Found out 6 months ago that my H of 30 years had been seeing prostitutes on and off for maybe a year (more?). He lied to me for over 3 months before admitting it. Our marriage was not great, but I never believed he would do something like this. I am still struggling with my feelings about this. He says he loves me, it is over, and I believe him, but still having trouble getting past this. He doesn't like to talk about it, and I keep bringing it up,trying to understand why he chose to do this. Can a marriage survive this?

Welcome to MB, I'm sorry that you find yourself here.

But you have come to the best, most informational and supportive group around.

Have you read up on all the literature?

I believe a M can survive anything when BOTH people are willing to make the effort to work on it and create a new marriage.

But it takes hard work.

Thanks for replying. I just discovered the site today and haven't read anything yet. just needing someone to talk to, as this is so embarrassing to me, I have no friends or family I feel I can talk to about it. After six months, I'm still going through horrible ups and downs; I think I (we?) need counseling. To make things more interesting, he just lost his job!

I hear you on the no friends / family to talk to. This site has been wonderful for my mental stability. I've read until my eyes hurt and then read some more.

Very good wisdom here.

Stay with us and post more.

And sorry you are here...

I think it can. Your WH had no EA to this prostitutes. He used them for one thing. So at least you don't have to worry about him running off with one of them. Are there any SF or physical attractiveness issues in your M?

Hi 4u,

You have nearly a lifetime invested with your husband. I reckon that you might not want to throw it all away. Do you know that most marriages that suffer the experience of infidelity do NOT end in divorce? Nevertheless the experience is a horror show unlike anything you will ever again experience. You are surrounded by folks just like you. However, most of them have one thing you don’t; they have learned what it takes to rise up from infidelity and shine again.

Now it is your turn to learn. Read the front end of this web site. Learn all you can about Marriage Builders and how to survive your husband’s infidelity. It is all free, for you, to help you. Reading this site will generate a hundred questions, and the answer to each one can be addressed to you personally right here in this forum.

I expect that you feel that the world is crashing all around you and your husband’s lack of compassion and understanding makes you wonder if he ever loved you at all. You feel this way because NOTHING that you or he has done so far even remotely resembles “recovery”. Your first step to recovery was your first post, so that means that your recovery is about six hours old.

For instance, do you know why your husband had his affairs? Would it surprise you to know that it most likely had NOTHING to do with you? You didn’t cause him to go visit a prostitute. He did that entirely on his own. It was entirely his decision to cheat. Do you remember him telling you that he wanted to visit a prostitute? Did you give him permission? No eh. That is because he did it on his own. He betrayed you and not the other way around.

The reason you are struggling with your feelings is because your husband is a liar. He repeatedly lied to you regarding his actions and so how can you really know if he is telling you the truth now? So each time he goes out you can’t be sure what he is actually doing.

There are answers to all of these questions but first, read, read, read, learn, learn, learn, then ask, ask and ask.

Mr. G

Dear fool4u,

I am sorry you are here, too. I am not really far enough along to be posting much wisdom, but I am a 61 year old WH trying to recover, understand myself, and heal my wife. I did the same thing to my wife every few months or so for 18 years, then became emotionally involved with a prostitute and carried on a 6 year relationship with her which ended with discovery several months ago. It might help you to read my thread, which is titled "GM back from hospital" to get some idea. My first thread was locked. My wife is also on this forum, and it may help you even more to read her threads. Her name is SadSoSad. I don't read hers and she has me blocked, so that we don't communicate through this forum, which is best. We are working hard, and Steve Harley seems to think that we can succeed, even though it will take years to heal her.

I don't know if my own behavior is based on the same thing as your husband's, but if I can offer anything at all, anything that will help you, please ask, and keep your chin up. There is hope and recovery here. There are also a few whose bitterness leads to posts that are not helpful, so don't take everything you read here too hard.

GM - Good for you for posting to help someone else! That is truly a sign of recovery.

Believer, you are so sweet and wise. I hope to some day help others the way you have helped me.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not real computer savvy, but I'm trying to learn how to use this site to help recover from this. I'll check out those threads. And good luck to you! Did you come completely clean to your W about your infidelity? My H just doesn't want to talk about it and I feel the need to know. He lied to me for so long, I'm not even sure which stories are true. If I hadn't checked his phone records, he would have stayed with his initial story which was "one time" and "only a massage"! I know this goes back at least a year before I found out. He now tells me "about five times". But numbers aren't really that important. I need to know why he did it, and the answers I get are vague and shallow. How do I get him to go to a counselor if he won't eve talk to me?

Stick with us and we will help you. I really hope that GreenMile will keep posting to you, or his wife, SSS. They have lots of experience.

Chances are good that you may find out more. Don't let hubby cover it up and pretend that nothing happened.

I didn't come clean about the sex workers for weeks after the intial shock about the affair. Unfortunately, my humiliation and embarrassment caused me to withhold facts, and each time more came out, it sent SSS back to square one. Like repeated torture. I wish I had come clean all at once, but the disclosure about the sex workers literally put me in the hospital with anxiety depression. It was a real "nervous breakdown". I couldn't stop weeping, and I couldn't even find my own toothbrush. I was in the hospital two days. Even after that, some other facts came out later that I thought were unimportant or insubstantial, but they were apparently huge, because they involved objects or places that my BS held personally dear. That set her back AGAIN. There are more little details that are truly not substantial, but Steve Harley feels that I should keep a list, but that it is not important for her to know all of these things that no longer make a difference, since it delays healing. Someday, I can read the list to her.

The story he gives you, "about five times" may be accurate, but most likely it is not, if I am any guide. One of the problems, besides the disaster of allowing lying to become a habit, is that sordid and embarrassing things cause a person to literally have selective memory, to compartmentalize and put certain memories away, where you can't even find them easily, unless jarred by something else or the threat of a polygraph. We are planning a polygraph, and that is essential to restoring any degree of trust.

As far as seeing escorts, all I can tell you is that in my case, I am still trying to understand where my head was at. I remember rationalizing that if I cannot have a sex life at home, seeking sex workers is safer, because it prevents the possibility of becoming emotionally connected to another woman. Big mistake. Every single time, it caused me to feel more distant and withdrawn from fixing my own marriage and was betraying her to boot. So, in actuality, it was harming her in real time, at the time, every single time. It prevented me from seeing the need to address my own real problems and ineptitude in matters of love and personal relationships. Another cause of my behavior was compulsive or addictive. I have had substance abuse problems in the past, and the dynamics were almost indistinguishable. I needed to have that fix, and it became more important than love, honor, fidelity, filial responsibility, or even common decency. It is exactly like the addict who steals his own disabled and poverty-stricken mother's welfare check to buy more heroin or cocaine. It isn't necessarily that your spouse did not love you. It is just that the love was suborned or stashed away in an inaccessible place in his mind because of the addictive draw. The third cause, I believe, was simply not having boundaries. I grew up in an environment where all my bad behavior was forgiven. I never had to suffer the consequences of my actions. We all have to have and learn boundaries, and like any primates, we will push the envelope until those boundaries are drawn for us. Hopefully, this happens in childhood, but for some, like me, it can take until age 61. A fourth cause, I believe, is just plain thrill-seeking behavior, which is basically an addictive thing. The thrill of sneaking. This relates to the boundaries issue and is probably not separable. There is a thrill of danger in violating a boundary that you know exists. Like Evil Kanevil [sp?] it seems to be a male characteristic mainly.

But that is why people need moral guidelines, belief in a higher power, and need to suffer consequences for misbehavior when they are children. I missed a lot of that, and, combined with an addictive personality, marital problems that I, myself, created led to that habitual and sordid behavior. It takes a total breakdown of ego, a dissolution of the sense of self-respect and self-worth to begin a real recovery from that. I have suffered that dissolution and breakdown, and I am in the early stages of recovery. Having a wife who is strong beyond belief, who still loves my good qualities, and who is stubborn at almost Biblical proportions has given me a chance to save our marriage. If we succeed, I will owe all my life, allegiance, belongings, love, and time to her. The post-nup agreement takes care of the belongings part. I hope that helps.

Nice post GM