Hi all. Here's the deal. I've been with H for 9 years. He drinks, he's depressed, but he's an AWESOME father and a great partner. So WHY would he do this??

He was out of town working for a couple of months. He just got home a week ago and he's now back out again for 4 weeks starting this past weekend. Last Monday he told me he cheated. I actually LAUGHED when he told me because he is the LAST person on this EARTH I would ever even suspect of cheating. He said that while drunk in a bar one night a few weeks ago, a very aggressive woman approached him. He said he was feeling good about the flirtation in the bar but before he knew it he was back at her place! He said the she performed oral on him to get him going, but he could never get fully erect. He said she tried to work with it anyway but he got embarassed and walked out. He did say that he was sloppy drunk when all this happened.... I'm not sure if I even believe that he didn't finish the deed. He's a fan of porn, so why would a "freebie" turn his crank?

He promised that this was the first time he's EVER done this while we were together. He's feeling sick about it and he's willing to do whatever it takes to "fix" things.

After having many days of discussions, I told him what *I* need is individual counseling for each of us and couples counseling for the relationship.

I'm just wondering....how does counseling REALLY help? And how do I get over losing that feeling of "MY man would NEVER cheat on me". That security is completely gone.

Thanks.

C-Dub

My reply may be a bit of a downer but at least he confessed the affair and wants to make the marriage work. I honestly think that if my H had confessed the affair to me right after it happened, instead of lying about it and saying it was just a phone call, I may have been able to forgive him.

As far as counseling goes, I believe that it works for people who really want to be in counseling. It also is very important to find a competent professional who knows what he/she is doing to help guide you through the process.

I have had great success with individual counseling, however, my H hated it. We went through two marriage counselors and my H only wanted to see the second one twice before H deemed our marriage "fixed."

I don't know how to get over the feeling of "my man would never cheat on me" because I also thought that my man never, ever would.

Hopefully someone else with more experience here will give you better answers. I just wanted to reply because I felt your situation was somewhat similar to mine and I appreciated your reponse to my previous post. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

Welcome to marriagebuilders. It is a good place to be. We all thought our partner would never cheat, but they did anyway. And yes, you can get over this.

I am concerned about his drinking though. How much and how often does he drink?

About his drinking....he drinks daily - beer, usually. He KNOWS it's a problem, but he chooses to drink anyway. His while family drinks. He also has undiagnosed generalized anxiety disorder and he himself even thinks he might be bi-polar. We're working with some issues here....the real problem (as is normal with alcoholic families) is that he's SO great 90% of the time. It's that 10% when he gets depressed and drinks liquor and gets more depressed, that's really awful.

I asked him if he thinks he would have gone for the one-nighter if he'd been less drunk. He said he wouldn't have. So, CLEARLY, the drinking impacts his decision-making. That's a reason I want him to have individual counseling. I want someone to help him understand that he CAN cope in the real world without alcohol. But I can't force him to stop drinking. So....

C-dub

Are you going to alanon?

The issue here is his drinking, not a one night stand.