never saw it coming.

[coccyx]

Hubby is away on business. I was looking for an old email receipt on his aol e mail account. A deleted message caught my eye, was a pic of a lady in her undies and message from Oh's phone that said 'yummy'.
I have confronted him. He says they meet up every few months just for sex. She is married , hubby not able to have sex, and my oh gets some sex as our physical relationship is virtually zero!
He says he loves me. Not sure what to do. All alone here, apart from children, I would speak to my friends in uk but they are also his friends.

Coccyx I'm sorry you're feeling so awful. I'm afraid you will, for ages, and you need to be really really kind to yourself. Have you told anyone in RL? You need all the help you can get with the children and everything.

When I found out it was like I couldn't get out of bed for a few days, and then the kids had months weeks of being plonked in front of cbeebies while I collapsed upstairs. Take it so easy, just get the basics done. It might surprise you how physical this pain is, although it will lessen, especially if your H does everything possible to help you.

There's a book often recommended on here called Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass which is very good. You have gone through a huge trauma, a complete shock to the system and the life and husband that you thought you had has kind of died in a way, so of course you are grieving. Glass talks you through the best way to get through this - with your H rebuilding your marriage, or on your own if that's what happens.

I would say that you DO need to know what happened, because your life for that period was not what you thought it was - you need to "reconstruct" it in a way. I can tell you from experience that the truth, no matter how horrendous, is infinitely preferable to what your imagination can conjure up. But do it slowly, when YOU are ready for it.

Thinking of you, so sorry again.

People can and do meet up purely for sex and for some it's merely a physical act devoid any emotional intimacy and/or attachment.

You will inevitably feel worse before you feel better but I believe that your marriage can survive and, in the grand scheme of all the years that have gone before and the ones that lie ahead, this is will be the short-lived glitch that gets you both back on track and able to share and enjoy intimacy with a greater intensity that you experienced before.

Another vote for Not Just Friends - it really helped me through the trauma of discovering my H's affair.

I can't imagine ever wanting to be intimate with him again.
I will get the book you have mentioned.
Thank you

It may be awful for a while. Anything sex related - with your H, or just on the tv or in songs, will send you right back. But it will fade. It's about 6 months since my H ended things with OW, and I can now watch stuff without too much reaction, although it does bring it to mind. My rl friend who is 3 years on says she now only thinks about it once a week or so. So if you can hang in there it will get better.

Counselling has also been good.

I feel angry with him today and wish he was here so i could tell him so, face to face.
Finding the up and down emotions rather odd. One minute I want to make him suffer the next I am in tears

Everyone seems to be blaming you for the lack of sex in your marriage, but it sounds to me as though you would have had more sex if he had been keen.

It makes a big difference to his justification - was it a sexless marriage because you refused to have sex with him or because nobody was initiating it?

No body was initiating it. Time just went by and to be honest felt a little awkward. he never pressured me, well we never mentioned it , but i guess he was getting it elsewhere so wasn't bothered!
He can be away for weeks and you would expect us to be all over each other on his return, but we never were.

I don't think he is trying to justify it.
I am noting down things I am going to ask him on his return and things I need to see/do from him. Sounds a bit clinical but there are things I realise I need to know

Your feelings are very normal - I remember going through similar stuff. I also found writing down my thoughts and questions helpful so that my whirling brain could have a rest.

Talking to a few close friends in RL helped me enormously and so did couples counselling a couple of months later.

I really feel for you coccyx. My H had an affair. You must be reeling. Seachange's book recommendation is very good. I found it helpful.

Lets face it. He has been deceitful and cheated.
He works away from home for long periods of time. How can he honestly reassure you that this will not happen again? You will have to trust him and he has proven you can't.
I could never cope or deal with the uncertainty while he was away again.
Is there anyway he could change jobs and stop all the travelling? Would it help if you moved back to the UK.
Trust has to be earned--if this was my DH l would have demanded that he return immediatly to hammer this out. You are being left in limbo still not knowing what he is up to.
He is weeping and wailing--why? simply coz he got found out, no other reason. If you hadn't discovered this l would bet it would continue longterm. Does the OW husband know??
Sorry this is not helpful but......

coccyx can I ask something?

Why didn't he invent an excuse at work and come home immediately? Have a think about that too, because if he would have come home for some other emergency, then he is not taking this seriously enough - and your pain, shock and confusion have all been made doubly worse because you've been unable to confront him face to face. The cynic in me also knows that this delay has given him ample opportunity to wipe his phone/laptop of any incriminating evidence and if he has finished with the woman, you have now lost the opportunity to hear what he said.

I completely agree with a poster above, that it seems that you are blaming yourself alone for your poor sex life, but please challenge that most vigorously. It doesn't sound as though he made any effort either and it would be interesting to know when that effort stopped. Manipulative people of both sexes will often want you to believe that they want sex all the time, but closer scrutiny tells a different story. If the supposedly higher-sexed one of the pair keeps asking for sex at inappropriate times (i.e. when you're cooking, about to go out, the DCs are in the next room) or their seduction technique amounts to asking for sex after a day without any kind gestures or affection, in reality this person knows he is going to be rejected, but wants you to take the blame for that. The truth is, that person didn't want sex at all, but won't take the responsibility for it.

I also wonder how labour is shared when he is at home? Four kids is an enormous workload, so the man who fails to pull his weight is also sabotaging his own sex life.

If he's been meeting the same woman for a long time, there might well be feelings involved, but he will be keen to deny them and present the affair as "just sex". What he might not bargain for in this lie however, is that in actuality that might make you feel worse in the long run, because it doesn't fit with the personality you thought he had.

I also think, if you have got any hope of saving this marriage, his long absences away from home have got to stop. Given that he seems to be prioritising his job above his marriage right now, I'd call him on this vow that he "will do anything". Will he change jobs and will you insist that he does?

I think he was so upset because I found him out and he realises that he may lose me and the children. He said he was ashamed that I would think he was not the man I thought he was, which is true. He has shown me that.
I am not too concerned about him not coming home straight away as I really don't think I would have wanted to see him.
He does his share of looking after the children. I think he has no idea though how much I do to keep them on the right track at school etc

I think Charbon is exactly right - if you are going to rebuild your relationship, the hard work and effort has to come from your H. It is going to be excruciatingly hard for you too, but your focus is on surviving. Your H has to be willing to pick up the pieces, do anything he possibly can to try and regain your trust, including being 100% open about what has happened, and willing to maybe make some lifestyle/job changes too.

Absolutely this "no sex" thing is NO excuse, or even mitigating circumstances. My H could have used the same one - I was either pregnant or BF for most of the last 4 years. Of course you don't feel sexy, and as was said below, if your partner isn't doing everything he can to help and make you feel sexy, then it's BS.

I'm angry now!

Get the book, there'll be loads of ideas in there of questions to ask to get to the bottom of it. What did your H tell himself in order to justify it? What was the build up and the time line? A great poster (whenwillifeelnormal) used to talk about how affairs happen not because a partner is not GETTING enough (ie sex) but because they are not GIVING enough, not invested enough in the relationship, and so it is easier for them to hurt and betray their spouses. Maybe all this time apart has meant your H has detached from you and the children?

Hope you're ok.

WIse words from seachange and charbon - my H blamed our lack lustre sex life but he was often reluctant to come to bed at the same time as me, did not bother to spruce himself up, and made passes at me at inappropriate moments, knowing he would be rejected.

I spent a lot of time on the relationship boards when my H's affair came out almost 2 years ago and whenwillifeelnormal gave me excellent advice. My H sounds a lot like hotchocs too.

My H wasn't prepared to put the effort into our marriage to save it or end the affair, although he claimed he had for 5 months

Is there anyone in RL you can talk to as well on here? WWIFN used to call them "friend of the marriage"