Replies to 'Infidelity'

Although the timeline is really bizarre, bizarre that he would even care after 12 years of marriage that you slept around while he was sleeping around and even more bizarrre that 5 years later he still hasn't gotten over it, I think you need to at least consider what he might be feeling . . . with an eye toward healing this situation, of course. After all, whatever you've been doing for five years hasn't worked. Time to try something new. I think I might understand to some extent what your husband is feeling, although on a much much smaller scale. I moved in with my now husband after we had been dating but living in separate towns for several months. A few months after we moved in together, it came out that he had spent quite a bit of time out at bars without me while we were just dating and I was living an hour away. It got me thinking about all those nights that I had called him and he hasn't answered his phone. I imagined him sitting at some bar and hearing his phone ring and looking at it, seeing my name on the Caller ID, and deciding not to answer. Because he was busy flirting with some other girl maybe? Because he didn't want anyone to know he had a girlfriend? His explanation for it all was that it just took him longer to decide for sure that I was the one he wanted than it took for me to decide the same about him. Now, all of this came out when we were living together and engaged to be married and he had obviously definitely decided by then that I was the one for him. Still, it bothered me so much to know that he hadn't been certain of that as soon as I'd been certain of it. It made me doubt every nice or loving thing he had ever said to me during our dating period before we moved in together. Suddenly, some of the special moments of our first few months together, moments I cherished in my memory, didn't seem so special. It especially hurt when I realized that, had I known back then that he was spending a lot of time out at bars without me and not telling me about it, I would have broken up with him. It suddenly ocurred to me that in the beginning, I was involved in a totally different relationship from the one he was involved in. I was at home missing him and he was out partying without me and probably hitting on other women just in case it didn't work out with me. I'm over it now, of course. But it bothered me for a long time, the discovery that my memories of our early days were flawed. Perhaps this is what's going on for your husband. Perhaps he feels like you destroyed his memories. Just an idea.