[The Judge]

I came to this website a few months ago searching for any information I could find to help me try to understand why my husband had his affair.

I feel that my husband has always had some self-esteem issues. Couple that with being passed over at work for many years because of favoritism, unethical bosses, shady company policies, and regular-old family issues over finances and you have a recipe for someone to go looking for a little “appreciation” and “feel-good” about himself on the internet.

A little background……….my husband and I were high school sweethearts. He was 18 and I was 16. We have been together for 32 years, and married for 27 of those 32 years. We have three young-adult children. We have been happy for the majority of our marriage, or so I thought. In June 2010 I received a phone call from my husband’s mistress telling me that she wanted me to know that she and my husband had been having an affair for the past 18 months and that she also thought that he was cheating on her with another woman! The gut-punch that was that phone call was indescribable. My world spun out of control. He was the only man I had EVER been with and he cheated on me! I confronted him about the call when he got home and subsequently threw him and all of his possessions out of the house. I truly worried that he might take his own life for those first few days. He realized what he had done and what he had just lost. He lived at his parents for a month and then we started to talk and reconcile. Please know that before his affair happened, I would have advised anyone to leave the sorry SOB and good riddance! But once you are in the situation, you see things very differently. I decided that for the sake of my children and myself, I had to try to save our marriage or I would always have regrets for not giving it everything I had. I prayed for help to know what to do. I cannot explain how I came to the conclusion to reconcile except that God helped me to see that I needed to judge the man for who he has been for 30+ years and not judge him on this one event. I have to say that he has done everything that a wayward husband could do about being transparent, shown all the remorse a human possibly could, cut off all contact with the other woman and has bent over backwards to be the husband he should have been all along.

My remaining problem is that it has been just over a year since discovery day and I still have the images in my head of him with her. I still feel the sting of all the lies he told while he was meeting her on his days off from work. There are days when this sadness just envelopes me like a warm blanket over my shoulders. He reassures me that it will never happen again, but I have these horrible twinges of mis-trust and pain.

Did I make a mistake in taking him back? …………will I always be in this much pain?

 

[The Judge]

Thank you all for your thoughts. I think we are all still in pain in varying degrees. I have never really had a conversation with anyone who tried to make their marriage work after an affair. Everyone I have spoken with took the "easier" way out, if there is such a thing and they are so bitter and hateful that they seem "stuck" in limbo about the past. I think most people will agree that it is much harder to try to salvage the marriage than to give up on it.

LuvmyH ~ I understand what you said when you feel like these are the best two years of your marriage. I am happy for you that you have moved on so well. I am just afraid that my marriage is in another "honeymoon" stage and it will fade and we will return to the same complacency and taking each other for granted like it was before my husband's affair.

Numb-badger ~ I remember the anger stage very well. I understand how it feels as do most people here. The only advise I can give to you is to just realize it for what it is and know that "this too shall pass". It will one day morph into "acceptance" and only then will you be able to decide how you want to proceed.

RWB~ It is strange to have made it through so many years of marriage and gotten past what most people think of the "rocky spots" in marriages only to come face to face with an affair after 25+ years of marriage. I totally understand what you meant when you said that it was puzzling that your spouse "could go from telling some other person that she/he loves him/her so deeply and meeting for hotel sex to being guilt ridden, shameful, and wanting me to take her/him back in a matter of minutes after exposure of the affair". How easily we (the betrayed spouses) were all thrown away at the beginning for the other person and then after exposure, how easily the other person gets thrown under the "provervial bus" and how you are told how little that person means to them. Upon discovery of their affair, I guess the cheating spouse finally realizes what they have lost, it is only then that they see how precious it actually was to them all along.

 

[The Judge]

Sammy~

I understand the desire for things to return to they way they were before the affair; but they can't. Something in the marriage before the affair is what led up to him having the affair. You are grieving (like I have been doing) for what your marriage was and will never be again. Trust me, you don't want your marriage to be like it was. This is a chance for it to be something MUCH BETTER. It is still fresh for you and you said you are still in the anger stage...........you need time to accept what has happened and then decide how to move on. Are you going to reconcile with him or have you decided yet?

 

[The Judge]

Sammy,

Believe me, I never would have considered myself to be one of those "special people" that would EVER stay in a marriage with a cheating husband.............but I did. Before this happened to me I would have advised any person to move on and let the sorry cheaters know what they have just lost!

My husband and I spent a month apart and then started to talk and reconcile. A little distance helped me realize how much I still needed him. We basically grew up together. Of course, he did not want to move out, but he had no choice. That is what I needed......to be away from him and for him to realize what life was like without his wife and family.

You said your husband reached out to her.....was it over the internet? That is how my husband started his affair........by talking to someone via the internet in a chat room. Someone that didn't fuss about things not being done around the house, etc. etc........ They all should have reached out to their wives, I will NEVER understand why they didn't. No one knows them better than their wives, but they bare their souls to perfect strangers.

Is your husband still in the home?

I think the biggest factor for me was how he acted after the affair. He was VERY remorseful and still is. He is very transparent and actually takes one of our daughters on any side trip he has to make away from our home......even it it is running to the store. That was his decision to do, not because I forced him. He doesn't even want me to have a thought cross my mind about who he might be meeting with.

Basically, my healing depended on his actions. Yours probably will also. He needs to do the majority of the work to win you back. I am not saying I don't still have those flashbacks, but everyone here tells me that a year isn't a very long time for them to fade. I guess my husband can see the look on my face when I have a flashback. When I do have them, my husband can tell and he just hugs me and reassures me that it will never happen again.

I understand where you are right now. I have been there.
I pray for your strength and courage to know what is the best course of action for you.