After everything, he's having an affair

LegacyUser

My marriage has been tumultuous to say the least.
My husband was/ is an alcoholic and was emotionally abusive- he used to shout, break things, awful temper....

He is dry about 3 years. It took another almost 2 years before he started to find peace with himself and therefore with us and he was still very angry for a long time after giving up drink. Angry with himself but taking it out on me.

I felt incredibly alone through our marriage, and I regret to say I cheated on him. These were not emotional relationships, but actually a sugar baby type thing where I was paid. Not that it excuses it.

He found out about it around the time he gave up drink (not related) but he didn't really want to talk about it.

During his recovery, he met someone and had an emotional affair, possibly physical at times, I'm not sure. Again whenever I raised it he got angry.

We went to counselling and just as we thought it was all over, we had pretty much decided to call it a day, something began to emerge from the ashes, albeit there was still a lot of hurt and anger- on my part anyway, and I'm sure on his too. Once counselling ended, we never really spoke of any of it again. While he was better at talking about his feelings in the now, the past was fairly firmly buried. We mention the booze the odd time, or his dalliance, but he has never asked about what I did. I would answer anything honestly but I'm hardly going to bring it up.

Covid has been, as I thought, the making of, finally, a real marriage as we were together far more. We were finally laughing together, talking, really getting on because he wasn't emotionally absent due to alcohol....even if both not mentioning much of the past.
We were spending a lot of time together as we were both at home, we were getting to know one another.

Anyway, I found out he has started another of these emotional , possibly physical, affairs with a client and I'm devastated.

I thought we were finally, finally getting somewhere. I feel I stuck with his emotional absence, his misdirected anger through alcohol for all that time, for whatever reasons of my own. That we had finally weathered the storm.

He's still far from perfect and yes I'm far from perfect, but now, once again, he's gone from me.

I am gutted and I don't know what to do. Where do we even go from here- I thought the life post booze/ recovery was a line in the sand for us, a chance for a fresh start, and yet here we are again.

He doesn't know I know but I know I won't be able to hold my tongue for long. I would say he suspects I have an inkling as he's changed the pin on his phone.

I should have copped sooner. He had the phone glued to him for some time - but it never really dawned on me as I thought we were getting on.

I read this forum a lot so I know the default it "leave him", dump his a$$.
But if I haven't left him during his alcoholism, I'm hardly going to do it now.
I love him and I thought he was finally in a place where he could love me.

LegacyUser

If it was all about the sex in some ways it would be easier.
It just hurts me so much that I'm never enough. It's always something or someone else that gets his emotional attention.

Princess Calla

I'm not sure what advice you want.

You stood by him through the alcoholic years, allocating the faults of your relationship to the drinking.

Mistakes have been made on both sides.

You drew a line under that and started counseling.

You thought things were better, the alcohol is no longer causing a fault in the marriage but he's embarking on affairs.

You say you don't want to leave him.

What else is there? He obviously has no respect for himself or you.

Your marriage is at best one sided, but in reality probably only in name only. He has checked out....you don't embark on multiple affairs if you love and respect your partner.

So up to you if you want to stay in a relationship like this. It wouldn't be for me.

The only advice I can think of is counseling for yourself and figure out why you are willing to accept this...."I love him" isn't really a good enough answer especially when he treats you so poorly.

Hannibal_Smith

I read this forum a lot so I know the default it "leave him", dump his a$$.
But if I haven't left him during his alcoholism, I'm hardly going to do it now.
I love him and I thought he was finally in a place where he could love

You say you don't want to leave him, so are you going to stay with him no matter what? Because you endured something together you should stay together no matter how much hurt is caused to one or the other? Even if there's a way of moving passed this can you honestly get to a place where you 100% trust each other?

It sounds like a vicious circle that takes an awful lot of work to try and get to the good times, but instead ends up with one party being crushed.

You're head must be wrecked. Take a breath, if its going to be a lifetime of such hard work where you end up hurt over and over, is it really something you want to hold on to?

Big Bag of Chips

OP, I understand that feeling of living with an alcoholic. The things you do. The behaviour you tolerate. I know your husband is no longer drinking but I think you could really benefit from going to Al-Anon. It honestly changed my life.

It is impossible for someone who has not lived with an alcoholic to understand just why someone puts up with it. To be honest, it's impossible for someone living the life to understand why they put up with it themselves!! But Al-Anon will show you that you are not alone. You are not any different to any other partner, mother, father, husband, wife, brother, sister of an alcoholic. And you will accept that you did what you needed to do at the time.

You might also accept that you don't have to continue that life. You don't always have yo put your wants and needs asidein favour of keeping the peace and smoothing things over for the alcoholic.

I am not going to judge you for still being with him. I am not going to question your reasons for anything. But maybe you should. Look to yourself, because nobody else has the power to change your life. Look to yourself and see if this is the life you are happy to live for evermore. Because, you can't change him. You can't change what he does, how he thinks. You have no control over him.

Al-Anon works off the 12 steps programme of AA. "One day at a time". Making tough decisions might seem daunting. So don't make any decisions until you are ready for them. Attend a few meetings. Find one you are comfortable in. And realise nobody is there to judge you, because everyone there has lived a very similar life to you.

You can't change him. But you can change your situation for yourself, if you want to.

LegacyUser

I know BBOC. The gas thing I thought we were happy. I really did, for once, and that hurts all the more.
All the time he was nice before he got angry in those endless cycles of abuse / co-dependance. That had finally stopped, and I relaxed, I really thought I can finally be me, we can finally be us.
For years I had my guard up, let it down only to be hurt by another outburst and left feeling like a fool.
And here I am again. A fu$$ing fool.

LegacyUser

We have just re mortgaged the house. We were going to split like I said, and then I (We?) took a leap of faith to do this, because it makes it all the more difficult to extricate ourselves financially.

I suppose we weren't as happy as I thought because 1. This is happening and 2. I'm almost scared to raise it with him as I know he will do his usual- attack as a form of defence, or his other previous tactic of silent treatment so you feel like it's your fault.

Because I've been at home during Covid-19 we have had almost no situation that would necessarily cause him to go back to his old outbursts I.e. no major rows but this ... who knows.

I don't know how to move on from this in the immediate future.. do I confront him?

I suppose we have had little or no reason to speak about our feelings as a couple or our relationship since we decided to move on. He is a head in the sand merchant at the best of times and wouldn't want to and I didn't want to rake over the past, what was the point?

Also, and I have posted on this before, I am going to have major egg on my face. I told everyone we were breaking up before, which was a big deal for me to come out about it and spoke about some of the worst parts of our past. When I decided to stay with him, my friends were gracious enough to accept my decision.

Right now I am in shock and it feels so dire

Rubberchikken

If he has put you through so much, do you honestly think it's worth going through all this again?

I realise that you say you love him but which man do you love? The one you married or the man who has gone through alcoholism/affair(physical or otherwise).

If he's willing to have another affair, of any type, I'd question his commitment to your marriage.

I'm sorry you're going through all of this. Do you have anyone in RL to confide in?

leggo

Second the suggestion to go to Al-Anon. OP for all you’ve been through, and I’m so sorry it sounds like hell, you don’t seem to have a full understanding about the cycles of addiction and affects that it can have on a partner. You’re typing things that are screaming red flags to me and if you understood the cycle you’d spot this as soon as you typed it. So I think Al-Anon would be good to give you support but also help increase your understanding, make sense of your own decisions and make the “what now” part clearer for you.

I’ll give you an example of something that stood out to me as soon as I read it: you spoke of your relationship resurrecting ‘from the ashes’ just as you were about to break up without much context or any particular reasoning. You later explained about how you doubled-down on this by remortgaging the house, which is a huge and questionable step to take for a relationship that was on death’s door so recently.

So when you’re with an addict, it’s quite common for partners to almost start behaving like addicts themselves, not necessarily by substance abuse but just by becoming addicted to the cycle of trying to catch the other person, to change them, the stuff I’m sure you’ve been through ad nauseum.

Well what happens an addict when they’re just about to give up their supply altogether? They typically decide that nothing else matters and make a grab for it at the expense of everything else unless they have support in place to stop them. And what did you do yourself when you were just on the verge of finishing this? You defied all logic and decided to totally re-commit to this and even re-mortgaged the house to make it near impossible for you to back out again.

Even now, when it’s come out that after you thought everything had been fixed your husband was cheating on you...you’re immediately dismissing the very reasonable suggestion that you finish the marriage before anyone can make it. Is that not exactly the kind of thing an addict says? “I’ve lost my wife and family and didn’t quit drinking...why would this stop me?”

Go to Al-anon. No harm will come of it and it’ll at least give you some perspective, info, structure and a support network to be able to manage whatever the next few steps are.

Big Bag of Chips

leggo makes a good point. Living with an addict brings all kinds of complicated problems with it. You become addicted to them. You become addicted to trying to catch them out, keeping tabs on them, trying to prove yourself right, yet continuing the same behaviours yourself.

You are addicted to him.

You need to break out of the mind frame you're in. This is not a good relationship. And you wanting it to be a good relationship, at all costs, doesn't make it so.

He will live the life he wants. Addicts usually do what they want, regardless of the affect on others. You now must chose the life YOU want.

LegacyUser

Afterall wrote: »

I read this forum a lot so I know the default it "leave him", dump his a$$.
But if I haven't left him during his alcoholism, I'm hardly going to do it now.

One of the saddest things is that sometimes when women choose to stay with a cheater is that they can just end up leaving you anyway and take the choice away from you.

Afterall wrote: »

I love him and I thought he was finally in a place where he could love me.

He clearly doesn't though. You said it yourself "after everything, he had an affair"....he doesn't care what this will do to you, he doesn't care if it will break you, he just wants to do what he wants.

A couple of posters mentioned you got addicted to the cycle of behaviour that goes along with being with an addict. Personally I think it's probably the emotional abuse that you suffered that had a bigger impact and that is still affecting you and your decisions. You are probably trauma bonded to him but this relationship is not healthy and it's not going to have a happy ending!

Tork

I think you believe you should be rewarded for putting up with all of this. You came through the emotional abuse, the alcoholism, the affair and counselling and emerged with what you thought would be a better future. Then he goes and tears the script up by having an affair.

It takes two people to make a relationship work and it's very much looking like he isn't on board with that. It's a bigger mess for you than last time because now you've got that remortgage and the embarrassment of what you told your friends/rolling back. You also tried counselling and thought you'd reconnected, only to have that thrown back in your face. Now you're trapped by that financial bind and an unwillingness to look at other options. Maybe as a defence mechanism, you've well and truly dug your heels in. If you don't want to leave him, that's fine. Will he stay with you is another question. At the moment you're both financially trapped but who knows what turn events may take in the future? You could still be left with a whole lot of heartache and nothing to show for it.

Like the other posters, I think you need to take this further and talk to somebody. We can only help you so much. It would be nice if you could reach a place in your life where you can stomach other options other than staying in this marriage.

Airyfairy12

He is who is he, theres nothing else to say but leave the marriage, why are you doing this to yourself? its a very naïve way of thinking that just because you love him and stuck by him through a tough time you have to stay with him through everything else.
Nothing is ever going to change, first it was his drinking, abuse, then cheating then it was good between you and now he's cheating again. Its a typical roller-coaster relationship between two people that shouldnt be together. I just hope there are no children involved in this toxic, immature situation!
You both need to go your seperate ways and grow up. Sorry if thats not what you wanted to hear!

mohawk

OP ask yourself what your getting from this relationship? You say you can’t leave because you love him. The truth is that love isn’t enough to keep a relationship going strong. There has to be trust, respect, communication etc. Does your relationship have any of those things?
Is there a part of you that feels that because you stick by him through the drinking that he owes you a marriage?
When reading your posts I kept thinking that if you two stay together the future is one of resentment and anger. There is only so many times a person can be hurt by another before you resent that person.
Definitely think that Al-Anon is the way to go for you. Help make sense of the past.

Jequ0n

Maybe have a hard think about how “happy” you really were once the “relationship” had risen from the ashes.
Sounds like you desperately wanted to believe that you finally had what you had craved so you didn’t see the cracks any more. You can’t fix something that never existed

Ms. Newbie18

OP, you said you love him but I think its time to start loving yourself. Use the resources other posters have provided and seek out some council for yourself.

Re confronting your husband - why don't you wright your feelings down in a letter and give it to him. Its easy for people to scream and rage at you face to face while they try to avoid responsibility, harder to scream and rage at a letter. Also, I think for a lot of people seeing the problem in black and white can have more of an impact and it may be more cathartic for you.

Neyite

Others have given you great advice so I won't hog the thread by repeating it - one thing I will say is that I am at the age where I see a few marriages stumble. I've seen people bend over absolute backwards to try to fix something that was too big for them alone. I saw them give chances I knew would be probably be thrown back in their face by their spouse.

I know they needed to try, and needed to know that if they (eventually) walked, that they knew in their heart and soul they only walked as a last resort. I respect that, I respect their generosity of spirit and their kindness towards their spouse. I've never pitied them or looked down on them, not once - why would I? It takes immense strength to stay and try to fix something so broken and when the odds are stacked against them.

So don't feel embarrassed telling your friends and family your relationship is in trouble again. This isn't on you. You needed to try, and you weren't prepared to walk away without knowing you did everything you could. That says everything about your integrity as a person.

You take all the time you need to process this. See a counsellor - for you alone- where you can unravel your thoughts and feelings on this. You don't have to decide now, or to confront him. You know what you know. You know what you saw and you know what it meant. So if you did decide to leave and he denies it all or lies about it, it's not a court of law, you don't need to provide proof in order to leave, it's enough that you don't want to be in the marriage any more, regardless of the specifics, if that's your choice.

Katgurl

You have described a very unhappy marriage which sees you being seriously mistreated but then conclude by saying you won't leave. I'm not sure what advice anyone can give you except to get counselling to explore why you are so determined to live a life of misery?

ILoveYourVibes

Hi OP.

I am going to offer you observations and try to make them respectful and non threatening. You have been very honest. So i will try not to judge even if i feel you have made unwise decisions.

This is what I think.

You both chose each other for a reason.

I feel that reason is maybe deep down you both feel the other is the only one who will put up with your dysfunction. And these dysfunctions are not things you are ready to face about yourselves yet.

Not being ready to face them ...well ok ...no rush. But you keep getting in this cycle of hurting one another.

Neither of you knows how to establish boundaries. Neither of you seems to have self respect.

You simply know how to get short term fixes out of people. That seems to be your way of standing up for yourself.

Like the affairs on your part ..or the sugar baby situation. And this affair on his part.

Neither of you seem able or ready to lay your cards on the table and open up in a healthy way about everything. You both seem to hold back.

IMO ....both of you seem to play games with the other at different times.

You are both very savvy ...but not wise. A bag of tricks but no cup of wisdom.

You have said you won't leave him.

OK fine. I respect your decision.

Will you at least start being honest with yourself ?? And change yourself? Start by telling him you know. Start by going to counseling yourself.

You can't change him ..but at least you can make yourself a healthier better person.

Heal from his abuse.

99nsr125

To be perfectly honest you're the problem
He needs to leave you.


You had an affair and gained financially from it.


He has a friendship outside your marriage and you seek to demonize it.


You are engaged in coercive control, wanting to control who he interacts with, checking who he talks with, who he texts. The admission of the invasion of his privacy of his phone should be a wake up call to your behaviour.


You are engaged in coercive control, dangerous, damaging behaviour to your partner and you will repeat this behaviour with each subsequent partner.

Your entire post seeks to shift the burden of responsibility onto him which is what every abuser does saying things like "I wouldn't have hit you if you didn't make me angry"

You have significant problems
You need to seek professional help alone and Ye need to seek professional help together.

LegacyUser

Thanks everyone. I asked him about it and he admitted it eventually. He said it wasn't physical but he did feel a very deep emotional connection.
He said hes sorry he hurt me, that he didn't want that to happen, but he's not sorry it happened.
I'm still all over the place about it. He says he won't leave , if I want space I need to leave.

I'm just so devastated- what I cant wrap my head around amongst other things, is why he chose when we were getting on to do this.

99sn- I'm not sure where you're getting that angle from, albeit I'm open to hearing all sides.
I don't control his phone. My suspicions were aroused as he kept taking his phone to the bathroom or snapping it shut whenever I came near.

Yes, I'm not saying anything about my past was excusable. As I said we drew a line under it all. He was an angry alcoholic who was emotionally withdrawn for well over 10 years so neither of us is an angel.

Furthermore, this is not a friendship. I don't want to go into specifics but it is incredibly intimate stuff. I'm not trying to shift any responsibility onto him- about what exactly? As I said since Covid everything had been great - or so I thought and I'm trying to make sense of it.

He's certainly his own man, and answers to noone , least of all me. He's far from " controlled ". If anything it's the other way around- not that I'm boo hooing about it.

I do agree with you on the counselling.

Ms. Newbie18

Afterall wrote: »

Thanks everyone. I asked him about it and he admitted it eventually. He said it wasn't physical but he did feel a very deep emotional connection.
He said hes sorry he hurt me, that he didn't want that to happen, but he's not sorry it happened.
I'm still all over the place about it. He says he won't leave , if I want space I need to leave.

I'm just so devastated- what I cant wrap my head around amongst other things, is why he chose when we were getting on to do this.

99sn- I'm not sure where you're getting that angle from, albeit I'm open to hearing all sides.
I don't control his phone. My suspicions were aroused as he kept taking his phone to the bathroom or snapping it shut whenever I came near.

Yes, I'm not saying anything about my past was excusable. As I said we drew a line under it all. He was an angry alcoholic who was emotionally withdrawn for well over 10 years so neither of us is an angel.

Furthermore, this is not a friendship. I don't want to go into specifics but it is incredibly intimate stuff. I'm not trying to shift any responsibility onto him- about what exactly? As I said since Covid everything had been great - or so I thought and I'm trying to make sense of it.

He's certainly his own man, and answers to noone , least of all me. He's far from " controlled ". If anything it's the other way around- not that I'm boo hooing about it.

I do agree with you on the counselling.

Hi OP,

At least you talked it out. He said he is not sorry it happened even though it hurt you - so had he ended his affair? Agreed to have no contact with this person?

I am glad you agree with the comments re counselling and hope you organise that for yours ASAP.