It’s not that I “don’t mind if I don’t know about it”. It’s the exact opposite. I don’t want to be deceived. I feel so stupid for having been so easily deceived in the past.
On the other hand, it is certainly possible that he is being faithful now. He claims that he gave up all the other women “cold turkey” about a year ago, after he showed me his emails; and it is certainly possible that he is telling the truth. Based on other things (e.g. his ability to drastically change his diet when he needed to lower cholesterol), I am sure that giving up his infidelities “cold turkey” is something that he is capable of doing, if he wants to. The question is – does he want to? I don’t know. And I don’t know how to find out if he is now faithful or not. Maybe I am just being “hypervigilant”. Or maybe not. I feel paranoid if I suspect him and stupid if I don’t. But the most important thing for me right now would be – to have some way to *know* one way or the other.
As I said previously, if I would find out that he is continuing to see other women, that would be the dealbreaker for me now. The question is, dealbreaker in what way? I don’t see any advantage for me right now in getting divorced. I would be alone; he would have no lack of companionship. (I have cousins who divorced and remarried, at a much younger age, and each new husband was 10 years older than the previous one.) So I would simply be taking everything I have worked for over the past 40 years, and handing it to another woman on a silver platter. No point in doing that.
But I would make changes – I would not continue to be there for him as I have been till now. I do a lot of supportive things for him, and I would stop doing those things. I feel really stupid for having been supportive towards him all these years when he was doing these things behind my back.
I am pretty sure he would not want a divorce, because then the whole story would come out. For all these years, besides being a devoted wife and partner/co-worker in our business, I have also been his “cover story”, enabling him to be respected in our extended family and our community. So if I have any leverage, this is it. (Of course I would not use this as a threat, because I want him to stay with me and be faithful to me because he wants to – not because I can threaten him. But it is an important thing to know - that divorce is not advantageous for him either.)
Financially – I am totally dependent on him. My “career” has been to raise our family and to promote his career, rather than building up an independent career for myself; and at this point in my life, I would not be able to support myself on my own. Our kids are grown and self-supporting, but I am now responsible for my mother, who needs full-time care. (She has a live-in caregiver, who is much stronger than I am, and is able to do all the things my mother needs. But it’s expensive.) Fortunately my husband has taken full responsibility for my mother’s upkeep; but it is another way that I am dependent on him.
I should probably speak to an attorney as you suggest, just to know what my rights are. How would I go about finding a good one confidentially? I don’t have anyone I could ask, and I hesitate to pick one at random from the yellow pages.
