I will try to make this brief. My husband and I have been married for 8 months now. Three months ago I found a folder on his laptop with nude pictures of girls he dated prior to me. Long story short between January and now I have discovered that my husband has been talking to his ex girlfriend our ENTIRE relationship (over 4 years). He has begged for and received nudes from her (while we were dating and engaged) and they tried to meet up to have sex right before we got married. She got pregnant around the time my husband and I got married. The baby is not my husband�s, however, her getting pregnant bothered by husband and that slowed down the sick emotional relationship they have had for the last four and a half years. He swears they never actually had sex because their schedules always conflicted. Although it is painfully obvious he wanted to.

I found out just last week that he tried to have sex with her prior to our wedding. He says he came to his senses after we got married and stopped but the truth is they stopped because she got pregnant and that reality affected him more than anything.
Anyway, he has apologized profusely, cried, begged and pleaded, deleted his Instagram and Twitter accounts, and given me passwords to everything (ex. Facebook, gmail, all emails, phone ect). Yesterday he changed his phone number. We are in counseling and go once a week.

Anyway, I really really need advice. I just don�t feel like I can forgive him. This wasn�t a �mistake� he literally could not leave this girl alone and I�m struggling with the fact that he has lied about so many things during our relationship and that their relationship went on for so long. I don�t respect him anymore and there is NO trust. He has destroyed me emotionally and I have these periodic moments of sheer blinding rage where I HATE him. During those times, I have learned to leave the house because I get violent and want to hurt him and I have NEVER been that way before. I don�t know who I am anymore. I can�t eat, or sleep and feel like an empty shell. I have only spoken to his grandmother about this so I feel like I have this dirty secret and feel so alone. Prior to this I trusted him completely and feel blindsided. I regret trusting him, regret marrying him, regret the day I first saw his lying stinking deceptive face.

Please those who were unable to forgive, how did you know it was time to move on? I am still in shock and know I am not thinking clearly, but I just don't see a way out of this. Those who were able to forgive, how were you able to forgive? Move on? How long did it take? I need advice, I am literally drowning in sadness, resentment, and regret.

Welcome to MB and sorry for your pain that has brought you here.

Do you have any children? Has he answered all your questions? You might want to have him take a polygraph.

Do you have spyware on his devices? Have you exposed this to anyone?

Welcome to MB.

The Marriage Builders programme isn't about teaching people to forgive, and therefore, people do not need to feel that they are unable to forgive in order to decide to move on.

The decision about staying and trying to build a new marriage, or divorcing, really comes down to confidence. You need to have confidence that your spouse is no longer seeking ways to contact the affair partner, and that he is all-in with changing his lifestyle and committing to your marriage.

Begging, pleading and crying are not the kinds of actions from him that will demonstrate that he has affair-proofed his behaviour - which is the action that you need to see. What will demonstrate that is if he changes his lifestyle so that his secret second life is no longer possible. At the very least, he needs to give up "his" laptop, and you need to have access to his account on joint computers. With a phone, he needs to willingly give you his password and agree that you can look at it at any time, and then you, secretly and without giving him the slightest clue, need to put spyware on the phone and computers so that you can see every keystroke that he makes.

What kind of work does he do? How will you be able to check, at any time, who he contacts and what messages he sends?

You say that "I regret trusting him, regret marrying him, regret the day I first saw his lying stinking deceptive face". Since that is the case, why are you trying to make this very short marriage work?

This was never a marriage. Your husband was deceiving you, and trying to have sex with this woman, while he was planning to marry you. He was not suitable marriage material, and your marriage was based on a lie. Why are you trying to patch up a marriage that was based on lies, and was never real?

What is your counsellor's plan for restoring the marriage? What does she make you do in each session - what do you talk about? What does she require you to do for homework? What is her end goal for the marriage? How long does she think it will take to reach that goal? How will you know when you've reached it?

I have a 12 year old daughter who absolutely adores him. There are no other children. We were trying to conceive when the infidelity was discovered. He has no biological children (something he has always wanted) and was looking forward to becoming a father. Obviously that is not even an option for me at the moment. I am 38 so we were hoping to conceive quickly. Given my age and our current circumstances, I do not see children for him and I; now or later.

His answers contradict each other. I don't even think he fully understands himself who he really is. He has never admitted to anything. It is only when I have the proof literally in his face that he will admit to anything. The lies have slowly been coming to light over the last three months not because of him but due to me looking for answers.

I have spyware on his device and he does not appear to be doing anything at the moment. I have not exposed anything to anyone. I am literally in a state of shock. His grandmother is the only person I have spoken to. She knows about the folder of naked girls. She does not know about the ongoing emotional affair or his attempts at sex with the other woman. I am hesitant to tell her more. She adores me and I love her dearly but she is currently dying of cancer. They have stopped treatment and are waiting for her to go naturally. I do not wish to hurt her during her last days.

With a phone, he needs to willingly give you his password and agree that you can look at it at any time, - He has and there is spyware installed.

What kind of work does he do? How will you be able to check, at any time, who he contacts and what messages he sends? - I can check through the spyware that he is unaware is on his phone.

You say that "I regret trusting him, regret marrying him, regret the day I first saw his lying stinking deceptive face". Since that is the case, why are you trying to make this very short marriage work?

This was never a marriage. Your husband was deceiving you, and trying to have sex with this woman, while he was planning to marry you. He was not suitable marriage material, and your marriage was based on a lie. Why are you trying to patch up a marriage that was based on lies, and was never real?

You have stated EXACTLY what I feel and why I am so angry. My family LOVES him. My dad was the person who married us. On one hand I see our "marriage" as a joke. On the other hand I did take vows that I take seriously. I just don't know what I want. A part of me wants to just move on. Another part of me wants to keep the marriage together and give him an opportunity to prove himself. I have a daughter who absolutely adores him. I just don't know what to do.

His "homework" is to find out what motivated him to seek out this girl. He tried to minimize his actions but the counselor called him on it and told him you don't have a four year affair for no reason. This is our 2nd counselor. This first was not a good fit for us. Our next appointment is Saturday. Our immediate goal is working on trust, but I am realizing that I may need to change that goal into trying to understand if I actually want to be in my marriage.

It's very hard to save a marriage that starts off this way. I can think of one from this forum that started this same way. Since their entire marital history was based on his affair, they went through 5 years of hell and ended up divorced in a very volatile situation.

Marriage vows are made to care for the person in conditions that are beyond their control. This is fully in his control.


I would stop this immediately if you want to save your marriage. This is honestly making the situation much worse. It is pouring gasoline on the fire and will solve nothing. He doesn't know why he had an affair. Here is what Dr Harley, clinical psychologist and founder of Marriage Builders says about this:

here

I agree all your focus should be on whether you want to save this very crippled marriage, but trust should only come from what you can verify. It is not a lack of trust that ruins marriages, but a lack of boundaries.

I would also suggest that you expose his affair to your family members. Keeping it a secret helps no one. Your family has a false impression of him. They can't support you if they don't know.

But you must know that you can't stay married to someone because your family loves him. You're the one that has to have romantic love for him, and to be with him in the future. Neither can you stay with him because your daughter adores him. We're talking about a marriage between you and him, not between you and your family.

As for taking vows: you took vows on the basis of what you knew, but that turned out to be just a mirage. You did not take vows with the man that really exists. Legally speaking, and even in the eyes of some churches (like the Roman Catholic church), your vows are null and void because you did not know who your husband really was.

I think your vows are irrelevant. What matters is whether this short marriage with a faker is worth rebuilding, and I cannot see how it can be. However, if you want to rebuild it, you need to see action from him, and not try to make yourself forgive. If you forgive, and go back to trusting, you will find yourself in the same position in a few months time.

Bingo! We are pro marriage here, but SC is right when she says this short marriage was based on a lie.

Would you have married him if you knew about this woman? You were denied pertinent information about him that would have helped you make this decision.

I wouldn't call this a "four year affair". He wasn't married to you for most of it. What he was really doing was having two girlfriends, and deciding to marry one (only eight months ago) and keep the other on the side.

You husband built a way of life based on compartmentalising his life into two separate boxes - and for all you know, there might have been, and might still be, yet more compartments. A man who does this for four years, and actually goes so far as deceiving one of his girlfriends into marrying him while trying to build a sexual relationship with the other, to keep her on the side, isn't really normal. He is a big-time Walter Mitty, and he will have problems all his life with being committed to his marriage. You need to get out of this nightmare, pronto, before you become as nuts as he is.