# I am now just another statistic



## storenut (Sep 1, 2009)

My story....

This is so hard to type and share, I am so humiliated. I had suspicions that she was, but I thought nothing of it. Just gave it up to having some last fun (partying not cheating) cause we are both about to student teach, be married and start a life, etc. 

I found out that my wife cheated on me. I found out just this week. The day after my Birthday. She was also with him the night before me bday. I told her about a relationship I had in the past. This woman at the time cheated on my bday. I was going to propose the next week. So, she know that this was always a hard time for me. Actually, I have been cheated on in every single realtionship of worth (3). 

We had dated for 2 years and are both seniors in College. We are both Christians and attend a small Christian school. My life has always been a good one. While I partyed and had my fair share of relationships, I never lost track of my goals and life. Much of my partying came in the beggining of college. While she was a wild child in H.S. and stopped in College. We had a great foundation and talk discussed so many issues. We changed this for each other, worked on our relationship. We did not force our relationship, we worked and got to know each other, etc. I am 27 and she is 22, so there has always been a bit of a "gap" in our lives (just were we are professionally, and how we handle things.)

We recently just got married in July. 

She started the affair about 3 or 4 weeks before the wedding. It started with a date, then led to kissing, then oral, then sex. It grow and grow with no willingness to stop. She made no effort to end it. 

The sex happened only a few days before the wedding. 

The night of the wedding it took everything in the world to even have sex that night. On the honeymoon we only had sex once. She was even with him the night before we left for our hm. While she says she did not have sex, she said she kissed him again on that night. After we got back from the hm things got better. Our sex increased, or inimacy increased, we talked and worked hard for eachother. I found out that she was cheating and that she was continuing it while we got back from the hm. she even had plans inline for the next 2 weeks. 

She tells me she doesn't know why she did...."I was just scared." "I got wet feet."


Like I said, I found out the day after my bday. I found emails and text. I actually thought it was just an EA, she then told me it was more. She told me twice that they did not have sex, just kissing and oral. I left for two days and came back and told her that I was willing to work on this and forgive. I made a contract with stipulations, rules, etc. (not a contract really, just things she would need to show or do) She agreed. I told her no more lies and she said ok. I asked her twice more if she had sex and she said no. Two days ago she finally told me she did. I told her before that if she lied again it would be over. She lied twice. I know she was and was giving her even more chances. She lied twice!!! 

I am a devote Christian and i think she is too. Regardless of what you think about that please help. What should be my steps?

I'm sorry if this is all over the place. if you have questions please ask....i'm just so emotionally drained I don't know what or where to begin.


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## preso (May 1, 2009)

For me, once that trust is broken... it is impossible to fix. The trust bond is shattered and in my opinion, cannot be fixed.
This is why so many people end up divorced after infidelity... to me its a waste of time trying to rebuild the relationship after something like that.... but many people try.

I think since you have not been married very long, you maybe are lucky to foind this out now and move on... meet someone who won't betray your trust.


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## COFLgirl (Oct 9, 2008)

OP, please don't get discouraged by the above post. Sometimes people have axes to grind, so to speak, and the advice makes you feel worse, not better.

True, it is difficult to fix a marriage after an affair. But it can be done if both partners are willing to do the work to fix it.

It sounds like it is too soon for you to know what to do and that is okay. Just take it slowly and in time you will know what is best for you, not what others say.


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## michzz (Jun 6, 2008)

I don't think t is an ax to grind situation. Your wife clearly is not ready to be married if she has no boundaries regarding faithfulness in a marriage.

I recommend you seek not a divorce, but an annulment based on marital fraud.

Do NOT have children with this woman.

In fact, get tested for STDs. It goes without saying, do not be intimate with her again without test results for the both of you in your hand showing neither of you are infected.

Your marriage has begun with a huge stain on it. I don't see how it can recover without real change on your wife's part. 

She has a hidden side to her that has no problem with hurting you.

Don't accept living that way.


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## floweredteacup (Aug 12, 2009)

I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but SERIOUSLY, it is good that you are a devote Christian, because you need to be "Christ-like" to be put up with your wife. She started off just WRONG,WRONG,WRONG!!!....Did I say she is wrong? Good, 'cause she is! I hate to say it because I know how painful it is to be mistreated and disrespected by someone you love, but she thinks you are a STRAIGHT SUCKER! Having ORAL SEX with some man and coming back to you AND then why is she doing all of these adulterous rendezvous on days that have some signifigance (sp?) to you (i.e. your birthday, wedding,etc.) 

Does she had trust issues with you before you were married and she thinks this is payback? I don't understand this.

No disrespect to you or your wife but a Godly woman does not take Gods sacred vows as a joke! I know God can help you to overcome this awful betrayal. Pray for her, too!:angel3:


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## Treadingcarefully (Sep 1, 2009)

*Stay or go?*

Very recently, my wife told me she had started to see someone else. And she wasn't telling me that it was over with him, she was telling me that it was over with me!
She told me that she didn't want me to hear it from someone else. She thought it was a virtue that she was being 'honest', although I said and felt, that honesty would have been telling me what was happening BEFORE she had the affair.
Telling me 5 weeks later, because she was worried the neighbours would tell me first, is not honesty.

We'd been apart for about 9 weeks, cos of some arguments that came from the blue, and turned physical (she hit me in front of our kids, and her Dad who was staying with us at the time).
I left, and she made no effort to stop me. She says now that she wanted me to stay, but couldn't say it. 

We'd had break ups before. She's very insecure about our finances. I'd been made redundant from a full time job shortly before we'd met, I was working part time when I met her, and still have that part time job, besides my own modest irregular business on the side, (which is finally starting to pick up now)

So, I'd work Mon, Tue and Wednesday... and my mother would look after the kids, and then I would mind the kids Thu and Friday (we can't afford full time childcare)

I looked for work, and got a lot of knockbacks, and so I tried my hand at teaching English to immigrants (low pay and irregular) and other things. 
Then I convinced my boss to send me on some evening courses for work, that I could also use to set up my own business... and I started getting into that. At first it was very, very slow, but I kept at it and now it's paying money, although the hours are unsociable (mostly I start work after I've put the kids to bed). 
We had frequent arguments about money, despite the fact that the bills were always paid, and we always had foreign holidays.
She resented the fact that I earned less than her, and accused me of not looking for work, which made me bitter about the put downs and the lack of trust. 
Arguments could escalate from the smallest things, and if I refused to be pushed around, I'd be thrown out of the house, which happened about ten times in the 4 years we've lived together. 

Usually, after a while, things would calm down, and she'd tell me what triggered it. This time she didn't. And when I asked she got defensive. 

For the first week or so, she asked my mother to come mind the kids instead of me, without consulting me about it. I took great offence to her asking my mother, and also in deciding it for me. She said it would free me up to have time for myself. 
after her dad flew home, I was back minding the kids during the day, and she'd leave the house when I arrived and come back just before the time we'd arranged for me to leave.
So we weren't talking, and I was so angry at her, that I wasn't in the mood to do much talking anyway. 

over the next few weeks, her mood changed and she started coming back and letting me stay for dinner Thursdays and Fridays.

She asked me to go to counselling, and I agreed. It wasn't productive cos it was just a history lesson, with nothing new and no proposal on moving forward (other than my small contributions) . We didn't go to a second session cos she says I didn't want to. But I don't get what part of 'when is the 2nd session?" sounds like "I don't want to go"... cos I remember wanting to try to improve things.

One day she came home, burst into the kitchen and asked ... is it over?
Now, she was very angry for whatever reason, and I said the first thing to my head, in reaction... yes it's over.
So she asked 'and what if in future we move on, and I'm with someone else, would you be angry? ' she mentioned some timeline... I think it was about a year or so. 
I said that if we didn't get back together then of course I wouldn't expect her to stay single forever.
I hadn't slept more than 4 hours in a long time, so I didn't even consider that this was anything more than just venting and pushing an argument.

the next day, it was like we didn't even have that argument. so I thought little of it. 

She eventually realised that I was being quite friendly and not hostile at all, and that when she sat me down to say that she HAD met someone and was in a relationship. But it was not cheating, because I'd said she could move on. 

Now, maybe she has a technical point, but to me, you can move on when you sit down and say it calmly to each other, and there is no open wound that you need to address.
Before that happens, you're just relying on a trick of words.

I mean, it's not like I got up one day and deserted her. 
I left after she was abusive, verbally and physically, and it wasn't easy to go, cos I have mixed but very strong feelings for her and I love my kids so much it hurts to only be with them on a part time basis.

So, it turns out the other guy is a wealthy farmer in his 50s, (we're in our early - mid thirties) and is married with two kids almost as old as we are, and has cheated on his wife before. 
I knew him because we were buying our vegetables from him, and now were renting an allotment from him to grow our own. 
He said he was lonely, and a workaholic because his wife drinks so much... (Okay, I feel sorry for the guy, but that's no excuse to destroy anybody else's troubled relationship.)
I know my wife is impulsive and easily led at times, particularly by father figures (she's dated a few guys about her dad's age) 
but this was new territory. a 4-5 week relationship with a guy, in secret, while we were still in limbo (although she didn't see it that way... but she's always been a cut and run type of woman when the going got tough.) 

5 days after she told me, she was telling me that she felt rotten and didn't know what love meant, and maybe she should leave the country and not see me or the other guy again. I had no faith at this time in getting back with her, so I just said, 'you can't live like that'. I miss the woman I met and fell in love with. I can't touch her heart anymore cos it's surrounded by broken sharp glass. Maybe someone else can touch it now, but unless you change, the same thing will happen and you will not be happy'.

I turned up uninvited to the house to tell her that I couldn't carry the bitterness and if she really was going to move on with someone else she HAD to avoid the destructive behaviour that had wrecked our relationship (it took a lot for me to say this to her, but I felt after 4 years and two kids, I had to try to make some sort of peace for us both)
Long story short, she tells me that she loves me, and we end up talking, (not long enough or cautiously enough, looking back, and also not honestly enough - she was dishonest about a few things.) and then we ended up in bed. I asked her first if there was any chance she was pregnant, and she said no. I had already seen that they had used some of my condoms from the box in the drawer, so i guess part of me wanted to believe that they'd always been careful. 

The next day she confirmed my suspicions about who the other guy was. Something about the way she said it made me feel weird cos she was talking like some teenager caught by their parents being naughty or something. Like, oh, it's all okay now and I can tell you. Must be nice to get the secrecy out of the way, but naive to think that it was somehow all okay now.
Sometimes, she seemed to regret it all, but then she would say, she didn't feel ashamed of the affair, but of the fact that TELLING me, had hurt me so much.
(again, the obvious questions don't seem obvious to her... does that mean you were going to keep it secret forever? How? unless you were going to end it soon anyway... which is at odds from the way she was describing the relationship, but she says he didn't hurt her and he was a good listener and generous - aren't most guys like that at the start when they really want a woman? the hard work comes AFTER the honeymoon period. The guy told me he was willing to take her in and the kids as his own and leave his wife, but he never even told his wife, and I doubt he would ever leave her. ) 

She had a tough time breaking up with him, which worried me. 
And the guy actually verbally abused me, and from what he said, she'd given him some line of b.s. to rationalise her own behavior. He thought I was a wife beater! (I never did nor never would hurt my wife. I have occasionally pushed her away from my face when she was screaming into my face, but I would never make a move to hurt, humiliate or scare her. In fact, she has seen me intervene when a neighbor was abusing his wife so she knows I have no respect for men who bully women.)
I think this is what she presented to him as evidence that she needed comforting from a bad partner. And he felt like a knight in shining armor coming in to save the day. Ignoring the fact that if she really was going through domestic abuse, she needed a friend more than a lover until she had found her stability again. 
He wanted her, and he pursued her, and she let him have her too. In our bed, with our kids in the house. 
She later told me, that she had assumed I'd moved on and had been seeing and sleeping with other women. 
I can't see any basis for that, only to try make herself feel less guilty, cos I wasn't even thinking about other women. I was still hurting from being separated from the woman I thought I would grow old with, watch our kids grow up with. 
I was a long way from falling in love with anyone else. I was still in love with her, but too angry and hurt to feel good about that. A lot of the time I wished I didn't love her so much. It would have hurt less. 

I don't know all the details, but I feel very weird about it.
I think she thinks she really loves/loved this guy and he thought he loved her, even after a 4-5 week relationship,

The day after she broke up with him, he asked her to at least meet him to finish it with dignity. I must be soft in the head, cos I actually agreed that if he was hurting she could meet him and firmly but fairly let him down. Boy do I feel stupid now. 

I found some text messages that have 'love you' in them and saying how she appreciated him in her life. She hasn't said anything about appreciating me in her life. She has said 'I love you' to me a few times recently, but I wonder if she knows what that really means. 

What sticks in my craw are some of the small things I became aware of later.
She told me on a Thursday... and I didn't speak to her the next day when I was picking up or bringing back the kids. 
On Saturday I drove to the other end of the country to clear my head a bit. 
I now know, that while I was clearing my head that weekend, they were having a 'family Sunday' which she said 'I couldn't imagine a nicer family Sunday'.

Family Sunday? His wife wasn't there. His kids weren't there. My daughters are not his family. And he was keeping the whole thing secret from his family, friends and employees. 
And what the hell was so special about that Sunday that she couldn't imagine better?
Was it better than the weekend where we climbed those snow covered mountains in Poland, with our first born on my back? 
Was it better than our picnics away? The fishing trips? 
The times we went camping? Cycling with the kids? Swimming in lakes? Or is all that simply not in her head anymore?

I can't imagine saying 'i love you' to somebody, and thinking that I mean it, and at the same time, I'm thinking of someone else, while they are out lonely and confused. 

The concepts of loyalty, dependency and looking after each other seem to be missing from this woman, or at least they come in very far below the importance of money. 

To make it more confusing. She decided to clear her head and go home to Eastern Europe for a month. Just her and the kids. She packed up and drove there. I gave her about $500 for hotels and gas. Then I find out that the other guy had given her a $300 GPS system to help her get there. 

Anyhow, 2 weeks later, she's in a car crash, the car is wrecked but thanks to airbags etc, she has minor neck injuries and some pulled muscles in her back. 

After a couple of medical check ups, she starts to feel unwell again,... and it turns out she's pregnant. She was going to have an abortion, but I talked her out of it, cos she's actually very anti abortion and her reason for wanting an abortion was 'i've done so many other bad things, one more won't make a difference' which to me, is not a healthy basis for any decision.
I did tell her that if she really couldn't have the baby, I would drive her to the clinic myself, but that she shouldn't worry about having the baby in terms of money or support from family to rear it.
She told me that the date of conception was about the time we got back together.

But just two mornings ago, she slipped up when I asked about a food craving, and she said, well, I'm three months pregnant. 
Three months? That's too early for it to be my kid.
I had prepared myself that if she was committed to the relationship, that I COULD raise a kid that wasn;t mine, but she'd have to be honest with me up front. And I had told her that. Now I'm thinking, she's just going to lie and lie, and try to get through this the best way that suits her. 
I deserve to know the truth if I'm expected to stand by her, and I don't feel that it's even on the menu.

I still have strong feelings for this woman. Love yes, but I don't think it's the 'I want to be with you' love anymore. I think it's the , 'I want you to have a happier life' type of love. I feel angry at her, but also sad. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think she doesn't understand love. I know I'm no expert, but at least I get the idea of commitment, and if you're going to move on, you have to end the other relationship first, in a caring way (unless you are fleeing a wifebeating nutter of course).

Some friends said we should go to counselling and that in time we'll get past it.
I'm not sure I want to fix this relationship. Maybe I want us both to heal as individuals, but not necessarily to be together afterwards.
I just can't see a way whereby I can believe that this woman appreciates me for who I am, not just some weight holding her back from being financially secure. That she would stand by me in good times and in bad, the way I stood by her in the tough times, and laughed and danced in the good times. 
I just can't see it, and part of me thinks it's just not fair to expect me to be forgiving about this. 
The problems then are, how would this affect the kids, and how can I afford to move out long term, and still maintain the financial support to the family?
3 years ago, she bought some land in Poland, and she pays the mortgage on that, while I pay the rent and bills on the place we've been living in here. It's roughly the same money, so I see it as sharing all the bills together. Thing is, for her, she can still save money at that level of spending, but for me, the rent, electricity, heating, phone bills, food and travel, some months took about 90% of my salary, so if I have to live elsewhere, I have to pay less to the rent for the house my kids live in, which will bother me. 
I haven't told many people about this. My mother knows, cos she still looks after the kids during the week. My Dad knows nothing, nor do most of my friends. I told a couple we both admire, cos they voiced concerns about some of the stories my wife had been telling them about me. I was pretty annoyed to hear what she had been saying about me. I'm no saint, and I will accept crtiticism for the things I did wrong, but I get really angry when someone starts adding fiction into the story as a way of making themselves look less bad. 
All of these things cut deeply and I still feel very little reassurance from my wife.
I also think that, if I leave, and people see she is pregnant, they'll think I'm scum to desert her in that condition.
I'm not the type of guy who wants to go dragging her name in the mud, so I don't like the idea of telling people ' hey I'm not even sure it's my kid, I left cos she was with another guy' 

Anyone else been through this want to add some advice. I'm already starting to feel like the whole thing was doomed from the start, and that perhaps the affair was natures way of saying, we shouldn't be together. 
And on the other hand, I still have those memories of two of us and our kids in a happy family home and thinking that we would eventually own our own house, and see those kids get taller around our own kitchen table.
Maybe, I'll just have to do that from afar. 
I know that my own parents stayed together despite their bitterness to each other, and I worry that if we stayed the same, we would raise kids in an unhappy house.


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## Treadingcarefully (Sep 1, 2009)

preso said:


> For me, once that trust is broken... it is impossible to fix. The trust bond is shattered and in my opinion, cannot be fixed.
> This is why so many people end up divorced after infidelity... to me its a waste of time trying to rebuild the relationship after something like that.... but many people try.
> 
> I think since you have not been married very long, you maybe are lucky to foind this out now and move on... meet someone who won't betray your trust.


You know, I think it is possible in some cases to fix it, but from reading the original post, I have to say, it seems like it was actually never healthy to start with, so what does 'fixing it' mean? 
I'm still in two minds about my own relationship following my wife's affair, and by nature I try not to be pessimistic, but in your case, based purely on what you have written, I can't imagine that you ever should have been together in the first place. That woman wasn't ready to commit, and it was a huge mistake for her to get married.
She has to change totally from how she is. IT has to come from her, not you. Nothing I read in your post says that she was ever any different, so what are you actually trying to recover?


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## StongerWithEachLesson (Aug 23, 2009)

Sure, we all agree that some cases of cheating can be overcome and forgiven, but that don't seem to be the best advise in this case. I think this poor man needs to stand up for himself, and end that marriage.


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## Gomez (Jun 5, 2009)

Telling others no is an essential part of being married. I dont think your wife has learned that lesson. I agree with the annullment. Go to the person who performed the marriage and tell him/her your story and I bet this can still be annulled.


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