u/Mossy-tart

I feel dizzy like my brain is a prize wheel that someone has spun as hard as they could and I am just reeling through every emotion and decision and outcome. I feel sick.

I just feel like I can't make a decision but I can't hide in my house forever. I have to go back to work in a couple of days or take more time off.

He might see this and I'm sorry but I just need to figure this out

• I have been with my partner since 2012. We got married 3yrs ago and are both in our 30s.
• From Nov 2024 through to Feb 2026 he saw multiple sexworkers while going to concerts out of town.
• During this time he also saw two in the town where we live while I was at work.
• He told me a week ago only because he was worried he had caught something (he hadn't)
• He at first told me it was only one special massage
• He let me go through his phone and his bank account where I discovered the rest of the transactions for around 13 visits, the costs being much higher than just a hand job.
• I got him to write them all out and I went through his bank statements and it appears I have the full truth now.
• He rightly takes all the blame, says he will do whatever it takes to make it up to me and to work through the issues that led him down this path.
• I understand the cheating to an extent.
• I do not understand how he lied so easily and for so long.
• This includes him saying he would never cheat while I was having a breakdown. When he had in fact already cheated.
• I had encouraged him, putting aside my insecurity and concerns, to go to these concerts for his happiness and mental health.
• He swears that this has never happened before, that his brain just broke.
• He stopped because he got tired of it??
• He knows it was wrong but I feel like there is still some level of disconnect.
• He has let met have all of my feelings
• He was apologising vaguely at first but I told him "I'm sorry" was not a full apology and he changed his language to actually address what he did.

I have loved him for so long, I was always worried this would happen but I didn't think it actually would. It feels like my beautiful husband was possessed and I don't know what to do. I just want this to be over one way or another, reconciliation or divorce. I don't know if I can handle this and I don't know how to live with this. No matter what happens I have have to wear the shame and the betrayal.

And still I really just want him to come home.

I just wish someone could tell me that everything is going to be ok.

We've been together for almost 14yrs, a year and a half ago, following me having a major mental breakdown, he started seeing sex workers. The last time appears to have been in February this year.

Nothing like this has ever happened before. Other than way too much time watching porn (which i knew he did but discovered the extent of during disclosure) as far as I know prior to this he has been entirely faithful.

I love him so much, he's my whole world (not in an isolated codependent way) and I truly feel that he was going through he own kind of mental breakdown. That doesn't take away the hurt but it makes me hopeful that it is something he can prevent from happening again. Am I crazy? Is my man still there or have I been lied to for over a decade?

Am I going to regret trying to fix this?

My husband told me almost 48hrs ago that for a year and half (most recent being Feb this year) he has been seeing escorts and going to massage parlours. Around 15 times in all. I think he's told me everything, I made him make a list and I dug through every app on his phone.

I'm furious, I'm hurt and I'm embarrassed but mostly right now I don't want to shower. I don't want to be naked. I don't want him to think about me naked.

And part of me really does.

We've had a fairly dead bedroom because of me and there's a part of me that wants to take back my power with him, show him that I am still good enough.

Then I get disgusted with myself, I know that would be a horrible idea, and I want to shower even less.

UPDATE: I talked to my husband about how I was feeling, about the trauma he had piled on top of and a lot about my past. Some things he knew some things he didn't. I had a panic attack so violent I threw up and then I went to bed, still wrapped in my robe. Yesterday I woke up and I felt back to normal. I was able to shower, I walked around in my underwear while I tried to figure out what to wear, just the regular ease of being.

UPDATED TITLE: I'M PRETTY DANG ANGRY NOW. (see update at the bottom)

Last night my husband and partner of 13yrs told me that last year he went to a sex worker while on a trip away.

He told me completely unprompted and was completely distraught, expecting me to blow up and kick him out, he was sure this was what he deserved. At first I was ok, not super angry, relieved he wasn't dying, just a bit hurt.

For background, we have a pretty non existent sex life due to health issues on my part, I've been trying to work on it lately through physical therapy and counselling but it's not a new thing. It is a major insecurity of mine and I always felt that this would happen. (You know how the world loves the rhetoric that men need sex to live)

Later on in the night after it had time to sink in I got angry and broke down. He had lied to me, told me he would never cheat on me when he already had. He had had so many opportunities to tell me what had happened, to tell me how he was feeling before it happened and had been told flat out that he deserved a sexually active relationship and if that's something he needed he was free to call an end to our relationship and find someone who could make him happy.

He assured me he was happy and sex wasn't important.

He only told me now because he's worried he might have an STD. Whether he didn't tell me because he thought he could get away with it or because he was so ashamed he tried to hide it even from himself I'm unsure.

Last night it was like he was a stranger, selfish and stupid. Today I am tired and just want to forget about it. I'm hurt and disappointed but not surprised. I'm glad it was a sex worker and not a person he could form a relationship with. I'm delighted that he couldn't get it up for her.

I'm all mixed up and I'm sure my feelings on this will change again and again as time passes but at the end of the day he's my best friend, I love him so much and in a way I understand why he did it.

That doesn't make it ok by any stretch of the imagination and he will have to do a lot to make it up to me if he wants to stay but I don't really want to throw away our whole lives over a mediocre one night stand with a professional.

Should I be angrier, maybe, but I love my husband (at least the man i know him to be) and I just want my best friend back.

UPDATE: Wow, I'm one of those people now. The ones you see in reddit posts copied to Facebook. I checked his bank account. He let me do it. For a year and a half this has been happening, at least. I had been anxious about him going to concerts out of town because I thought he would fall in love with someone prettier and more sexual. Instead he's been spending hundreds of dollars for a good time. Fuck this shit.

Content warning for sexual issues.

This is a big complex thing that I'm not sure I'll be able to put across in a way that makes any sense but I'll try, starting with some relevant background

• Often when playing video games, especially in my room or not a main living space I get this really weird detached, sort of sick and hollow feeling.
• When I was a kid I was victim to cocsa, this led me to engage with things online that were not appropriate, I was also hyper sexual and would masturbate a lot up into my late teens.
• As I got older the libido faded to nothing and I've been trying to come back to myself in that way.
• I have adhd, probably autistic, depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and I think vaginismus.
• I am in therapy and on medication.

So lately I've been playing a video game that has brought some arousal back to me for the first time in a long time. The other day I masturbated for the first time probably in years. I felt a little weird doing it in the middle of the day but mostly fine and even a little proud of myself like I might be regaining some part of myself.

Today I was in my bedroom, playing the same game, had a little me time again. Then all of a sudden it's 5pm, I feel disgusting, disconnected and sick. I cried. I've wasted a whole day just locked in this weird little bubble. It's a feeling I remember from being a teenager and hiding away in my room doing things online that I shouldn't have been doing pretty much from the moment I woke up until my parents got home from work.

I want so desperately to have a normal adult sex life and drive but it feels so consuming, inappropriate and weird. I just don't know what I'm doing or how to be normal about sex.

I know it's not reasonable but I want to cry.

I used to get this frozen fish with lemon sauce that I would mix with veggies and rice and it was delicious. Then the manufacturer changed the sauce to essentially be lemon flavoured butter, tasted way different and ruined that meal.

These days I have been relying heavily on these microwave veggies with cheese sauce, mixed with pasta. They were out of stock for a little bit so when I found them I grabbed 3 bags. Vile. They have changed the recipe completely and they're inedible. The sauce is thin and slimy, it tastes both like nothing and what I assume cheese whizz tastes like. I am mad and having just had a little mental breakdown prior to this I am upset and scared.

I don't know what I am supposed to eat? Why does this manufacturer keep taking nice food and making it awful??

Today, not for the first time, I had to leave work because I couldn't speak for fear of crying. I wanted to talk to my boss and arrange some time off because I've been feeling so worn down but I couldn't make it through. I don't think I'll be able to go tomorrow. It's been years and years of this, sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse but it's always there and I am just so so tired.

I have done all the right things and still there's a gaping pit in my chest.

After exercise and eating well and therapy and emdr and trying hobbies and diagnosis after diagnosis and meds on top of meds and sleeping well and everything else you get told to do to make yourself better, what is left???

What else can I do?

I think I might have PMDD but all the information is so confusing and conflicting. I just want an answer and a cure. A light. TW because I am dealing with some heavy stuff.

I've struggled with depression on and off since puberty and my periods have always been especially hard with heavy bleeding and mood swings (though I don't remember the moods I do remember my mum saying I was awful around my period and when she asked if I wanted to go on the pill I was so grateful). Because of this I've been on oral contraception since I was 16, only having a period every 3-5 months.

However, 3 to 4 years ago (in my late 20s) its like a switch flipped and I completely unravelled. My mental health took a sharp and seemingly permanent nosedive and I became suicidal for the first time in my life. Every weekend I started having screaming, crying meltdowns where I felt like my entire being was tearing apart. This has happened a few times in the past when I was very anxious and depressed but never this bad and they ended after a period of time or a change in circumstances. Because of this I thought it was just because I had been working in an abusive workplace for a long time and a change would fix it. So I got a new job that I love. And when that didn't help I tried seeking medical help, got an ADHD diagnosis, blood tests, the whole thing. At the end of last year I had my tubes removed and a mirena placed and have continued taking the pill to avoid any bleeding. This also confirmed that my uterus and ovaries are perfectly healthy.

So now I am on levenorg and the mirena, quetiapine, vyvanse, escitalopram and agomelatine.

I have seen psychiatrists and psychologists and regularly see a counsellor for emdr and talk therapy. I eat ok, don't exercise much but I'm not unfit or exceedingly unhealthy. I don't drink, do drugs or smoke, don't have have a crazy amount of caffeine or sugar.

With all of that (or maybe just because time has passed) the torment has eased a bit and it's not every week but I still often feel like I'm dying and every 2 - 4 weeks I lose my ever loving mind. I am angry, inconsolable, life feels exhausting and overwhelming, I am physically exhausted and I just want to disappear.

What is this? Who do I talk to? What can I do that I haven't already?

I just want to turn this off.

I think it's fairly new, country/rock vibes about wanting to be more than just somebodies wife or not wanting to grow up to be a good wife. (Not Paris paloma)

I've struggled with depression on and off for years and my periods have always been hard. Because of this I've been on oral contraception since I was 16, only having a period every 3-5 months.

However, 3 to 4 years ago its like a switch flipped and I completely unravelled. I put on some 20kgs and my mental health took a nosedive, I became suicidal for the first time in my life. I thought it was due to being 28 (in my family this is when our metabolism seems to slow.) and because I was working in an abusive workplace. So I got a new job I love, got diagnosed with ADHD and got a bunch of meds to help.

Nothing has really changed and every few weeks I feel like I'm dying.

At the end of last year I had my tubes removed and a mirena placed and have continued taking the pill to avoid any bleeding.

Still no changes. Every 2 - 4 weeks I lose my ever loving mind. I am angry, inconsolable, life feels exhausting and overwhelming and I just want to disappear.

Help?! What can I do? Who do I talk to? What can I do that I haven't already?

I am on levenorg and the mirena, quetiapine, vyvanse, escitalopram and agomelatine.

I have seen psychiatrists and psychologists and regularly see a counsellor for emdr and regular therapy (she thinks pmdd is likely). I eat ok, don't exercise much but I'm not unfit. I don't drink or smoke, don't have much caffeine or sugar.

Is menopause my only way out?