I am 32 and a recovering alcoholic. Been sober 6 months. I had some big problems with alcohol when my husband and I first met 8 years ago but no major issues since we have been together. He likes to consider himself my rescuer as "I would have died" if he hadn't been there for me. My husband is a resident surgeon and works long hours, usually 100+ a week for the last 4 years. I have felt incredible loneliness some nights when he has been on call at the hospital and have had several times where I drank in the evening when he was at work. He didn't like that I did this and we had maybe 10 discussions about this over the 4 years he has been in residency. Nothing major, I could tell it bothered him but he got over it in a day each time.

Fast forward to this past February. I had a couple weeks where I drank everyday. I became very isolated and depressed. I started to attend AA meetings and got a sponsor. I had a relapse in May and have been sober since. The point of all this is, my husband used this relapse as his justification for having an affair with a married medical student.

I discovered his affair a little over a month after my relapse. He left home for a couple weeks and we didn't speak. I told him I could forgive him and apologized for my alcoholism. (I know now it wasn't my fault he had the affair but at the time I thought I drove him to it). He asked if I could really forgive him then he wanted to come home and work on things. He broke off the affair and we went to marriage counseling. He continued communication throughout this time without my knowledge.

Then things started getting bizarre. He would leave for a week or a few days at a time to be with his affair partner, then come home and say he was going to break it off. He has spent thousands on hotels. He tried to break it off with her a few times, but inevitably went back days later. I had only seen him cry twice in the eight years I have known him yet he has had more out of control crying episodes in the last 6 months than I can count. He has said "Im in love with 2 different people" "He loves me but is not in love with me" etc. It seemed for a while he was leaning more towards leaving the marriage for the affair partner. He has been "confused" for months. However, after I said I wanted to move on he desperately emailed a pastor who later called and talked to him for an hour. My husband came to see me said he hates who he has become, he can't look at himself in the mirror, and that he knows I would take him back if he broke off his affair in due time. The pastor suggested IC and my husband set up an appt the next day. He saw the counselor twice, but was still very confused about which woman he wanted. The counselor advised him since he was in love with two woman, he should go work on his marriage. I understand now he was cake eating, but to me it seemed like he was really lost. The other woman has officially divorced her husband as of a few days ago.

In the past week or so, he has tried to explain to his affair partner he is miserable, feels incredible guilt and misses home. She won't accept this and won't tolerate him co-habitating with me. He has been living in an airb&b for a month and has said he has distanced himself from the AP and they have no sexual relationship. He tried to tell her again 2 nights ago and she said "How could you throw all this away, I left my husband for you blah blah" then she said" well if you go home then all those people at work will be right that I should tell HR you forced me into a sexual relationship, I will be your enemy etc". He claims he is scared but still won't do anything different.

Anyway, he comes to talk with me, acts like the person I know and says he misses me and wants to come home that he can't keep living the way he is. Then the AP talks to him and he completely changes his tune "I don't know what that will fix if I come home, I don't have all the answers." He has had this Jekyll/Hyde persona for months and it sounds as though he is a puppet for this woman and for his mother (who he has made hate me by justifying his affair to her). Is this normal? Does it sound like he really wants to come home or is he just playing games? I don't know how much longer I can tolerate this. Any advice would be helpful I am ready to give up and move on at this point since we don't have any children. I love him very much and our marriage was not anywhere near being over before this affair.

Hi Sushi, welcome to Marriage Builders. I am sorry for the reasons that have brought you here. Are you married?

The best hope you have for your marriage is to expose the affair. Affairs thrive on secrecy, so exposure can be ruinous. Keeping it a secret only serves to enable it as it thrives and grows. And quite honestly, your husband is not confused or torn, you are. He has the best of both worlds, two women meeting his needs. So this can go on for years and years while your mental and physical health is destroyed from the stress of his affair. The most impactful things you can do would be to a) expose the affair [read the thread in my signature] and then go into a dark Plan B and shut down all contact with him. If you are out of the picture, his affair will crumble much faster while you protect and restore your mental health.

Please pick up the book Surviving an Affair [you can download it on amazon for kindle] and read these 2 threads for now:

Exposure 101

Plan B

Hi, Sushi,

I am very sorry you are going through this - not only is an affair devastating to the betrayed spouse, it transforms the personality of the unfaithful spouse in the way you are seeing. Every contact with the affair partner is like a hit of a drug, and there is no way to get him to sober up at all until he goes no contact with her for life.

Have you read any of the materials Dr. Harley offers on this site about infidelity? Seen the free video or read his book Surviving an Affair?
https://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi1001_infidelity0.html
https://www.marriagebuilders.com//graphic/mbi8001_affair.html

Bottom line: unless your husband stops all contact with the affair partner, your marriage will not be able to recover. So you need to be preparing for the possibility that he will continue to stay in contact with the affair partner. If that is the case eventually the pain is going to become unbearable for you, so you need to be planning for a separation now in case it is needed. See a lawyer, get ready to file for a legal separation, find out whether or not he can be removed from your home (don't worry about where he will stay - that's his problem!) and be ready to separate quickly if necessary. Dr. Harley does not recommend that wives spend a very long time waiting while their husbands are in an affair - it is just too painful and too traumatic to a woman's health.

One thing that you can do to try to hasten the end of the affair and possibly motivate your husband toward marital recovery is to expose his affair - and you need to do this anyway so you can get the help and support you need and he will not be able to pull the wool over the eyes of any of your friends or family. Dr. Harley strongly, strongly advises exposing an affair. In the cases he has seen where people have recovered from an affair, exposure of the affair is almost always the very first step toward recovery. And even if you choose not to stay married, it's absolutely vital for you to get the support you need from people in your life so that you can recover.

Read through this thread to get some information about how to effectively use exposing an affair:
https://forum.marriagebuilders.com//ubbt/ubbthreads.php?Number=2566583&ubb=showflat

Thanks for the advice. I have gathered enough strength to be able to make it on my own without him. I have done a lot of self-work and realized how co-dependent I was. This has been a transformative experience for me so its not all bad. Unfortunately the affair is known at work and his bosses never did anything about it. I went to HR and nothing was ever done. His parents, best friend and co-workers all know about it. He has lived in hotels for 4 months now so can't really kick him out. I am planning to go dark on him and start moving on with my life. He was the golden child with a narcissistic mother so he has a huge sense of entitlement. I just didn't realize this before...of course hindsight is 20/20.

Who did you expose to on OW�s side? What did HR tell you when you exposed it to them? Did you read the Plan B thread?

The OW's husband and parents know about the affair. She is now officially divorced from husband because of it. HR said that an affair is really a personal thing and doesn't have to do with work. She would still relay the message to the program director, however the program director is friends with my husband. I believe the OW's husband called some corporate compliance number and filed a complaint with them but that was months ago and still no action.

It still never hurts to let people know - just having people know puts pressure on the affairees.

How do you know the OW's husband and parents know? Was this information from your WH? How do you know it was exposed to HR? Have you talked with the
OW's BH?

I would contact the program director personally rather than going through HR. Is the program director also your husband's direct superior? If not I would find out who that is and contact them directly, too.