I have been trying to deal with this for 10mths...but struggling, advice needed.

[cheesecakeplease]

DP and i have been together for just over 20 years. We were both young when we met (17) and her first DC when i was 18, second DC at 20.

Things seemed fine and i was very happy and felt very lucky to have found my perfect DP at a young age. My only problem was that he went out a bit tooo much, and got very very drunk.

When i was approx 7 months pregnant with my second baby, DC woke up one Sunday morning with glitter all over his lips, with a slight 'shade' to them. He also ad a little red bruise on his neck and a bit of lipstick on his collar. I asked him what it was all about and he first said 'his lips were always like that when he drinks' . The lipstick/bruise he said must have been from me and i do remember thinking at the time that we had had some encounter either before he weant out saturday night or when he came back inthe early hours of Sunday.

Anyway, i was young, dopey and i accepted what he had said and moved on, but now and again a ? popped into my head. A month or so later i discovered Genital Warts. At first i didn't know what they were for sure, mentioned it to DP, he had a few too. Stupidly we put it down to coming from a wart that DP had had on his finger (Oh i know!!) Went to the GP who didn't say much about it other than talk to the midwife about it, i did, she didn't seem concerned, said i was fine to give bierth normally. They were still around when DS was born, had appointment for clinic to deal with them. A week before my appointment the warts vanished...every last one of them ( and there were loads) Dp's vanished at the same time. Cancelled appointment and got on with things.

Soon after we got a computer.......looked about warts..discovered the truth, they never came from DP's finger. Questioned, questioned and questioned him and in the end put it down to me having had caught it before i met DP and decided to show up at that time of pregnancy when immune system was low. Though i had always wondered why they never showed with my first pregnancy?

Gosh i am rabbiting on!

Fast forward to June of last year. After sex one night, DP could tell something was wrong with me. I was thinking about all the above again and talked to him about it. We fell asleep.

Next morning DP woke me really early and told me there had been an incident with a girl the night i had found the glitter, lipstick, bruise. He had been out with our next door neighbour, they had taken an ecstacy tablet and had 'gotten off' with a girl after the club has closed. It was round the back of the club, kissing sexual contact, he was rubbing her and her on him. He said he suddenly 'woke up' up what he was doing and left, never had intercourse with her. He felt horrendously bad, never told me the truth as he knew we would have been over (and it would have been). He blamed the tablet for making him act this way, and i have never taken drugs so don't know, but i still am a bit about that.

What gets to me is that he still continued to go out with this friend (he had cheated that night on his partner too), so not that 'sorry' about what he had done? And obvioulsy the lieing for sooo long.

I think i am at the stage where i have accepted what happened. We were both young blah blah. What i can't get out of my head is..what that the truth? did he shag her? were there others? Is there more to tell me but he thinks by confessing to that it has made the rest ok?The fact that he lied (and there have been a few other little lies within that time) is what i am having the most problems with. I just feel weird that i am feeling like this some 16 years later and having to deal with it now that we have been for the last 10 years perfectly fine and happy without any other problems.

After the 'incident' i was always more suspicious, a bit more insecure and that slowly got worse over the years after. Dp 's going out did slow down a lot a few years later. I know now that i probably always knew that something happened that night, it was always a 'gut' feeling i had. But i lived with it and it never came up very often.

I am trying to move on, but it is really really hard. I just want to draw a line under that and forget about it. But i keep feeling there is more. It makes me weepy and sad. I keep re-thinking situations from back then. Most of all i feel angry. Angry that he never gave me the chance to deal with it at the time/make decisions about having more children with him based on what i know now. Why was i soooo stupid to not haing a problem with him going out all the time when we really couldn't afford it.

Will i get through this? Is there any books that might help? He went out on his christmas 'do' which was hard to deal with. He promised he wouldn't drink and would be home early and he did exactly that. He answers any questions i have about back then. I can see how painful it is for him everytime i bring it up. I believe he is truly sorry now, but perhaps at the time he wasn't so bothered about it being a big deal?

I dunno, i feel crappy. Good days/bad days.

What's your take on this?

What is going on in your life, or perhaps not going on, that is making you fixate on an incident from 16 years ago which has little relevance to the life you've lived with your dp and dc since it occurred?

I don't think you get genital warts from 'rubbing' somebody, sorry OP.

This is torture for you and it seems to me it is because you know he has lied, which has undermined the trust in your relationship.

He thought he could get away with it but he hasn't has he? This is still trundling on goodness knows how many years later and both of you are suffering. awful. I hope you get something sorted soon OP, this is no way to live

I do think that things like this come home to roost, regardless how many years have passed in between.

So he had an incident of infidelity 16 years ago, which may or may not have included PIV sex, and which he may or may not be lying about now.

Thing is, you'll never know. (Unless he decides to change his story again, but even then you've already heard 2 versions: would a third really satisfy your aching soul? I suspect it would be further cause for angst: why would he lie to you so many times, etc)

I think that only you can decide whether you trust him again, or whether the trust is broken beyond repair.

What, by the way, made you think of a 16-year-old incident all of a sudden that night?

I'm also interested in why this was pre-occupying you last June, but if this wasn't your subconscious telling you that you think he's up to new tricks, I'd suggest another reason.

The life you've had with him sounds hard. When your children were small and money was tight, he was selfish spending money you didn't have and time that was sorely needed at home. It's possible now that life is easier, you're looking back and feeling very angry about some of those issues. When we're knee-deep in the business of raising children and trying to make ends meet, our pragmatism convinces us to keep our heads down and get through it. Your head convinced you to swallow any doubts about his lies to you, because you thought you and your kids needed him to survive.

Now that you're perhaps in a position where you realise you don't need him for survival (and in truth you never did) you're allowing your subconscious some headspace.

It seems obvious to me that he lied to you and is still lying. I wasn't clear though whether he was suggesting that this incident with the woman also involved his friend having sexual contact with her. I'm afraid the thought occurred to me that this was a sexual attack and not consensual sexual relations at all. Had that occurred to you?

In my experience, people often feel more angry, not less, when they uncover a lie years after the event because there is a sense of being cheated out of different life choices and therefore life itself. Once the proper truth is out there, the person in your position needs to be honest about what you would have really done at the time, had you known the truth. The problem for you now is that you still don't know the truth, so cannot make that call. And even then, the offence now becomes the lies and deception - not the incident itself.

I have wriiten out replies twice now and the computer has crashed on me and lost everything...grrrrrr.

Genital warts and rubbing? Thats what i thought at first, but googled and it is possible but unlikely, no answers there then.

Why did it bother me last June? I have no idea. More time on my hands/ genital warts mentioned on tv that nighthormones. It wasn't a conversation that was brought up as a let's go over what happened that night, it was a conversation that just went that way from both of us that eventually led to a confession. When that confession came i felt strangely relieved? I must have always known.

Hatty what you say is truly amazing. I think it is exactly that. I feel like a freak after all the time passed and i am dealing with it now. What makes it so hard is the DP is lovely, gorgeous,generous, great dad, puts me first (now)! If he was a total ass i would know exactly how to have dealt with this last June.

He was never horrible to me back then, he could have been more thoughtful and bit less selfish in the times he went out, but i should of been more firm and stong and dealt with it all better.

As for the incident itself. Soory i didn't explain very well. He got to know our new neighbour, was going out with him. I never liked him from the beginning. That night they got split up within the club. DP was with this girl. Neighbour was with some other girl. Never saw each other again until the next day when they asked where each other ended up. Wasn't the two of them with the 1 girl.

I have to go to work now, but if anyone knows of any books?? anything?/ that can help us through (or at least try) that i would be really grateful.

I dunno, confused.

this message better post.

Hi Cheesecake, I'm sorry you are in this position

I found out about a year ago that DH had cheated on me twice a few years into our relationship (before we were married and before the DC). He had 2 one night stands within a fairly short time of each other. After the intitial shock that he had betrayed me began to wore off, I was furious that I had been in the dark for so long (I didn't find out from him so he would have lied to me forever) and that I hadn't been given the choice to make decisions about my own life knowing the facts. I felt that the last few years had kind of been taken off me as he had been fooling me for all that time. I would have left him at the time if I had known, but we were married and had 2 DC by the time I found out which made it more complicated, and it felt so complicated to be dealing with something that happened years ago, when our lives were completely different. I didn't know what to believe. I understand what you mean about re-thinking situations from back then, I do it all the time.

I would really recommend counselling if you haven't already. We did and I am sure we would have split up otherwise. DH was forced to open up and confront all sorts of things about himself. That he did this (he had a very dysfunctional childhood which he had never dealt with and it was very hard for him to talk about) helped to start rebuilding the trust. He told me things he had never really admitted to himself about how he had been affected and how he felt about things. All this helped me believe that he isn't holding anything else back from me. I wouldn't say I'm 100% sure that I know everything, but I think I do. It also helped me understand which bits were 'true' of the last few years. We are still together but it hasn't been easy.

I posted at the time under this name. On the last page there is some great advice by garlicbutter.

All the best

You may find Shirley Glass's Not Just Friends helpful - especially in addressing the vulnerabilities and weaknesses in your H that allowed him to think he was entitled to cheat on you in this way.

He sounds like a very selfish and weak person and one of the reasons why you are finding it hard to get your head round it all is probably because he is still not being 100% truthful about everything. You know he is still holding back and you cannot rest until you know what really happened.

I do not think he has learnt how to prevent himself from doing it again and this is why he needs to take a long look at himself in order to understand what was in him that made him do those things and how to address his character flaws.

I found out in November, afters weeks of confronting and denial, that my h of 20 years had been having internet sex with different women for more than five years. I had a bit of evidence most years but it was always explained away, he is very clever.

It always comes out in the end. The crashing of the trust is indescribable, and it takes time to see how badly and how often I had been lied to over the years.

My h has a dysfunctional childhood too.

We are working on it, and he accepts that it will take time to rebuild the trust, maybe years. He says that he wont lie to me even about a chocolate biscuit (!!), after what has happened, and he has volunteered to me that he lied over small things- money, travel, work stuff- for years and years, since we met.

If you are to get over it, he needs to put real effort into how he lives the whole of his life, not just this part. And if he identifies his childhood as part of it, he needs to work on sorting himself out re that. And if he doesnt and wont, you know you are at risk of worse again.

By best tip is to look at working on yourself regarding whether you want to 'fix' him, and how to be sure you are managing your own boundaries re what you put up with and contribute.

Things like this can be sorted out, but both of you have to really work at it.

Thank-you all for your replies. Sorry to hear others have been hurt in the past .

winds- i will have a search for your past thread, thanks for that.

DP had a very troubled childhood too, never saw how a 'normal' relationship should be without alcohol. We had a real good talk on Saturday night and i explained (again) how it does me good to talk, how it makes me feel better. I think he is beginning to understand, it must be hard to think like that when you are one to bury your head in the sand usually and hope it all goes away, but if he wants to get passed this with me then he will have to change.

Thanks again for reading my post, it did me the world of good writing it down.