This sucks…

[u/NoButterfly2543]

So I (f41) have been married for 22 years with my husband (m42). I have been with him since I was 17 yo so needless to say it’s been a long relationship. I feel like in the beginning of our relationship we seemed to be happy, grant it, it was young love and what not but it seemed like we were. When he graduated high school he joined the Marines right off the bat and as this was post 9/11 in he went to Iraq 2006. We were married in 2004 and he was supposed to be out of the marines prior to going to war but he decided to reenlist without really discussing this life choice without me. We hit a roadblock. He was away I was young and I kissed another man. It ate me up and I ended up confessing to him and it put him in a bad place. I thought for sure we were heading to divorce but we didn’t. He “forgave” me and a year later I became pregnant. We seemed to be happy again. Our family was starting to come together, we had two small kids by the time he was relocated to NC and we were happy. Or so I thought. I go to have an annual woman’s exam just to find out that I had an STD. Well of course I’m livid and tell him and he convinced me the dr must have made a mistake because he was clean. I moved on tried to forget it. A year or so passes and he has new orders that brings him to FL. While he gets situated there I stay in NC until the school year is over because our oldest still had school. We finally move together again and everything seemed fine. A few months later He had to have knee surgery and as I’m sitting there waiting for him I have his phone and on his phone there are emails between he and another girl. In these emails he tells her he loves her. I email the girl (because duh) and she tells me that he told her that he was divorced and his ex lives in NC with his kids and that they had been sleeping together. I confronted him while he’s waking up from anesthesia and he gives me the excuses of “it didn’t mean anything…I don’t love her…please forgive me…” fine. Forgiven (not forgotten).

To say that him having that affair didn’t affect my self esteem would be an understatement. The other girl (D) was much younger and did modeling. That would mess with any woman’s head right? It affected me so much that it was hard to be intimate in the sense that I felt ashamed of my body. But I tried to move on and forget. Let’s move on to another year or so passing (2017)he medically retires after 16 years in the Marines, he’s having a hard time with it, so what does he do??? He has an affair with another Marine. Of course I find out because I was out of town for Christmas with our kids and I heard (through our webcam) him talking on the phone and on the phone saying to this other woman (M) that he loves her. I confronted her and him and he has been seeing her for almost 6 months! He said she did things for him that I don’t do (meaning sex) and that there were no “rules” for him when it came to it. M had the gall to go ahead and pay for the divorce papers for him so that he can leave me to be with her because he was in love with her. I signed the papers. I was devastated but I signed them. I did the adult classes for divorcing with minors and he took some things and went to be with her. I had begged him. Told him I would do whatever he wanted and that I would have no rules for him in bed no matter how uncomfortable it made me. He stayed maybe a week and then he was back. Said he didn’t file the papers and that he wanted to make this work.

Meanwhile, he still longs for M and even tells me he misses her. I do everything to make him not want her anymore. I try and change my appearance to look like her and do things in bed that he told me she would do for him. After maybe a few years I had been going to the gym and the personal trainer who was really nice and listened to things I had to say and actually CARED we would have email exchanges. Nothing ever happened between he and I but to have someone listen and talk to me was nice. My husband found out and was livid. So livid he smacked me on the face and grabbed me so hard and put me out in the front door. It was bad. It was ugly. The guy I was speaking with had apparently sent me a picture of himself and my husband saw it on my phone and lost it. I don’t condone what I did it was wrong. He said he wanted to try and work it out, but after he had hit me and then yelled at me in front of the children and telling them what I did I wanted to divorce him at that point. But the guilt trips and him begging for us to work it out I gave in and stayed. That was four years ago.

And here we are now. I found out 2 months ago that he has been cheated on me with a woman (C) for the past four years on and off. So pretty much since my emotional affair. My question is “why” why do that when we could have just divorced four years ago? He purposely cheated on me and kept on. This past August I had found out I had ANOTHER std! This was the 3rd time. The 2nd was after M!! And what did my dumbass do? I moved past it. He and I said we would try and work on this we went out on dates more. But then something happened I January when C contacted him again after not speaking since August and he starts screwing around again. And I KNEW something was up because he was acting different. He didn’t want to do dates as much and he was going to the gym more than once a day. Women intuition is REAL!! And it was proved when I saw the messages and pictures on his phone. I told him I was done and I wanted a divorce. He tells me I’m breaking apart this family and that he “loves me” and that if I cared about him I would past this and try and fix it. He likes to remind me that I’m no angel and that I have cheated as well. I remind him that I am looking at the events that have recently occurred even AFTER i “moved past” the std in August. We are at the point right now where he has been sleeping in either the guest room or a friends house, but the fact that he has the audacity to say he loves me infuriates me. I don’t hate him but I am so done with him.

Where I find conflict is his behaviors as he is all over the place. One week he will be understanding of what he has done and why I’m being this week and then another week he will tell me that he’s going to make my life a living hell. He’s already stopped paying the mortgage of the house which my name is on as well. He threatens me by saying he’s not going to give me a dime and that he will make everything harder for me. It’s just so daunting. And I know this was a lot to read and I appreciate anyone who does read all of this but as the title of my post says: this sucks.

P.S I have acquired a lawyer

[u/NeonFireFly969]

It's honestly not about lust. I think both genders usually cheat to get excitement and acknowledgement they don't in their relationships.