Marriage Builders
Posted By: GloomyBlue Blindsided - 12/18/03 02:55 AM
Dear Members:

I have been browsing the posts here for a few days now and am so touched by the outpouring of emotion and support that I have seen between the members. I hope that you will allow me to share my experiences with you and gain some insight and much needed advice.

So, here it goes:

My husband and I have been married for 2.5 years, but have been together for 9.5 years total. This past February, his job relocated us across the country. We bought a beautiful home and settled in for what seemed to be the next and best phase of our lives. I bustled about in a happy, contented blur getting to know my way around the city, fixing up the new house, finding a job, etc. By May, we seemed to be well situated and things were going more smoothly than ever.

Evidently, my husband's persepective was completely different from my own because it was in May that he began having an affair. It all started with a phone call that he received as we were on our way to lunch to celebrate my new job and our good fortune. To this day, I have never seen my husband more nervous. The look on his face was one of sheer terror. He fumbled and stammered and quickly made an excuse to get off of the phone. I asked who it was and he told me her name (for my purposes here I will be nice and change what I usually call her to the word "Fungus"). He said, "Oh that was just Fungus. She works with me and needed some help with a project."

In the past, my husband has received calls from women with whom he worked while I was present, but he never reacted in this manner. Usually he would just give them whatever information/help they needed in a professional manner and promptly get off the phone. This time it was like a big red siren going off over his head. He started to tremble uncontrollably and his face was covered in sweat. I questioned him. He lied. We fought. He promised he would never do anything to hurt me and I believed him.

It was not long after that day when he began having to work odd hours several nights during the week. My husband is in a rather high level management position and the hours that he was claiming just did not jibe with the type of work that he does. Of course, I began finding hotel receipts, restaurant tabs, movie tickets... The worst was when I checked his voice mail and heard a flirty message from a woman. Again and again, I questioned him. Again and again he lied. I love my husband so much that I just tried to keep myself hoping for the best by making up excuses for him. I squeezed my eyes shut, covered my ears and told myself that all marriages go through problems. I fooled myself into believing that he was just going through some ridiculous phase and that any time he would grow out of it and realize how awful he was becoming; and it was getting absolutely awful.

My husband has never been much of a drinker. All of a sudden he was binge drinking every weekend. He started disappearing for 2-3 days at a time. He got destructive with our most expensive belongings and very verbally abusive with me. Still I prayed for things to get better. I told myself that he was having problems with transiitioning to a new home, new expenses, stress at work. I made excuse after excuse after excuse as his behavior steadily worstened. Then he got to where I swear it was as though he just enjoyed watching me cry.

At first, it was not just one woman. I think there were several with whom he was flirting. However, there seemed to be one that was his favorite and would come up time and again (the "Fungus"). I finally put my foot down (or so I thought) and decided to call this woman to explain to her that my husband was not available to her.

Fungus told me that he was the one chasing her. She was more furious about the fact that he seemed to be seeing other women besides her rather than the fact that she was speaking with me, his WIFE! Fungus said my husband told her that he was unhappy in his marriage and did not love me anymore. She said that he was sweet but that he was conceited and full of himself. "I tell him he's not all that!" said Fungus.

I guess I should mention that Fungus is kind of a ghetto girl. She is 26 (4 years younger than my husband and me) with two kids of her own by different fathers. She is inarticulate and speaks with a very definitive street slang. She still lives at home with her parents. She's really rather worthless. In fact, she completely surprised me when she said, "I told him that compared to you, I don't know why he's even with me. It don't matter though 'cause I don't love him or want him anyway!" I told my husband about the conversation and he just said, "Well, now you know." That was it. No explantion. No remorse. No promise to stop the affair.

Then, on November 20th at 8:50 p.m. (that's burned into my memory forever) I stepped out of the shower to find my husband shut inside of an extra bedroom of our house on his cell phone whispering to this woman how he loved her. I was outraged. I burst into the room and demanded to know what happened. A long, tumultuous fight ended in my calling the Fungus and her telling me that she was pregnant. "Yeah, we're having a kid! So what! He's mine now!"

That was it. The straw that broke my own back... For all my efforts to make my husband a comfortable, happy home, I had been defeated by a woman who has nothing but misery to offer him. His life is ruined.

The past couple of weeks have been hell. He is downright horrible to me, viscious, cruel... and I thought he couldn't get any meaner than he already was. Yet every night, he shuts himself in that room and whispers to her how much he loves her and how he will do anything for her. He grovels and pleads and begs. I have never heard anything like it. This is not the man I married.

So, it is what it is. He took the coward's way out of our marriage. He does not want to reconcile. He is not willing to try. He is using this as an exit affair, an excuse to get out of this marriage with no guilt or explanations. I know I need to move on, but there are so many questions I want answered. There are so many things that I want to resolve before I leave for good. I am even thinking about calling the Fungus and asking her if we can meet. I guess I need to make her real in my mind.

Please send me your thoughts and advice. I could really use some wise words that would apply to my situation. I have seen several posts from women who are in the same boat and are working to repair their marriages, but I just don't think that this is one that can be saved.

Any advice would be sincerely appreciated.

Kindest Regards,
Blue <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />
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