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Hello All-
I guess I need some guidance on how to repair a situation in my marriage. Let me start with the history. We've been married for nearly 3 years, have a 2 year old son together and he has 2 boys from a previous marriage. I am 28, he's 38. We fell in love fast as co-workers, I got pregnant and we got married. Things happened fast but we were SO in love it was ridiculous.
Last year we both got into the Myspace craze, I did it to reconnect with old friends from high school, he tried but couldn't find any old friends of his. So he began adding half naked girls as his friends, sending them sexy comments and chatting with them. Many times I told him this bothered me and that I thought it was disrespectful to me for him to be using Myspace this way. He always insisted he wasn't doing anything wrong and he didn't get why it bothered me so much when I knew that he was crazy about me. After a while I started to suspect that he was chatting more and more and hiding it from me. I would notice that his sent mail was empty when I knew he had been on, he would stay up very late on the computer and never have a good story about what he was doing on there so late, and close things quickly if I walked in. One night I got up and found that he was sending messages back and forth with a girl, telling her that he was masterbating to her, asking if she was turned on and asking for naked pics of her. This was the night before Father's Day last year, and it turned out that while I had locked myself in the bedroom to finish his "surprise" (a t-shirt with the kids' handprints on it) he had struck up the conversation with this girl and carried it on throughout the night when I wasn't around. I went through a wave of emotions - I was so angry, I was crushed, disgusted, ashamed, depressed, you name it. I was sick over this and couldn't eat. I strongly considered leaving him but after a few days I said I wanted to work things out and learn to trust him again. We went to two counseling sessions, and for whatever reason, we never went back. Maybe we thought we were "fixed" or just that life got too busy, but we let it go. Still today, if you ask me whether or not I fully trust him to never do that again or if I believe that he only did it that once with that one girl, like he says, I can't honestly say yes to either.
So...now to the part where I am the one who messed up and lied. A couple weeks ago my girlfriend was in town and invited me out to a country bar to have drinks and go dancing. He stayed home with the kids. There was a young guy there (cowboy) who was friends with some of the people we were there with, and I felt an attraction to him. It was just lust, the way he was dancing and he was cute. We were introduced and he asked me to dance. I said no the first couple times, but one of my friends encouraged me to just dance, that there was nothing wrong with just dancing with someone. This guy hit on me and came on strong. All my friends told him I was married, as did I, and he commented that he had indeed noticed the ring. Still, he kept flirting and wanting me to dance with him. I got caught up in feeling attrative and sexy and flirted back and we had a few dances. I found out that one of my friends had told him "my friend likes the way you dance" - I guess she thought it was harmless fun, but that's why he was so encouraged to keep trying I guess. He asked me to take his number and call him sometime, and I said no. He left with his friend, I stayed for a while with my friends, then I left and went home.
A few days later, I logged into my Myspace and was looking at my friend's page and saw many of the new people that I had met that night, including this guy. I sent everyone messages saying "it was nice meeting you Sat night" cowboy included. He responded with a flirty remark, and I told him that I hadn't changed my mind and I wasn't going there with him. He said, "ok, I'll back down and be just a friend, how was your day?" I wrote back, nothing flirty at all and he didn't after that.
Monday of this week my husband surprised me by asking me to lunch and was teary eyed and said that he had come to realize that he had been an ass for a while and had noticed that I wasn't happy and he wanted to do better at making me happy and get things back to the way they used to be between us. He said "I haven't appreciated you in a long time" and that he wishes someone would have woken him up. I cried at this because I knew I had been tempted the week before to do something I shouldn't with the cowboy and it had made me realize that I was unhappy. Giving into the flirting and the dancing had shown me that there were issues in my marriage if I could be tempted like that. So it was like my husband was reading my mind and he asked me if he was too late or if we could work on us and be happy. We had a wonderful week, made love more than we had in a while and we feeling very close and happy.
My husband had teased me after my night out, asking me how many times I got hit on, and if I had danced with anyone. I said no. I was feeling guilty that I had been attracted to this guy and dirty danced with him and flirted, but I lied and didn't say anything about him. My girlfriend had taken pictures that night, and I had asked her to please not post any or send any that showed me dancing with this guy because I knew my husband would not like it. Yesterday she posted some and there was one that showed me dancing with him in the background. My husband saw it and called me to ask me about it. This is where I really messed up. I turned it around so that I was mad at him for accusing me of something when it was harmless, and that I had never given him any reason not to trust me. I read him the riot act, denied that anything inappropriate had happened and he apologized.
Prior to his phone call I had gone onto Myspace and sent out funny comments to a bunch of my friends, and sent this guy one also and said "hey you, hope you're having a good week and not working too hard". In my mind, I had thought that the flirty stuff was done and that I could send him funny things as a friend without any misleading. He wrote me a message last night asking "when are we going to shoot pool" which is something he had mentioned doing at the bar. I wrote back saying:
"Sorry buddy, that's not gonna happen. My hubby saw a picture of us dancing and needless to say he was bothered by it. My friend tried to be careful what she posted but she missed one. We've had some troubles in our marriage this year but we are working on it. Maybe I'll see you around Jesse Black's next time I go but that won't be for a couple weeks. Take care."
He wrote back "alright, wish I could see the pics, when things cool off I hope to see you out". I didn't respond to that because I could see he was being flirty again and I didn't want to go there. My husband got home after that and revealed that he had gotten into my Myspace and set it up so that he could receive my messages on his blackberry, and had seen this email exchange. He says he did this on Tuesday because he had wondered what made me cry at lunch when he said he wanted me to be happy again. We fought about it all night. The email proved that I had lied to him about there not being other pictures, or there not being anything inappropriate. He wanted the whole story and I gave it to him, about the temptation, the dancing, the flirting and how I drew the line. He said he feels very hurt, not just that I lied to him but that I made him feel like a jerk for thinking that I would do anything behind his back. He said he also feels like a fool because my friends were there and now he looks stupid. He thinks that I had intentions of hooking up with this guy the next time I saw him, that I should have known he was just trying to get into my pants and by sending a comment or message I was keeping the communication open to hook up at a later time.
We fought all night, and I felt, and still feel, two waves of emotion. One moment I feel like a total ass for lying to him and even being tempted, but mostly for lying and making him feel like the wrong one for accusing me of doing anything in. I feel ashamed and guilty and torn apart that he is hurting because of something i did. The next moment I feel angry - angry that he is the reason I was driven to feel this way towards another guy, even though I know that I controlled my own actions - angry that he got into my emails to check on me, even though I know we've always been open with that stuff and I should have had nothing to hide - angry that he made me feel EXACTLY the way he is feeling a year ago and now he finally knows how I felt with his betrayal - angry that he doesn't believe me now when I tell him that I drew a line and did not do anything with this guy, I was not unfaithful, not even a kiss. He feels that what I did is worse because it was in person and what he did was online, but I feel that what he did is worse because he said sexual things to this girl and I never said anything remotely sexual. He basically tried to initiate "online sex" with another woman, which to me is no different than trying to initiate sex in person.
He feels that he cannot believe that I didn't do anything more with this guy since I lied to him about the dancing and the picture. He honestly thinks right now that I messed around and told me that he wants to see a picture of me with my wedding ring on that night. I told him I wore it all night, and anyone that even spoke to me knew I was married because I told them and all my friends told them. Whether or not there is a picture that captures my left hand showing my ring, I don't know, but I've asked my girlfriend to look through her pictures from that night.
In all the troubles we have had, I have never been the one on THIS side of things. It has almost always been him apologizing and me being upset. Now I don't know how to deal with being the one who did wrong. I guess I'm looking for advice, thoughts, whatever. I think we both want to work it out and stay together, but he is so angry and hurt right now and the way he is looking at me, I'm afraid that he doesn't love me anymore, but I know it's there. Part of me wonders what it means that in one year's time we have both done something to betray the other's trust. Thinking back to last year, I know I needed time and space to get through the initial anger and sadness and hurt, so I guess that means I need to give him the same right now. What I wanted from him at that time was for him to feel truly sorry about what he had done and KNOW how I felt so that he could understand it. For the first week after what he did, I didn't think he truly believed that what he did was that bad, and I wanted him to be more sorry. So I guess I need to take what I wanted from him then and give those things to him now.
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