I’m devastated. I never saw this coming. I really need advice. Last week I inadvertently came across things that led me ultimately to confronting my DH about his A. He admitted it within 1 minute of my confronting him. He’s extremely remorseful and wants to start over with us.

Here’s the background. DH has been depressed for literally years. He is a disbarred attorney. He lost his license to practice law about a year ago when he just basically stopped doing his job. He was a solo practitioner. He lost his office, his car got repossessed, our house is in foreclosure.

I’ve been working full-time all during this period, but my income alone is just not enough. After much job searching, DH finally got a job in June, 2007 working for a mortgage banker. After 2½ months the company went out of business, so he lost that job. That was last August. The last time he saw the OW was August 31 as near I can figure. In Oct. 2007 he got another job working as an executive recruiter, and that’s where he’s still working. Unfortunately, that job only pays $26K. It’s plus commissions too, but he’s made exactly 0 so far in commissions.

Money is extremely tight needless to say, and has been for long time. I’ve had to sell my dead mother’s heirlooms to literally put food on the table. We’re enrolled in all the low income programs relating to getting discounts on the electric bill and heating bill. What angers me is that I found out that DH has been giving the OW money for years! I haven’t found any evidence of huge amounts, but it’s definitely at least $5K in that 2.5 year period. He paid her cable bill when his own family was doing without cable t.v. all last year.

Now, my DH is in an entirely different place regarding his A than I am. As far as he’s concerned, it’s the past. It’s been 5 months since he’s had contact with her. He wants us to try to get money for our house (we’re currently in negotiations with the bank regarding a short sale) and move to Florida where the cost of living is much cheaper than NJ. I want that too. But as far as I’m concerned, this A is NEW news to me and needs to be dealt with.

DH tells me that the relationship was totally physical. That is, not emotional at all. I guess that’s supposed to make me feel better, but it doesn’t. For instance, I’m guessing he kissed her at some point in time. How can you kiss somebody and not have emotion? But also, as I said before, I never saw this coming. He has never withdrawn from me emotionally, and I most certainly did not notice a change in his behavior (aside from the unaccounted for late nights) when the A ended.

I realize that I’m lucky in that my DH definitely doesn’t want anything to do with the OW ever again. He wants to move to FL asap and start over. But I’m still in such emotional pain. Is going to a MC the answer at this point? I mentioned seeing a MC, and although he agreed to it, I can tell that he’s extremely worried that that will lead to me divorcing him.

What bothers me too is that now I feel like this is MY secret too. I know that “Exposure” is something that needs to be done in order to stop an A. Well, my DH’s A stopped 5 months ago. Is Exposure still necessary? I think I feel like DH would feel that he “got away with it” if I don’t tell people about it. I'm so angry. I guess telling people would be like my getting revenge or something. I know that's not productive for moving forward but I can't help feeling like I want to tell everyone.

Any insight/comments would be much appreciated.

Welcome to MB. You should know that you are in the right place.

All waywards (WS) want their betrayed wives (BS) to 'just get over it'. Totally normal as is not telling the truth about his emotional involvement. Withdrawal from an emotional involvement will cause him to seem depressed which seems to make sense from your comments.

You don't need Exposure unless the A is still going on. What you need now is Disclosure. Tons of it. For instance, you need full details on what caused the A so that you can understand how it happened and make sure you are protected from another one. And he needs to be totally honest with you about the money.

And after Disclosure you can start to work on the Recovery which involves using MB principles to address the things that caused the A.

As you are unlikely to be able to afford professional counseling for a while, you might want to post on the General Board which gets more traffic and where there are some superb vets to help you.

So sorry that you have to deal with this on top of all your other problems.

Thank you so much for making me feel welcome, liedtoagain. I'm so glad I found this forum. It's probably obvious to everyone that I do not frequent forums and make posts. But this event just seemed to make it necessary.

Well, this morning, while I'm alone for my 1 hour before I have to go to my job, I did more investigating and found the OW's cell phone #. I most certainly still don't trust my DH. He lied so convincingly to me for so long. I wanted to see if he's had contact with her. Well, it's amazing -- he called her so many more times than she called him, it's just ridiculous. Looks like the last phone call was on Sept. 10.

I'm taking your advice and will be looking into the steps for Recovery now. thanks again.

My suggestion is to post in the General Questions forum only because it gets so much more traffic than Recovery no other reason.

Post your story first, say you came from here and the vets will be along to give you great advice and support.

You have a lot of work to do, they will help.