Hello everyone
I've been reading such wisdom in these past few days and this is the first forum I have ever wanted to post on, so I am a bit new to this.
Married for over 24 years and have two children. Until last September, would have safely said my DH had never caused me a moment's pain, but discovered he was having an affair. He immediately ended the relationship and has had no contact whatsoever with OW since he ended things.
I love him to bits and I know he loves me, so I have been trying to get past this, but it is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I know he profoundly regrets what he did and wishes he could erase the past. For the past 5 months, he has been doing everything in his power to hang on to me and to make my life easier. He has been to counselling and has found that a great benefit. He has learned a lot about himself and how his childhood may have affected the choices he has made as an adult.
His counsellor (and me) have encouraged him to establish why this happened. Reading these boards, it is a familiar story. A woman he used to work with got in touch, at the point when he was suffering from very low self-esteem and when he was very depressed at work. He had received a couple of wounding professional knock-backs, had put on a huge amount of weight and this woman wooed him with reminders of how wonderful he was. He says there was nothing wrong with our relationship at all, except we didn't make love as often as he would have liked. He's right, we didn't. Although we got along very well, the truth is that my repeated attempts to get him to talk more, to help more and to care for his appearance more, resulted in some resentment and lack of desire on my part.
Married herself, the OW painted a picture of being happy and in love with her DH. My DH says he thought it was a "safe" friendship, except he neglected to tell me about it. This "light" E mail and texting relationship went on for months.
My DH kept refusing her requests to meet up, but it seems that by this time, he was getting addicted to the uncomplicated adoration. Finally, he agreed to meet her and in the interval between his decision and the meeting (2 months)it became clear that she wanted an affair. By this time, sadly he was hooked - even though they hadn't even met up.
The result was that they met up for sex twice, a few months apart. He says that the sex was disastrous and that he absolutely hated the deception that the affair entailed. The OW was a very needy person who by this time was claiming that her marriage was a sham. She fed my DH with a load of pap about how she had known he was the love of her life for years etc. and kept asking whether he would leave me. He says that he told her he would never leave me, but it is evident from some of what he has told me, that she preferred to believe he was only staying for the children.
Despite only actually meeting twice, the affair was very intense and during it, my DH was an absolute bastard to live with. What makes this worse was that the day before he basically agreed to have sex with her, I myself received a huge professional knock-back. I have had the year from hell and throughout it all, I suffered one knock-back after another, so my self-esteem was already on the floor before I found out about this. He knew all this too.
There are lots of things I just can't get past and one of them is that about 6 weeks before I found out, I cried tears with him because I couldn't understand why he was behaving like such a shit at home. I had an absolute instinct that there was someone else, but what I got that night was a grandstand speech about me being the love of his life, that he didn't just love me, he adored me. He also finally admitted to his work-related depression. He laughed at the suggestion that he was seeing someone else and although my instincts told me otherwise, I believed him.
I still have post-traumatic stress-like flashbacks about the texts I found on his old 'phone, which he had given to our DS two months earlier - and which had been lost ever since. I was triumphant at finding it again that night and had charged it, to be ready as a nice surprise for our DS the next day. Thank God in some ways the 'phone had been mislaid - I would have hated the prospect of our DS reading this stuff.
My DH is emphatic that he never loved the OW and was trying to end the relationship. He had in fact refused to see her just before I found out. One of my problems is that I will never know whether he actually would have had the bottle to end it, had this gone undiscovered. He says he had no desire to have sex with her again, but accepts that he was still "getting something" from the relationship, so he wasn't ready to sever all ties with her. He also knew that she was emotionally unstable and volatile and feared a spiteful and nasty reaction if he ended it abruptly, including the possibility that she might "let me know" (by this time he knew that she had done just that before, to someone else.) He felt that the best policy was for her to end the relationship herself and be allowed to keep her dignity.
He says he always, always loved me, but I just can't accept this. I can't see how you can really love someone, see them getting one knock-back after another, see them cry and express their fears that there was someone else - and carry on regardless.
He is absolutely appalled at his behaviour and had a breakdown after realising the pain he had inflicted. I might add that he absolutely hates the OW now and cannot believe that he risked so much for someone so manipulative. To say he was gullible would be an under-statement; she told lie after lie about various things, some of which he accepts he thought were improbable at the time and others, he thought were truths.
Through counselling and talking to me, he has also realised that the OW is a very damaged person who has always been in competition with other women. She had very few female friends and he recalls that all the women in their former workplace detested her.
She has a history of hitting on men in loving relationships and this has worsened considerably since her own DH had two affairs. Her response to my DH ending their relationship was to post some horrible, spiteful attacks on me and amazingly, our very young DD, on some of these social networking sites. Although it has been very hard, our response has been to ignore this so far - by not giving her tantrums the attention she obviously craves.
I absolutely believe him when he says he couldn't do anything like this again - and tellingly, he adds that he couldn't do it to himself again. He says he hates the person he was last year and it is true that his behaviour was completely out of character. I also absolutely believe that he has never done anything like this before.
In many ways, our relationship is better than it has been for years. My DH was always reluctant to have "chats" about feelings or problems in our relationship, whereas now he will talk for hours. His former laziness has completely disappeared and he will do anything to help. Our sex life is absolutely amazing and has been ever since this awful bombshell. He has started to look after himself much better, has lost loads of weight and looks absolutely gorgeous as a result.
We have been searingly honest with each other throughout and although I think he was in denial for a few early weeks about the intensity of this relationship, by and large he has told the truth throughout and I have been equally honest with him.
Apart from the counsellor, we have told no-one about any of this. Our friends and family know he had a breakdown of sorts, but we have told them that this was work-induced, which is partially true. The only person I have therefore spoken to about any of this is him.
So what help do I need? I need to know, from others who have been through this, when it will stop hurting quite so much? Is it really possible to love someone and not be sufficiently moved by their pain, to end the source of it? Is low-self esteem, coupled with opportunity, the real reason for affairs like this one?
One of my other problems is my own sense of self. For all these years, my self-esteem has been generally very high. I was one of those smug people who thought it impossible that their DH would stray - all that has been shattered and on top of what else happened last year, my view of myself is now very different. I cannot seem to feel joy anymore. My DH has been at pains to try to restore my esteem and professionally, some successes have got me back on track, but I just feel....damaged. When will I get my "mojo" back?