Topic : Cheated On

I think you need to trust your instinct. Way too often, we women dismiss our instincts...we ignore that little voice in the back of our heads, we ignore that heavy feeling in our heart/chest when we KNOW we have caught our spouse lieing about something....don't ever ignore your instincts!! You have sufficient reasons to be suspicious, I know that I would be very suspicious if I were you. Do you have a close friend or family member who you could have drive you to his work to "surprise" him with dinner? Your friend/family member doesn't need to know your real purpose if you don't want to tell them, just let them know you feel like doing something special for your husband since he won't be home for dinner.

Even if there is no way you can get there to catch him red handed, I still say to trust  your instincts. As you said, asking or telling him that you think or know he is having an affair will only bring on his denial, so what are your other options? The only one I can think of is asking him to come to marriage counceling with you. The purpose of the marriage counceling will be to learn how to communicate better, learn how to put the "newness" back into your marriage, and if needed- how to forgive and move forward, or, if you can't forgive, then just how to move forward. If he won't go to councleing...you have an answer...if he won't go, that means he must have something to hide. Also, if he wont go, I urge you to go for yourself. It will be very helpful for you to talk with a professional to figure out the reasons why you have tolerated this behavior and how can you change this. I wish you the best.

Hi. I wanted to share my story and hope to find someone out there who understands how I feel and give me any advice or comment on it.  I am now wondering if I might have been doing worthless efforts to try to save our marriage and being so fool. My hus and I have been married for a year and half although we have been knowing each other for several years.

He started to act weird for last couple of months like being cold and not showing affection to me and trying to avoid my hug and kisses. Recently he told me that he has someone in his life for whom he has deep feelings and she provides him things he likes and he wants such as intimacy and excitement. When he told me the story, I felt like all the trust I had for him for years was falling and I got hurt so much and had pain and sadness all over my heart and body. I kept crying for a couple of days and wished I could disappear from where I was, so I could get out of all these horrible things around me. He keeps saying that he doesn't want to hurt me and still does love me and want to be with me and doesn't want to divorce.  However, even he said that he was full of sadness and regret for the stupid selfish things he has done after he saw me suffering from being so much in pain I got from his story, he says he will not stop seeing his lady and try to meet her as much as he can, and also asked me not to ask him to stop doing it. He just says he does not know what to do about this situation now and has no idea what's gonna happen in the future. He doesn't want to change anything right now but wants to see how things will go for a while. His lady seems to have same idea about this situation which I can understand because she is also married although they have been separated but she has had a boyfriend for years whom she says she still loves. She seems to tell my hus that she doesn't want to hurt me however she should know that does a lot.

He married three times before he married to me and everytime he ended up them with divorce and all his kids are belonging to his x-wives.

I should have realized that something was not right about him before I married to him but I was blind and just wanted to be with him at that time.

We had/has some problems after we married like most of married couples will have I think, but I have been trying to fix those problems by myself and/or with him as much as I could but it seems he just couldn't wait. This time, I found out that he is the person who doesn't try to resolve problems instead of running away from them and getting involved in another relationship where he can have things he wants and his own happiness.

The problem is even after I heard his story, I still love him and can't hate nor blame him to what he has done to me. I really don't like what he did and also know that what he says doesn't make any sense at all to me. It'll be very hard for me to continue to live like this and I will have to find an answer to what to do about my life. I feel like I am totally lost now. Will anyone give me any advice or comments?

  are insecure. He was betting you would allow him to WANDER and have sex with others while also taking care of his HOME. YOU are being used. Once there are three people in a marriage there really isn't a marriage because marriage means monogamy.

  I haven't read too many "stories" where I would think LEAVE HIM, GET DIVORCED a.s.a.p. and find a way to build self esteem in yourself so that you don't attract other men like this.

  Maybe you could look into going back to school and have some time living on your own, figuring out who YOU are and not allowing anyone to do this to you again.

  CALL an attorney, get out there to find out about other oppurtunities in the area, like adult education etc...

  Do you have supportive partners? Would there be someone that would really tell you how unhealthy it is to be living the way you are and CARE enough to say it then help you through the steps?

  You don't mention if you have children, if you do, you may want to call a womens shelter to see if they have any suggestions for you.

Liars and cheats have been in the world since day one.  Men seem to have the cheating advantage, but I am sorry to say it looks like women are coming up fast.

OF COURSE, he was working on finding himself.  But this is only half a sentence.  He was working on finding himself...... a new bit of skirt.  See, very clear when you complete the sentence.  But you already knew that.

I bet he cannot even spell celibate, much less demonstrate it.

The one thing you can be sure of is that the hoochie dumped him.  That is why he saw the light.

Cheaters confess in stages in the best circumstance.  Their motto is "deny, deny, deny and when shown proof, continue to deny".  If caught red-handed (or whatever) say it only happened once and WILL NEVER happen again.  Never mind about the other hundred times-they don't count cos you didn't get caught.

Your refusal to produce you proof has him worried.  He cannot make up a good story  until he know the details now can he?  How inconsiderate of you to make him have to think and maybe even tell SOME truth just by accident.  NOT

The WORST mistake I made with my H was to show him the emails I had found.  IF you do share your proof make sure you have another copy hidden where he cannot get to it. 

You know the answer to your question.  You cannot trust him and without trust I do not know why you would stay.  Truth is this is probably just the one you found out about.

Keep doing the extra stuff, church, dating, staying busy, etc.  AND you need physical and emotional distance from him.  He can only keep you waiting if you cooperate.  Do not go to his home and do not let him visit you.  Don't go to places he will be or drive past his office.  If there are kids get a third party to act as go-between when he picks them up.  Let answer machine take his messages and keep conversation you must have short and relevant.  DO NOT wander down memory lane with him.  And most of all-DO NOT SLEEP WITH HIM.

My next question is did you remarry?  I hope not.

As I have stated before I think men have the edge on cheating, but we women are working hard to catch up.    AND what really grinds my cookies is that when women cheat we usually damage another  innocent female and her children.  I could NEVER do to another woman what has been done to me. 

I also believe the divorce economics issue is slowly changing-support, custody, etc.

Yes, infidelity is an equal opportunity situation and it hurts worse than any experience in my life, including my mother's death.

We usually have one or two men on this board, but I think the new format has driven them away.

Recently while trying to straighten out my over the road husbands cell phone bill I found calls to an "ex" girlfriend of mine up in Illinois.  We moved to Alabama 4 years ago and I haven't talked to her since.  When I questioned him why he had called her his reply was he was trying to find an old show horse I had trained extensively and had been trying to locate and buy back since living down here.  Instantly I knew that was a crock of bull.  After a heated argument he finally admitted that comment was a lie and that he had been calling her since January of 2004.  He admitted on that first call he had just happened to be going through her (our) home town and had stopped to see her and spent the night there.  But, of course, he states he slept in the guest bedroom.  The reason he states for doing this is because I had went to Tunica, MS for a group birthday for my birthday and a couple of others that at the time frequented a horse chat room on yahoo.  I had been friends with those people for a couple years and several of those have been to our house to spend the week-end and to trail ride.  My husband knows these people and at that time said he liked them.  It was his choice on that week-end to stay gone and run the loads he had.  He had been invited and knew exactly where we were and what we were doing.  Yet he now says that is was because of that that he decided to call her and start what has turned out to be a 1 1/2 "affair".  He adamantly swears he has never had any type of sex with her and has only gave her a one armed hug.  Yet in speaking with his friends that state otherwise.  One trucking buddy remembers her being in the truck with him and having supper with him and his girlfriend another tells me that he has stated on several occasions that this female is waiting and willing for him to come live with her.  Yet to me he says he just needed someone to talk to and thats all there is to it.  Would the normal rational human believe that he is telling me the truth?  That he has only been there once but his log book and reciepts put him in that area everytime there is a call on his cell phone.  He claims that he can't remember anything that they ever talked about and the reason being is that it was never important enough to remember .  Let me state for the record this mans memory is one that he can restate verbatim, one for word, arguements we had 10 years ago.  The one thing he has admitted is that they have had several conversations about sex such as likes and dislikes and not just involving those two.  He had to drag my sexual responses into it too.  He has also admitted that his intentions on instigating these phone calls was to get laid by her.  Yet after calling her for a year and half he swears it never happened.  He was to "shy".  Even though on that first night he tells me she put herself in his face then went to the other end of the couch to pout since he didn't take advantage of her willingness.  Since then I have found porno books and tapes in his semi which he never bought before in 20 years that I'm aware of. 

I feel very alone here since he has contruibuted to my not talking to my old friends in the horse chat room on yahoo and I don't want to upset my ill mother.  I feel stuck since right at the present time I am off work due to a knee injury sustained at work awaiting surgery.  They haven't paid me a cent yet and they state when they do it will only be in the amount of 248.00 which isn't even close to what I need to make ends meet.  I hoping someone else has been there done this and they can help me figure out what to do.  I do love this man or I wouldn't have lived this solitary life his career choice has made me live.  Any comments or help will be deeply appreciated. 

Desperate in Alabama, 

Theresia 

My first advice to you is to not allow HIM to keep you from chatting with your friends on "yahoo"....that was NOT the real issue at all, he just threw that out as an excuse when he was confronted with the facts that you had in your hand (the cell phone bill) and his natural response was to try to provoke guilt in you, to make you feel like YOU forced him to do that. But I hope you know 100% that you had nothing to do with his decision to hook up with this woman, there could be many reasons he did this but its not because you went on a trail ride on your birthday with friends!! He would love for you to truly believe that. The reasons he did contact her could be many, such as boredom, or his sense of low self esteem causing him to need to feel that another woman was attracted to him, or maybe he just thought he could get away with it just for the fun of it. Whatever the true reasons are, you had no control over it. Only HE controls his actions and reactions. His story is not believable. Have you considered talking to this old friend of yours, asking her what is going on? Maybe you could call and just say, "He's already told me, now I want to hear it from you..." something like this- it could get you the rest of the story. But then you would know for sure. So where you are at right now is you know that its not true but there really isn't much you can do because you are dependant upon him for financial reasons, right? This must be  very frustrating for you. Is it possible to get him into marriage counceling? If he won't go, I think that you should go by yourself. It can be very helpful. I wish you luck! 

Okay...I guess the conclusion one can come to is that there seems to always be one extremely selfish person in these situations, it's just that now, society accepts women cheating as well as they used to men. so what is the point of ever getting married. I am seriously disgusted with the way things are taking shape for the future (my kids). what kind of family lives and stability will there be. I really don't know how single parents can raise their children. it's so difficult to do with two parents at home. Anyway thanks for the reply. it's been three years for me, and I still haven't gotten over it.