I, F51, have been married to my husband, M53, for 30 years. 20 or so years ago he had an emotional affair with a woman he met online. I discovered the affair after she contacted me when he attempted to break it off (after six months of fairly explicit messages back and forth). When I asked him about it at the time, he admitted everything. We worked through it with couples counseling. I honestly haven’t thought about it much in years and I haven’t brought it up outside of counseling ever.
Recently, our niece came to stay with us after her husband was having an “emotional affair” with a coworker. My husband was incensed on her behalf (as am I), but then said no good man would ever do that to his wife. I just sort of stared at him. He asked why and I reminded him that he did that to me. He looked legitimately confused. He eventually put the pieces back together after arguing with me about it for 30 minutes. I mean, I know we are getting older, but he’s otherwise cognitively sharp.
Could he really have forgotten? It was the worst time of my life. The hardest thing I have done in my 51 years was choose to forgive him. I’m hurt, but it doesn’t seem fair to be hurt over something so long buried.
TLDR: Husband forgot he had an emotional affair and I’m hurt that he doesn’t recall such a painful time in our lives. I don’t know what to do next.
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If it was just online ya he might have forgotten . If there’s no physical contact and just chat it’s really hard to remember after a while . I think he genuinely meant when he said no husband would do this to wife . That means he genuinely think it’s a crime and he didn’t do . It was worst days and you need some kind of acknowledgement from him. That’s totally valid too!
Really? I take it as a good thing.
People change, we do stupid stuff when we are younger that as older adults seem so ridiculous.
I Remember many such stories I’d get told about my younger self where I’d call BS and make it a hill to die on, only to be beaten by LITERAL VIDEO EVIDENCE LMAO. (Family, will record your lowest moments 😉
So take it how you want to take it, but people change and grow. It’s in the past, we live and breathe the present.
He hasn’t forgotten, he doesn’t want the accountability to come back up. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He wants to pretend it doesn’t happen.
If he genuinely forgot about it, that shows how dedicated he has been to you. Don’t live in the past, all it can do is drag you down and keep you from being happy now and in the future. I’m not saying to forget, but if you’ve forgiven him, don’t dig it up over something like this.
Sometimes it’s less about memory in the factual sense and more about how people sometimes cope with shame, regret, or guilt. For some people burying something painful deep down is a way of protecting themselves from having to sit with it. That doesn’t make it okay and it certainly doesn’t make it less hurtful for you but it might help explain how he could genuinely not have that experience at the forefront of his mind anymore. Especially if, from his perspective, it’s something he believes was “handled” and “moved past.”
The one doing the hurting doesn’t ever feel it as deeply as the one dealing with the hurt. They are often in a hurry to get things back on track so they quickly try to move on. It’s not so easy for the one dealing with the betrayal though so I can absolutely understand how you’d be hurt and frustrated. It’s ok to remind him that this was a monumental point of hurt for you, to him it was just another Wednesday, but to you it meant your trust crumbled.
It could also be a trauma response related to childhood neglect, where he essentially forgets,”The bad” over time. These cases aren’t too common, but my dad could tell you for days about how he,”Treated us like gold” when we were kids, yet miss the rocky parts and the abuse
Or, he could have just forgot about it because it wasn’t a,”Significant” incident.
You know all you Reddit people. It was not an affair ,it was an ego massage for a young married guy that most probably wasn’t having sex with his wife. It made him feel special and exciting that his wife wasn’t making him feel. Most wife don’t initiate sex and expect the husband to always just wait until wife is in the mood
Seriously if it was consummated then you’d have a complaint but talk is just talk. Get over it and be grateful your husband is still with you.
He just admitted and knew he wasn’t a good man. He’s just been pretending for so long that he forgot. It isn’t that he forgot. He just doesn’t want to remember. Remembering would also mean that he was an intentional POS.
I’ve blocked out stuff. I 100% believe he wasn’t lying. He compartmentalized his bad choice.
It’s human.
The tree remembers what the axe forgets
To him, it wasn’t important or significant or he would have pulled up the memory right away. I don’t think he intentionally is being dismissive of your pain. It just wasn’t important to him to readily recall it. To you, it is more powerful and present. You were hurt by it. On the bright side, i think this tells you how insignificant that EA was for him and how important you are to him that he us supporting and protecting his niece which validates for you that he knows this was wrong.
It’s a perfect example of how he recognizes still how sad this mistake was He made a great mistake and with life experience can acknowledge the depth of this. I think it’s a positive about how he feels about you and his bad choice.
First, it was a traumatic event for you. It was less so to him (although the ramifications may have been).
Second, people often subconsciously work very hard to bury/forget things they did which were bad.
The art of hypocrisy isn’t dead.
I think you are part of the problem. If you have worked through it in counseling, why are you bringing it up 20 years later, especially in front of a family member?
Do you think your husband is genuinely remorseful? If so, try to bring it to a closure. If not, it’s back to therapy.
It’s likely he genuinely changed and his identity as someone who doesn’t do that took over. In his head he isn’t the kind of person who cheats. So I’d argue that’s a win.
How did he respond to you after he realized that he was as bad as the guy he was condemning?
People who cause trauma have no reason to remember it because it wasn’t traumatizing for them.
The ability of people to block out inconvenient memories have always amazed me.
I knew of 2 married guys I worked with that partied with hookers while we were on travel (physical, nothing emotional about it). Five years later both of them swore in my presence that cheating on their wives was the worst betrayal ever and they would never do such a thing. They really ment it even though I was in New Orleans with them when they hired the hookers.
The axe forgets what the tree remembers. He’s not feeling guilty because he never, ever was hurt like you were. Not for one single crocodile tear he wept in that bullshit therapy.