Recovering from emotional affair - advice pls

[Onlyme16]

Hi, just need some advice as I am torturing myself on a daily basis!

Bit of background. Husband had emotional affair which lasted for about a year. Nothing physical (so he says, and I think I believe him, but who knows eh) but still very hurtful to me obviously. We are both in our 40s with 3 teenage children and have been together since we were kids basically.

It is all over and he has no contact with her at all now, but I just can't get over the feeling of betrayal i have. Going back, I had asked him to stop having contact with her, he agreed to a fresh start and then months later I found out that he had spent hours on the phone to her, all behind my back, up to 10 times a day!!

So anyway I am just torturing myself on a daily basis, example, if he loved me as much as he says he does why did it take me finding out for him to stop contact? If I hadn't found out would it have carried on? Why couldn't he put me first and do the right thing by me when I have never asked anything of him in all the yrs we've been together, etc etc. How could he even do that if he genuinely loved me? Questions which I'm sure thousands of women in my position have asked themselves.

I just feel differently about my marriage now. I love my husband but I see him in a different light now. I'm always wondering how much he really loves me. Never had that problem before. My self confidence is shot to pieces, I don't feel good enough for him anymore.

Please, anyone who has been though an emotional affair and come out the other side, could you give me some advice, how do I try and let go of this and get on with things?How can I get my confidence back? How do I learn to trust again? In fact I'd be grateful for any advice at all from any of you that has been through anything similar. I just want to move on but finding it very hard and thinking about it every day, which I know isn't helping. Thanks for reading.

Has he definitely stopped now?

Has he been open and honest about why he did it? Are there any changes he wants to make to the relationship? Is he trying hard to make you feel better eg giving you full access to his phone, all his passwords etc?

Yes it's definitely all over, number deleted, the works. I have access to his phone and he also downloaded the tracking app I have for my kids so I could see where he was (OK yes I guess he could leave his phone somewhere and be. somewhere else, but he has made an effort). We had got into a bit of a rut, work, house, children and it started from there. I have no doubt he is sorry, he calls me more, tells me he is so sorry quite frequently and is ashamed of himself, so all that's not an issue. It's just how it's left me feeling inside and I don't know how to deal with these feelings of not being good enough etc. It's hard enough being a woman your 40s, getting older etc without your husband making you feel even more inadequate by having an emotional, affair with some girl in her early 30s!!!

My husband had an emotional affair for (he says) 3 months last year. I found out just before new years eve. I found the betrayal so hard to get over, we went to couples counseling which we found really helpful. It was good to have a safe space to talk everything through and have a 3rd neutral party to help each other hear what the other was saying.

It was a bit of a wake up call that we have been neglecting our marriage (3 young children), so since then we have made a real effort to make time for each other. I do still find myself asking all the questions you have listed above, but its less frequent. For the most part I have forgiven him, but I haven't forgotten and Ive had to accept that our relationship will forever be changed by it.

He has no contact with the woman he was chatting to, changed his number and I can request to look at his phone at any time. I use to ask for it quite a lot but I don't really ask to look at it anymore. But it makes me feel a bit more secure that I can look at it if I wished. I just prefer not to, cos I never envisioned being in a relationship where I needed that.

Coming up to the year since it all came to light and I still don't trust him, it still hurts to think about it. But I do feel like we've begun the process of moving on and putting it behind us.

That turned into a bit of a ramble, not sure if any of that is helpful. But sending lots of hugs cos it is a very difficult thing to get through. Be kind to yourself and don't rush the process, you will have good days and bad days.

@FilamentBabe thank you I can really relate! The part about the relationship changing has struck a chord. We've been together for years and I always trusted him and never had any reason not to, so now I'm also angry that our marriage has changed through no fault of mine. I guess you could say I'm grieving for the relationship I had for 25 yrs, if that makes sense. X

“Why did it take me finding out” - because only at that point did his fantasy bubble get burst and he will have realised what was at stake, namely the loss of his 3 children, being painted as the bad guy and his nice cushy life. Like you say, if he loved YOU as much as he says he does then he wouldn’t have done it and certainly wouldn’t have carried on when you told him to stop.

“If I hadn’t found out, would it have carried on” - probably unless she decided to bring an end to it.

The nothing physical bit- I would take that with a pinch of salt. People minimise when caught and just tell what they need to do to keep their life intact.

It will be hard to get your confidence back. It took me years and a split to get it back.

My wife had an emotional and I later found out physical affair with a married man. This was 20 years ago. In the aftermath she described it as like a drug addiction. However much she tried, she couldn’t resist and kept going back for more. She was actually in love with him and in her words he was with her. It didn’t work out for her as he didn’t leave his wife. (She had no choice because I left her). He actually kept in contact with her over the years whilst still married so I’m glad I was out as I have no doubt that it would have continued had I stayed.

I can see why people stay. Let’s face it kids are what keep many people together generally in marriages that have gone stale. I’m sure a bit of excitement wouldn’t go a miss to anyone now and again in the dreariness of a long term relationship but most have the self restraint not to seek it.

I hope that it is not you doing all the work to keep things going. I often read about Women who have been cheated on being the ones to them make all the effort to get things on track as they blame themselves.

You shouldn’t do that. He should be the one making the effort and he should be helping rebuild your shattered confidence. Is he doing that or just going through the motions?

That makes complete sense and I think when discovering something like this you do go through all the stages associated with grief. Like you we have been together since we were young and he is the last person I ever expected this from (I know everyone says that, but its honestly the case). I was so angry that he had put me in the position of questioning him and deciding whether to continue with our marriage. I couldn't believe he had been so stupid to put our life and family at risk. So I completely see where you are coming from, its a horrible situation to be forced into.

My DH had an EA a couple of years into our relationship. I was absolutely crestfallen, heartbroken and in disbelief. We weren't married at the time but were living together. We decided to work through it. But "working through it" basically meant not ever discussing it and I never felt he really said sorry or acknowledged it. It was just never spoken of again. It took me a solid year to not think about it again.

About 5 years later he had another one. I genuinely thought we were good again but realised when I discovered it that we weren't as I felt indifferent. Just a sense of "oh he's done it again". Once again that was handled badly and only in the last 18 months have we started dealing with the issues they have both caused. And our relationship is broken. I don't know if it can be fixed.

I think a lot of my resentment that I had buried came from his lack of remorse. Or the fact he didnt show it and we didn't talk about it. So I think it's good that your DH is acknowledging it. I would recommend counselling to work through feelings so they don't build up and so you can try and rebuild the solid foundation you once had, albeit the foundations will be different.

My DH asked me once why I bothered staying with him if I didnt trust him. I pointed out that the damage he had done, because I trusted him so implicitly meant that I would have likely have trust issues with anyone now, so it became a factor not worth considering.

Best of luck, I know mine isn't a happy tale but I hope you can learn from where we went wrong.

Sorry... not a solid year to not think about it again, but to not think about it every day.

Needsomebottle- what has stopped you ending it?

My dh got emotionally close and kissed a colleague as she offloaded about her failing and abusive marriage. He offered her a shoulder to cry on..........

After the incident he made excuses not to drop her home (she lived enroute to our home). She was persistent and sent messages to which dh gave direct one line replies. No messages were deleted. No messages mentioned feelings or were of a sexual nature.

Dh broke down and confessed to me on his knees.

This happened over a year ago and I recall the physical pain I felt. I was suicidal for first two months, had obsessive thoughts and images, lost two stone in weight and had a number of meltdowns at home and work. I hated that I had to wait until DC were occupied or sleeping before I could ask question upon question.

We attended counselling together and individually. Dh opened up about deep issues that affected him in childhood. At the time of EA, I pushed dh away whenever he wanted to be close. I also got depressed due to financial worries. Though it is in no way an excuse, he said he felt totally rejected, of no use and that I did not want or need him.

We are in a much better place and are working not to take each other for granted. My life will never be the same again. I wrongly placed him on a pedestal and thought he was so much better than me. We are now on equal footing if that makes sense. I have seen him cry more this year than in 16 years in marriage. I now see I am in fact stronger than him yet I felt the weakest one in our marriage.

Sorry for rambling!

You feel like you're not good enough for him and that's why he failed you and your family with this emotional affair?

You need to start looking at this the other way.

It is he who is lacking. Massively lacking.

It is he who has cheated on you and your family.

If there were issues in your marriage, he should have flagged them and made a decision to leave or stay as a committed husband and parent.

Have you had any anger yet?

Do you think you would benefit from him leaving for a while? Don't panic yourself. It's just to give you some time to really think. Or would you worry what he'd get up to living away from home?

I don't supposed he's had any sense of what it would be like to lose you?

onlyme After a year your dh would be attached which is why he struggled to cut ties. It was incredibly wrong of him to go behind your back after all the hurt he knew he had put you through.

I understand you questioning his love for you at this time.

You need to find some peace around the fact that you discovered it rather than dh confessing. Counselling may help with coming to terms with this.

Did they only ever speak and text over the course of a year?

You will think of it often for a while then it will fade. At first I could think of nothing else. It was an ongoing thought regardless of what activity I was doing. I was utterly tormented. After some months I realised an hour or two would pass and it did not come to mind. It WILL ease - I promise.

cobblersandhogwash
You are correct. Anger will come out at some point. Sometimes in a bid to get things back to normal, the betrayed spouse may quickly suppress feelings and emotions. They lay low for only so long and rise up when you least expect it.

I went through all the emotions and even hit dh on a number of occasions - I am not proud of this. I also swore at dh and I rarely swore before this. I acted completely out of character and shocked myself but it all had to come out. I even got close to someone (not phyically) for a confidence booster. It worked wonders for me and reminded dh I have other options.

I went through this. In May this year i discovered that my DP of 20 years was having an EA with a mutual friend of ours that he has always fancied. I found out, it was all phone calls and whattsapp. Nothing got physical and i think it was more DP.

It destroyed me, absolutely floored me. Not just because it was my friend but i hand on heart think it would have got physical if friend had given the green light. I think for her it was an ego boost. Of Course DP denies it would have ever got physical but i dont believe him.

We are now 6 months on and i have only just started to heal. I dont watch him with his phone all the time now, although i dont have access to it he leaves it lying around.

I am AD's as the mood swings were horrible, i would go from angry to upset to feeling suicidal in a heartbeat. I just wanted to run away and hide.

DP messed with my head in the weeks after, i wasnt allowed to cry infront of him, we were not allowed to talk about it, we would go weeks then have a big argument. He held all the cards as i didnt want him to leave.

It did make me look at our relationship as we had let things drift and grew apart. I had stopped going out and i have put steps in place and started new hobbies and meeting up with friends.

I am still incredibly hurt when i think back on it all, but i know that if it did happen again or he left i would survive. It would hurt but i would get over it. He will NEVER get a second chance to hurt me again.

Abadlyshaved I am sorry
Did your dh confess to finding your mutual friend attractive?
Is she out of the picture? Completely?

Badlyshaved, you didn't want him to leave but clearly he didn't want to leave either. So you still have/had some leverage there.

That's it, isn't it - the failed partner gets to dictate the terms after the discovery of the affair because the betrayed partner doesn't want them to leave.

@Zzzz19 - I think I just buried it for years. Its only in the last couple of years I've realised how unhappy and resentful I was. We are now finally slowly trying to work through it but have put a bit of a date on the point at which we say enough is enough if my feelings don't change. Ironically I think this has all been a massive wake up call for him and i probably trust him more now than I ever have before. I just fear we left it too late to work through it all and my feelings have changed irreversibly. But we will see. I now see this isn't a healthy way to live. But it's hung over most of our 16 years so I didnt really have anything to compare to if that makes sense!

Sorry OP to derail.

I get everything you are saying!
My OH had an emotional affair with a woman a lot younger than me (I'm in my 40's, although I'm told I don't look it)
One day (before I found out) I asked him if he was still in love with me, he said yes but wouldn't look at me, I asked him to think about his answer and then I asked him again - he said no.
I asked if there was someone else and he denied it, at that point I stupidly believed him.
I asked him if we could try and work on things, that I could change! And for a whole month I put my all into it - with very little back and my heart was shattered.
Then one night he fell asleep and I got hold of his phone and found messages and hidden photos of a woman from work. They had been sending nudes to each other for a long time, and I snapped.
He seemed to think it was ok as he'd told me he didn't love me!
Long story short I messaged her, she was vile, told me nothing physical had happened but it wasn't her fault that I couldn't "keep my man"
I decided then that it was definitely over. And a week or so later he begged me to forgive him, said he didn't know what he had been thinking etc etc.
I took him back - was I stupid? Yes probably!
But we have worked hard on our relationship and this was almost 2 years ago.
He got a new job and deleted contact with her.
The sad part is that you don't forget, and it does change your relationship forever. He's given me access to his phone etc but as some others have said it hurts that you are now in that position to even think about checking, and let's face it, if someone wants to hide something then they can.
My heart will always hurt when I think back, because what's to stop him doing it again? I try not to think that way and we are happy now, but there will always be that little bit of trust missing and it's up to you if you can live with it.
Good luck x

I think that is it in a lot of cases cobblers. My wife made the mistake of thinking that’s how I would be once her affair partner told her he wasn’t leaving his wife for her. She got a shock.

A lot of people know their spouse and sometimes rightly or wrongly one of the parties holds the other on too high a pedestal, may be a bit passive and can often live their life totally around their spouse.

The spouse who then has the EA knows that in all likelihood, if discovered, their wife or husband will go into the “I don’t want you to leave me” position. This then actually gives the EA spouse even more power and they then dictate the way it is dealt with afterwards. I am not saying that is the case in all scenarios but it happens a lot. Financial dependence of their spouse is another problem that gives the errant spouse too much power.

I think having your own interests, financial security and not putting your partner on too high a pedestal is important.

Agree with Zzzz19, I don't think they would do it if they either a) loved their partner or b) loved them but were fairly confident they would get away with it and if caught forgiven.
Most posts on these sites the women forgive, so the odds are in their favor.
I don't think it is easy to leave, but it is a massive personal sacrifice to stay and the odds are they will do it again.
The relationship will never be the same, you will never trust them again. I think people who do are massively deluded.
I would be building yourself up, biding your time but also putting a time limit on your obvious misery.
The problem is it could be 10 years and there is no question the older you are the harder it is to start again and they know it. Much less likely to forgive at 30 when the world is your oyster than 60 !

I think the hard part is that if you stay (and I did) they expect you to act and feel exactly the same about them as you did before and that includes sex life etc. The problem I have found is that I no longer feel exactly the same, (and its 3 years since I found out) because they weren't the person i thought they were. I do care but sadly not as much as I once did. In my case its more complicated as I found out 11 years after the 'relationship' and I am still not sure if it was both ways or a huge infatuation on his part. That time distance means that I kind of feel stupid musing and mulling over something from a long time agoif I had found out at the time it happened I would almost certainly have left him for the sheer cheek and disrespect and lies. Now it just makes me sad that I struggle to feel the same. Its easy to say 'let go of the resentment' its much harder to actually do in real life if it has changed feelings. However as someone else said my problem is I now don't think I would trust anyone, as we didn't have a bad marriage at all, making having another good relationship (and this is second marriage for me) probably not very likely. Every relationship is different though OP. Like others have said, my H never ever wants it brought up, if I did very rarely I was asked 'how long he had to be in purdour for'. He mentally doesn't see it as an affair of any kind, he thinks he just had a very big crush and went too far (wrote stuff about it etc) , mutually texted too much etc. he is very sorry indeed and knows how much it upset me, but sorry doesn't always make things right.

Needdomebottle
I am glad you now trust your dh now than previously. I do not feel the need to snoop on dh. If any doubts were to arise or I had evidence of any sort, I would leave. I know I would be fine, in fact I would move on and meet someone else.

Thunderandlightening I am so sorry. Sending numerous nude photographs was low. The woman was equally vile to spout "you cannot keep your man". That would be hard to come back from.

Thank you all for responding. I can see that a lot of what I am feeling is the 'norm' in these situations. Seems silly really but I'm beginning to think the only man a girl can ever really trust is her dad! I'm so worried the feelings I've got are going to overwhelm me. I've always been a pretty level headed logical person and the way I am feeling is worrying me. I so want to get past this and get on with life but I'm worried that I can't. I think about it every day and can't help it. I worry that whenever he is out he is meeting her even though I have no reason to think that
I honestly think that if he had just been unfaithful physically I could deal with that better than the feeling of betrayal and lack of trust, if that makes sense. I'm a very loyal person and this is just so alien to me. Thanks again everyone.

@Onlyme16 I could have literally written this thread myself, exactly the same situation. I found out over a month ago was going on for the past year and to be honest things are good if not better than before, I still think about it but not as much as what I first did, i think I obsessed over it for the first week.....I wanted to know everything.

For me it was all about feeling humiliated like someone else knew my DH better than me and I felt like they was laughing at me behind my back when in actual fact they wasn't.

I do see my DH in a different light now, I have lost respect for him and I love him differently but I chose to work it out I've forgiven him but I won't ever forget.

If anything now our marriage is better, like your DH he calls me more regularly and puts me first thinks about my feelings now. It has been a huge eye opener not just for him but for me too, I know I did nothing wrong in the situation but thinking back I did start to neglect our marriage as did he, it's made me more determined to work harder at it!

If you want to work it out you have to try and get on with normal life, slowly but surely you'll think about it less and less, if your DH is anything like mine, being open and honest really helped me especially when I was having a 'bad day' he would let me ask anything and be really honest with me

Onlyme16
I could not trust my father as he absconded. I believe this contributed to my lack of self-esteem and I convinced myself I was not worth sticking around for.

A time will come when the thoughts reduce and do not floor you as they do now. They will not consume you and you will be able to remain 'in the moment' rather than being with others and secretly thinking about it.

I did not think I would ever survive, enjoy life, laugh, enjoy food but I have and it is great!