I just found a secret identity on Friday, that my husband has had since March. He left his fake email address up and I found a dozen emails to and from various ladies that he chatted with online then emailed. Some indicated he wanted to meet them while on business trips. He stated he wanted to move cross country and start new, didn't mention being married. I approached him when I learned this. He said he never met, or talked with any of them, just chatted, although once came very close while on a business trip. He said it was all a made up fantasy world he made up and he was glad I found out so that it would all stop. He said he only wants to be with me, blah blah blah.

I nursed by baby, and with hormones (or lack of) we haven't been as close as we use to be, once a week, that's it. He said he knows it isn't an excuse but this was when he decided to do this, as an outlet. He said he didn't do any porn online, just this chatting...

I don't know how to respond. I am glad he didn't actually make contact with these women but am sick that he has been flirting with all these ladies, talking about sexual things with them, living in a world without me, our 18mth old and baby-on-the-way. He spoke with our pastor, who said he would be an accountablity parnter with him regarding website usage, getting a report weekly on sites he visits. He said he would go to MC if I wanted. I have explained the situation he's put me in being a SAHM, with no income, what if he left me? He says he won't but I feel unprepared. I don't know whether to distance myself from him or hold on to him. We both want the marriage to work but how do I let him know what he did was wrong and at the same time be thankful that nothing physical happened and try to build up our marriage???

Anyone else have experience with an 'online affair'?

When I was newly divorced, I chatted with a man on a dating site and later aranged to meet him. We had three dates, but I felt something wasn't right and about the same time we stopped going out another woman from the dating site wrote to me saying that she'd found out he was married. He had a new baby and his wife was already expecting their second. Sure enough, eventhough I hadn't had contact with him for months, his wife phoned me. It seems he set up a fantasy world of online affairs to escape real-world stress... but after a few months he took it to the next level. He dated at least five women and one was also married. He was dishonest with everyone and he was sleeping around.

My suggestion to you is to dig deeper. Do your homework to be certain your husband is having no contact with anyone anymore, online or "for real". Use condoms for your protection until you are POSITIVE he hasn't slept around. And get into counselling.

You can heal from this if there is honesty. I'm sorry you're going through this.


Mrs. W8ing

This is far, far worse than porn.
porn can be horribly addicting. very VERY tightly.
I've been there, unfortunately <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

But if he were addicted to porn.. it would hurt you, potentially make you feel bad... but he would never leave you and go buy a house jointly owned by "Playboy magazine".

He needs to realize how serious it is, what he has done. and then stop it for himself.
Since it is only recent.. maybe it is "easily" salvagable. I would suggest to try to work on the marriage.

Men can get horribly cut off from their wives when babies come. it can get REALLY bad for us, especially if the wife has a "baby comes first" attitude, instead of "marriage comes first" (which is best for the baby in the long run)

It sounds like you have fallen into this.

May I humbly suggest that you "own" your part of this, admit it to him, and then do everything you can to make him feel close to you again. It will hurt to make yourself vulnerable to him most likely. But as a husband, I think


On the flip side... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />
If he's talking about meeting women on business trips.. and he actually GOES on business trips... you probably have something a lot deeper to worry about in your marriage, I'm afraid.

It may have been building up for the last 25 months (yes, 25 months). in which case, you have a whole lot of slow, patient, loving rebonding to do.

Please hang in there. for the good of yourself, and the children.

Thanks for your suggestions. I have been trying to find information on our computer, in cookies, history, anything that would give me more information but so far, nothing. He deleted the fake email account, so it would all be behind us but now I wish I had kept those email addresses, so I could at least email the ladies to see if they would give me any information. He's traveling this week - ugh - but calling a LOT, to be accountable and put me at ease so I told him that I just wish I knew for sure that he was telling me the truth about not seeing anyone, he said he didn't and would do anything for me to know that for sure. We both know it will be a long time before I can trust him...

Wow, u think this is worse than porn, I never thought of it that way but you are right.

Yes, he does go on business trips and the dates and locations that he mentioned in his emails to these ladies matched up to when he actually went, but he swears that he never met them or even talked to anyone on the phone. How can I know for sure? He says he is telling me the truth but how will I ever know? It's not like I can just "trust" him and his word now....

I think that I have 'owned' my part of this, with the attention to the baby. I'm worried that I am owning too much of it and that he won't see the seriousness of it. I have forgiven him. I want to put this behind me RIGHT NOW and start on building up our relationship again - which he says is fine, that I am perfect, that it was all just a game in his head, etc etc - but we are committed to have date nights and time alone instead of ALL FAMILY TIME. He knows that I am hurt and that we will have trust issues for a long time, so is it ok to just smother him with attention and he respond back to me, because it seems that we are doing that, which is what I am worried about - maybe he will think that what he did wasn't so bad and he even said that it doesn't seem like he's being 'punished'. This is so hard..

Thanks so much for your post, I apprecate your time. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Hey, please enable private messages to you somehow. I would like to send you something that probably should not be public.
(I WAS writing it here, but it timed out. probably a good thing :-)
[urrr.. waitaminit.. cant send private msgs to OTHER people. problem on my end. eh?]


PS: yeah, no way i believe him about not meeting those women. MULTIPLE matches on trip dates? no way.

hmph. since I cant private-send, here's the rest of my hidden post, a little cleaned up from the original.


My guess is that you have a not-so-common problem for these boards. You dont have a problem with "an affair". There isnt one relationship to break up. It's a whole attitude of, "it's ok to go out and have casual sex with people if I have 'needs'".

from my completely inexperienced viewpoint, though <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> i would guess that some of the principles of MB recovery are still very valid for this situation.

eg: Ideally, he would not go on business trips any more. or not go without you. or even possibly, the "change job to get away from OW" tactic. The absolute minimum would be "complete transparency. Have him expect you to call him whenever and whereever you like. Having him call you, does nothing for accountability. But.. there's really too many ways to hide that sort of thing. All he has to say is "i'm sorry honey i'm in a meeting now, cant talk for a while".

If he's been screwing around, he'll be able to hide ANYTHING he is doing from you when you are not there, unless you (or maybe someone else trustworthy?) is standing next to him 24 hours a day. Sharing a hotel room even.
And of course, if he really has been screwing around behind your back, he will immediately blow up and complain about any attempt to truly hold him accountable and squash his "fun".

PS: you probably dont want to "smother" him. Just be very open and available to him (both emotionally, and SF wise).
If he LIKES you to be sexually agressive (big if!) then try that more often. But I'm guessing he would rather come get you, when you subtlely show you are interested... oopsie. you're pregnant, i just remembered. THAT'S... a whole nuther problem. He may simply not be physically attracted to you now, sorry to say :-(

If he's been previously associating sex more with visual stimuli than emotional (ie: similar to porn mindset) then.. you're going to have a major problem keeping him satisfied, while you have a round tummy <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

BTW: using porn, leads to the "visually stimulated only" mindset. it's not the only way; our culture is certainly pushign that sort of thing. But, he MAY be using porn as well. maybe magazines instead of online.


One semi-positive note: he probably sees his actions as "casual, harmless fun". which may make things easier to recover from in the long run. unless he's addicted to sex like that.

Maybe if he's totally visually oriented, you might let him take pictures of YOU instead. The nice thing about a photo is, you can spend extra time getting the angles "just right", if you are patient.

you have to be sure you trust him to never put them on the internet or anything though.

Maybe it will help with being an extra outlet for him.
IF he's using porn as well. or even if he just wants extra sexy-time, when you're not up to it. The nice thing is, it keeps him at least somewhat connected to YOU still.

oop... another really big thing, from a male sex drive perspective: If you dont feel up to regular intercourse, and you tell him that.. but he asks for other things (ie that dont involve your legs, to be delicate :-) for goodness sake... give it to him!!!
One thing that really distanced me from my wife during those times, is that ok, i understand she didnt feel like being poked right then... but I had a serious need, and I wanted to still keep things "between us"... and she blocked me out completely. in other words, i had both a physical and an emotional need that needed to be met. ironically, by blocking ALL physical in that situation.. you also block emotional.

phew! maybe that was more than you are looking for. heh heh.

anyways, I'm going to try to stay off the boards for a while. hope this helps you.
consider with your own wisdom. these are just suggestions <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Ohiowife, I am going to share my experience with you. A very sad and negative one. I hope this never happens to you.

We had a nice relationship. A good sexual life.

He went on a business trip. He had a ONS. I found out about after his return from his mails to the OW. I had no hard proof, and in his mind no way to ever find out, so, he denied, denied, denied. I had more then enough to know deep inside he had done it. So I went thru all we go thru after d-day. We talked and talked. He denied always.

I told him everything I could so he would come clean about it. He denied me the truth.
He said he loved me, we had such a great sexual life that he had no need to look outside. He would never risk loosing me or the girls, etc, I begged for honesty. Nothing. After a few weeks I just decided that if after all I had told him, that maybe he didn't do it after all and I was being the paranoid wife. He left it at a no more talking subject.

For two years I lived in the doubt of him and myself for doubting him. I lost all the trust in my gut instinct.

My official d-day (when I had hard proof) I realize that he did it that time and got away with it... so from that business trip until jan 2006, He had:

- He continued having an EA with that first OW.
- He had a PA followed by a EA with OW2
- He had a EA with OW3
- He had a PA with OW4 followed by one week EA... till d-day.

This is what I know, what I have been suspecting... he confirmed it... maybe more that I never suspected.

My advice???

Bring your H to MB, follow MB principals.

Make him understand the importance of RADICAL HONESTY.
Get the book or print the questionaries, Her Emotional Needs, His Emotional needs.

Your husband can be denying any involvement with these women. (very possible) His own justification probably is somewhere in the reasoning of: "I love my wife more then anything, this is just "a fantasy" I have no feelings for these women, What my dear wife doesn't know, wont hurt her" "If she finds she'll leave me" "I made a mistake but I don't want to loose my family", etc BUT this is all wrong, if he doesn't tell you the truth NOW, he's installing doubt in your relationship, he's poisoning it with a slow death.

He might trully believes that now that you found something that he wont ever do it again... but... He can't trust himself if doesn't come clean now.

But he might very well be telling you the truth, only him can tell you.

But either way, he went too far, even if only by e-mail there's betrayal. He already gave the first steps into infidelity... even if he keeps telling himself it's nothing.

Please, create a safe environment for him to come clean. Tell him you just need his HONESTY.
Don't pretend this never happened, the doubt will hunt you.

DONT blame yourself for his actions, but of course it's important that you realize there's some "things" not so well in your marriage, so you can together work on it. Please follow MB principals and have an Affair proof marriage.

Take care of you and your baby. Be strong. Be prepared for the worst.
There's hope and you can have a great marriage and a happy family, with RADICAL HONESTY.

Keep posting, as you can see there's such great people here giving us support and good advice.

Thanks so much for both your posts. I appreciate the time you've spent to enlighten me, it's so easily to try to 'move on' without actually digging deep into everything and dealing with it. THank you for sharing your stories with me. I will look more into the priciples on this website and go over it with my husband.

Thank you so much!

I will try to figure out how to enable private emails, I'm new at this. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Ohiowife,

I believe that the moderators turned off private messaging. I has not worked in quite a while.

Hang in there and bring the WS back with you <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />.

Ohiowife,

I'm also fairly new to the site, and found out about my H doing the same things. Unfortunately, I found proof 2 days ago that his business trips to CA & CO both resulted in meeting with women he met on the internet in the "Married but looking" chatrooms.

I found this out because I installed PCPandora software on his laptop. You can go to PCPandora.com to purchase it. For $64.95 you can install it on 2 computers (laptop &home).
It takes snapshots of the screen, shows e-mails, IM, keystrokes. It downloads and installs within 2 minutes, and you can run it in "stealth" mode, he'll never know it's there, doesn't even show up in program files.

I'm very sorry to hear you are going through this too. I thought mine was the only H weird enough to pull something like this!

Oh wow, I'm sorry to hear that you are going through this too. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

I am interested in that program and will look into it. Do u know if it records chats? My husband looked up a bunch of software because he wants it on our comptuers, to be accountable but he is also into computers and said most of them he can work around if he wants to, so we are trying to find one that he cannot work around - if he'd be so tempted. Some, u can just hit exit and it turns off. terrible. I will see what the program that u recommended is like. THank you. Is your H wanting to stop? I hope so. GOod luck and thanks for your reply!!!!

Ohiowife,
PCPandora records pics of the screen every 30 seconds, e-mails, keystrokes, im, chatrooms, everything. You can either set it up so you can check the program on the computer it's installed in, or have it e-mailed to you. I felt sneaky setting up a "secret" e-mail account to have it sent to, but if he's got nothing to hide (he says he doesn't, that he hasn't done it again) then no worries!

To bring the program out of "stealth" mode, you have to press a series of keys at once, then enter a password. When it's in "stealth", it doesn't show up on the program files, desktop, nowhere.

My H is pretty tech savvy, and he hasn't figured it out yet. My two teenagers haven't figured out it's on our PC also! If teenagers can't figure it out, that's something!

My H says it was a stupid thing to do, doesn't know why he did it, etc. But, he is willing to go to MC. I told him it was a must, because my trust is gone.

Hope the info on the program helps, and best of luck to you. Just remember, you didn't cause this, he did.

hi..
i'm glad he's willing to "work with you" on this.

However.. you SHOULD NOT LET HIM PICK THE SOFTWARE!!! this is foolish.
he most likely CAN work around anything that he knows is there. the primary trick is in not letting him discover what is there.

Have him give you full access, and let you install anything you want.Dont tell him what it is or what you can see.

If you want to be really paranoid, install two things: one that he knows about, that is lesser, and one that is really good. if he gets the urge to fool you, he'll cripple the lesser one, but the better one could catch him.

you need to make sure that the better one does not show up on any antivirus type software. it is NOT good enough to have a little configuration option in the antivirus, "ignore this programn".
He can just go right in, look at the configs, and learn about what it is there. it needs to be something that is completely undetectable.

o course, the one trouble is that if you make your home computer complete unescapable, that he could use someting at work. it's up to you how much you think you can trust him.

Bottom line: If he's a real tech guy, then he will be able to disable anything he knows is there.
So dont rely on anything he knows about.
it's enough for him to know that he will be held accountable for his actions. not how.

Hi Techie, I'm just so new at this that I am not thinking it all through. U are right, he shouldn't know what is running on the system, if he doesn't know then he won't be able to disarm it as easily. argh. Dont' know why I didn't think of it. Guess I was a little unsure of what to do but I'm sure there will be instructions with the software. I think I am going with PC Pandora...

Thanks for your post. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />