He keeps opening the wound.

[gildedcage]

I've been on here for about 8 months. Basically I found a fair amount of porn on the Google history. I wasn't snooping and didn't go looking for it...but there it was. I reacted badly really, in that I put my shoes on and walked out. I asked him about things when I got back but he lied to me...denied, minimised and deleted. After some frank discussion we agreed that we would mive on. He was however under no illusion in respect of my feelings re porn and pictures of other women.

I wont lie but my trust was destroyed. ..I have known him for 18 years and married for over 10. The secrets and lies hurt me more than anything. However I agreed to move on and I wanted to let go of it. Things improved and I started to feel more normal.

Then a couple of weeks ago I found him crying in the bedroom. He is destroyed by feelings of guilt. He has told me all sorts of things I.e. that he habitually masturbated, who he thought of while he was doing this, that he text another woman before we got married saying that he would basically would be with her if he wasn't getting married, that he holds hands with his female colleagues on nights out. Basically he has laid everything bare. Other than the text I am not bothered by any if that. The text bothers me and if I had known about ut then I wouldn't have married him. But I didn't and now we have a whole family life together.

Every time I start to feel better he reopens everything. I didn't eat lasr night because I spent it soft soaping him!! He feels like some sort of victim and I'm not sure how that happened. I woke up this morning feeling sick, I don't want to do this anymore. I have a professional job and I need to get my head out of my arse.

Do I suggest a little bit of time away, not a seperation just a little break? should I suggest a holiday? What can I do to make this better. I don't want a divorce but I can't keep doing this.

Hmmmm....It really is a terrible situation he has put you in. But it is him who has jeopardised the family unit. It is him who is making choices which he understands will lead to the inevitable breakdown of your relationship. While he may want to paint himself as a victim the reality is he is not.

Counselling may be a good place to start. A counsellor should pick up on his emotional manipulation and call him out on it. It might allow you to extricate yourself from feeling like you are responsible for all of this. Let you deal with your stuff and leave him to deal with his stuff.

It doesn't mean the end of your relationship. You get to choose your own boundaries and sometimes other people won't understand but it is your choice.

It sounds like there is a lot of love and sometimes marriages just need a lot of work.

Yeah I don't think I can consider continuing with the marriage without some counselling. As you say he cant make promises unless he knows why he made those choices in the first place.

Thank you to everyone who is listening to me...I don't know who I could speak to otherwise. My mum loves him. Has always said he thinks the world of me and that she's happy we all have such lovely husbands urgghh she'd go mad!

He's punching well above his weight with me...bloody cheek...I could have been holding lots of mens hands over the years and I've been made all sorts of offers....I'll take you on holiday etc your husband doesn't need to know...yet I've never touched another man in an inappropriate way in 18 years. Why didn't he engage his brain.

He simply does not deserve you, you could do soooooooooooo much better.

Wanted to up date, and really to get things off my chest.

We went out on Saturday alone, after an emotional week. He said he could see my position etc...talked all night, got back late together and he stated with the disclosure again. He didn't just hold hands he hugged her as well. Small things really but I told him that each of these little snippets of information destroys a little but more of our relationship.

How do I get to the root of this...if he's cheated I want to just know...he insists that he hasn't. If he has done nothing wrong then why the need to reveal everything. I suppose I just lookibg to understand why he's doing this.

I told him on Saturday that I wanted us to separate as I wanted to retain some love for him and not wait until I hated him. He insists that we can get through this. If he feels like this then why disclose more and more stuff to force my feelings in the opposite direction to tge one he wants? It makes no sense.

It really does sound like OCD to me OP. Everything you say.

Try reading this

Is he perhaps telling you this as he did cheat but if anyone relays a 'sighting' of him with someone to you he can say he already told you and that it was just a hug etc.

Why stay and go out of your mind questioning it anyway. The man told another woman if it weren't for your impending marriage...well...he really crossed a tonne of boundaries.

I really don't think it has to mean there is more to it. I mean this is possible if it is not an OCD situation, but I would bet my right arm that it is.

The thing is I have never spoken with his colleagues, wouldn't even know them in the street, and we both commute a fair bit. I just mean if he hadn't confessed to that I would have no way of knowing. His secret would have been safe. That's part of why I'm confused as to what his motives are. I agree the boundaries are well and truly crossed but do I just give up without us really trying?

I take on board the ocd point which is very interesting. I did discuss the prospect of cbt and counselling with him but it needs to come from him and not just be me fixing things.

Arrgghh I hate gaving doubts about him, this is killing me.

I think you'll find that if it is OCD, his motivation is to make himself feel better- he will feel temporary relief but then it will be replaced by another worry or memory. People with this type of OCD often end up confessing to things they haven't even done, because their mind plays tricks on them and created false memories, or exaggerates certain situations. And in the event of not being able to prove that something didn't happen, they would rather 'play it safe' and face the consequences anyway. The thinking behind it is that anything short of 'full disclosure' makes you a terrible person, and the guilt can be completely debilitating.

It's a very hard thing to explain to a non-sufferer, and I am sure incredibly hurtful to keep hearing these things. But I think sometimes mental health conditions can make you selfish without you realising it, or being able to do anything about it. I can't overplay how strong the compulsions can be.

You are right though, the motivation to seek help needs to come from him.

As before, I can't comment on what he has done, as I think that is something you need to make a judgement on, but I do want to help you to understand his motives in confessing (if my internet diagnosis is correct...)

Thank you isshoes. Your last post really hit home as he has said that he can't be entirely sure what happened and what he has exaggerated. He has also said he feels as though he feels better and the another anxiety surfaces and he has to confess. Some of these things are seriously minor things that you would never tell anyone.

I appreciate that I also may be falling into my own trap of being able to fix things.

In any event I am so grateful to you all for your help xx

The more you say gildedcage the more convinced I am. Can I ask what made you say before that you suspected he had OCD? One of the weird things about OCD is that you don't always have the same type- you can go from needing to wash your hands all the time to needing to confess things, to needing to keep retracing your steps to check you didn't drop something.

I would also add that not to take away from the effect this is having on you in any way, but I do feel for your DH. It's a hideous thing to go through - to know you are sabotaging what may be the most important thing to you but not to be able to help yourself. Ultimately what any therapist would advise him is to not give in to the compulsion - because every time he does, he completes the cycle and it will start again. I really advise he should read up on OCD, see a GP to discuss medication and therapy, and look into the 'four step method'.

To be totally honest he has always displayed tendancies, we always joked about it to be honest because it has always been obvious. To me and his family. That sounds very flippant now but these habits have never really affected his life before.

Obviously I didn't connect the two things but everything you have said does fit with what he is telling me privately, especially exaggerating and not being sure if he can be sure they are even memories/happened as he is relaying them.

Obviously if this is the case it doesn't make it necessarily easier for me but it may help him. These things have hurt me deeply and have totally changed things between us but if ocd is the cause then perhaps we can work through this together with therapy.

Thanks again.

I think it's ok to laugh about OCD - sometimes that's the easiest way to get through things (as long as the sufferer is also laughing!).

I can't imagine how hard it is for you but I do think that therapy may help and that there is hope. Not only does this type of OCD create false memories and doubt, but it also places massively inflated importance on the most tiny of things. And because you are hearing everything through his filter - they will sound just as big a deal to you. For example- he hugged a female colleague. In his mind that is a treacherous thing, but at the time it could have been simply that - a hug between friends.

I wish you both the best of luck in working through this.

Just wanted to second what isshoes is saying with regards to OCD and compulsive confessions (although I'm in no way 'diagnosing' your DH!)

With my STBXH it started with relatively more well-known OCD traits (checking light switches etc) and then moved onto relentless confessions. He would even force himself to 'confess' to things that hadn't actually happened.

Small things would be blown completely out of proportion and would become things he needed to confess. For example, he might have ordered a drink from a waitress on a night out. This would turn into: maybe I fancied her, maybe I fancied her more than you, maybe I didn't order a drink but asked for her phone number...

He would ask me over and over again whether I'd actually heard/understood what he was saying to me and would rephrase his confession countless ways just to cover all bases.

This is really difficult to explain as it sounds so strange to anyone who hasn't been in the situation! It is all so frustrating and exhausting and wasn't something that I could cope with.

Ultimately though, potential OCD is irrelevant where his previous (very shitty) behaviour is concerned.

Thanks seagull. Again this sounds very familiar, and reminds me of the need to repeat previous confessions to make sure every single aspect is covered and that you are making yourself completely understood. It is relentless and exhausting. And you constantly question your motivations for everything you do.

Absolutely. And as the partner, you are left with a massive burden: do you chalk everything up to OCD exaggeration/fabrication or are some of the confessions genuine? How do you decide which? Even the most thick-skinned and confident of people would get worn down by it.

Without help, it basically turns your relationship into your full time job which, from what the OP has said about her real job suffering, is what is happening here.

It must be so hard, OP .

Indeed - did your STBXH get help? And if you don't mind me asking, is that why he is STBX? Sorry if that is too personal a question.

No, that's fine, isshoes! Yes, he did get help and it did get better...but sadly only after the 'romantic' side of our relationship ended. We didn't have sex for years and were basically just living as best friends. For whatever reason, that seemed to take the pressure off him and his OCD.

From my own perspective, I think that my coping strategy, to deal with the constant confessions, was to pull away from his as a romantic partner. It felt safer and more manageable to deal with him as just a friend.

Overall, it wasn't the only reason we split up but it certainly didn't help. Because I had no way to differentiate between truth and fabrication/exaggeration I felt like I started to lose my grip on reality too.

On most occasions I could just reassure him that I'd heard and understood what he was saying and that it was ok. But on days when my confidence was low, his confessions were nigh on impossible to deal with dispassionately.

And as much as I tried to be strong and understand that his need to tell me about how attractive he found such and such a woman (and all the OCD ramifications of that) was a compulsion, it wore me down. I think I may have started to resent him.

Sorry if that sounds quite hopeless, OP.

Thanks again seagull and I am sorry to read about your experience. I hope you are both in a better place now.

OP i think that you are in the very early stages of this confession compulsion rearing its ugly head, and if you can nip it in the bud, there is hope.

Thanks so much isshoes and Sea. I have spoken to him this evening re the OCD. As soon as I gave examples as you had he seemed to be able to recognise himself in the description.

We are both well aware that this doesn't excuse anything and doesn't make either of us feel better but it means that perhaps with the right strategies and therapy he can see what its normal to disclose to you partner. Seriously some of what he has said should not need to be discussed.

I can't say for certain that we will stay together as I have been very hurt, mostly by the distrust and doubt in what he says. However I do love him and will give him a chance to get this sorted. Only time will tell though.

Wishing you the very best of luck OP.

Best of luck too, OP.

I definitely think dealing with this asap is the solution (I wish I had of done), otherwise resentment builds and you will lose yourself.

Don't leave the house-why should you? Get him to leave.

Read the thread mature.