You’ve been totally blindsided. It’s perfectly normal to feel this way. After all this time it must feel even worse. You are now no doubt wondering how much of your life was real and how much was a sham. Be kind to yourself and lean on others when you need to, this stuff can serious wreck your head. I know.
I found out about my husband’s affair 4 months before our 30 th wedding anniversary. It was a shock like no other. I had no idea. It was such a shock that our first conversations were with me still thinking he was the same guy I knew. Big mistake. These men are lying. Let that sink in. It’s hard, but you need to see it. They are liars.
I believed every word he said on discovery (and he did more minimising than an industrial strength pair of Spanx) because I was still viewing him as the guy who didn’t lie.
Now he had been discovered, he would tell the truth. Wouldn’t he? Nope.
This was the guy who I had been with for over 35 years who would never, ever do such a thing to me or our children. The guy who, surely, if he was sobbing and wailing that he had trashed his life and that he would finish with her as it was all a terrible, terrible mistake, must obviously mean it and would not possibly be capable of continuing to lie to a beloved wife who was utterly destroyed and on the floor at this revelation.
He did continue to lie. He did not finish with his AP. He did what I now know he apparently does when in a corner. Lie and continue to lie, to all involved, tell everyone what he thinks they need to hear to maintain control of the situation and buy thinking time. He lied to me and told whoppers to her.
Your husband is not who you thought he was. Read it again. That is a huge piece of information to process.
Where you go now is a) basic self care (eat what you can, try to rest if you can’t sleep etc) and b) if you feel strong enough, you go on a fact finding mission. You need to buy time for yourself to process this utter crap and start to think about what you want to do. Ask him to leave for a while/ permanently if you need to. My husband’s affair was in full swing when I discovered it. I knew what the score was on the Saturday night, he didn’t get home from the hotel 🤢 until late Sunday afternoon, when he dozed on the sofa (shagged out no doubt 🙄) and ate dinner with us like it was all fine. Such a good liar. I watched him in action and couldn’t believe how normal he could act despite having just taken a woman nearly 20 years my junior to a hotel for the weekend. He had no idea I knew and was being so nice to me it made me feel sick. It was like watching a horror movie. I wanted to kill him and die myself all at the same time.
I let him go to work on the Monday to give me time to dig deeper. I turned the house over looking for stuff. Made me feel ill, had never snooped on him in our whole 35 year relationship. Felt degraded that he had turned me into this woman. Search history on his iPad told me plenty. Realised he had changed the password on his spare laptop which he kept at home. Also found locked second phone. 🙄
I let our teenage kids go to bed that evening then I confronted him. But I was still clinging onto the view that if he wanted me (he swore he did) then he would end the affair immediately (he said he would) and be doing everything he said he would.
Put yourself as top priority now. Ask him to leave if you want space. Or if you are desperate for facts, ask him anything you damn well want to know, and let him know that if any of it turns out to be bullshit then the marriage is over. No more lies. My favourite quote amongst this hell was “What you allow will continue. What continues will escalate.”
If you allow lying to go unchallenged, it will continue. If it continues, it will get worse. You know what he is capable of now. Look for real remorse in him by all means, people make mistakes. But keep your eyes and ears and most importantly, your mind, open. Faced with hard evidence I was listening and looking, but my mind remained closed to who he really was.