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Hi, first time posting. Dday Feb (both in 40s). I found out WH of 15 years had spent 6 months enjoying prostitutes, engaging women online, porn use, along with onlyfans type interactions that I had no idea had been going on (sporadically) for years. I discovered evidence of the sex workers and then had trickle truth for a few days. In addition to the physical infidelity, also found out he sexted someone years ago. We have kids.

I have PTSD…not the greatest timing…we also in the middle of buying a house…

It didn’t cross my mind initially to do anything but try to reconcile. I was all in - my family is everything to me, especially my kids. The thought of losing half my time with them because of someone else was and is unbearable.

Right away, he promised it was done, never meant to hurt me, he will be all in and do whatever it takes to save our marriage. We went through a round of couples and basically "failed" for lack of a better word. Therapist essentially threw up her hands in our final session and told me she can’t help me if my husband isn’t ready to do the work.

It’s been almost nonstop fighting since Dday. Lots of reality bending, blaming me ("if you won’t move on…" or "if you refuse to forgive me…"), defensiveness, and silent treatment. I’ve had a difficult time managing this trauma on top of already having PTSD…he often yells and argues with me instead of offering comfort if I’m having an attack. He says he’s "trying" but he often refuses to do the specific things that would actually help me or our marriage heal.

I’ve asked for: daily check-ins so I don’t feel like this is being ignored or that I have to carry it alone; consistent "appointments" to talk about the infidelity and work through it so I’m not expected to shove it all away while I basically have to play house and act like everything is normal; a new couples therapist (WH just now got the ball rolling on this after months of promising to do so); a "soft spot" to land when I’m in emotional distress; and active amends, initiated by him.

He’s promised repeatedly to do these things and then not followed through consistently. He’s broken other promises such as searching incognito on his phone or going behind my back to friends with information he said he wouldn’t.

But. On the other hand, there are bright spots. There have been plenty of times where he has offered me comfort and it feels so good. Times when we have had deep conversations about what happened and he shows true remorse. And then there are the times when things feel almost normal and we enjoy each others company so much. He’s been my best friend for so long.

What are the odds he can turn this around? How many chances does one give if the person continues to express a desire to get better and that they are struggling to make changes but they consistently hurt and disappoint you? How much hurt can pile up before it truly is too much to work through? At this point, our fights are pretty unhealthy and I’ve lost so much stamina, I’m sure I’ve hurt him too because I’m not exactly tip toeing around his feelings lately.

I have made moves to separate, but have let him know the marriage door remains wide open. It will be his job to walk through at this point. But I am devastated and desperately hoping there’s still hope. Is it crazy at this point? How long should I wait for consistent behavior before I know it’s not a mirage, but true change?

Other info, he is in IC, and was while all the cheating was going on (therapist didn’t know until I did).

Thanks for perspective. Go easy please. This ish is hard.

Edited for brevity and to switch to the acronyms, but content is the same! Sorry for such a novel!

[This message edited by SoulThinker at 7:09 AM, Monday, August 18th]

I want to say that I am glad you found this space and we will support you here at Surviving Infidelity.

There are some great articles and posts in the Healing Library here at SI. One book I would recommend your Husband read (and you too) is called "how to help your spouse heal from your affair" written by Linda McDonald. It is not very long but may help your H understand what he needs to do for you.

Also many people will come along and offer their support, suggestions and opinions based on their own experiences. It may appear to be harsh or like a cold bucket of water, but remember everyone’s experience here is different and the advice comes from many perspectives.

It is unfortunate that the timing of your discovery of your H’s "secret life" coincided with some life changing events in your life, together with your PTSD.

I am going to suggest that maybe marriage counseling was not successful because your H wasn’t ready to face the music so to speak. If he’s not doing the work, it may be that he needs a different type of therapist. I don’t know if he has a porn addiction or sex addiction but if he does, he needs to be working with someone on an individual basis who can diagnose and treat his addiction.

I’m suggesting he needs individual counseling with someone who is a better fit. Once he has addressed his issues, then you may have a better chance of success in marriage counseling.

I hope this helps you. I will put my other thoughts in a second post.

Part 2 of my response to address things specifically related to your H’s behavior.

Unfortunately your H is behaving like a typical cheater who just wants to sweep this under the rug and make it all disappear. Unfortunately that is not going to help in reconciliation— it’s only going to make things worse and almost impossible for you, as the Betrayed Spouse (BS) to heal.

While I believe you see periods of hope where he is remorseful and willing to support you, it is overshadowed by his anger and frustration that "he needs to face this again and again".

This is the hard part. But you have to start thinking about what is best for you and kids. I am not saying you need to D him, but you do need to stand up for yourself and protect yourself from this pain. You cannot remain on the emotional roller coaster indefinitely.

How long should I wait for consistent behavior before I know it’s not a mirage, but true change?

Only you can answer the above question. Is it six days or six weeks or six months or six years? That is for you to decide. Obviously it is unhealthy to live in chaos and turmoil and a very stressful environment.

I will share based on my experience with my H’s last affair that for 6 months from dday1 (the day I learned of his affair) I did everything possible to Reconcile. I put up with being blamed for everything, the emotional roller coaster, basically having to audition to remain his wife (as I was constantly compared to the OW) etc. He didn’t want to talk about anything, was arrogant and expected me to sweep this under the rug. And every few days he would tell me he wanted a D.

Now I can tell you for those 6 months I worked in my plan B / exit strategy just in case we didn’t Reconcile. When I found out that he was still cheating while I was working my butt off to R, I snapped. I told him I was D him and then I did the hard 180. I didn’t speak to him, I didn’t do anything for him (no laundry or meals or favors or anything). I needed to start protecting myself and get off the emotional roller coaster.

I finally had to put myself first. I had to emotionally detach and stop putting him and the marriage first and put me (& kids) first.

Best thing I ever did. Yes we have happily reconciled but it’s not the same marriage. And my H knows I will not put up with any crap for any reason any longer.

[This message edited by The1stWife at 11:06 AM, Sunday, August 17th]

Thanks for your response and support. I’ve lurked for quite a while and really appreciated all the wisdom here. I think one thing for BSs, or in my experience, is we all want to think our WSs are somehow different or special or whatever to convince ourselves we have better odds.

He has read that book. Along with a few others that are very similar. He even read me chapters from one of them and we had good discussions about it. One of the highlights that makes things confusing.

I have leased a new apartment and plan to start filling it so we can start rotating in and out of the house in September. So I’m taking the steps that I know are needed to protect my peace. It’s just so painful to imagine days and nights away from my littles. I know being in a crap environment isn’t good for them long term but everything I think about it, I go down the rabbit hole of thinking I could just try harder, ignore him, put it aside, etc etc. it’s really hard to unbend reality when he’s constantly twisting it back on me. I am mostly aware but I’m not exactly all "online" with logical thinking and even when I am, the emotions and trauma responses are strong.

Sighs. It sucks so much.

I applaud you for taking that first very difficult step - to put yourself first.

There’s a saying that goes something like this: it’s better for kids to be from a broken home w/ divorced parents than live in a home that is broken down with constant fights and dysfunction.

I believe that as you "heal" from this you will start to see things differently and make decisions in your best interest and the best interest of the kids.

You certainly don’t want to be subjected to the cheater’s attitude towards you for the next 6 or 10 or 18 years.

FWIW my H tried to blame me for his unhappiness and his actions. I immediately shut that down and told him I was NEVER responsible for his happiness, career, etc. He thankfully got the message.

Holy crap that’s some hard perspective I needed…years of having his view of me shoved in my face. Having him save up things he doesn’t like about me like ammo for the right day…

Some days lately I feel like I can’t bear another minute of silent treatment. Years?! You are right, I really need to consider my quality of life long term.

I hate this. So much. I don’t want to see the truth. I know it’s staring me in the face but I want to go hide in a closet in lala land until this all disappears.

Who signed me up for such an adult life that requires such a massive amount of emotional maturity?!

Hi Soul Thinker -

I’ve been where you are. I had been with my husband for nearly 20 years (15 years married) when I discovered his raging prostitute habit.

Completely blindsided, I kicked him out the day I found out but then a few months later I invited him back in because the thought of throwing away nearly 20 years needed just a little time to see if I was doing the right thing. And then, of course, there was the fact that I was in love with him and had been for nearly half my life. As a side note, we did not have kids.

My prostitute using husband acted pretty much the same way it sounds like yours is. Little moments of clarity followed by big giant moments of rug sweeping, blaming me, anger, and worst of all, more lies. Lies lies lies lies.

Like a lot of people who find their way here say that the actual physical sexual cheating was not the worst part. I agree with that, although he did give me a nice little gift from one of his adventures. (thank God "just" HPV, which I was able to treat and get rid of) But for me, the worst part was not only the lies and lies and lies that he had told me over the years, not only the utter disrespect he showed the one person in the world who truly loved him and would’ve done anything in the world for him, but the fact that he was perpetuating abuse on these very young, probably trafficked young ladies. It wasn’t sex for him really, it was the power trip and it just grossed me out. I mean, grossed me out. I mean, I could not look at his face without seeing a sick sexual predator. His eyes used to look beautiful to me and now they absolutely made my stomach turn.

It took everything I had and more, but I filed for divorce and left him. Now, 10 years later, I live on the other side of the country and I’m OK. My life is nothing like what I expected it to be, I lost a lot of what I had worked so hard for, but I gained something probably more important. Myself. My dignity.

Now, when I look back at him, my marriage, the first half of my life, mostly what I feel is regret that I lost 20 years to him. And yes, I mean, I lost them. If I had married a good person, I might’ve had children. I might be spending the holiday season with grandchildren and family living in the house that I loved in the part of the country that I loved, living the dreams that come from hard work, dedication and love. But nope. He threw all of that away, on nothing.

My advice to you, from my little perspective over here is: don’t waste more time and feel like you lost even more than you already have because you didn’t want to believe what you were looking at. Your mileage may differ. I wish you luck, strength and peace. ❤️

He's not committed to helping you heal. Nor is he all-in on doing whatever it takes to build himself into a reliable marriage partner.

He knows they're the right things to do, but his constant frustration response at your ongoing pain tells a couple of things:

A) He hasn't internalized the extent of the damage his actions have caused to you and doesn't have the moral or emotional maturity to respond appropriately. This is manifested in the lack of conscientiousness towards you in your conversations.

B) He is under the impression that going through the unpleasant moments of feeling bad about what he did and saying sorry is all that needs to happen in order for the bad feelies to go away and everything to go back to being fine and dandy peachy-keen normal.

Neither of these traits are a healthy investment for entering a new marriage.

And entering a new marriage is exactly what you're doing. The old marriage is dead, and he killed it. Mourn its loss, you're never getting it back. It might help to let him know that. I recommend you tell him just that, maybe it will get through to him the enormity of the permanent damage he caused and thereby the unpleasant years long process that will take to build a new marriage.

This new marriage must be built in authenticity and emotional skill.

He must be willing and able to go through the difficult and painful process of transforming himself into a man whose stability, moral fortitude, and sense of responsibility towards you is solid to his core. If he doesn't, well, then the new marriage will have the same quality one did, with the moral rot festering behind his selfish, deceptive veneer of commitment and normalcy, and will likely end for the same reason.

You will have to recover and heal, since trying to build a new marriage from a broken and bleeding place is likewise not at all fair to yourself and anything constructed on such a foundation will immediately collapse the moment you change. You can and should build a "temporary shelter" for the sake of your children, as their primary need is stability. But do so with the full understanding that you, too will be changing as you integrate this awful chapter into the story of your life and adapt to the new person you are becoming.

We never "move on" from anything. We are the amalgamation of our experiences. Coming to terms with everything is our necessity. That's why here we say "the only way out is through." It is not right or fair or good that you have to go through this, and the only way through it is to face it, until your strength and identity is established enough to move with clarity and purpose in whatever treacherous waters you find yourself in.

Sorry you find yourself here. Take what works for you and leave the rest.

All the best,

-M

Your H won't be a good candidate for R until he decided the do the work necessary for him to change from cheater to good partner. He needs to want to give up the immediate pleasures of porn and prostitutes with the aim of building an M that serves both of you.

He failed as a partner, and he needs to fix himself. MC treats the M, but the M didn't fail. Your WS did not hold up his part of the M contract.

I think life works best when one asks for what one wants (not that I do it all the time myself), so my reco is to figure out your requirements for R and hold both of you to them. You've outlined some of what you want. Your next step is to figure out your deal killers. Is a daily check-in one of them? No porn? No searching the web anonymously? No sex outside of M?

IIRC, my top reqs were: No Contact, no more lies, IC with a goal of changing from cheater to good partner, MC (because our MC confronted my W again and again, and my W changed as she was confronted), and a few others. They were real reqs - if she didn't follow through on them, she was out of my life.

IMO, you have to heal yourself. As you know, a lot of pain has been dumped on you. It's in you now, and you have to process it out of your body. Your WS can give you support, but you have to do the work.

Similarly, your H has to do his work. You can't do his work for him. You can give support, though, if you're willing.

I have no idea of the probabilities here, and I don't care a bit about them. This was between my W and me. Either stepped up, or she was gone. IOW, I took an approach similar to The1stWife's.

R happens at YOUR pace, period. Let him know that if he does not like it he is welcome to leave at any time

A truly remorseful spouse is willing to do anything and everything to save the marriage. He is not there. Can he get there? Maybe

Just like 99% of WS's he wants to seeep it under the rug as fast as possible and move on because it's difficult for him. Boo hoo, oh well, too bad, he made his bed.

I would skip the MC for several months and stick with IC. Once you feel like your feet are firmly back on the ground then you can decide if you want to work on the relationship. That is the biggest mistake I made because I didn't know any better

Hello SoulThinker. I'm so sorry that you're going through this horrible experience. We always seem to find out when everything else is going to shit too and there's a lot to deal with. It's the cherry on the ick sundae.

No one has any magic answers here alas, I wish we did. It sounds like your husband has been cheating on you in some form or other for at least half your marriage. That's your answer to me. I think you'd find out it's probably even earlier than that too. This is who he is. Whether he wants to be this person or not....I don't know. I think if you never found out, and he never got shit for this, he'd probably be this person until his organs give out. Old age and ill health is what puts a stop to this more than anything else. Men (women can do this too but I'll say men because we're focusing on your husband) like this will do it until they drop, even if they are married to beautiful women like models or actresses - the most beautiful women, the most accomplished people, get cheated on and often abandoned. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU OR ANY PROBLEM SPECIFIC IN YOUR LIFE. IT'S NOT ABOUT PREGNANCY. It's not about any excuses.....this is the way HE PREFERS TO LIVE IF HE COULD DO IT WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES. We can call it an addiction, which means nothing to me, I think this IS his preferred way of life. What I keep seeing over and over again is that cheaters and faithful people who end up in situations like you do, do not have the same basic ideas or definitions of marriage. The cheater may not even realize that he's like this until he gets into this behavior and keeps getting deeper and deeper. Believe me, most of them ENJOY this lifestyle and would keep doing it - the only problems is if they get caught and they spend too much money, and have problems with their career, etc, over it. But if they can keep it within certain bounds they will keep living like this because it is how they WANT TO LIVE. We keep trying to get them to change, but it's unsuccessful because....this is how they WANT to live.

Oftentimes they want to live a non-monogamous, hyper-sexual life for themselves, but have a spouse who is Tina Truly, who stays at home with the kids and bakes meatloaves, and is kind and lovely and faithful so it's not often mutual. But if you could get him to talk HONESTLY about - or if someone could - about what kind of relationship he ideally would like to have, and how he views specific topics like sex, love, marriage - the more specific the better, I think you would find a basic disconnect between his ideas and feelings on these things and yous. He may not even consciously realize how differently he does view these things, or want to admit it, but I think he does. And how does he acknowledge and admit his preferences AND stay married to you. It's like you're half of his life and the other half is what is encompassed by his cheating life.

Instead of regarding this as a moral failing or some addiction he has, I would view this as his actual lifestyle preference as he's been doing it throughout at least half of your marriage. If this were me, that is how I would talk to him openly about his behavior. The less shame we put onto a topic, the more willing people sometimes are to discuss their true selves. You need to know what this man really is like....I don't think you've ever really known him or that part of him.

That said....as I think this is truly part of who he is and how he wants to live.....to me it comes down to, do you want to accept this. Is this relationship acceptable to you if he cannot or will not change or says he'll change on the surface but you'll keep having D Days in the future, often when you least expect it. If you assume THIS IS HOW HE IS then you can operate from that understanding that this is the package you've got. You can keep it or return to sender but I don't think you can modify it. Maybe once he realizes that you are serious that THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU WANT OR ACCEPT OR WILL TOLERATE....EVER....which basically means separation at minimum and divorce ultimately....he may have to decide HOW HE WANTS TO LIVE GOING FORWARD and make choices of his own. To me, it comes down to what he wants versus what you want. You can't compromise on what you want, it will never make you happy. The same is true for HIM. You can just both come to a recognition that on basic areas of relationship you just don't agree or want the same things and move on from there.

I don't know if my comments are helpful to you, I hope I may give some ideas or insight that may provoke some new thoughts. I tend to accept people AS THEY ARE without hope or insistence on change and then I can either continue on with them, fully or in a limited way....or not at all. But to expect people to change themselves because of what I want, is generally not realistic, in my experience. No matter how much you can see that what they are doing is negative - if it's what they want to do - it's their choice for whatever reason. This is voluntary behavior, not simply compulsions.

[This message edited by BondJaneBond at 7:57 PM, Sunday, August 17th]