It's been 6 days since I found my H calling another woman for what he calls, phone sex. He continues to hold the assertion that he was not intending to actually meet anyone, despite me hearing him say that "We ought to get together sometime"....He swears it was just phone sex. Given that he is holding firm on this as being "just talk", I decided that I would talk to him about how he opened the door to this possiblility even if at the time he didn't think it would go in that direction. When I mentioned this, he could see that point of view completely. He held the door open. That counts for something. To me it says........I'm wanting to meet someone else and I'm open to the possibility if the opportunity arises or if I pursue it. Had I not caught him, I can only imagine what would have unfolded. It's scary to think of how bad it could have been. Actually, after reading some of the posts here, I see how really bad things can go.
I struggle with a couple things right now:
1. Walking into our home....it re-stimulates the pain and grief of that day I walked in and what I heard. I feel truamatized.
2. Seeing all of our wedding photos on the wall, and in our bedroom. And the card I gave him the weekend before I found out. We went to San Diego and saw a concert. Journey is OUR group, and we've been wanting see them since before we got married. All of this stimulates alot of pain because things between us were so good up until a month ago. We had something truly special. Now there is distrust between us.
3. We've had an extremely close, intimate, loving relationship until we started getting our house ready to sell and then move into our current home. Life started to fall apart then. He fell off the ladder while painting our old home and broke his rib...it took weeks to recover but he still had to go to work, work on fixing up the house for sale, etc....then we both go sick right after we moved into our new house...a virus that left us both weak for over two weeks....then, from the move, he hurt his back so bad that he has been off work for a week.....then the grief I let him know would probably happen when he left his old house (he had lived there for 12 years. I had lived there with him for 11 months)...he didn't think leaving would have any affect on him but it has. He's been back to the old house a couple of times because the new owners have not moved in and he told me he cried and cried about closing the door on the comfort he found living there...the memories of our growing love there...and so many other things he had to leave behind.
Then there was the loss of 2 very long-term friends he has had....one for 12 years, the other since he was 12, (he is now 46).....This happened because both friends are pot smokers and their friendship needed this mutual connection in order to survive. My h quit smoking 1 and 1/2 years ago. They have turned away as a result. This has hurt him pretty badly.
So many things have happened recently and he has been depressed and shutting me out. Since our relationship had been so incredibly close up until now, I found the withdrawing, irritiability, lack of hope he was expressing unusual for him. He's always turned to me for things and he quit doing that. I reached out to him over and over again, but all that was there was a wall. I found he wasn't listening to me anymore. He wasn't happy anymore. People use to see us and they would be amazed at our love and closeness They would comment about this.
We have spent countless hours since the afternoon I walked in on things, talking heart-to-heart. Really good talks. He doesn't want to lose me. I'm giving him, and US, the chance he asked for. I feel like I'm getting my H back again. Tomorrow at work he is going to contact a counselor and begin "working on himself" as he calls it. After several sessions of individual work, he wants me to then join him in sessions. I feel good about how we are handling things so far.
Yesterday I purchased the book, "Betrayed: How you can restore sexual trust and rebuild your life." by Riki Robbins, PhD. The focus is for women. I think it will be very helpful to me.
