Hi everyone,
I'm new to the forum but not to the MB site. I just have to "talk" to someone who's been through it and survived. My husband of (then)32 years had an 5 month affair w/ a flight attendantwhich he confessed to in May '09. He promised it was over, he apologized and offered to leave for awhile if I wanted him to. Though my brain was totally numb with pain, I thought it best for him to stay in the home until I could sort out what I really thought about it. We started counseling almost immediately and did some serious talking. LOTS of talking!!! Two weeks later,the night we finalized reservations for a few days away, I discovered that he'd not broken off all contact with her. He had called her and sent emails though no actual personal contact. To say I felt betrayed all over again is a gross understatement. Fast forward to now, 20 months later. We've had some wonderful times together. He's changed the way he treats me and is much more attentive to my needs and his email, etc. are an open book if I want to check him out. All ok, but he still can't communicate clearly. Because of this, we have some serious misunderstandings which usually erupt into pretty nasty fights. This is all background info leading up to my problem/question...how do I move on to the point of not bringing TOW into every argument. I don't want to but she's always here. She is in my mind everyday and is usually the first thing I think of when I awaken. I picture them together when we make love. It's driving me crazy and it's driving us apart despite the efforts we've made to heal. I need help to move on and leave her behind. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how one does this? I can't seem to do it on my own. I do love my husband and want the marriage to work but there are three of us here and there should only be two.
HELP!!!

I am so sorry you are in this spot. But glad you are here. I found out about my wife's affair just 18hours ago. I am sick all over.

Sorry I cannot offer advice today. Please listen to the veterans. They helped me a lot today.

Hi broken, Welcome to Marriage Builders.

Can you give us a little more background?
Do you have children?
What has your WH done to affair-proof your M and help you feel safe?
Has he given you email passwords, cell phone records, anything like that?
Has he answered all of your questions regarding the A?
Does he have ANY contact with OW?
Is OW married?

Let's start with those.

I am sorry YOU are also in this spot. I remember all too well the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, the breathlessness when I heard the words "I've had an affair" and the physical pain I felt in my chest for what seemed like forever. All I can tell you is that part gets better with time. At least it did for me. Don't make any life long decisions until you come out of the fog. I'm so sorry for the pain your wife's actions have caused you.

Thanks for replying maritalbliss. Sure I can give you more info. Yes, the OW is married w/ two children. She was 51 at the time and had a daughter in college and a son in high school. She is a flight attendant and my husband is a pilot. They've known each other casually through work for years but nothing happened until January 09. They had flown together in Nov. and apparently enjoyed each other's company so much that he decided to start texting her. She then started getting on as many of his trips as possible. She made herself attractive and available all the while knowing he was married. She even made sure he would never leave his wife so I know this was just a diversion for her. He's a notch in her belt. I never told her husband as I figured it was too much like vengence but I now regret this. He deserves to know what kind of woman he's married to. BTW, she has herpes too and didn't bother to warn my husband so it was unprotected sex. We were both tested and are both ok but the thought just makes me physically ill and incredibly angry.

We have been married for almost 34 years now (32 then) and have three grown children, the youngest is now 20 but at that time had just started college.

My husband has given me his password on his email account, the cell phone account is mine through work so I can check to see if he's called her or vice versa. There has been nothing since mid June 09. No contact that I know of.

Answering all my questions about the affair was like pulling teeth. He didn't want to talk about "details" so over several months I managed to pull little snippets of info out of him. Each time it would just feel like it was all new. I've stopped asking questions now...even though I still have some it does seem somewhat irrelavant at this point.

My husband has no choice but to leave home overnight. As a commercial pilot he goes away for 1 to 4 days at a time and is put up in hotels at the expense of the company. Very convenient if you are having an affair as their would be no receipts, etc. However, I do believe he is being faithful now. The affair was totally out of character for him and I mean totally. If you knew him, you'd say he was the last man on the planet to do this. As I said in my original post, he has changed the way he treats me and is very lovely and attentive to me. He tries to reassure me that it will never happen again, he's sorry he hurt me. He tells me he it was wrong and recently described it as "gross".

The bottom line is...I love my husband and though he hurt me beyond words, I believe that he loves me too. We want to make this work but I can't get this tramp out of my head. She continues to fly for the same airline out of the same base and while they have not flown together since it ended, he could run into her in the crewroom or the airport somewhere. He swears to me he won't fly with her. BTW, I can check this very easily so if he does, I'll know it.

I really need help getting her out of my marriage. He says he never thinks of her unless I bring it up and I'm inclined to believe this but I think about her every single day of my life. I HATE her and would pop a bottle of champagne if she got run over by the snowplow. Awful to say I know but it's honestly how I feel. How do I get rid of her??? Any suggestions you might have would be helpful.

Point 1:
Write a letter detailing the affair to the airline.
Name names.
Ask that WH & OW never be allowed to fly together.

It probably will not get a great/satisfactory response from the airline, BUT, it will put them on notice.

Point 2:
Joseph's letter.
LINK .... PRINT IT OUT and give a copy to WH.

Okay, I'm going to tell you, but you're not going to like what I'm going to say:

Your H has to quit that job and find one with another airline. And I would still worry that he would run into her at some airport, but that's the least I would require in order to feel some semblance of care and protection on his part.

Also, the business of staying overnight away from you is an invitation to an affair. Permit this at your peril.

Realistically, I know you're going to post that he can't possibly leave his job. Okay. But you wanted to know what to do, so I told you.

So if he doesn't leave the job you're going to have to set up a system of checking on him, and that will still not assure you of being safe. I would suggest that you fly in to wherever he's staying on occasion and surprise him. Hey, let him know you plan to do that. He'll never know which time it's going to happen. That might help you.

Has your doctor mentioned that you need to be re-checked for herpes? Some STDs don't show up on the first test.

One of the most critical things you could do would be to expose this to her husband. For all you know he may make HER quit her job. Then you're good as far as your H seeing her in an airport somewhere. Also, you misunderstand the purpose behind exposing this to her H. Exposure will help you. The more people who know about the A, the more sets of eyes there will be on both of them.

Also, her H deserves to know what he is married to. He needs to be able to protect himself and his family against her. He deserves the right to his own marital reality.

Exposing to a spouse is an act of kindness, not vengence (although you'll probably feel some of that, and no one would blame you. )

bv526,

My husband was one who thought that trickling out the truth was the better approach to working it out.

He found out that this was the way to make the pain last 1,000 cuts instead. Talk to your husband and explain to him that this method of not talking about the details that YOU need to settle your mind is not the way to work through the affair - but it IS a very nice way to drag out the recovery process for YEARS. If he decides he wants it to last years, then it is his choice....but he has to understand that is a choice HE IS MAKING.

Read Joseph's Letter to him, to give him some perspective. He likely doesn't realize that the details mean little to him, but leave you feeling as though he is protecting the other woman and NOT protecting your marriage. Each time he fails to tell you the truth, or offer information to you, he keeps the affair "special and secret" with the OW - and keeps you that much distance away from him. He has to understand that it is NOT protecting you to keep details away from you, but it is keeping intimacy and closeness from happening for you.

How do you get the OW out of your head?

You need to realize that fundamentally the affair was not, and never was, about the other woman.

That is probably something new to you, but it is the truth.

The affair was not about the other woman. She was not special. She was not better than you, smarter than you, more attractive than you, cooler than you, or anything else that you might think of comparing yourself to. She wasn't any of it. The affair was about many things, but not about HER.

Read on this website about how affairs get started, and WHY. There are plenty of dynamics involved in why affairs get started. You won't find anything in there about how "special" or "terrific" the other person is.

That's why your husband now tells you how gross the whole thing was. He realizes what an idiot he was - how blind he was at the time, and how much he really risked in doing what he did. What he couldn't see then, he does see now.

Talk with your husband about that, too. You need to understand what he is thinking NOW, in clear terms. Because that will help you realize how much this was NOT about that woman...and how it was about the state of your marriage, his mind, the needs the two of you have as individuals and a couple.......


And hang around here. Do some reading on this website. Read all you can in the threads, because you will learn a great deal about affairs and their inner workings. You will grow.

Glad you're here. You will get through this.

Just to start with the easiest thing first, we've been tested twice and both are all clear for EVERYTHING! I'm a health care professional so I know about how tricky these things can be. I can say that if he'd given me an STD it would have been a deal breaker for sure. Just thinking about it makes me sick.

As for the idea of him quitting his job, you were correct that I'm going to say it's simply not possible. He cannot just start over at another airline, it doesn't work that way and we can't afford for him to do something else that doesn't pay the same. Financially, we are stuck with this for a bit longer though we both plan to retire in the next 18 mos. or so. Our son graduates from college in May '12 and we can retire then.

As for checking on him, I already do. I have a complete printout of his trip which includes departure and arrival times, detinations, hotel info, etc. I know who the crew is already and can check this anytime I want via computer and believe me, I do. I have been known to call the hotel to see is she is listed as a guest because even though she may not be on his crew, she could concievably be on another in the same city/hotel. I've never found that she was there. He calls me between each leg on his trips and at the end of the day. And he has been flying one day trips for most of the last couple of months so he's home every night. I understand about the overnights away from home but I have no choice at the moment. This is about all I can do at this point in time.

Now for what I've wanted to do from the beginning and chose not to thinking I was taking the high road in not telling her husband. Foolishly I thought she might change her ways and I didn't want her husband to feel the pain that I had. I thought by telling him I was just being hateful and vindictive. I realize now that she's not a woman who made a mistake and she will (and likely has already) do it again. My husband told me she asked him once in the beginning, "You would never leave your wife, would you???" I asked him if he realized that she was checking to make sure he was "safe" to have a fling with, if he was married and had no intention of leaving his wife, he wasn't going to be a problem with her husband. He said he didn't realize it at the time but he does now. I feel for her husband because I believe she's done this before. She has herpes, he doesn't and they've been married about 25 years. Gee, I wonder where she got it, obviously not from him. Anyway, she told my husband after they'd had sex several times that she had it and when he got upset that she hadn't warned him, she said, "it's no big deal!". Actually, what I'd really like to do is report her to the health department but they don't track herpes like they do other STDs. I will have to think on how to do this. Enlighten her husband I mean. I have his home email and work email addresses as well as his work phone number. Stupidly, she forwarded emails to my husband which had been forwarded to her from HER husband. Amazingly, she supplied me with his info. Not only is she a tramp but she's a stupid one. It is my understanding that she told her husband and he was trying to forgive her but I'm not so sure I believe it. It's a long story as to how I heard this so I won't go into it.


I will put some thought into all of this. I appreciate your advice. I guess I'll just have to live with this for a bit longer although I don't know that these thoughts will ever go away. I haven't thoroughly determined whether I'm just displacing my anger at him to her instead because it's safer.

So sorry you went through this, but if it were me, hell I'd call the health dept on her. She's a cesspool of self-inflicted disease and as a flight attendant, is there some sort of way you can KEEP her from flying around the world (health wise speaking) if she has a TRANSMISSABLE disease? Seems like something that would cause a problem maybe entering some countries to me.

Just a possible avenue. (I'm health pro too).

And I understand how you feel, the horrible movies which play over and over in your head. But realize this. She represented nothing but a self-indulgent, almost college-like-fratboy regression to your wh. I can tell you that the xow in the case of my wxh, was nothing but a distraction from stress in his life and made herself easy access. And , also sounds as if she deliberately planned some of this and stalked him.

Yes, 100 percent I would expose to her husband, and if you wanted to choose the route of exposing to the airline, you could take again the angle of "help protect innocent people in foreign countries who might be exposed to your herpes carrying flight attending get setting all over the globe".

I know our economy is rough right now, but what I'd do if it were me (before wh resigns his job) would be to try to pull rank and get HER fired. 1)she was the pursuer and 2)she is a carrier and practices unprotected sex and could spread herpes globally, and infect and cause a health crisis everywhere...and within their own company to other employees if they're not careful.

In fact, your wh could almost sue her for omitting to tell she has herpes (kind of like with the aids cases of deliberate transmission). You see, I see it as evil her not divulging her skanky and dirty secret before sex. You as a health care pro, might feel as I do on this.

And yes, you must expose somehow to 1)ow H, 2)the airlines, while trying to find an angle to get her fired (I am the obliterator of other women!) and 3)expose to ALL HER FRIENDS on FB and however you can. And if your wh were smart, he might even consider filing suit against her for her putting him and making him physically endangered by pursuing him sexually and not telling she has a std. Do not be afraid to go for the jugular. She did.

Just a thought from a betrayed husband. I would want to know. There were people that could have told me and didn't.

Maybe hes different but I don't think so. Plus if his wife has some disease and he doesn't he really needs to know. Although I do understand people can have it and never know. Do they even test for it?

I'd take odds to vegas the ow has NOT informed her bh, or minimized to the point of ridiculous. Let's face it, skanky ow did NOT get her std by baking cookies and volunteering at the p.t.a. fundraiser.

Thanks schoolbus! I've read a good bit on this web site and know intellectually the affair really had nothing to do with her. Actually, it didn't really have much to do with me either. It was all about him and his not getting his needs met. Our marriage was not in great shape at the time (surprise!) and hadn't been for a long time. The fact is, NEITHER of us was getting our needs met. I had shut down emotionally and shut myself off from him and we lived as roommates. The only difference between us was that I continued to honor my wedding vows in regard to remaining faithful and he made a concious decision not to. He has told me that it really wasn't her, that it could have been anyone although he has also told me he "cared about her" and considered her "a friend". I told him there was not room in this marriage for the three of us so if he still thought of her as a friend I was gone. Anyway, I know that SHE is not the important aspect of the affair, it was what was lacking in our relationship with each other. We have been working on that very hard and spend a good bit of time together. We talk a great deal and spend a lot of time snuggling. Our sex life is better than it's ever been and quite amazing actually. Still, thoughts of him with her invade my day and sometimes nights in the form of dreams.

I am going to print out Joseph's letter and give it to him to read. I've tried to tell him those very things but he says it doesn't do any good to "rehash" things. We need to focus on making the future better. While I agree with that in part, the questions do keep coming and my imagination is far better than what really happened I'm quite certain. I think it all just disgusts me so much I can't quite shake it. Sort of like sucking on a dirty penny, you just can't get that taste out of your mouth.

I don't know, it's all such a mess and so dirty...like her.

Hey peachy, I love your spirit. I'm so glad that life has turned around so well for you. You are happy again! What a blessing!!!

You have emboldened me. I shall call the Loudon county health department tomorrow. Maybe they DO keep records on herpes but I don't think so. At any rate, it will feel good to rat her out by name to someone. Who knows, maybe they even know her personally! LOL Would love to expose her filthy secrets to the world but I think they call that lible and/or slander. She had a FB account but just after I found it she either canceled it or made it super private, as it's now gone. She now has a MyLife account instead, like I couldn't find her if I wanted to. What a stupid skank!

I'm also thinking I will send something in the mail to her husband's work address. We will see what happens. I tend to believe like you, that she did not really tell him anything. I had actually called her and told her I was through with my WH and that she could have him, etc. I told her I hoped they would be very happy together as they certainly deserved each other. She stayed after a trip once and waited for my husband to get back from his. She poked him in the chest with her finger and angrily told him to tell me to stop "stalking" her or she would turn it over to the authorities. She then said her husband was trying to forgive, yadda yadda yadda. My thought is that she was trying to scare me. Anyway, the other thing I could do is contact the Flight Attendent supervisor and make sure I get her name out there with them. I doubt she'd get fired but it could make things pretty uncomfortable for her. Hell, I might even file suit against her myself. She knowingly exposed another woman's husband to an STD without informing him and thus exposed me. You what they say, Herpes is the gift that keeps on giving and it may just give her back something she doesn't expect.