I'm posting an old post of mine that I thought might help you understand how your wife is feeling, since I went through the same honesty/dishonesty thing with my husband.
In October of 2002, I found out that my husband had been having a month long affair.
We had been having a lot of problems over the years, but (I thought) things had been
going better in the past 4 months or so, after we'd had a talk about separating, but decided
against it.
So in October, he told me that he wanted to leave me, that he just wasn't happy, it
wasn't my fault, that I had been great, but he needed more. I had asked him on
several occasions if there was someone else, but he kept insisting no, that he just
wasn't happy. He finally admitted to it and gave many excuses as to why it happened,
including that I had been gone too much as I was working two jobs, working about 60
hours a week trying to help pay off some bills we had accumulated. That we still had
nothing in common and still argued over the same issues.
After a very short time of making him leave for a week, I went to him and we talked
for a long time about the problems we'd had, how to address them and he wanted to come
home, he agreed to never see her again or have any contact with her, said that he was
only with her because she flattered him, she had given him her undivided attention, she
thought he was a god. ("she" was living with a man she had been with for 10 years,
who she was also cheating on). He wrote her an e-mail telling her he didn't want to
see or hear from her again, that we were going to work things out, I approved it and
we sent it together. He put a block on his e-mail so he would not receive e-mails from
her.
My husband and her work for the same company, but work in different buildings a few
miles apart. This is how the affair started, he has to send her orders sometimes and
they started flirting through e-mail and it progressed from there. He talked with his
supervisor told him what happened so that he wouldn't have to have contact with
her, the supervisor agreed to handle orders in the future. We started marriage
counseling and for the last 5 months things have been going pretty well, except for
the only real thing we've argued over, him not telling me when she has contacted him
or the two occasions his boss has made him do the order. We had an agreement
together and within the mc sessions that he would tell me any time there was any
contact. She has called and left him voice mails before.
Yesterday, I went to meet him for lunch and while sitting at his desk was checking his
e-mails, he had an e-mail order to her from Friday. I was furious, once again he had
lied to me by omission and I exploded once we got in the car, told him I was sick of
the lies and the dishonesty and his excuse was that he just doesn't like to bring her
up, he doesn't know how to tell me. Swore nothing was going on. I told him that we
had agreed in counseling that if he had to e-mail an order he was supposed to
forward it to me so it would make it easier on him, he said he forgot about that. We
argued for a bit, or should I say I yelled at him for quite a bit, went home, called in to
work told them I wouldn't be back today and threw down two "panic attack" pills and
slept the rest of the afternoon, then when he got home, I listened to him once again
say it wouldn't happen again, he was sorry, he was going to look for another job,
blah, blah, blah and I left and got drunk, (something I don't do)
I kept trying to pray about it, but felt a wall.
Yesterday, he tried to call me two or three times throughout the day, I avoided
answering. He left me a couple voice mails saying he was wondering how I was doing?
I sent him an e-mail which I will post here:
"I'm feeling like my husband wants to continue to lie to me and think it
has no effect on our relationship.
And that it if that's what he needs to do to keep himself from feeling
anything uncomfortable and let his wife feel the pain instead, that is
what he will do.
That he continues to tell me he's sorry and won't do it again, but as of
yet hasn't told the truth, but I'm supposed to believe him, because he
says it.
That he wants me to trust him, but gives me no reason to do so.
That he tells me he loves me, but continues to break my heart.
That he says he never wants to do anything else to hurt me, but
continues to do something that he's seen do exactly that, over and over
again.
That our relationship grows and grows til it feel wondrous and magical
and then I get slapped in the face again.
How do I feel, like crap."
When I got home last night, he said he wanted to show me something he had been
working on all day. He had set up a form to fax his orders for the next 6 months to
"her" so that there wouldn't be any e-mails and all that would be on the faxes were
the orders, no niceties, etc,
He said he knew that this didn't change what he'd done, but that he wanted me to
know he was trying to make things better. I told him thank you, but said I still didn't
know how to trust him. He felt that his omission wasn't as bad as a lie and I told him I
didn't see how he could expect me to forgive him for something that he didn't think
was serious.
He said that he did think it was serious, that he did think it was a lie and
a breaking of trust and he knew that he would have to build it up again. I said that I
wanted to believe he wouldn't do it again, but I've heard it so many times before. I
began crying pretty badly and told him that every time things got good, he would do
this, that it was like riding a roller coaster, where things were at the top, going
wonderfully and then bam, we drop to the bottom again, I said, that it hurt to say
this, but if he was going to continue to lie that I didn't want him here, that I loved him
so much, but that the lies and dishonesty hurt too much and I couldn't live with it.
He sat with me while I cried and then later he told me that he would never do anything
to hurt me again, that what he had done with her was wrong and he would never do
something like that again and he wouldn't lie anymore.
I want to believe him so very badly.
I guess I should be glad it's going as well as it is. The other thing that's really hard is she
lives 4 doors down from my sister and so any time I go to my sister's I have to pass her
place, a constant reminder. And I see her around town at least once a week.
He says he is going to look for another job, but first he wants to go to college so he
can do something else, so it will probably be a year or two. For him that may be ok,
for me that's a lifetime.
This is the hardest thing I've ever been through.
Help.
