I am in need of help. I have been with my husband since I was 15 years old. Due to my very unstable family life I moved in with him and his family right before my 16th birthday. I am now 36. We have 4 children and lost our second child to SIDS when I was 20. I love my husband very much but we have had many ups and downs in our relationship.

Since we started out together so young there were a lot of things that we both had to grow through and learn from. He always spent a lot of time with his friends and away from home. When I was younger it didn’t really bother me. I was busy with work, school (high school, college and grad school), and our son. And I had my friends and family and spent time away too. My family said some nasty untrue things about him at the beginning of our relationship and so he never went to family functions with me. I did not complain because I felt it was their fault for offending him when he never did or said anything to or about them. For some time he stopped hanging out with his friends and went to college and our life was going very well.

However, in this time period I had found out he was using drugs on two separate occasions. I attributed the first time to being young and experimenting even though I made it very clear that due to my childhood with drug addict/alcoholic parents it was one thing I asked that he never do. The second time I found out we split up but reconciled and I attributed it to his way of dealing with the loss of our daughter and the stress that ensued. After the loss of my daughter I was severely depressed and he stood by my side and was the one who took care of me when I refused to get out of bed for days at a time. I then became obsessed with having another child and put a lot of pressure on him to make me happy.

After he finished his education and began working he slowly started spending more and more time hanging out with his friends again. At first it didn’t bother me. I was working and going to grad school and he was taking care of the kids a lot and felt he needed time to relax and hang out. But once I finished school the amount of time he spent away kept increasing. Stupidly I began going out with my friends and things escalated to where we barely had a marriage anymore. We had separate lives for the most part and when we were together we mostly argued. I became friends with a male coworker and I spent time with him and his friends (including his girlfriend). My husband began accusing me of having an affair repeatedly. I was stubborn and felt that since I knew we weren’t it should not be a problem with whom I spent time. I had never done anything to betray his trust and I felt he was being ridiculous. He had had friendships with female classmates/coworkers and I never accused him or felt threatened.

Eventually I agreed to see things his way even though I felt I was in the right and was not doing anything wrong I needed to respect how it made him feel and agreed to stop hanging out with my male friend. However, he made no changes to his behavior. He continued to spend most of his free time at his friend’s house. I continued going out but changed to my female friends and family as my companions and increased the frequency. I was going out every weekend almost. I began suspecting him of odd behavior and found out he was using drugs again. This time I asked for a divorce. We were on different pages on our marriage and things were falling apart and we were both doing things that were making it worse and we should just split. He said he didn’t want to lose me or his children and he would stop and we would both make changes and recommit to our relationship. I told him he had lied too many times and I couldn’t deal with not being able to trust him. He told me I could drug test him at will. I did for a while until I was able to trust in him again.

During this time we relocated and to me I felt like we were starting over and building a real marriage. Then a few months after we moved and settled in he started going out with coworkers again. I told him he promised we wouldn’t have separate lives anymore and his going out and telling me I wasn’t invited was contrary to what we had agreed to. He wasn’t going out a lot like before but it still bothered me because when I asked if I could go along (wanting to meet people in a new state) he would tell me I wasn’t invited.

After I made it clear I wasn’t going to tolerate him going out and never taking me along he invited me a couple of times but mostly still said he didn’t want me to go. Then after about a year and a half I found a woman’s phone number in his car. It only had an initial and I asked him whose phone number it was and he said he didn’t remember. Of course I called and it was a nurse who worked at the hospital with him. He then said that she overheard them talking about going out and she wanted to go to. I was hurt by his lies and furious. He told me I could not have male friends several times and I wasn’t to go out with male coworkers because “it wasn’t appropriate behavior for his wife.” But yet he is making plans to go out with female coworkers.

I then found out from this that he had kept secrets about who he had gone out with and where for the entire time. I told him that given he made the rules that he should have to follow them to and his deceit made it appear that he was doing more than just going out and socializing with his coworkers. So we agreed that if he was going out with coworkers I would be invited and it would be up to me to join or not but he needed to be honest about who he was going out with and stop excluding me. He took me along to a few more work get togethers but then would say oh just the guys are going to watch a game at the sports bar in order to go out. Or there would be work functions that I could not go to and they would end up going out to a bar after the function was over.

He took me to one farewell party for a supervisor where I observed a male married coworker and a much younger single (well her boyfriend was in prison at the time) coworker were all over each other and dancing with their crotches rubbing together. His wife was sitting home with their newborn child. I was completely disgusted and told him I wanted to leave. I was upset after seeing this. It brought back all my anger for his lies and made me wonder what he had been doing with these women also. It made me believe that the inappropriate behavior that I witnessed was what he had been doing all those times he made it clear he didn’t want me along.

Then two months later I found pictures of him out with these same sleazy girls at a bar. They posted them to their myspace page. He had been lying AGAIN. The pictures were from St. Patrick’s Day and a couple had asked us to go out with them and he said he was going out with the guys and had already committed to that. I said ok and went with our friends he joined us around midnight but saw that they had brought along a male friend and was mad at me and accused me of being out on a double date. I didn’t find out for another couple weeks that his accusations were a result of him having just lied to me about where he was and who he was with. He made an elaborate guise to make sure I didn’t know where he was that night.

I was in the emergency room the week before I found out about his lies. He said he had to get back to work and when they released me he would take me home. They released me shortly after that and I went to find him in his department. He was nowhere to be found. So I left and was going to my car and he was outside with the sleazy girls and guy he works with. I didn’t know about the other lies yet but it was what tipped me off to something going on. The girls didn’t speak to me and looked very uncomfortable and he was overcompensating.

Since then the one female coworker made a myspace page and made it look like a combination of him and his male coworker and put that the person was a Swinger on the page. I confronted him and he said he had nothing to do with so he didn’t care. But then she changed it to fit his description more closely and put his orientation as unknown and had a couple of gay men (one her brother) added as friends. I told him that this was offensive to me and should be to him. I didn’t appreciate all the other people at the hospital getting the impression that my husband was cheating behind my back with men now. He said it wasn’t him so why should he care. We fought about it and I finally made him look at the page. He then confronted her and asked her to change it. But he still defended her and told me he didn’t know what her intention was so he still thought she was a “good” person and friend. I felt betrayed by this.

I have asked for a divorce a couple times since then but I back down when it comes down to it. I have so much anger and resentment towards him at this point. He says he loves me and he never acted inappropriately but felt HE should be able to go out with his coworkers and it shouldn’t have been a big deal. He won’t admit that he purposefully lied to me he says he didn’t lie he just didn’t tell me. I have also recently found out he was calling another female coworker and hiding it from me about 2 years ago. She moved away and had called him shortly after to tell him she was pregnant. He told me and then was asking me how soon can you tell when you are pregnant. I was perplexed about why he would ask and he said well she just married the guy and moved away 3 weeks ago, can you tell you are pregnant that soon. I found an old phone bill recently where he had called her on a day he had off and I was at work and it was about 5 weeks prior to that conversation we had. I don’t know what to believe anymore.

I have lost all my trust and faith in him. I honestly believe that because of all his lies there is way more to the story than I have uncovered. I have become somewhat obsessed with trying to find out the truth and don’t believe anything he tells me anymore. He has not really attempted to go out for the past 7 months and is trying to reassure me that he is and has been faithful but I still don’t believe him.

I love him and was truly head over heels in love with my husband before all this came to light and now I am crushed and devastated. But find it difficult to let go and move on. I find it hard to imagine splitting up our family. I understand that it has to do somewhat with my past. My parents divorced when I was 2 and I had a bad relationship with both of them. All my dreams have always been to have a healthy happy family but I know we are definitely not that right now. It has been 7 months and I am not getting over it. Is it time to let go and move on? It has been hard because he won’t admit to lying to me and tries to play all his deceit down. This only makes me feel like he is only apologizing to appease me and doesn’t mean it. Last night he told me I worry too much and make everything into more than it really is. Which only hurts me more. There have been strange blonde hairs in his car and he told me no one was in his car and maybe it was just on him from a patient or something (he is an x-ray tech). But it was on the floor of the passenger side and the headrest of the passenger seat.

I don’t know if it is time to throw in the towel and go my own way. I can’t take not trusting him. He is the only person in my life that I ever fully loved and trusted other than my children. I understand all my issues and reasoning and know I need to stop looking for proof of infidelities and move on with the future but I am stuck. I feel that as many times over the past 21 years that he has lied and deceived me, he is only bound to do it again. I don’t think I am emotionally or mentally stable enough to deal with it anymore. He refuses any notion of counseling and tells me to stop trying to psychoanalyze him. Am I an idiot to stay with someone who makes it clear that he feels the issues in our marriage are only because I make it an issue? I can tell you I feel like one. I should be able to just let it go and move on. What I really don’t understand is that we have a very healthy sex life. What is it that he can’t get from our relationship that he needs to be with these other women. Does he need his ego stroked that much?

I feel like my life has been destroyed. I cry all the time and I am suspicious of everything he does. I hate feeling like this. I don’t want to be this type of person. But I don’t know how to move on from it. I think I want a divorce because I am having so much difficulty letting go of my anger and resentment but then I don’t want to lose him. He has tried to change and his actions are different but his attitude and statements are so cavalier I still feel doubt. I punish him with words in an attempt to make him hurt like I do. I know it is wrong but my tongue and anger get the better of me at times. What should I do?

J. B.

I suggest that you go get counseling ALONE. You can invite him, and if he refuses, you go.

Does your husband spend 15 hours a week with you doing fun things together? To me he sounds very immature.

jboo,

Welcome to MB. Please read the concepts sectiona above and the book Surviving an Affair (by Dr. Harley). Then find an MB familar with MB or call Steve H @ MB for phone counseling.

Your H at the very least is having many EA (emotional affairs). It is not t/b tolerated in a M.

Read the book for starters. There is more but right now you have enough evidence to doubt his loyalty to you and your family.

We can help you learn how to cope with it but you also need a plan for personal recovery 1st and M recovery 2nd. The M recovery only comes when your H is no longer a WS but your H again. Maybe a better H than before. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

L.