Question about bringing and affair up to Command
Posted on
First time poster, so not sure if this belongs here or in r/Divorce, but I'm really hoping to crowd source some ideas or experiences or military members since I’m honestly just at a loss for what to do. Sorry if the story set up is pretty long, I’m not sure what details people might find important and I’m trying to avoid confusion.
I (32F) and my husband (32M) have been married for almost 8 years. He is currently active duty Army and has been in the service for 12 years. We have been having communication issues in our marriage for a long time and I had been asking my husband to do marriage counseling with me for a long time. I tried to balance pushing the issue for the sake of our marriage while also understanding that as messed up as it is, getting counseling while in the military can have negative connotations and I didn’t want to hurt my husband’s career. On top of that, he lost his mother a year ago and I know he has been struggling with grief and it contributed to an intensifying of his negative behavior. I am not saying that I have been perfect by any means, I have made plenty of mistakes in our marriage, but it seemed like the difference between the two of us is that I wanted to get help, make changes, try and fix things, while his solution was to live a double life, keep secrets from me, and lie over and over again. We finally reached a breaking point and in early December he finally agreed to try counseling to see whether or not things can be fixed between us.
Our first counseling session went well I thought and the counselor was able to facilitate a good discussion between us over some misunderstood expectations in our marriage that had been driving my husband away (expectations he had created for himself thinking it was what I expected when I never expected any of those things). I was hopeful that we would finally be able to talk about these things and find healing. Then less than a week after that first session I discovered text messages on his phone from a female co-worker revealing that they had been secretly seeing each other for several weeks. From the context of the messages it was clear that they hadn’t slept together yet, but that was very much in the plans for the near future as they were planning a secret vacation together. I was and still am absolutely devastated by this revelation.
I confronted my husband about the cheating and he admitted to it and said he no longer wants to work on our marriage, that he is just not happy being with me and he has found happiness elsewhere. I am heartbroken. I tried really hard to be a good wife. I tried to take all the stress at home away so that after a long day/week at work he could just relax, I tried to keep things exciting in our relationship by suggesting cheap/free date ideas for us to spend time together, I tried to always build him up and support and encourage him, and I never refused him physical intimacy (my libido was the higher one anyway). I know I’m not perfect, but I really tried to be the total package and to always make him feel like a lucky man.
So after all that set up the conclusion is I have agreed to an amicable divorce. I’m heartbroken, but I have determined that I can’t love him into falling back in love with me and so the best way I can honor the love I have for him is to let him go and do what he wants and for me to figure out where to go from here with my life.
Here’s where I need some advice reddit. I really do want this divorce to go smoothly and amicably, first because I do still care deeply for my husband and don’t want to inject anymore poison into the situation, and secondly because although I have worked and contributed to our household, I have had to make sacrifices in my career in order to support our military lifestyle (moving) that has hurt my earning potential (passed up for promotions) so that there is quite a disparity now between what he makes and what I make. It fees embarrassing to admit, but I need my husband to stay amicable during the process so that he will be reasonable and fair in the division of our assets so that I will be able to move forward with my life after the divorce is finalized.
But I’m really struggling with one issue. The cheating. I know who this other soldier is and I know she’s also married. I know that the military does not take affairs lightly. I am really struggling with whether I should inform my husband’s command about the affair. I want to make them aware of what is going on because I genuinely think that at least some part of this is tied to the self-destructive behavior my husband has been exhibiting since his mom died, and I really feel that he needs grief counseling and I feel like his command should know as he is in a leadership position and I worry how these choices may effect his judgement later on. I also don’t feel comfortable with them working together during the duration of our divorce proceedings. It’s takes a minimum of 90 days in my state to file and grant and uncontested divorce and I just don’t want to feel like there is someone else whispering in my husbands ear that whole time possibly planting animosity. And I honestly don’t have any desire t ruin my husbands career, or even the career of the other party involved, but as far as I can tell the other soldiers husband still doesn’t know and I feel bad about that. I don’t even know how to get his contact information to inform him of what’s going on and I don’t know if the command would inform him if I inform them. On top of all this I don’t want to give my husband any reason to want to fight with me during this divorce and I know if his command does punish him at all for this he will know it was me who told them. I thought about just waiting until the divorce is finalized, but that would be 3 months of me keeping this information to myself and also from the other husband involved. Even if I were able to find his information somehow, if he decided to go to their command then my husband would still figure out that I'm the reason the other husband found out. I would love advice and incite from both military members and spouses (or former spouses) on what I should do.
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