SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello all,
Thanks in advance for your time, energy and support. I will pay it forward when I’m in the right place to do so. My story started when I was 28 and my boyfriend (we shared a flat) cheated on me and we split up. It was traumatising as he lied and lied even in counselling. About 18m later we got back together and eventually got engaged, married, had 2 boys, this is context for what happened next. The first decade of marriage was good and our family were so happy. Only difficulty was he struggled to keep jobs - he moved/lost jobs often so was a little stressful and I worked full time also. In the last 5-6 years his dad died and activated a spiral in his mental health. He’s was angry and then he also told me he’d been abused by a family member. I couldn’t get my head around this as we had had a good relationship and he had let our kids stay at this persons house. Over the last 5 years I discovered debt, first £30k then a year later £10k loan. The first £30k I was devastated but we paid it off and he explained it away. Then shortly after discovering the £10k his mum died and then it all unravelled. I searched his iPad and discovered he’d been visiting massage parlours/escorts. He also smoked pot often. I was completely broken and barely functioned but we had now a 14 and 11 year old so had to. I am so torn - we are both in therapy individually. I am heartbroken as is he. He struggles that I didn’t believe/support him. I struggle that he lied for so long and is capable of this deceit. He didn’t want to lose his family but couldn’t cope because of the childhood trauma. Eldest kid is now in final gcse year and has said he feels depressed. 😔 i don’t really know how to move forward. I have a good group of friends but this is soooo heavy I don’t want to burden them and often have to put on a brave face. I just want to heal and be optimistic about the future but for some reason feel I’ve taken a huge step back. I can completely relate when people say this is the most painful experience and I think it’s the isolation. Husband struggles to hear my pain as in comparison his is worse - he was suicidal, has lost both parents etc etc It’s sooooo hard to get out of bed and then have 2 sons who seem to want to play the x box all day which compounds the loneliness. None of this is their fault so want to protect them as much as possible. Seems we are all victims because of husbands choices BUT i still have some compassion that his choices are a result of his childhood trauma. Thankyou for hearing me - not sure what the answers are but feeling incredibly lonely and broken. I also just turned 50 - never a good time for this shit to happen but here we are.
Xxx

Sister, his choices are likely a results of character flaws and childhood trauma that went unresolved forever.

That is a thing, common in cheaters.

This doesn’t excuse the sexual and emotional abuse he inflicted you with infidelity, adultery, betrayal.
This is a trauma gifted just for you, and a very bad one at it.

You see there are usually reasons for bad choices, rarely a person is completely rotten or evil. Most of all had troubles and little or big traumatic experiences that developed character flaws.
Most people find healthy copying mechanisms. Some resort to evil and abuse, because they are too scared to accept their issues and confront them.

Imagine for example I come and tell you the story of my childhood abuse trauma etc. then instead of facing the issues or finding a healthy coping mechanism, I end up abusing sexually another person. (Or any kind of abuse really, this just got our case)

Does that make me the victim even if I started being one? Does it justify the abuse in any way or form? No, it doesn’t. 2 wrongs don’t make a right. Evil choices are still bad no matter if they come from hurt, you are still the villain.

The abuse received is a tragedy. The abuse inflicted is a deliberate choice.

If you weren’t emotionally invested in your partner you could see this clearly and you would not excuse it in the slightest.

The tricky thing about infidelity is that we love our partner, so even as abuse victims we try to find empathy and excuses just to deny the closest person in your life could do you one of the most horrible things a human can do to another human.

That’s why nasty ptsd is so common and some people break completely or end it in the worst ways.
That’s why is important to see the betrayal for what it is and the cheater for who they are.

You need to put yourself first, set boundaries and protect yourself from further abuse to get you time to heal from your wounds.

This is not an upside or a small blunder. The damage to your nervous system shares similarities with other nasty sexual or emotional abuse, just know those are punishable by law, you would probably never receive any vindication.

Maybe scorn, which adds insult to injury.

Friends are good, but unless you’re friend with someone who dealt with infidelity in their life, they won’t be probably much helpful, is a complex topic and an uneasy one, as it puts into jeopardy the deepest form of human connection, the attachment wound, it’s something you don’t really want to think about or face unless your are so "lucky" to find you into, your partner’s courtesy.

Still like all trauma and abuse there is a way out. The most straightforward is removing yourself from the abuser and cutting them off your life. Which is the most common advice you get from the average person.

Problem is, you most like,y have emotional attachment that doesn’t make it so easy to cut it off. And that’s something people who didn’t live it, cannot understand.

It can put you in the position of a special kind of lonely and mess with your mind and emotions.

Think this.
You suffered a great wound and you are likely living with chaos right now.

What is important is for you to be heard.
You have been heard.

Start acting to protect your own emotional state (what’s left of after the nuclear blast) in writing down what you want what you need, what you deserve. Those are your boundaries

They are more important than ever right now.

You come first.

And let out all the pain you feel, don’t compress it. Here you will find people who can hear you and understand you

I get a little upset when a cheater tries to make a situation into the oppression Olympics as if their pain is somehow worse than yours.

I've had some devastating things happen in my childhood. I suffered from a psychological and mental crash and a profound loss of function. Tho I contemplated it, I never attempted to commit suicide. I was treated for major depression, anxiety disorder, and put on high doses of SSRIs. Which turned out to be the wrong treatment for me. I'm off of the SSRI now and have been recovering ever since.

It was a mess. I was a mess. That was about a decade ago. My wife's affair 17 months ago eclipsed all of that. For many it's the worst experience of their lives, and I can say that's also the case with me.

It's one thing to suffer from childhood trauma, major depression, and crash out. It's a whole other ballgame to lie, be deceitful, sneak around, and destroy someone else's life. That's just pure selfishness. As bad as things got I was always at least honest and wore my feelings on my sleeve.

I don't want to tell you what to do. I know how hard this is, and I understand the attachment you build with someone over decades. My wife and I were married almost 27 years when she had her affair. But I do know I wouldn't accept any of his excuses. If he needs help he needs to get it, and he can do it without wrecking his whole family.

It's no wonder you didn't believe or support him. He lied to you! He earned that doubt. Until he can accept what he did and stop blaming his condition for everything he's not a safe partner. It sounds like he's been through a lot and I'm not completely unsympathetic because I've been there, too. I just didn't make the destructive choices your husband did.

I haven't lived your husband's life, but that's my take on it. He needs to own what he's done and take responsibility for it. I know there's no measuring stick for individual mental anguish, but he needs to make room for your pain and realize that it's right up there with his own, and maybe even worse. The difference being he actually inflicted it on you. He made choices.

I'm not trying to just bash your husband for the sake of it. I'm trying to give you my perspective as someone who's been through some similar issues and didn't cheat on my wife, even when I've had opportunities. Mental illness is not an excuse or a get out of jail free card for infidelity. It's also no excuse for not facing what he did. I think it would be a step toward true healing for him. Instead of just wallowing in self pity, own it and start making amends. You don't have to tolerate it.

I'm so sorry you're here and dealing with this. I encourage you to keep posting. Ask any questions or just vent if you need to. This is the place for it. This is a good group of folks and a safe place to let it out. Most of us have been in your shoes to some extent and we understand what you're going through. Just typing things out and getting feedback and support has been so helpful for me. Hang in there. It takes longer than anyone wants it to, but things will get better.

[This message edited by Pogre at 1:18 PM, Saturday, September 19th]

Survivor15

Seems we are all victims because of husbands choices BUT i still have some compassion that his choices are a result of his childhood trauma.

I really relate to this because I think it is possible to have compassion for what somebody has been through and still recognise that what they then chose to do with that pain belongs to them...his childhood trauma can be real and terrible without making the lies betrayal or escorts something you were supposed to absorb because he was hurting - you were living through your own difficulties too and you did not turn those into somebody elses wound. My own situation also involved repeated use of prostitutes and one of the things I have struggled with is how you hold empathy for someone you have loved for years alongside the reality that they were capable of living parts of a life you knew nothing about. Those two things can exist together and I do not think having compassion for him means you have to minimise what it has done to you.

I think it’s the isolation. Husband struggles to hear my pain as in comparison his is worse

This really stood out because pain should not become a competition...his losses and trauma do not make your betrayal trauma smaller and you should not have to make yourself quieter because his history is painful. You are also still trying to function as a mum and protect your boys while carrying something enormous yourself and that is exhausting, a step backwards at 18 months does not mean you have failed or undone your healing - sometimes another layer of it just lands differently and needs attention. You deserve somewhere your pain gets to exist without having to justify that it is bad enough first...I am sorry you are feeling so alone in it...

Thankyou so much Butterfly in progress, Pogre, and Back from the storm. It feels very validating to actually be heard by those who can relate to the pain.
It’s a constant cloud affecting self worth and mental health and just so hard to reconcile that the impact this would have on me was NEVER considered.
Amongst the mess of the massage parlours, also discovered my husband was too close with his female business partner. Disappearing messages, & a message with kisses. I told him I needed to separate but he convinced me there was nothing inappropriate and he was building better boundaries. He has to some degree built better boundaries but he still has to travel with her often, works from her house etc. It leaves me in a state of anxiety every time. Whether they are having an affair or not, or did it is unhealthy for me. I just don’t have energy or strength to separate at the moment. I’m struggling to function again (work, parenting kids) I just want this pain to stop. I’m so angry with him. Our kids are suffering as because of his actions they now have 2 parents with mental health problems and not able to be present parents.
I’ll talk to my therapist tomorrow but have to change something as can’t carry on like this. Sorry don’t have a question or looking for advice. Just need to vent as another weekend and again feeling miserable 😞 . I hope anyone reading knows how strong they are for surviving this horrible trauma of betrayal. Xx

You said you're not looking for advice, so I'm just going to let you know that you're being heard and give you my take on what you're describing. Infidelity is real trauma. It takes an average of 2 to 5 years to recover from a betrayal like this. I've seen so many say that it's the worst experience of their lives. Worse even than the death of a loved one. Topped only by the loss of a child. I can say that's been my experience, and I went through a couple of horrific things as a child. I do not like the way your husband trying to tell you how you should feel relative to how he feels.

He's minimizing and poo-pooing your pain and trying to make his issues front and center, and that's just not going to work.

Amongst the mess of the massage parlours, also discovered my husband was too close with his female business partner. Disappearing messages, & a message with kisses. I told him I needed to separate but he convinced me there was nothing inappropriate and he was building better boundaries. He has to some degree built better boundaries but he still has to travel with her often, works from her house etc. It leaves me in a state of anxiety every time.

This is not good either. At all. There is something inappropriate happening here, even if it's "only" the messages. It's no wonder you're feeling a lot of anxiety. He's not taking what you're going through seriously at all.

Vent away.. You have been heard.

Please put yourself and your kids first. And don’t let him rug-sweep.
You deserve better.

I would be livid upon learning he let you put your kids in harm’s way by letting them go to the H’s abuser’s house.

He wants to take the easy way out. He’s looking to be coddled and told it’s not his fault and other factors and other people are to blame.

I’m sorry you are not getting the support you need.

Survivor15 I was not surprised to see the connection between your WH using massage parlors and/or sex workers and claiming he suffered childhood abuse, which I presume means SEXUAL abuse? If so, the same thing happened with my WH and he confessed to being a sex addict, or SAWH as we say on this site. As several others already have said, the fact that he grew up with that kind of memory should NOT have become YOUR betrayal...it is a CHOICE they made!

A famous sex addiction therapy center author studied the psychological problems that led men to such behaviors and found that 81% of the men he treated as inpatients for sex addiction had histories of suffering childhood sexual abuse. That is a staggeringly high percentage, but it still does NOT excuse victimizing an innocent, trusting spouse!

But it helped me get some sense of my WH's motives for caring so little about me/us when I finally got him to admit it was primarily his MOTHER who had sexually abused him as a toddler! I concluded there must have been a ton of buried rage at HER that he never dealt with in his life and he was single until almost age 40. All during that time, as he much later admitted, he'd gone to prostitutes regularly even though he'd told me when we first met that he was a 'virgin'!

A psychological "image transfer" from the sexually abusive mother to the man's wife seems not uncommon in adults who were childhood abuse victims. I think that history has something to do with the kind of cheaters they become. Why else would they seem to "act out" against their bond with an intimate other - who happens to be female and a mother. Too much nasty unfinished business in his head, he needs intensive therapy. The problem is, he has now had experiences he cannot mentally or even physically erase, combined with a demeaning attitude towards women. I am so sorry, and urge you to seek support for yourself now and talk to your doctor about getting checked for sexually transmitted diseases. Some of those diseases can lie dormant for years and ultimately lead to horrible outcomes. My SIL was given syphilis by her XH who had gone to prostitutes in another country. By the time she discovered this, it had caused her to become handicapped in her legs and she cannot walk without a cane. And I lost my only sister to cancer several years after she was given HPV by her XWH, a sex addict who did horrible things and came home to her and their children.)

Many books have been written to help us BS's understand such perverted behavior in abuse victims. One that I remember as fairly simple to read was "Ghosts in the Bedroom." But finding sympathy for the abuser is also perhaps not the most important reaction for the betrayed partner to have at first.