Infidelity support thread for the betrayed party

[ppandj]

I recently found out about my partner's affair, which occurred while I was pregnant and had a newborn (plus a toddler). My partner's behaviour was vile to me for a long time (turns out it was part of the guilt of the affair) and I had been considering ending our relationship anyway. Then I found out about the infidelity and our world has come crashing down, we are both devastated and my partner has had a wake up call- all the illusion of his affair has been shattered and he realises what he jeopardised when he made those choices. I have not yet decided what to do long term; whether we stay together depends largely on him and whether he can have a good look at himself and learn his lessons, but also I need to build my self-esteem and think about what I actually want.

Since I found out I have been on MN (more than usual ) and have read some old threads where the betrayed spouses were supporting eachother. I have also seen that there are many coping with this shitty experience currently posting. So I thought maybe we can have a thread to know that we aren't alone.

I wonder what made him force her hand after keeping their secret for 8 years?

Everything I’ve read about infidelity says the it’s harder to go from a platonic relationship to kissing than from kissing to sex. Once they’ve already crossed that line, sex usually follows pretty quickly.

It seems unlikely they wouldn’t have slept together, especially if they’ve admitted to doing other stuff and you know for a fact they omitted things from the story they told you. As you say though, they’ve had such a long time to get their stories straight and it can’t be proved one way or the other. I’m sorry, it just be horrible not knowing whether you’ve got the truth or not :(

I’m not convinced I’ve got the full truth but it’s largely academic whether it was once or ten times really; either way he betrayed me, lied to me and trampled over our wedding vows.

I’m not convinced I’ve got the full truth but it’s largely academic whether it was once or ten times really; either way he betrayed me, lied to me and trampled over our wedding vows.

This is how I feel but if we are to reconcile I need to know there are no more lies

I don’t think my dh even knows what the truth is he spun me so many lies over what could of been an innocent friendship that I would have had no problems with until he started lying about everything. We are ok at the moment he’s being attentive and not in contact with her. But I’ve been here so many times I am waiting for him to either get a text from her as she thinks the dust has settled or for them to bump into each other again and it all start over again

Welcome wtf sorry u are having to join this thread

Screaming, I can understand that. It’s a big thing to lie about. Have you questioned her about and it and asked her to explain why they didn’t? Surely if they were that intimate with each other they would have wanted to, so what stopped them? That’s what I’d want an answer to.

I don’t think my H will change his story now as he’d know how bad it would look to have sworn for months I had full disclosure and then for other details come to light. From messages and emails I saw, the timeline, etc I think I more or less have the full story. There could’ve been other secret meet-ups I’m not aware of but I’ll never know how so I’ve pretty much stopped asking questions about it now.

I’ve just spent a satisfying hour deleting her from all our digital photos. Cropping her out and deleting others completely.

@Screaming That's so excellent. I should have done the same thing. Well, that or replacing all pictures of her with pics of cows. No.. actually that would have been mean... to the cows.

Good work Screaming. Sounds very satisfying x

Sad but in a way reassuring. H is normally the one behind the camera and there really aren’t that many pictures of Her to delete. Just sad about my wedding and having to delete one of my DC’s godparents from the christening

Hope that helped u screaming hugs x

Just seen your latest post screaming I have no words at the moment just feel incredibly sad for you having those special moments tainted by their behaviour

Just seen your latest post screaming I have no words at the moment just incredibly sad for you having those special moments tainted by their behaviour

This.
So sorry Screaming

Me and dh are getting on well he’s not in contact with her but I did have a trigger moment the other night he was faffing stalling going to work so I told him to hurry up I wanted to go to bed to which he replied he was an adult and could sort himself out. Yes quite right but as he blamed me for him contacting her etc because he gets up and I go bed I now try and stay up. It’s bollocks of course they were calling each other after he had left for work so it doesn’t matter if I wave him off or not but for some reason it’s a trigger for me

I’m so tempted to send the letter I wrote to her.

Will I ever really have closure on that side of the betrayal without it?

Screaming, I have every sympathy, I have an urge to post’hope karma gets you’ on her smug smiling page on FB full of baby pics and yoga etc , even though it happened 11 years ago

I still want to tell everyone what a complete bitch she is. I asked her to remove all mine and my husbands family from her facebook friends and anyone she is friends with because of me. She has just posted on another godparents Facebook. She only knows her through me! If I told the other god mother I know she’d be deleted. Argh I thought I’d dealt with her side of it but obviously I just put a pin in it.

Why don’t you tell people Screaming? Because they will tell you to leave him and/ or you don’t want people to think badly of him?

I wanted people to know as I didn’t want him to be able to hide from what he’d done, although in hindsight I do regret it a bit as I feel it does add to the pressure and I worry about people judging me/ us.

Some people know my mum, mil, my sister and bil, his team at work, his best man and his wife, one of his other mates, a couple of my friends and my manager.

I personally think family should know, friends are another issue as it does add pressure. If we don’t make it the world willl know why!! I’ll be telling everyone why!

I think it’s good that some people know otherwise it’s like they’ve ‘got away with it.’ I don’t know how people who keep it all to themselves do it - I’d have gone mad if I had no-one to talk to. Our close family and friends know but no-one else.

Completely agree that if we break up everyone is going to know exactly why! All the mums at school would be so shocked, everyone thinks he’s such a bloody good guy!

So I just told him that I don’t want to celebrate our anniversary, that I don’t want to see any cards from his family(they always send some). He needs to deal with them before I do.

I said I felt that we have only had 5 years of a marriage not 14 and I don’t want to celebrate vows that he broke.

I could tell he was upset but I really don’t care it’s another consequence he has to face.

He can’t even confirm whether the affair was ongoing over our 6th anniversary or not! He can’t remember dates.

I pulled his shift Rota for that year- I can see where he took hours owed to leave work early and meet her!

The whole I can’t remember thing is really heating on me now - do you think it would be weird to find somewhere to do a polygraph test?

Do you believe him when he says he can’t remember? I guess it was a long time ago. My H seems to struggle to remember things about his affair and it was only a few months ago so I think ‘I can’t remember’ is used as a convenient excuse for not telling.

If you lived in the US a polygraph would be standard practise judging from some of the forums! Do you think you would believe what the polygraph said? If it said he was telling the truth about no sex, would you believe it or think he had beaten the test in some way?

I wouldn’t think it’s weird in your case as it happened too long ago to find any evidence so you can only go on the words of two people who deceived you for years. You just want to know the truth, so I can understand why you would consider it. I have no idea how you go about getting one in the UK though!

Me either. I might need to stop with the forums as It’s making me worse I think!

I think I am definitely spending too much time on forums! I think I’m expecting to see something that will tell me what to do but everyone’s situation and experience is different so it’s not going to happen. I’d prefer for someone else to decide, it’s so hard.

I’ve felt ok about things this week but this has happened before and then one little memory or trigger has sent me into a total meltdown.

I’m with you there.

I get to a point where the thoughts and questions start to build up to bursting. I say I need to talk and let it all out. He is still hopingit’ll All just go away I think

Are you having counselling? I find that helpful for getting everything off my chest. H is having counselling too but we haven’t started MC yet. I’m not sure how much his counselling is helping - his counsellor has basically told him to stop being so hard on himself and that this happens to lots of people! There hasn’t been any exploration of why he did such a horrible, selfish thing or how he will stop it happening in the future.

If I never mentioned the affair again he would be happy with that and would do likewise. He wants everything to go back to normal but doesn’t seem to realise that can’t happen and it will never be like that again. A new normal perhaps, but things will always be different.