My Husband Just Confessed to Cheating on Me

Everyone, thank you for all the kind words. I am really feeling like everything is crashing down on me right now. I am constantly angry, distracted, always thinking about what’s happening and overthinking the most terrible possibilities, and my husband is just making everything worse. I swear to everything I wish he just never told me about this. I feel like I am going insane. We had a terrible fight – I don’t think we have ever fought like that before. Then again we’ve never betrayed each other in this way before. The only thing we agreed on was to ask his parents to take our girls for the next few days. Unlike my parents they live only an hour away. They are ecstatic to take them off our hands tomorrow. They have no idea what’s going on and my husband never plans to tell them.

In fact he never plans to do anything. He just wants me to forgive him and sweep this nonsense under the rug! He betrayed me in the worst way possible – how can he expect me to just toss this out and do nothing about it? I am honestly at my wit’s end, and the fact that he doesn’t want us to seek professional help together makes it even worse. I understand that this is a difficult time for him too, and maybe he doesn’t want to keep re-hashing his mistakes, but I think if we could have just one professional see us through this it would really help our marriage. But he just isn’t willing.

I wish I read your posts before we had our argument. I definitely kept asking why he did it, because I just wasn’t satisfied with his bogus answer. Answers that I now know for sure are bogus! I have met all of his close coworkers – they were always very kind to me, and I remember most of their names. When I asked him which coworkers “forced” him to have sex with another woman, he told me they were new and that I never met them and that he and them weren’t all that close. This is just….ridiculous!! How could you let people you don’t even know or care about coerce you into having sex with another woman?? He is totally lying and I can’t take this. And get this – I asked for the woman’s name and he said, he “didn’t remember”. How could you not remember the name of the woman you’ve had multiple casual encounters with? Does that mean it was more than one? Does that mean you are protecting someone you had a full blown affair with??

Honestly I don’t think this is salvageable. If he walked out the door and never came back I think I would celebrate at this point. I am convinced he is hiding something enormous. If it were simple casual encounters here and there with one random woman from tinder who he didn’t care about, then he would be able to show her to me, he would be willing to get through this together and talk through it if he was truly sorry. He wouldn’t be telling these outrageous lies.

One thing that has really gotten my head spinning out of control is the fact that I completely forgot he has a second phone for work. It’s a Samsung, not an iPhone. I’m assuming you can download tinder on there and do a variety of other things that your spouse won’t be aware of. But the phone is a few generations old, and he used to always forget it in the house. Yesterday I noticed him taking two phones out of his pocket and my mind just went spinning. I had completely forgotten about it, and he used to totally disregard the phone because he decided everything work related was better done from his iPhone – so seeing him with it in his pocket raised a lot of red flags.

I did not ask him about it – I wanted to see if he would leave it home tomorrow so I could look through it, but after our fight he left the house to sleep over our mutual friend’s house again. Tomorrow I am going to call our mutual friend and see if he knows what is going on, and to see if that is actually where my husband is going. I hate to be sneaky but he is a damned liar and I can’t trust him right now.

I feel like my marriage is a sham. I feel like this is coming out of nowhere. My world is turning completely upside down. I feel so guilty and so angry, and so sad – especially for our girls. I don’t see how we will find a way out of this, i really don’t.

I am so sorry to say this Maryland but your gut instinct is telling you everything I’ve thought reading your posts.

Don’t you dare feel guilty. Ever. This is on him. If he had issues, he should have spoken to you.

All the other feelings are justified.

I doubt there’s any point looking at his phone. He will have deleted anything by now.

Hey Maryland…

Maybe take the “we” out of it. We didn’t have an affair. We aren’t hiding something. We didn’t decline to go to counseling. He did all that on his own – unilaterally.

I did that at first when my marriage started going sideways a while ago. But “we” weren’t the problem. I was the one that fought for a marriage that worked for me. I was the one that kept trying to get back to happier times. “We didn’t want to go in the same direction, and “we” weren’t on the same page.

I only started being happy when I accepted the fact that is was no longer us. I knew how things were going but I stayed in it for 20+ years. Now it’s been 27 years as of a week ago. How many years did I waste where I could have been looking for happiness.

Things only got better when I accepted her not wanting to be a part of me. I am alone a lot. The things I do do, I do alone or w/ my best friend when possible.

From what I’ve read of what you have posted, if he tried and did half the stuff you have suggested – your marriage could possibly work out. But if it doesn’t – it’s not bc of you. He sounds happy and content with how things have gone in the past and he feels guilt-free now having “confessed” his indiscretion to you. He’s good with the status quo.

But let him know that you aren’t ok with things (It doesn’t sound like you are. I know I would be done – infidelity is a dealbreaker for me).

Maybe don’t try to understand it. It will never make sense or be explained away. Maybe either accept it or walk away from it. But do it on your terms. After all is said and done – there are no right answers. You just stick to what you think is best for you. Can’t go wrong there.

But again, it’s not a “you” problem. Hang in there. Write when you need support. TC

Maryland, indulge me for a second please. Why are you trying to figure out all the details of his cheating? If you know that he cheated and we already know why, what will knowing the details accomplish? Please think about that for a minute.

The reason I am asking you is because your pursuit in figuring out the details of his betrayal are causing you a huge amount of pain and does not lead to healing. It only leads to more pain. What you focus on persists. If you keep focusing on trying to figure out all the details of the betrayal you are going to keep experiencing that for as long as you choose to focus on it. If you focus on how to recover from the betrayal that will start you in a direction of healing.

I am sure you are right that him wanting to sweep it under the rug is his way of not having to rehash it again. On one hand he has a point, in that what is done is done. Maybe after he cools down and stops being so defensive, you may be able to have him come with you at least for one visit with a counselor.

I know this is going to be challenging because the betrayal is very devastating and it has control over your thoughts, but try and focus on you. You just got stabbed by someone and you are bleeding. Instead of tending to the wound you are running after the perpetrator while you are losing blood.

If you redirect your focus on healing your wound (self care) which has nothing to do with him in the sense that self care can only be administered by self. Connect with yourself again, your inner strength, cry, morn, do what you need to, but I can promise you once you can get balanced with yourself again, you will know what to do.

Healing is not a matter of external events presenting themselves in a specific format. It is about getting reconnected with ourselves, our soul, higher self, Jesus, whatever you want to call it. Healing in an internal process and happens only by your choice. It has nothing to do with him.

Whether he slept with 1 woman 3 times or 5 times does not matter. Whether he met her on Tinder or at a grocery store does not matter. What matters is that he betrayed you and lied about it. As a result you have lost your personal power, your connection with you.

Obviously you will need to sort out if you can trust him again. But you don’t have to do that today, tomorrow or even the next day or the day after that. But you won’t even be able to know what is right for you to do until you can get back connected with yourself.

Why don’t you see the counselor at church or even talk to the pastor. It would be a good step for you taking care of you.

Hey Maryland.

Was just thinking about this so sending you some plus energy. I’m sure others on the forum are as well.

Do you exercise? Now would be a good time to focus on that. Do you do Yoga? That’s an inner you type of thing that would be helpful. If you do – great! If you haven’t done Yoga then go to Youtube and search Total Body Yoga – Deep Stretch | Yoga With Adriene. It’s pretty basic but is all stuff that will at least make you feel better muscle wise. Stuff like that.

Job #1 = TC of you. GL

^ RCS = spot on

Please get with a counselor ASAP to work through this. This is a serious situation and you have two small children and what you do right now is critical and what you do next could determine whether your marriage can pull through or if it’s over. I think it’s past taking advice from strangers on the internet.

First thing I noticed…. he didn’t go out, get drunk and accidently cheated. he didn’t meet someone trhough work, developed feelings and cheated… He purposefully went and looked for an opportunity to cheat on Tinder

You know he cheated on you with this woman, but how many others were there? Chats, dates, sex, whatever

Did she know he was married, or did he deceive her into believing they are in a relationship?

Why did he tell you? Dis she threaten to if he doesn’t leave you for her?

These are things I would get clarity on, before I decide what type of a man he is, and whether he deserves a second chance

You also really need someone to support you in this. Either a trusted friend, or a counsellor. Don’t go at it alone

Lastly, I’ve been divorced for 8 years with 2 children. My youngest was only 2 when we divorced. I really don’t find it bad at all. I’m much happier as a single mom than I was married to the wrong man

I spoke to our mutual friend – and he confirmed my husband has been staying there. He knows what’s going on, and claims my husband told him the same story. That he cheated with a girl on tinder and confessed. He told me that he found out about it the day that I found out, and that my husband felt he had nowhere to go and no one to really trust besides him. I was tempted to ask him if he really believed my husband and if he saw any red flags before this, I was also tempted to ask if he was lying for my husband (they are closer to each other than our friend is to me) but I didn’t ask any of those questions. I am just exhausted.

Our girls are with their grandparents until Sunday. I am going to our church myself to ask our pastor for support. He was the one who gave us counseling before our wedding, and my husband has known him almost his whole life. At this point I don’t really care what my husband says or how he feels about it. He is not answering my texts, my phone calls, and he is still not home. I’m assuming he will be staying with our mutual friend again.

I just wanted to say thank you again for all of your support. Will definitely come back with updates. I can say today is the best I’ve felt after my husband confessed. I think having heard the news and having to take care of our girls at the same time was really taking a toll on me.

I’m glad you can go talk to your pastor. Just airing it out to a neutral party will make you feel better.

Ugh…sorry about ryoo’s my phone is not texted friendly lol

I think the Tinder story is probably right but the whole “my co-workers made me do it and then I couldn’t be rude to the girl who responded” is a crock. And I’m guessing that the girl found out he’s married and was threatening to expose him and that’s why he suddenly confessed and is refusing to turn around and acknowledge the steaming pile he laid or that it reeks to high heaven. He’s really leaving Maryland no choice if he continues to refuse to be completely honest about what happened and why or go to counseling.