My husband had a 2 year affair and I don’t know whether to take him back

[Thescornedwife]

This is a hard question to even write, I am
crying while writing it that I can’t even see properly. My DH has been having a 2 year affair with a co-worker, the last year of it being physical and the first year emotional. The OW left her husband and my husband left me however neither of them said why, just that the marriages were over and they didn’t love their spouses anymore.

This was 6 months ago and I have been in turmoil as to how he can leave me and our grown daughters in limbo, not coming on holiday and living away from home etc, but I have just found out it’s because of this other woman. He has slept with her countless times and in contact with her day and night for 2 years constantly, pledged his love for her, visited her at her home and played happy families with her all in secret. Been her support system, had his own shower gel etc at her house, took her a birthday cake on her birthday, helped her with DIY in the house, the list is endless. The lies have been colossal! I only found out because he told me before she did because she had had enough of him not making a fuller commitment to her and she wanted to leave him and leave her job, and I also think work and work mates were becoming suspicious and the jig was up basically. I can’t help but feel he would have continued if she hadn’t got cold feet.

Now he all of a sudden wants back home and is sorry and it meant nothing and she was more into it than he was and he loves me and wants to go to counselling blah blah!

He has lost his job, his reputation and my DC can’t look at him and never mind my extended family! He was afraid the OW would tell me everything because I contacted her also so he told me every single gory detail that I now can’t get out of my head! It’s sickening! Very sickening!

I love him still and he’s all I know, can this be repaired? Did he love her? He took the biggest risks to be with her, what the hell does that say about me? And everything else we created together?

I hasten to add that it’s terrified me of therapy! The hundreds of comments on here can’t be wrong! And some from people who have experienced it! Yet I’m worried therapy will try and take advantage of my vulnerability and not guide me where I need to go.

My father cheated on my mother thirtish years ago. She took him back 'for the children'. Us children left home decades ago and they live in toxic hell together as she understandably never forgave him and are too old and ill to change their lives now. I would have preferred a quick ripping off of the plaster and my parents having divorced many years ago and going on to be happy than seeing how they live now.

O P if he starts up again with crying and begging - you should return the same x 5! But not in front of DC. Scream at him how he has devasted your family and their business and you are so ashamed about it. Let him know your heart and health are now completely broken thanks to him and you can't stand the sight of him! Tell him he's photos etc were disgusting and made you feel nauseous -that he's worse than you ever imagined! etc etc. Also that he's a total loser, gambler , liar and home wrecker !Then maybe he'll go away rather than listen to your earful of scorn and hate!!

You "don't blame the family for wanting him out"?!

Forget the workplace sex for goodness sake he disrespected You and Your children AND YOUR Family who gave him a decent living....with Perks!

Which he used in their FACES to get a leg over at work!?!?!?! The cheek!

I say this kindly - Wake Up from your sorrow and Get Angry. For your sake.

No return from this OP - you will regret taking him back Forever. Damage is done and by Him Not You.

Sending hugs at this difficult time, totally understand how it messes with your emotions and head.

2 years!?! Of straight faced lies and deception including leaving you because she left her husband?

Find your Anger OP. Don't let him walk all over you like this.

You need a clear head going forwards.

That's because people can make a lot of money from it.

Can anyone link to that excellent thread a few months back where the poster discovered her husband was having an affair? It took her ages to find her anger and she bought him out of the flat before letting on she knew

Many women have gone the rabbit hole of taking back cheating partners. Most had awful stories to tell.

Reconciliation with a partner in a long term affair often leads to nowhere. There are some serious issues they need to address, and the majority don't want to do it. They look for the easy option of telling the rejected spouse how sorry they are, how much they love their family, how it will never happen again, or go for serious manipulation like threaten suicide. Words. Just empty words without taking themselves to a counsellor to acknowledge the harm they've done and why they did it.

You can't reconcile with a man who had a 2 year relationship with the woman he left you for, just because he doesn't want to be alone. He's not thinking of you or your children's well being, he's thinking about what's best for him and to hell with you and your children.

He doesn't care about anyone except himself.

I remember that but can't remember the poster. I do remember two threads one by @pleasenotme and @bananabeau both had terrible husbands like this, the first one was really grovelling at him and he was showing complete contempt. I've not seen them for a while but I hope both posters ditched them and moved on.

Surviving fucking Infidelity, and it’s ’Reconciliation’ sub-forum in particular - has a lot to answer for…

Seriously, @Thescornedwife - I know it’s early days, but you need to get a grip. This’ll never end well.

There is another book that really helped me a few months after DDay called 'Cheating in a Nutshell' .
I remember reading this quote from it and had it printed out and put on my kitchen wall so each time I felt conflicted in my emotions I read it back. My XH got half my large inheritance as we invested it in a huge renovation......except he'd already started chasing the new OW at that point (I only found this out much later on).

"A lie is an assumption of power over another. A lie is an assault that attacks not only the dignity of the other person but also their physical and mental well-being.

A lie steals power from the one deceived. It reduces their alternatives.

It causes the betrayed person to act as they never would have acted had they known the truth.

A liar deliberately feeds inaccurate information, and when there are children, the lies reverberate in their lives as well."

Has anyone mentioned Chumplady yet?

Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life: The Chump Lady’s Survival Guide

Definitely worth reading…

So was it your uncle who found out about the affair because of all the sex at work, so your husband had to confess because obviously you'd have found out anyway? Just wondering what the timeline is between your husband getting sacked and him telling you about the affair.

Whatever happened, I'm really sorry you've been treated so badly by someone you love. FWIW my stepdad had an affair (not for two years though) and my mum ended up taking him back. I'm certain she'd have done things differently in highsight. I don't think she's ever really loved/liked him since.

Same. Mine are like the Twits now.

I’m sorry you are going through this. Relationship breakups are hard and you have been with him a long time, known each other since teenagers and have grown up children. I’m guessing most of your adult life has been in this relationship and you don’t know anything else. So that’s very frightening to contemplate life as a single person. But you seem to have the support of your wider family - kudos for your uncle and family for not accepting the unacceptable.

It’s also hard to face the fact that someone who you trusted implicitly for so many years has betrayed you so completely. You begin to question your own judgement. Perhaps you wonder how in the future you will trust others.
But the bigger question is how will you trust him if you did take him back? If you’ve been together since teens, he may have felt he wanted more experiences, settled down too soon etc but the way he went about this was incredibly selfish, deceitful and hurtful over a long period of time. Your children are grown, I expect two years ago it would have been possible for him to be honest and separated from you without causing devastation in their lives. But instead he chose to spend two years deceiving you, betraying your trust, taking your choices away from you, before owning up to his other relationship (let’s not call it an affair, that sounds so flimsy - he was investing far more emotionally in the other woman than he was in you and his family). And he only owned up to it because he had no choice. This is very different to a moment of madness or lust or drunken lack of control. This was deliberate, long standing and carried out sober.
Now he wants back in his marriage. I think you do have to question his motives particularly given his unfortunate circumstances.

My opinion is that whatever you decide, your life will not go back to the way it was before the affair. You will no longer have a husband you can trust to be faithful and honest. You will no longer have a husband who you believe is there because he wants to be with you. You will no longer have a husband who you can rely on. You will no longer have a husband who in your heart you know loves you.
He has been part of your life for a long time so your confusion is understandable. Just be aware if you take him back, you are not turning back the clock.
My advice would be that if you are tempted to take him back, he should prove himself to you. If he really wants you back, he should be happy to do this. For instance, he should get a job and a home. He should take you out. He should wait for you to want to be intimate again. He should expect you to be angry. He should meet up with your children if they allow it. He should apologise to your uncle. Not necessarily these ideas but whatever would make sense to you.
In your shoes though, I would definitely prefer to make a new life for myself however difficult I might find that.

Yes, I and others dotted throughout the thread have. This is exactly the book @Thescornedwifeneeds to read right now and I think she'll find the chapter on reconciliation a breath of fresh air as it describes exactly how she feels.

I don't find the blog as helpful (but still read it faithfully!) but her book really put into words all my conflicting and confused emotions into words and I will always be grateful to an u known MN poster who suggested it on a cheater thread I was reading at the time.

No, the OW woman was threatening to tell and leave her job so he had no choice but to tell me (he seriously downplayed the initial confession about the affair though). I then told my parents and they in turn told my uncle that both his “employees” (be it he was family) were in a relationship. Nothing wrong with that in normal circumstances but my DH is family! And married to me! And he had to tell about the sex at work when he realised OW was being serious about letting it all out. He actually just didn’t have the nerve to go back to work that day anyway, or face the consequences, he just said “it’s ok I’ll resign” not that my uncle wanted him back anyway.

@Thescornedwife - you can have therapy on your own and for yourself. Don’t do therapy with him. There are great therapists out there. But those with a reconciliation agenda aren’t right for this kind of situation. (They might be better suited where the problem in the marriage is more about how best to communicate).

As PPs have said, this wasn’t a drunken 1-night stand or a very short dalliance. This was a 2-year affair where they had sex at work on multiple occasions, he lied to you and cheated on you throughout and he left you 6 months ago telling you he didn’t love you any more and needed space, including ignoring his DCs’ pleas that he join you on a family holiday. He was happy to lie to your face, cheat on you and throw away his job and your relationship. There are some things you cannot come back from. I would say this is one if those things.

It’s called penis privilege.

men can’t be in control of what they are doing and as women we must mollify them.
it’s just one of the many reasons I left the Samaritans.
I refused to believe that I had to understand men fucking around on their wives and families due to their hormones.

patriarchy is everywhere.
protect your daughters from it.

OP I’m glad you are getting good advice here. As we have said it feels scary but you don’t have to make any decisions right now. Just start talking to people you can trust (not him!), work out what divorce would look like financially and see how he behaves when he’s not sure where you stand. He’s been in control of this for two years. All the decisions have been his. It’s time to take control back and keep him in the dark on your thoughts and feelings. He doesn’t deserve them.

And if he runs to the OW because he doesn’t think he is getting anywhere with you then more fool her. He’s not a prize. He’s an unemployed man, who can’t be trusted and whose reputation is in tatters. His family doesn’t want anything to do with him and his friends from work won’t want to risk being on his side. He’s not running into the sunset with her. It sounds like a miserable place to be. And he deserves it.

Have you asked him if he would forgive you if the roles were reversed and you cheated on him for two years, left him and embarrassed him in front of everyone you knew? Let him tell you he would with a straight face.

Sadly if you take him back after that level of dishonesty and disrespect you are just telling him that he can get away with it, and he will do it again. It sucks that whilst he loses the life you built together through his own choices, you also lose it through no fault of your own - but it has already gone, taking him back now wouldn't get the pre-affair relationship back as that ship has sailed.

Your next step with him should be navigating your complex feelings and hurt so that you can try to salvage an amicable coparenting relationship (it sounds like your girls are mostly grown, but there will be graduations (and university funding!), weddings, babies etc to come and it will help everyone if you can navigate these things amicably enough to make it easier for them). Therapy might help.

Look forward to the new future that apparently you are having - being in full control of your own home, time, holidays etc with no need to compromise with a man, no wife-work on his behalf, and potentially still romance and sex if you want it - with one or more people who treat you better than he did! You can stay in touch with his relatives if you want to, but don't feel you need to mask what he did or how much it has hurt you and your daughters if you do. It might actually be quite nice in a few years once the trauma wounds from this part have started to heal.

There is a lot of money in infidelity for therapists/counsellors. They sell hope and keep the betrayed spouse paying by asking the betrayed spouse to "share responsibility". Because otherwise the cheater will flounce off in a huff, taking their money with them.

It's absolutely sickening. Chump Lady calls it the Reconcilation Industrial Complex (RIC), because tons of people/businesses are making a LOT of money off the betrayed spouses.

And reconciliation rarely works!

https://www.chumplady.com/wheres-the-data-on-reconciliation/

"Gretchen Baskerville over at Life-Saving Divorce did do her own unscientific research, following up with 330 participants who attended marriage retreats and found that 7 out of 10 divorced or separated, and another 1 in 10 planned to. What about the remaining 2 in 10? Some were happily married, but the majority were unhappily married (and thousands of dollars poorer).

Based on her survey, the Hope Restored marriage intensive from Focus on the Family had one of the higher rates of failure, with more than 7 in 10 attendees later divorcing or separating, and more than 7 in 10 indicated they would not recommend it to others. "

The RIC doesn't work because the problem is not the marriage, it's the CHEATER.

The RIC also refuses to recognise that cheating is abuse - because it makes money off turning a blind eye to it.

In fact, cheating is every type of domestic abuse you can think of. It is:

• emotional abuse: cheated people class being cheated on the most painful and traumatizing thing that ever happened to them, it's agonizing and soul destroying
• mental abuse: many women feel a latent sense of unease long before they find out their spouse is cheating, they clock the lies subconsciously, they query the cheater and are fed a pack of lies and are gaslit to kingdom come, and they feel anxious and confused, sometimes for years
• physical abuse: the cheater can not only pass on deadly STDs, they also pass on vaginal flora from OWs that can cause distressing chronic or repeated bouts of UTIs and bacterial vaginoses; many women say how these problems disappeared when they ditched the cheater
• financial abuse: lot of cheaters spend family money on OWs and prostitutes
• sexual abuse: the wife would likely NOT agree to sex with the cheater if they knew he was fucking around, so the right to consent has been stripped from her
• a form of reproductive abuse, because chlamydia and bacterial vaginosis can cause female sterility

The RIC is morally bankrupt and self-serving. I strenuously urge you to avoid it.

An individual counsellor for you, to help you navigate this turmoil and pain, would be a better bet.

She might have been blackmailing him for a finish too, she thought he had money.

There is a reason for that, I know I keep repeating this but he is after squandering a ton of money on this affair. He has probably taken out loans etc. check this and be careful!!’

Honestly get rid of him. You deserve so much better

Great post.

What do you mean she was threatening to leave? Was this when she was threatening constructive dismissal unless he was also made to go?