admit to a couple of other things last night that he had been denying. He admitted he spoke to two girls on plenty of fish while he was at the hotel, but never made plans to meet (I checked his Google timeline and already knew he had never left the hotel the nights he was there, so he never went on a date). He also admitted he spoke to AP2 on the phone twice (through Facebook messenger). He had previously said all interaction was only through text.

He swears there is nothing else, but I think a polygraph is in our future for sure.