My life is in absolute shambles right now. Yesterday morning at 2:30, I discovered my h's affair by reading the emails in his "sent" box. They were the most passionate, erotic, and loving messages that I have ever read - nothing like my H has ever written or said to me in our 13 year relationship. I couldn't believe the raw emotion in his messages to her. I woke him up immediately and cornered him about the affair.
Turns out that the R with the OW ended 5 weeks ago when she dumped him due to his baggage. She's 24, he's 36 with 3 month old twins (nice, huh.) She claimed he was the love of her life but didn't want to be tied down with kids at such a young age. He reciprocated her feelings and was devastated by the break up (evidenced by the 24 emails that he sent to her over the past few weeks trying to get her back.) He told me that he had planned on marrying her and wanted to have kids with her. I never believed he was capable of the level of deception and manipulation that he showed to me during this affair. Here's the story in a nutshell:
Our relationship had problems that went unaddressed for years on both our parts. We essentially had a platonic marriage as we rarely had sex (neither of us seemed to have much desire for the other person.) It sounds ridiculous in hindsight that we lived like this for so long, but, I guess, we didn't want to rock the boat and deal with our issues since we were best friends and got along so well. Unbelievably, we got married and then got pregnant with twins (after 16 months of trying) without resolving this major problem.
My H's affair began when I was pregnant and put on strict bedrest for the last 3 months of my pregnancy. H was solely responsible for running the household and taking care of me.
He and the OW met at work, and he told me it was an immediate connection. They had an emotional affair for 2 weeks before it got physical. She ended up leaving her husband for him, and he planned to do the same with me after our twins were born and enough time had passed. My H had it all planned out in advance for how he was going to leave me without anyone learning about the affair. I REALLY enjoyed learning about this from reading his email.
When the kids were two weeks old, he told me that he was having difficulty adjusting to their arrival and needed to see a therapist, which he began doing. Two weeks later therapy showed him that the real issue was between us, and he was no longer attracted to me. We began seeing a marriage counselor, and I worked diligently on trying to save our marriage. Throughout the next 10 weeks he displayed enormous negativity about our situation and told me he didn't have any hope for resolving our issues and wanted to separate. I dug in my heels and wouldn't give up. I even went so far as suggesting that we attend Dr. Schnarch's intensive therapy session in Colorado as a last ditch effort before separating. He dragged the decision to go over a two week period and then told me to book the trip. I was elated! We returned with him still needing to make the decision on whether or not he wanted to try to make our marriage work. He was still "deciding" when I found out about the affair.
Turns out my H agreed to go to Colorado after the OW dumped him. He wanted to see if there was any hope left for our marriage. Unfortunately, he never admitted the affair so the therapy was useless. I can't believe that he was willing to waste over $7,000 on therapy to keep up the facade. He now admits that his sole purpose to drag me through therapy was to keep the affair secret from his family and me. He wanted our divorce to be amicable and didn't want tension that a known affair would create between the OW and the people in his life. He had planned on "meeting" the OW after our separation and then introducing her to us as his "new" girlfriend.
My H has shown very little remorse for his behavior (in my eyes)and is cold and distant. He is still in love with the OW and is holding out hope that she will change her mind and come back to him, even though he has said that she never will (our kids were a deal breaker.) He isn't interested in saving our marriage because he feels our problems are insurmountable, and he will never feel for me the passion he felt with the OW.
His cold and calculating behavior throughout a time in my life that was supposed to be joyous disgusts me and is unforgiveable. But it sickens me to know that deep down I still love him and want to work it out. What is wrong with me! I'm embarrassed to even post this. What is the chance that he'll get over this OW? I can't believe that he doesn't realize that his relationship with the OW wasn't a healthy and lasting relationship. It was based on lies! I think it was a form of escape for him and the sneaking around made it more exciting.
I've asked my H to move out of the house, but I'm so confused and don't know whether or not to file for divorce...
Any thoughts? Opinions and advice would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.
