# Dealing with a love affair and don't know what to do?



## foolishlytrusting (Oct 17, 2011)

First I think I need to give ya'll a little back story. Me and my husband have been married for 10 and half years. We have four children together ranging from 10 to 4 years old. 

Throughout the marriage he has been emotionally and verbally abusive. This year something in me broke and I no longer had any feelings of love for him. 

I felt lonely and wanted so badly for someone to love me so I began thinking of having an affair, I would look up old boyfriends online and search for men to have a relationship with. When it came down to making the final decision to have an affair I couldn't do it, I respected my husband and family to much to do that.

Instead I told him how I was feeling, that I didn't love him anymore and that I felt our marriage was in trouble. I kept thinking of an affair but never could go through with it. Meanwhile right after I told him how I felt he installed a monitoring system on my computer so he could see everything I looked up on the internet. 

So he did catch me looking at men on the internet and confronted me about it. I lied and said that I wasn't doing that, so he assumed I was having an affair (which I was not). I now realize I shouldn't have lied but I was embarrassed. I never once contacted any of the men let alone have an affair with them. I always thought that if I did that it would be over and there would be no working it out with my husband.

We worked on his anger issues and things slowly began to get slightly better, but I noticed that he didn't really like being home. He would come home and stay on his computer mostly and not interact with us very much, but his anger issues seemed to get much better so I just thought that's what he needed to do to relax.

I began to slowly fall back in love with him, he was once again this wonderful man who loved and respected me. We did have some marital problems that I will own.

I was a very ambitious woman who wanted to get a Doctorates degree, it consumed me I finished college while being married and having four children. I did not want to be just a mother who stayed at home with her kids (sorry I'm not trying to be offensive you need to know this about me to understand the full scope of things). I tried my hardest but I was not able keep up my gpa to a high enough standard for the graduate program I wanted. Each time I had a child it would through me into postpartum depression, it would get really bad to the point where I hated housework and being a mother. I would dream of my future career while in the meantime my husband had to pick up my slack and do mostly everything.

I would come out of it and then be really good and keep the house clean and the children happy but it would never last and I'd spiral into depression again. 

He confronted me about the house often but I never could own the fact that it was my mortal enemy and I'd rather do anything but clean. Til finally this year I took a good long look at myself and decided it wasn't fair for him to live that way and decided to change. I started dressing and looking nicer for when he came home, I was keeping the house clean and making sure the children were getting what they needed to get done. This made me happy and I was happier than ever. 
We have had problems for the past few years with intimacy, money, and feelings of resentment.

My husband often has to go out of town for work but it's only a couple of hours away and he'd sometimes stay down there but sometimes he would come home. Before one of these outings he told me he needed to have a discussion with me. Instead he just didn't come home. I didn't know what was going on he wouldn't answer my phone calls or texts. Hours later he texted me that he would be home the next night and didn't want to talk to me through texts.

The next day he came home at 8:30 pm. We put the kids to bed and I decided to own my part of our crappy marriage. I told him I was horribly sorry for not putting forth my best effort with the house and children and for spending to much money, we have a credit card shared between us with a debt around 11,000 dollars. 

He then told me that he didn't believe that I had changed and he was tired of it and wanted out of the marriage. I said that those were fair feelings to have but if he would give me one last chance.

Then he dropped the bomb on me he had had an affair with another woman. He said he did it because he was hurt when I told him I didn't love him anymore and that he felt numb.
He told me about his monitoring system and thought I was having an affair. He actively sought out an affair. He never asked me if I did have an affair. I told him that it never happened and that I couldn't go through with it, I did admit to having those feelings but I never could do it.

He believed me and said that he wasn't good for me and that I should just get away from him. He wanted to leave. 
He told me he fell in love with her. He was dishonest with her and gave her a fake name and whole identity. She finally confronted him and asked if he was married. He admitted he was married with four children. They talked and she told him that she could accept that he had kids not that he was married and he had to decide.

He stayed with me and so she ended the affair. He couldn't answer if he would still be seeing her if she hadn't broken it off. At first he said that he wasn't sorry or regretful about it. He had fallen in love with her and enjoyed it. 

When she broke up with him he had a feeling of loss. The night he didn't come home he was actually sitting outside her apartment thinking about talking to her again. He didn't and came home to tell me the next day. 

I begged him to stay that he would see that I really changed so he stayed. He says he will try to work out our marriage, but that he didn't love me anymore. 

I had to leave to visit family a few days after the discovery, now he says he's remorseful for what he's done and wants to work it out. I'm not so sure if I want to now.

I don't know what to do I'm completely devastated and can't eat, sleep or think straightly. All I can think about are what he was doing with her and the great relationship he said they had. He says it was all based on this fantasy life he wanted and that's why he fell for her. 

When I talk about how this affair had affected me he throws in my face that he thought I was having an affair and couldn't deal with it. 

I feel like he's blaming this on me and that it's my fault he had the affair. He hasn't used those words, but he started the affair a couple months after I told him about my feelings of lost love. 

I don't know if this is worth saving maybe too much hurt has occurred between us and I don't know what to do? I would like some advice or experiences to help me decide. I love him and I want to work it out but he can't promise me that he won't do this again. 

I'm not sure if I could ever forgive him for this.


----------



## michzz (Jun 6, 2008)

It sounds like you started this path by actively trolling for men and he didn't believe you that you didn't actually meet any of them. So he did likewise looking for women and actually met one.

You two need marriage counseling.


----------



## daisygirl 41 (Aug 5, 2011)

Hi, im so sorry you are going through this. Im not really in the positon to give you much advice at the mometnas i am feeling very emotionally fragile myself at the moment as me and my husband are trying to recover from his EA. Hopefully someone wil come along with some good advice for you. Read as much as you can. TAM has helped me so much in my recovery, listen to the advice given on here, read up on THE FOG and read other post that talk about the scripts of the WS and the stages of grief we go through on the discovery of afiars.

My emotions change daily, and they swing from loving him and being prepaired to do anything to keep my marriage together, to hating him and just wanting to walk awa. From what i have learned on her, this is normal!! sounds like you and your husband have a lot of history and resentment from the past, he will blame you, my husband blames me, but now 5 months on he says that was wrong, he had the EA and he is responsible, but i still feel guilty and DO acept that i had a part to play in all this.

I found talking really helped. I opened up to my closest friens and they were amazing, so supportive, to me and, didnt ever judge WH. Just supported me, cried with me and laughred with me. I tols my mum, she needed to know why i was sucha n emotioanal wreck, and i confided in 2 close work colleagues, and their support has been amazing.

good luck to you x


----------



## Gabriel (May 10, 2011)

I think you can recover from this but only if you WANT to. I agree with the other person who said that you guys should go to marriage counseling (MC) right away.

If you are worried about the cost, just think how expensive two homes and a divorce would be. It's a drop in the bucket.

You both did some bad stuff (him worse than you, obviously), but if you both want to reconcile and save this marriage than absolutely you can. But it will take a lot of work.


----------



## omega (Aug 2, 2011)

You go into great detail about how you have recognized your faults and made efforts to improve yourself as a wife and mother. At the same time, the first thing you tell us about him is that he has emotionally and verbally abused you throughout your marriage. Then we find out he cheated on you, blames you for it, and you are now begging him to come back.

You need to do the following:

1) get some self-respect.

Oh, that's it.

Do that, and then you'll probably be able to figure out on your own what you need to do. But honestly... you already know. Good luck - it sounds like this guy has really ground you down. And please don't think of yourself as a bad wife and mother because you had ambitions of getting a PhD! That's totally unfair to you.


----------

