I found out my husband visited an escort

[NiftyKhakiPoet]

I found out yesterday that my husband visited an escort earlier this year and I’m completely devastated.
We’ve been together a long time. As far as I knew we were happy.
I found messages on our shared iPad from February. He had contacted a woman through an escort site asking if she was available. She replied with a menu of services, all of which involved some form of sexual “relief”. He booked an hour, later messaged to say he was there, and she sent him instructions for getting into the building.
When I confronted him, he initially completely denied it. He said the messages couldn’t be his, he’d never been there and there must be some sort of mistake. Eventually, after a lot of questioning, he admitted he had gone and had a massage with a happy ending. He says it happened once, he has never done anything like it before and genuinely doesn’t know why he did it.
I asked him to leave yesterday and he went to a hotel last night. His apology was pretty rotten, basically that he was sorry he had disappointed me and let me down!? He asked what he could do, but I honestly feel he should be the one coming up with that, not expecting me to tell him. He hasn't been in touch since.

The other thing I’m really struggling with is how much the whole thing disgusts me. The fact that my husband went onto an escort site, chose someone, arranged to meet her and paid for a sexual service makes me feel physically sick. I can't get the messages or what happened out of my head.
This morning I noticed he had signed his iMessage account out of the shared iPad. I sent him a screenshot of that and he read it but didn’t respond.
I love him, which is what makes this so painful, but at the moment I can’t imagine ever trusting him again and I didn't think he would be capable of this. I also keep wondering if I really believe this was the only time.
Has anyone been through something similar? Did you stay or leave, and if you stayed, were you ever genuinely able to get past it and trust your partner again?

I never said I was a police officer. I was a 999 police call handler.

Yes I’ve been in this situation and it’s a horrible feeling that takes a while to get over. Two years down the line and it still traumatises me although there are a lot more good days now. If he is the sort of man who will go to such lengths to deceive you, he won’t think twice about lying about literally everything until caught. The key thing here is that he didn’t voluntarily tell you that he messed up…you found out…that shows his integrity and lack of remorse. If you never found out he would never have told you. Sending hugs as I know this will be so hard for you. Whole world shattered. It gets easier over time I promise but you will have a lot of healing to do x

It's not about women's bodily autonomy. It's about whether it's OK for men to pay for sexual access to women. It's about whether it should be acceptable for humans to treat other humans like that.

Spreading your legs to pay the bills makes the sex acts not exactly a free choice anyway, because saying "no" means loss of income so that financial pressure is there behind every decision.

Unfortunately the hardest part of cheating is the fact that the one getting shat on usually thinks the relationship is going ok and they love their partner so it hits hard, i tried to get past it with my ex but unfortunately i was never able to rebuild the trust, the events just kept popping back into my head when i least expected it, when it did it was like the clock was rewound again and the hurt would just reappear. Everyone is different but for me when the trust is gone so is the relationship.

Half the joint money into your own account, stat.

Then book an STI test and a solicitor's appointment.

How did you meet sex workers as a call handler? And you implied you were an officer and met women as part of that job. Very misleading frankly.

Regardless, you've posted on this thread 11 times, mostly about yourself. You don't appear to have a lot of empathy for either OP or sex workers who have to have sex with men they didn't choose. And yes I know a lot of sex workers. Both personally and professionally. And I think the men that use their services are bad people.

It’s just so unpleasant. My bil did this and it was with a girl half his age, my sil has forgiven him but I find him repulsive. Money may have changed hands but this was still exploitation.

I'd find hard to forgive too and probably wouldn't. But would be more upset if it was someone he met at a bar or something as this could have just been more about a shag

Prostitution is legal here in Australia it's up to the women if they want to do it but brothels are legal here I've known many women that did it willingly most for the cash I knew a girl that did it to earn money while she was at University

Yep some woman actually enjoy it too, I don't actually have anything against it if its all ethical etc. I understand some people might struggle to find someone normally so resort to this

In the context of a long-married woman who's just discovered her husband's secret hobby of paying to cheat on her, I find this parallel discussion really distasteful. If you want to defend men's right to use women's bodies, do it elsewhere.

If you are actually defending OP's husband's choice to use other women's bodies while appearing happily married, to hide these activities from her and presumably to pay with money from the family budget, then say so.

Oh, OP. I am so sorry. This is just a horrible discovery.

I'm not sure I'd believe the part about it only being a happy ending. Why would he pay for that only?

So, basically, it seems to me that some people cannot live up to the vow of fidelity in marriage for decades on end. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Can you try to get to the bottom of WHY he did it? Do you have a good sex life but he wanted some variety? This is bad, because it's not something you have the power to fix. Or is your sex life spotty/boring/infrequent/non-existent, and he began to feel he couldn't live the rest of his life like that? Still really bad - he should have talked to you - but something you could potentially work on together.

I really do not know how I feel about sexual fidelity in longterm marriages. I'm the endlessly faithful type, but I know that a lot of people eventually struggle with it, even if they're not normally the playing-around type. If it happened to me, on the one hand it seems crazy to throw away all your memories and years and your future because of some brief physical interaction. On the other hand, it's a heartbreaking betrayal and could be hard to move on from, I imagine.

My head thinks that we place far too much emphasis on the physical, if he made a mistake and doesn't love the other woman. But I would have no idea how to make my heart agree with that.

OP, it depends what you want, moving forward. Some people cannot get over physical infidelity, and that's OK. Some people don't think it's the most important aspect of a relationship and that their shared interests/sense of humour/history/kids/life together are more important than a physical betrayal.

I heard a good piece of advice once. It said that when you have to make a difficult decision, make one that you can live with over time. Do you think that twenty years from now you would regret breaking up over this? Or can you picture yourself happy in a new life without him, be that single, dating, or remarried?

Only you know how you feel. I am extremely sorry you're going through this. I honestly do not know what I'd do in your shoes. I'm a big romantic, so it would probably kill my love for him. Some people are more practical and less emotional about physical betrayal. It's your call.

Sending you big hugs xxx

He might have signed out in order to search and delete other messages to sex workers and be planning to let OP back in, saying there was a "glitch" or something. It doesn't look good that he did that, for sure.

I only know one woman in sex work, and she is indeed a survivor of childhood sex abuse. ☹️

The best thing you can do is step away from here
give yourself time and space to process what’s happened
the decision you make over this which ever way you go will affect you for the rest of your life
don’t make knee jerk decisions

I dated a police officer, too. Absolute alleycat. Would literally stick it in anything that moved.

How did your elderly neighbour let you know in a clever way? I LOVE that!

You need to leave this thread with your nonsense about how your professional and personal life has led you to be having such close conversations with sex workers that they open up to you about “gladly” consenting whilst you’re at it maybe deactivate your Mumsnet account completely. You won’t. You’ll crack on with joining threads, wading in with your size 12s, apologising, leaving thread.

Do you actually know anything about prostitution? Anyway, this thread is about his choices.

Apparently both professional and personal experience that has led to @user1464187087 having a very close insight in to the thoughts and feelings of sex workers

Yep 🤢

@NiftyKhakiPoet of course he is logged you out.
First scared you will find out more and more than likely at it again while in the hotel and why he isn’t giving a shit and quiet.
Not a chance I’d allow him back home or near me again.

I suspect they do know about it…

I know what a bizarre come back “she” had right