You started all over again. It's going to take time, how did you finally find out about the PA? Not just the EA...
Wether or not you forgive him or allow him to rebuild the trust he's gained is up to you. it can be done, you have to decide if too much damage has been done for you.

He confessed. It was a long road with a lot of moments where he could have told me and I rugswept A LOT. I always had this feeling it was more though so I threatened to hire a private investigator to confront the other woman's husband as I had a feeling he knew and wasn't telling me. After I said that he finally just confessed.

I feel a lot of the time that too much damage has been done. Not just the affair but lying about it for so long. How he could watch me suffer for so long and just keep lying and saying it was an "EA."

I'm just not sure I know myself what is the right answer. I argue with myself all the time and I just don't know what the right path is.

What did you both do up to this point that was working until DDay#2

Cheaters will more often that not say it was an EA, when it was a PA. It's trying to minimise their affair and cover their rear. Doing this just sets you right back to square 1 again. It takes so long to get the trust back and this trickle truth is painful.

How long have you been married?
Do you have children?
Do you work?
Is your husband remorseful ?
Does he understand the pain he has out you through?
Is he open and transparent with his phone and email?
Do you have the passwords?



What has he done to demonstrate that he is a safe partner?


The trust broken from infidelity rarely returns to 100%.
This ultimate betrayal shakes a marriage so severely that it changes who you become.

I think you need to tell your husband thst at this point you are unsure about reconciliation. His dishonesty has caused a set back and the trust you were trying to regain feels like time totally wasted.

When you are denied the truth, you cannot make an informed decision and that is what he has done to you. He has starved you of all the information to decide what you want to do.

Has this been his only affair?
What consequences did he face following the affair?
Did you expose the affair to anyone?

Very often there is so much more than you are told, as cheaters will tell you the bare minimum and deny unless presented with irrefutable evidence.

Just recently following a betrayed wife telling Her chesting husband that she didn't believe him and was scheduling a polygraph test, as the date loomed closer, he confessed to 10 more affairs. She thought she was dealing with 2 affairs. She thinks it's more than the additional 10 he confessed to.

If your husband wants this marriage try this. Ask him if you had the affair and he discovered it was a PA later on, what would he want from you, for him to be safe in the marriage.

Would he still want the marriage?

Can you be in a marriage where every time your spouse comes home late, you're worried. Or when they travel on business you get panic attacks. Is it worth the stress? Is it worth your mental wellbeing?

Exposing the full affair to the other betrayed spouse, is the right thing to do. It's the moral thing to do and I'm sure it's what you would have wanted.

Remember that infidelity is a dealbreaker for many.

I guess to understand where I am I will give a super brief timeline. I hate writing it out simply because when I look back I think how stupid I was. I am hard on myself I know, and I know I was in self preservation mode a lot of this time so that is why I made the decisions I did but still I am mad at myself for being so blind and not listening to my gut.

July 2013 - I discovered tons of texts being received/sent in our phone bill. I confronted husband (stupid, should have done more research on recovering deleted texts etc then!)
He said it was just an EA. He was feeling down and needed someone to talk to and she did as well and that was it.

She continued to text him for months! we had blocked her # so no idea what those texts were saying (also stupid)

We just rugswept it all away.

March/April 2014. I had moved overseas first to find us an apartment. I am on his facebook (FB) and look in his "other folder" in his messages, and she had messaged him from a fake account saying how could you do this to me, why aren't you talking to me etc.

I flipped out, didn't want him to come over. So I messaged her husband so she would leave us alone. We spoke a little bit and he thanked me for telling him. Then out of nowhere he said, my wife and I have talked, there is nothing more to say, let's just all move on. So we did....

July 2014, we're living in europe, and out of nowhere, no word since April, she messages me stating how sorry she was for the affair she conducted with my husband and she assumes he finally told me which is why we moved... etc etc. She told her husband back in April but she didn't feel it was right for him to tell me.

So again, I am an idiot and get mad at this woman. I think she is just retaliating and causing drama and mad because I messaged her husband back in April. I never saw any of their texts so I literally have no idea what went on. We send a no contact letter, block her on everything etc.

But this thought keeps nagging at me. What do I do. I try to recover the deleted texts. I scour his emails, facebook everything. I come up with nothing. I just couldn't handle not having proof! He kept lying and lying and lying.

So in Dec. that is when I finally say I'm hiring a PI to track down her husband to ask him the truth and that is when my husband confessed.

How long have you been married? 4 years
Do you have children? No
Do you work? Yes, my job brought us overseas
Is your husband remorseful ? Yes
Does he understand the pain he has out you through? as much as he can
Is he open and transparent with his phone and email? Yes, I have always had access to his FB, emails etc.
Do you have the passwords? Yes

he is doing what he can. He is in I/C, he is remoreseful, he is trying so hard.

It's not him at this point. It's me. If i can even begin to get over the affair itself then I have to tackle the 1.5 years of lying.

I recommend you and your H read the book 'not just friends' by Linda MacDonald. It gives a great insight into EAs and boundaries with members of the opposite sex. If your H is remorseful, he should be willing to do this.

There's also another book called 'how to help your spouse heal after an affair'.

I also wanted to add that it might be helpful to have a time in your mind, like 6 months to a year to see how you feel. This new discovery is essentially a second dday , and your husband needs to understand this and how it has set back your recovery.

There is an app called Dr. Fone, it could be too late, but it's worth a try if he still has the same phone. I think there are other apps/ways to recover deleted texts. You can Google to find out.

With her 'how could you do this to me', could your husband have promised to leave you and be with her? I get a feeling there is a lot you don't know here regarding the depth of the affair.

If you don't know the depth of it, then it could be a case of blind reconciliation.

A suggestion is that you discuss with your H a post nuptial agreement, that favours the betrayed spouse should you divorce in the event of further infidelity. This will also include any affair that has ended, that you don't know about. Rather than a 50/50 split , make it 60:40 or 70/30. It's his reaction to this that will mean more then the agreement itself.

Good luck and do remind your husband the average time to heal from an affair is 2-5 years, with the discovery it was a PA, your healing time had effectively been reset. It's important that he knows this and is ALWAYS patient when you have a trigger or feel low because of the affair. He created this mess and he needs to do majority of the legwork to get your marriage restored.

^the second by Linda MacDonald is short, easy read.. I recommend it

Thanks so much everyone. I am enjoying this support group better than some other sites I have been on. I appreciate all the advice.

We have read the books mentioned. They were helpful.

Moniren, that is really a hard point for me! You hit the nail on the head. I do not know and probably never will know the full extent of the affair. I have asked him so many times, did you say you would leave me, even if you didn't say did you think it? Did you ever express any feelings for this other woman.

He says no no no no no. Over and over. But her messages make it seem like so much more. And it could have been on her side and no this and he said the bare minimum to string her along. But my husband has said so many things that make no sense!

The affair started in the end of Feb/beginning of march as an EA. it turned PA when she invited herself to our house in the afternoon, and she came on to him. She made the first move, she pulled the condom from her purse etc. But then it happened 2 more times for a total of 3 encounters. After that my husband says it went back to a texting/calling EA. And that lasted until July when I found out.

Does that make sense to anyone! I have never been an "OW" but if I was one and the guy I slept with 3 times suddenly starts putting me off I would think something is up. He says he told her every lie in the book to get out of seeing her. He liked the 'ego kibbles' he was getting from her but the physical part made him feel awful which defeated the purpose of this whole thing which is why he stopped seeing her physically. But why would she tolerate this. I have to work, I have a client, the dogs are sick, I have to take the dogs to the vet, I have to run errands. She put up with that crap supposedly for 3 months. Makes no sense!!

And she is known to be dramatic but man her message to him after he ended things was intense, he showed me. And then the message sent sent in March 2014 was, in my opinion really dumb, but also intense. Especially since he had been putting her off physically for so long. She seemed to want a way out of her current situation. I do think if my husband had ever given any indication that was an option she would have taken him up on it immediately.

None of it makes any sense to me. I obviously can't ask her what the hell she was thinking. and her husband basically absolved her of all of it and they just had a baby!

It's very possible he said what she wanted to hear to keep things going. He may have realised she was getting very into him and decided to pull back, but men usually are more interested in the physical side.

It looks like she wanted rescuing and saw him as a KISA (knight in shining armour). The ego kindles are the attention are a large part of affairs. Your H probably wanted NSA sex, while women tend to get more emotional when things are physical.

I think the problem is once a spouse has cheated, you NEVER have that total,trust again, because you know what they are capable of. There's this voice in your head saying it could happen again. A cheating spouse can do everything to try and make you feel safe, but sometimes the fact is you just can't get over the betrayal. You just can't heal from the hurt you're going through.

Everyone is different and I've come across situations where a husband has been unfaithful with over a100 massage parlour women and prostitutes and the wife is wanting to reconcile. This TT (trickle truth) you have is often what kills it.

The one thing I would say on a positive note, is that your H ended it and didn't get caught during the A, so he likely felt guilty. The more important question is, has he identified what led him to the affair and if thst situation arose again, how can you be assured he won't have another affair?

As far as your H putting her off, the thing about being involved with a MM, is that you can't really demand their time. An easy excuse is, I'm out with my wife or we need to cool it because she's getting suspicious. It's not a normal relationship and is full of fantasy.