[bobbieb65]

My first post, so I'll provide a lot of back ground, bare with me:
me 47yrs, husband 44, one adult child still at home
dated 19mns b4 getting married, had child 5 1/2mns later
married 20yrs 6mns...in R for 20mns, drama began 2yrs ago.

H has always had a problem with attention seeking and CL, even while dating. After we were married and had our child, he seemed to back off from his bad behavior or at least I didn't know about it...he stopped bragging about how someone that liked him at work or hit on him, claims he was just trying to make me jealous During the earlier years we mostly fought about his drinking, yes he had/has a problem with alcohol, and money. I think that I can only remember him taunting me about one girl that worked with him at his second job that had a crush on him but most likely the other way around. Anyway, as usual, I told him he could leave at any time if he felt that I wasn't what he wanted anymore...I never have been the jealous type and was not into playing games

When our child turned 4 I gave my H a choice, his family or an alcoholic beverage. It took a lot of fighting and about a year b4 he stopped drinking. He didn't drink at home for the next decade, what he did away from the house I'll never know but I'm sure he did some drinking.

Things really changed about 13yrs ago when he went to work for his family. He now had more time away from home, a whole new group of friends, more money and a lot more freedom. He was constantly taking trips that he claimed were required for his job and I couldn't go because our child had school...the trips always took place during the school year:scratchhead: Right away there was a girl that worked with him that had a huge crush on him...they had a sports team and she would show up and take pic's of only him!!! He only told me about her after she was fired...she apparently had a serious drinking/drug problem. A few years later, 2004 or 05, he started hanging out with some of his new friends and I was kept in the dark about who and what they truly were. He started going out after work to drink and of course lied about it. He would take some of these friends with him on these trips...one trip was to PR and he took a friend but also took this guy's GF and lied to me about it, I found the ticket stub and it wasn't until 8yrs later that he admitted that she went with

It was about 2008 he started drinking at home again, working late and hanging out with these friends. It was about this time he started talking about his work-wife...I accused him many times of cheating and all he did was gaslight me. Then in 09 I saw an email about how he was trying to pick up a girl at the bar where he stayed at an overnight work event in the city...less than an hour from home. Once again, no proof = crazy wife...claimed that the guys read it wrong and that he was being a gentleman by talking to her and her mother to fend off the other guys that were with him:rofl:

By this time we both had checked out of the marriage emotionally and were just going through the motions. Then he met a guy through a business dealing that upped the ante. My H started buying all new clothes, shoes and started wearing cologne. His trips became more frequent and almost always to LV. By the end of 2010 I knew something was up and that I had to do something. He went to LV again at the end of Jan'11 which was a weekend trip that I could have gone on but he said it was just business and I would be bored. He went with this new friend. When he returned, he was noticeably different, or should I say indifferent towards me. I started looking for evidence, but since he always kept everything locked up tight, it was fruitless. There were 2 more trips to vegas that spring and I was at the end of my rope with him. We were fighting like crazy, and I hated to see him come home at night. Then I got lucky...

He drank too much and left his email unlocked two weekends in a row in the beginning of May. I searched through thousands and thousands of email going back to the end of last year. I didn't find anything much between him and any girls but the emails back and forth with his guy friends were enough...going to strip clubs, posing as tv producers while in LV, and so on. Of course when I showed him the lies started to roll. I then hacked into his cell phone and found some flirty texts between him and girls he does business with, nothing confirming that they were having an affair, but close enough.

By the end of the month, I was done. We had the biggest,end of the world fights we ever had. I told him it was MC or D. He chose MC, his mistake. By the way, the unknown to me OW got a DUI on the same day we had this blow out! KARMA:smthumbup:

On June 6th, two days before our MC sessions are to begin, I find a pic on his phone of a women w/o any message. I of course ask and get the standard answers...I don't know who it is, didn't know it was there, people send me stuff all the time and I can't control it. Two days later MC started...I'll just skip to the part where he agreed to go transparent and give me full access to all his many email accounts and cell phone and phone records. During this time, he had the girls that he was flirting with before and now a new work wife. He minimized the flirting and the work wife to not only me but also our MC. Things move along at a snails pace because he didn't consider anything other then actual sex to be cheating. It was almost a month before I was able to see his detailed phone bill and strangely enough the account locked up a month later but by that time I had down loaded the call longs from Aug 2010.

So I kept chugging along...snooping and checking his emails, found the search log history on his 2 gmail accounts (he was real surprised by that one!) I found out so, so, so much but no proof of an affair, just a lot of bad behavior which in itself was bad enough for me. It took awhile to go through the all the call logs of the past year, but I did it. I found a LV number that kept showing up when he was out there and even a couple of times when he was home. I honestly didn't think much of it because he does work out there and has a direct line (that now ring our home phone if anyone tries calling it) and has business contacts there. The day I found these we had a MC session and didn't bring it up because I though it was nothing. He actually came home with flowers because he could sense that something was off with me at counseling. He was so right...when I got home I ran the phone number and came up with a girls name. I still didn't think too much of it but was concerned because some of the calls were very late at night.

So, he walks through the door with the biggest, most beautiful flowers I've ever seen and I ask, "who's XX from LV?"

I am going to post what I have written so far because this is getting wayyyyy toooo long and I need an intermission...but I'll be back

xoxo
bobbieb65

 

[bobbieb65]

I'm back....

So I ask who XX in Vegas is...his face goes white and he looks like he's going to be sick. I start crying and he walks over to me and says, "if you really want to know the truth, I'll tell you the truth." What follows is a story that sounds reasonably plausible but would not explain the calls.:scratchhead: He ends by saying, "if you don't believe me, call her and she'll tell you the same thing." It ends by me leaving and not coming home until the next day. I sit with this for a few days but don't believe it. Four days later, I call her. Through her I find out the real story about how they met, how many times they saw each other but I didn't know what she did for a living. She assumed that he told me that she was a stripper but I guess he forgot about that little fact He met her during the Jan '11 trip and saw her during his return trips over the next few months. They exchanged texts a few times a week and he called her twice from home, within the first week of meeting her, and then just called her when he was in LV. So I heard excuses and different reasons over and over again all varying to some degree but he always claimed that nothing happened. He also told her after the last time he was out there that he would not be back to see her for a while and had no further contact on his end. She did send the picture and texted him that her mother had died a few weeks later, btw, her mom's alive and well

As fall turns into winter and MC continues, I turn my attention towards the work wife. I heard a vm from her that sounded too overly friendly. I have heard other employee vm to him and they didn't sound like that. She decided that the company should have a Christmas party and planned it herself. Well that was interesting...when I introduced myself to her I said, "oh you must be the work wife". I watched the interaction btween them and came to the conclusion that she had an employee/employer power crush on my H. I made sure that see knew that my H was off limits. After that, her vm tone was all business although I still wanted her gone.

So 2012 begins with nothing knew, same old same old, trying to R and H doing a 180. He comes clean about what happened betwn him and XX...they made out and did some heavy petting during the vip lap dance she gave him the last time he saw her. She also invited him to get together after her shift was over. I asked him what he could have been thinking when he allowed her to kiss him, I told him maybe she just finished making out with someone else, or what if she had just given one of her regulars a bj and then makes out with you?:rofl:

Now, almost a year earlier when he was out there, he called me the next day after they were at the SC and tells me that him and the group of people he was with got food poisoning. The people he was with that night, including a girl, all ate at a private function that evening and then headed out to the SC. Now, he left out the part about the SC of course. There was 4 people that were supposed to leave that day but couldn't bc they were too sick. My H wasn't leaving until the next morning so since they had already checked out of their rooms the took over his. He wasn't as sick as them but wanted to sleep in but since there were 4 other people in the room, with one bathroom, he went walking around until his next meeting. He had called me in the morning when they showed up at his room and then called me a little later while he was walking around. I do have phone records showing him calling back and forth with this friend while they were in his room. So would he have met up with XX after her shift that night if he didn't get sick, don't know. I guess we'll call that one a karma-catch 22.

I did go to a clinic and got tested for STD's, and I do have oral herpes but most people do. He's lucky nothing else showed up.

We made it through 2012 with no new trickle truths and H has now done a 360. The work wife was fired last fall and I felt a heaviness lifted from my shoulders. I still have issues from what has happened but am trying to move forward.

I know most of you that have taken the time to read my posts are shaking their heads and questioning why I would stay with someone like this.:scratchhead: I question myself at times and am still on the fence, one foot holding the door open. I have been able to get past the attention seeking cheating and even the possible one night stand(s). Our MC doesn't think he fits the profile of a man-*****, he thinks he just likes to flirt. We've been on almost a dozen trips together in the last couple of years and there has been two times that he had too much to drink and got overly friendly with women, in my opinion. The first one happen while he was gambling and was chatting up an attractive girl next to him, I was sitting on the other side of him. There was a guy standing behind her and we all assumed they were married. Even though the whole table was involved in conversation, my H kept leaning over and talking in her ear and she would occasionally touch him on the arm. I told him to back off and he did, I thought he was engaging in too much one on one with her while holding my hand. It was really strange...he didn't think he did anything wrong but I saw it differently.

The next time this happened we where on anniv trip. He had too much to drink before we left for dinner. I didn't know that he had that much but by the time we walked to the restaurant he was pretty lit. There was a very interesting event that took place on our way from the pool to our room and then when we got to the restaurant that I will tell at another time...my H scored some points with that one. So we're sitting and a little blonde waitress comes to our table and she happened to be from the same country as my H's family. Well he starts chatting her up and it gets very uncomfortable and she keeps looking at me for help. I get the H to back down and he does. He came across as very creepy and started looking like he was going to be sick. I had to assist him walking back to our room. Needless to say, he no longer over serves himself and has not engaged attractive women in conversation since.

He now understands that what he did, even if it was just talking/flirting with someone he finds attractive, is indeed cheating. He has given up the bad group of friends and does not go out without me. No overnight or out of town trips unless I go with. He truly regrets what he allowed to happen btween him and XX. He has made vast improvements but there is still a ways to go. We both have our own problems and even some of the same issues to deal with. Our MC commented that she has no idea how on earth we found each other but we couldn't have been better matched.

Now what I'm having a problem with is closure. I've been able to get past the cheating behavior that occurred years ago, everything prior to 2011, I never was threatened by it. The last work wife was no longer an issue once she was fired last fall. Maybe I was able to let that go bc I saw the interaction, read the emails, and heard the vm myself and could come to the conclusion that, although he enjoy the attention, it never went any further. It's the vegas skank that's a problem, and why? Is it because the only exchange between them was a call log, no emails, no text nothing I can judge the level of the relationship by? Or is it because this was the only one that went physical? I've googled her a saw a pic, besides the one on his phone, and yes she is pretty, she is a dancer after all. I thought about looking her up next time we're out in LV and maybe that would allow me to move on. I may not be able to get past the H's infidelity this one last time, IDK.

Oh, and the karma God's are watching over me...not only did XX get a DUI on the same day we had our relationship altering fight (b4 I knew anything about her), but within 14 months later, one year exactly from the night I called her, she got a 2nd DUI and driving on a revoked license:rofl::lol::smthumbup:

Don't kill me on here, I'm far from perfect and did my share to destroy our marriage, but I never stepped outside the lines. Like they say, there is always 3 sides to every story...