I'm 38 & my husband is 31. We met 4 yrs ago & he lied to me about his age for a year.I was very angry when I found out but I loved him. Eventually moved in together. We got pregnant & miscarried. From that point on tried to conceive but no luck. I was upset that he had not proposed but would get me pregnant. Since I was older, I gave him a time limit. He proposed & we married the next year. He always was going out to night clubs & it bothered me. I figured he would grow out of it. We struggled to have a baby - something he pushed & went through infertility treatments for a year. It ruined our sex life. In the end & to our surprise we conceived. The pregnancy was difficult physically & my H made it worse. His behavior totally changed. He was not supportive. He didn't show a lot of interest in the baby. He was critical all the time. He had lots of angry outbursts. In the end of my 8th month in a high risk pregnancy, he went to Florida for a bachelor party.I left him & stayed at my Moms. That pretty much destroyed me. I had the baby the day after he returned. He came to the hospital & I agreed to give it a shot for her sake. His behavior still continued to be erratic. During the pregancy I had discovered her cell phone number on his bill quite often & called it. I got her machine. He made up a story about how he was seeing a counselor for a food addiction. It was all very convincing. He also had been delving into porn & this made me very upset. He never did this before & I thought he was being extremely insensitive to a woman who was pregnant. A month ago (4 months after the baby was born)I found he ordered a porn dvd & went looking for it. To my surprise I found pictures of him with another woman & a card to her. She was a much older woman! 48 in fact & not very attractive. I was devastated. I called her & we spoke. He had lied to her & said I was his ex. He said he wasn't living here & she had no idea about the baby. The affair started before we got pregnant & was off & on for almost a year. I threw him out. He was crying & said he loved me. He wanted us to stay together. His mother & father begged me to stay with him. Of course she dumped him. I agreed to try. We started marriage counseling but our counselor was terrible. On our first visit, all he did was complain about me. I was in tears & she let him go at me. On the second visit she forgot she even met him. We plan to go back but I have been procrastinating making an appointment w/ a new counselor & he hasn't done it. Immediately after the affair he started helping out more at home & he doesn't go out anymore. He was much nicer & very apologetic. Now his mistake has worn off for him a little and at times he is less sensitive & is not trying as hard. Sometimes I can't reach him on his cell for a short period of time & I know I'm overreacting but I get very uptight. He doesn't get it. He's become less supportive of my insecurity. It seems as though he can't deal with the guilt. It seems as if he just doesn't want to deal with it anymore. He's wants everything just to be normal, the way it was before the whole mess started. I'm having such a hard time dealing with images, the loss of feeling special & the thought of the whole thing.
We seem to be on a rollercoaster. We go for a while that things seem ok with eachother & other days we are arguing. I feel like a mess going between depression & normalcy. I'm at the point where I can't tell if I'm staying married because of the embarassment of divorce after 2 years, for my new baby, to avoid the pain of splitting up all our assests & selling our house, the fear of being alone or because I love him. How do I figure this out? When does it get easier?

Get a decent marriage coach. Look for Cerri's posts out here. She is an MC (mine, in fact) and you should contact her.

The first thing to do is to find someone to help and stop the hurting.

DL,

Welcome to MB. U need to do some reading of the concepts section and get ahold of a few books.

Surviving and Affair - by Dr W. Harley
His Needs/Her Needs - by Dr W. Harley
Love Must be Tough - by Dr James Dobson

Let your OB/GYN know what you are going through. U are an older mom (me too, had son at 37) but you also may be suffering from post partum and with this A thing, that the added stress is not healthy for you or the baby.

See an MC with or without your H.

How is the baby?

L.

Thanks to you both for the advice. I will do all of those things. I actually have an appointment with the OB already. I'm not sure about post-partum but maybe. I don't know a lot about it. I often feel sad or depressed because it feels like my whole life for the past year wasn't what I thought it was. Every memory is tied into this affair somehow because they occurred at the same time. After struggling for two and a half years with infertility & beating the 1% chance they gave us for having a baby, I thought we be drawn closer together. It was such a happy time. When he started to wig out I thought it was because of the new responsibility we'd be facing. He's always had a hard time growing up.He's definitely on the immature side of things. I ignored all the signs because I completely trusted him or maybe I didn't want to see them. I don't know. It seems so surreal at times. I can't believe it happened. And when the reality of the situation hits then I get depressed. I look at him now & don't see the same man I married. I can't even explain it. But I'm sure as I read the posts of others who have been in this horrifying situation I will read very similar thoughts.

The one thing that I have to hang onto is my beautiful baby girl. She is doing very well, thanks, & so young that she is totally clueless to whats going on.

So, I will try to get a mc & definitely will get the books. Thanks again for you quick responses. I really appreciate your advice.