You just found out very recently, so your emotions are very high. And unfortunately, his response probably didn’t give you much comfort. As women we tend to blame ourselves first for his cheating, if he cheated, what did I do? And in a sense he is right, it probably had little to do with you, and everything to do with his selfishness is his actions. You can not make you husband go and flirt and talk to other women, that is a decision that he makes on his own. Some men cheat and the wives are beautiful, cook, have sex every night, it’s not about the wife, it is about the man, and how he responds to life.

I guess the first thing is your husband has to see how this impacts the marriage, it seems like he is casual about this which I am not too comfortable with because if he is casual, he might not see the wrong in it or the impact. Unfortunately pics turn into phone calls, which turn into affairs, so it is a big deal.

He has to see the serious wrong in what he did if the relationship is going to survive and he has to take actions to understand why he did it.You can’t force him to do this, you can suggest, but not force.

I know you are hurt right now but I will tell you this – know this now at this time in your relationship is a blessing. Can you imagine purchasing a home, getting married, having 2 kids, living away from family, and then seeing this (that’s what happened to me)? So as hurt as you are, you are going to look back and say man I am glad I found out when I did.

Not so true. He may say that but thats not really the cause. As for the sex site… yeah it could be just for fun… a dangerous kind.

What he is going through is being a victim to coolidge effect, a very problematic biological reaction that is the cause of many heartbreaks. I have given a short version for Joy but I’ll elaborate here.

There are two things(maybe more) about orgasm (from sex or masturbation) that contributed to this:

-orgasm numbs pleasure sensitivity a notch developing tolerance for sexual pleasure. That is, after an orgasm a person needs more stronger stimulation to receive the same amount of pleasure they had before. The pleasure sensitivity would return to normal two weeks to one month after orgasm. The problem is if a person has orgasm before his/her pleasure sensitivity returns to normal the ‘numbness’ would compound, making the numbness even stronger. So after having lots of orgasm in quick succession would build up a high tolerance for sexual pleasure. In other words sex becomes less and less satisfying.

So after having a lot of sex and orgasm, a person will find his current partner less and less able to give him pleasure. The person will then have less and less sex, which leads to sexless marriage. A booster for pleasure is giving something novel in sex like new sex position, harder sex, sex toys, or new location. The one with the biggest impact is having a new sexual partner… even if its 2d (like porn).

-orgasm also had this effect of making people hornier, that is, seek more sex amd orgasm. As above, after having rapid succession of orgasm, without letting the body recover, the horniness compounds, becoming stronger and stronger. Orgasm after orgasm, the hornier and hornier ones gets. Slowly other possible sex partners is very interesting, especially the willing ones. There lots of them online in form of porn and adult sites and one could get easily hooked.

In other words, orgasm (especially excessive amounts of orgasm) has this effect:

-a person gets less and less satisfaction from his sex partner, thus have less and less interest for sex with him/her. Only having novel more stimulating experiences could satisfy… like having a new sex partner.
-a person gets more and more hornier wanting to have more gratification from orgasm. The body demands more sexual pleasure.

With this two effects getting stronger and stronger after every orgasm, having affairs will get more and more attractive. It would then reach a point where the person is unable to resist and just must have sex… ending in cheating.

Even though you can not prove if he is indeed cheating or not, the problem is that he is literally lying to you, which is scary. It means that he is in some serious denial. Most cheaters deny deny deny until you have proof. In your case, you know that he was on these site, and for him to look at you and say he doesn’t remember is tough. I think you have to have a heart to heart with him and tell him he needs to be honest with you in order to save the marriage. His behavior will continue until he actual can say that he is doing these things. I know you are probably beyond frustrated, hang in there!

Marisol,

It’s interesting how you mentioned that you just had a feeling and checked his computer. Our instincts usually spot on. It does appear that your husband has an addiction, I almost sense that he feels the need to seek validation from multiple women online. You stated that you went through counseling a few years ago and it helped, nothing wrong with doing it again. At the end of the day, I think you have to look within yourself and think about what you want to do and how much your husband is willing to work on his problem. I know you want kids, and as your probably know having a child would complicate things greatly (if you got pregnant it would be ok, just complicate things). If you want to be a mommy you will be one regardless if you stay in the marriage, take care look forward to an update.

Gatybu –

Those works ‘Get over it’ make me cringe in terms of saying that to you, I even wrote a post about that phrase that you can read here – Cheating Man . I think cheating husbands have a hard time understanding how emotionally traumatizing this is. It makes you constantly question yourself. You are always thinking is there more. You want to know but you don’t want to be paranoid, you want to work on the marriage but you don’t want to feel like a fool, you want to move on….but you can’t. The irony of the phase get over it is that you do so by talking and communicating and bringing things up like you did. You do not want to get to the point where you are suppressing those feelings. Give us an update when you get a chance.

Sue – Thank you for your kind words. Seeing what you saw is traumatic, it’s not something you just sweep under the rug and move on. This is what makes it so hard – the cheater wants to not hear about it so that they are not reminded of the ‘bad deeds’, meanwhile as the wife, we need to talk about it to make us feel confident that what you are saying is the truth. You mentioned something about him lying and how that hurt you. I felt the same way, when I found out about the affair I was hurt, but it hurt me more that he was not honest when I asked him initially about things, I was really hurt that he would lie to try to cover up. It’s natural to still have feelings for him, he is your husband. At this point you have to think about if he is willing to fight for the marriage, that is a big determination on how things will work out. Look forward to your update.

This is a common tactic…to say “this is not about you.” My husband has used this line frequently with me. It’s a way to put up a wall and get you off his back so he can feel better.

The thing is, it’s bullshit. It IS about you. It affects you. It affects your marriage, your mental health, and in many cases, physical health.

How many women here sleep lightly, or stressfully, through the night because of their husband’s past diliances online? That alone affects physical health. The amount of stress causes blood pressure and heart issues.

It IS about you. His choices affect you. Whether a person hides money problems from their spouse, or sexual preferences, these actions affect the other spouse.

You gotta get to a place where you’re willing ot stand up for yourself, and understand you have the right to be treated better. When you get to that place, you’re able to confront the “it’s not about you” issue and clearly, calmly, and rationally state that indeed, it is about you. It’s about your life and the affects of all this on it. The triggers you must now go through. The doubt. Insecurity. Lack of feeling SAFE in your marriage. Loss of trust. Loss of intimacy.

Marriage is a two-way street. ALl our choices we make once we choose to become married must be considered in light of our partner’s role in our lives.

I know exactly how you are all feeling.
I always check up on my husband via facebook because hes always chatting to random women he knows and even his friend’s girlfriends.
As most of you have already said, the messages are really graphic and it hurts to read them cuz you think youve actually done something to make them do it in the first place. We have recently moved in together and he gets up in the middle of the night to go on porn sites, this other fairly new webcam site called chatroulette and generally chatting to women. I obviously cant be sure if he’s ever physically cheated on me but feel that this is just as bad. Whenever I have confronted him about all these things he says that he doesnt remember doing it or ‘i havent been on those websites’ or something along those lines and its frustrating because i then can’t say anything more on the matter because i can’t actually prove anything cuz he will have deleted the messages by then or deleted the internet history. it’s driving me mad because half the time i’m actually believing him because he’s that good at lying. any advice on this would be brilliant!