He's definitely restarted the affair

[Allthegoodonesareg0ne]

2 years ago my husband had an affair and we reconciled. All was going well. He left his job for a bit and then had to go back. In March he went on a trip where she was, first time since. He came back off. I suspected, he denied. Then he said he hasn't been happy, rhe effort of dealing with my triggers from the affair was too much. He was worn out. He was planning to stay until after my hysterectomy this week and then move out. Since then its been a roller coaster. Warm some days, cold the next. In amongst it i filed for divorce. Some days he wanted to try and some days he was like an imposter in my husbands body. Over and over I asked about her he said he wasn't talking to her.
Today I got forwarded messages between them from her husband. He's been at it again.
He says he wasn't cheating, he'd already decided it was over between us he wouldn't tell me so I'd let him look after me and rhe kids through my surgery.
So now I know. I already suspected it shouldn't be a shock. I'd already said ir was over but I suppose some part of me was hanging on.
No point to this really except maybe to warn others and to get a bit or a handhold as this feels bloody unbearable.

Exactly this.
There isn't a focus from me on the ow (though I don't have a high opinion of her and think she has a questionable moral compass!)
What they do next absolutely affects me. We have children. If she sticks around she becomes part of my life. If he moves to another country wirh her or they have babies that also impacts me and my kids.
The fact that we are sorting the dissolution of our marriage and handling financial at the same time they are planning their life together is totally related to my experience of this divorce.
On a human note, I'm not overly disappointed that the logistics of their current situation make this a nightmare for them!
He's the one who has betrayed me, but she is his accomplice. I don't think anyone is demonising her here and sparing him

The only thing you could do differently is focus more on you and what's good enough for you and stop trying to save a relationship.

In my opinion you need to show the other person you're totally willing to let them go their own way and mean it.

It's easier said than done as both participants are addicted to the dynamic.

Most of affair recovery is a personal reconstruction project that each person does for themselves and THEN they can look at the relationship to see if it can be rebuilt on a completely new basis.

I think both things need to go on in parallel.
Job 1 is to set firm, non-negotiable boundaries with clear consequences for contravention.
I’m pretty sure if @Allthegoodonesareg0ne had found him still cheating, unwilling to participate or recalcitrant in any way, he would have been long gone.
Unless you separate for a while to work on yourselves independently, which isn’t always financially or logistically possible, you have to deal with what’s going on within yourself and within the relationship and the infidelity aftermath every day. Work/ children/ life won’t give you a breather in which to sort yourselves out.
Any issues perceived by ether party before the infidelity, have probably been magnified and rewritten by the unfaithful, with a few invented for good measure to attempt to justify the betrayal. The discovery and immediate aftermath of the affair tend to make other issues look like a walk in the park and get smothered initially.
I think working out your own issues, working out how to ‘be’ as a couple and working out what you want individually happen concurrently.
Living in the same house and parenting your children with at least a semblance of getting along/ normality for them, has to be sorted immediately.
Therapy and/ or communicating honestly whilst this is going on raises what you feel and helps you see what you want and need from the relationship at the same time.
I guess it’s dependent on what happens on discovery, and whether, having decided to try to reconcile , the betrayed needs space to get their thoughts together or prefers/ can stand the unfaithful still being in the same house.
I think after being the victim of an act of supreme selfishness, such as infidelity, the betrayed usually wants to shift the focus from the entitlement of the unfaithful to themselves and their needs within the relationship naturally.
Maintaining the marriage in the new circumstances happens as a day-to-day event alongside your own personal growth. In my case how our relationship evolved grew naturally, out of having it suddenly thrown into sharp focus and seeing life as we knew it under threat. No ‘pick me’ dances, no compromises accommodating the unfaithful extracting themselves from the affair: just an honest ‘this is what I need to happen, this is what I want the relationship to look like and if you can’t do that, then get out.’
I think when things are going smoothly, couples rarely evaluate what they have built together and how precious that is.
Infidelity comes from losses: loss of conscience, empathy; compassion; courage; personal standards; truth; honesty…. ultimately it is a gradual loss of self, each boundary crossed leaves who they were further behind. It is never about the injured party, who often gets scapegoated for the unfaithful’s character flaws and appalling choices. Those personal character losses lead to actions which can end in a catastrophic loss, a fact often pushed down or minimised by the unfaithful because, after all, nobody will ever find out …….
Discovery often shows both parties what they stand to lose. Sadly for some unfaithfuls, they realise too late, when they get thrown out, or when the affair dream relationship can turn out to be ordinary at best or a fantasy which has become extremely difficult at worst.
You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, to quote Joni Mitchell.

Agreed you can do these concurrently but the work on the relationship will not be particularly effective until each individual has somewhat sorted their own shit out. And sorting their own shit out takes a concerted effort, it needs to take priority over many other activities for a while. A lot of this can be done with podcasts and journalling but significant time and effort must be spent on it.

If the unfaithful party is not spending significant focus on this activity and not showing demonstrable step changes in behaviour and attitude over time then reconciliation is not happening regardless of the efforts of the betrayed party.

Fucking hell, what men will do to satisfy their ego. She will get pregnant, make him move and he will be miserable. Get popcorn ready for the fallout OP.

Agreed, hence item one on the post discovery list is saying what you want to happen and what you need before anything else can. OP has suffered from a second betrayal. Not just the resumption of the affair, but the false reconciliation which is totally unforgivable to me. He’s not changed one bit and is clearly a master of disguising that.

I think this is rather irrelevant to this topic which has gone beyond this stage. Perhaps you should start a different thread if you feel it would be helpful to others?

Don't berate yourself, you were brave and hopeful enough to give a second chance, but unfortunately he blew it. I'm sorry you went through that betrayal, and the fuckery of not knowing if it was happening again. At least you have clarity now, and the information that this is unfortunately a pattern and not a one/off, and the trust has been broken, though that must seem so painful. On top of health stress too. Thinking of you at a painful time. You sound very strong and clear headed, you will get through this.

At the same time what they do next is totally outside your control. Use this opportunity to focus your energies entirely on yourself and the kids.

Literally cut dead any thoughts that start with "he should ..." or "why doesn't he..." and bring your focus immediately back to what you want to do.

Once you get in the habit of looking from a constructive self focussed view, based 100% on what you can actually do or say rather than anyone else including and especially him, you will actually feel far more empowered.

It's probably not a habit you have had (hence you bending over backwards to "read all the books" and "reconcile") and learning to do this takes practice. It involves letting go of quite a bit of anxiety and become secure in yourself that you will be fine regardless of what he does.

Of course it impacts you. But you can’t control it, influence it, change it, you won’t even be party to the discussions on it, but will be made aware after the decision is made,

The what ifs are just that righr now, he may meet someone locally, the exit affair partner is seldom the long term one. There is every chance once he’s moved out and the dust settles, he’s free time alone, he will start socialising and meet someone locally. Likely a number of them before he settles down again. Hence why this woman, right now, is fairly irrelevant. She is simply the exit affair partner.

I think thr other key thing to remember here op, is he has not left you for this woman, that’s not what’s happened, in fact at this stage it is highly unlikely he wants that, she is fairly irrelevant, if he had left for her, said she’s moving here, I’m moving there, we will be together, then it would be different,but it’s very different, hence why it’s likely this has no legs. And at some point another woman will appear who he meets going forward. He may even have met her already,

Thank you. I'm starting to see this too. When we talk, he has no clear plan for her. I believe he genuinely hasn't thought about it. He's focused on the kids. He's going to he nearby, he will have an open door policy for them and wants to see them as much as can. He and I agreed to 12 months with no introductions to new partners, which makes it impossible dor her to spend significant time here or him there. He also recognsises the challenge of coparenting with her in the picture. The roots of his leaving seem to be much deeper within himself and about his own guilt and avoidance. I think you are spot on about it being an exit affair ans not intended as his next big relationship. Painful none the less, but I don't think she's likely to be a long lasting feature.

Get divorced while he feels he Owes You
Fleece him

It does seem unlikely op, not impossible, but right now this doesn’t seem to be about her, or wanting a future with her, sure, it might change, but it doesn’t appear he left the marriage for her. As such, it’s likely as time moves in he will meet someone if he hasn’t already closer to home.

i think focus on what you need to do for you, for the kids. She’s not really relevant right now, apart from the fact it’s hugely hurtful he cheated.

Why did you have her back? Could you have done it on your own?

Yes I absolutly could have done it on my own. We had got to the point of that happening.

Lots of reasons we reconciled.
But that wasnt possible until she had a huge moment of clarity after I did something completely ridiculous, embarrassing and sitcom worthy. I told her all about it as i figured she could do with a laugh. And that broke her. Our daughter was with her and said it looked like she was broken. Going from laughing to crying over and over.
We talked later that night and gone was all the blame shifting or avoiding whole truths. She took complete responsibility and told me everything. Showed me the messages and asked if we could try.
I have never set any boundaries or rules as whats the point? But she set them for herself. Shes not gone out since with work for drinks or birthdays unless im there too.
She was open whenever he tried contacting her and showed me.

But thats the how. The why is she is and always has been my everything. For that year she was horrible and distant. Snappy and just not pleasant but I kept hoping that my wife was in there somewhere. She has had issues with mental health so I put the change and moods down to that and did what I could. After the secret came out. It was like a weight had been lifted and gone were the moods and anger.

In my darkest moments the person I wanted to talk to most was her. For over 20 years she has been that to me. I couldn't throw that away without trying and I am very glad I stuck around. Has it been easy. No. Did it ruin my sense of self. Yes. Am I ok now. Not always.
She knows all of that and since that sitic moment has had genuine remorse for what she did to me and our family.

We are in a good place now. And thats through hard work, faith and a big rule i set for myself. I would never under any circumstances bring up the affair in an argument or use it in any way to get my own way or punish her or anything like that.

I still have moments of doubt. Bad days when I wonder if I'd ever know if she lies to me again. Each time she has sensed it and reassured me and each time it looks like it causes her anguish over her actions that lead to those thoughts.

@AnonymouseDad your post has really moved me. There’s a lot of honesty, strength and courage in it.
It’s also a clear example of how, until that ‘penny-dropping’ moment occurs for the unfaithful, there can be no reconciliation.
The stress of secrets/ covering tracks/ running away from guilt/ dancing fine lines to keep two people (spouse and OM/OW) manipulated, without seeing they are being lied to, is immense and eventually only confession or discovery relieves it. It just can’t go on any more.
Serial cheats tend not to get to this phase, they’ve been bed-hopping for so long it’s more of a hobby than a life crisis.
Real change is possible, but you have to own your brokenness and really want your spouse/ marriage/ life and self back.
When you said that you knew your ‘wife was in there somewhere.” that’s how I felt about my husband. It wasn’t denial on my part, I ruthlessly examined my thoughts and feelings and did nothing based on fear. I knew this really wasn’t who he was: he was in there somewhere. It was so crazy and out of character (I’ll admit I was absolutely one of the ‘not my Nigel’ brigade until I wasn’t)
that I felt there must be more to it than the face value charade, it looked more like a mental episode fuelled by fantasy than a love affair. Cringeworthy and so stereotypical you could almost laugh if it wasn’t so horrific.
So common for “What the hell was I thinking?” afterwards to set in. My husband totally admits he chose it, it was his deliberate decision, but when he unpicked how he got to mentally squaring it with himself, it actually scared him silly. He would have been adamant, even under torture, that he’d never do anything like that. But he did. A fascinating read (not about infidelity but includes it) is “Mistakes were made, but not by me.” It explores how normal people who consider themselves honest and trustworthy, full of integrity, end up doing things they would never, ever think they’d do. It uses newsworthy scandals and political/ corporate/ big pharma fraud amongst its examples.
Good people cheat. Bad people cheat. People who are happy in their marriage and don’t want to lose it still cheat. Unhappy people who want out cheat. Motive is key.
Cheating men/ women and OW/OM aren’t the devil incarnate, but I think at some level they are usually pretty seriously fucked up individuals to be able to live a lie and lie to themselves to justify it like this.
None of it is really about love or sex.
It’s usually about the void within the unfaithful that they have no idea how to fill in a healthy way. When the shit hits the fan and the bubble bursts, they’re forced to act and do what they were too cowardly to do in the first place: either leave the relationship or if allowed, stay and face whatever it is within themselves that they’ve been running away from, sometimes for years.
Some get brave enough to do it, others choose to keep on running.
I’m glad your wife had her epiphany and hope she learns from it and lives authentically from now on. You deserve that.
OP’s husband seems too cowardly to face whatever it is he can’t cope with about himself and his life. I think the OW is a catalyst to his crisis but not an answer.
Take good care of yourself now@Allthegoodonesareg0ne , even he doesn’t seem to know what he wants. The logistics of his new ‘relationship’ aren’t going to work without huge upheavals on both sides. To me he’s using it as a bogus ‘reason’ for changing his life, but he doesn’t sound like he can tell you or even himself what that change he wants is, or why he wants it.

Thank you. What you said sums everything up that went on perfectly.
I had a lot of help and good support around me and that helped too.
Just a couple of friends who I knew would support without judgement or imposing their opinions.

The big thing my wife had to face and did was her holding onto every single past event.
When I lost a job and we struggled for a couple of months. I was made redundant another time and despite these things being out of my control the pressure it put on her she held onto. Before we married she became pregnant with our daughter. It was a surprise and I had been adamant I never wanted kids after my own awful childhood with an abusive dad. I didnt handle the news well at first and withdrew into myself in fear a bit. I did come around quite quickly and can honestly say the birth of our daughter is the best thing that has ever happened to me and being a dad is my favourite thing.
But these past events she held onto always and in every arguement these would be brought up as impassable hurdles so I just stopped arguing as it was impossible to ever win.
We started marriage counselling following the affair and before her moment of clarity. She brought up the past events and the counsellor asked for details on everything my wife held a grudge on and then the counsellor took each appart one by one and described what and why holding onto those was and what effect it had had. She was very good and did it in a non accusatory fashion too. After we had our moment of reconciliation she said she could see a huge difference and had hope for us. She said it felt like the other person had been removed from the room by us both and that was a good sign.
Not once since has my wife brought anything up from the past and she recently admitted it is freeing and she is so much happier even during tough times.

@Thewookiemustgo as always you are bang on - in my experience it’s rarely the Jack the lads who actually do this - more so the ‘not my Nigel’s’ who actually do want that emotional connection and initial buzz - the Jack the lads usually just want an easy no strings shag, which can be harder to come by and are more likely to be doing hook ups, escorts etc

@AnonymouseDad I think the biggie is do you feel you can still feel 100% about someone - that’s where I have struggled, not that I don’t care or even like but it definitely to quote Carole king ‘something inside just died’ -

@AnonymouseDad unfaithful people need to hold on to and magnify everything that they perceive as negative about their spouse in order to justify the unjustifiable.
The fact that she’s no longer alluding to any of it would tell me that she’s fully owning this. No matter what happened, no matter what you did/ didn’t do or say, she had other choices to deal with it than to cheat. Cheating is on the cheat, never the betrayed or the relationship. It’s a cop-out to blame others for your own deliberate choices or behaviour.
It doesn’t mean every betrayed spouse or relationship is perfect, no one person or relationship ever is. However, where you have options in the face of perceived issues, what you choose next in response says a great deal about you, not the person or situation you know or think has wronged you.
Anything in the relationship obviously needs discussing and working on jointly, there’s a 50-50 responsibility for the state of the marriage. The responsibility for choosing an affair belongs 100% to the one who chose it.
There’s hope for everyone who chooses to live honestly and authentically. It’s very difficult to admit our own flaws, own our mistakes and own our deliberate choices, but until we do we’ll never even know who we are ourselves, let alone being able to allow those we love to truly know us. Real trust is letting people know who we truly are, warts and all. We can’t be trusted and can’t trust others in return, when neither party in the relationship is being their true self. Power dynamics come into play where one partner is open and honest and the other isn’t.
Easier to run away or pursue fantasy and reinvention than stand up and face everything in the short term, but a very painful (and sadly an oft-repeated until
the lesson is learned) strategy in the long term.

@AnonymouseDad ny husband also said something very similar to ‘the other person being removed’. It’s compartmentalising as a way to avoid admitting that this wasn’t another person, it was they who did it. It’s what happened in the affair, two compartments which if kept separate, hide the fact that it’s wrong. The good person is at home being a good spouse in one compartment and the bad person is in the affair compartment. I think to cope with the guilt and shame he wished it was somebody else who had done this, not him. It stopped the agony of cognitive dissonance. People capable of affairs all seem to have this trait as a coping mechanism.
The crash came when he had to admit there wasn’t a good Mr Wookie and a bad Mr Wookie, there was just Mr Wookie who was flawed like the rest of us and a frail human after all his posturing. It was he who did it, not an alter ego.
He hated who he was and even contemplated suicide. For the first time in his life he had to admit what he’d always feared, that he might not be as great as he thought he was, he was actually just human. A ton of FOO issues, plus a big career crisis that was none of his doing but he felt it reflected on him caught up with him. It didn’t, it was the arsehole above him, but he couldn’t shake the thought that an otherwise impressively stellar career was tainted by association. It was as clear as day who the idiot was, but he couldn’t forgive himself for not seeing that initially, either. Thanks to the FOO issues, he was always using externals for validation because there was a big hole where his self-confidence should have been. He hid that well too, by being a perfectionist and a high achiever. The supremely confident expert turned out to be not that confident after all. The career thing was definitely the catalyst for it. I think he felt hard done by and that life owed him a favour after working so hard and doing all the right things and being the ‘good guy’. His chucking himself at his career had slowly led to me being more involved with the kids and having to shoulder a lot of the domestic load, we lived two different lives in the same house. We had our relationship on hold, both thought that after the work and kids ‘busyness’ died down, we could concentrate more on us. We still got on really well, were affectionate and intimate, there were no obvious problems. He never communicated his internal struggle (saw it as a weakness he couldn’t afford) so I didn’t see it.
When the affair was going on and he was maybe a bit distant or apparently working long hours, I asked if he was ok and he said ‘fine, just a bit stressed at work’ and I always believed him and did all his side of childcare because he was ‘so busy’. I never realised that my taking up his slack, because I felt sorry for how hard his new job was, was being used to facilitate the affair.
None of his issues are or were excuses, there are none. They are just a bunch of reasons and circumstances which created the void in the first place.
Healthy and confident people communicate and face the tough stuff, unhealthy people fill it with what looks like a quick easy fix and hurt everybody else in the process.
They’re not the safest people in the world to have a relationship with, without the self awareness to realise it, admit it and sort it out. OP’s husband is still using his quick fix as his permanent solution and sadly always was, despite his protests to the contrary initially.
You’re better off without him, OP, in his current state. Lord knows what it will take to make him see that, but that’s up to him and you need to protect yourself from the fallout of this crisis and save yourself.

I'm not convinced by this talk of the cheats were not "who they really were" at the time of cheating. People change over the course of a life and you cannot expect someone to stay that same person. I feel as if it's an excuse for the cheat - they lost their way blah blah and it's used as protection against the fact that yes they did indeed choose to do this. Yes they may have had a hole in their life where their needs were not being met but why did they not address this. Yes good people do bad things. This kind of talk makes me think of the people on trial who try to claim temporary insanity except it's the victim claiming it instead of the perp. It's a solution to an unsatisfactory situation.

I never said that at all, I said that the compartmentalising isn’t owning what you did. You need to change that, it’s no excuse.
I said it was the compartmentalising which he realised meant he want facing up to what he’d done and faced that fact, realised it was all on him.
I said many times these are not excuses. He wasn’t temporarily insane and I never insinuated that either. . He chose it. There is nothing you can use as a ‘solution’ for this. You have to face up to it.
But no, what people do shouldn’t define them forever unless they remain that way and do not change.
There is a difference between contributing factors and excuses.
Offenders in the criminal justice system have many aligning circumstances in their backgrounds and detectives often use profiling to find suspects. It doesn’t mean that this excuses what they did, they rightly face trial and punishment. It just means that people with that particular set of past issues are more likely to commit a certain type of crime. Circumstantial reasons, not excuses. There is often abuse in the childhood background of abusers. People who were bullied can sometimes go on to be bullied themselves. None of that excuses anything but it does increase the likelihood.
Much more than once on here, women who have been betrayed find similarities in their partners’ personalities and backgrounds. That’s no coincidence.

Facing up to it IS the solution to continuing in an unfaithful marriage like this. You have taken temporarily insane too literally as you probably well know. We tell ourselves whatever works for " facing up to it" otherwise you exit the marriage.

Well my surgery is all done and I'm recovering in hospital. He's been actually brilliant. Taken good care of me and the children. I got a bit teary in the run up to the surgery. It just all got overwhelming. He was very kind, but a bit confusing. He promised me he wouldn't be speaking to her until he moves out. He reassured me again he isn't talking to her. He told me that me and the boys are rhe most important people in his life. That he will remain my person. Etc.
I appreciated his kindness but nothing changes for me