You better tell me everything…
After my husband told me about his infidelities I became fixated on needing to know every single detail he could recall about what he’d done, how he did it, how it felt, what his emotions were at the time, how did he feel afterwards, what was the other woman’s body like, was sex better with her, what positions did you do it in, how long did it last, would you do it multiple times in one night, were the strippers pretty, how did you have sex with them, what did the prostitutes look like, how old were they…. my questions were endless. I felt I had a right to know everything, he was my husband and this time that he spent with other women should have been spent with me.
He expected me to be 100% accountable to him. Everyday that he was out of town he would ask for an explanation of what my day consisted of. He was never left wondering who I was with or what I was doing. I was expected to tow the line and I did. He on the other hand lied to me every single day for 7 years. Never telling what he was really up to or who he was with while he was out of town. Every week before he would travel he would send me the dates and usually his flight and hotel information. Every once in a while the hotel information would be missing, I’d ask him why, it was always the same excuse, that his assistant had made the reservations and he’d not gotten an e-mail. He would verbally tell me where he was staying. I took it all at face value. I have since found out that those were the times when his AP would make his hotel reservations, he’s told me that she would request their rooms be close together for convenience. He said sometimes they would be next to each other, across the hall or right down the hall from each other.
They only spent one night together in the 6 years that he had an affair with her. He said there was a half night when he’d fallen asleep and left her room at 4am but only one full night. If you can even call it a full night. He said that he was on a 3 day trip in ATL and had been with her the first night and gone back to his room, the second night he went out with his buddies to a strip club, he said he thinks he got in around 2am, he went to her room had sex and passed out, he said he woke up the next morning in shock that he’d fallen asleep, she initiated sex and he left immediately after. He told me he felt awful and strange after having spent the night in her room, he said he worked until lunch and then found a bar so he could get fucked up because he was so sick about it. I guess in his fucked up addict mind that sex was one thing but spending the night was crossing a line.
Repentance…
When my husband wrote me his repentance list he was very detailed about the things that I was most concerned about, the things I wanted the most detail about. It was gut wrenching to read it.
I was thinking about the list the other day after he’d asked me if I would renew our vows. I thought, I need to read the list one more time, I need to know if I can really stay with this man, if I can renew my vows with someone who could do these things to me.
I almost got the list out of its hiding spot but then I paused and thought better of it. I already know everything (I think) and what I don’t know I’ll assume its because he can’t remember. He was often black out drunk and high during his escapades.
Last night…
Last night we were both exhausted but still in need of that physical connection, he asked me if I would get on top of him and do all the work. I complied… We fooled around and had great sex.
Afterwards I started wondering if he did things with the AP that he does with me (obviously I know he did a lot of the same things, it’s sex right) I mean specific things. Things that up until he’d met me he’d never done, things that I introduced him to. Like a dumb-ass I asked him “did you do xxx with her, this way or that way or before or after?” I already knew the answers, I’d asked before. It’s like I expect the answers to change. I think that’s because he lied so much in the beginning. He said, no to part of it because she was to big, I wonder if that means he tried at all, I did not ask, I don’t want to know. Then he said “please God don’t make me rack my brain trying to think of the details, I don’t want to remember that shit, I hate that I ever did it. We just made incredible love, do you really want to talk about this?” My answer was no, I did not want to talk about it. I just wanted to cuddle up and go to sleep.
Therapy today…
In therapy today I told our counselor about sex last night and how it triggered me into thinking those things and asking questions. He understood completely and told us both that those are “Why?” questions and to stop asking them. I already know why, I already know how. Now I need to know how to heal.
Letting go, a little….
Today I thought a lot about memories and I realized that I don’t want my husband dwelling on the memories of the worst things he’s ever done. It’s less important what details he remembers about drunken sex with women he cared nothing about and much more important he remember the details of our life together. When I ask him specific questions about sex with other women I’m putting him in a position to think about the actual act to generate an answer for me. I know this had its place in the beginning of recovery, I needed to know everything, but now that I know I need to stop asking the same questions over and over. I needed to ask the same questions until they no longer had an impact on me, that happened last night. When he answered the first question it did not faze me at all, but it did affect him, that’s why he asked me to stop. I want to let this part of it go, I want to let myself be happy, if only a little bit. I deserve happiness. I deserve to let myself let this one thing go.
Memories worth remembering…
I want my husbands memories to be of us together.
Darling,
I want you to remember that before our first date you went to three flower shops looking for tulips (they were not in season) because I had mentioned once in a phone conversation that they were my favorite flower. After that you always got me flowers from that shop, until you became an addict and clicking a few buttons on 1-800-flowers.com became easier. I still appreciated the flowers but it was not the same.
I want you to remember us breaking my bed during rambunctious sex when we were dating. Me pulling a mounted light over a hotel bed out of the wall while I was riding you on our first night away together. Us laughing hysterically about it and wondering if the hotel would charge us for the light. That same night we saw a shooting star while waking on the beach, the next morning you asked me to be in an exclusive relationship with you. The first time we took a bath together and how it became our thing to bathe and shower together almost every day, we’ve done that now for almost 13 years.
I want you to remember our first Valentines day, you had court that day for a custody hearing and were in a bad mood after so we decided to stay home and cook instead of going out. You gave me beautiful earrings and a bracelet. I gave you a gift bag, I don’t remember what was in it except a pair of panties. I’d planned to give you the bag during dinner and then tell you that I was glad you’d found my panties…. I was pregnant on that day but we didn’t know it yet.
I want you to remember us getting filthy doing yard work on a hot summer day and collapsing on the bed, our proximity was enough to stir us, we had filthy sex and loved every second of it.
Remember the crazy fight we got into because I was mad when you did not help me get a pizza out of the oven? Like you should have read my mind!!! I threw pizza and then you threw pizza, then we laughed our asses off. We found specks of pizza sauce on walls and on our books for a year!
I want you to remember the things you said to me the night you had to leave me in the hospital before I had surgery to take our baby. I was hysterical and you demanded the nurse give me something to sedate me so I could sleep. I want you to remember the things you said to me when you insisted they let you walk beside my bed all the way to the operating room. I remember the look on your face when they took me away to save my life and take the one we had created. There is rarely a day that I don’t think about what we lost.
On our second Valentines day you got me gifts I don’t remember what, except for two movies, this would become our tradition, for you to buy me two movies every year, you stopped when you started being unfaithful. I had delivered to your office a beautiful blue-bottle containing a scroll with song lyrics printed on it, the bottle was in a cork container. We again stayed home and cooked dinner. You put artichokes in the garbage disposal and backed up the sink. We had to call your Dad to come over with a drain snake to unclog it. Again we laughed hysterically about it. We were always laughing together. I love that you’ve always kept the bottle safe in its container and always where you can see it.
I loved every gift you’ve ever gotten me, but our traditions meant something. I like familiar and comfortable with you. I expected those movies every year and was sad when they were replaced by other things. The best was after our trip to VA, when it was freezing out we went to the movies and saw “Ray”, the next year on Valentines day you got me the movie.
Remember in Virginia Beach the no cursing signs everywhere. It was winter and the place was deserted so we cussed up a storm when we walked down the streets laughing hysterically. We took pictures on the beach in 30 degree weather. I loved that trip.
I want you to remember all of our trips to the beach together, how you loved to pull me around in the ocean on a raft. How when I got sick the first thing you did was book us a weekend at the beach thinking it would make me feel better. You were the most thoughtful man I’d ever met.
Remember when you invited the Mormons who came to the front door in to debate religion with you. I knew when they entered they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. I watched silently as you schooled them on theology. They never came back!
Remember us sitting in the grass, your legs wrapped around me, us watching the kids play and ride bikes.
When we were sufficiently in love we’d play the 5 years, 10 years game. I’d ask you or you’d ask me what does our life look like in 5 or 10 years. We came up with all sorts of clever scenarios. We never came up with the one we ended up with.
I want you to remember all the great adventures we’ve been on, all the places we’ve traveled, everything we’ve seen together. Oh Canada eh!!!
Remember when we went to the beach and I told you to put sunscreen on your legs and you said no my hair will filter the sun? You spent the day with a book in your lap studying, you ended up with 3rd degree burns and were in so much pain you missed work. You were not in so much pain to as to avoid sex and asked me to mount you without putting any of my body weight on you and not touching your legs. That took a lot of thigh power on my part but I did it!
You made a similar request when you broke your leg in 6 places a few years later. Telling me you had to be close to me, that we had to be together.
Remember the first bonus you got from work, it was only $5000 but we thought it was incredible. Your boss had written you a letter telling you how great of a job you were doing and how impressed they were with your talents. We kept the letter and the check stub in the top drawer of our dresser for years. I was so proud of you. That was before life got to big, before you could dream away $5k in your sleep. God how I wish we could go back to that day, how badly I wish you’d remained only an engineer.
I want you to remember grabbing me in our dining room of our house where we were happiest, you know what house I mean. You grabbed me and told me that you’d figured out how many days we would be together if we both reach our life expectancy of 82 years, you told me that it wasn’t enough days, that you needed more. You told me that we would be together forever in this life and in the next.
We once talked endlessly about superstring theory and what our lives may be like in other dimensions. We wondered if in another dimension maybe we’d met earlier and neither of us had ever been with anyone else, that our baby had lived and that we had a simple happy life. In one of the letters I wrote you while you were in rehab I once again visited this theory, hoping that somewhere in a different dimension that this is not our life, that we did things right. That you were faithful and had not become an addict.
It’s hard for me to think about our memories while you were being unfaithful. I question if they are real or not or if they meant anything to you. By all accounts you included me in every aspect of your life except for your infidelity.
I want you to remember when we bought this lot, the lot our house sits on now. We’d come out here one day to walk around. We marveled at the beauty of it, not believing that it was actually ours. I remember you and I standing in the middle of the lot where our house now sits, you embracing and kissing me telling me that you were happy. That was real, wasn’t it?
Or the happiness when we bought our boat, the big boat. How you were so excited to take me on a test drive before we bought it. Or when we bought our beach house and then celebrated making love on an air mattress in the living room. You went to the store and bought us an assortment of mini desserts and fed them to me. All of that was real, right?
There are so many memories between us, so many things I don’t want you to ever forget.
I so badly wish you would have had the character and moral wherewithal to tell “R” that you were happily married and that you refused to follow him down the rabbit hole. I wish when the other guys had bragged about their women on the side that you would have called them on their bullshit instead of feeling inferior and thinking you had to join in. I wish you would have told that whore from work that you were happily married and that your life was filled with romance, laughter and love and that you would never do anything to jeopardize it, and then walked away.
I wish you would not have stopped pursing me after you knew you had me lock stock and barrel. I wish the things in our life that had transpired between us before you were ever unfaithful would have created a bond that was unbreakable, that what we had would have been enough to make you resist temptation. I thought because you came up with all the rules for the relationship and I followed them that you did too.
I know you can’t undo all the things you’ve done. I don’t want you to forget the pain you’ve caused me, or to know that my pain is equal to how much I loved you. That it hurts so much because I loved so much. You were the love of my life, my hero.
I’m willing to let you be all those things again. I love you too much to let you go.
Please stay the man who you are today, the man you’re becoming in recovery. The man who is so much like the man I fell in love with so long ago. Please be a man of your word and keep your promises. You swear to me every day that you will never hurt me again, that you will be faithful for the rest of your life, that you will never lie to me, please keep your word. I am so filled with fear because of the things you’ve done. Please prove to me that you are not that man and never will be again.
I’m giving you permission to forget the bad things you’ve done but not the pain they’ve caused. Remember instead the good things in our life, all of our fabulous memories. I’m ready to make more wonderful memories with you for the rest of our lives.
Love always,
C
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.” – Rumi
In my work with couples where infidelity has occurred, the “why” questions are always present. It’s very normal. But I’ve found that learning all the intimate details only gives the wounded party more things to obsess about. Someone has compared it to watching an autopsy performed on a loved one. Why would you want to do that. The most crucial detail is that they have died.
In the context of an affair The most crucial detail is that there has been betrayal. THAT is the wound that must be healed. Whether they had sex with someone once or a hundred times doesn’t change that one critical point. So I try to get everyone to focus on healing.
I’d be interested in your opinion of this.
Thank you for the comment and asking my opinion. I personally think this is not a one size fits all answer. I think that it should be up to the betrayed spouse how much information they want. The betrayer has already stolen so much, kept so many secrets and lied to his/her spouse. It seems grossly unfair to keep information that your spouse has requested that you (the betrayer) has the answers to. If my husband had not answered my questions I would have felt like that left him in the power position in the marriage, he’d already in his mind put himself there when he cheated. Marriage is a partnership, two becoming one to face the world together. When one half of that partnership does not keep their end of the agreement it puts the entire relationship in jeopardy. In order to return to a point of homeostasis in the relationship I think that it’s only fair that the person who threw it off come clean in whatever way the betrayed spouse desires. Withholding information from your spouse is never okay. My husband hid his affair because he thought it would hurt me and that he would lose me, by withholding information he would have been continuing with that same logic. Personally if I saw a therapist who told my husband not to disclose everything I wanted to know I would find a different therapist. We’ve actually seen 4 different therapist and all of them were of the mind set that he needed to answer questions.
“Whether they had sex with someone once or a hundred times doesn’t change that one critical point” I vehemently disagree with you on this. There is a huge difference between a one night stand that was the result of a drunken slip up and an on going affair. My husband’s initial disclosure was a lie, he told me that years ago he’d had an affair with a women at work and that he’d been with her 10 times in 2 years, he told me he was drunk every time and that he’d stopped because he loved me and realized it was wrong. After he told me I went into shock but it seemed like something I could recover from, he’d made the mistake years ago and was sorry. Then I found out the real truth, that he’d actually had a 6 year sexual relationship with this women. That it had only ended because her husband suspected and pressured her to tell, she had actually come up with the lie about the time frame, my husband went along with it because he felt it benefited him too. It was with her between 50-70 times. Does it matter? Hell yes it matters. Over six years you learn what someone likes and does not like, you learn their body and how to make them respond. It’s very different. If it had been a short fling he would not have had as much invested in it. That being said he’s maintained that he had absolutely no emotional connection to her, that she served a purpose was available and discreet. She was also not the only one, my husband had sex with 9 women and had some sort of inappropriate sexual contact with 13 women over the course of 7 years. It makes a huge difference. It makes the healing different. Forgiving a one night stand would have been nothing compared to what I’ve faced with him. He would not have had a working knowledge of a one night stands body.
It’s like if you move to a new city, if you drive around once you know a little but you might not remember your way around. But after you’ve lived in that city for 6 years you know all the streets and where to go.
As for obsessing about details… Before he gave me details the things I made up in my head were far worse than what occurred in real life. In my mind it was some romantic, exciting affair in which he had mind blowing sex with another woman who was less attractive that me. In reality he was pursued aggressively by this women who took every chance she could to act out in a sexual nature with him. He has told me that the first time it happened that he had not wanted to do it but she had already made their hotel reservations with rooms across from one another and that he was drunk. He told me that he felt uncomfortable and uneasy the entire time. He was an addict so he kept going back. She made it very easy. All of that matters. And as for the sexual details, yes I needed them all. As I said what I made up in my head was much worse than reality. That seems to be true with most of the betrayed women I’ve spoken to.
Sorry I’m so long winded. I’m very opinionated on this matter.
My husband read the book “How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair: A Compact Manual for the Unfaithful” It was very helpful for him to help me understand the why’s and how’s. Healing has to happen on the betrayed spouses timeline, not the betrayer. It’s not for him to determine how I heal or how long it takes me. My personal healing is separate from that of the healing in the marriage, just as his healing is separate.
I want to get a copy of that book for my husband!!!
I think it has been the best recovery book my husband has read. I saw an almost immediate change in the way he responded to my questions and my pain when he started reading it.
I am not sure he will read it. since he still can’t, won’t, doesn’t care to follow the #1 basic rule of recovery!
All you can do is try. I hope he’ll read it. Pray hard about it, God works in mysterious ways.
You’re an excellent writer and I can feel the pain and other emotions that you project. . Another part of me is left wondering if anything you write about is real. It’s just so surreal. Wow!
Regarding recovery, it has been my experience that 5 years is that magic mark when a person recovering from addiction is expunged from all previous behavior and has chosen a better path…or not !
Ha.ha.ha.ha… You know I’ve read some of my post and thought no one is going to believe all this shit is real. I can assure you it is 100% real, my husband and I are living proof that it’s real. You have no idea how badly I wish it wasn’t!
I’ve also read that recovery takes between 2-5 years. That’s a haul, hopefully it will be worth it.
Wow, wow, wow. I’m in this exact same spot right now. Like you I wanted all details. THe things I’ve asked (i’ve you’ve read back entries in my blog you’ll see I’ve asked EVERYTHING and then some). Obsession at its worst you know?
But lately I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped obsessing. But then a few times, a question has come up, and I’ve just not asked. I’ve wanted to, but…like you…
Just wow. I never thought I could know enough, never thought I’d be able to stop asking. But right now it’s almost like, maybe I’ve hit that acceptance stage. I can’t change what happened. It did. It just DID.
My therapist asked me once, whe I’m asking my questions…ask myself, will it help me move forward? At that time, though it made sense I was at a palce where I still just needed those details. And she understood that. But now…I ask myself…will this help me move forward and heal?
Asking the questions did help me move forward. Like I responded to the others it was important for me to know if the scenarios I had in my head were what happened in reality. If I had not gotten the details it would have driven me crazy. I honestly don’t think I could have remained in the marriage if he had not told me the things I wanted to know.
The shit I made up in my head was 100 times worse than what actually occurred. It absolutely mattered.
The problem for ‘me’ really happened when I started to obsess on the things I did know. I asked the same questions over and over, I’d forget what his answer was or I was hoping to catch him in a lie, again. When he finally got honest and his answers stopped changing it got easier and easier for me to process it all. I needed to be at a point where asking a question about the infidelity did not faze me any more than if I were to ask him what he wanted for dinner. I’m finally there, after 14+ months I’m there. Like you said, I can’t change it. I have to accept that he was sick, he’s now in recovery and we are moving forward with our lives together.
OH! I agree. I had to know. I couldn’t move forward without knowing. I needed the details, all of them. I advocate for that. But, now? Re-asking does me no good anymore.
But for me also knowing details helped in that, it destroyed the secrets and intimacy between him and them. And brought everything to light. I didn’t want him to have ANYTHING with them I didn’t know about.
But now, I do not have the burning need to ask over and over and over again. The answer’s aren’t going to change. I know where he had sex, what positions, even their grooming habits, how they kissed, if they even made noises. Having those conversations again and again and again, will not help me anymore.
Exactly… I asked all of those same questions. I wanted to know every single detail down to the fine hairs. I agree 100% about the intimacy, in him telling me it became something he no longer shared only with them (her). The only person in this world my husband needs to have secrets with is me.
Do you ever wonder or have you asked your husband, if the tables had been turned, if you were the sex addict and had committed adultery over and over would he have stayed? I’ve asked my husband, he says yes he would have stayed, that he could not imagine a life without me in it. That as long as I did what ever it took to get better he would stay. I don’t know if that’s true or not, I honestly don’t think he’s as strong emotionally as I am. Our therapist said he was spiritually and emotionally immature, at least in the start of all this. I have to wonder if I would have been afforded the same grace that I’ve given him. Hopefully we’ll never have to find out.
I have asked him, and like your husband, mine has said the same thing.
But, like you, I don’t think he would have been able to either. There is no way he could have been able to handle what I have emotionally. Stress is a huge trigger for him. He would act out even MORE when he was stressed because he had ZERO coping skills.
But, insome ways I also know his fear of being alone may hvae caused him to stay. I know…if I’d kicked him out, he’d have had a “replacement’ very quickly because he couldn’t be alone.
I also asked question after question after question wanting detail. I have just commented on another blog post saying I wish some of the questions I had not asked, becuase the answers give images which will now not go away. Our counseller said a very similar thing – what is this question going to achieve? Is it helping you? She also recommended saving the questions up until set time. She said sometimes we ask a question because the thought pops into our mind, rather than if we wait until an pre-determined time perhaps the question might not be so important and we can let it go. I am asking less now, and it only tends to be when I am feeling tense.
I love the contents of your ‘letter’ to your husband – they are indeed the memories worth remembering.
I had to know if the images in my head were as bad as what had actually occurred. I was relieved to find out that was not the case. I’m not sorry for any of the questions I asked, he’s my husband I have a right to know everything. He made a promise to share his body only with me, when he broke that promise I wanted to know exactly how he broke it in detail.
I am relieved to be at a point where I don’t think there is any more information. It’s been nearly 15 months for us, I’m ready to start living my life with my husband, I’m done living with the ghost of his infidelity.
Beautiful post! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for sharing your perspective with me. You make some very valid points.
I admire anyone who makes the effort to repair the damage done by betrayal.
I wish you much success in building a lasting marriage!
This was a great post. The comments are all very interesting, also.
I’d had no idea you’d lost a baby, SLH. That part of your letter to your husband made me cry. I’m sorry for you loss.
I liked what you said about needing to know everything, in the beginning, because you had to feel he was coming clean, and because when you don’t know, you’re left to make up the truth in your head. But that then later you had to stop obsessing over it. I also liked what Samantha said, above, about how knowing the secrets destroyed the intimacy between the betrayer and the AP. That resonated with me, because of how my husband was and is still being so secretive and possessive about his “secret friendship.” I think I need to stop obsessing, regardless, because he isn’t showing any signs of wanting to heal any of this, and it doesn’t get me anywhere when I do.
Thanks BV, I think knowing the truth is paramount to healing. My husband is the person who I’m supposed to trust more than anyone else, my protector, my light in the darkness. If he would not have come clean we could not have healed.
I’ve been thinking about doing a post about losing our baby. It’s such a painful memory, I almost couldn’t write about it last night. I was in bed crying when I wrote it. My husband was asleep next to me, his head buried in my hip while he slept as I typed. When I look at him it’s hard to fathom that we’ve been through so much and that he was ever capable of doing harm to me. His face is to sweet, to innocent to be the face of an addict/adulterer. How could this be the same man who shouldered us through such a traumatic loss. I’ll write about it soon.
I love that you can still remember so many good and toughing things preaffair. Blessings!
Sniff…had to grab a kleenex for this one. I could have written this post myself. When you said that he wanted all of your daily details and whereabouts, all I could think is JR did that to me too, but only during his affair. I should have caught on, but I didn’t. I think he worried I would cross paths with them if I was out and about. He kept very close tabs on me those days. Then he convinced himself that I was having an affair and began stalking me…so weird, those days were nuts.
You have created a bond that is unbreakable…just think, what you have survived would have ended most marriages…it did NOT end yours!
JR and I always talk about how much history we have. We pretty much grew up with each other, we became adults together. Being just 18 and 15 when we married, we didn’t have a clue. All we have ever known is each other. We’ve shared so much. Reading through all of your “remember whens” made me think of my birthday this year. We knew we were going out to dinner and didn’t want a big lunch so JR grabbed us a couple of egg rolls frm our little Chinese place we love. When it came time for fortune cookies we opened them and then read them out loud…we had gotten the exact same fortune and it spoke of good things to come in the future. We laughed, it was pretty neat…in 25 years we have never had the same fortune and we eat a lot of Chinese food. Now this is one of our “remember whens”. I told him that from then on he has to get us Chinese and fortune cookies for all of my birthday’s with zero’s in them.
I have also spent many days asking the same questions that I already knew the answers to. I think it’s just our brains trying to make sense of something so senseless. JR also hates having to go back to those moments. He tells me that when I ask for specifics it forces him to go back in his mind and think about being with her. He says it makes him physically sick and I can tell that it really does. I no longer ask those types of questions, I have tormented him and myself long enough. Now our conversations are more general, they are much more productive. I don’t ask the sex questions anymore. I have all of the answers I need and want. I will not continue to punish him by making him remember being with her. I want him to forget every little speck of her…poof…gone! Ding, Dong the whore is dead…the slutty, skanky, whore is dead! Cart her ass off to OZ please….or Tibet…yep that would be far enough away…hehe.
I am glad that we have so many good memories to draw from. We had a solid foundation, now there are cracks we need to fill in. I will never in my heart understand how he could have done the things he’s done. My brain and my heart just don’t connect, intellectually I understand it but my heart won’t accept it.
My husband had always expected me to be accountable, from day one. He was accountable too before he started lying and going to strip clubs. Baring my leaving the kids and getting on a flight to go spy on him in whatever city he was in I would never have known the difference.
Tibet? seriously…. NO…. Not even the fiery pits of hell would be far enough away for me, not for the two women who knew me and knew he was married, not for the one who was my friend. I hope there’s a special place in hell for home wrecking whores.
I skimmed this not fully prepared to read everything.. I told my husband he needed to answer the other questions, but sex, the ones I ask about that, dont.. I cant handle that, no matter how mean I get or angry or cry, please dont ever answer.. so he hasnt…I did read your last comment… and yes I second this –> “I hope there’s a special place in hell for home wrecking whores. ” <–
I think it should be 100% up to the betrayed spouse how much information they want. If that’s what your comfortable with then that’s all that matters.
(tried to enter this earlier and typed to fast, hope I’m not double posting)
OMG- you made me cry and I don’t even know you. I hope that your life together from now on is more of all those things you remembered so well. I hope that he is far enough along in his recovery to recognize what he came so close to throwing away.
Sweetie, I remember all of those wonderful memories. Falling in love, our mind-bending sex, our adventures to new and exciting places together are the greatest moments in my life. Earning you as my girl, as my fiancee and as my wife was a gift beyond my imagination. I would have never anticipated becoming an awful betrayer, wounding you so mortally. I lack the words to effectively describe the shame, the guilt, the gut-wrenching remorse and regret. I am eternally grateful to you and to God for mercy, forgiveness and second chances in life and in marriage. My efforts are endless to recover from the awful moral and spiritual state I came to and I will go to any lengths to repair, reconcile and reaffirm our marriage. I am committed, with vitriol, to look back on 50 years of marriage with you to see 15% of our marriage as failure (due entirely to my actions) and 85% of our marriage as an enormous success.
I will do all I can for us to be able to move forward in building new happy memories. Demonstration of this commitment can only be made over our lifetime together, as such, I will be your faithful, honest, loving, nurturing, honorable, gentle, kind, tender, sweet husband forevermore. Our next 16,000 days lie ahead of us, awaiting for us to travel down them together. Let’s do all that we can to ensure they are the happiest 16,000 days possible for us as we make our way towards the year 2058.
You are my Everything, my Mona Lisa, my Beloved.
With all my love forevermore,
I