"The reason he said that he'd been unhappy for 'a while' before the affair is because he was trying to justify in his mind why he'd done this"
Dh said that in the nightmare 24 hours after I found his texts and before he came clean as to exactly what had been happening. He said it while we we lying in bed in the dark, in a calm, even, resigned voice.
The thing that still even now upsets me more than the rest of the stupid uninventive predictable mess was that he can't remember saying it, or any of the other things. He was drunk - maybe. Normally if he gets drunk he gets louder, happier, more affectionate. He tries to interpret what I told him he said - and he tells me the same as your H told you - but I would be much easier if he actually remembered saying those words.
If, at some point in the future, I do decide I can't do this any more it will be those words, that time, feeling out of control, sick with panic, my feeling of worthlessness and failure, and that HE DID THAT TO ME, that will be the cause, not the fact that he 'fell in love' with some silly cow who thought he was her knight in shining armour.
God! I am angry now..... doesn't happen often these days
Good luck, you are doing so well. The self-doubt is inevitable and I won't lie and tell you will definitely stop feeling it completely. For me, what I lost was the total confidence and trust I had before, and that undermines but also strengthens you. I am a different person. And that isn't altogether a bad thing. I was a happy fool, now I wiser woman with a bit more of a shadow over me.