This is my first post on SI even though I have been a long time lurker. I have been comforted to see others who put into words exactly what I am thinking or feeling. There have been some recent posts that have absolutely nailed it. I just passed 3 years post discovery day. I found SI a few weeks after discovery and it was good to see instinctually I had done all the right things first. Not sure I'm looking for advice more than getting all of my thoughts and feelings out as I recently made the decision to move to divorce. While I agreed to try reconciliation after DD, I think a part of me knew I could never get over this and the betrayal was just too deep. I don't know how to look at him any differently. I applaud those who are able to successfully reconcile. But I am still so angry at and disappointed with him and sad that our marriage had to end like this. He was my first and my only serious relationship (we started dating right after college graduation). I had very low expectations of men and relationships when we met (my dad was a serial cheater which he knew) and he was supposed to be different, especially because his dad had basically left his mom for another woman and started a new family. But he wasn't. 33 continuous years together (23 married) when I found out. Apologies in advance for the length.
Bottom line: WH had a LTA which produced a child whom he hid for almost 3 years. And the way I found out was that my 16 yo (at the time) overheard him talking to a child on the phone in our house and asked me about it because she knew that wasn't normal. I knew my husband didn't talk to other people's kids on the phone (not even his nephews and nieces) so I knew something was up. I immediately searched his phone when it was out of his sight and found a text thread with a woman and photos of a child. I didn't get very far in the text thread but saw enough and it was a gut punch. I confronted him right then and there. He of course denied it and said it was a "friend" who was getting older and wanted a child so he agreed to donate sperm via artificial insemination (the things he thinks I would believe). I knew that made no sense. By the end of the weekend (I confronted him on a Friday) I got him to finally admit he was sleeping with her. I asked him how long, and he said a little over 3 years. I told him our marriage was over because I had been explicit that infidelity was a deal breaker. He left for a week-long business trip that same weekend and that's when I got to work. By the time he returned I had made printouts of all our financial docs, consulted 2 divorce lawyers and read 3 years of texts (he didn't realize his phone synced with our home computer) and combed emails, keeping copies of everything. I wished I could have read beyond the 3 years but he had consolidated phones during that time so it wasn’t possible. But reading the texts is when I learned the true extent of what was happening. That this had started 10 years ago and that the child was intentional, not an accident. The woman was in her 40s, still single and wanted a child and according to him the only way he could continue to have sex with her was to give her what she wanted (what???) If he hadn't ended the affair with her before the request for a child, that should have been his cue to say I'm definitely out but nooo.
I also learned through the texts that he had also slept with someone else a few times (a married woman with a child) during that time while still sleeping with the LTA woman. By the time I confronted him again when he returned home from his business trip, I had a good set of facts and timeline so it was all about seeing whether he would tell me the truth or lie to my face like he did when I initially confronted him because I already had the answers. He calls these "gotchas." I call them truth tests.
I eventually learned he told the LTA it was over immediately after DD even though I had told him I didn't want to be married to him anymore before he left for his trip. Apparently he called her and told her I knew and she said she was glad and now he could choose. He told her there was no choice and he was staying with me. He kept asking me to try and reconcile. I wanted to walk away. My oldest was already in college and my youngest was a year from starting college. I have my own life and friends, a good career and make good money. I was not afraid of being single. I did not need to stay. But I agreed to try R.
I went through menopause early (45) and my libido declined pretty much to where it was basically non existent. It wasn’t always this way but his libido was always stronger. We were definitely having very infrequent sex but I didn’t think anything of it because it was so not top of mind for me. So I definitely understand his frustration and why he might want to look for sex elsewhere. Unlike some waywards, he had never changed how he acted toward me. I never felt "neglected" and he was not cold or distant. He actually used the fact that he never changed how he acted with me to justify how what he did was really about sex and not about not wanting to be with me. And in truth he never missed a kid’s sports game. We traveled a lot as a family with multiple trips throughout the year and went on long trips too (2-3 weeks at a time at least once a year) and for a period of 4 years he would often accompany me on my business trips in between his own trips. He usually traveled weekly for work which is what facilitated the affair because it took place in the same city his firm was HQd.
I am not a jealous person by nature. And I trust until you give me a reason not to. I have always had his passwords to everything (phone, computer, bank accounts, etc) and never used them. He had my implicit trust for 30 years.
He has always characterized his affair as solving his sex problem (not having it enough with me). He said he never wanted to leave me or boil down our marriage to sex and that I would have divorced him over it if he had done that 10 years earlier and he didn't want a divorce just because of sex because everything else in our marriage was working great. I told him that while I completely understood his desire and need for sex, that didn't give him the right to solve the problem with cheating and cheating for so long. He had a choice. And what's even worse was his decision to knowingly and intentionally FATHER A CHILD. That's even more of a betrayal and shows such a breakdown in judgment it's almost unbelievable -- he had to know that decision would eventually blow up in his face and he is creating a permanent symbol of the affair. What was a hole between us (lack of sex) became a chasm (no sex + LTA + child) and WAY harder to address. I told him if we had divorced 10 years ago over lack of sex, he would at least still have some level of respect from me intact. I now know what he is capable of, the lack of respect he showed me, the crossing of lines he is willing to do. Implicit trust was gone and will never come back even if we stayed together and I don’t know how to be with someone I don't trust fully. Not to mention I counted at least 4 pregnancies for this woman by reading just the 3 years of texts, 2 of which happened AFTER the birth of the child (who knows how many happened in the 7 years previous because they didn't use birth control) One she lost and one she terminated. Again - for me this was too much. I think reconciliation was always going to be doomed for me. I saw sides of my husband through those texts (level of manipulation, incredibly poor judgement, sense of entitlement and selfishness, lack of basic respect for me and the family) that I had never seen before. I don’t recognize this man at all and I now can't separate what he did from who he is.
He was the master of compartmentalization. He could call me and then hang up and call his AP (yep, I looked at old phone bills, mapped his texts to our trips, texts he wrote to me and events in our lives) He could go see her the week after returning from a 2 week vacation with us. I discovered through the texts that he was texting baby names back and forth with her while he was on a family vacation with me, our kids, his mom and my mom. I literally don't know how you do that and not feel guilty. It turns out I knew who this woman was because he had told me about a "friend" who could help my son in the college application process (she never met my kids but she knew about them). The fact that he could talk to me about her like it was nothing made me sick when I realized I knew who she was. Made me even sicker that he was talking about MY kids with her. He had also shared photos of them with her. I went ballistic when I learned that. It was another indication of his inability to feel shame and guilt.
He didn't seem to have any lines he couldn't cross so it really wasn't enough to me that he "chose " me and walked away from her even when I didn’t ask him to (i.e., he ended the affair without my asking him to). I was ready to walk on DD. My kids are pretty much grown and they already know what happened because of how this was discovered.
A month after DD I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The cancer is hormone positive so there is no taking hormones to address the libido issues. In fact I have to take hormone blockers for the next 5 years. So in addition to this shit show, I was dealing with surgery, chemo and radiation so my health, not reconciling, was my first priority that entire first year and a half post discovery. So while technically it has been almost 3 years of trying "reconciliation," for me it’s really only 1.5 years but for him it feels like 3 years. He moved out of the house at my request for about 8 months right after DD. When he moved back in, I had him stay in a guest bedroom which is where he has been ever since. For him things were moving too slowly. He wanted signs of "forward progress."
Now 3 years post DD and I haven't touched him in a romantic way. I told him from the outset when he insisted on trying to work it out what he was getting and this could be the case. I explicitly gave him no promises that sex would ever return especially because he made it even harder for me with the nature of his betrayal but he still wanted to try. I "see" her all over him. He is tainted. It makes me cringe (I honestly don't understand hysterical bonding). I also know way too much of what they did sexually because I read 3 years of texts and some of it was shocking to me. But I don't regret reading those texts. Yes it made it harder but it was the only way for me to really get the unvarnished truth and understand what he was capable of. I would do it again.
What has always bothered me in the period between discovery and now is this seeming lack of shame, guilt and contrition. He says the right words but I don't believe them because I don’t see the emotion. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him cry or become emotional about this set of events. He was someone who lived without consequences for so long and honestly I don’t think he really understands what consequences mean. But he will.
One of my conditions post DD was that if he wanted to stay in the child's life more than financially, he could do that, but it would be without me. I know what I can take, and what I CAN'T take is knowing he is interacting with another child he fathered while with me. But it was his choice. Fast forward to almost 2 years to the day since discovery, the OW contacted him asking for money for the child, though she did not file for child support which I found odd since that's the surest way to get the money she wanted. And honestly, this woman had been single for 40 years making a living as a lawyer-- she did not need financial support. She clearly wanted something else. He told me about it and I’m pretty sure there had been no contact before that with her or anybody else. After that, he would tell me when she reached out. He made it sound like all the convos were about money. I had stopped regularly checking his texts awhile ago but had sporadically started again when she reinstated contact and came across one that led me to believe he actually was in contact with the child and had seen her and the woman. I was just getting to the point where I thought he could really do hard stuff. But it turns out he had broken one of my conditions and misled me about the nature of the ongoing interaction. I confronted him and he said he had not slept with her but he saw the child because he knew had to in order to have sex with her again. Basically he was saying that regardless of whether he had slept with her yet, he was planning to f*%$ her. And that's when I called it and told him we are done and there is no path forward for us. And this time he finally got it, though he still says he doesn't want a divorce. For me, there is no other path.
33 years together, 2/3 of my life and this is how it ends. Not how I envisioned my future. Thanks for listening.
