I am 29 and have an amazing 2 year old son. I have been married to what I thought was a wonderful man for 6 years and we dated for 5 before that. I just found out that my husband has been having an affair with a woman he used to work with. I am so absolutely overwhelmed that I don't know what to do with myself. Sometimes it is hard even to breathe. I don't feel like I can ever cry enough and I can't imagine that I will ever feel good again.

It started a year ago when she started working at his company. I knew from the first day that he started talking about her that something bad would come of it. He is a very social person and has always had very close girl friends. I have never had a problem with that. We both still keep in touch with many of the women he has befriended over the years. But I knew that something was different about this one. I talked to him about it and brought to his attention the amount of time he was spending with her and talking about her to me. He was accused by his boss and co-workers of having an affair with her and could have lost his job over it. But still he contuinued to "hang out" with her. He started working late or going out after work almost every night. This went on for months! He was never home and when he was always angry about work or having to take care of the dogs or something. He was miserable and he let me know it. I tried to talk to him so many times and even asked him to go to counseling with me, but he refused. Over this past year I have spent more evenings alone than I care to think about and I have listened to countless comments from him about all things that are wrong with me. I fought so hard to get him to come back to me but he always refused and said more than once that it was a mistake for us to have gotten married. I felt like he was doing everything he could to drive me away and hurt me to the point that I would leave him. I tried several times but he always convinced me to stay and said there was nothing going on with this other woman. They were just friends! HA! He kept saying that he wouldn't talk to her anymore, but then the cell phone bill would come and her numbers would be all over it.

Finally I know that truth. He has denied for months that he has seen her, denied having been with her, denied everything. Finally two Saturdays ago I reached my breaking point. I was out of town at my sisters house and he was no where to be found. I have learned that he turns his cell phone off when he doesn't want me to know where he is or who he with. So I called one of his friends cell phone to find out if he was with him. He was and after first lying to me about where he was, finally admitted that he was at a strip club. I told him I wanted him to move out. He has since admitted to everything and says he wants to do anything to make this work. He says he has no feelings for her and that it is over between them. He says he loves me and he was just confused.

But what I want is to UNDERSTAND!! I want to understand WHY this happened? I want to understand HOW this happened? How could he go for days at time without seeing his son so he could be with her. How could he walk away from a wife that loved him so much and took care of him every day. He admits that he created fights between us all the time. To justify being with her. He says he lied to himself and had convinced himself that he wasn't doing anything wrong. I don't believe that!! How can I beleive that?? I know this man! I know his heart and his soul and the morals that he has always believed in. How could he throw it all away??? I am Catholic and believe that marriage is for a lifetime, but how can I ever look at him again? How could I ever trust him again? If he convinced himself it was ok once, why wouldn't that happen again??

I keep praying for some guidance and for this pain to ease. Will it ever??

Hugs to you dear.
Very sorry you find yourself here. I know the pain you are in right now is BEYOND belief. No one deserves this blow to the heart. I would NEVER have survived without prayer, and so I am praying for you now as I type.
Your situation sounds so much like my own--I had my first baby at 27 also. My husband was a great guy in so many ways, whom I thought the sun rose and set on. But,also like yours, he was friendly to women. He was cheating on me behind my back, picking fights with me in order to go out, etc. I never found out about his cheating until it was over.
The only thing that allowed him to see the evil and uselessness of this way of life was God. He personally came to a deep belief in God, and developed a desire to live to please God. He had some faith previously-- believed in God growing up in church, but did not care to do anything with that belief. Instead,he went further and further into a life of sin. His conscience became seared. He thought as long as he hid his cheating from me that I wasn't hurt by it. But he was horribly wrong!
You and your husband can recover from this, if he is really willing. He needs a revelation of reality. Seeing the pain he has caused you will be a start. He must come to see that his desire for cheap thrills and sexual variety are really damaging to your marriage, to you as a person and to him as a person. His secret lifestyle has to stop. He says he is willing. You will need counseling as a couple. You may need anti-depressant medicines if your pain is too severe, which is common as a response to infidelity.
You will need to read everything on this website...great advice here from people who know, and you will get some much needed support and understanding. Please keep posting and let us know how you are.
As to the hows and whys, you will struggle with these questions for a long time. There are some answers, but lots of it has to do with the utter selfishness of man, and the foolishness. It is uncomprehensible on the one hand and totally understandable on the other. You will love him one moment and hate him the next. You need to work on communicating better, even though you thought you were doing okay, his secret life says differently--that hurts I know from experience.
Got to go for now...
Pray. And read everything here to help yourself and your husband.

shine

<small>[ November 19, 2003, 11:10 AM: Message edited by: want2shine ]</small>

If you were a guy, I would recommend "Surviving an Affair" by Harley and be done with it. Interestingly enough, when it comes to men's affairs, there are a variety of common reasons (and you thought women were complicated and guys were simple). With women, it is usually unmet emotional needs, which is a subject SAA deals with better than anything else written. For men, it can be that, or a desire for adventure, or a simple lack of morals, or a learned association between sex and adrenaline-based arousal that is missing in sex with a wife, or, or, or...

"Surviving an Affair" is an excellent book, and unmet emotional needs are usually at least a part of the WHY question, so it is worth reading in any case - read it together and work through the exercises. It will also teach you how to have a great marriage that is relatively well-protected against any further infidelities, as well as a lot of fun (hard to believe from your perpective now, I bet, but I have been through this, and it really made such a difference that I can hardly describe it). "Torn Asunder" is probably the best book on the market to help you get at the other reasons for "Why?", unless he is a sex addict - in which case it may be helpful, but you will need more than just that. In any case, counseling CAN be helpful but please read through the links on counseling in my signature line link before retaining one. There are a lot of bad counselors out there and you need to be able to identify the ones that are competent.

<small>[ October 09, 2003, 08:55 AM: Message edited by: johnh39 ]</small>

Almost 3 yrs. ago I was your husband (except I'm a female). Anyhow, this story sounds so duplicate of my own A that I had.

I cannot tell you when, how long, and exactly what it will entale, but if both of you are sincere and really work at your marriage, you will again be able to look at him and feel pride to be married to him. My husband has told me several times that he is proud to have me as his wife.

I cannot tell you the why's of your husband's affair and denial and lies, but I can tell you my own. I did the same as your husband - I denied EVERYTHING, even when it was point blank put to me by my husband. I caused many fights between us, and I even thought I wanted him to get so mad he'd leave, but when he would suggest that I broke and cried and didn't want him to go. I loved him still.

I never really convinced myself that the A wasn't wrong, but I didn't think about it either. It was much easier to not think of it at all, and then I didn't have to face my own morales that I was trampling all over.

The best explaination I have come up with for my own actions is fear. See, we all have it mapped out for us. We all know where we want our lives to go at one point, and well even have a whole idea of how it gets there. However, we forget that there are many detours in the map of life, and the key is how we embrace those detours. I was afraid of change. I thought that the changes were wrong, and I just couldn't see that if I had embraced them with my husband we were still headed to the same destination together. So, I hid from the realities of life in my A. I didn't have to face the changes and detours.

Then, when faced with losing my husband I thought OK, I can end this on my own and noneone will be the wiser. However, as long as it was hidden from my husband it was still not real to me and it was impossible to break away. It wasn't until it all came out that I was finally free from my own betrayals enough to end the A.

My husband resented me, he had many feelings and emotions on d-day, as I'm sure you can relate. It was my mom who actually convinced him to stay and try. I called the OM then and there and broke it off. I told my husband that I would do whatever it took to earn his love again and save our marriage.

We did counseling, and had many conversations about the A. I answered any and all questions he had, and all I asked in return was that he believed, just a little, in our love and I told him that in time I would give him every reason to be glad he stayed. He agreed to give me just that little bit of belief. I never asked for his trust though, I only asked him to believe in US, just a little.

It was a long hard road. We had our share of triggers, and fights, and times where he may have said he wanted to quit. We shared many thoughts, fears, feelings, tears, and hugs. We learned to communicate properly and how to work together as the team we were supposed to be all along.

It is doable, and it can have a wonderful ending. However, it does take both parties. You husband needs to be able to take the time to really see his own evil. To address it, expose it, and futher to allow himself to be vulnerable to you. In doing so, he shares his sincerity in saving his marriage, as well as learns how real you love truly is.

I wish you all the best, and I hope that in some way this has helped you. It truly is a long hard road ahead of you, but I promise, with both of you dedicated to the same outcome, it is well worth the ups and downs. Good luck to you.

Thank you thank you thank you. I appreciate the kind words and I cannot tell you how much it helped me to read your story Princess. A part of me is so afraid but I am working to overcome that. My husband asked that we do counseling together and I agreed still not sure if I wanted to stay in the marriage though. We have been three times now and have spent much of the time in between with him answering all of my questions. It has been I know that I will never completely understand but I hear him and I believe him when he says that he loves me and will do anything to keep our family together. He says he just wanted to be 23 again. To not have any responsibilities and to be able to do whatever whenever. She offered that to him. She is 23, just out of college, money to spend on whatever she wants to. We do have a very stressful life. A two year old, two dogs, both work full-time, and trying to get out of debt and save for a house. It is so stressful, but it is reality.

A feeling of utter panic hits me many times a day because I don't trust him. I am supposed to go out of town to see my family this weekend, but I don't even want to go now because I am so scared of what he will do when I am away. I can't stand feeling that way. I feel like there is something wrong with me because I still love him even after all of this hurt. Even though the hurt is still strong, I do know that I want to stick it out. I believe that is what God wants me to do and I am trying to believe that my husband means it when he says it will never happen again.

I have so much to work through and I look at it in three parts. I can only handle so much of one at a time and then focus switches to another. The first part is all of the lies. He lied to me probably even more than I will ever know and it was so easy for him to kust look me in the face and lie. It is going to take a long time for me to believe the words he say to me. The second part is the way that he has put me down over the past year. He would tell me that I was a scatterbrain, that I disgusted him, that he hated me, that I was weak because I cried, that I couldn't find my way out of a paperbag, and probably the worst was that marrying me was the biggest mistake he ever made. And the third part is the hardest for me and that it the physical acts. I met my husband when I was 18 and he was 19. Neither of us had ever been with anyone else. He never even had a girlfriend before me. So what we has truly was sacred bewteen us. And it kills me to know that he has given that to someone else. I can't get the image of the two of them together out of my mind. Im not sure if I ever will.

So anyway, thank you for your words and your support. It just feels so much better to know that I am not alone in this and to know that people do survive this.

I pray for continued strength for you. As a BS, I know your pain as my W is in an ongoing EA and I don't know if she is coming back. Like you I find it difficult to look at her with happiness and can barely imagine being proud of her again.

The best I can say is to start reading SAA if you can. I am and it is great. It doesn't take away the pain but helps to frame it a little. You and I are both too young for something like this. Be strong and be mindful of your needs as well.

I feel for you it is an overwhelming feeling I never want to have again.

my story:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=31;t=009539

But if he really loves and will committ to try and repair and more important rebuild your marriage then princess is right.

Truth is affairs are wakeup calls. They may signal something wrong personally or with the marriage.

And because of the really hard look you and your husband will take at your marriage, should you rebuild the marriage it will be stronger than most marriages.

Sounds odd doesn't have an affair end up with a better marriage. But that is how it works because you and he are in a sink or swim situation. Most marriages have problems...and without some type of event like an affari few marriages work on those problems. They wind up living not so happily after. So while you are in deep pain right now the marriage formed from the ashes of the affair may prove to be a deeper more fulfilling one.

Now here is the tough part. You are going to ride a rollercoaster of emotions for several months to even a couple of years.

You cannot will this away. You cannot control the anger and pain...and you shouldn't. You cannot decide to avoid being depressed, resentfull, feeling loss of self worth, the "why me"s" and so on.

What you can do is read as much as you can about affairs. How they work, why they happen, how both of you will feel when recovery from one, and so on. That way you are better armed to deal with this.

This will be one of if not the most painful thing you will experience in your life. Many experts compare the emotional intensity of an discovery an affair to the death of a close loved one to even as traumatic as being raped.

Try and stay calm. Try as best possible to take care of yourself at this moment. Do the best you can to try and eat right or else you will suffer huge weight loss (36lbs for me) that will further sap your strength. Try and sleep right. That too will be difficult. Perhaps right now get some over the counter sleeping aids.

Definitely get seek professional help for yourself and if agreeable for the both of you and your marriage.

I strongly recommend getting a medication ie anti-depressantes. Also go ahead and get some mild over the counter sleeping aids as you are going to have a very hard time sleeping.

Eat right and try and sleep right because you are going to need your strength to deal with all that is about to hit you.

Most important thing and the toughest for thing to accept when you first found out.....MOST AFFAIRS ARE NOT ABOUT YOU!

That's right most affairs are not about the betrayed spouse. Its hard not to take things personal after all that is YOUR spouse but his/her affair in most cases is not about you. Indeed few affairs are exit affairs. Most people in affairs are not sincerely wanting to leave their current marriage.

Hang in there its always darkest before the dawn.