This Thread has drawn me back to it each and every day since I first saw it. Read this, then go read that thread for my responses. They are tied together in many ways.
I am a disabled BS. Just to clarify, my stbxwh had a specialty for cyber sex affairs (CA's). Thru 14 years of marriage, there are 7 known CA/EA's of 3 month or longer duration, and God only knows how many I did not care to find out about. Are these real affairs?
YES. I don't even want to hear another
'but it's not like it's physical sex with another woman!' for as long as I live.
There is a lot of color, emoticons, and what nots in here to keep your attention!
At the bottom of this post, I have put in some quotes from that thread that have meant a lot to me to read. I have copied those responses and quotes and added them to the end of that thread, this one got far too long
(still is, but alot shorter now!) Thank you for those who responded to it, your words have given me faith that there are, indeed, good people in the world.
For a long time, I would start to think life could never get worse, and each time, I would meet someone who would prove that otherwise.
In no way is this thread a pity party or an invite for sympathy, its nothing more than my feelings, thoughts, my situation, and most of all, my hopes for those who read it that it might save one person, a fraction of the heartache and hell I have lived.
It's time I put into words how I feel, and I am combining a lot of things here, over and above that post linked above. This post is very long, approximately 3000 words. I've decided to put this mess in Surviving an Affair, because this is exactly what I am.
I am a Survivor. For those BS's living with, or are past victims of, WS's and especially with serial cheaters ...pay special attention to what I am about to write.
Listen to the vets here, do what they tell you to do, when they say to do it! They know what they are talking about. If after giving it all you have, your marriage does not survive,
stay here to recover yourself! There is much valuable information here for you!
Remember, you have the
RIGHT TO SAY NO to staying with your WS. If it is a 'serial cheater' don't stop, just run, that's just my advice, not MB advice.
When they say EXPOSE � Expose! Far and wide, leave no one standing without knowing what is going on! They frequent the local convenience store for coffee every morning?? Expose there too, believe me, I used to be one of those clerks years ago, I would have watched your back! Blow the tops off their affairs!
When they say go NC with your WS, DO IT!!! You will heal faster, stress less, and have a clear head for the next battle coming. Get an IM.
THE WS IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!!!TRUTH for the children! I can not stress enough, tell your kids the TRUTH about what is going on with your marriage! Don't fall into the trap I put myself in!!!
Do NOT Isolate yourself! Find some good friends that have your back, find support groups, find whatever you can to keep from being isolated! After I had to stop working, my friends all dwindled away, most of them refused to come visit because he made them feel so very welcome. The depression of mine I'm sure did not help. The last friend I had locally, moved away from the area yesterday. I have tons of online friends however.
LISTEN TO THE VETS! They have seen it, been there, done it, they KNOW.
When your life gets calm, don't get complacent and comfortable! The other shoe WILL drop. Jump in first and drop it on them!!! I have had the shoe, the other shoe, the BOMB all dropped on me. (Yes, I'm a slow learner it seems). While standing on the tracks whistling Dixie after putting the pieces of me back together again, I got slammed between two speeding freight trains. I stood up yet again, but I can hear the bombers heading to Pearl Harbor making a detour my way. I could be mistaken and that sound might just be the Karma bus aiming for him. I can always hope right? (A friend told me I needed to work on my description of pain...how am I doing?)
I came back to MB in March, after my stbwxh told me he was filing papers for the divorce. I knew it was coming, but hearing it? I was filled with an intense anger at that moment, and needed to discover where I went wrong that lead me to that day in my life. I have learned a lot over these months, and for that I am grateful. I highly doubt I will ever have a chance to put what I'm learning to use in another marriage, but it's helpful in many other ways.
I first found MB in 2002 and HAD I stayed then to work on ME, I would not be typing this tonight, facing the choices I have at this time in my life, all of which suck royally. Yet, I'm happier today than I have been in most of my life and looking forward to tomorrow!
He has my daughter now, after filling her head with trash to the point she will not listen to a word I say without screaming it's all lies. She chose to live with him after that. After all, he told her, she can tell the Judge who she wants to live with!
I do not want my daughter living among the values and morals he and his mother have. Therefore, my choices I find myself faced with are:
I can pay rent and not fight this custody battle.
I can pay the lawyer and be evicted with 3 months left on my lease.
Either way, I have to find a new place to live and move.
Somewhere in there I have to buy a car.
I'm thinking seriously of buying the car, paying the lawyer and living in said car while I fight this.
But then, no place to bring my daughter home to.
Like I said, the choices suck royally. I put myself in this position, by not telling my daughter the truth before he managed to fill her with trash talk.
I can prove everything I say, but does she need to see this proof? Its pretty explicit in some cases. Pictures, a video, tons and tons of paper trails. You tell me after reading the rest.
I would love to hear any advice.I am far from innocent in the downfall of my marriage, I'll admit to everything I did wrong. I will say I had reasons, that many of you might read as excuses. For many a year,
I did not own my part in what happened, and I am trying hard to accept that the
choices I made, were indeed my own. I chose to stay in the hell I married into. I chose to allow him the power to treat me the way he was able to. I did not care enough about me to stand up for what I believed in from the beginning. I chose to let fear rule my actions.
I kept each and every one of my vows, as best I could, until the day I finally had the strength to walk out that door. The only vows I have broken are 'for better and for worse' and 'till death do us part'. Had I stayed any longer for the first, the second would be true.
I can look back now, and pinpoint the moment I felt the first knife hit my heart. I was 7 months pregnant with our daughter, about 9 months into the marriage at that point, (yes she was planned, just not expected on the first try), crying myself to sleep every night for the remainder of the pregnancy (which ran 3 weeks overdue) because he refused to come to bed, refused to have sex with me, refused to talk to me about it. His reason? He told me YEARS later, he was �afraid he would hurt the baby�. I believed he meant it then, now? I just think it took him years to come up with that excuse. Meanwhile, my drive was in overdrive and the pain of that rejection cut deep. When I was crying myself to sleep or begging him to come to bed? He was on the computer.
Hindsight being 20/20 as it is, I never should have gotten involved with him from the start, but I did, and I thought we had a good marriage up until then. The pain he inflicted, was only the beginning of what he was capable of that I have found in the years since.
My stbxwh had no difficulties in having multiple CA/EA's over the years, beginning way back when I was still healthy and pregnant, and more intense ones the sicker I got. He said it was his way of �dealing with stress�. Stress? Lets see, when I was 3 months pregnant, my mother (61), father (62), and favorite uncle (54) all passed away within 18 days time, all unexpected. I disowned my siblings after 3 pushed me down the stairs.
And HE was stressed? oh, wait, he was dealing with MY stress! Having cyber sex with online bimbos. Should I try this stress reliever??? Yes, they started during the pregnancy when I was crying myself to sleep. Those cyber sex affairs plagued all of the years of our marriage.
His reasoning behind them being OK is because it
�wasn't like it was PHYSICAL SEX with another woman� 
and proceeded to tell me among other toxic spewing, for the next 12 years that I was �CRAZY�
for even thinking it was wrong.
I know now, that he became and still is,
an expert gas-lighter and speaks fluent fog-babble. Reading about gas-lighting and fog-babble was very healing for me. And relieved the last of my doubts that I was indeed, crazy.
I should toss in here at this point, that his stressing the 'physical sex' part is due to what I told him early on in our relationship. My XH had multiple PA's, and if I ever caught him screwing around with another woman, I'd cut off that prized possession, shove it down his throat, and leave him to chew on that thought while he bled to death as I walked away.
Those were my boundaries as far as that went.
I did try to work on the marriage after discovering the first one, when our daughter was about a year old, as I recall, the time on that one is fuzzy as I did my best to forgive and forget. He again rejected me, refused to come to bed, would not have sex with me, would not discuss it and I was again begging, pleading and finally crying myself to sleep. By then, he had a 'man cave' den he locked himself into.
Little did I know I was Plan A in full gear long before finding MB. By the time I discovered the second, I was already undergoing tests for what turned out to be the disk, which almost killed me. That is when I found this site, and we were working on the marriage. Right up until the day he told his mother about the site, she looked, pronounced it 'hog wash' and that was the end of his attempt to stay with the program.
By the third?? I wanted to kill him, but did not have the physical strength to. After that? I was numb from the pain and fighting severe depression that could not be treated with any of the anti-depressants we tried. I could not take them due to reactions, and did not care if he lived or died to be honest. I wanted to survive for my daughter,
and it is because of her, I am here today. 
I stayed at that point on for the insurance. No, it was not right, but I couldn't afford not to have medical insurance. I have had six major (knock out) surgeries in the years we have been married, five of those in the last 7 years we were together. Medical bills were over $500,000 of which I paid OOP a little over $5,000. How do you walk away from that when you are scared to death of what is coming next?
When I did try to leave on a few occasions, he fought any idea of me leaving because he did not want to be saddled with child support (yes, he admitted it later). He begged, he pleaded, he cried, he apologized, he admitted to having a porn/cyber sex addiction, promised to get help, he went over and beyond what he could deliver, to keep me there. He managed to convince me each time he meant it. And idiot me fell for it.
My medical history, scrambled as it is, is in my original thread, but in a nutshell, I have Multiple Sclerosis (dx 6 yrs ago, first signs 11 yrs ago), permanent spinal cord damage from a 2 yr undiagnosed herniated disk that had the cord well over half compressed at the time of dx. It was discovered during the next surgery on my neck that the cord never fully decompressed and there is ongoing atrophy at that location. I currently have a plate in my neck from C3-T1 after blowing two more disks (trying to throw a 17 inch monitor at my MIL, long story on its own, no worries, she was long gone before I got to the monitor). I have restless leg syndrome I would not wish on my worst enemy, a few other odds and ends discovered during testing that don't bother me much if at all, and who knows what else since my stbxwh dropped my medical insurance the first of the year, while knowing I was in the process of being tested to find out what this new stuff is going on, which is still ongoing and undiagnosed. His reason?
�We will be divorced soon anyway.� 
Eventually I'll find out, I suppose. Might be during an autopsy some day, I only hope they tell me. The best part? I know I'm looking at another surgery to fix a hernia. Yay Medicare! Until then, I am following doctor orders best I can, with my ten pound weight limit on picking stuff up. While packing up a 2 bedroom apartment of course.
The day he told me he was cutting my insurance is the day I finally went into NC, and realized there was no such thing as a
'friendly divorce'.
That lasted until he told me he hired a lawyer. When I told him I hired a lawyer, he got angry at me, and that weekend, during his visitation with my daughter, filled her so full of trash about me as to make my head spin. I've been reeling ever since.
Just a taste of what she believes? The reason I don't/can't do a lot is not because of the MS, it's because....I'm....lazy! 
So glad to hear SS approves disability for laziness now! She is also arguing with me the 'physical sex' part.Fear of the unknown future and my health is the only reason he was able to convince me to try after #2, and why I stayed in the marriage after finding out about #3 on. It was one heck of a battle to stay after #2.
I was put out of work in June 2005, diagnosed with MS that August, approved for SSD first try. In that time frame he had two known CA/EA's one of which was about to turn physical, and I got the �pleasure� of telling that cyber bimbo where to jump off the ship.
Today, I am still walking,
on a good day to the mailbox and back, on a bad day, to the front door and back. I'm constantly getting up and moving, my legs go wonky if I don't. My head is clear as long as I don't have to recall dates and other important information on a moment's notice. I can do a lot, can't do other things, but given a chance, I could and did try to meet his needs at the beginning. I gave half hearted attempts after, but mostly just stayed in my little hole of depression where he seemed to prefer I be.
Had he been HONEST and not fought to keep what he did not want (me and his daughter) due to paying for the child support over the years, this marriage would have ended in 1997 with the first CA, and my disability would not come into play today as far as he is concerned.
Don't ask me about MIL's from hell.
I know that all to well.
He even told me when asked, that his mom was and always would be, more important to him than I was. 
After all, she gave birth to him and he OWED her for that! That was also in the middle of being put out on disability and getting my dx on MS, when I was not strong enough to physically pick up a damn gallon of milk or push the self propelled vacuum cleaner.
It has taken me a long time to write this without anger and bitterness. I like to type, it's one thing I still do very well, and thru my typing, I have worked thru a whole mess of stuff in my life. I've been writing since I was a kid, pages upon pages of thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams for my life.
My greatest dream was to be married one day, have a loving husband, happy children and die a happy, very old woman surrounded by family. If I were to die now, I'd be able to at least die a happy woman. That's more than I could say two years ago. I am, after all, a survivor!
I have survived the BS Fog. Thanks for reading. Don't forget
This Thread
