Last year my husband cheated on me. He had a relationship with an employee. It’s been a few months, and I really want to forgive and forget that story, but I can’t.
My husband is trying to help me in every way he can. He puts up with my tantrums. When I start to “get it” he pulls me close to him and says, “We’ll get through this! Doesn’t help for long. And I so want to stop remembering and overthinking already! I know he chose me. I have to live for today, get involved in something. Everything is fine for a while, and then I start thinking again that he’s just pulling dust in my eyes now, so I can relax. As soon as I relax, he’ll find someone else.
I think it’s his way of relieving stress. Three years ago, my mother got very sick, and for a year I practically never left her bedside. My husband was kind of sympathetic to the situation, even though he was actually “forgotten” by me for that time. Then my mom was gone, which was a big blow to me, I wasn’t ready after all. Again he let me get over the loss. Then my youngest son graduated from high school, I had to enroll. Anyway, I got so wrapped up, so tired during that time! Like, just beginning to come to their senses, and then this news. I found this picture of last year by chance. He was taking pictures with this woman. Clever, deleted photos from his phone, but they were saved on the server and after synchronization somehow appeared on my laptop.
The most frustrating thing is that I should have figured it out sooner, I should have looked, because there were “bells and whistles”. Now we have thirty years of marriage, and 10 years ago, just on the eve of my twentieth birthday, he had health problems, and from time to time he went to a sanatorium for treatment. And then, one day, he brought me back from the sanatorium with an indecent illness. I suspected treason, made a scandal. But then he swore and swore that it was a ridiculous accident, a bad sanatorium. Anyway, he made something up. I forgave him, we made up, and things got back to normal. However, I didn’t let him go to the sanatorium anymore. And now he admitted that he really was with another woman. Like, just once.
He also had an ugly episode after we got married. We lived together for several years, then decided to get married. And just a few months after the wedding, I practically caught him with my girlfriend. I thought that everything was going well, we were just now an official family, which meant that everyone was happy with everything. And it turns out he was out on a date. I should have broken up with him right away. But I was pregnant with my eldest child, and I was not ready to break up.
Sometimes I think it’s not all his cheating. I begin to analyze, and I find inconsistencies in what he used to tell me. Maybe I’m making it up myself. What if I’m not? What if he’s been cheating on me my whole life? What if he cheats again?
He’s 56 years old now. Maybe he could start a new family with a younger woman. He’s got everything he needs, money and a job. I’m really scared.
