# Still suspicious of everything



## marriedforlife09 (Mar 25, 2011)

My husband had an affair last year. There were some really unusual circumstances. He received a large sum of money at one time. He got in with the wrong group of friends, and next thing I know it's four in the morning and I'm at home with our three month old daughter. He had taken over a thousand dollars to his friend's house, and when I went over there to investigate, I was sure he was high, but he denied everything. He had never done "hard" drugs before. I had. He knew what I had been through as a result of my own substance abuse problems. I quit everything before we got together and never looked back. I didn't want that life then and I don't want it now. I want our kids to have better than that.

Well, I found out from some of his friends a few months after that what happened. By this time I was pregnant again, and we have a newborn now, too. What happened the night in question was that he spent several thousand dollars with a prostitute. Part of it was for sex, and the rest was the crack they smoked together. The prostitute was his friend's cousin, and a friend of mine who is married had been flashing him and hitting on him, too, but as far as I know (from what I have heard from several people) he didn't do anything with her.

I am desperate to make this marriage work because I love my husband dearly and we have two children together, but I am still bitter, angry, and suspicious of everything he says and does. To the best of my knowledge--and I feel like I would know--he has not smoked crack or done any hard drugs since then. He only recently quit smoking weed (he has been doing that for probably twenty years, since he was a young teenager) and still smokes that "incense" they sell in head shops and gas stations. I would not say he is an alcoholic, but it runs in his family and on the rare occasions he does decide to drink he doesn't know when to say when. I feel like him being impaired led to the affair and want him to stop, but he acts like it's no big deal. He also still has friends I don't like, but not the same ones, and he has started making female friends that probably are just friends but still make me suspicious. One is a high school friend he found on Facebook. Since she talks to me, too, and is happily married and her husband talks to my husband, I think it's on the up and up. The other is our neighbor's girlfriend, and he hangs out with both of them but seems to relate more to her than him. 

I can acknowledge my part in the affair. Our daughter, as I mentioned, was three months old at the time. I had untreated postpartum depression after she was born and was a miserable person to be around. I had low self-esteem because of the way I looked and because I felt like our sex life would never be the same. I also had trust issues, etc., because I was married before to a man who physically, emotionally, and sexually abused me.

We are extremely low income and can't afford marriage counseling, nor could we afford to get a divorce. I can't find a job, and we had to sell our car due to his marijuana addiction, since he decided he would spend $200 on weed instead of paying the ticket he got in the car or the power bill, so we have no way to go anywhere without relying on friends. Since I don't work and neither of us have family in the area, I have nowhere to go. I am not about to take my kids away from their father where they can never see him. He is good to them and it would break their hearts. However, I can't just move out and go live down the street, either. He does not make enough to pay our bills let alone pay child support or alimony, so there is no way I could survive with the kids away from him. I can't leave the kids with him, though, because of his drinking and drug use. He has insurance but I doubt I could get him to go to rehab.

I am determined that we will stay together somehow, but I am at my wit's end trying to figure out how to move on and forgive him or what I should do about the current issues. Any advice as to how to save my marriage?


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## TimT (Mar 25, 2011)

There is nothing short of ENOUGH TIME FILLED WITH THE RIGHT STUFF that will enable you to trust him again. (1) TIME. Even if he was doing everything 100% right in order to make you feel safe again, it would still take time for you to trust. (2) THE RIGHT STUFF. Time alone won't fix this, he has to be willing to do what's necessary to earn your trust again. If he minimizes your need for this, or gets defensive, or makes excuses, then my guess is that you will not be able to move toward a trusting, intimate relationship. You've probably found other helps online by now, but if you cannot afford counseling, at least make use of resources like marriagebuilder.com or (my own) affairhealing.com. I wish you well.


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