My husband and I have been married 5 years we have been together 6 years. We have a 3 year old son.
2 years ago I found out my husband was addicted to pain pills. He had been secretly using drugs for the last 10 years. I was of course devastated. It was a shock to me! I found a bag of pills in his bag and then after checking phone records and bank statements realized he had been spending several hundred dollars a month on pills. He was out of control. Once I found out it was about 6 months of therapy, a wrecked truck, dui and a few thousand dollars later. He was clean or at least I think he was. So once he got clean then we were left to deal with all of the after math. The lies and the hurt!
That year he was very withdrawn from life. The marriage problems were a mess and we didn't handle anything right. We thought time would heal things. Wow how wrong!!
About 7 months after he got clean I started having an affair. I felt so disconnected to my husband. I felt as though his problems were on my shoulders and I was exhausted. The OM showed me attention and was so opposite then my husband. You all know . . Mr. Perfect is how he seemed to me! I have been seeing him for 9 months. He is single.
About a month and a half ago my husband relapsed and started using again. Then about 2 weeks after he relapsed my husband found a text message from the OM and discovered the affair. He was upset! I told my family about the affair. I felt terrible. I had tried to break off the affair several times before but after a few days I would give in and make contact again.
Now that my husband has relapsed again I am ssooooo torn if this is the person I want to stay married to. I am struggling with his drug use and if I want to live a life with a person who may relapse every couple of years. That is a heck of a roller coaster ride. At the same time I know my affair is influencing my decision in my marriage. I feel like I want to end my affair so that I can make a decision on whether or not I want to stay with my husband due to the drug use. At the same time I love the OM and I feel that my marriage is so broken. I would hate to end my marriage and loose the OM too.
At the moment my husband thinks I have stopped seeing the OM. I have told him I don�t know if I can cope with the drug use. He has been clean for 2 weeks now. He is in NA and has been attending a meeting every day or every other day. Last time he didn�t work a program at all so I do see him making progress.
I feel so confused! There is so much hurt between my husband and I. We have both done so wrong and don�t even know where to begin.
I have read a lot on hear and I know what the steps are and I am willing to work them. I am just trying to search within myself to see if I even want to work with my husband and his drug addiction.
Your input would be appreciated!

Hi Karrie,

Welcome to MB. If you are dedicated to doing the hard work, we can help you.

Two things you need to do ASAP.

1) Break it off with the OM. Tell him that you cannot continue. This is done in the form of a no contact letter, where you explain that there will be no contact for life.

2) Confess to your H that you never broke off the affair.


Is he willing to keep you? (your H that is)

If he is, then I suggest that you both start going to a program designed to help both of you... NA and alanon or it's equivalent.

CV

You didnt have an affair because of your husband's issues. You had the affair because you have poor boundaries with other men.



You skip the part where you ALLOWED this. It doesnt matter how manuy men out there are willing to show you attention, if you dont allow it.

Take responsibility. It wasnt the OM's actions -or your husbands that led to YOUR choices.

The strength to end this affair starts with your taking responsibility - are you up to it?



Rubbish. He was clean when you began your affair and didnt relapse until you had been screwing around on him for months. Are you even listening to yourself?



I bet you would. It doenst even register with you that you have no right to be with the Om, that that relationship is adultery and that you betray your h and small son with every contact you have with him.



Repulsive. I suggest you begin practicing honesty.



I think the question really is why is your husband enduring your repuslive addiction to the ego boost you get from the OM.

He is sticking with you, but you are 'torn' as to whether you want to stick things out with the man you chose to marry.

If you have it in you to make things right,

Confess all to your husband
Write an NC letter to OM
Begin making amends to your h immediately.

That's my input.

You are both right.

No matter what his condition is I am responsible for maintaining myself. If I was unhappy with him I should of taken the proper steps to try and help our marriage. NOT have an affair. It is my responsibility! I was wrong no matter how you spin it!

I do need to tell him and have no contact with OM. Even if my marriage does end I can atleast say I did it the right way.

Good start.

You are also in the best place to receive advice on how to do it.
Great advice is on its way on how to block the OM from contacting you and on coping with the withdrawal symptoms from the OM.

The vets should be here shortly.....

Your h can also receive good support here on how to best handle marriage recovery.

Karrie,

I do need to tell him and have no contact with OM. Even if my marriage does end I can atleast say I did it the right way.

Glad you picked that up so fast, if only because...

Case1: Dating after the divorce, you tell your new bf everything that happened and how you made amends.

Case2: Dating after the divorce, you do not tell your new bf everything that happened out of shame, but bf finds out somehow and loses all respect for you.

God Bless
Gamma

Here's the best way to begin getting your life back on track.

1. No contact letter to the OM. Stress any contact from him will result in you taking legal action. I.E, restraining order.

2. Take everyone's advice and get your husband into treatment and treatment yourself on how to deal with it.

Karrie, your OM is your drug and you're addicted... so now relate that to your BH's drug addiction. You both need to stop using.

I agree with other posters on advice for you. NC with OM forever is a must. Don't make a decision about your M while you are still in an A. You can't do that reasonably because you're still "high". You need to detox yourself and get real again.

Have you read SAA?

Best...
grace

karrie,

As Grace pointed out you are just as addicted as your H is. Not a good way to make decisions. Permit me to offer you a few thoughts. I know they will sound very harsh.

1. Your H is an addict and as such is not a good husband and cannot be a good father. Does he sound like good marriage material. He lied to you before you were married and he will continue to lie as long as he is addicted. You are addicted and you lie to your H all of the time, doesn't make you much of a catch either.

2. Your OM is having an affair with a married woman. That doesn't make him much of a catch either as he has no regard for marriage. I know you aren't showing much for your marriage, but this advice is for you and about you. Even if you divorce your H, the OM is the last man you should date. He has no regard for marriage, no regard for you, and will make a lousy role model for your child. You can expect that he will cheat on you when the going gets rough, and unless YOU change he can expect you to cheat on him as the going gets rough.

My comments do seem to leave you with an good choices do they? Well, right now you don't have any good choices when it comes to decisions you are mentioning. The reason to put it bluntly, your H is a loser, your OM is a loser, and you are a loser. I can tell you for a FACT that losers hooking up never works out and you know who LOSES big time? YOUR CHILD.

So after all of these harsh comments, do I have any advice for you? Yes I do. You need to focus on you and cleaning up your side of the street. You need to read the articles on this site and decide what sort of person you will be and how to effectively use the tools available to you here. If you decide to be a woman of honor and integrity, then these tools can be used you change your perspective on life and how you handle it. Having an affair because your H is an addict is NOT using good coping skills. Divorcing because he is an addict would have been a better way to handle it.

So work on you, your values, what you stand for, and how you would like your child to see and really know you. Children learn from their parents and right now neither of you are giving this poor boy much of a chance in life. At least one of you must step up and become a person to respect.

It is your call. Will that person be you? I hope so. The tools are here.

God Bless,

JL

karrie,

In most cases I would tell a person to try to save their marriage.

I have much different advice for you.

You married a man who was a drug addict, and he lied to you going into the marriage. You, on the other hand, seemed to have no ability to notice this about the man before you married him.

This bothers me. A lot.

It tells me that you do not have much ability to observe the behavior of other people, and that you do not have much insight into the motivations of others, either. You don't seem to be able to see beyond the surface of what that other person offers you; or, you do not look beyond the surface. Either way, this is a MAJOR issue.

Let's say you cannot see beyond the surface, and you are, simply put, gullible. You truly should go back and live with your parents, take your child with you, and ask them to help you build the skills to overcome this deficit. You chose a drug addict for a husband, due to being gullible, if this is the case.

If you are not gullible, and you simply CHOSE to look past the signs and red flags that your husband surely MUST HAVE been waving prior to your marriage...you still need to make serious changes in your situation.

The fact is:

You are living with a CHILD in the home of a drug addict. This is a serious situation, and NO CHILD should be exposed to this situation. Period. While you "feel" you can look past the issues, your child is developing. That child is NOT able to understand the issues involved in recovering from addiction. Your job is to protect this child - and you should place your needs SECOND to those of the child. Move out. Go somewhere safe, and STAY THERE, until you have figured out exactly why you chose to ignore such a major flaw in the personality of your husband.

Once you figure that out,

then,

and only then,

should you begin to consider your next move.



My vote would be that you take a minimum of one year in this process.


Your husband should be in rehab. Not in your home.


The affair - to me - is a symptom of a disease that began a long time ago.


And that is something else that is on your plate to deal with.


My advice is this addiction problem is issue number one.


I am not saying that you shouldn't deal with the affair stuff. You should. From where I stand, you have to deal with the shark first. Then, the elephant.


SB

Printing SB again.

Thanks, my friend.

Jaded4now,

If you are considering hooking up with OM right now then you have not recovered personally from your A.

You need to become ambivalent about him, before you can really know you.

I am over 2 and a half years since NC......and it is only recently that I realised that my OM was no better than my H was back at that time.

ITA that good can come out of messes.....but absolutely no good will come out of this if you D and then go and find OM again - never mind the crappy message you are sending your son.#


You need to know that you can be independant and that you do not need anyone else. Learn to value yourself.


The statistics in my case were pretty horrific, I didn't want to do the rollercoaster anymore. My H emotionally and physically abused me. "an abuser never changes" "get out".

I thought I'd had enough, was going for D anyway, was ready for that, but I knew that I would not run to OM I realised I needed to learn to love me and that I had to make amends with myself and my H for cheating......no matter what he had done....running to OM would never have helped that.

As it is, my H did change despite the odds....took a lot of work from both of us.

Could you trust a man that had taken another mans wife, not to do it again? How could you consider investing your son's future on OM?

Please learn to love yourself before making any decisions.

jaded, I think you are right to make the decision to separate from your husband. There is nothing you can do for your marriage until he gets help for his addiction. And I would strongly advise you to NOT even see the OM again. He is a loser who would not be good marriage material. Why go from one bad guy to a complete loser? Use some better discretion and judgement in your selection of men. You have a child depending on you after all.

It would be a horrific idea to see OM ever again. Waywards spouses ALWAYS affair DOWN. Think about that for a minute. Your OM is WORSE than your H.

And besides, the statistics of the 2 of you being together for life is about 3%. Would you want to open yourself up to having a child with OM, and having a worse sitch than you are living right now?