How do you cope with infidelity??

[juliepooley]

This is the first time I have posted a message on anything like this. I feel I need some advise or just support. The bottom has just dropped out of my world. My husband of 14 yrs has told me that he has been seeing someone else for the last 6 months. We have 3 small children. He has always been my best friend and the most loving and lovely person. His job takes him to Budapest often. So often, that his company rent him a one bedroom apartment (I know, alarm bells should have gone at this point). I have never visited because we couldn't afford it. He told me that not only is he seeing this OW but she has moved into his apartment about 4 months ago!! They are actually living together and thick me knew nothing at all!! This was a few weeks ago and he has now decided to stay with me and he has eventually asked her to get out of the apartment but he seems sad about this. I am very confused, hurt, angry and doubtful that he actually wants me. I feel that I have no way of knowing if he is staying for me or the kids. I had trusted him 110% so I feel I am in total shock. Can people ever trust again??

Hi I´ve not been through this myself but my very close friend has experienced something similar. Despite everyone shouting the usual ´kick him out´ etc etc she decided to make a go of it. It´s been really hard for them but they are coming through it. People can trust again but your dh has to be willing to do the hard work of regaining your trust and realising it´s not going to be an easy fix. And you will eventually have to forgive and try to forget or you can´t move on.

She says a really important part of the process was her telling her support network of friends and family what had happened, being totally open and honest with them even though it was hard for him facing up to them aswell. It gave her a lot of strength and it struck me that this seemed really fundamental in their recovery from it.

I´m sorry this has happened and I hope you find the best way forward for you, whatever that is.

The sad fact is that you never trust completely again. You need to talk to him. Preferably with a couples' therapist.

Thanks - I have told a couple of very close friends and they have been supportive but feel that I can't keep using them for support as they have busy family lives also. I have told dh that I haven't spoken to anyone as I actually dont want him to feel bad about this (can you believe it?). I swing from wanting to protect him to wanting to hit him. We have just had an assessment interview at relate and I am not sure what to think about that at the moment. It will probably help but not sure how much. I just want to return to how we were but it is slowly dawning on me that this will never happen. It hurts.

I´m sure it does and I am sorry.. my friend´s husband was unfaithful once and they put it behind them. She didn´t really tell anyone. It was the second time that it happened that she decided on a different approach in telling whoever she needed to and letting him suck it up if he found it hard. Only time will tell if theirs will work and if he will not do it again but I hope so.

I´m trying to say that I think you need to look out for what you need right now. I don´t think you need to worry too much about how he feels about others knowing, if he wants you both to get through this he has to face up to it and realise that you are going to need support from outside the couple.

From my own experience Relate can only help if you are both going into it with a commitment to be open and honest about everything because you may not know what is relevant and what isn´t and things you hold back because you don´t want to tell a stranger, well, those might be really key things, iyswim.

I would air the dirty washing. Your friends will be wondering why things are 'iffy' between you at the moment, and having everyone know will hopefully shame him. Why should you help him hide his infidelity.

My dp cheated on me a few times with his ex, and I was devestated. Between him, and his ex, they broke my heart.
I knew he loved me, so I stayed. However, he is (bizarrely) the best boyfriend I have ever had, and wouldnt swap him for the world. Its ironic how the man I have trusted the most, hurt me like nobody else ever has.
My only advice to you would be this, If you dont think you can get over it, dont stay. Of course, you wont know whether you will be able to forgive him yet if you have just found out.
I made the mistake of staying with my dp, but never getting any help with getting over it. It still makes me cry. It still hurts like hell. I still bring it up during arguments, as it has totally shattered most of the strength that I once had.
If you can forgive, I think that once everything has been talked about, you need to leave the past.
I drag it up a lot, and it really does us no good at all.
PLEASE get help with a counsellor (on your own maybe? OR as a couple) as it may affect you for longer than you think.
It has been 8 months since I got hurt, and although I love my dp more than ever, on days, it can kill me inside.
Im sorry for what he did to you, its a really shitty thing to do. You have to ask yourself the question; "Do you think he ever set out to hurt you intentionally?"

I pray that you are ok.

I agree with most of what mumzyof2 said. My dp and me work in the same place and he cheated on me with someone else who worked there. I was absolutely devastated and to make it worse EVERYONE knew and many of them knew before I did and no one said anything.

I tried to forgive and forget against everyone's advice and he just carried on and off with her for over a year. In the end I moved out for 6 months and that was it, almost overnight he realised he didn't want to be with her, and I moved back in.

For us it still does crop up in arguments but mainly because this OW is such a tramp and she makes my blood boil even now nearly 2 years later! She makes a point of waving to us both when she sees us and still texts him etc - and also I still can't get over how she told me to "get over it and butt out of their relationship" at the time !! I have no problem with them being in touch still, she is now engaged etc but I still even now feel like i'm going to have a heart attack and punch her in the face when I see her about - I am glad you will never have to face the OW!! Plus I am still very childish and bad mouth her still at any opportunity but it's the way I cope with it!!

Anyway i'm waffling now. You can get over it if you choose to, we had a good year before I started to get paranoid again (for no good reason) so the feelings never did go away for me.

I hope it goes ok for you x

Thanks to all for the messages - I think that I haven't wanted to face up to the fact that everything will change now. He is a different person to me now. I can't believe what he has done. To have sex with the OW would have been bad enough but to then start a relationship and move her in to the company flat is just too much to bear. I just thought he was stressed with work as he flies all over the place! I am also jealous that this 29yr old bitch has been getting all the fun and loving and I have been looking after the kids, washing cleaning etc and probably looking like shit. Oh well, I have already lost 1.5 stone what with feeling sick constantly and started working out so I feel better about myself. To AMERSG, I cant imaging seeing the OW all the time, I dont know how you can cope with that. I would like to see my dh's OW just once to tell her what I think though! Would try not to hit her!!

Luckily she has left our place of work since luckily for me LOTS of staff turned against her (and not my dp for some reason!) plus I didn't make it very fun for her working there, one of my highlights was spotting her new car parked in a disabled parking space and I got it clamped !!! I was very bitter back then!! I'm glad to hear you are at least feeling a bit better.

juliepooley

I can understand your anger towards the OW but you won't be able to express that directly to her so save your emotional energy for what now matters - your own feelings and repairing your marriage. Its no excuse for her appalling behaviour whatsoever but who knows what lies she was told by him (probably the usual things like my wife does not understand me and we're no longer sleeping together).

Do you both want your marriage to continue?. I would suggest that you both attend Relate as a matter of course, both separately and together. This needs to be talked about and aired in a controlled environment.

Affairs are often symptomatic of problems in the relationship, not the cause. Both of you need to look at why the affair actually started and the issues leading up to this happening. There is "right" and "wrong" on both sides here.

I wish you well and hope you can come through this.

juliepooley - this is my worst nightmare, if it ever happened to me I know that I would not be able to forgive and forget. My heart really goes to you, you are feeling exactly what I would feel like, the one at home with all the cooking/cleaning/children etc why he's living it up in Budapest with this, this well - girlfriend I suppose?. I think as a minimum he has to think about moving to a job where he can be back @ home and show commitment to you and the family. Very very best wishes and hope you work things out for the best

JP so sorry you are in this situation. I KNOW the agony you are fee,ing, the mixture of shock, disbelief, anger ,hate, saddness and love it's a hige rollercoaster of emotions you've just been forced onto.

4 years ago my world fell part when my dh- my best friend, lover, the person i'm the closest to in the world had an affair with a work colleague. we'd been together at that point 20 years, married 16 of them and had/have 3 great children. I felt an absolute MUG- I had no idea, never saw it coming- thought all was ok with us. Infact nothing major was wrong with us we'd let life get in the way of us and he had some sort of a 40's mid-life crisis and completely lost the plot for a few months.

We are still together and I can honestly say now we are closer and stronger having worked through the agony of this trauma together.Until you live through something like this no one can explain what it's like- it's very easy for people to say "get rid, kick him out" but you know this person so well they are so much a part of your life and you are suddenly faced with the fact that "he's lost it" you'll be feeling like your living in a soap opera at the moment , like it's not your life and the fact that none of this is your doing and you had no say in the choices he made are very hard to cope with- for me i weighed up what we had together before this and decided it was worth fighting for.

We both saw counsellors, seperately. me , to deal with the overwhelming emotions that invade your every moment and can so quickly become so destructive to any future you may have. for him to try to understand how he got to where he did.It took the best part of a year to totally get HER out of our lives and we made big changes- time for each other, decluttered our lives and focused on our family.

I would hazzard a guess that your dh is approaching 40 and the living away so much has a great deal to do with this!

he needs to decide where his priorities lie and make drastic changes- he must put you first and do everything to try to make you understand why and how this happened. men in this situation have a great ability to put their lives into different boxes and put lids on the boxes at certain times- he has been living a fantasy, escapism- not necessarily escaping from you- just a different "fantasy life" at first this life is so exciting but when reality hits and the real world finds out these relationships seldom last because they have no substance to them they cannot exist from day to day.

There is hope IF YOU WANT to move on- but it involves lots of painful homest talking on both your parts and he has to tell you everything, cut ALL contact with her and focus on you.

My dh looks back now and says he can't believe what a fool he was, he nearly lost so much for so little but at the time he'd managed to seoerate his lives and quite simply chose not to think about me or the kids just himself!

Do i trust again? not totally 95% I'd say and i know it will never be 100% he's got to live with that he caused it! BUT if you can work through this together it can bring you closer and I think we both have better lives together now because we KNOW what he nearly lost for us.
Take care of yourself, whatever you decide you need to let yourself grieve (I'm sure that the process you go through is akin to grieving)do not try to bury the emotions they laways come out at a later stage- if you can both bring it all out "no more secrets"- it's the deceit that kills you- then and only then can you make some sense of it and start to heal.
I learned you don't have to forgive (after all some things in life are unforgivable) but you do have to try and make some peace with what he's done before you can begin to move forward. Good luck, keep talking it does help!

To Maturer - Thanks so much for your post. It is so interesting to see where you are 4 yrs down the line. I am at the stage where I just want to feel normal but don't know when that will be. I go from wanting dh to hold me to wanting to punch him. It is amazing that, in hindsight, I should have realized something was happening. About a year ago (when we were still telling each other everything!) he came home shocked one day and told me that this woman, who he had known for 4 yrs, just offered herself to him during a night out. She made it very clear that she was up for a one night stand or a full blown relationship. He told me that she scared him and we decided that it was best that they didn't go anywhere on their own anymore. Slowly, over that last 12 months, he stopped mentioning her, which, if you read the books about these affairs, should have sounded very loud alarm bells. Obviously, she hadn't scared him enough. Your story, MATURER, sounds so like mine, I just hope that we can make it through this. We are already spending more time together, talking alot more than we did and we are waiting to see a relationship councillor. Dh has just finished his CV and is looking for another job. I asked about trust because I dont like the person I am now. I check up on everything and cant help checking his mobile for texts - something I would NEVER have done before. But, at the end of the day I love him and never want to be without him - But if he does it again !!
Good luck to you all and thanks for the messages of support

jp-sounds like you are heading in the right direction together.
This is a very slow process, regaining trust and I get exactly what you say about not liking what you've become. I did the check up on everything for probably about a year after and even every now and then I feel the need to look at his phone. Do not be hard on yourself, firstly for now he's lost the right to privacy- if he wants to proove to you he really is sorry and wants to move on, secondly I think it is part of the accepting process to snoop now- but I found i'd do it then tell him, then we'd talk and he'd ask for ways of how he could reassure me more.

Even 4 years down the line he asks for ways as to how he can do that and tries to tell me where he's going to be, who just texted etc etc. After a while you will stop wanting to look. You kind of reach the stage where you say "if he's going to cheat he'll find a way despite all your looking" you have to strat taking that leap of faith agian and you do stop looking.

I think hin trying to find a new job is a great move forward and speaks volumes of his wish to try to make it work with you.

Please just keep being honest with each other- share your pain no matter how hurtful it is- it helps to bring you closer if you are dealing with it together.

1 warning though if he stops giving you details "because it's too painful for you" MAKE him understand you need to look back, get all the demonds out in the open befoe you can make sense of what happened then move forward a little bit more.
Try to enjoy your Christmas together.

Thanks MATURER. Your story gives me much hope! It is weird that you do need to know details about the affair (when, where, how etc) It is like you are going back over the last 6 months and working out what was REALLY happening in his life and trying to tie it into what was happening with you and him. It hurts like hell but you need to know. I have been reading a book called Not Just Friends by Shirley P Glass which is really good. It is about workplace affairs mainly, which are apparently happening more and more.
Thanks again, you have helped alot. Take Care and have a good Christmas and New Year.

I feel for you, i have all the same feelings as you. 4 months ago I discovered my husband had a 4 month affair 5 years ago when. It was never a love affair on his part but she offered herself on a plate when he sometimes saw her at the pub he went to at that time. In the end after about a year he gave in to temptation. I was at home with a toddler and trying for our 2nd baby. Up until the beginning of this year they still met up about 3 times a year for a drink after work.
The good thing is that this is the best thing that can happen to a relationship, we have been together since we were 21 (17 years). I must admit i have not paid him much attention since we had the children and there is fault on both sides. Now our relationship has never been better. If you are both in love still it can boost your sex life, make you start communicating better and make more time for each other. I'm sure if you both keep communicating and make time for each other the same will happen for you.
I was amazed when I found this out about my husband as we've alway been soul mates. But something like this which puts a rocket up your relationship can be the best thing that could happen in a weird way.
It still kills me inside when I think about it, its the worst hurt I've ever felt. But 4 months on I don't think about it every day now. My husband is making me feel very loved nowadays I hope yours does too. It will help the heeling.

Good luck x

Hi PINKRAINBOW, Thanks for your message. I do believe that our relationship will be better once the hurt has died down. I do worry about the sex though - I think that when we get around to that I will just be thinking that he will be thinking of her or it will bother me that the last person that he touched intimately was her, which is really hard. He has also asked me to go to Budapest with him and we have arranged it for the last week in January (Gran coming to look after kids) but I am really worried about visiting the flat that dh and ow had a 6 month affair. I know I wont be able to sleep in the bed. Maybe I will have to address that issue when I get there. Thanks again for your message of hope!! Have a great Xmas.

Good luck with your break away, we had a weekend just us a month ago and it was lovely. You need the time without the children just for the 2 of you. Try not to worry about the sex you will hopefully find like me that a shock like this makes you realise how much you love each other and it can add a spark back and make it better than before. I am sure he won't be thinking of her, she was just a fling and hopefully this has made him realise what he has so he won't do it again. He sounds like a good family man not a womaniser.
Try and have a good xmas too, and 1 other tip after the 1st couple of months try and not mention it all the time, I did for a while then my mum advised me not to continually bring it up which although hard I thought good advice. Its hard to move on if its continually talked about. Now when I think about it I keep it to myself. I hope you have a good xmas.