# Still Confused



## rickx (Jan 10, 2013)

This is a bit of a vent, an attempt to help myself make sense of the confusion running riot in my mind, any advice on this would be welcome as i have no one that i talk to about this other than my wife lol!

Backstory, i am 41 succesful and 2 years into my second marriage, the first ended 10 years ago after 9 years together and my wifes affair with a man 8 years younger than me, she left me for him.

3 years later i was happy and having a lot of fun, i met an attractive young girl, she chased me and we got together, things moved a little too quickly when we had our 1st child 1 year into our relationship, our second one year later, we were happy and got married 2 years ago, which is where things started to go wrong, we overspent on the wedding and through various issues i became depressed about money and the constant pain of a 2 year recovery of a broken cocxyx, i tried to control our spending but my wife refused to listen, i had always allowed her to go out and have fun with her friends.

Obvious mistakes were my inability to say no and desire to please her, along with my need to trust, but with her being 15 years younger than me i wanted her to have fun so long as she was faithful, 6 months into our marriage i made a huge mistake, she had been away for the night with friends and when we kissed i knew instantly she had cheated, i stopped and asked her, she denied it and not wanting to believe what my instincts were telling me i accepted what she said.

Anyway, 5 months later - 3 weeks before our first aniversary, i finally gave into my doubts and checked up on her, after using find my iphone and seeing that she was lying about where she was, i confronted her and she gave me another load of bull****, so 2 days later i restored the backup from her phone to mine and began to read the messages. I had thought about doing this before but refused to invade her privacy and betray her trust, probably again my desire to see the best in people.

But there it was, the whole affair from the first time, when i questioned her, through the holiday in thailand they had together which i paid for her part of!, the fact they were in love and many more painful details.

So where did this leave me, well she ended the affair when i found out she was lying, before i discovered the whole truth, when i did she swore her devotion to sorting the marriage out and her regret at the mistakes she made

She has been trying hard since to repair the damage done, she has not to my knowledge contacted him or the other friends she made during the affair, and i am 99% sure this is the case.

She has done everything she can to ensure i know who texts or calls her, where she is and what she is doing, she has discussed the affair and truly appears to be remorseful and ashamed of what she has done, to the point where whenever we are happy together she usually begins to cry and apologise for how much she has hurt me.

When i do have an emotional crash she tries to be supportive and help me through it, I try to avoid these as much as possible but even a year on the triggers are everywhere, i wake up thinking about it every morning and i struggle to hold myself together at the best of times.

I debate every day whether i should have an affair of my own, divorce her, or just get over it and forgive her and myself, but i am an emotional person, i have unrealistic notions of loyalty and have never cheated on anyone, so i struggle to understand and have never been as unsure of what to do.

Currently i am trying to accept that all i can do is try to work through this together, whilst working on improving myself to become the person i want to be, and then whatever happens to us as a couple i hope to be strong enough and confident enough to be happy, in the knowledge that whenever i achieve this state of mind, i am much more attractive to women, and therefore my wife who i still love as much as the day i married her.

I am well aware that i should have listened to my instincts, that she is much younger than me, and infact i turned her down the first time she approached me because she was only 18 at the time, i have no problem with meeting other women as i am attractive and look much younger than i am. And i have no doubt that she wants us to get through this and keep our family together.

My problem is that the damage is severe and whilst everything in our relationship is now better than it has ever been, the pain does not subside for more than a few minutes at a time, i hope this will improve in time and keep searching for ways to speed up the process and free my mind from its torture chamber.


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## LetDownNTX (Oct 4, 2012)

Im not going to lie or sugar coat it. People say that the pain goes away in time, or maybe just gets easier to deal with. Here I sit 6 years, to the date almost, of when I discovered my WH's PA and it still hurts.

Its hard to not think about it when they are in front of you everyday, you look at them and relive something they said or did that hurt you and its hard to not think about it. There have been some days when I havent thought about it at all but its never far away. 

I think as long as you are with your WS you're always going to have some doubt in your mind...always. Maybe it gets less and less but it hasnt for me so I cant say it will.

Im sorry you are here, its a horrible place to be in!!


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## ThreeStrikes (Aug 11, 2012)

rickx said:


> I debate every day whether i should have an affair of my own, divorce her, or just get over it and forgive her and myself, but i am an emotional person,* i have unrealistic notions of loyalty* and have never cheated on anyone, so i struggle to understand and have never been as unsure of what to do.


Huh?

Loyalty is to be expected in a marriage. After all, that is why you married! To be exclusive to one another...not to share each other with other people.

Don't have a revenge affair. It will make you feel bad, and you seem to have a pretty good self-image.

Only 2 years? I'd seriously consider D. You probably won't have to pay spousal support for such a short marriage. You can always reconcile after the D, but at least you won't be on the financial hook if she does this again years from now.


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## the guy (Aug 3, 2010)

Time does help, I'm going on three years and it does get better. However 1 year since d-day (discovery day) you still struggle. 

Are you awere of what you are forgiving her for? Do you have the details. You mentioned that she talked about the affair, was this often or just a one time talk?

What is she doing to affair proof the marriage? Is she in counseling to learn the tools to prevent this from happening again? She has some individual issues she needs to adress about her and not so much about the marriage.

Its been a year and maybe your own wife is a big trigger, maybe this is a deal breaker and you just can't face it? 

I suggest you also get some help and address your own issues in dealing with this betrayal again.


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## goodwife4 (Jan 7, 2013)

money probs can deal to depression and can make everything hard in a relationship.
my hubby is 11 years older than me and when we first got married 15 yrs ago he told me his biggest fear was that i would be unfaithful ..... well it wasn't me it was him.

it takes a long time and a lot of hard work to get over this ... its been 2 years since he confessed the affair which he had hidden for 3 years...
i still struggle....... its so very hard to forget, i still love him but we have intimacy issues now. never did before this .... by the way....

its going to take time, but i have learnt to be totally honest and for me i needed to know every detail of his betrayal. hard as it was

good luck


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## Will_Kane (Feb 26, 2012)

Did she initiate the affair and pursue the other man?

Who was the other man, how did she meet him?

You read about how much she loved other man, but she gave him up immediately when you found out. What did she say about her love for him then?

What does she say about other man now? Does she describe him as a good guy or a bad guy?

How do you feel about other man now?

Anything she said or did with other man that she never said or did with you?


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## rickx (Jan 10, 2013)

Well while it was going on, she always told me where she was going and what she was doing, just leaving out the fact that along with the girl friends she was doing it with, there was this guy, so i know pretty much everything they did together, and since i found out we have discussed it a fair bit and i am aware of pretty much all of the details, unfortunately i had to know and whilst they are extremely painful, it is easier for me to deal with things i know, than those i imagine, i also know that he was the one who pursued her.

A couple of months after d-day, i arranged to meet him and whilst i was fighting the urges that come naturally after something like this, i kept calm, whilst he assured me that he regretted what he had done and had no contact or intention of contacting her again, i have a burning hatred for him although it is her fault, more than his, i choose to let my anger direct itself at him until it burns out eventually.

We had a fairly healthy sex life before and whilst it was going on, and now fortunately this has improved considerably, although still not to the level that i want.

One of the hardest issues we have at the moment is that she has been suffering with a sinus infection for the last 8 months and on numerous courses of antibiotics which has prevented us from doing a lot of the things that would help me, and caused her a fair amount of depression. I am hoping that things will improve soon to allow us to have more fun together.

As to forgiving her, i understand why this happened in the first place, my depression, our inability to communicate properly about finances, along with multiple things that are common triggers, our first child starting school was a major life change for her, starting working for me at the same time was another big change, getting married achieved one of her life long ambitions, she had her "Princess Day", and she had me with little left in the way of challenges.

There is also the issue that so far in her life i am the most consistant male figure, her dad, and step fathers had all been cheaters so she is used to dissapointment and major life changes every 5-7 years, this may have been partly her internal clock expecting me to do the same and defending against it. 

So all in all at the time she began cheating there were a lot of the reasons that cause some people to cheat, all falling into place at the same time.

As to her feelings for him, i know that in affairs people have feelings massively intensified by the danger aspect and excitement of cheating and the risks involved, every time i came close to finding out or questioned her, she will have had an adrenaline rush, and that in itself will have translated into stronger feelings towards him, my future concerns are more to do with her missing the excitement of an affair than missing him, in fact she has said that she felt excited when coming home to see me, probably due to returning into an environment where she was at risk of slipping up.

So from one point of view i understand why and how it happened, what i need to do to prevent this from happening again, and she is making every effort to affair proof our marriage for the future, with complete transparancy.

However, at the same time i have always had a level of disgust for people who can cheat and lie to the people who love them, she has been exposed to and witnessed the devastation that cheaters caused, to their partners and children, and is fully aware of how much pain my first wife caused me, yet she still made the descision to cheat, and still lied to my face when i suspected it.

So where does this leave me, well i am in the position now where i have a wife who i love, who is under no illusions that any further slip on her part would end us permanently, who has said that if i wanted her to, would leave and give me custody of the children, who has said that if i need to, she will accept me having an affair if that helped me to overcome my issues, who regularly makes extra effort to make me feel desired and loved, and who is a great mother to our children. She has also had counseling for a few months.

I have an ongoing conflict in my head between my desire to experience the thrill of cheating, just to level the playing field, have done it and understand the feelings involved, to possibly even reduce her guilt, and my distaste 
for the risks, guilt and pain it causes, my worry that even if i did, and she never found out, it would still make things worse.

My aim is to work on myself to be the person i want to be, to have fun and be happy in myself, in the hope that when i achieve that, all other issues will be reduced, i hope that my urges to cheat will reduce over time, and i am proud of the fact that i have not yet despite having had opportunites, i feel i need to be stable in myself before i make any major descisions like that.

It is comforting to know that pain reduces with time, at the moment a day without thinking about it is something that i dream of, i have got over this before but i am under no illusions that it takes longer to get over betrayal when you are still with the person who betrayed you. 

And to be honest it does help a huge amount to actually put this down and let others see it,

Something i am considering asking her for is a post nuptual agreement, to effectively set out what would happen if we did divorce and remove that worry from my mind, to also see if she is sincere in what she is offering me as far as the children are concerned, or just saying what she thinks she wants me to hear, has anyone had any experience with these?


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