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The big question I’m coming up against is that I do not think I love my husband anymore. I don’t like spending time with him. I’m forcing myself to do so in case my feelings will change with more exposure to him, but they haven’t. He argues that he can’t show me all the changes he’s made unless we live closer together and spend more time together but I feel like he needs to be able to behave well enough at a distance to make me want to see him more. Doesn’t that make sense? He doesn’t think so.
Anyway, back to the main question, if I don’t think I love him and don’t want to spend time with him, are these signs I should really seriously consider leaving him for good or are these the normal feelings one might have to a partner who has lied and cheated and slept w prostitutes even if he hasn’t done so in over six months and it was “only” a handful of times over several years? Normal feelings that will dissipate with time and the appropriate level of remorse? Does this question(s) make sense? If not I can try to clarify.Yes, it makes sense. At least to me. Lying and cheating and sleeping with prostitutes is abusive behavior to your partner. A partner’s regard and emotional connection is naturally eroded by that kind of disregard and abuse. Not having done so in ANY amount of time does not erase the fact that it WAS DONE.
I wouldn’t concern myself with his arguments. Do what feels right for your heart. If your heart is begging for space to process, honor it. He has lost his bargaining chip, as far as I am concerned. When he chose to go outside the marriage with his love and sexual urges he broke the vows. Now you do not owe him anything at all. You owe yourself a chance to heal.
Ditto. We didn’t know the men we were in love with and we didn’t know what they were doing. If we had known them, we probably wouldn’t have loved them in the first place. Whether it is that they killed the love we felt with their actions OR the love died when we came face to face with their real self….well, maybe a bit of both? I guess that is one for the scholars……
i don’t think you can fall back in love with a man you don’t even like.Hi Anne, your situation and attitude sounds much like mine except that I am still living with my h. I don’t think I love him and even though he is really trying and seems to be sober (who really knows??) I don’t think I can let my guard down and trust him again. I think the relationship will end when he realizes that I can’t have sex with him. The thought of it makes me sad and sick. I will never be able to get those other women/men out of my mind.
Donna – thank you for your response. May I ask you a few questions? Why have you stayed w him? Its a question I ask myself all the time. Are you waiting for him to leave? My husband has said he will stay no matter what and who knows whether that is true but sometimes I wish he would leave me bc for whatever reason it seems so difficult to make the decision to leave (for good) myself.
Anne, I think I am just afraid. Afraid to disrupt my daughters’ lives, afraid my h would get angry, sad, afraid for my financial future. Mostly it’s because when dday hit we were actually getting along well and in spite of all the horrible horrible things I found, I just cannot reconcile the guy I found out about to the one standing in front of me telling me how sorry he is. It’s very confusing and he does not want to leave. I look at him and think, who are you! I know that I can never forget the pain he put me through, i will never trust him again and I am certain I can’t have sex with him. I’m sure that I am totally blocked being with him but it’s hard to get away. I’m with you, I wish he would just leave. My girls go off to college in August. I think that is when my h and I will have the moving out conversation.
Anne – I personally think space is the best thing for you in order to process what you do feel for him. I don’t think I love my h. any more and it’s sad & depressing but I could only really gain that clarity from separation. Also, your h. is using classic manipulation tactics – he knows that if he can get you to budge an inch, then he’ll work on getting you to budge more & more until he has more ground again.
And, for what it’s worth, these guys will NEVER leave on their own. Why would they? For so many of them it is very important that they maintain the image of the “good guy”. Plus, as Bev always says (and I’m coming to believe more & more), they need someone to cheat on. Without a loving wife to betray, some of the fun is lost in the secrecy & lies. I really believe that for many of them, they are as addicted (or maybe more so) to the secret life and what it takes to live that as they are to the sex acts.
Donna – wow. What you said resonates so much w me. Have you found any evidence that he cheated again after the initial discovery? My kids are both under four. Just curious, if your girls were younger, how would it affect your decision making?
Feelingconflicted – we have been living apart since Nov ’12. I think you’re right – it has allowed me to become a bit clearer about my feelings for him as a husband. He definitely keeps pushing me. I feel like someone who truly understood and felt honestly sorry for what he’d done would just say “take all the time you need. Im here for you. Whatever you need.”
The insight about having someone to cheat on is very interesting and makes a lot of sense to me.FC…I think you are really onto something there? Clearly, there is something lacking in the single life that is present in married life. I remember reading somewhere that sex addicts ALWAYS have a primary partner. Perhaps you cannot have a secret life without a double life? I also think the thrill of lying, plotting, anticipation, mind game and manipulation are a heady part of the mix and you just cannot create that if no one cares who
you f–k?I’m more and more certain that I no longer love my H. It was driven home to me when I realized I really didn’t care if he cheated or not…..I would react probably…. but I know it would only be a surface “whatever” compared to the gut wrenching pain of my first discovery. I am POSITIVE my H knows I feel this way and positive the thrill is gone for him. Though I do not doubt he loved the sex…I realize now…he loved my reaction even more.
Anne – my girls are 10 & 8 and that certainly has had an impact on my decisions – to a point. For the first two months after DDay in late August, I worked hard to “save the marriage” and I actually thought we were working together towards that – h. insisted that he was glad it was all out in the open and that he had changed, etc. etc. Fast-forward to late October and I found out he was still seeing his most recent fuck buddy and had never stopped seeing her. In fact, during this time he bought her a fucking used car! I honestly don’t think he went a week before he fucked her after the 1st D-Day on 8/31. For me, that was a double-betrayal and what started me on the process of detaching and realizing that while the first discoveries were bad, this was unforgiveable. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, as it’s taken me 6+ months from DDay #2 to be pretty fully detached. (And actually to make a long story longer, I had actually discovered he was doing stuff 10 years ago – confronted him, we worked on it and went on our merry way. This is a prime example that unless they have real treatment & consequences, these men DO NOT change and actually end up escalating their behaviors).
I know it’s hard to have young kids at home and yours are younger than mine but if your h. is in any sort of recovery, he would not be pressuring you – he would understand this takes time. I would strongly recommend – as I often do to others – to read “In Sheep’s Clothing” – it will help put a name to the manipulation tactics he’s using and again for me, that helped me process what he was doing and helped me see my part in getting sucked into his manipulations.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I’m so sorry you’ve had to endure all this. I just feel like I haven’t given my h that second chance that perhaps he deserves? Maybe he really has stopped these behaviors? But then someone on this very site said something that I repeat to myself all the time – “Sometimes giving someone a second chance is like giving them an extra bullet for their gun bc they missed you the first time. -SL”
Just ordered Sheeps clothing. Man I love amazon one click 🙂
Anyway, thank you for the suggestion and for your thoughts and insights. This is such a lonely road. It is nice to know there are fellow travelers.
Hugs,
AnneLiza – is she ok? I haven’t been in the site for the past several months. Her words really resonated with me and have seen me through some tough times. I hope she’s ok.
Hugs, AnneSorry, I meant SL knows from *past* experience. Last I heard she was in serious love with her new man and new puppy. 🙂 But would it kill her to drop by and say HI every now and again? 😉 So Silver, wherever you are, report to Headquarters – we miss you!
Im so glad she is well. Nice to hear there can be hope at the end of this shit rainbow. I second an update!!
Anne, I wish I had found all of this out years ago. I always knew something was off with my h but I could not put my finger on it. I lost years, my youth, to him and his deceit. I had no proof and he was busy acting like a good guy. It would have been really hard to leave him because he is bipolar and explosive but i would have done it. Now he is acting as though he has “grown up” and now gets it but really it’s that he got caught. Says he stopped cold turkey on dday which may be true but I really don’t care anymore.
My plan is to put the house up for sale after they leave in August and when it sells finding my own place. I am not sure if this will get ugly. My h does not want to separate and he is doing “all the right things” but I just don’t think I can ever get over this and be a couple. I have been distancing myself and my h realizes that. I am hoping for an amicable parting but I’m probably delusional.
Donna I feel like we are having parallel experiences – I, too, have some (likely delusional) idea that we can part amicably. He talks about how he worries about me being a damaged person forever because of what he’s done and that he just wants to make things right with me even if we don’t stay together. Sounds very nice but if we divorce he ha already said that he wants the kids half the time despite the fact that I’ve taken care of them as a stay at home mom since they were born and before dday when he suddenly turned into father of the year, he barely had time for them. I want my kids to have a relationship with their father but I think we will have a lengthy full on custody battle over the kids. If he’s willing to put me through that, just how worried about my welfare could he possibly be?
I was also wondering – I also always felt something was “off” about my h. Can you explain more about what that looked like for you?
Hugs, AnneAnne, I think the only good thing in my situation is that my girls are pretty much grown. He is an attorney and I would not have been able to battle him over the girls. Back then, before I knew, he had this bipolar personality where he loved me to death (love addict!!) or he hated me and blamed my lack of “the right kind” of sexuality. I knew he looked at porn and he knew it hurt me but he acted like it was my fault. He had an explosive anger that could be triggered by the smallest thing. It trained me to keep my mouth shut and be afraid of him. Over the years the anger got somewhat better but we would have these “talks” where he would say: “I’m not happy! You don’t make me happy! You know what I need, why can’t you do it. If you loved me you would. All guys want this…..” I would try but I could not sustain the mommy/whore role he needed. I had nowhere to go and was afraid of leaving. Since he got caught he is the nicest, kindest and most understanding he has ever been. WTF!!! So confusing but again I don’t trust it. He may have grown up but he damaged me in the process.
“He may have grown up but he damaged me in the process.” That statement really resonates with me – so eloquent. He *may* have “changed” but all the cheating and lying that pushed him to that point may have damaged your relationship in a way that cannot be repaired.
One thing, though – YOU are not damaged – HE is. He has hurt you, he has betrayed you, but the person in this scenario with the fundamental problem is NOT YOU, it’s HIM.
Donna, was he diagnosed as bipolar? He sounds rather borderline but either way…unstable people do NOT become nice stable people because they got caught. YOur gut is probably right. He is probably “acting”. I mean how hard do you think that is for these dudes, when they have been acting most of their lives.
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