I found out 10 months ago, through a text message, that my husband kissed another woman. Since then we have had many talks and discussions, talking about where our relationship had been failing over the last 3-4 years.

About 4 months after the initial shock, I found out that he was still talking with her on and off, even though I asked him not to. This lead to continued talk and conversations, all in an attempt to continue working on repairing our relationship. We went to 10 sessions of couples therapy.

3 weeks ago, during a discussion, I talked to him as if he was a friend and not only my husband. I told him that I would support him in learning why he felt he needed to go somewhere else for support when I was right here for him. He was emotionally and physically exhausted by lying to me about continuing his relationship with her and told her that he could no longer be her friend.

Things were great. We were connecting like we hadn’t in years. We were open, we were comfortable with one another, really enjoying each other’s company. Then last week, my gut told me something. Something was off. We talked more and he admitted to me that he had fallen in love with this woman. He hasn’t talked to her in 3 weeks, but admitted that she brought something to him that he felt had been missing in our relationship for some time. He does not want to leave me, he wants to work very hard on our relationship, as do I. We both see that we have had something special and that we can have that again, if we work on it.

Although I am hopeful, I also feel overwhelmingly sad, lost and split into a million pieces. I realize that I cannot be everything to him, as I know we get different things from all the people we know. But the fact that he felt he needed to go somewhere else to feel emotionally supported, really upsets me, because I wasn’t getting that from him either. We are both guilty of shutting each other out, but the fact that he acted upon it, makes me mad, sad and defeated.

Everything is still very fresh, but I would like to be able to take steps forward and work on myself. I would like to practice being emotionally available to him. I am just not sure how to do that.