Ladyinblue

Hello everyone,
I'm new to this forum, and after a week of searching for answers-I am extremely happy and thankful to have found it.After reading some of the other stories here-its comforting to know I am "not" going crazy...despite having all these crazy mixed feelings.Writing down my feelings or sharing them really helps me. When my feelings are strong they tend to drive my actions, but later when I’ve had more time to reflect I usually regret my behavior. I'm trying very hard not to act on my feelings alone.

My husband and i both like to game, and occasionally its something we enjoy doing together after all the kids are in bed.We have been married for 2 years, but have been together for four years are in our mid thirties.We started playing this online game a few months ago and met other couples and people who we became friends with.I have never had any issues with him speaking to women, i dunno-i just never felt threatened by it.I have male friends who i speak to, but they are mostly "childhood friends" who practically grew up in my house and have all met my husband.I explained to my husband that i grew up with 2 brothers, and a lot of his friends were always at our house.The older we all got-the more they all became like big brothers and overprotective of me.I never dated any of them-ever.I just grew up around a lot of guys so its easy for me to hang out with guys and be like "one of the guys". ya know what i mean? Still my husband has never been comfortable with me talking to guys.I'm a really social person.At parties,i like to see people having fun...so i tend to be loud, and silly.My husband is like my polar opposite, he is really shy..pulls away if i try to get him to dance...and i usually back off and end up grabbing one of the kids instead to dance with.(wow getting way off track here).Anyway, i met some guys in game and started hanging out with them regularly-although not all the time.Since our computers are like 3 feet away from one another-its not like he couldn't look over and "see" we were just playing the game.So he meets this girl in game and tells me he she's really cool and i should "meet" her-maybe we could hang out.I saw this as him trying to control me by suggesting i play with her instead of the guys...so i was hesitant to listen to him.So he starts hanging out with her-except it starts to become very frequent.I started to become a little suspicious and jealous but i ignore it and instead brush my feelings-thinking i was just being insecure.I occasionally went along and hang out with them in the game, and after a while it didn't bother me.I just felt that i should trust him-and allow him to understand where i was coming from when i said that it shouldn't bother him so much that i had guy friends.Okay so she stops playing the game and a few months go by-she comes back and he begins playing with her again.This time its EVERY TIME she is online.He starts to stay up later and later and i start to notice he's doing more "chatting" than playing the actual game with her...

So of course red flags start to go off in my head and my stomach starts to act up whenever i see them playing together.I tell my husband he is talking wayyy too much with this woman and its starting to piss me off.He defends himself by telling me its "nothing" and they are just bull****ting about the kids, and game related stuff.He even reassures me by saying " you could even check my chat box, i have nothing to hide....."Still my stomach never lies...i have always been a very intuitive person so i can "feel" when something is off.But again, i ignored it. A few days later while i was looking for our lawyers #- I remembered it was written on an email i had forwarded to him so i went into his email.Low and behold i find 3 emails he had sent her talking about how he added her to his facebook, and messenger so she could add him too and he missed her and had felt sick but the only thing that made him feel better was thinking of the time they had the night before...which had been "great". I remember that night because i had taken care of him and even gotten up from bed to go get him an icepack for his head.The other one said how "they were going to have to be more careful in game because that was too close of a call" i guess i had almost "caught them" because i happened to be looking at his screen when she had sent him a message about something.....The shock and horror of finding out that my husband has betrayed me by being unfaithful has smashed my world apart. A whole range of feelings have flooded in threatening to overwhelm me, I feel stunned, bewildered, confused, angry, miserable, helpless, despairing, and numb. I've thought about hurting him back or doing something dramatic like walking away.When i confronted him-he came clean ad old me everything.He admitted to exchanging Emails,chatting and playing online games from work,and having cyber sex on one occasion.It was the night i was sleeping over my brother's house babysitting-and i remmember him calling me and telling me he missed me and when i told him i was just gonna spend the night because it had gotten so late....he told how much it "sucked" and how he "hated sleeping without me".... Meanwhile he hangs up with me and starts cybering with this woman?
i don't even know if it was on the phone-or online.I don't even dare ask.....I saw her picture on his facebook and felt worst.She wasn't beautiful or had a great body.Just an average looking older woman.God i hate him so much right now.....

I know these feelings are just the signs of the pain and hurt within me and i know they need to be faced rather than suppressed.His betrayal has cut me very deep. It took a lot of courage for me to commit myself in this marriage. I've had a hard time opening myself up to him, not wanting to risk some of the more tender and more private parts of myself in love. I did share things that i would share with no one else. I allowed myself to be intimate not only physically but emotionally. Feeling betrayed, it seems as if the precious gift of myself has been thrown in the mud and trodden on or worse revealed to someone else. Something has been broken and I wonder if it can ever be fixed....
If it can’t ever be the same again, does that mean it’s the end of the marriage? Part of me thinks it will never work, but I want to find some way forward. How can i learn forgiveness and learn to trust again? One of the first things that I need is to begin the process of forgiving .That involves recognizing that he has hurt me badly, but choosing not to hold it against him and not to exact revenge from him. Forgiveness is a process, because you have to make a decision to forgive, but then you have to live it out, day by day, when the pain and anger come back or the doubts set in.I'll have to keep on facing the pain, find ways to let him know when i am hurting and what i am struggling with, without blaming him for it and try to love him as i had before.It will be a challenge but i am really trying my best here. I have this amazing reserve of love that enables me to forgive, because my love is stronger than the hurt he inflicted.

I think trust lies at the heart of a strong relationship. When trust is lost -we feel betrayed, angry and taken for granted. But what is trust? Trust is when we take as fact some "belief" we have, for which there is only partial evidence. For that very reason there is an element of uncertainty and risk involved. Whoever we are trusting may not always live up to the faith we are putting in them. The way I see trust is as something that is inspired in someone when they are trusted. You place the trust, let go, and believe they will rise to the faith put in them...I am glad that he has severed contact,answered my questions, and dealt with my emotions.All this is aimed at strengthening the bond that has been broken. It demonstrates a willingness to handle problems in a responsible way instead of trying to bury them, avoid them, or hope they go away. There are no shortcuts; the only way through this situation is to face it head on and deal with it. Even then, it will be difficult.

Certainly, neither of us wants to drag this out; it's so painful and uncomfortable that we want it to be over quickly, but it can't be rushed. So unless we are both willing to commit to honesty and to investing the time and energy necessary to deal with all this, We're unlikely to make it together; or if we do, the emotional distance from the lack of commitment to doing what's necessary will lead to a deadened, meaningless marriage.I still want to believe there is hope that by actively working together, we can come through this with a stronger relationship and greater trust than we had before. A crisis like this provides us with a chance to "get it right" something i didn't really do in the first place when i had a kind of "blind trust" and just assumed everything would work out all right. If we can learn from it and devote ourselves to developing a strong bond based on complete honesty and a commitment to fairness and equality....then some good will come of all the pain we are going through now.I know this though....Unless we are willing to meet our own needs, we won't be able to make this work-no matter how much we both want it to work.He may have to accept that i may not be "the one" for him or he may not be "the one" for me. Unless we are both willing to have the courage to take a closer look inside ourselves and understand what we REALLY want and "need" to be happy, we will never be able to express it honestly and openly to one another.I honestly don't know what his needs are, or what mine are at this point anymore.This just happened last week, and we have spent hours on end talking and crying.We agreed that we would try to work this through.But i feel as Its as if we are just trying too hard to be "happy" like it never happened...its our way of attempting to minimize the full scope of this situation by avoiding the "real issues" within us that caused it...There is such a wide range of emotions im constantly bombarded with from one minute to the next- i just can't help it.He asks me what is wrong and when i begin to be honest and tell him what im thinking or how I'm feeling, he gets really upset and tells me how sorry he is for being so stupid.He tells me how he's poured out his heart and has told me everything and gotten on his knees crying and begged for another chance...and he doesn't know how else to "prove to me how hurt he is and how much he regrets having almost lost me by having this online affair".....??? I feel like i just want to pull away and not talk about this anymore because he is trying to manipulate me into not allowing me to express my feelings by making me feel guilty about how upset it makes him whenever i am feeling upset.Its like does he honestly "expect" that i "not be" upset after finding out he's been leading this double life behind my back,sharing his feelings with a stranger-and investing his time and attention on a "virtual" relationship,putting his job-and marriage at risk while i am home raising his kids full time? It just makes the entire thing even harder...he didn't even consider the trauma the kids would have to suffer being put through another divorce or how it would disrupt their life.I dunno, i just look at him sometimes and i see a cold- hearted, selfish, deceitful person. A hypocrite with no values whatsoever....
*Maybe he is "really" crying over her, and mourning the loss of that relationship...?" How would i ever know? Anyway this is just a glimpse of what my mental chatter sounds like inside my head right now.My stomach has been in knots since last week, any suggestions for dealing with an anxious stomach? For those of you that have actually made it this far reading,Thanks you for letting me vent....



Lost and confused....
LadyinBlue