When you found out about the A

[ShatteredLady]

Sick. Literally like I wanted to vomit.....I was sick and scared to death the whole time.

 

....It was truly the not knowing that screwed with me and made me weak.

 

I am so thankful he did tell me the facts fairly early on so that I could work from a position of strength. That is why IMO the lies are almost as damaging as the affair.

 

 

Being gaslit. Not knowing why my entire existence had turned to s**t nearly killed me & I'm not being dramatic!!

 

He had been 'depressed' & just awful since Thanksgiving. When I asked he said it was the stress of loosing his job & starting a new one. Both of our birthdays are in December. He told our little kids to give me my presents after school without him. It was a very special present that he'd planned & ordered months in advance. Something I'd wanted all my adult life. I've never touched it since.

 

He showed no interest in Christmas for the kids. I wrapped everything & carried it to the tree, back & forth, back & forth, in blinding agony...while he just sat there looking at his phone.

 

New Years Day I logged onto my chronic pain forum to find a 'new member' had written an awful post titled "My Former Magical Life". It asked the question "Would it be selfish to leave my family? My wife is a cripple burden. Should I leave to peruse happiness, Love, Romance & Adventure or stay miserable in a blah existence?". He listed the 'things he would never do'. They were nearly all things we had done. Things I planned for him in the past. I knew it was my husband. My blood ran cold.

 

He went on in the post to criticize me as a wife & MOTHER. He stated "Kids are adaptable. I guess they may grow-up with the occasional fond memory of doing crafts at the kitchen table with her.". I wanted to die. Since I had life saving surgery in the summer I had been depressed. My worst nightmares, being a useless burden, crap wife & Mum were all true! It was there on the screen for me to read. I hated myself!

 

 

He stuck to that truth. If I tried really hard he 'might' feel for me again. He wouldn't tell me what I'd done wrong. He said that if he had to tell me I would only do the 'right' things because he told me & NOT because I loved him. I was on trial. It drove me insane. I asked if there was another woman (I've NEVER done that in 25 years) he deserved an Oscar! He was so adamant. Me asking was another example of how pathetic I am.

 

Come Mothers Day I received a small bunch of flowers. They were delivery!! I've never got delivery flowers. The card read simply "From H & kids". The next day I saw the online receipt. It was a buy 2 get 1 of LESSER VALUE 1/2 price. Hers were huge! Her card read "To the Greatest Mother in the Whole World. ALL MY LOVE Xx) I recognized the name...it was the coworker he had an affair with 12 years before!

 

I was pathetic! Over the months of being treated like s**t, fighting to save my marriage, being rejected as a burden cripple, I had completely lost myself. He actually managed to convince me that they were "just friends". Living with me was so awful he needed her to talk to!

 

From New Years Day when I read the post too the day I broke into his email account & found the messages that PROVED he was having an affair took nearly 9 months! 9 MONTHS of being tortured & gaslit. 9 MONTHS of cruelty & rejection. The affair was NOTHING compared to the agony of those months. Those months destroyed me & I will never be the same person again. In those months I became a ghost of myself. I became the burden cripple that he unjustly accused me of being. I can recover from the affair. The final knowledge of that was almost a relief. What I find so hard to get-over is those 9 months!

 

The night I found the emails I exploded!

 

The next day when I tried to talk about it he shouted at me, "When are you ever going to let this drop? You keep picking the scab! Let ME heal!".

[Joie]

That first night I felt like my heart had literally been pulled out of my body and I threw up.

 

I then got in the car and left while I decided what I wanted to do. I am lucky. I can maintain my lifestyle without my husband. I knew I would get the kids in a divorce, I would keep the majority of our friends, and I could buy a new house. I also had the ability given my profession to have us divorced very quickly.

 

Knowing all that I had to decided if I actually wanted to stay because I LOVED him. That night I knew I wanted to save my marriage if possible for no other reason than love.

 

I went home. Asked him if he would like a divorce. He said he loved me and wanted to be "us" again.

 

In that moment I decided to FIGHT. I know many would say a WS is no prize or I was doing the pick me dance. I don't care. I loved him. So I picked myself up and we started to fix the things that were broken.

 

(Everything was NOT all sunshine and roses. Many nights were spent crying)

[MrsR1981]

I found out from someone else - a friend who confronted my husband at a party...even though he had been caught out and lying for months he stood there, looked me in the eyes and continued to lie.

 

 

I was completely numb but furious, told him I wanted a divorce and that he was a coward, and despicable for carrying on with a girl younger than his daughter!

 

 

If I could go back and change things and how I dealt with it back then I would, in a heartbeat...I'd be stronger and make him leave. Instead I was weak and foolish and took him back - numerous times. That will never leave me, I will feel cross with myself for the rest of time now. I was brought up to be strong and independent and I acted completely the opposite to him. Now he thinks he has a hold over me and mocks me daily.

[Cephalopod]

The initial shock of finding out about the affair my exWW was currently engaged in caused me to make every mistake a desperate husband could make. Yeah...I was pathetic. I had a four year old daughter and was desperate to save my family. My ex denied and denied, but when I laid the evidence out she dropped the facade and allowed me to see the real person she was, and that is when the real shock and fear hit me.

 

This woman was someone who I didn't even know. No horror movie could convey the sense of doom I felt when I realized how I had been duped and taken advantage of for so many years. I had been living with a monster for seven years and had no clue. After I kicked her out, I did more sleuthing and found out about the multiple men she had entertained while we were together. I literally had no clue. I thought we were a normal happy couple.

 

And then my desperation a and sadness turned into rage. I went full on gonzo, got the meanest lawyer in Southern California to represent me, and I went on a smear campaign to get sole custody of my daughter. In the end she gave me what I wanted and slunk away. But I ended up still having to pay $1,100 a month alimony and will have to do so for four more years. But it is worth it as long as she stays away from me and my daughter.

Edited January 22, 2017 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
language~T

[seren]

It truly pisses me off when I read that men or women have to pay the ex alimony. I get that people who have been SAHP find it hard to get employment and if they have custody of the child should be helped while they get things together, but should always pay for the child. But, to have to pay for someone who blew up their marriage by having an affair is beyond the pale. They need to get a job and live the single life they pursued while marriage, being responsible for themselves being one of the responsibilities. I would be so, so mad. What incentive do they have to get a job while they leech of someone else?

[Starswillshine]

When I saw that there was texts he was hiding.... it felt like the rug had been swept out from under me. I couldn't even keep my composure to read the texts. I went full on insane. I don't remember most of the weeks that followed. I was in detective mode. Every new shred of evidence provoked a new panic attack. I lost 20 lbs (left me under 100 lbs). I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, I puked daily.

 

He had been acting odd, but I trusted his love in us and didn't think he would ever go there. My beautiful life, my beautiful marriage.... was gone, just like that. And even if we work it out, it will never be what it once was. I will never be the same. I don't know how I managed to lI've through those first few weeks.

[Cephalopod]

It truly pisses me off when I read that men or women have to pay the ex alimony. I get that people who have been SAHP find it hard to get employment and if they have custody of the child should be helped while they get things together, but should always pay for the child. But, to have to pay for someone who blew up their marriage by having an affair is beyond the pale. They need to get a job and live the single life they pursued while marriage, being responsible for themselves being one of the responsibilities. I would be so, so mad. What incentive do they have to get a job while they leech of someone else?

 

She actually has a job now that pretty much pays all her necessities. What she gets from me is gravy, and that is not right. It pisses me off whenever I see that money come out of my account...even after all these years it still angers me. That $550 a paycheck could go a long way towards fixing up my house, buying my daughter her first car, buying her nicer clothes. What pisses me off even more is that my exWW just fritters it away. I have no say in how she spends it. On the other hand, she has to pay me back $600 of that per month for child support, so you could say I only really end up paying $500 per month. But still....

 

And then she only comes around every three months or so to see her only child... Makes me so ****ing mad!

[understand50]

I know one thing everyone can agree on.

 

When you found out, your life changed. Nothing going forward can remove what happened, you can only "cope" "react" "feel" and hopefully go forward. You can always remember the date, what you were doing, what was said, the weather, how they looked, and what you felt. It will remain one of the worst days in your life, and you will always remember.

 

May you not have more then one.

[Overtaxed]

I'm going to add mine because I just found out (few weeks ago) and my initial reaction was very different.

 

Probably the biggest thing I felt? Relief. Relief that the last few months of our relationship going downhill wasn't me. Relief that I wasn't losing my mind and that something else was "going on". Relief that I could stop looking and stop dancing around the issues with the wife when we talked. And relief that, if I leave, I do so with a clear mind; had I never found out and I left (or she did) I always would have wondered "what did I do wrong". Now I know, I didn't do the wrong (or at least not the major one), she did.

 

After that, the rest of the emotions poured in, anger, rage, sadness, grief.. All of them. Like waves crashing on me. I sat for a solid 30 minutes reading the exchanges and just "was". I felt nothing but raw emotions when I saw the conversations, it wasn't logic, it wasn't even absorbing the impact, it was just emotion. I saw how the courtship played out and, sadly, that's when I almost lost my mind. The OM used his position to abuse my W's trust in the most terrible way imaginable, justified their actions with God's name and, in general, nearly took me to the breaking point because of the way spoke to one another.

 

The pain has been immense, that's for sure. It's hard to even comprehend someone you love can do this to you. And, like many of your stories, I know the OM and have been friendly with him for years. It's just a nightmare unfolding before your eyes; I wanted to know, I needed to know, and I firmly feel that if I hadn't found it, we'd be divorced 6 months from now and I'd have no idea why. We may still be divorced 6 months from now; but at least now I know what happened and why.

[BuddyX]

I remember my hands shaking and my jaw clenching. I drove to the beach house to get away. I remember punching the dashboard. I'm glad I was in the car alone.

 

I don't condone violence, but for a split second I wanted deck my wife. I wanted to hurt her bad. Just one month prior, I asked her straight up "is there someone else?" She looked me in the eyes and said "No".

 

I was a pu$$y back then. Took her back. Caught her talking to the POSOM again and still took her back.

 

10 years later, I'm living the life by myself. No checking of emails or text messages. No doubts. Just honesty.