[barbiedoll]

I have been 11 months trying to "re-build " our 35 year marriage. There is much I have learned and most of it I was a very unwilling student. My husband had an affair. I have to say that again... My husband had an affair. A little less pain to say the 2nd time. His affair started the last week of April 2013, and by May 4th , I had the bomb drop. All the typical things... I do not love you, you cannot make me happy and several months of living in his hell. I kicked him out in september... still unaware of the "women" he risked it all for. In November I discovered "her". I guessed . I was right. She is a family member. This was the moment my marriage finally drew its last breathe. He decided the fate of my future, my past, my dreams, my marriage.. never did he ask about I may have wanted with my 50 %. He took it all and left me in the deepests shock I have ever experienced. I know there are bazillions of women who would say NEVER would my husband do that . NEVER. I am the Queen of that club. Nothing in the universe would EVER make me belive he was capable of inflicting such an injury to me. I would belive he would rob a bank or steal from the elderly 1st. It makes one feel very very stupid.. right or wrong.. it is one of a million emotions and feelings that assault you day and night. I had 35 years of proof that he was a good and faithfull man . ( of course , now I am not so sure. Do not want to risk looking stupid again) I knew his integrity, I knew his values, I thought he loved me. He is a father of 5 daughters. Could he really have an affair and model this to his daughters? Could he truly inflict this permanent injury on me ? Everything I "knew" said NO... every cell in my body said NO. But my intuition knew. It is crazy making struggle to live with 24 hours a day. .. for months. He lied. He is now a liar. What do I do with the movies in my head?. I see her perfectly .. she is not a stranger. They come out of the blue, snapping into my mind like the flash of a camera. I feel the surge of anxiety, the horror, the unreality breaks into sweat, i have broken blood vessels clenthing fists to stop the pain, I turn into a corner of a room thinking it will block the view, I have begged god to make it stop... it is unspeakable cruelty to me. If hear myself whisperring no no no no .. I try to change the voices in my head.. I chant over and over " it will be okay, it will be ok, you will be okay." I try to change the channel, I weep until I think it is all gone and will not come back, I have broken elastics on my wrist until I see my mother cry from the marks I have inflicted . I hear him.. " yes, I am sleeping with her, I am having sex with her" in his arrogant monster voice. Finally the truth . How cruel of him. How endlessly cruel of any human being. It is a lasting sorrow to me. He says, he never thinks of it , unless I ask . He says he never thought about me, not once. He had no guilt climbing from her bed to mine. He is protected by his "fog". I have memories that I did not make .. in clear technicolour. He has his "compartments" to climb into. I have fear of my own thoughts. I pray for relief. He prays for forgiveness. My daughter will get married in 6 weeks. She wears her diamond turned around when she is with me as it has made me weep. Marriage .. is so sweet and exciting for her. Marriage is the source of my deepest dissappointment, the source of layers of complex emotions that I do not see coming, the pain I wear on my skin until I am flaming with effort to control myself .. and be happy or feel joy for her. She has a wonderfull poem about love and marriage. My grandaughter will read it . I will excuse myself . I thought.. " if he would just come back, I can forgive anything .. please God, do not take my husband ". I remember praying that outloud. I will never forgive this betrayal of every part of my exsistence as a women. Never. Can you rebuild a marriage and never truly forgive.? I do not know. Please, I have struggled so long with this. How are other women coping with the sexual betrayal. Did it really mean nothing? How can this be true? How do you ever overcome this pain?. My husband was her Knight In Shining Armour.. he fits all that I have read. He absolutely felt that way. He "rescued " her, in his mind. I never enterred his mind... at all.
He saved her... and destroyed me. Destroyed "us". How do you ever get past this ?

[barbiedoll]

I thought this was posted under " discussion"... Sorry, did something incorrectly . I need to hear from other women about coping with sexual aspect  etc..
Thanks

[Howmanytimes]

Hi Barbiedoll

I have not even been brave enough to think about them together intimately. ,it is too painful but I am overweight and she is slim and that makes me feel so inadequate.  I know she prances around in stockings and suspenders and behaves like a wh*re.

Try if you can and push it from your mind and tell yourself that what they have is grubby and seedy and what you had was righteous and pure and was true unsullied love.

They destroy our lives and anyone who does that will have to pay someday.  If not in this World then in the next.

Take care

HMT

[Searching4Answers]

I know how much this hurts - it hurts all of us

My issue is with the emotional betrayal - the sex doesn't bother me as much. I know that my H is using the OW for sex, it is not special or meaningful. I think that as women we confuse sex and making love. Sex doesn't always have emotions tied to it and men are very good at having meaningless sex. The sex that my H and OW have is not something that I would want. She is not cherished or adored.

My suggestion is change the way that you view it. The OW and the sex really do not mean anything. Men use sex to escape, they use OW that will degrade themselves in order to build their self esteem. They are selfish lovers! The man you knew as your lover is not the man that the OW got as her lover - I promise you. 

[UnconditionalLove]

I can so relate to you! My H was a kind, love tentive wonderful man. There wasn't a mean bone in his body. He loved me with a pure love. We had a great marriage.  Crisis set in and at 52 he met a 32 year old and everything changed.

I now am in divorce as he quickly tries to get rid of me.
He's cashed in our retirement - Not sure how much yet
Thinks he owns me nothing
Thinks everything is his
Seems to hate everything about me
Looks for ways to cheat me
Looks for ways to steal from me
Looks for way to make me feel like dirt
Lies just to lie
Hurts just to hurt me
Found out just this week he has been recording me
He wants the divorce but wants everything and wants everything to go his way
I'm having surgery a big one and he wants nothing to do with being there for me.

I don't know this man and it's a nightmare.  I wake up everyday to the same questions. How could a loving man do this to me?  54 years of and a 31 year marriage is gone because of MLC, fog and a tunnel? It's hard to believe and understand. It's so sad for me but it's more hurtful.  I did my best and gave my all only to be here alone. 

I think about them and it turns my stomach. Some days it's more than I can take. He's so angry, he's brain is telling him to be angry and all that anger is at me.  It's just unbearable at times.

But, I do have moments that I pop back up and believe in myself and know I'm not a fault and that I will get through this somehow. I have hope for my future because I can't become what he thinks I am.  I'm better than that.

[living with Hope]

Barbie doll, 

I have no clue who my husband is sleeping with. He keeps that part of his life hidden.  He is not even aware that I know about her. I am not sure who she is or what she looks like so that helps keep my sanity. My husband has not thrown her in my face or admitted to much more than he had needs and maybe there might be someone he would like to get to know.  Knowing that was a lie hurt me more than what he has been doing.  Being ignored by him right now has hurt me more than knowing how he is living this secret life.

But I haven't had to face it yet so I don't know.  I find the lies, the secrecy, the amount of effort and money he has spent on these other women that was our retirement savings, our general living for our children and us - right now that bothers me more that he has wined, dined them and probably spoiled them with gifts than him having sex with them.

I have seen some exchanges before he decided that I ruined his life between him and this woman and it is not a happy relationship.  He wrote things to her that screamed he has very little respect for her.  He used language that I can't imagine my husband ever using to anyone.  He threatened her. She threatened him.  It was not a relationship I would ever want to be involved in or want anyone to be involved in.  It is so freaking bizarre and twisted.   

It hurts I think anyway you look at it.  How can it not haunt you.  This is the one person you trusted with everything you had.  You raised a family together, you have shared everything and in a blink of an eye, it was shoved aside for some times of whimsy.  I am haunted by words he has said throughout this entire journey. 

I think all I can hope for is strength and time to heal. 

Hugs.

[in it]

I guess I wasn't one who coped with it very well either . I needed to know the truth. Which I don't think I got.

He moved the creature into the family home where I raised my daughters the one we had all lived in for 10 years after the divorce was final which took 4 months.

Two weeks later this creature (whom I also knew) was in my bed, using my kitchen, taking a shower in my bathroom, inserting herself directly into my life because he had to save her.

And as bad as all of that was what was worse was I went back and tried to deal with the loss and fix everything.

I slept in the very same bed he was in with her for 5 months never talking, never touching, him ignoring the facts of what happened. Her ghost in the room, in the bed.

After 5 months my very soul cried out and I expressed it to him. I woke up one morning weeping before I could even have a thought "I cannot do this anymore! The bed has to be sold!".
He was leaning one hand on the foot of the bed looked right at me and said " I'm not selling this bed"

With those words he was condemning me to spend whatever time in the very place he allowed her to sleep, participated in whatever they did, whatever intimacy that may have been shared.

Guess what happened? The bed went.

I know he had ED issues but would not address them at all. He had them way before all of this happened. If his biggest complaint was he didn't get enough sex? He needed to fix what was wrong with him. It couldn't even be discussed.

I would have been just fine to omit that part of the relationship. He's a diabetic and I wasn't willing to put the pressure on him to do anything. I took care of him the best way I knew how.

I did put the pressure on him to tell me what they did but the story changed a few times so that indicates he was lying. First he said they did have sex then he told me they didn't. So who knows and frankly I don't care. After the mental angusih I went through for the year and eight months I was there it doesn't matter. I did that to myself.

It took a visit to the emergency room hospital for me to wake up and realize he couldn't have cared less about me to begin with...32 years for what? I have no clue.

Was she physically more attractive that me? Not as far as I was concerned.

She needed to be rescued she sold her house because he said he would marry her and he played the part and thought everyone else should just be ok with his decisions.

My compassion for him put me in that bed. Slighlty misguided.

I have daughters also and he's no example of what a father or a man is. What he's done concerns me for how they interprate their own relationships. He's shown no respect for anyone in the situation.

The only thing that's put my life and what I put myself through into perspective was meeting other people who's story was much more tragic IMHO than mine. And no contact for a year and a half.

On HS? Scooby comes to mind. That her H would bring the creature into the house while she and her children slept upstairs is beyond belief.

 I also have made friends with a woman who lost her husband and twin toddlers in a car accident.

I thank God everyday I am no longer in the situation.

[bipolared]

Maybe I am in denial or something but the sex doesn't really bother me so much.  What does get to me is the cruel, hurtful things he says.  I do wonder if he is doing things for these women that he never bothered to do for me and that definitely causes some bitterness.  Do they get taken out all the time, does he hold the door for them or get their coats, and does he do activities with them where he just wanted to sit around the house with us? His ignoring our children is also so disturbing to me;  I have said many times that my personal distress has been displaced by how he kind of ignores them.  But it is definitely his words that have wormed their way into my psyche and I don't know how I will get over it sometimes.

[Thunder]

barbiedoll,

There has never been a post written that has touched me more.  To hear you explain your journey and how you felt was so raw and open.  You could honestly be a writer.

I can't give much advice or insight into an ow but it has to be the most devastating and painful part of a marriage break up.

I truly hope and pray...for you...you can find it in your heart some day to forgive him.  I don't know about forgetting, maybe that never happens.  But the forgiveness is for you to heal, not for him.  He has to forgive himself.

btw, glad the bed is gone.   

[ruggedendurance]

Unconditional love,

Change the participants to 52yr old W and 37yr old  lover?

You've just described my sitch.