My husband was in the car with a family member of his. We had gotten into an argument on the phone. At the end of the conversation he failed to turn his cell phone off. After listening for about ten minutes while he and some of his family members stopped at a restaurant to eat, he and this family member were sitting in his car waiting for the others to come out. He starts talking about this girl that he worked with last year. Starts talking about her great little body. He tells the guy with him that she came back in the office and started kissing him on the neck and he was like"hey what are you doing". But then she did it another time and he f**ked the s**t out of her. It was so good that he went back for more another time - got a hotel room. It took a few minutes for what I had heard to register. So I hung up the phone. I wasn't going to say anything about it, but I just couldn't help myself. I called him back and let him know that I had heard the whole thing. At first he tried to tell me that he knew I was on the phone and that he was just messing with me. Then he tried to tell me that he was talking about someone else. After he finally understood that I had heard every word as well as the circumstances and the girl's name, he told me that he would tell me everything as soon as he got to his parent's house. After a whole weekend of avoiding me ( he was at a friend's funeral) he came home. In the mean time I had a whole weekend to think of the worst. The picture in my mind is much worse than the one in his. He cried with me about it. He swears up and down that it was a mistake and that he will never hurt me again. It happened a year ago. He stopped working there not too long after it happened. He swears that he has not seen her or talked to her. There was no "relationship". It was just a physical thing that happened one time. He loves me and he married me and only wants me. I can't get the picture of him with someone else out of my mind. I wonder how it was for them right after the sex and how it was at work the next day. I imagine that it was very flirtatious and exciting for him. He doesn't understand my need to know details. I understand that he is trying to protect himself as well as me. He doesn't want to go through the pain of telling me everything. But I want him to. The picture in my mind is probably 100 times worse than how it all actually went down. He broke our vows. How do I get past this? How do I rebuild the trust? He is angry with me because I am still having problems with this. I tried to explain to him that he has had a year to deal with his mistake. it is still very fresh for me. I have only known about it for two weeks. I want to get through this. I want to get my marriage back together. I know that I can't keep beating him up about it - figuratively. At some point I have to be willing to let it go and choose to move on if I want to stay in this marriage. any suggestions/thoughts on how to get these images out of my head?
I still picture, quite vividly, where the incident happened and how it happened. My big hang up is why wasn't our love strong enough to make him say "no". We were struggling financially, so I had taken a second job in the evenings. I was working M-F 8 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. I am guessing that to be the time that it happened. I am hurt that I was busting my butt to make things work for us while he was betraying me. I have been reading alot about why people cheat and it seems to be centered around how that person feels about themselves. He wasn't feeling good about himself, maybe because he wasn't making enough money, he was unhappy with his job, etc. This OW was much younger than he which maybe made him feel like he was older/wiser/more experienced/better lover/could teach her a thing or two, blah, blah, blah, perhaps giving his ego a boost. When I look at it like that it all makes sense. But then it seems like I am making excuses for his behavior. As far as I was concerned, he was the king of my castle. I was supportive emotionally and intellectually. I loved sex so I didn't think we had a problem in that area either. We slowed down a bit in that department after we got married, but I didn't think that we had a problem - thought that it was kind of normal. We have been together six years so we have gotten quite comfortable with each other. The problem that I am having right now is that I now feel inadequate. I know in my head that I am an attractive woman, but since this has happened, I feel like a dog. I know that this is my issue that I need to work on, not his. It just feels like everything I believed, the world as I knew it, didn't really exist. How do you put that back in perspective? I know that I did not ultimately do anything to cause him to have sex with someone else and that it was his choice, his mistake. I just can't get it to register with my heart yet. Do you have this problem?
My husband is my best friend. He is the one that I talk to about everything. Unfortunately, I cannot talk to him about all of this or I will be right back where I started with him thinking that I am going to attack him everyday over this. He agreed to marriage counseling, but I know we won't be able to afford it.
Just so you all know, I am the last person who will be or has been making excuses for my husband and what he has done to our marriage. My reason for bringing up those things that I mentioned, ie; not being happy at work, not making enough money, not feeling good about himself was the result of reading about the subject of adultery and why people cheat in various self help books. These were reasons presented to me, not ones that I conjured up. Really, the easiest thing for me to do would be to blame myself and say that I must have done something to cause him to stray and it is taking everything in my power not to do so becauseI have that tendency. HOWEVER, I know that he made his own choices. He was not a victim, he chose to act on whatever feelings he was having. IF he was feeling badly about himself, I am quite sure that the few minutes of sexual gratification did not really make him feel better. I don't think that I was clear in the first post as to how it started. Apparently this girl had tried to kiss him one day and he didn't go for it. Then it happened again and he did go for it. So I don't think that she just happened to walk up to him one day and kiss him on the neck afterwhich he dropped his pants and boned her. I'm sure there was more to it than that. My guess is that she had been trying to get with him for a while, he probably avoided it for awhile and then one thing led to another.
What I can't figure out is why the subject came up to this family member. They weren't talking about women. I heard the conversation leading up to it and there was no "guy talk" b.s. about anyone. They were in the restaurant eating, talking about food, then they talked about his brother, then they were yelling at his sister to hurry up and get in her car so that they could leave. The connection was clear as day so I know I didn't miss anything. The family member that was with him didn't even react to what he said. It was really stupid. It made no sense. It was like it came up out of the blue solely for the purpose of me finding out about it. I'm sure that is not what he expected to gain out of telling his story. I don't know if he has been faithful otherwise. I guess that I may never know. I can't imagine that if it was happening regularly that he would just happen to bring up this little slut from a year ago and no one else. He couldn't even get someone his own age. If he was bragging, wouldn't he want to tell his buddies what a player he is? All I know is that I am hurting like I never thought I could. I really don't know which way is up right now and I am not sure what to do with all of this hurt. I just want it to go away. I want that safety and security back in our marriage.
