Multiple affairs, MS and what to do next….?

[64scared]

I am nearly 60. I’ve been with my husband for nearly 40 years. We have two kids in their thirties. Our marriage has, I thought, been pretty good, though I was diagnosed with MS at 27 and my health has not been amazing. We had an intimate sex life until twenty years ago. My illness then just made it the last thing on my mind. We never really discussed it and that side of things faded away…

DH has been the provider our whole married lives, or since I was diagnosed anyway. He owns his own business and works hard, and this involves regular travel. When at home he is fully present and I’ve never doubted his commitment to me. Until now.

We have never hidden phones from each other. We go in each others WhatsApp’s for various reasons. Then last weekend I was using his phone and discovered an app called telegram which he had open. He had a conversation open and I flicked through… increasingly in horror.

He was describing to a woman his cheating history. This spans ten years and has ranged from a few months to apparently five years. He set out how he has loved these women but will never leave me as I need him and he is committed to me. He has used work travel as a cover and managed to run these relationships without me ever suspecting a thing.

I feel strangely calm and haven’t said anything but what the fuck to do. If I were to raise it I don’t know what I’d be asking for. My home life is happy and this has been happening for ten years without any impact on me. He has set out to this new prospect that this will continue and I am torn between wanting to go ape shit and wanting to turn a blind eye.

what do you think? He is my carer. I can’t live independently. I have no income. And he’s made it clear he will never leave me. I feel betrayed but I also know that it probably wasn’t great to expect him to live without sex forever more.

I just want to go back to a world where I didn’t open his bloody app…

Is it possible that he has assumed somewhere along the line that you already knew or had guessed? The openness with his phone suggests to me that he thinks you know and accept it. Or that for whatever reason, he wants to get caught out this time, that he wants to trigger a conversation about the future.

He may well love these other women on some level, but clearly not enough to end his marriage for them. Love can take many different forms, fill different voids for people. His relationships with them aren't 'real', in the sense that they haven't had to survive in the open, only in the fantasy and fun of secret liaisons, not the daily grind of life. Real love is in the every day, the ordinary, a lifetime of caring for each other, not the romance of a few days here and there, even if over several years.

People and relationships are a complex series of connections and characteristics. What is right for one may not be for another. It is easy to sit on your phone and judge.

The OPs mental health has been so bad that's she's been sectioned. That's surely very pertinent here. He may have thought she wasn't capable of having a discussion about the lack of sex or that it would have led to another mental health episode. I really think no one can generalise here. Why don't you talk about it with your counsellor OP and process how you feel. Having your life be upended could have pretty extreme health consequences to someone so vulnerable.

He's a self-serving liar and a cheat. I think it's very dangerous advice, suggesting the OP stick her head back in the sand and hope for the best, leaving her long term security completely in his hands. He could pull the rug from under her feet at any time, without warning.

He spent 10 years being in a sexless marriage and stayed faithful. Then another 10 where he has been unfaithful.

In all that time he's had plenty of opportunity to "pull the rug". In the messages the OP has found he makes very clear he does not want to leave the marriage.

Given the knowledge the OP has she could decide not to confront him, but as many posters have suggested, also start making plans/researching what her next steps could be if either of them decided to exit the marriage.

Realistically based on the evidence, I'd say the bigger risk to "the rug being pulled" is if she confronts him.

As for a self serving liar and cheat. Well yes he's cheated. Should he have been honest about it? Ideally yes. But given the OP's updates about her mental health I'm not sure this situation is quite a clear cut as you want to make out.

He's by the OP's account been the person who's physically, mentally and financially held the family together for over 20 years. He could have walked away but didn't. I don't think that makes him self serving.

By contrast the OP has been happy to live in a sexless relationship and been happy in it because of what that relationship has provided to her and the fear of being without the support he provides.

I think if you wanted to be harsh you could argue that's also a self serving position.

I think both the OP and her DH have had a tough time to navigate and neither of them have made choices beyond criticism.

But they have lived happily together for the last 20 years.

Is the alternative in confronting him worth it? What benefit would it bring to the OP?

You have mental and physical health problems which may include a low sex drive and it's understandable that sex is something you're not interested in given your health problems.

Your views on sex are skewed as to fail to understand that your husband, a fit and healthy man would automatically lose interest in sex too.

He may even have a high sex drive.

It's incredibly sad for you both that you ignored the situation at home and never discussed it. You choosing to accept it as a way of life and him seeking sexual pleasure elsewhere.

You are chained to each other with neither of you breaking free. A very sad existence.

I've NC for this.

Someone upthread asked how a woman can have an affair with a guy knowing this.

I've done that, exactly that, a guy was honest that his wife was disabled, he loved her and they didn't have sex anymore, but he wasn't going to leave her. He never spoke badly of her but he wanted a sexual relationship and a bit of different companionship at times. Why did I do it? I'm a single parent to two young DDs. I don't want a LTR or marriage, or anyone meeting my daughters. Nor did I want someone who wanted a big commitment. For me, someone who was happy at home and wasn't going to leave his wife was perfect. I wasn't setting out to hurt his wife, I never messaged at times I thought she would see, we caught up for chats and messages a couple of times a week. Mainly life stuff, but then we'd meet up for sex and it was fun. For me it was like a FWB situation. There are plenty of women out here that don't want a relationship and this worked. We eventually fizzled out, no drama, I wished him well. So if you do decide to ignore it, with how he's laying it out, it doesn't sound remotely like he's planning on leaving, and it's likely he's meeting women that have a similar outlook and don't want him to leave either. Obviously there's no guarantee to that, but I do think he has been discreet if it's been going on 10 years and you haven't suspected.

The alternative is to explore steps towards independence. Recognising that he is not the man she thought he was.

All it's going to take is one woman who he really clicks with and wants to be with, and OP's life will come crashing down. I'd want to be 100% prepared for that eventuality even if it never actually happened.

I don't think he would leave. You're a dependent in his eyes, almost like one of his children. That love is usually far more powerful than any kind of romantic love. He knows it would destroy you if he left and he probably wouldn't be able to live with himself. I think he's in it for the long haul. I've known people in similar situations and that is the sort of love/dynamic that keeps the well spouse with the ill spouse.

I've name changed and am not trying to wind anyone up. I juts want to give the OW view, please don't read on if you don't want that.

I have had a 5 year affair with a man trapped in a sexless marriage. He tried to fix it and couldn't. He won't leave, yes we have feelings for each other and talk everyday. It was just sex to begin with but now we support each other through tough times. Does he want to do this, no. Does he feel he can live for you next 40 years without sex, no. His wife made that decision for him

Nice. Now we have OW mansplaining why men cheat on their wives.

This is a very good post.

I can’t help but feel that the self-serving thing for him to have done would have been to leave.

He's not trapped. He can leave and divorce like many others do when their relationships fail or the intimacy is gone.

Trapped but then you say he won't leave. Which is it? He obviously loves his wife and uses you for sex, why do you accept such treatment?

I don't believe anyone should stay in a sexless relationship but I'd bet a tenner in your case he is still having sex with his wife. Why don't you try dating someone unattached?

@ohdearymeeewhy you don't say why it's sexless and I'm not having a dig but an able bodied person with good mental health refusing sex is very different to the OP's situation. The dynamics involved in the relationship are vastly different.

She refuses and won't discuss, yes he could leave but doesn't. I don't actually want him to either

Yeah so he says hun. You keep lapping it up. Wouldn't you like to be treated better than this?

So he's still trying to get her to have sex even though she clearly doesn't want to AND he's been cheating her for 5 years?

yep

You sound happy with things the way they are. I don't judge anyone in your situation as I really have no idea of the individual's genuine situation

The narrative on here is always that a man who says he doesn’t have sex with his wife is lying but thread after thread suggests he’s probably not.

See that's just disgusting to me, he's no doubt laying on the guilt trip to her even though she stopped wanting sex years ago, and he's having an affair but still making out she's the bad guy etc.

If people are going to cheat when they're in a sexless relationship they should at least stop trying to get their spouse to have sex with them 😷

He may well be planning to leave, when the timing and circumstances are right for him. Who knows? He has a whole other life he's not sharing with the OP, she can only guess at what he's really up to.

Well obviously there are a lot of sexless relationships so they're not all lying, but it's also a common enough lie that women shouldn't just lap it up when a man tells them that. There's a high chance he's lying and it's unlikely that the affair partner will find out the truth.

Yeah a previous poster said he might not many more years of this left if he's going to retire in the next few years because it would be more difficult to carry on affairs if he's not travelling for work, but perhaps retirement will make him go the other way and to want to go all in with an affair partner, if he goes for affair partners around his age then perhaps she'll feel the same and sell him the idea of a proper life together to enjoy retirement.

OP is in a very precarious position. All she knows is what he has told the new prospect, that may not even be the truth, maybe there was times he was considering leaving the OP.

I agree. So many threads and so many posts where women in ltr say they don't have sex, don't want sex or at most have 3-4 x a year 'obligational' sex.

I don't know why people seem to think it's unlikely that a man saying there is no sex is lying.

I feel sorry for both of you - a very sad situation.

The only thing I would say is to not underestimate the impact that withdrawal of intimacy would have had upon him.

I was recently in that situation for nearly six months (my husband withdrew, despite me making multiple overtures to resolve it) and it affected me far more than I expected. I felt utterly lonely, rejected, insecure and it felt so painful to see other couples just showing normal affection (an arm around the shoulders etc).

After four months I was seriously asking myself where the moral boundary lay around infidelity in these circumstances.

I didn’t, but I certainly thought about it.

None of us is perfect and, in the swirling mass of humanity, I think that you probably have a man who is, overall, a good man.