This is why my friends tell me to stay away from forums. Message received.
To a large extent your friends are very wise. Forums are generally a terrible place to get marriage advice. You have no idea of the agendas of the people posting to you (wiccans, atheists, angry divorced persons) nor their personal experience(s) other than what they tell you (fake stories, trolls, other woman). This place is different. Here at MB there is an expert with 40 or so years of experience and who has counseled thousands of couples, trained thousands of marriage counselors, written a dozen books, sold thousands of books who gives away his advice on his forum (and on his radio show) and has a this forum where hundreds of volunteers who have utilized Dr. Harley's programs and methods to not only save their marriages but restore romantic love in their marriages participate sharing their experiences using MB.
This forum is not a sales pitch to sell you coaching or a $500 ebook. This forum is not a bunch of psuedo-intellectual peer counselors who will try to help you with your marriage using their own personal opinions when those opinions brought them no happiness or love in their own marriages whatsoever.
What this forum is ....is HOPE. Free Hope. Your marriage might not be saveable. We can only help you to the extent you are willing to listen, learn and implement the advice. The rest is up to your spouse who unfortunately isn't here listening and applying the concepts as well and obviously has a (self destructive) mind of his own.
As far as your husband not telling you about OW dumping him. In the grand scheme it matters not a lick. After I exposed my wife, her OM dumped her. Some people get caught up in the thought that they want their spouse to "choose them" over the other person but that just doesn't matter. All that matters is that the affair is truly over.
Consider this too...your husband DID kind of break up with her. She demanded all or nothing. It sounds like your husband wanted both. He wasn't willing to give you up to be with her exclusively so she ended it. From your husband's standpoint ...he probably doesn't think he's lying. Waywards are notorious truth shifters so from his point of view...OW wanted more, he denied her so he ended it.
Anyway....ending the affair once and for all is step one to any possible recovery. It is impossible to recover with a third party lingering in the wings. How it ended is irrelevant. What you do from here IS relevant.
You really must strike while the iron is hot. Meaning...you need to insist that just merely staying married and continuing on as though nothing happened isn't acceptable to you. That rebuilding a marriage of extra-ordinary care where both of you love and feel loved and respected by the other spouse is required in order for you to give him another chance. That you are willing to hopefully love and trust him again but only if he is willing to work a marital recovery program designed to rebuild love and trust.
My wife and I both posted here. I actually sent her a link to something here and she registered and started posting. I actually registered and posted after her. When your husband asks you what he is supposed to do to make things better (which every frustrated wayward spouse seems to do as they are still in it's all about me fog), you need to tell him to post here, tell us who he is and what he's done and ask us for help and how he can go about making things better. For example, here is a link to the poster HerPapaBear's first post on this forum in Nov. 2007. (
HerPapaBear's First MB Thread asking for help as a Wayward Husband His wife, sexymamabear, posted here first, use MB and then when she confirmed PapaBear was still in contact with OW she went into Plan B and insisted he come to MB. He (and his wife) posted here on MB for years, first for their marriage and then to help others. HerPapaBear at some point changed his name to TST, I think, so there may be more posts than just what you see under HerPapaBear. You will see PapaBear indicates they have 5 children....well, since recovering their marriage they have adopted 4 more. They live close enough to me that my wife and I have visited them a couple times over the years. HerPapaBear is a close respected friend of mine now. It's so hard to believe he was at one time a wayward monster.
Hope you stick around and/or send your husband here.
Godspeed.