Help. I apologize for the long post. But here it is.

My husband moved from NC to KY for his job in December. I stayed behind with our son (6 yrs old) to finish the school year and to sell the house. I would have been willing to move first but husband discouraged it.

He called every night to check in but his calls started getting earlier and earlier. I rarely called him because I could never reach him. I finally figured out he was calling home and then going out later to bars. Sometimes with co-workers. Sometimes alone (I know now.) When I discouraged it, he just quit telling me.

He only came home (7 hour drive) once after the corporate relocation benefits ran out. I felt like there was something wrong and tried to talk to him about it but he blew me off or made me feel like I was over-reacting.

Anyway I never open his mail, but when I was at his temp apartment I opened his cell phone bill on a fluke. I found phone calls on there at all hours to several different numbers. I called some of them and they were women. When I asked him what they were he just said, "I don't know." Then I started opening bank statements and saw that he had been withdrawing about $1,800/month in cash and it wasn't for regular expenditures. Sometimes he would withdraw $200 twice a day.

Then all of a sudden I get an e-mail from him saying he might have been more responsible for our communication problems than he thought. That he was ready for he and I to take a trip together (one he had avoided planning for months) and that he wanted to go to church with his grandmother over the weekend (hugely unlike him). Basically he was all of a sudden addressing the things I had been trying to talk to him about for months now. It was bizarre.

When I finally confronted him about all of it, he told me he had called a couple of women he'd met in bars. Then over a couple of days (because I kept at him) he told me he had been going to a strip bar and had been meeting a stripper that worked there on a few occasions (for breakfast, at the mall). He said he hadn't slept with anyone else, but that he "wanted to see if he could sleep with her (the stripper), or see if she was just interested in him for the money." Duh.

And the bizarre epiphany e-mail? He had gotten a DUI and spent the night in jail.

There's no way I can move with him to his new location in KY knowing about this behavior. But, my family is from KY so I am moving there from NC. My son and I will be about an hour from husband. I have filed for a legal separation because I needed to make him accountable to me for the money in our savings (it wasn't a joint account but still marital assets) because of all the withdrawals.

Originally we talked about doing marriage counseling together. This was before he told me about the stripper. Originally he told me she was a woman he had interviewed for a job. He has gone twice to individual counseling. But, now he is calling less and less (we are still in NC and he is in KY). It's like he is just drifting away and that's okay with him. I don't understand this at all. I have known him for 20 years. We met in college. Have been married for 8.

He is obviously an excellent liar. I caught him in a lie about 6 months ago as well related to him staying out all night by himself while visiting friends of ours out of town. I also found a confirmation e-mail from an "adult" matchmaking site last year. When I asked him about it he said he didn't know what it was and that he hadn't done anything. He has traveled for work a lot the last few years so I don't know now what has been going on. This could have been going on forever.

I can't believe this. And, I don't know what to do. I am so angry and confused. I didn't file for a divorce immediately because I thought a legal separation would give us a year to better sort things out. Now I don't know what to do.

Has he lost his mind? I know I'm losing mine.

I think your H is likely to be seriously burned getting involved with strippers -- and burned both emotionally and financially. Legal separation seems appropriate.

For what it's worth, our M failed beyond belief -- years of physical abuse which I forgave him for and tried to change my behavior to avoid, and then he got involved with a married woman from work, and 12 days after I had serious surgery including a hysterectomy he said this woman might call him, I threatened to call her, and he broke my arm (my ulna was broken in 7 pieces), requiring three surgeries and 4 months in a cast.

We're in the MarriageBuilders program. It's slow going. He is showing remorse, he is taking responsibility, he is making some attempt to meet my emotional needs...

My H told his mother, after I exposed the A by calling the woman's husband who then got the truth out of her and called me: "It's all up to her. She needs to forgive me. I did terrible things, but they're in the past and I can't change them."

Well, he wanted to forgive and move on. That's not what is needed. What is needed is a change in behavior that will prevent anything remotely like what occurred in the past. That is what we are doing by following the MB program.

You could consider offering terms for living together -- like going through this program or another one.

I am totally convinced that it is better for children that they come of divorced parents than that they witness a bad marriage. Your H has proven that he is willing to do things that he enjoys at the cost of your family. I would guess that the stripper is the model of the predator-whore but that still does not excuse his behavior. It is up to him to change his behavior. What you can do is offer him a program for changing his behavior.

And welcome to MB. I don't know that I would have survived without the help and encouragement of people on this board.
Cherished

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Has he lost his mind? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Figuratively speaking, yes.

Before you communicate with him again, read everything on this site about infidelity and order the books "His Needs/Her Needs" and "Surviving an AFfair" both by Harley and available in the bookstore on this site or thru just about any on-line bookseller.

Study the Plan A concepts and ask questions here about what you don't understand about it.

Read the link in my sig line below and all the embedded links.

Now, some suspicions, good and bad:

There's no way he hasn't been having sex with one of these women. Very hard to believe he hasn't. I recommend you think critically before you have any sex with him. Eventually, you need to make sure he gets tested for STDs.

But, there's no way he's gonna leave a family for a stripper either - if you do a good Plan A.

You can follow-up the DUI story easily through legal channels, and perhaps you should if you think thisa could be "cover" for spending the night with another woman. Some cover, huh? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

The fact that he had some form of a wake up is very good. Capitalize on that by encouraging the bahaviors he suggested - after you're Plan A literate.