Open Affair-Recovery Support Group: An Emotional Affair

My husband and I met when he was 14 and I was 16. My father took over
a martial arts school and we met at the first class. I was currently
dating someone else, but we became really good friends. When my long
distance relationship died, he gave me flowers and was always there
for me. All I ever heard from people was that he had the biggest
crush on me. When I had a very invasive back surgery done, that left
me in the hospital for two weeks, he brought me a bear, and walked me
around the hospital. He asked me to go out with him that October, and
he gave me a promise ring on the top of a ferris wheel, just as the
park lit up, that next summer. We became joined at the hip. My
family knew that he had the utmost respect for them, and his family
couldn't get enough of me. He wrote me 10 page, front and back,
letters about how great of friends we were, and how much he loved me.

We knew we were going to get married a long time before it ever
happened. We even picked out and bought our rings almost a year
before he proposed. We were even planning things before he had
proposed, our families just knew it was comming.

The wedding was perfect. Our families did everthing, we stayed in a
great hotel, and later took a honeymoon in Wisconsin.

HERE'S THE CLINCHER
About a month before the wedding, just the two of us were at my
parent's place of business printing our thank yous and cards, when he
told me he had to tell me something. He felt that he had had feelings
for a mutual friend of ours from the same martial arts school. He had
gone to her and asked if she felt the same way and they had decided
"that for her [my] sake nothing could happen." Those words in quotes
will forever be etched in my memory. We talked about it, and I of
course cried. I wanted to punch him, I wanted to drag her around by
her hair. I wanted to throw up.

I was devistated, but I told no one, until a few days later when I was
trying on my dress in my father's room. He came in to see it, and I
was sitting there on his bed, wearing my wedding dress, bawling. He
instantly switched into daddy mode, and I told him everything. He
cried just as hard as I was crying, and told me that he was going to
make an appointment for us with a counselor at church.

His confession clicked. They were closer in age, they met the same
time we met, they were the same belt rank, they were going to the same
college, they were always texting each other and talking on the phone
into the early hourse of the morning. It all fell together.

I thought I was able to get the message across to him, I even said
directly to him, "I feel like you are putting me seccond to her." He
then changed his story when my father and our counselor confronted
him, saying that I had misunderstood him, and that he was saying that
he 'thought' he had feelings, but he hadn't. I wanted desperatly to
believe him, so I did, and we were married.

He still wasn't sharing with me what they were texting and talking
about until 4 in the morning, the story had somehow spread, and others
were chastising them for their close relationship, telling them that
it was innapropriate. The problem is that he doesn't feel the need to
worry about what people think. I tolerated this for a few months, and
then finally had to tell my family to butt out, because they were
making my life a living hell by bringing it up everytime I talked to
them. Then I started finding things in the apartment.

I was looking for scratch paper, and I sifted through his portfolio
from the martial arts class that he had taking in California (which
she had gone to, I wan't able to) and found, tucked away in the
pocket, and couple of cards from her thanking him for being so
understanding of her situation, and for being such a great guy. She
also thanked him for the rose. Yeah, that's what I thought. Even more
depressing was that in the other card, he had hidden a couple pages of
notebook paper on which he had written dates, and things that had
happend; 3/2~ played footsie under wendy's table? 2/17~ talked for
two hours, met for lunch.

This made me explode. I wanted to cry, I wanted to leave, I seriosly
wanted to sleep in my car that night, and not come home. Instead I
took a four hour walk. I KNEW that I had not misunderstood him,
because it took him over a year to simply tell me he liked me. It
would have taken a strong feeling over time to have made work up the
courage to talk to her. I confronted him, and he stopped talking to
me. About a month later, I actually found drafts of a letter that he
was writting to her at one point to ask if she had feeling for him. I
confronted him about that one, and he withdrew even more.

At this point I broke, and I called the girl. She is a 'good little
baptist girl' and she bawled the entire time I tried to talk to her. I
basically laid it out for her, "how worried would you be if you're
hearing this crap from everyone, seeing all this evidance, and having
only been married for 3 months?"

I think that they still text, but I really have no idea how much,
because he never tells me, and he delets them to 'save space'. I
haven't come across anything else, and I don't think they see each
other as much, but then again, you never know. I am just having such
a hard time dealing with all this. The anger is subsiding, but I
don't so much as look at her anymore, I refuse to do anything with
her, and he knows it. I am still so hurt, and I don't think he
understands exactly how much he has scarred me.

I will wonder for the rest of our marriage, the rest of my life, can I
trust him? How could such a caring, romantic kid turn into someone who
just doesn't understand? I have stopped caring about taking care of
our apartment, I've without even realizing it, stopped being
interested in being 'involved', I recently realized that it had been
almost three weeks since we had had sex. I feel like it's my right to
be hurt, and that he should being doing everything that he humanly can
to keep me, but at the same time, I don't want to drive him into her
arms.

HELP!

Amanda

An Emotional Affair

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