We have been married 25 years. I found out 2 days before Christmas that he was having an affair with a co-worker. I had suspected something was not right for several weeks and even questioned him about it during the previous week. He lied and told me he was counseling the husband for alcoholism, which isn't such a stretch because he is a recovering alcoholic himself. But his story didn't sound right and I knew it in my gut.

A week later I found an email he left open in which the OW was saying what a wonderful night they had at the hotel. My heart stopped, and I had trouble breathing. This was the weekend that I went out of town with our daughter to do Christmas shopping.

I confronted him with the email, there was a lot of crying and screaming, and I left the house and stayed at a motel that night. After a lot of soul searching, I came home, found this site, saw that it was possible to get through this.

I printed out the emotional needs questionnaire, showed it to him, and he broke down crying, telling me how much he loved me and how sorry he was, and that he would do whatever it took to make it up to me. He hasn't picked it up once since that day.

Things have been rocky to say the least, I have bad days, and really bad days, although on the infidelity diet I have lost 23 pounds. At least I have a sense of humor about something.

My H works graveyard shift. Last night I was putting away laundry, and I found a box in his bottom drawer with a bunch of papers. I have become a snoop because of this A, checking the history on the computer, looking at calls on his cell phone and the bill, so I looked at the papers. They turned out to be things he wrote during his 12 steps in AA. One of the pages was labeled guilt, and my name was all over it. The reason why was because of all the other women he had been with up to that time. There were 4.

The earliest one happened shortly after we were married. He wrote beside it that they just kissed. The next one I couldn't tell when it happened, but he indicated that they were both ready to have intercourse but never at the same time. The 3rd one was a woman we both worked with early in our marriage. He indicated that he was jealous of her interest in another man. The fourth one was about 7 years into our marriage, again a woman he worked with and that I knew, and questioned him about at the time. He said nothing ever happened, but to me, kissing someone and having oral sex with some one means something happened. These pages were written 5 years ago, so I don't know how many OW's there have been between then and now. When I confronted him about what I had found, he wanted to know why I was reading his 12 step stuff, that it happened a long time ago, and nothing happenend. I guess to him if there is no intercourse it is not sex, thus, not needing to be mentioned.

He made notes about what they did, but always made note that there was NO SEX. There was kissing, making out, oral, but NO SEX. Even Bill Clinton knows better than that.

I didn't think that I could feel any worse than I did 3 weeks ago, but now I just feel dead inside.

Does this suggest a pattern to any of you? BTW, he did have intercourse with this latest one. I thought we were on the road to recovery, but know I just don't know. How many A's should one forgive? If there wasn't any intercourse, is it really an A? It sure feels that way to me. How will I ever know when he is telling me the truth? When I confronted him with what I had found last night, his response was that I should not condem him for something that happened in the past. When I found out about the most recent A, I asked if there were others. Again, he lied.

I am shut down right now. He keeps wanting to talk, sending me emails from his work saying he loves me. I don't know what to do. We have 2 children, oldest is 23 and out of the house, and a 16 year old daughter living at home. I am unemployed right now, and have no money to leave, or get a divorce. I looked up counselors on the net and told him about it, but it seems like I, as usual, am doing all the legwork on recovery and he is not doing anything.

He says the most recent A is over, but he sees her every night when he goes to work. She works for him, so I don't feel we can even do Plan A. He can't leave the job as he is the only source of income for the family at the moment.

Neither one of us had been having our emotional needs met by the other, but I NEVER went looking elsewhere.

What do I do now?

I share this question with you? I have found that my WS has also lied and is very good at covering his tracks. I have been married 11 yrs. I have 4 children, eldest is 18 and recent moved out. This is second mariage for me-first for WS. I think that if you give more than the second chance to shape up and fly right that you are then being a chump to the most important person in this drama-YOU. I don't want to live my life on this rollercoaster from hell and have 'Jerry' call me for his next show. TWICE is my answer....good luck.

Blue-
I don't feel qualified to tell you what you should do from here... but I will share a bit of my experience, in hopes that it may be encouraging.
I told my husband 3 weeks ago about an affair that I was in at the time. I expected him to throw me out, as he had always said that he would do that if I had an affair, but he didn't. He stayed, and said that he wanted to work through it. Then a week later, because of some good advice from here, I told him about 9 other PAs and some EAs from the fairly recent past. He is still here. I truly don't understand why he's here... he says that it's because he loves me... but I am shocked and amazed that he could love me that much.
I'm sorry to hear that you had to find out about your Hs other As by stumbling across his papers. That is one of the reasons that I told my H about my other As. I didn't want him to find out another way and have it all come up again and make a whole new mess.
I know that there is alot of hope and help and strength to be found here at this forum. I hope that you will find it to be that way for you, and that you will eventually find the answer to your question. I don't think that there is a set # to forgive or not to forgive. I think that you need to look in your heart for that answer, actually... but like I said - I don't feel qualified to give advice, only to share my experience.
God bless,
SMH

How many is too many to forgive? Well, if he told you about the first one and you forgave him and then he told you about the second one right after it happened and you forgave him and then the third one...well that's where it would get pretty dicey for me.

My H told me about the first one and then had a ONS four years later, which apparently surprised him. He thought that he had control over this type of thing. He didn't tell me. He was terrified that I'd take the kids and leave him. He was probably right.

This behavior went on for 12 years...an affair or string of ONSs every 3 to 5 years. He finally confessed in January of 2003. He first confessed that he was having an affair, was in love with her and was leaving me. I didn't buy the love part because our marriage of 26 years had been fantastic for the 6 months before that. As it turned out...that was the problem. The better the marriage got, the more guilt he had about his secrets. He actually had the exit affair to run away from himself...it didn't work of course, but it made sense in his warped mind at the time.

He confessed to a total of 8 affairs besides the first one that I knew about. I was dumbfounded. It was the worst day of my life. I didn't let him go, however, I knew in my heart of hearts that he didn't really want to leave. He wanted forgiveness. He wanted a clean start and he didn't think he'd get it so he found someone else first.

They didn't all come out at the same time either...it took about four days for all of the truth to come out and he never had any intention of telling me the whole truth. I stumbled on a private e-mail to a friend where he said that he couldn't bear to tell me everything! Well, after reaming him a new one, he realized that the truth was the way to go. It was either the truth and radical honesty (this was before I knew about MB) or he was out.

We are in an excellent recovery. It's been hell for me lately with all of the triggers, but he's never treated me better than he does now. We do all of the Harley recommendations. We spend tons of time together. We hold hands on the way out to the car even! It's wonderful! I still have lots of healing to do, but it's been worth it.

I think that by writing those things down, he WANTED you to find out. He wanted you to find out and forgive him. Ask him that.

If he's willing to do individual counseling, men's group facilitation therapy, marriage counseling, love you forever and become the H of your dreams...I say go for it! You've got to really love this man to get through this, but it can be done and it can be BEAUTIFUL! What guarantees do you have that the next partner you find won't do the same thing? If you love him and love your life together then he's worth it.

I know how badly you are hurting right now and I'm so sorry!

Stillwed

I saw this topic and jumped right away to see the answers b/c it is where I currently am---but I am the one to do the confessing. My H found out about my affair 10/28/03, and we have been working toward recovery the last several weeks. I just happened upon this site, and was so thankful to find it! It helped so much, especially for my H. He is having a terrible time w/ the pain and disbelief. I feel like the worst person on earth for doing what I did. He is starting to feel more "at ease" in a way about the affair now, but his biggest concern is if there have ever been any more. I have denied this from day one, and I have been lying. I can't try to make excuses for any of it, I know I've done wrong and I need to pay the price. I've wanted so very much to have it all out on the table for a long time now, but it seems like every time I got up the nerve to tell him, there would be a fight and words would be said, and I would get scared. Since this all came about, my H has wanted every detail of my affair--# of times we had intercourse, what types of sex we had, how I liked it, how long it took, noises made, touches, etc. It has been very painful trying to be honest w/ him about all these things, and a very SLOW process, I will admit, b/c of me and my holding info back. I did not want to hurt him any more by giving him so much information, and to be honest, each time we went through it again, I felt like the horrible person I am, and he would tell me what he thought of me, and it would lead to awful words and me shutting down. I know I owe it to him to be totally honest, that is the plan to make recovery possible. And I want to, and I have been about this recent affair. I've told him everything I possible can remember and be honest. Now, I've got the horrible thing to tell him that I did it before, about 5 years ago. I am so afraid that it will be the straw to break the camels back, as they say. He keeps telling me that he won't leave me for anything in the past, but I really don't know if he can handle it. I am so scared. the truth is, I love him so much now, I have found something so special w/ him in the last couple months that we had not had in our entire marriage. I ordered the book, "Surving an Affair" and we both read it. My H actually read it in about 2 days. He said it helped alot. He has been so attentive and working so hard to try to get through this, and I love him so much for it. I never really dreamed he cared for me as much as he has shown me these last few months. I don't want to lose him. I want to work to be the most loving and faithful wife to him that has ever walked the face of the earth. I am just so afraid that he will walk and I will lose the only person that I should have ever allowed in my life. I guess I just needed to vent, b/c I have asked my mom to come tomorrow so I can take him to a motel and let him know it all and see what happens. I'm really scared.
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WS - Me 39
BS - H 38
Married - 18 years in March
children - 3 wonderful boys, 15, 13, 10
What I want: My life back before I turned into a terrible, destroying person. I never DREAMED I would betray my husband! and then I did it twice.

Forgiveness is about the past.

Recovery is about the present and the future.

I am dealing with one affair which is far more upsetting than perhaps 50 instances of physical abuse, including being thrown down when 7 months pregnant, having my forehead pushed in so severely that I have a visible lump 6 years later, and two chokings.

My focus with the physical abuse was on forgiveness. By the time he broke my arm, I was so practiced at forgiveness that it wasn't even a struggle!

With the affair, I could not, would not forgive. Now forgiveness isn't an issue. I'm more focused on the present -- how do we rebuild an intimate enjoyable relationship? This is a TEST. A TEST can fail. If he can't meet my ENs or I can't meet his, then we need to DV. It's as simple as that. There is no virtue in enduring a bad M.

<small>[ January 22, 2004, 11:04 PM: Message edited by: broken heart and arm ]</small>