My husband is a stranger? I sit out!

It was the absence of smell that showed me when Georg came from another woman. Because he always showered out of consideration for me, before he got into my marriage bed late at night.

As my heart was pounding, when he fell asleep, usually fast as lightning, and I bent over him cautiously to sniff out, if he smelt of anything, that is, of cheating. Often, I then watched his peacefully sleeping face while my heart was breaking and at the same time the hot rage was rising in me.

He betrayed me countless times

How do you explain to other people the love of a man who has cheated you countless times over the course of a 27-year marriage?



Whenever I have tried it even rudimentally, I have met with absolute incomprehension. There are always phrases like "You do not need that" or "That you let that humiliate you!" like.

I always felt bad afterwards. So I kept the dark side of my marriage to myself and showed the outside world only the bright. The successful architect couple with two well-to-do sons.

The hospitable, cozy house, the summer parties in our garden, yes, the facade is right. But, and that's where my dilemma lies, not just that. Apart from the sexual, Georg and I are still a dream couple.

I know he will not leave me

We talk, we laugh, we travel and cook together, never have we got bored with each other. "My life man," Georg calls me, and now I know with bone-deep assurance that he will never leave me.



Probably he will not cheat on me since his fourth bypass six months ago. But even if, that would be no reason for separation.

"Monogamy is overrated" - when I heard this sentence for the first time, Georg stood naked in front of my stove and showed me how to cook the perfect risotto.

It was not the look that fascinated me about him, Georg is small and early glazed and even then had a small tummy. But he had this "with me you'll have fun" in his eyes, which simply "turns on" all women in his presence.

In his company, they feel young, beautiful, desirable. Of course, Georg is a gifted lover. Before I knew him, sex was never much fun. The first months with him were therefore almost unreal beautiful.

Cheating in marriage: when did it start?

But then I felt the need to loosen up our sexual intensity a bit, to bring more everyday life into our lives. I just did not feel like doing any nighttime sex until the early hours of the morning. And then I got pregnant. Slack and tired. No desire for sex.



I realized that Georg was getting restless, that the lightness between us was lost, I suspected what it was, but I repressed it. As long as we did not talk about it, maybe my fear was just a fantasy.

Shortly before birth, he came home after a business lunch at three in the morning. I was so ready that I made a huge scene for him. And he appeased me with the usual "Too much drunk, forget time" lies.

I felt ugly

I believed him because I wanted to believe him. Of course it went on. He was not available, he was in the radio, he came home late, his "business appointments" piled up.

I was pregnant again, felt fat and ugly, there was a doldrums in our marriage bed. A couple of times I picked myself up to what George then called the "married frustration number", which was true, because it felt joyless. Shortly after, I found, as in a bad movie, a bill for a double room, plus the right restaurant bill.

It was clear he was cheating on me. And the first and last time in our marriage that we talked about it.

"Why are you risking our marriage?",

I cried. And George took me in his arms and howled with me. But then he said, "You have to accept that I can not be faithful, it's not just sex, it's the hunt, the conquest, this all-sense-being-alive I do not offer anything else, my friendship, my loyalty, my money, if you insist that I am sexually loyal to you, I separate myself from you, but if you can stand it, I promise you that I will do not burden yourself with it. "

That was naive, of course. And hard, very hard. At this stage, I tried to talk to my friends about it and quickly realized that I was alone with the problem.

From one I knew that her husband secretly cheated on her for years - was that the better option? I knew that I had to decide.

And for the first few years, I was often very close to separating.

Because I simply could not stand it, when George played happily with the children, cooked something, lovingly embraced me, and I knew very well that he had just come from another woman. That he was all the nicer to me and the kids when he had a good time in bed before. Sometimes so energetic and exciting that he also wanted me. And sometimes I even went into it. That has often pushed me to my limits. I still did not want to go.

Is cheating worse than indifference or stinginess?

In the meantime, we had set up a very successful architects' office where I worked part-time, the children loved their father idolatrously, and between me and Georg, most of them were true - we were fine.

How many times have I heard the conjugal lamentations of my friends? One drinks or smokes too much. One is only on the sofa and watching TV, the other does not care about the children. Something is always. No marriage is perfect. And Georg just needs sex a lot more than me.

Of course there were low points. Once it was something more serious, Georg was far away, even if he sat with us at the kitchen table and Uno played. That's when I realized how great my fear was losing him. I took him in my arms and just said "stay with us" to him. Shortly thereafter, the matter was over.

When I sat at his bedside after George's fourth bypass operation, after several minutes of silence, he took my hand and whispered, "I'm afraid your old wolf has become toothless."

Does it sound cynical when I say that for me this was one of the most beautiful moments in our marriage?


Should his Wife or Mom Sit in the Front Seat? (March 2024).



Cheating, long-term relationship, partnership, cheating