SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It has been over three years since my total DD. I found out most of the truth after over 50 years of marriage. It still hurts; it will always hurt. My husband led a double life for most of our marriage. To others, we would appear the perfect family. I can't talk to him because he can't understand why I am so hurt over something that occurred so many years ago. He remembers details about the other woman and could not remember my favorite perfume two weeks after I told him what it was. He remembers her birthday and her married name; however, he can't remember the one and only time he ever sent me flowers. He said he never should have gotten married as he could never commit to one woman. He told me he was done with running around before we married, but he denies we ever had that conversation. I am stuck because I have nowhere to go. I need him financially and we do enjoy common interests. I have seen how remorseful he is about hurting me, but he can't seem to understand it's not what he said, but what he never said to me. He never once told me that I was the one and only woman he ever loved or wanted to be with. He still says all the other women came on to him and he was not the pursuer. I keep reminding him that it was him who chose to cheat. He never told any other person that he was happily married and loved his wife. He only thought of his own selfish desires at the time. He had unprotected sex with at least three women and gave me HPV back in the 70s which I never realized what caused it until I was over 70. I will never forgive him for that. Sometimes he makes my skin crawl when he touches me. I never cheated; I loved him with all my heart, and I never desired any other man. He always desired other women. Now he says he only wants me. Of course, he does. He is no longer young and virile, so I am all of a sudden enough for him. He will never be enough for me. I told him I don't want my remains anywhere near him when I die or any mention that I was ever married to him. I am so ashamed that I was duped by this deceitful man. I have the IQ of a genius, but I am so stupid to have been blinded by my love for him. He was never deserving of me and our sons. I did my list of pros and cons, and they were about even. He has been a good provider and loving father to our sons. I try to put everything in the back of my mind and live one day at a time. I do have good friends for support, and this website has helped to see that others are sadly going through the same thing.

[This message edited by xcook at 4:05 PM, Saturday, September 20th]

xcook, I am so sorry for the pain you are going through. There are a lot of similarities in our situations, and my heart goes out to you.

This is the first holiday season since I found out some big ugly things about my betrayal. I am struggling so much, and just need to vent. The stress of holiday prep is really getting to me and I think it's because I am functioning at a sad baseline. WH is crazy busy with work so most of it is falling to me.

My heart is broken and I just want to curl up under some blankets and hide for a while. I need a big cathartic cry, but there's no time. At this point, I think everyone is just getting gift cards from us. Everyone except the grandkids, I mean. They are the bright spot. They are how I know that there is still joy to be found in my life when I am ready for it.

I am so sorry. I am also three years out from finding out the stuff a decade ago. I’ve been struggling with a lot of disgust lately which feels particularly unkind toward my WH. But wat a weak coward. He gets up in arms about the political climate (I’ll leave out which party). He expresses moral outrage. Morale outrage is not a pretty look on a man who cheated ten years ago and lied as recently as a year and a half ago when exAP called his office. I don’t think he actually knows what integrity is. I feel badly pointing this out to him.

Hello I’m a newbie , this is my first post as I’ve been doing more reading and researching , I’m lost , broken and ashamed to even tell my story, but I’m not even sure where to begin healing.

I have been married 22 years together 24 . He’ 49 , I’m 55 . We have a 21 year old son together and 2 older children from previous marriages . During our 15th year he had an affair that lasted almost 2 years with someone he met online that lived 2 hours away , she was 12 years his junior and a actively into BDSM what they call a sub that enjoyed brutal spanking and being controlled. ( so I found out ) I was unaware of anything about that lifestyle until I researched on my own .
So when I discovered it , he came clean and basically said he was in a dark place and was ashamed of what he’d done and didn’t want to lose his family. ( everything he did was during working hours & through work phone he is in the law field ! ie: meeting up with her at hotels , at peoples house she knew in the area at stores , ect she would drive to him very often , he never footed any bills or rooms . So he was able to hide it for a long time . Although looking back there were many red flags that didn’t stand out in the moments.

After that he rebuilt my trust for him and I felt everything was going good , we had bought a home, lived a normal life I work he works , raising our son , enjoying grandchildren we have

This august I discovered another affair
( emotional affair ) that had been going on for 5 years . I spoke to both women of the 2 affairs , there’s 2 sides to every story and I wanted theirs as well . Both were met online , the first one from Fetlife and the second one on Meet Me

The last one both claim it was a friendship only and was only done while at work as well . The second one lives in the area .

Once I discovered this last one I began more research on my own and ask more questions and he admitted to me that this online infidelity had been occurring for the last 24 years and not only was it just the affair but that there were several hook up onlys and many couples he’d joined .
While I was building the foundation we have in our home and marriage I had no idea my husband was living a double life . I’m confused, hurt and traumatized, my oldest son is a pastor but I have been ashamed to talk to anyone. I spoke with my doctor today at a well visit didn’t go into full detail but she recommended a psychologist not even sure if that is who I need to be seeing . I love my husband and my beliefs and faith has kept me holding our marriage together and I don’t know anything else but him for that last 2 decades .

He claims he doesn’t want to lose his family and that he doesn’t understand himself how he allowed the lifestyle to consume him . He began individual counseling in September, he says it’s helping him but I can’t see where because he was a good man at home , he didn’t change until he left for work. I’m at a loss and don’t know where to begin with any of this just a wreck . Anyone have resources or healthy advice it is welcome and much needed . Thanks

Not sure where to begin with all you have been through. I hope you pursue the psychologist - you will definitely need counseling, as you pointed out yourself this is incredibly traumatizing. If it is any consolation (which I’m pretty sure it is not) many people go through betrayal trauma and you will survive. Everyone’s situation is so different. Maybe you posted here because you were looking for some similarities. I think that makes sense. I was looking for others who had found out years later. But my story was messy too like yours with parts found out along the way but the final blows toward the end being the most crushing. Sometimes we take on shame from our spouse’s actions. I hope you try not to do that to yourself. I’m not sure if you were in any way alluding to the BDSM aspect of the whole story. But everyone has parts of their own story they feel are the MOST shameful. It’s part of the whole hiding/secdrecy./deceit aspect of cheating. I am sure you must feel incredibly hurt and betrayed. I am sorry you are experiencing that pain. When you find the silver lining to all of that you can let me know.

I am glad you posted. I hope you continue to do so. This place helped me a lot, at each state of the process. It sounds like you are looking to try to work through this with your spouse. I hope you are doing a lot of self care. It sounds like you have much of the story which is good. But it also sounds like it goes back all the way through the marriage which is another kick in the pants to add to the many before. I will say one of my little non-religious prayers for you. Keep posting!

Dear Suekl,

I am so very sorry you are going through this. You feelings are completely normal. This is devastating. I really suggest finding a Betrayal Trauma Specialist. They can help with this complex trauma. Look up Jake Porter on YouTube and start listening to his content.

You might want to post on the "Just Found Out" page. I suspect you will get much more individual advice there. You are good wife. He has done terrible harm to you. I pray God breaks his heart and saves his soul....and at same time comforts and strengthens you.

Secrets

There isn't much out there to read on this subject. Particularly, long held secrets and how they affect the secret keeper and the deceived.

My MIL kept a doozie. After migrating from Norway, her family settled in Montana. Big family. Lots of girls. Mom passed and it sounds like things got out of hand. Her and her sister both got pregnant as teens. Sent away to have babies and never to be spoken of again. She would have kept her secret til the grave, but it was exposed 55 yrs later. I can see the damage it has done to her. I can see how her behavior created dysfunction in our family. Very sad.

Now my H. He cheated and kept that secret for 42 yrs. Spent our entire marriage under a cloud of deceit. I ask myself how different things might have been if he had only come clean. Our marriage. Our parenting. Everything.

I came across this article recently. It helped me make some sense of it all. I thought it might help someone else who has discovered the truth years later. I don't have the authors name, so I am unable to give credit.

The moment you decide to protect someone from the truth is the moment you stop being in a relationship with them.
Nobody talks about it this way. We call it kindness. We call it timing. We call it not wanting to hurt them. We wrap it in the language of consideration and care and we tell ourselves we're being loving by holding it back.
We're not being loving.
We're being alone.
Because the moment you take something real, something that's happening inside you, something that matters, something that's true, and you decide they can't handle it, you have left the relationship. Not physically. Not even emotionally in the obvious sense. But you have made a unilateral decision about what this person is capable of receiving. And in that decision you have stopped relating to them and started managing them.
And managed people aren't loved. They're handled.
Here's what that holding back actually is, underneath the kindness story we tell about it.
It's fear wearing the costume of protection.
You're not holding it back because you're certain they can't handle it. You're holding it back because you're not certain you can handle what happens if they can't. The conflict that might follow. The hurt on their face. The possibility that saying the true thing will cost you something in the relationship you're not sure you can afford to lose. The terrifying open-endedness of what happens after you say the real thing and it lands badly and you don't yet know if you'll be able to find each other on the other side.
So you don't say it. You protect them. You protect yourself. You call it the same thing and you hold it in and the relationship continues on the surface exactly as before.
Except it doesn't. Not really.
Because you are now carrying something they don't know you're carrying. And the carrying changes you. It changes how you sit with them. How you listen to them. How present you can actually be when you're also managing the weight of the unsaid thing. It creates a layer of performance in the relationship, however thin, however well-intentioned. You are now, to some degree, an actor. Playing the version of yourself that isn't holding anything.
And they can feel it. They may not be able to name it. But the nervous system of someone who loves you is exquisitely attuned to you. They feel the slight distance. The managed quality. The place where you used to be fully present and now there's something else there instead, something they can't access, something they don't even know to ask about.
And they file that away as information about themselves. About whether they're safe to be close to. About whether you trust them. About whether there are parts of you that will always be held somewhere they can't reach.
This is how trauma wins inside relationships.
Not in the dramatic moments. In this one. In the ordinary daily decision to hold the true thing back because the hurt that might follow feels like more than the relationship can bear.
Trauma, early trauma, the kind that gets built in homes where telling the truth had consequences teaches you that revelation is dangerous. That what's true about you is safer managed than shared. That protection is love and exposure is risk.
And then you bring that lesson into your adult relationships and you apply it to others who might, if given the chance, be able to receive what you've been holding.
But you never give them the chance. Because the nervous system doesn't know the difference between then and now. It just knows that the last time something like this happened, saying the real thing cost something. So it holds it back. And calls it kindness. And the relationship stays safe and also stays shallow and also stays, in the most important sense, unreal.
Here's what happens when you do it differently.
When you feel the fear and you say the thing anyway.
Not recklessly. Not as a weapon. But as an act of genuine relationship. I have something I'm afraid to tell you because I think it might hurt you and I'm going to tell you anyway because I'd rather be honest with you than comfortable.
Several things happen in that moment.
The first is that you are fully in the relationship for the first time since you started holding it. The performance stops. The managed distance closes. You are present in a way that managed people can feel even before they've heard the content of what you're about to say.
The second is that you give them the chance to be who they actually are. Not the fragile version of them you've been protecting. The real version. The one who is capable of more than you've been allowing them to demonstrate.
And yes. It might hurt them. The thing you feared would hurt them very likely will. That part wasn't wrong.
But here's what nobody tells you about hurt inside a relationship between two people who are trying.
Hurt that is shared is not the same as hurt that is protected against.
When you say the true thing and it lands hard and they feel it and you see it on their face and you stay in the room with it and you don't run from what you caused, something becomes possible that was never possible when you were holding it back.
Repair.
Real repair. Not the management of distance. Not the return to surface okayness. The actual finding of each other on the other side of something hard.
And that repair, that specific experience of I told you the true thing and it hurt and we stayed and we found our way back, is the single most powerful builder of real intimacy available inside a relationship.
It is how trust actually gets built. Not in the easy moments. In this one. In the moment you were both most afraid and stayed anyway.
Every time you hold the true thing back you are choosing short term comfort over long term closeness. You are preventing the hurt and also preventing the repair and also preventing the specific kind of trust that only comes from having survived the hurt together.
You are keeping the relationship safe.
And also keeping it from becoming what it could be.
Trauma wins when you hold it back. When you decide that protection is love and management is kindness and the real thing should stay inside where it's safe.
Trauma loses when you say it anyway. When you let it land. When you stay in the room with what it does. When you learn, together, that you can hurt each other and find each other and that the finding is real and the relationship is bigger than the hurt.
That's not a small thing.
That's everything.
That's how relationships heal.
-
What I tell myself to justify holding the true thing back:
This isn't the right time. I'll say it when things are better between us.
I don't want to hurt them. They're already dealing with so much right now.
It probably doesn't matter enough to bring up. I'm making too much of it.
I've tried to say things like this before and it never goes well. I'm protecting both of us.
If I say this it might start something I don't know how to finish.
They're not ready to hear this. I know them well enough to know that.
I'll feel better in a few days and then I won't need to say it. I just need to wait it out.
The relationship is in a good place right now. I don't want to disrupt that.
Some things are better left unsaid. Not everything needs to be shared.
If I say this and it goes wrong I don't know if we'll recover. The risk is too high.
-
What holding it in actually does to me over time:
I carry it everywhere. It's in the room with us even when we're not talking about it.
I get quieter in ways I can't explain and they can feel but can't name.
I start to resent them for something they don't even know they've done to me.
The distance between us grows and only I know why and I can't say why so I can't close it.
I perform okayness so consistently that I start to lose track of what's actually okay and what isn't.
The longer I hold it the harder it gets to say. The weight of the unsaid thing compounds.
I stop trusting myself. I've managed it so long I can't tell anymore if it matters.
I start to feel alone in the relationship. A specific kind of alone that only happens when you're with someone who doesn't know the real thing about you.
I love them less freely than I could because part of me is always managing the held thing.
I tell myself I'm protecting them. The truth is I'm protecting a version of the relationship that isn't real.
-
What happens in the room when I say the true thing anyway:
Something in me releases before I've even finished the sentence. The holding was its own kind of weight.
They look at me differently. Not worse. Like they're seeing something they didn't have access to before.
It lands hard sometimes. I watch their face take it in. I stay anyway. That staying is new for me.
There's a moment where I don't know what happens next and I have to just be in that moment without running from it.
They respond in ways I didn't predict. Sometimes better than I feared. Sometimes harder. Always more real than anything the managed version of us produced.
The hurt is real and it's in the room and we're both in the room with it and that shared presence in the hard thing is more intimate than anything the held-back version of us ever managed.
The repair that follows isn't a return to before. It's something new. Something that couldn't exist without the hurt and the staying and the finding each other on the other side.
I trust them more afterward. Not because they handled it perfectly. Because we both stayed.
I trust myself more too. I said the real thing and the relationship held. That's information my nervous system has been waiting for.
The relationship got bigger. That's the only way to say it. It got bigger than it was before I said the thing I was afraid to say.
-
Mirror meditation: For the one who has been protecting someone from the truth and calling it love:
Find your mirror when the house is quiet and nobody needs you to be okay right now.
Stand close. Let your face do what it wants.
Take one breath.
And ask yourself:
What am I holding back from someone I love right now?
Don't reach for the small things. Let the real one surface. The thing you've been carrying. The thing you've been waiting for the right moment to say, knowing somewhere underneath that the right moment is a story you're telling yourself so you don't have to say it.
Let that come up.
Then ask:
Who am I protecting?
And then the harder version of that question:
Am I protecting them or am I protecting myself from what happens after I say it?
Sit with that one. Let it be uncomfortable.
And then ask the last one:
What is the relationship I'm in right now, the managed one, the one where I hold the true thing back, what is that costing both of us?
You don't have to say the thing today. But you have to stop telling yourself that holding it back is love.
It isn't love.
It's fear.
And fear has been in this relationship long enough.
The true thing deserves to be said.
And the relationship deserves the chance to be bigger than you've been allowing it to be.
That chance starts the moment you stop protecting them from you.