SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have been having self-blaming thoughts "if only I was thinner, prettier, younger" or "If only I hadn't spent time away from him to follow my dreams, even though he encouraged me to" or "if I hadn't got disabled" he wouldn't have been interested in seeking out other women. But in reality he did this over and over when I was younger or thinner or not disabled. Heck, even when he was sitting beside me he was chatting up women and when I was home upstairs he was video-calling a naked woman and showing himself on camera touching his naked penis... ??

I know intellectually this behaviour wasn’t my fault, he made the shitty decisions. but yet I still struggle with the pain of why he felt I wasn't good enough for him, physically or even to connect on a deeper level. It may not have ever gotten physical but that doesn't make it hurt less. Betrayal is betrayal. I thought the pain he saw me in of not only the lying and year and a half of trickle truth would have prevented him from ever doing it again. How could he not remember how awful it was for 4 years?

This time it is worse not only because he was contacting women again, it is worse because I can't unsee the video of him and her half naked. It doesn't matter if it was a deepfake video, he thought it was real. It doesn't matter that she stopped it to sextort him... who knows how far he was prepared to go? When you are showing your penis on camera and touching yourself while begging her to lower the camera to show not just her naked t**s but her naked p**sy as well what are the chances you would stop before an orgasm???

And that might just be the deal breaker... He insisted that no one ever got "a piece of him" But having an orgasm with someone else IS someone getting a piece of him. Is intention bad enough? Just like if the person he connected with in the past had agreed to meet for a "well-oiled massage" and some "tension-release", which let's face it really is code for let’s meet for sex. What are the chances of him not going to meet her? And then once meeting what are the chances of turning down a woman that's willing. He kept insisting he would never have let himself cross the line – but then said I mean he did say if I hadn’t cancelled all my travel plans in 2014 he doesn’t know what would have happened that summer. And he kept crossing lines – what line would he have stopped at ? ?

I would have thought being on video with a naked woman was a line he wouldn’t cross. And certainly, showing your penis on camera I would never in a million years imagine would be a line he would cross.

Does it make it ok that no one took him up on his offers to meet years ago?

Does it make it ok because this one was after $$$ and stopped him before orgasm?

Does it matter that he was talking to bots most of the time? That the woman in the video wasn’t even real. He tried, and thought it was all real.

Am I willing to accept that "we'll never know what would have happened"? That's what I accepted last time.

Am I willing to accept that it will never happen again? That's what I accepted last time....

Seriously, am I that crappy a partner that it keeps happening? Happening in multiple relationships and mutual times with the same person sure seems to speak volumes Sad angry hurt pissed off and wanting to change the past but it all can never be undone just like I can't unsee what he was willing to do on camera...

Why do I feel that I am overreacting because it wasn’t PinV?

Why do I feel that I am overreacting because it isn’t happening now?

Why do I feel that I am overreacting because it wasn’t emotional?

Why do I feel like I am overreacting when we are happy in so many ways, in our twilight years - who knows how many years we have left- I don't want to waste time being miserable – why can’t I just let it go?

Why does the only person I love have to be the reason for my pain, anger, and sadness?

Why is it that the only one I want to or can comfort me is the cause of it all ?

Why the f**k did you have to make it so your penis or you being attracted to breasts are f**king triggers. Now the images intrude into our daily life and make even the great times tainted. Yes I got definitive proof so I don't feel lied to any more and don't have to imagine it, but now I can't f**king unsee the truth.

What the f**k do I do now?

[This message edited by lizziej at 3:48 PM, Monday, June 16th]

Lizzie, I’m so sorry you find yourself here. Get into some IC and work on yourself. It’s painful and it sucks to no imaginable end, but try to get yourself through this. It can be done and my heart breaks for you right now that you are dealing with this. Know this though, it has nothing to do with you! This is a problem of your spouse and something he will need to work on. You deserve better and if your spouse knows what you’re worth, he’ll do anything within his means to re-earn your trust and to prove to you that he is safe to be with. Give yourself the grace that you aren’t OK now and that it will take time to find a sense of peace, but know that everyone on this site is rooting for you and has your back.

This is trauma. Intimate partner betrayal is one of the worst kinds because this a principle relationship. IF with a betrayal trauma specialist may be helpful. Also, you may wish to look into EMDR treatment.

Your WH (or STBXWH) has a major character flaw. He's choosing to cheat. It isn't because of what you did or didn't do, said or didn't say, how you look or don't look. Adam Levine cheated on his wife, who was a Victoria's Secret underwear model. Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, the list of beautiful, successful people could be endless. The cheating isn't about the BS.

I feel so bad when I see betrayeds blame themselves for their spouse’s cheating.

They didn’t choose to cheat because if you, they chose to cheat despite you.

Most of us did our best. Were we perfect? No. But there was nothing so imperfect about me that was a reason to cheat.

After 25 years of a good marriage my H told me I never loved him. Huh! I put him first more than I should have, in hindsight. But his "reason" for cheating was all based on me and my flaws.

Spin it around. Call it as it is.

He wasn’t good enough for you.

Hey, Lizzie. You know I'm pretty new to all of this so I'm not one of the more sage advice givers, but I did want to just pop in to say that it's most certainly not you. It's not anything you did or didn't do. It has nothing to do with being thinner, prettier, younger, or not disabled. It has everything to do with him being willing to let his boundaries vanish and betray you. I'm going to share some words with you, slightly paraphrased, that had been given to me in one of my threads, and they really did help.

"No, just NO..... this is not on you...

I have, and would again, push away any attempts from another girl. Once, it occurred to me for half a second before I shut that thought down permanently because I cared about and loved my wife and would never do that to her, no matter our problems.

Yes, there were problems in your marriage that you have a responsibility for as does he, BUT his DECISION to have an affair was ALL about his bad choices not about you!"

Those words, your words, really helped me that day. They meant a lot and I needed to hear them. so I hope resharing them with you offers some sort of solace as well. I don't think you're overreacting. As I'm finding out, this stuff is really traumatizing, and you're going to feel your feels. It's NOT that you aren't good enough! Tho I understand the temptation to go there, as I do it myself sometimes. Clearly tho, he's the one who's not good enough right now, and he should be thankful you even gave him an opportunity to rebuild to begin with. Let alone repeat the same damned behavior...

I'm so sorry you're dealing with this right now, and my heart goes out to you, it really does.

Gently, you're blaming yourself because you don't yet understand this is not on you at all. It takes time for that to happen. A good IC can help speed up the process.

I'm very sorry you're going through this. I'm very sorry you're blaming yourself.

Thank you all for your kind supporting words.

As I said I know all this intellectually that it was him not me that made sh*tty decisions, but its just hard to not feel responsible when I KNOW I wasn't my best me physically... it just feels too convenient that he is a changed loving man now that I am no longer disabled, and also that I have lost 125 lbs in the last 8 months. Thus I struggle with these thoughts.

Pogre, thank you for the reminder. That means so much for me to hear. Funny how we can see it so clearly when it applies to others, but not in our own situations. I will keep reminding myself daily that no matter what he was feeling or not feeling he could have talked to me and I am not responsible for how inappropriately he dealt with those feelings.

Thank you all for the suggestions of IC. I am nervous about choosing the wrong person and making things worse. I haven't found anyone locally that specializes in betrayal trauma but I will keep looking thanks to all your encouragement. I am doing a lot of reading which helps.

My husband is doing all the right things now. He is realizing he was a dumbass for not being communicative especially about his feelings. And sex, he was never able to really discuss it which I think lead to a lot of bad assumptions on his part. Heck he didn't even tell me when he was having a heart attack, or when he had skin cancer. 😳 After 40 years he realizes that really talking to me makes more sense than keeping everything inside.

He is doing the reading and learning that while his love language is acts of service, being go go go has taken time from us. Now he takes the time for us, for cuddling, for talking, for sex. Then we get stuff done together. He is off social media and done looking for validation elsewhere beause he finally realizes everything he wanted was in front of him all along.

Am I still being cautious- absolutely. Because I thought we had figured this out last time... i thought that he got over the misunderstandinfs and the idea of " I thought you didn't really love me" even though I told him every day.... but apparently something was still broken inside him. He is a very smart and competent man but in some things that I think should be obvious he is a clueless dumbass. I guess that is my bad communication as well for assuming they were obvious.

Maybe one day I will believe that he truly finds me attractive. But for now I will work on believing that either way it was no excuse for his utter disrespect of me and our marriage.

Thanks everyone for the support. I deeply appreciate it as I have no support except him and SI. I have no very close friends or relatives and I didn't tell my kids as I don't think they need to know. He is a good father and there is no need to jeopardize their relationship with him for what is our issue. So thank you SI community for being there for me, last time and now.

Re-reading this after finding out he was addicted to porn for 25 years gives it a different spin.

He admits there were periods of our marriage he didn't desire me. No wonder he didn't want to hardly have sex with me. No way could I compete with the looks of 1000's of women he has masturbated to.

Now he tells me he is attracted to me and that I turn him on. And my brain screams " yeah now?" Now that you realize you were an idiot for turning away from me, real love and real sex. yeah now that you realize I loved and desired you all along. And the real kicker- yeah now that I've lost 140 lbs.

Yeah now that you realize how close you came to loosing me.

Intellectually I know its all on him, but it is still painful.

Just wanted to congratulate you on overcoming disability and a lot of excess weight, that is so admirable! You have been carrying not just the physical but the emotional weight of other people hurting you for far too long. Sorry that you are struggling with your wishes to have that past wiped off the record book; so do I. I think so do most all of us here!

But before trying to accept what your WH is truly like, and come to terms with his past and his motivations, if I were where you are, I would want him to take a polygraph to determine that he isn't still hiding or covering up things you haven't heard about. Seems to be too much smoke not to have been a fire, in my opinion. It could even decisions he made from before you were married, but you need to know what you are trying to build a future with.

In my case, my SAWH has still got a load of rage he buries against his sexually abusive MOTHER which he ACTS OUT on ME by making choices he knows are hurtful. Just now he came in and sat down and asked me what I'm typing. I just read this last sentence to him and when I got to the load of rage he buries, he nodded his head, AGREEING. I'm not just making up explanations, it's something abuse victims can do, which turns the abuse they suffered into thrm reacting against innocent others. I am so sorry but I think you need to be sure your WH is not still telling you a sanitized version of his reality.

Thanks Supresse!

I agree about the polygraph. It is part of the plan. I do want to believe him but am very cautious, and have told him so. After him lying and gaslighting to me because of shame for so long he didn't have to come clean about the porn use but he did. However, he knows that if there was physical sex I'd be gone (I have told him that), so no way he would confess.

The plan is to get us both into IC him with a CSAT, do a therapeutic disclosure eith the therapist. He has agreed on principle to rhis although we are both nervous about it having read so much about not choosing the wrong therapist. I haven't brought up the polygraph just yet, but I will. Before his confession and me pushing to find his why's I told him a polygraph would be useless because he believed his own lies or misremebered. For examplr, he insisted that he didn't initiate getting on video calls with Facebook women, they were the ones that led him down a rabbit hole and were probably bots that he was just "calling out" to prove they were bots (huh?), he knew they weren't real etc. That is until I literally read him the conversation he had which was very clear he was attracted to them and thought they were real and invited them to a call and gave them his zoom link. He was stunned! He also seemed to have forgotten that when he got on ab interactive call he showed his penis on camera.

So he would have passed the polygraph.

Now, he has done a lot of self-reflection and had to come face to face with his behaviours. Now I think I might get an accurate reading, however, I will only be doing this with the guidance of a CSAT.

In 2017, I came to the conclusion that there was no physical activity and put it to rest, deleting the 100's of pages of evidence into gathered over a 3 year period. He didn't confess ANYTHING, I had to find it. He kept saying he didn't remember doing those things 20+ dating/hookup profiles and messages and emails to women seeking for nsa sex). I believed him at the time. Now he has ripped the would wide open and I am requestioning everything, but having to go from memory of the evidence.

I agree that the root source of all of this was anger. He was very angry at the world and himself and took it out on me for many years. Not abusive but just being distant. I knew he was angry, but I thought he did get over it by 2017. He hid it well and I believe the stress of my near death, his near death and my 4 year disability triggered the behavior again.

As he self reflected this time he believes he was sexually abused as a child as well. It's true he had some really shitty things thrown at him in life, but that was no excuse for not communicating and especially for sexually acting out and shutting me out.

As we talk I remind him not to beat himself up too much as he sometimes rewrites the marriage to make out like he was horrible, it wasn't so, I just wanted more of him than he could give. He also has to remind me not to rewrite things eg like he NEVER " desired me". We are learning to accurately communicate with each other.

I finally got the "more" : the non-angry, loving caring, fun, vulnerable, communicative Mr. Lizziej who was always a good lover, but now is even more so. But it has been a terrible price to pay to get there. AND I am cautious about not quite believing it and him just quite yet. He continues to do the work and continuous to show he has changed in every way, but time will tell inf it will last or he will relapse. What if I'm disabled again, what if I gain weight back again? Or something stressful and shitty happens. Will angry me LJ return, will old behaviour return?

I have to kept reminding myself I am not 20 years out from the dday of a single dating profile. Or 11 years out from the big ddays or 1 year out from discovering a relapse. Or 2.5 months out from discovering a video of his interactive sexual behaviour. I am ONE WEEK out from discovering he had a secret sexual life of excessive daily porn use over the last 25 years. One week! No wonder I get sad, angry and hurt and cry multiple times daily as if I "just found out" I did just find out.

Anyway thanks for listening.