This has gone on too long!
TLDR: My husband 56/M had an affair that began about eight years ago.
I 52/F first noticed him getting close to a woman he worked with. I’ll call her Rebecca 53/F. One night, I heard his phone go off around midnight. It was a text from her. That was the moment I knew their relationship had crossed the line into something inappropriate.
Over the next month, I repeatedly asked him to stop communicating with her outside of work. I was met with the usual responses: “You can’t control me,” “You don’t trust me,” and “Nothing is going on. We’re just friends.”
I knew it was more than that.
I asked him to keep the relationship professional, and I asked to see their text messages because I wanted to understand how they were communicating. It didn’t take long before I found a nude photo she had sent him.
At that point, I became a detective.
I started looking through his phone and his email. I found countless messages between them. They weren’t conversations between friends. They were sexual, intimate, and deeply emotional.
When I confronted him, he admitted they had slept together “once.” He insisted they were also very close friends. He told me he had done this because I had become withdrawn from our marriage. According to him, I wasn’t paying enough attention to him, we weren’t connecting, and she made him feel wanted. He described their relationship as having a special connection and said they just fit together.
He agreed to stop talking to her outside of work and said we would focus on repairing our marriage.
That never happened.
He kept telling me it was over, but he continued lying.
For about the next year, the affair continued in one form or another. It became a vicious cycle. I would discover another lie, another secret, another hidden conversation. He communicated with her on disappearing message apps. He even downloaded a separate messaging app to hide their conversations.
Every discovery led to another explosive argument.
I begged him to end it. I wanted to know why he kept choosing her. Instead of taking responsibility, many of our fights turned into arguments about me looking through his phone. He would tell me I had violated his privacy and that he couldn’t trust me because I kept searching for evidence.
The truth was, every time I looked, I found another lie.
Eventually, I had reached my breaking point.
I called Rebecca myself. I told her that if she didn’t end the relationship and leave her job, I would tell her husband and the people they worked with.
Not long afterward, she resigned.
My husband swore it was finally over. He promised he would never speak to her again.
We decided to start over. He found a different job, and we relocated. I believed we had finally escaped everything that had happened.
But even then, I struggled.
One of the hardest parts was knowing he never truly chose me. I was the one who forced the affair to end. He wasn’t. I also never felt genuine remorse. I never felt like he fully understood the damage he had done or the pain he had caused.
During that entire year, it felt like I was fighting for my marriage while he was fighting to keep her in his life.
Despite all of that, I stayed.
I loved him. I wanted our marriage to survive. We tried to build something new.
For several years, things really were better. We fought much less. The affair still came up occasionally whenever something triggered me, but overall it seemed like we were moving forward.
Then, several years later, he accepted a position back with his former employer.
Rebecca no longer worked there, so I convinced myself it would be okay.
Because of his job, we began splitting our time between two locations.
That changed everything.
Being back in the same environment, around the same people and reminders, brought all of those feelings rushing back. I had no idea how strongly I would react. It honestly feels like PTSD. My body responds before my mind even has a chance to.
Since then, our arguments have returned.
He refuses to discuss the affair anymore. He tells me he has apologized “a million times,” that it’s the worst mistake he’s ever made, and that he wishes he could erase it.
But that’s not what I need.
What I need is for him to understand that I still have unresolved trauma from that time. There were years of lies, deception, sneaking around, manipulation, and disrespect. I don’t feel like those wounds ever truly healed.
Now I’m constantly being triggered by reminders of one of the most painful periods of my life, and he refuses to talk about it.
Instead, he tells me that if I continue bringing it up, he’ll divorce me because he can’t spend the rest of his life talking about the same thing over and over again.
Then, recently, I learned something that changed everything.
For years, I believed the affair had ended when he told me it did. I made the decision to stay in my marriage based on that understanding.
I have now learned that, years later, he searched for Rebecca online. He looked up where she worked and searched for the location of her office.
When I confronted him, he denied ever seeing or speaking to her after she left her job.
I know he searched for her because I found the searches in his account history. He admits he made the searches but insists he never contacted her or saw her.
He is currently at work, and he says we’ll talk about it later.
I want to know why he searched for her.
Right now, I’m sitting here with overwhelming anxiety.
I don’t know what to believe anymore.