is not much different than others on here. we have been married 14 years, together for 16. we have two young daughters, 6 and 3. we waited to have children b/c we married so young, he was in the air force for 5 years at the beginning of our marriage, and we both wanted to finish school.

i found out three weeks ago today that my husband was having an affair for ten months. the woman, I'll call her "T", is a friend of WH's step-mom's best friend. They met last november at a realtor appreciation dinner. my husband was a mortgage broker at the time but in the process of buying a business. i did not go with him to the dinner, he went with his boss and co-workers at the time. while at the dinner he met "T", who was a gues of his step-mom's best friend, who is a realtor. They all hung out that night and then a bunch of them decided to go out downtown after, the step-mom's BF didn't want to go and asked my husband to bring her friend home since "T" wanted to go out with all of them, he agreed. That was the first night they were together, he slept with her in the front seat of his truck in his step-mom's friend's driveway.... classy huh? once i confronted him, it was as if a volcanic eruption of honesty and truth was taking place. he started confessing all over the place...it came out that he slept with her that first night, then about 3-4 times a month after that, sometimes more.... he had sex with her at her house, in his truck, at a friend of hers house and heartbreakingly, in my house...in my bed, with my children home (asleep in their beds) on at least two occasions...he also had sex with her in our pool...she actually woke up in my bed the morning of my birthday, i was out of town visiting my best friend. i chose to spend a few days away due to a huge lie i uncovered in June that had nothing to do with the affair. My husband has a history of lies between us and for some reason has always had a hard time facing the truth, even with himself. this is something that is surfacing with him now and he is trying to uncover those layers based in his childhood.

he ended things with her the day i confronted him, he called her right then and there and told her i knew everything and he was ending their relationship. he has told me from the beginning that their affair was purely sexual, he is not attracted to her and has no emotional ties to her at all...i have yet to see if that's true, although he has had no contact with her since then that i know of....

the state of our marriage for the last few years has been rocky at best, we were actually in marriage counseling one year ago this month, but we stopped going because he "wasn't getting anything out of it, there was nothing wrong with him, he didn't like our therapist, and of course we didn't have the time or money to spend on it"....well, less than two months later he started the affair. he has recently confided in me the reason he didn't like our therapist was because he (the therapist) was starting to get too deep and was scraping the surface too much.

don't get me wrong, i'm not playing the victim here and i know i'm not to blame for his choices, but i do know i have some repsonsibility to the state our marriage was in. i lost respect for him several years back, i don't trust him due to the years of dishonesty (he has a hard time telling the truth to me and other people due to a fear of conflict and confrontation he has) and i have shut him down emotionally.... so i know i have responsibility...what i don't know is where to go next...i have not made any permanent decsions about our future, i feel like i'm living somewhere in purgatory...i've read several really good books that have been very enlightening, but i still don't know which way to go. I've decided NOT to make a decision right now, i'm starting counseling myself next week, he's already been to two sessions and i'll go from there. i do love him, even after years of "issues" but just don't know if i have it in me to go the distance and invest in our future as a couple and as a family. it seems so much easier to just walk away, but then we will have attorney's, splitting three businesses, child custody and community property issues...ugh, so overwhelming.... we are currently in Plan A right now....will see where that brings us.

any insight, suggestions, opinions, comments and questions are welcome at this point....

((Dancer)) So sorry you are here but welcome to MBers.

First of all, has your H had STD testing? Would be wise to do that before any SF. Better safe than sorry.

If you post on the GQII forum, you are likely to get more help as there is much more traffic over there... I believe you can have a moderator do it by pressing the "Notify" button...

Is your H willing to write a NC letter? My H also did a "NC call" but if I had to go back, I would insist on a NC letter...

Is OW married or have a SO? Sorry if I missed that in your post.

Have you read the requirements for "Recovery After an Affair"?
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5065_qa.html
Is your H willing to be transparent, give you passwords, access to cell records, etc, and account for all his time, etc?

If you have read the comparison of affair to addiction, you know that you need to keep an eye on him as waywards tend to have a hard time sticking to NC in the beginning...and will lie about it even after swearing on a stack of bibles...

Sorry for all the questions. Will help us determine red flags you should be aware of... Hang in there and keep posting!

so far WH is very transparent, i have full access to everything, and really did before as well, just never had a reason to go into emails, phone records, etc... he is extremely forthcoming about everything, even finances and business records, and honestly i can't find anything that he's still trying to hide. If were till contacting the OW, i would probably know by now, only because there is a close link with some of her friends and my in-laws, but i'm not fooling myself either, i know it's possible.

the OW is divorced, her husband cheated on her several years ago and has since married his OW, she has two teenaged sons. As all of the details of the affair have come out, we have since found out she is extremely promiscuous, and has several boyfriend's (what i call f-buddies) at a time, including local doctors and lawyers. My in-laws are both in the medical field and know several personally that this woman has been with. she has been known to sleep with her students, (she's a "gifted" teacher) and also had a brief fling with my SIL's ex-boyfriend about 8 months after they broke up. this was several years ago and before WH and OW hooked up, but still, shows her "style"... since all of this has come out about her sexual behavior, my WH has physically gotten sick a few times, finding out the type of person that she is has really hit home with him and reality has gripped his foggy brain. if her name is mentioned around him, his skin literally crawls... i say it's good for him...

WH has been tested for STD's, he had a full panel screen done and everything came back negative, thank God! we both came back clean, that's a huge relief in all of this.

Did you expose this particular affair to the OW's friends and family? You really really need to, to stop this piranha from destroying any more marriages.

It worries me that you say she sleeps with students. Are these college students or high school students? That's against the law, you know.

As for your situation, you have the perfect opportunity to INSIST your H go to personal counseling (IC) to get to the root of his lying. In fact, this is probably the only chance you'll ever get to be able to stop this destructive behavior.

That is the only way I would stay married to him, IIWY.

I'm happy to hear everything checked out OK on the STD testing. And the way that you have described your H's attitude re transparency, being remorseful, sounds hopeful.

HNHN was suggested to me here when we started recovery and I would definitely recommend it. You mentioned something about having issues in the past w/your H being dishonest...I had that issue with my H as well pre-A. HNHN addresses Radical Honesty and how important it is in M. There is also an article here I think under Basic Concepts regarding it as well...

It sounds like from your description of your H that he may be passive-aggressive (as is my H). There is an article that you can google called the "Boomerang Relationship" that may be of interest to you in terms of setting boundaries with this type of behavior, etc.

Lastly, are the two of you making sure to do the 15 hours UA time with plenty of it being away from the home and kids? Seems like it is a common theme here for folks to get "disconnected" from each other once kids come into the picture and the "alone" time evaporates.

the students i'm referring to are both high school and college aged kids. i can't say much more about it because i think there is already an investigation going on.

I agree with you on the counseling, the only reason i've not asked him to leave the house was because he started counseling almost immediately. My H has already started counseling, he's been to two sessions already and is actively researching lying, fear of conflict and confrontations, etc. Of course we are only three weeks post affair so for right now he is "walking the walk and talking the talk", we'll see how long it lasts...i'm very apprehensive, rightly so, based on our past and his dishonesty.

up until this weekend, we were spending a lot of time apart. we have been talking every night but not sleeping in the same room, or even the same house most nights. after the girls were asleep one of us would leave and sleep out. he was at his dad's and i was at a friend's house. we actually have a "date night" set up for Saturday night and have started shutting everything else down at 9:00 for us to talk and read together. it's helping but i'm still not sure i'm committed to making this work. i have many many reservations about our future and if he has what it takes to be a "brutally honest" person with me... thank you for the name of the article, i'm gonig to google it now and read it....

Glad to hear you have such an active dialog. I think being unsure is the normal feeling at this point.

Try not to do anything that discourages honesty. For example you can always send a positive signal when hearing something unpleasant. You can be thankful for the honesty when you get it. If you react demonstrably and immediately respond with how you feel when your WH reveals something, it might discourage candor.

One should also be careful about implied (or direct) threats. In a neutral setting long before my WS's affair, I made a remark about not thinking that I could forgive unfaithfulness. I came to regret that remark. It made it more difficult for her to be frank, believing that I woudn't forgive, when I fact I was able to.

Put the A on the shelf and have a good time on Saturday.

- WG