We have been married 34 years next month. We have 4 grown children, 3 in law children, and 3 grandchildren. I first discovered my husband's affair about 29 years ago. He started an affair with the woman who provided daycare to our two small children. He got her pregnant (she was married but undergoing fertility treatments. I'm pretty sure it is his.). After a lot of grief and pain, we managed to put our marriage back together again. Last month I discovered that the affair NEVER ended. With a few brief episodes of "no contact" over the years, the affair has continued for 29 years. I can't believe I was so stupid I didn't know this! I can't get over the fact that I essentially have no memories of the past almost 30 years - almost my entire marriage - that are not colored by the knowledge that he was cheating on me. I've read all the materials on this website. But the resentment!! Has anyone dealt with an affair this long? This encompassing? Where do I start? Should I even try?

He says that he was "80%" happy in our marriage, but need "the charge" he got from her sexually and in her "need" for him. She "filled the other 20%". He says he thought I was "content" and so he wasn't hurting anyone. He is also a leader in our church, so the hypocrisy of this is overwhelming for me. Our children would be horrified. I just don't know where to go from here.

Im so sorry
Dr Harley would encourage you to first expose his affair to family (including children), friends, church and family and friends of the affair partner.

dapoc,

So sorry for the cruel betrayal by your H.

Yes, there are other people who are dealing with long time affairs.

Decades long. You are not alone in the experience. There are probably many more than people will ever know of.

Your H has had two lives and IT ISN"T YOUR FAULT!

You were not so stupid. You were so trusting in what he said to you.

Anyway. The best thing to do from here is to study up on the Basic Concepts

http://www.marriagebuilders.com//graphic/mbi3000_intro.html

so you can get a handle on how this all happened.

Read this link (since you realized only a month ago about the continuation of the affair, it is 'new' to you!)
http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1659680#Post1659680

You can learn all you can about affairs. You can do plan A and plan B (you will learn what they are) and you can heal. You will need to expose your H to the people around you to reveal his secret second life. It is the best thing for you and him. Whether he likes it or not, it is toxic to him too. Toxic to everyone.

Frankly, long time affairs suck. They are tough to truly recover the marriage from. But.......YOU can heal and go on and be one heck of a woman to be witnessed. You can come out of this with respect for yourself and respect for your history (the way YOU carried yourself in it, loyal and with integrity).

Bless you. God bless you.

Welcome to MB and so sorry for your pain.

When will you be exposing?

Surviving an Affair-Start Here First

Start reading and start exposing. Never exposing is why this affair has gone on all these years.

Exposure is the first step. Don't discuss it with him. Don't threaten him or warn him. If the OW is still married, contact her spouse directly. Expose to your children and your church. This affair is not your fault. Don't become an accomplice by hiding it. Expose it.

Hi dapoc,

If there is any one thing that is THE most important for you to do right now it is to read everything that you can on this site regarding exposure.

Exposure is THE biggest tool that you have for killing the affair. Yes, your children will probably be horrified�but please do not be tempted to protect them from the truth about their father. "Protection" is not fair to them�it is not fair to lie to them about the reality of their lives.

I would second that. I was married to a long term serial adulterer (his father was one too). Our marriage sadly did not survive, his habits of secrecy were too deeply entrenched.

You have the opportunity to create a committed marriage that could be very different from the paper marriage you have experienced over the last 29 years but this is going to depend on whether radical honesty is possible for him. His secret second life gave him an 'escape'. Instead of negotiating with you when you had difficulties in your marriage, he just ran to her to validate his feelings. That is now a very entrenched long term habit. Exposure will benefit you either way as it will force him to face the consequences of his actions for the first time. It means that the game is up.

To save the marriage, he has to make some massive changes; become open and transparent (Dr Harley calls this Radical Honesty). Exposure forces him to decide whether he is prepared to do this.

If the marriage cannot be saved, exposure will protect you. I did not expose properly and am very sorry that I did not because it allowed XH to present a sob story to the world about what a wicked wife I had been and how terrible it was that I abandoned the family. Once that story was out, it was far too late for me to present the truth.

This link comes from MelodyLane:
Exposure 101

Just to let you know Blair, the Exposure thread is in the Start Here thread I posted.

I know it is in the Start Here thread. I wanted to make sure she could get to it easily. Sorry if I caused a problem.

Not at all.

Expose first!!
As stated, you control the information that way, and the "spin" by him will be way less credible.
Dont make the mistake i made and do only a minimum exposure, it must be far and wide and deep.
The wayward will make up all sorts of wild allegations and stories if you dont go FULL THROTTLE, it took me a few years for most people to find out the truth was my side and the ex had become an alien.
There will be anger and craziness from the wayward so be ready.

I'm very sorry for your situation. He has abused you and battered you with his lies and deception. I'm sure that hurts you as much as the affair itself.

Regardless of what you do, exposure should be done. He cannot be a leader in the church if he has carried this on. The church should be one of your exposure targets. Not out of vindictiveness, but because it is the honest and just thing to do.

If your marriage is going to have a chance, he has a lot of work to do to justly compensate you for the devastation he has wrought.

Please consider e-mailing the Harley's so that they can help you on their radio program. This is a very difficult tragedy to recover from, and I think Dr. Harley will have the wisdom to help you. To get on the show, send Joyce Harley your story and questions. The e-mail is mbradio@marriagebuilders.com.

God bless.

dapoc,

Very sorry to hear your horrible story, but the best place to start is exposure, because you've done nothing wrong and you should not have to carry this painful secret for the rest of your life.

The Other Womans Husband, OWH, should be the first to know as he has been deceived for as long as you have.

My Mother in law has been cheated on almost continuously since the 1950s when she got married, and had an emotional breakdown because of it a few years back. Had MIL exposed it would have removed the burden from her to my FIL who deserved it.

You are not stupid, you trusted your WH and trust is one of the better human traits. That your WH violated your trust and went to extraordinary lengths to hide his dishonesty is the crime.

God Bless
Gamma

Thanks to all who have posted in response to my post. Before I found this website I had already done a few things (1) demanded immediate cessation of all contact - no calls to explain he isn't calling anymore, NO contact at all. He agreed to this and I monitor his cell phone records and (2) demanded absolute transparency and honesty, including a written timeline of the affair and every detail I think of to ask. He has been compliant. We have been spending a lot of time over the past month talking and talking. When I found this website, so much of what I read has rung true. I'm learning a lot.

I have not exposed him; I'm still thinking about that. I feel like a bomb went off in my life and I'm not yet ready to set off the other couple of bombs that exposing him will detonate in MY life - (I don't care at all about protecting him from any consequences - he needs to take the hard road here.)

Someone asked if she is still married. I have learned that a few years after the affair started she divorced her husband and then several years after that her ex died (approx. 18 years ago). She has been single since then and apparently is very open with everyone in her life about this affair - no shame at all! She lives about 40 miles from us. They do not work together or in any other way come into contact with each other socially or occupationally and never have. Because he is self-employed he has been able to arrange visits to her in such a way that I was never suspicious - he just isn't gone from home that much.

Believe me there is a big part of me that wants to expose him; but there are consequences that I will suffer if I do and I don't know that I'm ready for that right now. I very much appreciate the support and understanding from this forum.

You will receive great advice here, but I hope that you will consider e-mailing the Harley's. Dr. Harley will help you take the right next steps. It's been a long time getting here, so wouldn't it be better to not waste more time with missteps?

Yes. I believe I will. Thank you for that advice.

What consequences will you suffer?

My Aunt discovered that her husband (uncle) had a Black book of escort girls, contact info, sex acts they performed...

he had lived a secret second life most of their marriage (abt 30 yrs)...

She didnt expose...divorced him...and now shacks up with him....

Expose this evil into the light of day!

dapoc,

I am glad that you are still reading and posting here. It definitely is the best place for recovering a marriage after an affair.

About exposure. In our case, I called my Mother-in-law on D-day. She revealed to me that Father-in-law, as an Air Force pilot, had had at least one long term affair and an unknown number of one night stands. No one in the family knew about these affairs and he was idolized by the children. At least three of the children, including my husband, had their own affairs. How much better it would have been if my H had known about his family troubles and then taken precautions to prevent an affair in our marriage. Dr. Harley talks about infidelity in his family and how that was one of the reasons he studied how to have a happy and affair-free marriage.

With regards to our children, I exposed the affair to my DD from my first marriage and our older DS right away. I didn't expose to our then 14 year old DS for quite some time. It was a big mistake because he knew something was wrong, but didn't know what. All three children were angry, thought I should divorce H, and I thought their relationship would be ruined forever. However, that is not what happened. Since then, H and I have had several opportunities to talk to all three about mistakes in our marriage and educate them about MB philosophy and principles. They are so much smarter than H and I have been.

You do recognize that your husband is not fit for his leadership role in church. You should talk to the pastor right away and your husband should resign immediately from whatever leadership job he fills.

Finally, is it possible for you and your husband to move? This OW is way to close for you to be comfortable living this close to her. My H and I moved about 1200 miles away from OW and it was still difficult.

AM