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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here — I will post more when I have time.  I would second the folks who have said it is the devastating pain you can imagine.  Betrayal of trust with the person you have been intimately involved with for decades is extraordinarily difficult and I do not believe there will ever be full recovery for me whether we are together, apart, etc.  Our marriage was good and there was plenty of love and enough sex (though not as much as either of us would have wanted as a result of parental and work exhaustion/ depletion).  But childhood trauma and lack of parental role models for faithful marriage combined with depression and a tendency to look outside for validation can lead this to happen.  I wish I had known all the risk factors and how would come out in his 50s.  Keep the stories coming.  I think my biggest fear is that all of the deep work he is doing now will somehow backslide and he will return to being selfish, immature, entitled, cold, dishonest, secretive, etc.  But right now with almost 30 years together and his commitment to do anything for me every day until we die to make up for what he has done (knowing this may not be enough) and knowing he says he will keep doing the deep work even if he loses me just to be a good father and better person is attractive,  I have read that what you really need is to learn how to trust yourself and know you will do what you have to do to protect yourself from anyone going forward.  And folks, no one would have guessed him.  Mutual friends have said he loves you and he must have stepped off a cliff to blow off his life.  This can happen to anyone if it happened to us.[/quote]

OP, I wish we could talk privately.  Your story is exactly mine, almost verbatim.  I have been with him for 24 years.  It’s excruciating.  I also doubt I can ever get over this betrayal.  He has said the same exact thing about changing and doing therapy for life whether I leave him or not.  He had a ton of childhood trauma that also came out at close to 50 and looks outside for validation, admiration and approval.  Instead of booze (his father was booze and whores), his was women.  I am also so disgusted with the married woman who was just like him.  She had daddy issues and wasn’t sad when her father died last Fall.  My dad was my best friend and suffered terminal cancer while this affair was going on and the grief was overwhelming because he was such a great man.

I also am just blown away by the ease of the double life.  I now can’t take anything that comes out of his mouth as truth.  Somebody I gave 100% trust and love to, never nagging, etc.  
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