Hi all. I'm blessed and happy to find a place of proactive healing and answers. Thanks in advance for your time and care.

I am 34. I've been married to my high school sweetheart since we were 18. We have three beautiful teenage boys. I am a life-lover. I find joy in all the beautiful details of life. I teach PE at my boys' school and am a homemaker. I enjoy making house a home. My husband has a successful career and is a hard worker. We share a favorite hobby of working out and lifting weights, at the gym. I also like to run. My boys run with me. We love the adventure and enjoy soaking up God's beautiful outdoors. I love to bake, make things pretty, and create special moments for my family. These last few years have been the happiest of my life. I literally **thought** that I was the luckiest girl alive. Life has been amazing, overflowing with goodness.

Years ago, earlier in our marriage, I found out my husband was addicted to porn. It crushed me. Months later, I walked in on him having drunken sex with a much older lady. I was shocked. It was the darkest, deepest pain of my life. I had a really good childhood and walked into marriage fairly innocent. This knocked me to the ground and it took time to regain my footing in life. However, my husband has always shown passionate love for me and I was able to quickly forgive, trust again, and move forward. I thought we had a miraculous redemption story. I trusted him 200% after this hard time. I gave him total freedom in life and he gave me mine.
We spent the years since this disaster, raising our family and living happy lives. I always thought that my husband loved me more than any woman could be loved. I respected him immensely. To me, he was an incredible man, whom I admired so very much. He beat his battle with porn and changed his life...


...so I thought....

A couple weeks ago, my husband confessed with great remorse that he still looked at porn regularly. He indulged in chat rooms, web cam sessions, paid porn sites, Craig's List encounters, and more. He took it further and paid for massage sessions, strip clubs, and sex with escorts. He travels often for work and over the last couple years, he has been with escorts 44 times. The latest girl turned into a fling, who he took to dinner, flew to see her, bought her gifts, and paid her bills. I am shocked and devastated. My life has crumbled. I feel as if I am still in shock. I am numb. I couldn't eat a bite for 3 days. I can't focus or sleep. My foundation is trembling and is not at all what I thought. I have been trying to be strong for my 3 boys. They need a solid life. They're in early teen years, and I want them to have stability. Unfortunately, I have also needed to be strong for my husband. This guilt has caused him great agony and he is unstable and unwell. I walk numbly through my days. I cannot seem to process this reality. It doesn't feel real. I cannot live like this. I love my husband SO VERY MUCH but for the first time in my life, I am thinking of leaving him and rebuilding a new life. I do worry about my boys, so as of now, we are still in tact as a family, at home.

I am not a perfect wife, I have flaws, of course. BUT I truly have given 100% effort in being the best wife I could be. I have always been faithful to him and loyally supported him. I have NEVER turned him down on sex. We have wild, crazy sex often. We have sex several times a week usually and have for years. I'm not ugly. I cannot figure out WHY WHY WHY he needed to look outside our marriage. This is something I struggle with. I make him homemade meals, pack his lunches, prep his clothes, make our home beautiful, am a VERY happy wife, I don't complain about long work hours...WHY did he need some other woman??? I'm broken and dying inside. To clarify, I am writing with emotion, more than reason right now. I have plenty of bad qualities of course, but not enough to merit him cheating on me multiple times, for years. His actions are beyond my comprehension.

My soul is destroyed. I gave all of myself to him and planned on loving this man like crazy until we were 90. He wrote his story at this post: http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/u...at&Number=2882395&gonew=1#UNREAD

I appreciate your time and love. Thank you!

Do you want to save the marriage?

My heart wants to save it, my logic is telling me to run from it.

The biggest problem in your recovery is that your marriage was never affair proofed. In order for you to recover completely and FOR REAL this time, extreme measures are going to have to be put in place that makes it absolutely impossible for your husband to cheat again.

From Surviving an Affair, pg 66-67

The extraordinary precautions do more than end marriage-threatening affairs; they help a couple form the kind of relationship they always wanted.

These recommendations may seem rigid, unnecessarily confining, and even paranoid to those who have not been the victim of infidelity. But people like Sue and Jon, who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of an affair that spun out of control, can easily see their value. For the inconvenience of following my advice, Sue would have spared herself and Jon the very worst experience of their lives.

Checklist for How Affairs Should End

_____The unfaithful spouse should reveal information about the affair to the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should make a commitment to the betrayed spouse to never see or talk to the lover OP again.

_____The unfaithful spouse should write a letter to the lover OP ending the relationship and send it with the approval of the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from the lover OP:

_____Block potential communication with the lover OP (change e-mail address and home and cell phone numbers, and close all social networking accounts; have voice messages and mail monitored by the betrayed spouse).

_____Account for time (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

_____Account for money (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a complete account of all money spent).

_____Spend leisure time together.

_____Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

_____Avoid overnight separation.

_____Allow technical accountability.

_____Expose affair to family members, clergy, and/or friends.

Is this really the wife? Your husband claimed you have been on this forum for years, but I See you just registered. Do you have another user name?

In addition to the above checklist, your husband will also need to find a career that makes it impossible to be unfaithful.

Since he is a serial cheater, the two of you will need to build your life where you are together 24/7.

No one will judge you for running.

Yes, this is really me, the wife. I read this site years ago, during first episodes. I just tried to find my old login info, with no luck, so I just created this account today.

Hi Prisca,

Thank you SO much for that checklist. It's helpful to see a strong plan of action. We have almost zero of those safeguards put up. I am actually sad that we are at the point to put these in place because I prefer freedom and trust. But I realize this isn't realistic at this point. ...we have work to do.

It is not realistic for ANY marriage.

Your situation is not special. Marriages that do not observe precautions against affairs end up dealing with them. That is not the exception to the rule. It happens a lot. In about 60% of all marriages.

You need to put extraordinary precautions into place to affair-proof your marriage. Do not mourn the loss of innocence. What you are losing isn't innocence; it is ignorance.

"Freedom" and blind "trust" destroy marriages, though. In affair proof marriages, the husband and wife are integrated into each others lives to the point that an affair is impossible.

If your marriage is to recover, your husband's life is going to have to be completely transparent. He should never even be on a computer again without you sitting right next to him. He should not be out of your sight again.

1. Immediately implement No nights apart and 100% financial and electronic transparency. He should never have been able to spend money without your knowledge.

2. I am skeptical of your ability to recover because though your husband claimed to come here for a plan to recover, he has proceeded to argue with us on every point. I doubt his commitment. You need to dig into all of his records. I severely doubt that you have the full truth. At this point, you should only believe what you can verify. Your husband has proved himself a skilled liar. You cant trust his word on anything, only his verified actions.

3. Any avenue for the affair must be closed, including leaving his job and ending any relationships that supported the affairs.

4. Get tested for STDs. If you haven't seen his lab results personally, request them now.

Have you exposed his affairs and porn use?

I am unsure what you are asking. I have been open and transparent (I am her husband). If there is a step that we have missed in doing this, please share. We are listening.

I think she means telling friends/family about our situation.

No, we haven't...only here.

pleasehelpme02, Please do not post on your wife's thread. Stay on your own. Thank you.

Exposure is the first step in recovery. All of your family and friends need to know what has happened so they can help hold the wayward spouse accountable.

Thank you everyone for your help so far! This is excellent guidance. Everything is foggy for me right now so it really helps to have direction. MUCH appreciated.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5525_qa.html

Dr Harley's article on how to survive infidelity.

Exposure is crucial to your recovery, greyseason. You need to talk to your friends, family, and clergy if there are any. You should also tell any child over the age of 4 what is happening (in age appropriate language).

He will need to be held accountable by the community around you if you are to recover. If you choose to NOT recover with him, the people around you will be a support system for YOU.