Husband may have cheated with my friend
My husband of 9 years was caught texting a close friend of mine at a birthday party I threw for him. Several close female friends had been noticing that when he put his phone down she picked hers up. She is 10 years our junior (I’m 40). My best friend took me to her house to tell me and I immediately checked my phone records and found out that they had been texting for over 18 days and some days they texted all night. I got to see some of the texts and in them he tells her he loves her, even though I saw no reply from her indicating she felt the same to him he repeated the words to her often. He denied everything until I got his phone from him and read the texts back to him out loud. He still denied anything inappropriate. I also soon found out that he went to her house the evening of his birthday while I was out of town with our kids. I’m guessing he was there 2 1/2 hours and he says that all they did was kiss goodbye and talk while he was there. There was also an occasion that she stayed the night in my house when she got too drunk and couldn’t drive her or her kids home. When I got up the next morning, she was gone but her kids were still here. My husband was also gone to a NFL game with his sister. Through phone records I found out that they had been talking quite early that morning. My husband tells me that nothing happened in our house either. But I feel as though he is lying and will continue to lie until I have evidence. He refuses to take a lie detector and I just don’t know if I can stay married to him. He has never given me any reason to believe that he’s done this before but now I just can’t get over the betrayal. It’s been 11 months and I’m still not over it. When I confronted her the day I found out the only thing she said was "we didn’t have sex". He claims she was on her period. My question to him was how and why did you know that? I want to confront her to maybe get the truth about all of their physical encounters, only then can I move on with or without him. If he lied about what they actually did, then he will lie to me forever. The texting affair lasted 18 days and they were also beginning to have phone conversations. He also mentioned leaving me in his texts but claims that he never meant it since she was joining her husband at his next duty station when he returned from overseas... since he got caught there have been no questionable contacts, and nothing from her.
Should I contact her? She was a friend who screwed me over and tore our family apart! His two kids have been in a tail-spin (I’m the only mom they’ve ever known) and my boys don’t’ trust him anymore. My home has been pissed on and my trust in female friends has diminished... I’m a good woman, hard worker, good mom and devoted wife. What did I do to deserve his betrayal and should I move on?
Response:
Sorry to hear about your situation. First, it probably won’t do much good to confront your friend. She has already betrayed your trust. Interacting with her will only make her a bigger part of your life and most likely she will only say things that will leave you feeling more hurt and confused. But, if you do need closure, maybe consider writing her a letter—some form of one-way communication. And make it clear that you do NOT want a response. If she tries to contact you, do not listen to what she has to say. Keep her out of your life, if you can.
With respect to your husband, you have some decisions you need to make. From your question, it sounds like you are having a hard time believing his side of the story. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to rebuild trust, unless your husband is completely honest with you (see surviving infidelity). However, if your husband did more than he is telling, he has a good reason to hide it from you (see why people lie). Simply put, you have to be sure that your husband is telling the truth, which he may not want to do.
Here is our best advice: Evaluate your relationship. Consider all of the pros and cons (see relationship worth saving). Do you love your husband and want to work things through with him, even when you consider the possibility that he may have had sex with your friend? Many couples can build a stronger relationship after an affair comes to light. And even if you decide to leave your husband, there is no guarantee that something like this won’t happen in the future (in other words: learning how to deal with this issue as constructively as possible is a useful life skill).
So, if you want to work through this issue with your husband, you will need to get him to tell the truth. But, to do so, you will need to make it clear to him that you are committed to working things through, but only as long as he tells the complete truth. In other words, you need to be prepared to hear the worst case scenario and tell him that you will work with him even if he had sex with her. If you CANNOT do that, then you’ll probably be stuck where you are right now: living a life full of confusion and doubt. If you do decide that you want to work through this issue, no matter what happened, involving a counselor is critical. Having such conversations without an experienced and trained counselor will probably only make matters worse.
In short, trust can be repaired, but only when you are convinced that your husband is telling the truth. But, getting your husband to tell the truth, involves making a commitment to your relationship and a willingness to hear things that may upset you.
Hope this helps.
cheating husband | confront lying | confront other person | denies infidelity | trust issues
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