SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So, I was here 14 years ago as my marriage ended after multiple infidelities and everything turned to sh*t.
I remarried, someone I'd known for years, someone I trusted...someone who knew what the infidelity in my previous
marriage did to me. The last few years have been tough, very little intimacy even though I've tried on many times to
initiate it, I've felt unlovely and lonely many times but we both wanted to be married I thought and he assured me it
wasn't lack of love but mid-life disfunction. Today after attempting to simply have a hug and kiss and being stepped away
from I did something I swore I would never do...but his phone was left open and I wondered if he was looking at porn..it had
happpend before and we had talked it through I thought...instead there are messages to a co-worker (she's in another country were
we lived 3 years ago). Flirty texts, she send him photos (which he asked for) clothed but provocative and he told her she still looked 'fine'...he hasn't said that to me in a long time.
I confronted him, very calmly, and he admitted straight away that he had been sending her messages, but said is was 'just' on the phone, nothing physical ever happened, he hadn't cheated even when we lived in the same country. I told him that he had, and that I never talked to other men and if a male (joint) friend happened to call round when he wasn't home I was very careful about keeping clear boundaries and conversation topics. I packed a bag and am in a hotel tonight, I haven't spoken to anyone yet and really don't know what to say. I feel like there is something wrong with me, for this to happen again...I'm not perfect I know but I don't get why not one, but two men, decided that there was something better out there.
He wants to talk tomorrow but I really don't know there is much to talk about. In my first marriage I stayed after his first affair and it took 8 years and another 2 affairs before it all imploded and I was a total wreck. I tried to hold it together for my kids and because I meant what I said when I got married but this time...I don't want to waste years more for it to happen again, I don't want to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm 62 I don't want to be 70 and trying to find somewhere new to live, build a new life.....but I also thought I was going to spend the rest of my life loving this man..I wanted to and I planned to...I'm angry and sad and so so exhausted and I wonder why I spent the last 4 years trying to nuture intimacy when he was getting his rocks off with someone else on the phone. This isn't how I saw my life playing out....and now I've got to rebuild it all again...I'm scared I'll want to believe him and that things can be somehow fixed or right, but I rode that horse to the ground last time and I haven't got it in me to do it again.

I'm very sorry this happened.

Trauma surfaces memories of previous traumas; one trauma can seem like a repeat of all other traumas combined. But new traumas are not combinations of all previous ones.

You have changed in the last 14 years. Your current H is not your 1st H. This betrayal is not the multiple betrayals you experienced in your 1st M.

I think it's worth talking with your H to get a sense of what's possible. Maybe you're both good candidates for R. Maybe not. Communicating will tell you. OTOH, if you don't want to meet, so be it. You control you.

Breathe deep. Relax as much as you can. There's nothing wrong with you. This is not a repeat; it's something new - and you have the strengths you need to survive and thrive.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:35 PM, Saturday, November 16th]

Thank you Sisoon for your words, its hard not to process it through the same channels. I know this time that I won't move back in with him unless and until he is taking significant steps to process his choices including making his own appointments to see a therapist. Last time I stayed right from day one and I did all the work of organising counselling and let him just come along for the ride. This has to be different...he has to want to stay and needs to want to do the heavy lifiting. We may talk today, we might not..I'm not sure I'm ready yet, but it may also be that this is his opportunity to exit...part of me thinks that whats he's been looking for but hasn't had the guts to say so. I know I'll survive and one day thrive but doing this again is just so hard