I posted my situation on the "Just Found Out" forum. The only person to respond told me that weekends are slow and to check out this "General Questions" forum. Here is my original post though:

I am a 35 y/o woman and my fiance of 3 years, is the WS. I found out about his affair in January of 2005. Our son was only 9 months old at the time. When I opened the hidden email account I was devastated to find that WS's affair spanned nearly as long as our relationship had. When I confronted him, he became enraged, he threw his razor blade (he was getting out of the shower at the time). It split my head open. I tried to call for help but he ripped the phone out of the wall. Our baby witnessed me having to crawl out the front door to the street to get help for my head injury. He was arrested for Assault& Battery w/ a Deadly Weapon and Intimdidation of a Witness (both felony charges in this state). Because of the restraining order I took out, I had to leave my WS and remove my things from our home. I have been staying with my mother until I can save enough money for an apartment. I receive a disability and never have had enough income to accumulate any savings. I booked me and WS a counseling appointment and went for several visits until....I snooped through his email and I found out that he had put out a personal ad online and was already in the process of dating other women. I felt betrayed all over again. I cannot, as much as I try to wrap my brain around all of his behaviior, understand why he has done all this. I have offered him multiple choice questions like: "Do you think your philandering has an addictive quality? B/c we can get you help for that? Is it because you are angry with me to get back at me? Is it because you can't handle the emotional intimacy I keep striving to get from you?" to which he always answers, "I don't know why I do it." I don't know!!!! wtf is that? Why has he continued to give me hope for a reconciliation while simultaneously seeking out other women? He is truly the epitome of a duplicitous person. And I cannot identify with why someone would do that?

After the discovery of his affair, I phoned the OW and called her many choice words. It was an emotionally driven instinctual decision to confront her too. I also asked her what kind of person she is. How could she play 50% part in destroying a brand new family? How could she expose innocents to her swinging lifestyle and disease? THis woman calls herself a Chrisian? After I hung up, granted I gave her a 3 minute earful, and many things I screamed weren't nicey nicey....This OW had the nerve to call the police department on me for "harrassment". I was not arrested or anything but was told by the police in her town if I ever tried to contact her I could be arrested. That self righteous bee-otch ! How can she claim harrassment? I think to myself, doesn't she see her part in the destruction of a family? I take that as harrassing!!!

The counselor that me and WS saw til I knew of his further betrayal told us that she couldn't help us b/c WS needed to do some indiv. work before she could help us as a couple. She says that he has issues that pre-existed our relationship that desperately need dealing with. But WS never made an appointment but instead hopped back online and spends his time on casual sex and personal websites. So I started seeing her individually. There is a section in this forum mentioning some BS go on anti-depressants. My therapist suggests me going on one. However, I am still a nursing mother and cannot take those medications (lack of longitudal studies/effects on neural developement in infants) I have cried nearly every day and then there are days I am filled with rage. Most days it is a struggle just to do the ordinary: keep my baby's diapers changed, feed him, play with him , and occaisionally have the emotional energy to put on a facade and smile and sing to him. And the irony is, that even after all WS's cruelty, I love him, I miss him, I want him to want me back. And that is the cruelest paradox, b/c WS seems light years away from loving me...even if he says he does. If having secret affairs is how he thinks you are supposed to love someone, than I have to question if he even knows what love is?

I still have so many unanswered questions that my counselor family, friends cannot answer: How did it happen I ask myself? when was the moment he stopped loving me? Why couldn't he express his dissatisfaction with his life? I begged him for months to open up and share himself to no avail. In fact the opposite happened, the more I sought intimacy the more he retreated from me. WS himself, says he doesn't know why he does what he does. But yet why won't he enter therapy to figure it out? I would think a person would be petrified about engaging in a behavior that equates in the loss of their family?

Even now as I have a bad day, become frightened overwhelmed, it's been reflexive to call the man I love, my best friend for helpl. But I call my WS only to have him yell at me and tell me I am "too draining" that he doens't need to "put up with (my) bull*hit" that he doesn't want to talk about the affair (s), can't I just move on? why must I bring up "heavy " things? Is he living in Bizarro land or something? heavy things? my whole g'damn life is freaking heavy b/c of what he's done!!!

Before finding this website, I felt that my experience was ineffable, I couldn't aptly even convey to another person the pain inside of me. It is so true when they say that it is tantamount to living through a natural diaster.

The worst thing that happens in my brain on a daily basis I have images of my WS and OW that intrusively flood my brain, in their contorted sexual positions. What makes it worse is that during these images I was sitting at home desperate for attention/affection 8 months pregnant, hoping beyond hope he would come home and hold me. I do the best I can to keep distracted but I am not always successful at purging the images from my consciousness. Sometimes I am ashamed to admit I end up drinking to forget it all. Of course that is only temporary relief.

I still wonder the same questions that are pondered in so many posts here: why? what in the samhill happened? I search for at least closure from him now, and am not trying to pursue a relationship (knowing I can never stand a chance)and still he answers...." I dont know" why he had the affair, "I don't know" why he puts personal ads out, "I don't know" what he wants out of life....this mind you, coming from the man that begged me to have his child, the same man that coulnd't wait to be a father. this from the man who looked into my eyes as we conceived our child and told me I was his soulmate.

I told him recently that I am scared of being homeless, that I cannot stay at my mothers very much longer and am overwhelmed with anxiety about where to go, financially unable to put a roof over our son's head on the disability income. His response to all this, "that's not my problem" spoken in a truly callous and cruel way.

It seems my own pattern of behavior is to go through cycles where I get angry and blast him for all the hurt only to retract it later and apologize for the way I said it. But this is the first time I have been able to distance myself from calling him and not answering his emails. It's only been a week. There are emails from him trickling in. asking if my email is still active, asking if
he can see his son....

and I am rageful, he wasn't thinking about his son when he gave me an STD from that whorish OW! passed it on to our infant son (because I am breastfeeding) He wasn't thinking about our son's little heart ache about being ripped out of his home, the only stabliity he had. and now I am supposed to feel sorry for my WS?

His A&B trial is coming up in August and as for the violence he commited, I will get my day in court. But what hurt me more than any head wound was his betrayal of me with that bee-otch OW. I find out that she has 2 kids of her own, apparantly a single mother of two teenage boys. She is involved in a" swinger " lifestyle. what kind of mother goes after men who are engaged with a baby on the way? where the fluck has society's values and morals gone? couldn't she look for a nice single man?

After reading your posts I realized that I am not alone. that I am not the anomaly or outliar value here. That this problem (infidelity) is more pervasive than I had ever imagined.

I feel and identify so strongly with many poster's here...your soul's pain. Some questions for this forum? Do things get better? you are further along in this than I? Does the pain stop? do you stop missing them? Do the WS ever regret what they have done? Do they regret losing the people who truly loved them? Will my heart stop that gut wrenching sorrow? Will I ever get any closure on why he did this? Will he ever give me an understanding why they did it? kept doing it? Why won't my WS ever feel not a drop of empathy for the loved ones they have hurt so profoundly? Will my WS ever feel anything? How could he have gone from the beautiful man I accepted an engagement ring from to the Mr. Hyde he has become?

ANY responses are welcome from both WS's to BS's; if you have time to reply. Seems that's all I have right now is hours and hours that feel like an eternity to get through. Hours of analyzing and trying to gain insight and understanding. I have bought books, scoured through articles on infidelity but still am no closer to understanding why my WS did this?