My husband is cheating again and I don’t know what to do

Dear Roe,

My marriage has been tumultuous to say the least. My husband was/is an alcoholic and was emotionally abusive. He is dry about three years. It took another almost two years before he started to find peace with himself and therefore with us. I felt incredibly alone through our marriage, and I regret to say I cheated on him (not emotional relationships, sexual flings, not that it excuses it), which he found out about subsequently.

During his recovery, he met someone and had an emotional affair, possibly physical at times, I’m not sure. We went to counselling and just as we thought it was all over, something good began to emerge from the ashes, even though there was still a lot of hurt and anger – on my part anyway, and I’m sure on his too. Once counselling ended, we never really spoke of any of it again. Covid has been, I thought, the making of a real marriage as we were together far more. We were finally laughing together, talking, really getting on because he wasn’t emotionally absent due to alcohol. Admittedly neither of us mention the past much because I know he would rather not, but I wouldn’t mind.

Anyway, I found out he has started another of these emotional, possibly physical, affairs with a client and I’m devastated. I thought we were finally, finally getting somewhere. I feel I stuck with his emotional absence and his misdirected anger through alcohol for all that time. I am aware that I’m far from perfect, but now, once again, he’s gone from me. I am gutted and I don’t know what to do. Where do we even go from here? I thought the life post booze and in recovery was a line in the sand for us, a chance for a fresh start, and yet here we are again.

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It has been a really difficult few years for you, and I’m sorry that you’ve endured all of this, and that you are again feeling hurt and hopeless. It’s clear that you have put in a huge amount of time, emotional work and energy into both supporting your husband through his recovery and trying to make this relationship work, and it must be incredibly difficult and hurtful to now feel that the relationship still isn’t faithful and loving in the way you need it to be.

Four things that really stand out to me in your letter as giant red flags are the phrases “he met someone and had an emotional affair, possibly physical at times, I’m not sure”; “there was still a lot of hurt and anger – on my part anyway, and I’m sure on his too”; “once counselling ended”; and “neither of us mention the past much”.

There’s a running theme here of a dynamic where he or both of you have not been completely open and honest about the nature of your relationship and the betrayals that have been committed – and now, you are not trying to address them, but instead pretending that your tumultuous past never existed and trying to just move forward.

Except, of course you can’t.

'It's important to make a very big distinction between someone who has alcoholism, and someone who has alcoholism and is also emotionally abusive and unfaithful'

There are still so many questions, confusions and deeply felt feelings here. Were his affairs physical? Is he still hurt and angry over your affairs? Has he taken accountability for the other ways he hurt you when he was drinking? Have you expressed how alone you felt during your marriage when he was drinking and in recovery? Have you both discussed what you want your future relationship to be, and addressed how to specifically communicate about, in an ongoing way, issues of trust and emotional engagement and your husband’s anger as you move forward?

There are so many questions still to be answered – and yet you are no longer in counselling, no longer getting help navigating the vital questions and not addressing them because “he would rather not”.

I have enormous sympathy both for people who suffer from addiction, and their support systems. I hope that you have sought out individual therapy as well as specifically tailored supports for yourself, such as Alcoholics Anonymous or similar groups for people whose partners or family members or friends have been through addiction. These groups will provide you with a space to express your experience of your husband’s alcoholism and how it affected you, and support from people who understand your experiences of both your husband’s addiction and his recovery.

However, it’s important to make a very big distinction between someone who has alcoholism, and someone who has alcoholism and is also emotionally abusive and unfaithful.

'You felt alone and hurt and betrayed in a marriage when your husband was drinking. You feel alone and betrayed in a marriage now that he is sober'

I wonder if your experiences with counselling have addressed your husband’s behaviour in ways that have really let you feel heard, and let you express your feelings without these experiences being brushed off as simply a part of his addiction that you had to endure and now never speak of again because he would prefer not to. I’m guessing not, or at least that your prematurely ended experience with counselling left you with no tools or strategies to address the past and your feelings now, which is concerning.

It’s also important to separate the guilt you seem to feel over your infidelities from your husband’s behaviour in the past and present. You had affairs in the past, and so did he. You may both have felt betrayed and hurt and may now feel guilty. But this guilt does not mean that you must continue enduring this infidelity. You write that you are “far from perfect”, but none of us is perfect. The fact that you reached out for sex and a distraction and an ego boost while your husband was abusive and not emotionally present does not mean you never get to set boundaries ever again. And you having those affairs under those circumstances is not the same as your husband, now sober, choosing to cheat on you after you have stood by him through recovery, gone to counselling and tried to reconnect and rebuild your relationship.

You cannot move forward in this relationship without having properly addressed the past, and without allowing the past to be a factor in ongoing conversations about your future. And right now, I have serious doubts that you should have a future with this man. I admittedly have questions about how you “found out” about your husband’s affair, and it’s clear by your lack of awareness around whether it’s a physical relationship or not implies that you haven’t discussed it, and are going off pieces of – I’m guessing – secretly obtained information. None of this is healthy. There is no trust, no communication, and possibly yet another, soberly made decision made by your husband to cheat on you.

You felt alone and hurt and betrayed in a marriage when your husband was drinking. You feel alone and betrayed in a marriage now that he is sober. By not addressing the past and in order to keep your husband comfortable, you are defining the terms of your relationship around his needs, not yours. This is clearly not sustainable. It’s time to consider that maybe the line in the sand and the fresh start that you need is one that you need to make without him.

Roe McDermott is a writer and Fulbright scholar with an MA in sexuality studies from San Francisco State University. She is researching a PhD in gendered and sexual citizenship at the Open University and Oxford

[ irishtimes.com/dearroe ]