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Hi Maria,
I just found out that my husband of 24 years had one night stands in the early years of our marriage. Once when i was pregnant with our first child and then 2 more times after that. I have drilled him for years, because i always suspected that there was something going on when he traveled. I made him swear with his hand on a picture of his mother (who is deceased) that he had been faithful to me in 25 years. He pushed the picture away and it all came out. Although he swears it was only 3 instances with 3 different people (one night stands at business conferences) i cant help but wonder why only 3.
I feel trapped, suffocating, angry, betrayed. I actually feel raped for lack of a better term. I feel like i have been violated beyond repair and at first was seeing my spouse as the rapist. But now i am starting to feel that these women, who knew my husband was married were the rapers. They got away with it, they are still out there, and they have not been punished for it. Is it wrong to want to meet these women?
My spouse says that he can only remember the name of one. I am so obsessed with this woman, that i have searched internet, facebook (under my husbands name to bait her) marketing companies (as that was her field), its consuming me. I cant even function until i meet at least one of them face to face. I wake up every morning and realize that my memories are no longer mine. Everything i believed to be true about my marriage , and our history, and our children is all clouded.
We had only been married a couple of years. I was 24 years old. Not enough time had passed in our marriage for me to have screwed up or done anything to lead him astray. We were at the happiest time in our relationship - a new house - a baby on the way - a promotion for my husband. All the articles on affairs, and cheating and healing have to do with relationships that hit ruts, or get bogged down with children and bills and day to day drudgery. That was not our case and therefore i cant get any help on the internet or with books.
My husband is very sorry, and is reading a book on narcissism which he thinks may be an explanation. I dont know if i am strong enough to continue with the relationship or with life itself. We have told no one. I am too ashamed. Yet i want him to tell his sisters and his aunt and uncle. Selfishly, i want to humiliate him. I can not let my family know under any circumstances. They will all tear him apart with their bare hands and the realationship between my children and my family is so genuine and good. My children do not know, nor will they ever.
PLEASE HELP!! I SOMETIMES THINK I'M GOING CRAZY.
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The goal of this website is to give support to people who are facing problems in their relationship related to cheating, abuse and narcissism. I am living in Europe and English is not my native language, I wish you will excuse me if I make some grammatical errors. I have a background in neuroscience and behavioral sciences and I am currently doing brain research related to these topics in university in my home country. I decided to write in English because I wish to reach as many people as I can around the world.
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Dear Friend,
Thank you for sharing your story. I am so sorry to hear about your pain. Right now you are in the middle of an emotional turmoil. You are unable to think of anything else but the matters related to your husband's betrayal. What cheaters often fail to understand is the depth of the emotional wound that cheating causes. Cheating breaks the foundation of the relationship. One moment all is well in your life and then suddenly you are forced to rearrange the image of your whole world. It is impossible to get over such a profound event in just a blink of an eye.
 It is often hard for the cheater to understand the extent of the pain his or her actions have caused, especially if the person who cheated has never been cheated on. Only after personally experiencing the pain that cheating is causing it is possible to fully appreciate and understand the emotional suffering that follows. Of course anyone can imagine how it would feel like to be cheated on. However, as most of the visitors of this site know, imagining the pain that cheating is causing is but a shadow of the intensity of the real pain.
Dear Friend, I am emphasizing the above points to help you to understand that your feelings in this situation are perfectly normal. In fact, if you did not feel as severe pain as you are now feeling there would be something wrong with you. It is normal to be "obsessed" with the thoughts related to the women with whom cheating took place. Most so-called "normal" people are not capable of compartmentalizing their mind in such a way that they could completely shut out something of this magnitude. The intensity of the pain will decrease as the time goes by, however it will not happen overnight.
You need to be patient and give yourself time to adjust to this new situation. Adjusting to the situation does not mean accepting what your husband has done. "Adjusting" in this case means adjusting to the fact that your marriage will never be the same as it was before the betrayal. However, this does not mean your marriage should automatically become worse or end (for more information on this topic, please see article How to Get Over Cheating).
You mentioned that your husband admitted cheating on you with at list three different women. You wondered if he is telling the truth. Dear Friend, regardless of whether your husband tells the truth or not, three separate occasions is not a minor matter. Anyone can make one mistake, however if the mistake is repeated several times it shows that one has not learned from it. It seems your husband did not feel guilty enough after the first incident to prevent him from repeating the mistake. Also, when he realized that he could do such a thing without getting caught it must have lowered his threshold of cheating again.
Dear Friend, do not waste your energy on wondering how many times cheating actually occurred. That is irrelevant. Regardless of what your husband says, you can never have a 100% certainty of the matter. The main thing is that is happened and that it happened more than twice. This is all you need to know. Regardless of how many women there actually were, the fact remains: Your husband is a cheater. Whether there were three women or thirty women is not changing this fact. What you need to do now is to process your feelings and come to a conclusion as to whether you can stay with your husband or not.
I recommend you to go to see a counselor to discuss your feelings, it will help you to clarify to yourself where you stand emotionally. I also recommend you not to make fast decisions while you are in the middle of the emotional storm. Give yourself time to process your emotions in peace. Eventually you will know what is the right way to go from here.
Is it easier to forgive cheating that took place long time ago?
The most important question you need to ask yourself is the following: Do you feel your trust in your husband can be restored? You need to be honest to yourself. You know your husband the best. Do you get a feeling that he is genuinely sorry about what has happened or do you feel that he is only saying so to make your feel better? Of course he is sorry that you found out about what has been going on, but to be sorry about you finding out and to be sorry about the actual encounters are two different things.
 If you are able to answer this question it will give you a partial peace of mind and will help you in deciding what to do next. It can be quite difficult to get an answer to this question. As I said, you are the one who knows your husband the best. Trust your intuition.
If you feel your husband is genuinely sorry and feels he made a grave mistake when he got involved with those women, your relationship has a good chance to survive. However, if your intuition tells you that your husband is not truly sorry about what has happened, I cannot encourage you to remain together with such a person. The reason I say this is the following: If your husband does not feel in his heart that he has done a very big mistake, that means he does not respect his commitment to you.
Relationship cannot work without trust. If your husband is not committed to your relationship, you cannot trust him to put your relationship as a priority while he is making his decisions. Remaining in such a relationship would only cause you emotional suffering and constant insecurity.
You wrote that your husband is very sorry about what has happened. Based on your email it is not clear how your husband has been behaving during your emotional struggle, apart from being sorry. Is he being supportive and understanding? You said he is reading a book about narcissism. Does this mean he has some narcissistic features? Has your marriage been otherwise happy? These are the questions that you need to ask yourself in order to know how to proceed.
Finally, if you do believe that your husband is genuinely sorry and that he is telling (more or less) the truth regarding when and how many times cheating took place, it is good to keep in mind that these matters took place long time ago. Despite these encounters your husband chose to remain with you. That tells something of his feelings towards you. If he did not care for you he most likely would have left by now. OBS! This does not suggest that what your husband did would be less wrong. I merely wish to point out this important point that is often forgotten in the middle of the emotional storm.
Should one try to meet the Other Woman?
About seeing the other women personally, I understand you feel that might help you to get over this. However, regarding the question who is to blame of what happened, it is very difficult for you to know whether the fault is more on these women or on your husband. You said those women knew your husband was married. But you only have your husband's word regarding this matter. You cannot know what your husband has been telling those women before he ended up having sex with them. There is no way you can know for sure what has happened. You said you are already suspicious regarding the number of the encounters. How can you trust that other details (told by your husband) regarding those incidents are true?
 Dear Friend, please do not feel bad about what I said above. I do not mean to say you should not trust anything your husband says. You need to be able to trust him in order to continue your marriage, if that is what you wish to do. What I mean is that you should not torture yourself thinking about the details of these incidents. Details are irrelevant. Facts matter. And the fact is that cheating took place. If your husband has not cheated on you since and you feel otherwise happy in your marriage, what you need to do now is to concentrate on healing yourself instead of digging deeper into those painful events.
I do not believe that meeting those other women would bring you a relief. It might only make your situation worse, especially when you do not know what exactly your husband has said to those women before the sexual encounter took place. They might tell you he said something in order to make them agree to have sex with them, for example that the two of you were having problems, he was planning on leaving you etc. It is not uncommon for a man to say such things if he is trying to have sex with another woman. Most men would not say in such a situation "I love my wife and all is well with us, however I still want to have sex with you, what do you say"? If those other women would tell you this is what happened and you confronted your husband about it, he might deny saying such things to avoid complicating matters more with you. It is difficult for you to know who to trust is such a situation. It might only make you more confused and increase your pain.
Overall, it is clear that this incident has strongly affected you emotionally. There is no shame in seeking external help in a situation like this. I strongly recommend you to go to see a counselor to discuss what has happened. Let a professional help you to carry this heavy burden (you do not have to tell your family that you are seeing a counselor if you do not feel comfortable with it).
Remember that you are not alone. Please write to me anytime you wish.
Warm hug,
Maria
If you wish to submit your own story and get feedback and support for your situation or if you wish to contact me for any other reason, send me email to
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he actually never cheated..so...