I am so sorry. I, too, do not know the why. My husband had a baby with me while carrying on with his 2 year affair partner. She sent me baby gifts. He linked our lives together for what purpose? It boggles my mind at how cruel someone has to be to do something like that. I hope you get your answers. You are not alone.

If he will die before he is completely honest is that a union you can be happy in? Is restoration possible without honesty? Is that someone you respect for how they are dealing with their mistakes? I hope you can see how much you deserve and how much God wants good for you. There is no prize for being a miserable martyr except misery. I am learning that and excited about the freedom of not being on the crazy merry go round with an habitual offender who can't get real. Life is too short and I there is so much growing, loving, serving and evolving to be had but not if tethered to a boulder. We cannot continue to accept emotional abuse because of a toxic hope that doesn't materialize or a potential that will never be met. I wish you strength sister!! xo

I think the reason is because he feels powerful doing that. His position in the government wasn’t enough. When he saw you being friends with TOW he felt like an arab prince. He needs to find other healthy sources of satisfaction and get detox of power addiction. I think he knows that but he knows this is a very bad thing so he doesn’t want to admit it. I know you love your kids but be careful with the decision of remaining married. He needs to get through his mess and clean it in order to commit with you again. And the way to do it is admitting to you the real reason.

My dear friend, I am so sorry, and just as the other person commented, you are not alone. My heart breaks for your situation, as it does for mine and the others here. What is it with unfaithful partners putting their spouses in contact with their affair partners while they are cheating?? Mine did the same! It’s completely creepy and disgusting and doubly hurtful.

As for your question, I am sad to say I do not think it is possible to move forward in a healthy and mutually loving way without knowing the why and the truth of the infidelity after some reasonable amount of time. As Rick will tell you, it takes some cheaters longer than others to come down out of the clouds and give full disclosure, and even understand why, maybe that is your husband’s situation; but if it has been some time and they simply refuse, that seems different to me. If—after an unfaithful spouse has ended all affairs and come down out of the clouds—he/she still will not divulge the why and the truth, then, in my opinion, something destructive is hiding, and it is only a matter of time before it rears up again. You may be able to go on together for a while, for the kids, or because you have committed love for your unfaithful spouse, or because it is financially necessary, or because your spouse now checks all the boxes and gives the appearance of being back in the marriage, but unless you know it all, the why and the truth, then I’m afraid you are just biding your time. This is just my opinion, but unless the unfaithful spouse comprehends and is able to communicate to you the why and the truth fully and with remorse, it won’t work. You are worth having promises kept to you, worth having the full truth, and worth having amends made to you.

I’ll share my story to explain my answer. Fifteen years ago I was devastated by the discovery of my husband’s infidelity. Through church, we were directed to Affair Recovery (AR). We had three small children, and soon a fourth. My husband was definitely in the “fallen in love” category, convinced he had found his soul mate and never loved me; he totally re-wrote our marital history to conclude he had never been happy. Our lives were in utter turmoil as all of you can relate, but he agreed to end the affair and we dug in and worked hard. AR, counseling, spiritual directors, books, retreats, you name it, we did it. I worked on healing and my own discoveries of negative contributions I made in our marriage, and he worked on putting safeguards in place that would help me feel safe in our relationship and on his own personal issues that had allowed the deceit and unfaithfulness. A year later we renewed our vows, and moved to a new city to start again.

Rick encouraged my husband to continue counseling, anger-management, and some form of affair recovery in our new town, but although I continued in counseling, he did not. This gave me a queasy feeling, but I couldn’t make him, and we continued on. For a while, he was very intentional about whom he hired and what situations he put himself in, to avoid new problems with women. We had weekly date nights, quarterly get-aways, family dinners, recreation together, vacations, marriage church groups, daily couple prayer, retreats, book studies, you name it. I was terrified, but as the years passed, my fear subsided and we created new memories. However, deep down, I had a nagging feeling that something was amiss. Although after the affair my husband said the right words as far as apologizing for the affair, the right feeling was never behind it. It was as if he was mad at me that it had happened. He never acted like a remorseful man thankful for being forgiven and given a second chance with our beautiful family. There was something withdrawn, something tense that I couldn’t put my finger on, but he jumped through all the family hoops, helped with the kids, was home for dinner, etc., so there was nothing concrete I could point to. All I could verbalize to him was that I felt some distance between us. I felt like he was disconnected in some way, but isn’t that a common complaint between women and men?

Fast forward fifteen years, past all sorts of life events: raising four children, burying our oldest daughter after a car accident at age 16, grieving, going back to school, building a company together, being sued by former friends, succeeding to build a very successful business, watching children graduate from high school and college, then halt. All of a sudden, my husband of 28 years is moving out and I am replaced at our company and, I now know, replaced in his bed. It took two more years of abandonment, divorce, and annulment work until I finally discovered the lies he had kept from me not just for 15 years since the last sexual affair, but from the time we dated, were engaged, and married. Lies that did not come out when we supposedly had “full disclosure” with Rick at AR, did not come out after our daughter died, did not come out in years and years of counseling, and because of those kept lies, our marriage was doomed to fail. Had my husband, at any time, revealed the truth, we could have either restored our marriage, or, ended it sooner and saved me years that I faithfully devoted to him, assuming he was who he appeared to be.

What I am trying to say is, I don’t believe a marriage can stand on a bed of lies, or deceit or omissions, no matter how hard everyone tries to keep images in place. If there is something an unfaithful spouse will not share, my feeling is, there is a deeper problem with the marriage that has not been revealed. This is not hopeful or positive, and I hope your story ends up differently, but I want you to know there is hope either way.

It has taken me years of devastation over the destruction of our marriage and family to come to grips with my situation. But I’m going to be ok. I know that now. And I do have hope. And most importantly, I am now living in truth. I’m not going to pretend I don’t wish things had turned out differently, meaning with true confessions and true re-commitment, but I would not trade living alone in the truth for living with someone who is keeping lies and omissions. I am grateful to be out of the stress and confusion of what I now know was a lack of full disclosure and deceitfulness of my partner. I believed for years that saving my marriage and loving my husband no matter the sacrifice were what I was called to do, what God expected of me, and was the way to beat back the enemy. I now know that for me in my situation, living in the Truth is what defeats the father of lies, and I do not believe God calls me to live in a relationship without honesty and full disclosure. Living in truth and full knowledge, even if it is just your own, is a wonderful thing.

First, I would like to say that I am so very sorry for your heart crushing pain. I know this anguish and it is devastating. It takes your breath away, puts your heart into a vise, ties your gut into a knot and smothers your spirit. I am in a similar situation with very public disclosures of my spouses misbehaviors, not the high profile front page which must have just killed you, but widely shared in our town where we are know and respected. There was a time when I could not leave my house and going out in public sent me into full panic attacks which required anxiety meds to just make it to the grocery store. Getting out of bed was chore but staying in bed was terror too.

I asked my husband to move into our rental house which was vacant as I needed space and time. Our business went into madness as our employees were devastated by this reveal as well. They carried the public shame as well, as I am sure all who worked for your husband have too. We lived separately as we worked diligently and painfully to keep our business from collapsing and to keep a hostile takeover from happening from within. Loads of time and energy went to this so the focus was on that and my own pain was secondary, a place I was very familiar with. Our adult children worked in the business with us so they had to face this embarrassing and hurtful information about their father and figure out how to manage their relationship with him. My heart bleeds for them as for your children too.

After a year of what felt like a hurricane at high seas, counseling, meds to avoid panic, meds to sleep, EMDR therapy......... My husband asked me to participate in the Affair Recovery program EMS online. We had some of the most frank and honest conversations of our 35 years of marriage during this course work. It is intense if both people are fully invested in the process. Regarding the ownership of his misdeeds and full disclosure of all of his infidelities during the course, it took many weeks for him to get to full disclosure. Each new event was a new stab in my heart, many affairs and liaisons over the length of our marriage including one lengthy one with our secretary who was also a "friend" of mine. This one still circles through my mind even though it was 25 years ago. The new knowledge of what our marriage really was, (very different than my vision) haunts me. The pervasive thoughts roll in with the smallest trigger and color my days.

The interesting concept about the truth setting you free is that that freedom takes heavy tolls. Just because he has confessed does not leave him free of the consequences of his deeds. When my husband finally got to full disclosure, got everything out on my plate, he even took a lie detector test to prove to me he had told me everything, I was left with a mountain of hurt, lies and betrayals. This did not set me free, it laid out clearly how little I knew about the man I chose to trust my love and life to.

The only gem I have found in this experience is that without the public nature of our mess, my husband would never have seen and owned the problem with his behavior and never understood the damage it was causing our marriage and our children. He needed to be pushed off the cliff and clubbed with a post to look at himself and make a decision to choose our marriage or his narcissistic self. Unfortunately the fall out is so painful for me and I am sure for you as well.

He has chosen to stay and try to learn a whole new way of being in this life. This is no easy task but he seems to truly want to change. I have stayed for reasons I am not sure I totally understand but hopefully we will both grow into better people. It seems in this day there is more shame in staying than in leaving. I remain quite guarded and the trust is slow to return. Hard memories pop up all too often but I am more bold about having the necessary conversations and let my feelings be known.

We are approaching the 1 year mark from full disclosure, 2 year mark from the most recent "discovery" and 35 years of a "marriage" filled with many betrayals. We completed the EMSO course, continue with our Married for Life group which keeps the hard topics on the table and we are continuing to work at regaining some semblance of a marriage. This journey is long, hard and at times discouraging. I would not encourage you to push for full disclosure without the safety of a huge support team on both sides. Affair Recovery has created a structure of support so that when you are ready to fall apart with the weight of the information you may get there is help to keep you from destruction.
I hold you and your family in my heart

You have every right to be mad as hell. I am sorry you have been put through this. I believe your faithfulness to God and to your marriage will be rewarded in some way even if your marriage does not make it. I too questioned why God didn’t answer my prayers and honor my obedience and faithfulness and save my marriage. It took a long time for me to realize God wanted to take me out of a bondage of lies that wasn’t going to change. I wish you freedom, truth, and peace.

I am truly sorry to hear your story. I have been unfaithful and attended an EMS weekend which helped me and my wife reconnect together. Not sure what the dynamic is in your marriage, but please be mindful of the research that states "most women who cheat have already checked out of the relationship". Wish you the best. Either way, there is no easy path.

Amen sister. I feel the same way. It'll happen for both of us.

How long after you discovered your wife’s infidelity did it take her to own up and quit blaming you?

That’s not good enough. He may think it is but it is not. Ask him to do an AR group, weekend, or at least counseling. He’s still putting other women (the two moms) and his image ahead of you. And if he’s still connected with her on social media, he’s still connected. Trust your instincts.