SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Bruce,

AP, happy? I doubt it.

And, all things considered, who would you rather be in life, you, or your husband?

I’m guessing, you.

So, maybe feel a little pity for your husband, and then it won’t seem so unfair.

FPP, you’re right I know you are but sometimes it’s so difficult.
I am so grateful for the days I can see the positive side of things, then I have a couple of bad days and I'm in agony.

As for AP it’s nearly three years since she last had contact with my H, she’s now engaged. She had no problem in taking pride telling me everything she has done with my H, at times lying and torturing me, before the polygraph I asked her if she’d had PIV with my H at the Christmas party, she told me she was that drunk she can’t remember what happened on that night, turns out they barely even spoke to each other. The anger I feel towards her is unreal, part of me wants to do to her as she’s done to me but unlike her I’ve NEVER been tuned down by a man in my life. I could never lower myself to be such a scumbag in order to seek revenge but at times I wish I could, it feels like she’s had her little bit of fun chasing my H, ruined my marriage and now she gets to be happy without consequences. POS!.

I’ve actually thought about that just the other day FPP, I thought had I done the same to my H as he’s done, I came to the conclusion that I would have to leave and D. The guilt and shame would consume me, I would not be able to look him in the face nor go through what I’ve put him through or he’s witnessed these past three months with me, I’ve been a mess and to see him like that would kill me.

I do have pity for him but it’s short lived.

Bruce,

Your marriage isn’t ruined, but my goodness, it’s being tested.

If we weren’t going to be attracted to others along the way, we wouldn’t need vows, and promises, and ceremonies.

Maybe it was those vows, and promises, and ceremonies; your marriage, that kept him from upgrading his membership.

" I’ve actually thought about that just the other day FPP, I thought had I done the same to my H as he’s done, I came to the conclusion that I would have to leave and D. The guilt and shame would consume me, I would not be able to look him in the face nor go through what I’ve put him through or he’s witnessed these past three months with me, I’ve been a mess and to see him like that would kill me."

Yeah, it sounds like he wants you, a lot.

Bruce I know how you feel and I have anger towards the AP too but mainly pity. She was/is unattractive and desperate and if you read the post about 'affairing down' you're seeing you are worth so much more than her. I won't contact the AP for details as I wouldn't be able to tell if she was lying or not.

Block her, do not look at her social media, focus on you 💓

As for details, your husband probably does not remember the exact details like mine. It sounds like he's been honest with you as far as he can - am I right in thinking he admitted to having sex with sex workers before or was that someone else? If so, he has no reason to lie about how many times he kissed her.

Have you both looked into IC yet? Are you based in UK?

FPP, you’re right I know you are! It makes perfect sense and it’s staring me straight in the face.

Evio, yes that’s my H! Historical cheating with sex workers, 3 times the last being 2009 if I remember correctly. I do think I’m strange because of the fact that it doesn’t really bother me, they meant nothing to him it was just sex and with the last one he couldn’t maintain an E. how he absolutely sobbed telling me about these sex workers upset me more than what he actually did.
This recent cheating has absolutely floored me though and there was no sexual intercourse or oral sex, kissing and touching only on and off for over two years, he self corrected and stopped messing around with her almost 3 years ago and told me all of this NYE 2024.
He did not have sex with her and it’s absolutely destroying me, mental how the mind works.
She’s 22 years younger than me and still not fit to lace my boots but she still managed to divert my H attention and that hurts.
It’s the wanting to make her pay that bothers me too, why can’t I let it go? I get so angry I literally shake.

I’m not in IC but I’m receiving CBT and am being referred for counselling after completing the course. H and I have agreed he will go to IC in a couple of months, the reason being nothing seems to be going in for us both at the minute, I don’t think the CBT is helping at all I can’t even focus on it. We’re based in the UK yes.

I think the counselling helps things go in better than CBT. My counsellor has been able to challenge some of my negative thoughts, given me a placement to vent and helped me devise strategies for the tough days.

My Husbands counsellor has made him look at his behaviour and acknowledge the devastation he has caused better than my explosive angry or sobbing has.

I know what you mean about the sex verses the kissing .. my husband had a serious of quick shags with his AF (with her kids asleep upstairs 🤢)rather than emotional intimacy but I hate the fact they sexted/texted as it feels more intimate in a weird way 🤷

I want revenge too and I'm not sure why, she didn't cheat on me, my husband did! I guess I just want her to realise what a lowlife she is but then I'd be lowering myself to her standards. We mustn't stoop or we'd lose our crowns, let's hold our heads high 👑

Evio & FPP,

Thank you both for your positive, uplifting words. I can’t imagine what life would be like without SI especially on days like today when my emotions get the better of me.

I’m in pain today, yesterday wasn’t good but I managed to get through it, today I’m hurting.

How do you accept and move forward with something that you don’t understand?, I don’t understand what made my WH cross that line, he tells me that ‘she was there and flirting with me and also lack of boundaries’. This answer doesn’t make sense and I think the answer is he wanted her and it crushes me.

How do I accept what he tells me about not being able to stop. From the first time he kissed her 6 months went by before there was another incident, then almost a whole year later another incident, then 4 months later WH entered AP house and ran off, then a whole 7 months passed again until the last incident. He says he couldn’t get away from her, couldn’t tell her to F OFF because he was afraid she’d tell me that they had kissed and touched, he says he was also afraid she might report him at work and accuse him of sexual assault, he said she was always flirting and tempting him. These are just excuses and I think the answer is he wanted her and it crushes me.

How do I accept that when he transferred department in Jan 22 he had no contact with AP for 3 months then saw her at the bus stop after her shift and stopped to give her a lift home, he said because he hadn’t seen her for a while and wanted to chat to her about work, I can’t accept this and I think the answer is he wanted her and it crushes me.

How do I accept that when I ask if he had any feelings for AP he tells me no, nothing. He tells me it was about how she made him feel and not about what he felt towards her he said it could have been anybody. So why wasn’t it then? Again I think the answer is he wanted her and it crushes me.

I keep coming back to days like this when I feel so hurt and heartbroken and I tell myself the reason he cheated is because he wanted her, he didn’t stop because he wanted her and went back for one last go because he wanted her.

Ouch.

I think that you'll find permission to accept all of that if you look inside yourself. If you give yourself that permission, I suspect that you'll take a step forward in deciding what's true and what's not.

It's so hard to understand and accept betrayal when you're not responsible for it. For BSes who have built the necessary boundaries, IMO it's impossible to imagine not having boundaries, and Shirley Glass said that As happen in good Ms when the WS lacks boundaries.

I suspect that your WS had a limerent experience. Limerence is a compulsion. I'm susceptible. When it hit me, I very much did NOT want to be in love, so the 1st thing I did was invite my limerent object out for coffee in the hope she would turn me off. The opposite occurred, but at least I had started getting to know her and letting her get to know me. We've been married since 1967.

In our 11th year of M, I got limerent again when I was away from home for a 14 week class. That was awful, because we all ate lunch and dinner and partied together. I went home for the weekend 4 weeks into the class and my crush was over the instant I saw my W. (My LO hooked up with an instructor very early in the class, so my crush wasn't going anywhere outside of my head.)

I met a half dozen potential LOs later in life. Therapy taught me by seeing them as potential partners if I weren't already married to my W, and I kept my main boundary strong. (My main boundary is to say or do only things that I say or do with my W beside me.)

Limerence is a very powerful force, but it's not an EA. If it hit your H, I can see him reacting the way you report.

That's a possible explanation. Even if it's true, it's not an excuse. Whether you understand it or not is not important.

What IS important, IMO, is what you and your H do about it. I'd advise your H to get therapy and make one of his goals 'learning to control limerence with boundaries'.

My reco to you is to take the betrayal into account without excuses. Don't minimize. Ask yourself big questions.

Is limerence a valid explanation?

Do you want to spend the rest of your life with your WS if he doesn't learn to contain whatever it was that enabled him to violate boundaries

Will he learn to contain his limerence?

Does he love you?

Is he in love with you?

Another reco: let your answers and your experience determine whether you'll D or R.

*****

The agony you feel goes with love and/or limerence (he might be your LO, too). I think the more one loves, the more betrayal hurts. Feeling the rage, terror, grief, shame, etc. lets it go.

Have faith in yourself to heal. You really can heal yourself. A good therapist can help, but you probably know that already.

Thank you for your reply Sisoon,

I have spoke to him about limerance and he told me absolutely not a single chance on earth he felt anything even close to that.
He did tell me something I found weird one day when I was obsessing over feelings, he said ‘I’m telling you this to prove I didn’t have feelings for her, when I masturbated at the time it was going off I never even thought of her’. First thing I did was burst out laughing, I said how does that prove a thing, then he said ‘it’s not funny I didn’t even have a wank over her and you think I had feelings for her’.

When I tell him about the way he acted and it seems to me that he wanted her he always replies ‘why didn’t I let her give me a BJ then?, 3 times I turned her down’. Or he says ‘why did I not have PIV with her?, I had the opportunity, I didn’t want to it felt wrong’.
But why didn’t he stop!?.
I get so confused, upset, distressed when I keep coming back to things that I can’t accept because the actions and words don’t match.

I know how my brain works, if I can understand something then I can process and then accept it or maybe I’m not seeing things right or clearly because H says to me everything is there for me to see but I’m not seeing it.

When I tell him I’m not sure I have the whole truth he tells me we will go to get another polygraph and he’ll answer any questions I want.
He asks me you do believe that I love you don’t you?…..absofuckinglutley not!. The sadness in his eyes is awful but no I don’t believe you can love someone and destroy them, I believe that you wanted her, but you weren’t brave enough to go through with it because you didn’t want to take the chance with her when you had a good wife at home, reliable, convenient, comfortable, I believe you wanted her but knew that you couldn’t have her, you didn’t have PIV with her because you knew she would have told me and you would have lost everything.
Even if what I believe isn’t true, it doesn’t stop me from feeling like I was the second choice #No2, good old reliable, faithful, loving housewife that does everything for her husband.
I get to feel like I was a second thought for the rest of my life, who am I kidding second thought, he didn’t even think of me at all.

BS only.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:32 PM, Saturday, April 12th]

TheEnd,

Thank you for sharing your experience, this is more or less how he describes it to me the same feelings too, he says he got himself in to a mess he had no idea how to get out of.

Last night when he got home he was devastated when I told him what I was feeling and thinking, he got emotional because he said he doesn’t want me to feel like that and it’s all his fault and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

I feel completely different today, haven’t even spoken to him about the A, just wanted to enjoy our morning together before he went to work and we did.

I would love to know how I start to feel like I’m the prize, that I’m number 1, that I’m the one again. I have no idea how to get my confidence or self worth back.

Sisoon,

You are definitely right about the boundaries, H said this how it happened 100% lack of boundaries. It seems such a small word for so much pain and because my boundaries are bulletproof I can’t understand how H let his slip, more importantly how do I know they won’t slip again?, why did they slip?, how will he put them in place?, what if he lies to himself again?.
It’s all terrifying!.