I don't trust my hubby and I don't know how to fix that. We've been doing so good for a couple weeks. No fights or anything. But then tonight the phone rang and when I picked it up it was a woman's voice claiming to have the wrong number. About 5 minutes later it rang again and again it was her, saying she had the wrong number. I asked who she was looking for, said I was visiting a friend and just answered the phone so she may have the right number. But she said no, wrong number and hung up on me.

I'm so sure it was for him. And I chewed him out. You probably could have heard me down the road yelling at him. This was just awhile ago so I'm still waiting for the cops to show up to make sure every thing's okay.

Ugh. He swears he has no idea who it was. And no one's ever called here for him before. So why suddenly am I so sure it was for him? I'm so afraid to brush it off as a wrong number. I don't want to be hurt anymore. I'm so tired of trusting him and getting hurt in the end. I feel so stupid then.

Is trusting someone after multiple affairs possible??

BR, i know how you feel. I read your first post and although i cant say i 'just found out' regarding an affair, my h does the same thing. lies about stupid crap, that doesnt matter at all, but it makes me wonder sometimes if anything he says is the truth. i have caught him in a huge lie in the last 6 months that did matter, he apologized, etc etc, but i find myself questioning, in my mind or 'verifying' what he says. its a pain and sometimes i want to just 'drive away' if you know what i mean and not have to deal with anyone, anyone that cant be truthful. with anyone else,other relationships that i have, if i cant trust- i dont deal with them. but i've been with him for 22 years..

have you ever asked him why he lies about stupid crap? and told him that when he does that it just breaks down the trust you have. your question of its possible to trust someone after multiple affairs- i believe if you set your boundries and he is willing to respect them- and is transparent as glass ( remember, he breached your trust, he needs to do whatever it takes to build it back and if you follow thru on the consequences if he doesnt, you could heal. thats what i'm trying to do.

it sucks not having trust in someone you love.
thats my .02 cents

BR,

I read your other posts as well as the one above. Thank you for making your own thread. You're worth it.

For clarity, you are now sure your WH has had multiple affairs...both PAs and EAs, correct? You confirmed his PA and found out he's been on sex dating websites for all of your relationship, correct? You also believe he is a pathological liar, separate from the affairs, that he lies about many things, not just big ones.

Have you considered he is a sex addict (SA)? When you stated you knew of his many infidelities, did you say you wanted to recover your marriage, have a really great one? What did he say? Has he recommitted to your marriage? Have you guys set up marital counseling (MC) sessions yet? Did you read Surviving an Affair?

About trust...I believe it has two parts...which makes sense, because there are two halves to the marriage...yours and his. You are limited to half. Nothing can change that.

If your WH is remorseful and has committed himself to recovering the marriage, then he can rebuild half of the trust through his choice to be transparent and O&H with you. He can answer any question you have, stay present and understanding through any trigger, apologize when you need to hear it and work through (not fight) whatever issues your marriage faces.

I don't think anyone does that all right now, btw. That's the layout to rebuild trust, though. The plan.

Your half of trust is choosing to trust. Humans lie. They lie by commission (I didn't do it) and they lie by omission (I didn't tell you I didn't do it, did I?). Your part is to choose to believe what he says or not...and to discern what he's saying, as well.

There are lies of actions taken...what we do and do not do. Those are lies about The Truth. Definitely, infidelity comes into that category. Then there is his truth...his thoughts, feelings, beliefs, perception and perspective. He can lie about what he is feeling...very difficult to discern a lie because his truth is his truth...He may feel deep anger and you may think he shouldn't...doesn't change HIS truth that he feels it.

I would suggest you focus on the lies you can know...his actions. For now, leave the lies about his truth to him, where they belong. You can verify actions...and again, BIG kudos on the keylogger. Keep it. It's another way for him to be accountable (if he's aware of it) and accept it...which is working on the marriage.

Part of your half are your own choice of action. You can choose to change your phone number. It is not UNREASONABLE that any one of his EA partners isn't looking up his home number, even if that's not how they communicated for the A. You are accountable for what you do to defend your marital boundaries...changing cell and home numbers, email addresses...what is within your power...is reasonable. Do them. That's you acting for the marriage, not against your WH.

Own your own stuff..."I got two suspicious calls just now. The caller ID said <blank> both times. I'm feeling a lot of pain and anger right now because I immediately thought I just heard the voice of one of your affair partners. I'm going to do a reverse lookup right now and check our cell phone bills for it (going as far back as possible). I'm doing this to know the truth, and to not assume."

How proud of you are you for chewing your WH out, which is an AO from the sound of it? Do you permit yourself to yell, speak sarcastically, define him (tell him his truth) and berate him? That would mean you permit him to do the same to you...no boundary in place around you, for your conduct.

Totally understandable and reasonable for you to trigger to those calls...because you are so unsure of what your WH has been doing for years. Part of the deep pain is that he excluded you from his life in this way. You didn't share in his choices.

You can't control his choices...you can know a lot of the truth of his actions. I'm asking you to be reasonable as you do so. If you permit yourself to react to your triggers, LB through AOs or DJs...then you aren't in Plan A. You aren't acting to save your marriage. You're just saying you are.

If you have decided to divorce due to his behavior, then please do. You get to make that decision, free and clear. He broke the vows. If you choose to recover and have a better marriage, then stick with that and get rid of the LBs...you'll love yourself more, build your own self-esteem and self-respect by choosing to do so. You won't with LBs...they are what tear us down from the inside...and it's easy to think our partners are doing that, too.

They aren't.

Read Harley...he says blind trust isn't love...and it isn't. Nowhere close. It's a choice to participate in fantasy. Solid marriages are built, they aren't made by choosing the partner. They are made by choosing to be a great partner.

There's a great website for sex addicts...www.recoverynation.com. This isn't so he'll go to it and fix himself (he isn't broken)...this is so you'll go and research, learn they have a partner program...and understand your power and limits. So you can breathe, feel some peace, and get to work on building that great marriage you really wanted.

The fantasy in marriage gets stripped away by affairs. Reality is ten times better, I promise.

LA

P.S. To answer your last question...yes. I was a serial cheater. I have rebuilt my half of our marital trust in the last three years...and my DH has chosen to trust again...though neither of us will blindly trust again. We found out it's an LB for us. Blind trust has no respect.

You know what, I don't know anything anymore. I don't know what to think or what to believe. I'm not even sure I can tell the truth from a lie when it comes out of his mouth.

Ironically, we met online through a dating website. It was a no name site--a local one. We chatted online and talked on the phone for about 4 months and then met in person for the weekend (what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas--you know?).

We kept talking on the phone and emailing for the next 3 months and then we moved in together. And got married 2 months later.

After we got married I was kind of "put in charge" of the finances. I started getting his checking account statements and there were regular monthly charges to multiple porn sites. He swore to me up and down that he had no idea what they were and begged me to cancel them. I don't know how he didn't realize the hundreds of dollars disappearing every month. But he claimed he didn't. And though I didn't believe him, I accepted it. And canceled the accounts.

About three months later he was complaining that his email account was jam packed with porn. He was getting hundreds of emails a day inviting him to one porn site or another. So I suggested he just open a new account and close that one. Which he did. He set up a new account--if I remember right it was single cowboy just looking (and this was when yahoo profiles were still free--so the profile was created with the account). I found out about it and he never went to it again.

A few months later he set up an account on the exact same website we had met at. I found out about it and he closed it.

A couple months later he set up another account on the same website. So I set up an account and I started writing to him. We had emailed back and forth a dozen times when I made the comment that I was going to visit family in "this" town and wondered if he wanted to meet me at my hotel.

He said yes.

That was the first time I took my rings off. I printed out the emails agreeing to meet and taped my rings to it. That day "we" agreed to meet he had told me that the guy he carpooled with at the time had that day "we" were supposed to meet off so he needed our only vehicle to take himself to work. So the day of the meeting (when he got the printed emails and my ring) he said this person didn't need the day off after all so they'd be riding together.

I was pregnant when this happened and by the time I started to show, he stopped having interest in me. It was like he thought I'd break if he touched me. I thought he was just disgusted with my appearance--disgusted with me.

But then I found all the pregnant women porn he had BOUGHT memberships to. He was more than willing to watch other pregnant woman "go at it" but he wanted nothing to do with me.

Baby was born and as far as I know it all stopped. We picked up where we had left off and things were great. Well, sort of anyway. There was never an emotional connection between us.

The porn/dating sites stopped for awhile and I thought we were doing pretty good in our marriage. He never has been one to talk about anything though--not about us anyway. He's more than willing to talk about what happens at work or what so and so did or what's going on around town or so on and so forth. But never about how he's feeling or what he wants. I guess I just learned to live with it.

Then in early July I noticed he was spending a lot of time online, always wanting to check his email. So I was curious to know why. I guess I really wanted to know that he wasn't doing anything, no more sites, and I was just being stupid and paranoid. That's when I downloaded the keylogger and found out more than I could have ever imagined.

Then I put two and two together. Like how he was using so many minutes on his phone so quickly. Or how he was "working" 70 hours a week but only bringing home a check worth 60 hours. Or how he was so anxious to answer the phone at home at night. I was such an idiot to not notice all this stuff earlier.

I confronted him about it. First he said he had no idea what I was talking about. I was making it all up. I showed him everything I had and told him the password to all his accounts on these porn and dating sites and the one for his email. That's when he blamed me for it all. He said he was on his email one night and my yahoo was signed in and someone sent me an instant message that said "just thinking about you, hope every thing's okay". It was from a guy. But he failed to ask me who the guy was. Had he done that he would have known it was someone from a depression website similar to this one. It's easier to talk to someone about how you're feeling when that someone has been there too. Someone who knows what's going through your mind.

Anyway. So he claims he set up all these porn dating site accounts to make me jealous. But when I asked him how I was supposed to get jealous when he was hiding every thing, he had no idea. Then he said he did it because he wanted some one to talk to. I asked him why if he was just looking for someone to talk to, why would he set up a personal add on a porn dating site? I mean, two of them were strictly to find nothing but sex partners. But all he's looking for is someone to talk to? And why can't he talk to me--I'm always asking him how his day was or how he's feeling or what he wants to do or making suggestions to spice up our lives but he always told me everything was fine and perfect and just the way he wanted it.

This is why I have such a hard time with trusting him. Every time I start to trust him again, he ends up back on dating sites. He just won't talk to me and what he does say to me is an excuse for why he did something or it's a lie.

I want to save our marriage. But he doesn't. Nothing ever changes. He refuses to talk to me. Refuses counseling. I can't even get him to go on a date with me. I think his main objective in this marriage is to see how many of my buttons he can push before I finally explode.

He always told me he left his first wife because she had an affair on him. The last few years kinda makes me wonder if she's actually the one who left him.

PS I'd LOVE it if he'd fight with me sometime. At least then he'd tell me something.

You don't. Trust following adultery is EARNED by the unfaithful spouse.

Here is the "key" to your "learning" to trust again. You CAN choose to trust, and will fairly easily in many areas, but not when it comes to the fidelity issue. The "key" to trusting again in the area of fidelity is this, at least for a very long time (average of at least 2 years):

Trust as long as you don't have a reason NOT to trust.

You have a reason.

Therefore: Trust, but verfiy.

This is why Openness and Honesty, Accountability for time, Caring about the Betrayed Spouse and their feelings AHEAD of the feelings of the Wayward Spouse, are so very important in rebuilding trust in a marriage that has been devastated by adultery.

God bless.

BR,

Assuming he may be willing to actually do something about his addiction to porn, see if you can get him to check out everymansbattle.com or find it through newlife.com under "programs" on their website.

Like any addiction, porn and SA cannot be done away with by simple will power. It is not merely a matter of choosing the right thing to do and willing yourself to do it. That is only the first step. What an addict of any kind needs is a method of accountability in which others help hold them accountable for their choices and give encouragement and support from the perspective of someone who deals with the same weakness and temptations.

Mark

If he has an addiction to porn, then why when I suggest we get some to watch together does he tell me porn is disgusting? He says it's sick and only perv's watch that kind of stuff. He says he has no interest in watching nasty ****** do that kind of stuff together--it's sick. He watches porn with girls using "toys" and whatnot and I've suggested buying some and we can do that together to spice up our sex life. But he says that's gross and in his eyes toys are no different than an affair and if I'm not happy with just him than maybe we should stop having sex with each other.

THIS is what I'm talking about. He's always doing this and doing that and when I suggest doing it together then it's suddenly disgusting and gross and he wants no part of it.

Or wants no part in me. But of course when I ask him if he's happy or if I can do anything for him to spice up our lives or give him something he wants, he says he's happy with the way things are and he wouldn't want it any other way.

My issue is more than the porn or the internet affairs--there are the lies in there. I've got proof that he's been to all these porn sites. Heck, I've even told him the log in and passwords to his accounts but he insists it's someone else. It's got nothing to do with him. C'mon! The keylogger only works on this computer!!! And truth be told I don't care about the porn sites. I'm angry about him denying it and lying about it.

I think I'd have an easier time accepting it and forgetting about it and moving on if he'd say YES it's my account and I did it for "this" reason because I want 'this'.

But he won't even do that.

BR,

What's unusual about an addict denying they have a problem? Many drug addicts say drugs are repulsive...only derelicts do them.

Which is why they say until someone will admit to a problem, there is no treatment.

You said those websites costs money...originally were charged on his credit card, correct? Why not find out how to file a criminal complaint for stolen identity? You can tell him you're filling out the paperwork for him to sign.

Don't be gaslighted...you know what you know. You know it. Him denying doesn't change what YOU know, 'k? His lies are to himself, as well...when we lie to ourselves, we can believe we are telling others the truth...and this, most likely, is a decades old pattern of self-deception.

Please check out the websites that Mark and I shared with you. Learn more about addictions and then decide what you know...what resonates...because you cannot change him...you know that...you certainly can change your actions and beliefs.

LA

The original ones back in 2003 were on his credit card, yeah. Well, they were automatic withdrawls from his monthly checking account. But these newest personals ads he was mailing in a money order for the monthly payment.

I found another one in his wallet last night. I brought it up to him today. I asked if I forgot to pay something because I noticed he had bought a money order. He denied having one. I said it was in his wallet. He said I must be on something cause there isn't one in there. I asked him to give me his wallet and I'll show it to him. But he refused. Said there isn't one in there so I don't need his wallet.

Unfortunately his cell phone is pre-paid. It stores all the numbers, but they can be easily deleted without deleting all the numbers. So he could call ten people but only delete one number. Not that it matters, when I asked if I could borrow his cell he made a big deal about it. Said he was running out of minutes or he was waiting for so and so to call or it's not working right.

Excuses, excuses.

I think I'm ready to end it though. I can't keep doing this. He refuses help and I can't handle the lies anymore. I have three children to think about. Someone has to care about them.

This aren't excuses, BR...this is gaslighting.

See "Gaslighting - Redux" thread by Larry. May help in many areas in your life.

"I can't keep doing this" is a vague expression of a lot of important stuff. I encourage you to become clear on your boundaries, how they are violated (and make sure you aren't also crossing them), write down your progressive boundary enforcements...because then you'll know you did everything you could to save your marriage.

We are only as sick as our secrets. Your WH's secrets are not yours. In marriage, that can be difficult to separate those.

About the three children...you've been married four years...are they all from this marriage? Were you married before?

Boundaries...stating as a first one. Not asking. Stating.

I'm sure you've done...most likely, numerous times.

Next boundary enforcement...stating your acceptance that he continues to choose to attack the marriage by violating marital boundaries (infidelity, secrecy, gaslighting). You acknowledge his choices...calmly and share you know his choices are about him...that you're not the cause, control or cure of his choices. In support of marital boundaries, you are choosing to separate, (go to Plan B), and are willing to file for separation and his removal from the family home.

Lay out his way back...because it's the same...by choice. Before moving back in, he would choose to go to IC for three months and begin MC with you after that; he would choose to be transparent with his cell, computer, and do communication exercises twice a week with you (they are only a half-hour each), and commit to 15 hours of UA together in RC. He would share with you his marital goals, and you with him. He would own (maybe listing) all of his marital infidelities, share why he chose to do them, and what he's going to put into practice to protect him from doing them again.

And you file...you own YOUR choices...do it respectfully, calmly, without LBs...because that's not who YOU are...and you see where your choices were as important in your marital issues as his were...that you are half. When you let slide...you are actively attacking your marriage. You are adding betrayal to yourself and the marriage.

When you discount, cover up, ignore...that's active, not passive. When you demand he admit instead of you stating your own knowledge...then you are saying that your marital happiness rests all on your partner...choice of, his actions...and not in your control other than who you choose to love. You, essentially, participating in fantasy.

Commit to your own IC program to work out your healthy boundaries (which go around you), regular self-care, self-discovery and deep commitment to respecting others' choices and seeing your own clearly. Knowing your power and limits.

Get yourself ready to thrive...with or without your H.

See your life-long patterns regarding control...make a plan to find real-life support (like Alanon) and continue to post here...read books...educate yourself on yourself.

Do the recoverynation partner work anyway.

See where you take his opinion and make it more than an opinion. Where you discount your own. Not to bash or be more responsible than you are or less...because you're worth your focus, awareness and love as much as anyone else on the planet, including your children.

And remember the biggest lesson you teach your children is through your example of how to love. That's what they carry with them for all of their life...and how deeply it affects them? Well, look at your H...who may see you as a mother...which means his way of having a marriage is parental, not partnering...and that's normal. Your effect on your children is that powerful...learn to partner well and with surety, joy and thrive.

Your choice.

Or you can repeat and repeat your relationships. I don't believe you want to do that anymore. The issues may look different on top...look underneath. See where your beliefs didn't change...your reactions, permissions, knowledge didn't change...just your choice of partner did.

LA

Well, he changed his email password again. Said cause he just felt like it. And then got pissed wanting to know why I was in his email. I said if he had nothing to hide then he wouldn't be so angry about it. He's got the passwords to every single account I have--email or message boards. I've got nothing to hide and nothing to fear.

He spent the night browsing Yahoo360! albums. But he says it's okay cause it's not porn. PLEASE! It's still checking out pictures of other women (which is all he looked at--only women). And heck, one girl had her feet in her mouth in a rather provocative position!!!!

I'm so upset. So, so upset. It's like he just doesn't give a damn. Nothing matters to him. Oh, and his reason for viewing the Yahoo360! was, again, my fault. He said it's because he doesn't feel like he's wanted here. Um, HELLO, you're having A after A after A!!!! And right in front of my face!!! I mean, he didn't even bother to wait until I was gone out of the house. Heck, he didn't even change the page when I walked in the room. It's like he gets in this daze and totally forgets about the world around him.

And he's got a hard-on viewing these albums and I'm not supposed to think looking at the pics means anything to him???

I was born at night, honey, but it sure as well wasn't last night!!!!!!

I'm so tired. I keep trying and trying and making suggestions and asking questions and everything and I'm getting no where. He just doesn't care.

I sent that link to him though. Told him to use the money order he got to pay for his sex dating site to pay for this other one. I know he won't even look at it.

It's such a waste of time. That's what I feel like my efforts are. I'm taking time away from my children trying to save a marriage that is only one-sided.

I'm so upset I'm sick to my stomach tonight. It feels like someone's standing on my chest, I can hardly breathe. I'm shaking so bad I keep hitting the wrong keys.

What is so wrong with me that he wants everyone else? He says it's not me. Of course, he also says he's not doing the porn or anything. But obviously that one's a lie. So saying there's nothing wrong with me must be a lie too.

I've wasted 5 years of my life with him and I regret every minute of it.