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I need help really, really bad.

121K views 356 replies 92 participants last post by  IIJokerII 
#1 ·
I'm 52 years old, have been married for 30 years and have 4 kids (8,10,12 & 14). Never cheated on my wife once ever. Lied to her about stopping smoking many times, stare at attractive women once in a while, but never, ever touched. My wife has been home many years raising our kids while I worked. She recently got a job as a school crossing guard, and all of a sudden has developed a social life again.
Yesterday, she dropped the bomb shell on me. She met a guy last September, started off casually with coffee at the diner for 4-5 weeks, a few days a week. Last get together, they jumped in his truck took a ride. Kissing, touching led to unprotected sex. She says she cried as soon as they got intimate and stopped doing it very quickly, at which point the guy yelled at her "why'd you start something you couldn't finish?". He had giver her a TracPhone which she eventually gave back so they could call each other and set up meetings without me knowing about it. Since this ended back end of last year, he disappeared. Can't find him by name, and he was on Long Island for work and had North Carolina plates. Said he loved her and wanted her to leave me. Things haven't always been good with us, normal marriage issues over the years, but never like this. She says this is the first and only time she's ever been with another guy since she met me. To make things worse, she now tested positive for Herpes 2, which I got tested for this morning and am awaiting results.
I don't have any friends to talk to about this, and have a lot of mixed emotions. Don't know if I'm more mad at the picture in my mind of them having sex in the back of his Denali, or the fact that she now has a disease she may have given me. It disgusts me to picture her naked with another guy, and all the things that led up to them getting physical that day. Also mad that I may never be able to have sex with her again because of the Herpes, and can't picture myself getting intimate with her, while I'll picture them together in my mind. This whole thing really rots. I feel like if I find him I'll kill him. I'm mad, embarrassed, grossed out, depressed and a little numb. When she told me yesterday in tears, I held her close and told her people make mistakes and as long as you learn from them we can work it out. By the time I got home from work, I was very angry, took my wedding ring off, and couldn't sleep at all last night, again picturing my wife naked, touching a strange guy is killing me.
Please help with some practical advice, as my life as I knew it just fell apart.
Thanks,
Larry
 
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#325 · (Edited)
Larry,

I'm sorry for what you're going through. No one wants to end up with an STD, but I think her betrayal of your marriage is blowing this up in your mind to be much worse than it really is.

An estimated 90% (stats from the CDC) of the population has some form of herpes (either Type 1 or Type 2). And yes, you CAN get either type in either place -- it's just more common for Type 1 to be oral and Type 2 to be on the genitals. But a woman who has Type 1 (cold sores) could perform oral sex on you and you could still end up with it on your genitals.

The CDC estimates that 45 million Americans have Type 2 herpes. So there's a good chance that someone you date in the future may already have it.

I'm sure none of this makes you feel much better, just trying to help put some perspective on this.

My best friend's husband has genital herpes. She confided in me when she was about to deliver her baby because the doctors had to take extra precautions to be sure she had no active outbreak (vaginal delivery). They have been married for 14 years and she has never contracted it. The whole "shedding" theory is controversial at best.
 
#331 · (Edited)
Sorry to re-post... but Larry, did you read this post of mine (below) at all?!?! You're making a mountain out of a molehill. 90% of the population has some form of herpes (type 1 or type 2). Your wife may have ALREADY HAD IT and you never even knew! You're stressing out over it, yet you HAVEN'T HAD ANY SYMPTOMS!! Not a SINGLE one... That's how it spreads... No one knows they have it!! C'mon Larry...

You really need to educate yourself (away from the "scare" internet sites) on just how pervasive and insidious this disease is. Almost EVERYONE has some form or another of it. H*ll, you or your wife probably already had it and never even knew. 1 in 5 Americans has it (according to the CDC).

And forget the whole "shedding" theory. Anecdotally, most docs have PROVEN that the disease was contracted when someone was "symptomatic" but didn't realize it. You really are falling prey to scare-mongering. Ditch the internet and its outdated herpes information. As I pointed out in my previous thread, I think my friend would have gotten it through "shedding" after 14 years of marriage. It just doesn't happen that way.

If you're getting ready to have sex with someone, and they have WEEPING LESIONS (on their mouth or their genitals), you should probably postpone it. Otherwise, you're in the same boat as the rest of us -- you just "can't know." Stop dramatizing this. Jeez... it's not the end of the world. We're not talking AIDS or Ebola...
 
#328 ·
Larry you got herpes. WHO cares. It's not the end of your life, you should of known when you made the decision to stay with your wife this is going to happen. Which husband has sex with a condom, you clearly knew that you were going to stop using the condoms, stop acting like you didn't know. Seriously you are acting like a big baby.

When you decided to take the wife back and you forgave her you knew exactly what you were doing.

You should of divorced and moved on if you were that concerned about the disease or the infidelity. Obviously you didn't care enough for either as you took your wife back, rug sweeping and didn't make her accountable for the affair.

I don't know why you took your wife back because clearly in your comments the kids was not the reason, so what, YOU love her. That's the only reason? Anyway it is TOO late. Your stuck now with your wife and your herpes. Everyone here warned you and try to get you to listen to reason and you decide to do whatever you felt like and ignore everyone. I still don't understand why. Yeah divorce is the easy path (you said it) you should of did it.

If you shoot yourself by accident you can't take it back man, deal with the consequences of your decisions. You shouldn't be mean to your wife now and treat her bad, she didn't do anything to you at this point. As far as you should be concerned you FORGAVE your wife and moved past it.

This is why everyone told you to do numerous things before R, but you did not listen. So now deal with the bad decisions you made. UGH!!!

Seriously you should not be upset and just be happy. You have your wife and family together and she seems to be faithful at this point (we think, you think). So if that is the case, calm the phuk down and move on man, no reason to hash old crap up.
 
#329 ·
What do you know about this Samus? And who the hell are you to blame me for any part of this?
Also when you say "you should of did it", correct grammar is "you should have done it". Get a dictionary.....
I'm not stuck with anything I don't want to be stuck with, except for bad memories.
You have some questionable bedside manner man. Its not what you say, but how you say it. You sure picked the wrong way to say it, and to the wrong guy.
Seems like you're on her side defending her. She started this, and I'm the recipient. It all flows downhill. How I chose and choose to deal with it is my prerogative (SAT word), but don't reprimand me for my decisions. I appreciate the advice form everyone here, but it is varied and sometimes 180 degrees apart. Everyone has a different perception of what's right and wrong, and how to deal with things. I'm not complaining and I'm not an immature cry baby. Just dealing with the anger, distrust and reality as best I can.
Also I never forgave her, and maybe never will. I'm still trying to understand her. Understanding has to come before forgiveness.
And don't ever tell me to calm the phuk down. I'm pretty phukin' calm considering what I've gone through and am going through right now. And I'm not the one hashing old crap up. I'm only posting new events and answering questions to some folks here who actually give a crap about me.
But thanks anyway......
 
#330 ·
Larry,

It's an open web based forum. The only qualification you need to give advice is a connection to the web. Sometimes it can be helpful to use the ignore feature. For what it's worth, I think you're doing the well for what you're trying to accomplish, under the circumstances you've been dealt. Go ahead, vent...

Best
 
#340 · (Edited)
Kudos to you turnera for your honesty! :smthumbup:

Practically everyone I know has herpes in one form or another. I dated two men (LTRs) with herpes, never contracted it. Gone are the days of the BIG, DREADED "DISCUSSION" :

"There's something I must TELL you. I have HERPES."
*Gasp* *Silence*
"Oh... so do I! And so does everyone ELSE I know!!"

I'm getting a little irritated with all the hysteria surrounding this EXTREMELY common virus.
 
#347 ·
That's what the pharmacist told my DD24 to use for her shingles, and it worked like a charm. A $5 bottle of pills was all she needed, after a doctor misdiagnosed her and wasted time and money on antibiotics.

My husband used to get cold sores all the time. Then he stopped drinking Dr. Pepper, and he hasn't had any since. My mom, a nurse, verified that the acid in soft drinks often creates cold sores.
 
#348 · (Edited)
Larry sorry to come across hard on you. But given 2 years have passed and you moved on rather quickly to rekindle your relationship with your wife I took that as some sort of forgiveness and acceptance that she has an STD.

Larry, I have Herpes and so does my wife. She gave it to me, but let me tell you a little thing about the disease from someone who has it. I had unprotected sex with my wife for over 3-4 years without contracting the disease. I knew she had the disease after 2 years of being with her and she telling me she had it, but I already fell in love with her and didn't want to leave her.

She got it from her Ex-Boyfriend who never told her. My example above is to show you it is rather very hard to contract an STD just by 10 second penetration, never mind shedding, etc....

I made the conscious decision to continue my relationship, because like you I love my girl and didn't want to leave her over herpes, which like a lot of folks have said is a non-life threatening disease and just an annoyance when you get a breakout. Yes there is that REMOTE chance you can die from it if you get something in your brain, but that is rarer then Ebola.

If my wife cheated on me I would leave her, because I don't have the strength or the will power to stick around and ya know, I wouldn't mind having some new putang <wink>, but I love my wife and I will keep on as long as we are both faithful.
 
#349 ·
Apology accepted. Only thing is, my wife got Herpes from screwing another guy while being married to me, not from an ex-boyfriend. Yeah, I took the risk and now I might have it too. By being intimate with her several months after she told me, I was trying to get things back together and back to as normal as possible. Don't confuse forgiveness with trying to reconcile. Won't know for sure for another week or two until the test comes back whether I have it or not. Irrespective of that, it makes it much harder to accept that I might have HSV2 from my wife's affair, as opposed to a prior legitimate relationship.
As far as having the strength or willpower to stay around, that's exactly what I'm going through now. I stuck around for about 2 years, and thought we were making some progress. My positive HSV2 results a couple of weeks ago set me back a ways, and has un-done many months of self-healing. I hope you can understand that our situations are very different, but I do appreciate your apology and candor. Maybe my possibly having HSV2 is not the main thing pissing me off. Maybe its what events transpired to my eventually getting it.
 
#350 ·
I think most of us understand your pain Larry. Don't think we don't.

I personally don't believe your wife is a bad person, nor is she the worst cheater we have seen here on TAM. Far from it. What sets your fWW apart is that she slept with a diseased scumbag. She had no way of knowing. That doesn't absolve her of responsibility, but does it make her worse than the average ONS cheater? I don't think so.

At least she has shown remorse and disgust in herself. We have several BSs on here who's spouses show no remorse or care at all.
 
#351 ·
I think after all is said and done, based on the time we have invested in each other and the advice of many of you here, that I'm really going to try and reconcile things with her and try to make a new life together. Knowing what I've got now is a lot less scary than what I don't have out in the world. What you said is what I feel. She's not a bad person, she's a good mother, has been a good wife, but she made a GIGANTIC mistake. I've made mistakes in my life (none like this) but she never kicked me out or left me for them. I think if I'm more understanding, and stop re-hashing this with her, and she has an understanding of my expectations, we can make this work. I think I just need more time to get this out of my head, or at least find a place in my head I can store this away without constantly thinking about it.
 
#352 ·
Sorry if this has been covered already, but I can't keep track of all the details in all the different threads.

Have you and she been to good MC? Good IC? Have you read books about R?

You have been traumatized and need certain things in order to heal. She is a necessary part of that healing. If you are both genuinely wanting to R for a great new marriage, you have to do those important steps in the process. So you either need guidance from a good MC or you need to use a good book for guidance.

IC is for you and her to process those individual issues which aren't necessarily the realm of MC. You might be able to cover those items in MC, but maybe not.
 
#354 ·
Great news! The Western Blot HSV-2 test came back yesterday-NEGATIVE for HSV-2. Lab says this is the definitive test, and confirms (at least) that I did not have HSV-2 for 12-15 weeks prior to the test. The IGG HerpeSelect test was indeed a false positive and no need to get re-tested again. The Western Blot test tests for 14 antibodies and is personally reviewed by 3 physicians on site that must concur on the results. The IGG test tests for one antibody, and is done like a litmus test, looking at colors on a strip of paper. I am happy. Where do I go from here? Don't know at this moment...letting some good news sink in for a while.
 
#356 ·
Larry
Sir: While my situation is unlike yours it bears the similarity of a spouse who has done something that to most on TAM is unforgivable. I am 60, have been married for 40 years and while my wife cheated 2010/2011 I only found out this August, and while I am not yet decided, I find the path you are on most similar to my own. Don't know what will become of us, but I thank you for the encouragement to get through today and perhaps the next.
 
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