Any recovery from an emotional affair?

[maybeexwifemum]

Just discovered that my husband is having an emotional affair with a work colleague. Of course, he followed the script… minimising the situation, not wanting me to see his phone, hiding her messages in a hidden folder etc etc.

From what I can see, they have not had sex. He says they haven’t and I do believe him on this (I knew when he was lying at the start of this discovery). But, he clearly fancies her. She is much younger, prettier and divorced. I’m not sure if the feeling is reciprocated - it does seems more flirting on her part. But a part of the conversation has been him discussing our sex life, calling it “chore sex” and the like. (For context we are in our 50s and have been together for 30 years).

For now, he has left. I’m devastated and am reeling. Turns out he has told several people that he is not happy in our marriage. We have been working on things, and I have been trying to make an effort.

He says that he loves me and he’s screwed up. But in the very long discussions we have had, he also told me he loved her, and when I said the only way to be with me was to cut all contact with her, he said he couldn’t do that. It was an impossible choice. When I mentioned it a second time, he was silent. At that point, I felt he had no fight for our marriage. I’m not sure I’ve seen much since.

Today, he said he would do anything to stay, including cutting contact with her.

Is it over for good? Until today, I loved him. Of course, after 30 years there’s not the same passion any more, but I do still love him and find him attractive. But is there any hope? Would the resentment just breed and lead to a messier divorce down the road? Should I cut my losses now? Or has anyone been able to make it work?

I agree OP sounds fantastic and seems to be doing really well, but may still be on adrenalin at the moment. I don't understand why some posters focus exclusively on sex, anyway, even in the early stages of an EA, the other partner often picks up instinctively that something is wrong which has a consequential effect on intimacy.

Taking time is definitely good advice, you don’t need to make any decisions until you are ready.

There is clearly a distinction between:

1. Posters with partners who really took full responsibility, were transparent and did all the work to address their choices and

1. People (like me) with partners who continued gaslighting, minimising and, when cornered, wholly blamed their ongoing midlife crises, unmet needs or some external factor.

The common myth that it takes two to ruin a relationship is deeply flawed. Yes two people can contribute to relationship struggles in differing proportions, but only one person has chosen to step outside the relationship and impose hurt. Taking ownership of that seems the critical ingredient for those who decide to try and rebuild.

You may find in 3-5 years when you recover you will then lose all respect for him. Betraying his own vows, lying to himself and you and his family, throwing away a marriage he claims to want for what?

It’s just really unattractive, not very sexy, he’s a bit of a pathetic saddo/loser. Sliming around this younger women who he claims didn’t even want to have sex with him. Not cool at all.

The I’m not happy is from the script. It’s to stop cognitive dissonance.

Totally agree @lonelyplanetmum

And I think it's impossible to advise whether op should stay or go, too many variables, age, finances, the recovery process of both the betrayed and the relationship if they do decide to stay.

Stay or go, it's completely up to you op, I would say choose the best way to recover first, stabalize yourself and build yourself back up with the help of trusted support. You can change tack at any point, nothing is written in stone.
What you feel now maybe completely different in months/years to come, nothing stays the same.

As for your husband's change wanting to stay, he's currently flip flopping depending on his moods, if he spends too much time with her, he will see your advantages, and the opposite if he spends time with you. He's in the early stages of infatuation, it's a dangerous period for making choices but one thing you have learned from this is his stupidity and disloyalty that has over run any sane thinking you may have thought he had.

Appart from the sexual and emotional betrayal, I was blown away with the utter dissapointment that I had chosen someone so monumentally stupid as a life partner.
In time you will regain your confidence and realise that his weaknesses were not in any way your fault and that you were in fact the intellegent one with foresight.

He may bore you in years to come with his feeble excuses.

the suggestion is that op should improve her sexual performance.

No it isn’t. Read the question again and atop projecting.

Maybe sex became a chore for OP too. Maybe it became a chore not because she’d gone off sex, but because his performance wasn’t exactly scintillating. Interesting that assumptions can be that if sex is becoming a problem in the marriage, that the husband is the one with all the moves and the wife is the problem.
Also interesting that the huge elephant in the room isn’t actually playing “hunt the sex/ marriage problems “.
It’s the fact that whatever the problems are or were, no matter how great or small, her husband should have addressed them within the boundaries of the committed, monogamous relationship he willingly signed up for.
The only blame to be shouldered for an affair of any kind is his, and his alone. Because it’s a choice, not an inevitability.
The state of the marriage is separate to the fact that what he is doing is utterly wrong and breaks the vows he made to OP.
You don’t get to cherry pick your marriage vows when things get a bit rough and a younger woman decides to offer a flattering shoulder for you to cry on, to fill in a void in her life. You stay faithful, sort out your problems or you leave. Not easy but the only two morally upright choices available. If you choose to cheat instead, that’s on you. Nobody else. Ever.
OP if you give credence to what a man in an affair spouts to stop himself looking like a common or garden cheating shit, (I’m in a dead marriage/ my wife is crazy/ direct understand me/ sex is a chore blah blah), then you might as well believe everything a nine year old says when called into the headteacher’s office to try to prove their innocence when caught breaking the rules. They will say literally any old shit to convince the OW that they are a victim and not just a lying cheat trying to get into their knickers. As if he’d ever say “sex with OP is fine, actually, but I’d also like a bit on the side with you.”
Don’t listen to his crap OP, it’s bollocks designed to remove his guilt, convince OW that he’s a poor trapped victim and give them a common bond of woe. Of course he shouldn’t have said it but if he thinks it gets sympathy from OW (slagging off the wife always music to their ears) then he’ll say anything, the bloody fool.
He’s cheating and he can’t do that and hold onto a good self image, so you’re getting the blame which actually belongs to him. It’s bullshit.
It isn’t a matter of OP’s performance as a wife at all, that doesn’t come into it, never did, it’s solely a matter of the breaking of vows by an adulterous husband. And he did that, nothing to do with OP at all.

My friend’s husband had a full blown affair and she made him stay elsewhere for six months minimum to prove he wanted back in when he begged to come home and prove he meant what he said.
If you want to try again it’s possible, but the impetus must come from him and he has a ton of work to do to prove it.
Only you know whether he and your history are worth it. Take care and prioritise yourself, this stuff is so painful it’s hard to even describe.

Maybe sex became a chore for OP too. Maybe it became a chore not because she’d gone off sex, but because his performance wasn’t exactly scintillating. Interesting that assumptions can be that if sex is becoming a problem in the marriage, that the husband is the one with all the moves and the wife is the problem.

Exactly! Indeed, the OP has already clarified that her husband was talking about the chore being hers:

I should also clarify when he said “chore sex” that was referring to sex being a chore for me. He also referred to me giving an“unenthusiastic shag”. So the chore is on my side, not his.

The OP’s question was whether there was any recovery from this. I maintain that the extent to which the OP agrees with her husband’s framing forms a part of the answer. Not the largest part, but a part worth clarifying nonetheless.

My point is though that I wouldn’t give tuppence for the crap he’s spouting to OW, affair partners tell each other what they want to hear.
The “chore sex” (Ugh!) comment really doesn’t matter, it should play no part in whether or not to reconcile, it has nothing to do with his choice to cheat.
Taking full responsibility for his actions, no blame for OP, cutting off all contact with OW, permanently, lots of introspection as to why he felt entitled enough to do this and how he “justified” it and lied to himself, fully investing in OP and his marriage, is the only way back, even if OP wants to try.
Any contact within OW, any blaming OP, any sign of not taking full responsibility, of not being fully remorseful and willing to do whatever it takes, and I wouldn’t let him back in, even for a conversation.
OP agreeing to any extent with her husband’s framing of the situation is tantamount to OP taking the blame. She is in no way to blame for his cheating and should tell him to stick his “woe is me” narrative where the sun don’t shine. His “framing” is the narrative he’s constructed to be able to play the victim and justify his wrongdoing to OW and OP. It’s how affairs work: maximise and even invent flaws in your spouse and minimise flaws in your affair partner. Wife= bad person OW= good person and bingo! There went guilt in a cloud of bullshit justifications.
OP don’t even consider agreeing with or trying to unpick his “framing” aka his version of events. That’s not the conversation younger to have. He really might as well have said to OW that he’d found out you were a lizard alien from the planet Tharg.
He said what she wanted to hear which was anything at all to support the following:
“We both know me hitting on you means I’m lying to my wife and keeping secrets from her and my adult children and being a total shit, but you won’t like or want to sleep with a total shit. So, how to get round this awful truth about me so that you’ll actually feel sorry for me and like me…..
I have to dress this up as me being desperate, so very unhappy, trapped in a pretty much sexless marriage, neglected and bored, a victim of a disinterested, uncaring wife. A man who has bravely soldiered on for years as a good loyal person (because that’s who I am remember, a good loyal person, not a lying deceiving piece of crap) until you made me realise what happiness was missing from my life, you made me feel alive again … Young again.. blah bloody blah.”

Tale as old as time, same old script.
I’d be far more interested in how he wants to “frame” his choices to break his marriage vows, lie, cheat, gaslight and villify his wife.

OP agreeing to any extent with her husband’s framing of the situation is tantamount to OP taking the blame.

If there is only a single "the blame" to be shouldered 100% by one or the other, what's the point of the OP's question?

You don't get it do you.

Let's frame it another way.

I would say the person who steps outside of a 30 year marriage without concience of harming their partner is very capable of being the person who is wholly responsible for being the abusive person in their marriage.

He was always the one who had problems making a connection and the one who did not value the betrayed person and their marriage.

Essentially he's a moron who likes to blame others for his poor, selfish choices and you yourself sound like you have similar values, aportioning blame for the indefensible.

@maybeexwifemum : Dealing with the aftermath of an affair is unbelievably difficult, for reasons including things other people have said in this thread. But there's another complication: the effect of blame and shame. My wife's affair was years ago, but we never discussed it. God knows I tried, but, for her, the affair just meant guilt, blame and shame and - I'm pretty sure - these emotions were too much for her to overcome, the result of which was that we never discussed any aspect of the affair in any depth. Why did it happen? What did it mean to you when it was happening? How did you feel when it was over? Did you enjoy the sex, and was our unsatisfactory sex life (if it were such) a motivation for the affair? Or was it deeper than that?

I'm telling you - years later, I really want the answers to these questions and, from this distant perspective, I can see the harm that guilt, blame and shame did to our prospects of an honest - painful, but honest - conversation.

You have to walk an incredibly difficult tightrope. You are not in any way responsible for your husband's choices and you have the absolute right to act in a way which will further your own happiness, without reference to anyone. The simplest way to achieve this is divorce. I'm not advising that, but I am putting it forward as what you might call an informed opinion.

Beautifully put - many people seem to think there has to be a ‘ definite reason’ for previously good partners to act like total shits - there very often simply isn’t a reason at all - it’s pure lust and opportunity and ego boosting , particularly in men I feel - I do think women doing this do tend to fall more into the ‘unhappy with partner looking for away out’ territory. Plenty of men fully intend to carry on affairs Asan extra bit of cake eating and as you rightly say if they said to an affair partner, actually my wife is lovely, we get on really well I have no intention of splitting and I do like you and just actually fancy a bit more sex on top and you seem quite open to it — a lot of women would run a mile ( some wouldn’t admittedly) - so they make it sound all woe is me instead , so they don’t seem quite such a shit.

OP I really feel for you. Take time to make your decision.

I too have been married almost 30 years. 14 years ago my ‘D’H had an EA that I found out about when he stupidly left his FB messenger open. We moved on, mainly because my daughter was young and I accepted that we both needed to work harder at the marriage. It was never good afterwards, just ok. Nothing changed.

A couple of years ago my spidey senses told me he was up to something. Welded to his phone, never left it unattended, didn’t charge it in my presence, recoiled if I asked to borrow it in an emergency (eg if my battery had died.) So I warned him - stop whatever it is you are up to, or the marriage is over.

Over the years I’d become increasingly lonely in the marriage as there was no conversation, no laughter, no interest in me, sex had dwindled to nothing. Every decision was down to me, down to where we went on holiday or where we ate,
work on the house,
school and other life admin. One day I realised he’d not taken me out on a date once in 20 years. We had nothing in common other than parenting. Even so I procrastinated because by then I was utterly indifferent to him yet the thought of ending the marriage after so long was terrifying.

It took next to no time - when I finally decided that I had to do something about my suspicions - to discover call logs for the 18,000 texts they’d exchanged over 18 months, and goodness knows how many phone calls with her. It was incessant. I’d warned him, but he was arrogant enough to think he’d get away with it. Now I’m walking away.

He, of course, has made the same promises to change as the first time. There have been tears and apologies and declarations that I am his priority. And yes, it’s a lot of time to throw away. But since finding out I’ve found an inner strength I’d forgotten I had. I have more years ahead of me (I hope) and they deserve to be ones where I feel valued. I will be ok. Him not so much, but he’s not my problem any more.

Only you know, deep down, whether your marriage is salvageable. I don’t think mine ever was - there was never any effort on his part to change, and eventually he couldn’t stop himself. Your situation may be different and I sincerely hope it is. Take your time to decide.

For me - there is absolutely no come back from the chore sex comment. None.

He is only begging to come back because the fantasy bubble has been popped and she actually doesn’t want to take him on full time and now he is realising that his options are limited; he has clicked that he is losing all his comforts, social status, a place to live, his reputation - all because of some text messages.

Divorcee may have been bored.
Your husband is a fool.

Don’t take him back.

I am so sorry this has happened.

This thread keeps getting strangely preoccupied with the DHs one off self justification comment about sex in a 30-year marriage. Surely one comment isn’t determinative.

Starting to think I am the only person alive who, in my current (very happy!) relationship, occasionally jokes that sex is on the to-do list between servicing the car, chauffeuring the kids, loading the dishwasher and doing the dog walk.

@maybeexwifemum Firstly there's no guarantee this affair is over. They rarely ever end until the other woman decides to do so. Your husband has proved he's a lying bastard, so there's no reason to believe him this time. Secondly, you will never get over this. You're convincing yourself you will because you feel afraid of the future (understandable) and you think you still love him. But believe me, it will eat away at you daily until you can hardly bare to look at him.

I feel for you - it’s bad enough when your H isn’t like this, ( and I’ve been there) goes on date nights, buys you stuff and you get on well - but when none of that is there either - yep I would be leaving - nothing really to salvage

OP asked if there is any coming back from an emotional affair. That’s all she asked. That’s what I’m responding to.
My answer is yes there is, but that depends on OP even wanting to try again, or deciding that the betrayal is too much, and if she wants to consider staying in the marriage, him shouldering the blame (he chose this, OP didn’t force him) and asking himself why he didn’t solve any problems he had by communicating honestly with his wife. Why he chose lies and deceit and cowardice instead of honesty and integrity.
That should have been what he did, as a married man: deal with this within the vows he made to OP. He had choices besides running to an OW, which is why none of his emotional affair is OP’s fault. The marriage is a 50/50 shared responsibility, his emotional affair is 100% his responsibility. He was tempted by an easy but immoral answer to his alleged woes and chose wrongdoing over honesty. That’s on him. At any time he could have said no or ended it. He chose not to.
OP’s question has no other dimension than can you come back from an emotional affair, not whether or not she thinks what he said has any truth in it or whether she should carry any blame.

OP carries shared responsibility for her marriage, which is another question, but only her husband carries any responsibility for his choice to have an affair in response to the marriage problems he told OW he had.
He owns and discusses his terrible infidelity choices first, then they discuss the marriage together.
There’s no coming back from a betrayal if he holds the belief it’s ok to cheat if you’re in a bad marriage. It never is, it’s a cowardly dishonest choice. He shouldn’t be looking elsewhere to excuse his own awful behaviour. He’s an adult.

My advice is not to continue with him. If it was bad before it will be worse now. You deserve not to be an option.

This

Thank you for all your thoughts and feedback. I do take responsibility for my part of the marriage… the things he said he was unhappy with, some I knew, some I was working on, some I didn’t realise were as much of a problem as they were and I could have done more about. But he decided to take his frustrations outside of the marriage and he has to take 100% responsibility for that.

I appreciate all the posts that have said it takes time. I think that is exactly what I need. Last week I would have said we had a good marriage and I feel that I have lost my best friend. I keep seeing things and thinking I’ll just tell DH…

I’m not making any decisions yet, now I just need to negotiate how we move forward into the next phase, learn how to live apart etc…

When you see things you want to share with DH maybe share them with your Mum, the DC or with us on here.

My exH had one friend (apart from the OW). Now, on the rare occasions when he sees the DC, he is always keen to absorb news of the pets, my relatives, my old friends, neighbours and local news. I always just think well all of those people came as part of the package with me - he doesn’t deserve to have those things shared with him any more. He did substitute our family social life with OWs younger circle for a while, but says he used to hang out with them all, but doesn’t now.

Really my point is don’t share stuff that comes as part and parcel of you with him- he has hurt you and doesn’t deserve things that come as part of the you package.