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1 of 1- Sonata
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Confusion
Hello Everyone,
I haven't been on this site in a long while. I am just trying to live my life with my husband and our 13 year old son.
It hasn't been easy during this time with Covid and all. We are in Los Angeles County where there is a lot of Covid and I am a teacher so I am kinda going nuts preparing lessons and such.
It's also a very weird time with my husband. He says he wants to stay together and I must want to also because I haven't made moves to separate. We are sometimes intimate and we definitely love each other. I just feel like something has fundamentally changed. Well, of course it has. My husband had an affair with a man.
He says he isn't in love with the other man and had no feelings other than sexual. He has apologized many times and I think genuinely feels bad. I don't know how long it will take me to forgive him. I am certainly not there yet. I just found out in May. I found out by reading texts to the other man.
He is not willing to show me his email because he still feels like it is private and his. What do you guys think of this? I want to know if he has lied to me about other affairs. He says this man is the only man that he has been with and the only time he has stepped outside our marriage. Both he and the other guy said they were together about three times, once a year....because they lived in different cities..... But how do I really know?
The bottom line is my husband had a huge secret from me for over three years.....it doesn't exactly make me trust him. Day to day we are good....there is love and affection and we work together to raise our son who is autistic. We've been through so much together over the years. It has not been easy but we are family and our son needs us. I do love him and would like to build something new together....just not sure how. The marriage we had feels broken but we are working on a new one in counseling....it's painful.
I wonder how long it took some of you to build a new relationship after you found out about an affair? I wonder if it's possible and if I will ever fully trust him as I did before? I wonder if he can be monogamous after finding out about this part of himself? I wonder if I will ever be able to be in an open relationship? At this time I don't think so.
We just celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary. I say celebrated loosely because my husband is really bad at celebrating. He didn't get me anything but I didn't get him anything either. I figured it was his turn to plan....but he didn't......he says he can't do what he dreams of because of Corona Virus and money so he just gets stuck and doesn't plan.....it's very odd.
So, you see, I am a bit lost and confused....no longer devastated just sad and confused.
Thanks for your thoughts in advance.
- Ellexoh_nz
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Re: Confusion
Hi Sonata.....I used to think people who said "once trust has been tainted you will never regain it" .....well, they
didn't have the great, stable, amazing r'ship & love that I did.
I was totally wrong. It was the 3/4 months full of gaslighting (didn't even know it was a thing!) that killed the trust I had, that made me angry, then confused, all the while crying my eyes out
Honestly...I don't see how he can ever repair the harm he did to our 32 year r'ship. I'm still with him, waiting....waiting to be stronger and in a more decisive place in my life
Elle
KIA KAHA
- Sonata
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Re: Confusion
I can totally relate to the idea of waiting to be in a stronger and more decisive place......I am in the same emotional place that you are. I wish you and me much peace as we heal and figure out what we really WANT.....
- •
Thread Starter- SusanneH
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Re: Confusion
Sonata,
First, before I forget, good luck with the school year! That alone has to be at minimum
stressful, not counting all the other you’re going through. Take it easy on yourself.
I know what you mean about trying to live a ‘normal’ life with your husband after a
disclosure like that. I, too, found about my husband’s cheating by finding it on his phone.
It’s a long story that started with him accidentally showing me his iPad with a nude
photo of a man on a CL ad for M4M before they took it down (March, 2018). He said he ‘didn’t know
how it got there! Well, I couldn’t rest & the next day looked at his computer. The 1st
thing I saw was an email labeled “SEX”. My world as I knew it ended then…I showed
him the email and he said he didn’t go. Since nothing had ever happened before, I
believed him. But, I kept asking “WHY???” We had a great relationship/best friends/
good sex life…nothing seemed out of place. After a month of me asking why, he finally
said “I’ve always liked having sex with both men and women”. But, the way he
described it, was that he went to men when he couldn’t get women, etc. I didn’t
immediately associated it with bisexuality. He made it sound like something he just did
recreationally, or whatever.
I had never looked in his computer or phone until then, but told him I was going to start!
He said just fine! (maybe he didn’t remember all that was there?) I searched for 1 1/2 years, finding porn, dating sites, emails to men, etc. He lied to me, over & over telling me “I never met any of those men!!!!”…then, after he had to admit
that since there were so many, he said “I went to see them, but didn’t have sex with
ANY of them!!!”…yeah, right…. He looked them up on the dating/CL site, he
contacted them, he initiated the date, and yet he turned them all down?????? NO
WAY! But, all I had to go on was what he said. VERY long story a little shorter,(June 1,
2019) I finally found something he couldn’t get out of and he admitted to having sex with a guy f
for about 2 yrs (oral sex only/nothing emotional. He didn’t even know the guy’s last
name). They met at the local porn video shop and would go in the back rooms and ‘do their thing’. He said that was the only man he had been with.
I couldn’t let the others go, and when he saw I was going to go through with the
polygraph, (5 months later), he admitted to having sex with men our entire relationship.
In fact, he’s been doing it since boy scouts and never quit. He did it all through having
girlfriends, everything.
Just wanted you to know the background. Sorry it’s so long.
One of the things was:
You said: “not willing to show me his email because he still feels like it’s private and his”.
Well, (this is spelled out really well on the forum ‘surviving infidelity’ better than here),
when your spouse has an affair, and wants to reconcile, they are supposed to let you
have access to ALL their devices at any time! That shows you that they are not hiding
anything. If he doesn’t want you to look, then he probably is..
“he says this man is the only an he has been with and the only time he has stepped
outside our marriage”.
When I first found out, and he told me it was only one man, I believed him, even though
I had seen all the others on the computer. After all, I didn’t know he had lied to me all
through our marriage by then, and as far as I knew, he usually told the truth..WRONG>
people kept telling me that a cheater rarely tells the truth on everything right off the bat.
I told them they were wrong….no, I was.
As far as how long it took/takes to rebuild a new relationship……that depends on both
of you.
First, both of you have to want it.
It’s a good idea to get counseling (both individual, and later marriage). I think I saw in
another post that you are?
It’s different for everyone. For instance, my husband can’t seem to keep his attitude up.
When we argue, or when something comes up and he gets defensive right off the bat,
which is common these days, we take several steps backwards.
It takes a lot of honest communication to make it work. We’ve been reading
communication books & workbooks (we have troubles with that when we argue). He’s
not good at talking about feelings …at all! At first, he’d stonewall…..just sit there & look
down/quit talking…..It was infuriating.
SO, the better you can do with communicating, the better.
Also, boundaries! You need to set boundaries for him to follow. For instance (whatever
applies to your situation and your wants/needs)..for him, the porn leads him to wanting
men even more….so,
no porn
100% honesty at all times
full access for me to look at all his devices at any time
no sexual activity with anyone but me.
text/call me through the day (he travels around town while he works…that’s when he would meet up with men)
and, whatever fits your situation
The other thing: open relationship.
My husband would like an open marriage (of course he would). that’s what he’s had up to a little over a year ago! as he put it when he answered a question in a workbook :”the best of both worlds”.
I, on the other hand, am strictly monogamous. I thought about it, but just can not do it. It’s part of my core values. Others have done it. Some with success and love it. Others do it…usually the wives…to make their husbands happy/ to fulfill their urges, etc….. I have to ask. If his urge was to have sex with another woman—say, different from you; and it was just as strong, would you have an open marriage so he could fulfill that urge? Most wouldn’t, so why do we do it because it’s a man?
Anyway, right now, it’s best not to make decisions, but to take it a day at a time. Take care of yourself.
All the best to you both!
Susanne
- Dutchman
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Re: Confusion
Sonata wrote:
I wonder if it's possible and if I will ever fully trust him as I did before?
Yes, in my experience trust can be restored. But it doesn't just pop out of the ground though. It grows with openness, acceptance, communication, and the experience of both actively going for a common goal (ie. your relation together). Along that path mutual trust grows in the background.
At one point my trust in our relation was severely damaged. I doubted if it could ever become what it was before. But it did! And it's now actually on a more solid ground than just the automatic assumptions like I had before.
The quality of trust is actually better than before it all was questioned by my wife coming out.
I wonder if he can be monogamous after finding out about this part of himself? I wonder if I will ever be able to be in an open relationship? At this time I don't think so.
That's about his choices and how he deals with his sexuality. Experiencing sex with men will have made it more complicated for him. But there's no turning back the clock. He has to find his way in coping with that fact as well.
He has to cope with his sexuality himself. But actually that's about the way he stands in life.
And this is integral part of the rebuilding of trust. If he doesn't learn to cope, you'll find no reason to regain trust. It's as simply as that I think.
So, there is this issue with his dealing with his sexuality. Fact. He has to do something about it. Fact. This is not (in the first place) your problem, it's his!
Sure, an open relation would make it easy for him, but that is like putting his problem on your shoulders. Like: You pay the price, so he doesn't really have to deal with his issues. I don't think this a sensible thing to do.
But... both going for the relation, means a lot, it's a mayor job, not easy at all. Sexuality is a complicated matter, but sexual orientation is not the main thing. Maybe it feels like the central issue at the moment, but it's not the real problem.
There are a zillion bisexuals living in a monogamous marriage without cheating their spouse (or even lesbians married to a man, without fear of cheating being an issue). Because it's really about the way one thinks, makes choices, stands in life and live it accordingly. Not suppressed, not by force, but free and authentic. But it takes effort and determined will to go for it. To choose that path is actually an act of striving for freedom.
I'm glad my wife already wrote in another topic about her way going through this. For I as straight spouse can only mention and somewhat describe the way the LBG spouse has a decisive role in his/her handling feelings for a MOM to succeed, but not what it's actually like going through that.
It wasn't easy for my wife seeking her way through it. (and how this unfolds and choices made will be different depending on the person involved, but I think certain aspects of her story are general). So it's certainly not a simple task, but it's a battle on a totally other front than the struggle against urges and feelings. If the latter is the case, one is probably fighting the wrong war.
If your husband is genuinely going for internal change (not his sexual orientation as such, but his dealing with life and relations), your questions are answered. You'll won't be wasting your time, and trust will eventually return.
The effort you put into it will be worth it as well. (it could take some years before you find yourself in a good place again).
But be (or make) sure it's genuine and totally honest. One can make mistakes and not being perfect, one may also have to learn a lot along the way. But no malicious deceit allowed and real love has to be at the base of it all.