SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi, this is my first post. I found texts today whilst trying to reduce storage on my late husband’s phone where he is arranging to meet up with escorts in hotels for huge sums of money, arranging massages in women’s homes, hook ups for sex locally and when I put his email in only fans he has an account there too. I’ve been grieving his sudden death for the last few months and this has hit me so badly I don’t even know the man I’ve been living with for the last 14 years of my life. I feel so hurt and betrayed and don’t know how to deal with this. He would always profess his love for me and our children but obviously it was all lies or he wouldn’t be doing what he did. It’s really hit my self esteem which has always been low and I’m wondering how he could do this to me. I feel so stupid for falling for his lies too and being so blindly trusting. I’ve gone from wanting him back more than anything to feeling hate for him which is awful. How do I process this when he’s not here to ask why?

I’m so sorry for your terrible situation. It truly is a nightmare.

How do I process this when he’s not here to ask why?

It is a fairly universal instinct in the face of betrayal to try to find out details and understand why. It completely makes sense that you would want to be able to question him to get your answers, and now on top of the betrayal you have been robbed of that opportunity to ask your questions. I hurt for you.

If there is any good news in this, it’s that you must quickly learn the difference between learning about the affair and your own personal healing. They are completely different things, but many betrayed (me included) conflate the two early on. You must heal, even without your questions answered. And you can. You really can.

I strongly recommend individual therapy. Process your feelings there, and get good advice on how weather the storms. Read and post here. We understand the pain of betrayal. You may find comfort in the stories here and learn that most waywards have strong similarities. You may even be able to find good enough answers to "why" here. In the end, answers to "why" for infidelity are never satisfying.

Wish you so much healing.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 10:20 PM, Tuesday, October 22nd]

Uggh, so horrible to hear, PS24. But a thought…

He would always profess his love for me and our children but obviously it was all lies or he wouldn’t be doing what he did.

Delete the word "obviously" because you will never really know what went on in his noggin. In his heart. He would hardly be the first person to live a double life, enjoying the warmth and security of his home, and…the other life. Tiger Woods, anyone? Supermodel wife? And on and on and on.

His behavior is very little about you and everything about him.

Of course you wished he didn’t have this behavior stemming from a monstrous character flaw, but now that you know some of the truth of him…are you glad you know that truth?

Welcome to SI and so sorry for your loss and the betrayal. There are some posts pinned at the top of the forum that we encourage new members to read. Also, there are some with bull's eye icons that are good. The Healing Library is at the top of the site and has a lot of great information, and includes the list of acronyms we use.

If you can, IC (individual counseling) with a betrayal trauma specialist can be very helpful. If you're having difficulty eating, be sure to eat something even if it's only a protein drink. If you have problems with depression or sleeping, see your doctor because meds may help you short term.

We do have members who dealt with infidelity after their spouse passed. It is rough because you aren't able to ask them questions. I hope they read your post and can chime in.

Please see a grief counselor. I think it will definitely help you.

I am sorry for your loss and the fact you found out he was cheating. It will be difficult to heal but you can do this!! It just takes time.

What an awful thing to find out at such a terrible time.
I want to reinforce what others have said. His choices have nothing to do about you. When in the initial shocking hard not to blame yourself. But please do not. He did this because he was clearly a very broken man.
Now because I'm a health professional and no one else has said this you absolutely need to get full STD testing now and repeat in 6 months. This means a full pelvic.exam.and blood work. He was active with high risk individuals. You have to stay healthy for your kids.
Also ask your Dr for a grief counselor and if you are struggling to sleep and eat you may need some medication to help you get through this. It's a very real trauma to lose your spouse unexpectedly and then finding this out on top doubles things the trauma the fight flight respone etc.

Continue to reach out here. We are a great community withan6 wonderful people.

Ok, I’ve been betrayed as well as have many/most of us here. Yours is quite awful in that you can’t really hope for answers or closure.

I’m not a cheater, but as a man, I do know it was likely that he did love you and your children, possibly even fervently. Men can compartmentalize sex differently and don’t always associate all sex with live. He undoubtedly had psych issues or a porn addiction that let him to seek outside sex, admittedly a cruel betrayal, but my wife claims love for me despite throwing herself into arms of another man (years ago now).

Impossible for me to get into his head, but it might be unnecessarily damaging to you to jump to the conclusion that he was conducting an elaborate sham on you and your kids. He was a betrayer and damaged, but he may have still held you up in his heart/mind. Tough, I know, but this site is full of cheating men who report to love their wives throughout.

I feel your agony, even though I don’t know you. But I do know the trauma of discovering your one and only had been leading a hidden life. You are most likely feeling many of the symptoms of shock. Tushnurse’s advice is absolutely golden. Keep moving forward, and the first step should be to your doctor. Then keep going with grief counseling. I have read that a betrayed spouse goes through the same grief process as a bereaved person. I have personally found this to be true, so I expect that you will feel like you are grieving two deaths, your husband’s and your marriage. You may be able to get through all this grief and suffering on your own, but it will take a lot of time and sadness before you navigate this terrible puzzle. Go get professional help from someone who has guided others through this hellish landscape. You will get good advice and support here, please know that you are not alone and you are nothing but normal for feeling like you do.

About ten years after my Dday, my wife was diagnosed with stage 3 uterine cancer. I was still very angry about her EA and lack of remorse and I had just discovered a month or two before that she had networked with him on LinkedIn. I was now angry that I was so conflicted. I know, pretty petty thinking about my own feelings when my wife was facing a potentially fatal illness. But have to admit, it kept going through my mind that the betrayal had even muddied my role as supporter and protector. I did get over myself and was able to support her, but I think I understand a little of your conflicted feelings. Wishing you the best.

Thank you all for your support and advice and for sharing your own experiences. I had already started seeing a counsellor to process his death as it was traumatic as I had to perform CPR and then allow his life support to be withdrawn in hospital when the doctors said he couldn’t recover. I saw the counsellor today and poured it all out which helped and a lot of what she said resonates with the replies here. It’s been hard to sleep and work today but I’m still eating and taking care of the kids. Thank you to the posters sharing from a male point of view, I find it really difficult to understand how you could love your spouse and also do this to them but that’s just looking at it from a woman’s point of view. I am seeing my doctor next week so will get some advice around STD testing and I think I could do with some antidepressants as I’m feeling so low and hopeless right now. It’s just so hurtful and cruel

Also the messages go back several years so I’ve been duped for a long time

I am so sorry you experienced this.

Sending ((virtual hugs))

I gently concur with tush that taking exquisite care of one’s health is important. I found that health care providers differed in terms of their knowledge and expertise with thorough std testing and betrayal trauma. I was very fortunate to have compassionate and knowledgeable providers and was given thorough testing that was repeated at an appropriate interval and paid for by my health insurance.

Yes, you will get through this season of your life.

Allow yourself grace, time to grieve and time to heal. And please don't allow others to tell you to get over it. This is a process that needs to go at its own pace.

Sad but true, my journey of healing began on his death bed.

I'm in a much better place today, but it took a lot of time to get here. My life also looks so different than what I imagined it would be like with him, especially because he was only a couple of years away from his retirement. But I will say that my life isn't bad today dispite what I went through because I am healing. So there is hope for better days.

You have a lot to process; his sudden death and now learning he had a secret double life.

My late husband admitted to one affair a few years prior his death, and also admitted in his own way there were quite a few other affairs throughout our many years of marriage.

But he told me in the 2nd person, as if referring to someone else having these affairs. He got to tell me about his affairs in detail because he acted like he was referring to someone else!

I didn't have a clue that he was referring to himself when he told me some details about these other women. And after he passed, the truth of who he really was came to the light. In other words, I was out of denial. All the questions I had asked him about if he was cheating throughout the years of our marriage was actually the truth, but it all somehow got swept under the rug because I believed him and the lies he told to me.

Anyways, the best advice I can offer to you is to allow yourself time to process this shock and trauma, and grieving his death, and allow yourself time to heal.

You will experience a lot of intense, really intense emotions. It's a lot to deal with, but you will get through it. Use time to process and to heal yourself. There is no rush. It has taken me 4 1/2 years to get to a better place in my life. But I also had outside help, something you may also want to consider.

What I have found interesting is that the truth always comes out and everything comes to light as you are now beginning to figure out.

I am so sorry for what you are going through with your husband's death, and then learning of his past life by accident. So disheartening.

I hope what I had to say gives you a little hope that you also can heal, and even offer forgiveness to your late husband. I will admit though, it's very early to offer forgiveness. You first will need to understand what you are forgiving him for. But there is also no point in rushing to find the answers to his why's. Why he betrayed you for one thing. In time, you will find you the answers.
Everything will become clear to you in it's own time. And you will find the answers you are looking for. Just give everything time.

Finding out after somebody dies is whole next level traumatic.

Were the messages you found only for casual sex hookups? The reason I ask is because if there was more of an established relationship, then perhaps you could ask that affair person for some information.

I would be so angry. At his funeral/service I'm sure everybody said what a great person he was, and now I'd want to be screaming about what he was really up to all these years. This is not very gracious, but that's how angry I would feel.

After acceptance you need to understand that he didn’t cheat to hurt you.

He cheated b/c there was something broken in him. He needed to do this b/c of who HE is and it has nothing to do with you.

You were a good wife. And I’m certain he knew that.

are you glad you know that truth?

What kind of question is this? She didn’t dig to find out about her husband’s murky past. She just found things out, which she can’t unsee.

That kind of behavior speaks of a sexual addiction. It had nothing to do with you. You can put it under the same heading as a drug addict or an alcoholic or gambling addict. Again, it had nothing to do with you, that addiction owned him and how he managed to keep you innocent says a lot about how long he was addicted and I’m going to guess from puberty. Anyone who can be that secretive has never had an adult life. He was somewhere as a child emotionally you and your children were just the ballast of the ship for him. Being married and being a parent gave him some sense of stability which under the surface was pure chaos.

I am going to make a real wild guess here but I think he did truly love you the best he could. Please understand that kind of addiction owns the person, body and soul. How he got away with it that long is a mystery but many people do.

There was a poster on here for a while, who found out that his wife only wanted sex with black men and evidently did so routinely. There is something missing in all these people and there’s not one thing you can give them to fix it. They are buckets with a bottomless hole and you can pour all your love in there and it just drains right out because they are not able to maintain an emotional adult life.

There was another poster whose husband was NOTHING like she thought. When she went looking what she found was sickening. I think they have divorced.

I hope you find a support group of spouses of sex addicts. I think it will help you put into perspective how many bs are out there trying to make sense of it all

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 3:58 PM, Monday, November 4th]

Thanks for the replies, sorry I’ve not been on the site for a while to reply. In answer to someone asking I believe it was just hook ups for sex rather than an affair so I can’t contact the affair partner for information unfortunately although there could have been one that I haven’t discovered yet I guess. I found a phone I didn’t recognise in his belongings recently and tried to turn it on today but it was password protected. I’ve been questioning everything about our relationship, whether he loved me ever, when it started, if he was still doing it when he died, why he couldn’t speak to me if he was unhappy. He always told me he loved me, was very attentive and was very family oriented and protective of me and our children so I just don’t understand this new side of him that I’ve found out. I’m still really angry with him but also miss him which feels crazy! I’ve been blaming myself but my counsellor tells me it was his choice to cheat but it’s hard not to think that if I had been a better wife he wouldn’t have strayed. I don’t know if he was addicted to porn but there were sites he was using that I’ve found on his laptop and an only fans account. I wake up every night thinking about what I imagine him doing with escorts and it’s devastating. Hopefully with time these feelings will lessen but at the moment I am in a dark place with it all