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54 Posts
Very long story, but I could use some advice.
Background: Wife and I started dating May 19th 2004. I was 24 and she was 18. We had an instant connection, and both fell in love with each other very quickly. Wife is a beautiful woman, yet she had never been in a relationship before. As a matter of fact, I was her first kiss, and obviously she lost her virginity to me. I had been married before. My first marriage ended in divorce because of her infidelity. The relationship I was in directly before my relationship with Anna also ended due to infidelity on her part. I am a very loyal man and have never once cheated on anyone! I consider myself to be caring, loving, and I am not a bad looking guy. I have never received any negative comments from any of my sexual partners about sex, size, or stamina. I proposed to wife on May 19th 2005. She very happily accepted. We married on May 20th 2006. Neither of us could have been happier. We lived a very exciting and fulfilling life. We were both madly in love. But we did start to see each others faults. My fault is that, even though I consider myself a romantic, I show very little attention, especially when I am stressed out. I stress out often because I like cleanliness, organization, and I work in law enforcement. My wife’s fault is that she is very lazy (something she has very openly admitted). I felt I was the only one taking responsibility for house chores, and she felt I was not giving her attention she desperately needed. Those were our two major issues, and we spent years fighting about them. Other than that, our lives together were fantastic. We bought a house in May of 2007, our daughter was born in May of 2008, and our son was born in June of 2010. I was older and very ready for these things. Wife was happy with these things, but understandably felt like things just happened too fast. Both of us were working full time jobs, the kids were in daycare, and life just kind of became hectic. Both of us were stressed from our jobs, so wife rarely helped with chores, and I rarely showed her attention or gave compliments. Our sex life never really dwindled, and we always had an exciting sex life, but outside of sex, attention and compliments rarely came from me. Jealousy, however, was never a factor in our relationship as we both fully trusted ourselves and each other.
The Beginning of the cheating: After two kids and lack of attention from her husband, Wife was having some severe self esteem issues (though I always, always, always found her so attractive through our entire relationship, I just never conveyed that to her verbally or physically outside of sex). I have always had great intuition, which helps me a lot in my job, and I started feeling something was wrong. Wife starting texting someone who she worked with constantly (2,000 messages a month). As I stated, jealousy was never an issue. But after several months of the constant texting, I suddenly got “that feeling”. Though I let it go because I did not believe that Wife would ever cheat on me. But one day, the feeling became strong enough that I just checked her phone. I was shocked to see the messages she and this guy were sending to each other. They were sexting to include pictures. I confronted her and she said it was only sexting, nothing physical was involved. I spent a week very upset with her, but I did not make her cut off contact with this friend of hers. I am by no means a pushover, but I trusted her and she promised to stop sexting. This was May of 2011. Our relationship that was completely free of jealousy was no longer. She stopped texting this guy as much as she used to, but began texting her brother’s friend a lot. Anna, her brother, and several of his friends played a lot of role playing games together, many times at our house. Her brother’s friend was in no way attractive, would quit jobs just because he hated working, and mooched off of friends and family as much as possible. He paid for nothing because everyone picked up the tab for him. I really didn’t think too much about my wife texting him so much because he is such a loser, and once again, very unattractive. My wife is very attractive. But that feeling of something wrong was still there. It never really went away, and I became a jealous person. Even thought I had been cheated on before by others, I never brought jealousy or mistrust into new relationships. As I said before, the relationship with my wife was no exception. But that year after finding the sexting was filled with mistrust and jealousy. My son’s second birthday was in June of 2012. I took a short vacation from work to celebrate it, and my wife and I got along so well. It was just like falling in love all over again. On the day I had to return back to work, we fought because I accidentally broke her Kindle. As I said, my wife was lazy, and she just left things laying around. Her kindle was underneath some blankets on the couch, so I didn’t see it when I broke. When she told me it was broken, I was already looking on line for new kindle prices because I knew how much she enjoyed reading, but I made the comment “Hopefully you won’t leave your next Kindle laying around somewhere where it can be broken again”. Well, she took this as I didn’t care about her feelings and left us not talking to each other for three days.
D-Day: So my next vacation from work was for my birthday. My birthday is July 2nd, and my vacation started July 1st. As I said, I still had this feeling that something was not right, and being in law enforcement brought out the investigator in me. I checked her cell phone text messages log, and found her to be texting her brother’s friend until 1:30 in the morning. I knew she had him over occasionally to watch movies after I left for work, and she always told me about it, but since I couldn’t possibly imagine her doing anything romantically or sexually with this unattractive loser, I didn’t have any problem with it. But this first day of vacation, I asked her what time she went to bed. She told me 11:30 PM. I told her “That’s funny because I see you were still texting at 1:30 in the morning”. She told me that was true and she was not sure why she lied about that. I asked her if something weird was going on with this guy, and she said no. I asked to see the texts she was sending up until 1:30am, and she said she had deleted them. So I gave her the speech of her need to tell me what was going on. I told her I was not going to leave her, but I needed to know what was going on. So she told me of some of her cheating incidents. She told me one night when she went out drinking, she made out with a guy over a spin the bottle game. She told me she kissed the guy she was sexting a year ago, and she told me she had slept with the loser guy one time at her parent’s house when no one was home. I was devastated. My whole life changed that day. There were so many questions, so much anger, and so much disbelief. That was July 1st. July 2nd, my birthday, she lost her job. Law enforcement does not pay much, so her losing her job was a huge financial loss. Life was not good at all, and I was lost in a cloud of hate, mistrust, anger, confusion, denial, you name the negative emotion, I had it. The healing began about a week later. I let out all my negative emotions, but both of use wanted to work because we loved each other immensely. She explained she never wanted us to end, she just got caught up in the self esteem boost he gave her (he apparently was never shy about his feelings for her). The healing for me was a very slow process. I had mostly bad days, but I was beginning to have some positive feelings again. I had a feeling I was not being told the entire story, but I wanted to believe her. So, I occasionally let her know I felt something more happened, but kept it subtle. Obviously, there was a strict no contact rule set in place, and things were returning back to normal, if not better than before.
August 23rd 2012: While at a dinner party at my parent’s house, I noticed Wife had disappeared for a little while. I found her in my parent’s study, sitting in a chair, crying. I asked her what was wrong, and she did not answer me. I asked her if it involved her cheating incident, and she nodded her head yes. I then asked her a series of questions:
Did you cheat on me with more than one person?: No
Did you do things you have not told me about?: No answer, just more crying.
Did you sleep with that guy more than once?: No answer, but a slight yes nod.
There went my world again. We talked for hours and I found out a lot more than what she originally told me. The guy she was sexting, well, they never had sex, but it turns out she brought him to her parent’s house one day and made out with him. She said that’s as far as that went. She told me she actually slept with loser guy five times. Three of those times were in our house, twice on the couch in the living room and once in the kitchen. The other two times were at her parent’s house. She also gave him oral sex on two separate occasions. And here’s the kicker, of the five times she had intercourse with him, only two of those times were protected sex. I told her it was over, broke some things, to include my hand when I punched a wooden post, and then she begged like I have never seen someone beg before for me to not leave her. I don’t remember much of the next couple of weeks after that. I had a cast put on my hand and was placed on light duty, which meant day shift for a month instead of graves. My doctor placed me on anti depressants, anti anxieties, and sleeping pills. I began drinking heavily. We left the kids with the grand parents for a while since we knew things would be bad around the house for a while. I called the loser guy and told him to come to my house about an hour after breaking my hand. He actually came. I scared him so badly. He left the house shaking. There are a couple of reasons I did not hurt him or worse. One, I would lose my job. Two, I would go to jail or prison (people of law enforcement don’t do too well with the bad guys on the other side of the fence). Three, my hand was already broken. And four, before I told the guy to come over, I had my brother take all the guns out of my house. I also called the sexting guy, who did not answer his phone, and left the message that he should not ever contact my wife again.
Present: My wife has become a completely different person since all this has happened. She now does all the chores around the house. She devotes all of her time to me and the kids. She has given me her passwords to her social and email accounts and she leaves her phone in places where I can look at it any time I want too. I have found no evidence of things happening since, and that feeling of being lied to is slowly going away. However, I have more bad days than good days right now. I am having a near impossible time of getting the images of her with this loser guy out of my head. And since some of those things happened at our house, I feel like I am being slapped in the face every time I get home. My wife says she regrets doing it, says it was horrible anyways, and says she would do anything if it was possible to take it back. I can see such a huge change in her as can my family. I want to get past this and move forward, I just can’t though. I love her and want to stay with her, and she is showing her commitment to her want to be with no one other than me as well. So how do I move forward, get rid of the sometimes extreme anger, and begin to trust again? Any advice would be helpful, and please be respectful.
Background: Wife and I started dating May 19th 2004. I was 24 and she was 18. We had an instant connection, and both fell in love with each other very quickly. Wife is a beautiful woman, yet she had never been in a relationship before. As a matter of fact, I was her first kiss, and obviously she lost her virginity to me. I had been married before. My first marriage ended in divorce because of her infidelity. The relationship I was in directly before my relationship with Anna also ended due to infidelity on her part. I am a very loyal man and have never once cheated on anyone! I consider myself to be caring, loving, and I am not a bad looking guy. I have never received any negative comments from any of my sexual partners about sex, size, or stamina. I proposed to wife on May 19th 2005. She very happily accepted. We married on May 20th 2006. Neither of us could have been happier. We lived a very exciting and fulfilling life. We were both madly in love. But we did start to see each others faults. My fault is that, even though I consider myself a romantic, I show very little attention, especially when I am stressed out. I stress out often because I like cleanliness, organization, and I work in law enforcement. My wife’s fault is that she is very lazy (something she has very openly admitted). I felt I was the only one taking responsibility for house chores, and she felt I was not giving her attention she desperately needed. Those were our two major issues, and we spent years fighting about them. Other than that, our lives together were fantastic. We bought a house in May of 2007, our daughter was born in May of 2008, and our son was born in June of 2010. I was older and very ready for these things. Wife was happy with these things, but understandably felt like things just happened too fast. Both of us were working full time jobs, the kids were in daycare, and life just kind of became hectic. Both of us were stressed from our jobs, so wife rarely helped with chores, and I rarely showed her attention or gave compliments. Our sex life never really dwindled, and we always had an exciting sex life, but outside of sex, attention and compliments rarely came from me. Jealousy, however, was never a factor in our relationship as we both fully trusted ourselves and each other.
The Beginning of the cheating: After two kids and lack of attention from her husband, Wife was having some severe self esteem issues (though I always, always, always found her so attractive through our entire relationship, I just never conveyed that to her verbally or physically outside of sex). I have always had great intuition, which helps me a lot in my job, and I started feeling something was wrong. Wife starting texting someone who she worked with constantly (2,000 messages a month). As I stated, jealousy was never an issue. But after several months of the constant texting, I suddenly got “that feeling”. Though I let it go because I did not believe that Wife would ever cheat on me. But one day, the feeling became strong enough that I just checked her phone. I was shocked to see the messages she and this guy were sending to each other. They were sexting to include pictures. I confronted her and she said it was only sexting, nothing physical was involved. I spent a week very upset with her, but I did not make her cut off contact with this friend of hers. I am by no means a pushover, but I trusted her and she promised to stop sexting. This was May of 2011. Our relationship that was completely free of jealousy was no longer. She stopped texting this guy as much as she used to, but began texting her brother’s friend a lot. Anna, her brother, and several of his friends played a lot of role playing games together, many times at our house. Her brother’s friend was in no way attractive, would quit jobs just because he hated working, and mooched off of friends and family as much as possible. He paid for nothing because everyone picked up the tab for him. I really didn’t think too much about my wife texting him so much because he is such a loser, and once again, very unattractive. My wife is very attractive. But that feeling of something wrong was still there. It never really went away, and I became a jealous person. Even thought I had been cheated on before by others, I never brought jealousy or mistrust into new relationships. As I said before, the relationship with my wife was no exception. But that year after finding the sexting was filled with mistrust and jealousy. My son’s second birthday was in June of 2012. I took a short vacation from work to celebrate it, and my wife and I got along so well. It was just like falling in love all over again. On the day I had to return back to work, we fought because I accidentally broke her Kindle. As I said, my wife was lazy, and she just left things laying around. Her kindle was underneath some blankets on the couch, so I didn’t see it when I broke. When she told me it was broken, I was already looking on line for new kindle prices because I knew how much she enjoyed reading, but I made the comment “Hopefully you won’t leave your next Kindle laying around somewhere where it can be broken again”. Well, she took this as I didn’t care about her feelings and left us not talking to each other for three days.
D-Day: So my next vacation from work was for my birthday. My birthday is July 2nd, and my vacation started July 1st. As I said, I still had this feeling that something was not right, and being in law enforcement brought out the investigator in me. I checked her cell phone text messages log, and found her to be texting her brother’s friend until 1:30 in the morning. I knew she had him over occasionally to watch movies after I left for work, and she always told me about it, but since I couldn’t possibly imagine her doing anything romantically or sexually with this unattractive loser, I didn’t have any problem with it. But this first day of vacation, I asked her what time she went to bed. She told me 11:30 PM. I told her “That’s funny because I see you were still texting at 1:30 in the morning”. She told me that was true and she was not sure why she lied about that. I asked her if something weird was going on with this guy, and she said no. I asked to see the texts she was sending up until 1:30am, and she said she had deleted them. So I gave her the speech of her need to tell me what was going on. I told her I was not going to leave her, but I needed to know what was going on. So she told me of some of her cheating incidents. She told me one night when she went out drinking, she made out with a guy over a spin the bottle game. She told me she kissed the guy she was sexting a year ago, and she told me she had slept with the loser guy one time at her parent’s house when no one was home. I was devastated. My whole life changed that day. There were so many questions, so much anger, and so much disbelief. That was July 1st. July 2nd, my birthday, she lost her job. Law enforcement does not pay much, so her losing her job was a huge financial loss. Life was not good at all, and I was lost in a cloud of hate, mistrust, anger, confusion, denial, you name the negative emotion, I had it. The healing began about a week later. I let out all my negative emotions, but both of use wanted to work because we loved each other immensely. She explained she never wanted us to end, she just got caught up in the self esteem boost he gave her (he apparently was never shy about his feelings for her). The healing for me was a very slow process. I had mostly bad days, but I was beginning to have some positive feelings again. I had a feeling I was not being told the entire story, but I wanted to believe her. So, I occasionally let her know I felt something more happened, but kept it subtle. Obviously, there was a strict no contact rule set in place, and things were returning back to normal, if not better than before.
August 23rd 2012: While at a dinner party at my parent’s house, I noticed Wife had disappeared for a little while. I found her in my parent’s study, sitting in a chair, crying. I asked her what was wrong, and she did not answer me. I asked her if it involved her cheating incident, and she nodded her head yes. I then asked her a series of questions:
Did you cheat on me with more than one person?: No
Did you do things you have not told me about?: No answer, just more crying.
Did you sleep with that guy more than once?: No answer, but a slight yes nod.
There went my world again. We talked for hours and I found out a lot more than what she originally told me. The guy she was sexting, well, they never had sex, but it turns out she brought him to her parent’s house one day and made out with him. She said that’s as far as that went. She told me she actually slept with loser guy five times. Three of those times were in our house, twice on the couch in the living room and once in the kitchen. The other two times were at her parent’s house. She also gave him oral sex on two separate occasions. And here’s the kicker, of the five times she had intercourse with him, only two of those times were protected sex. I told her it was over, broke some things, to include my hand when I punched a wooden post, and then she begged like I have never seen someone beg before for me to not leave her. I don’t remember much of the next couple of weeks after that. I had a cast put on my hand and was placed on light duty, which meant day shift for a month instead of graves. My doctor placed me on anti depressants, anti anxieties, and sleeping pills. I began drinking heavily. We left the kids with the grand parents for a while since we knew things would be bad around the house for a while. I called the loser guy and told him to come to my house about an hour after breaking my hand. He actually came. I scared him so badly. He left the house shaking. There are a couple of reasons I did not hurt him or worse. One, I would lose my job. Two, I would go to jail or prison (people of law enforcement don’t do too well with the bad guys on the other side of the fence). Three, my hand was already broken. And four, before I told the guy to come over, I had my brother take all the guns out of my house. I also called the sexting guy, who did not answer his phone, and left the message that he should not ever contact my wife again.
Present: My wife has become a completely different person since all this has happened. She now does all the chores around the house. She devotes all of her time to me and the kids. She has given me her passwords to her social and email accounts and she leaves her phone in places where I can look at it any time I want too. I have found no evidence of things happening since, and that feeling of being lied to is slowly going away. However, I have more bad days than good days right now. I am having a near impossible time of getting the images of her with this loser guy out of my head. And since some of those things happened at our house, I feel like I am being slapped in the face every time I get home. My wife says she regrets doing it, says it was horrible anyways, and says she would do anything if it was possible to take it back. I can see such a huge change in her as can my family. I want to get past this and move forward, I just can’t though. I love her and want to stay with her, and she is showing her commitment to her want to be with no one other than me as well. So how do I move forward, get rid of the sometimes extreme anger, and begin to trust again? Any advice would be helpful, and please be respectful.