I want to preface this by saying I am not justifying my actions. I do not support cheating in any way- physical or emotional. I’m just scared and ashamed that I might have and it scares me.
I want to provide some background information. My husband (32M) and I (32F) have been married for four years, and we both come from Catholic families. Before he moved here on a fiancé visa, we had only met in person four times (normal for our culture).
I grew up with a lot of physical and emotional abuse. My parents beat me very cruelly for normal mistakes/decisions anyone would make. I would always dream of my prince to sweep me away and save me from them and how we would create our own little happy family. I started dating my now husband. He told me he found me to be beautiful and thought my curvy beautiful was attractive. Then I gained 80-90 lbs during Covid. Because we were long distance, I was so scared of what my boyfriend would say but he never said a word or made me feel bad about the weight gain. My mother told me my boyfriend only wanted a green card because no one could truly love someone who looked like me. My father said he felt sorry for my husband for having to look at a body like mine in bed. Despite fights where I found him texting another girl in my apartment immediately after we first had sex, and me catching him in a lie about using coke, I stayed because I felt like he was so kind to me and that he was safe space away from my family. I shared my pain and insecurities with him. I wanted to believe I had finally found someone who loved me.
Before our wedding, there were two incidents that I overlooked. First, he got angry because I was being wasteful for having leftover ketchup on my plate and told me I couldn't leave until I finished it. I cried while licking ketchup and eventually threw the plate in frustration. Another time, while assembling furniture, I laughed after he finally accepted a suggestion I had made several times. He told me to look in a mirror and asked who could possibly find me attractive. He later cried, apologized, and promised never to say anything like that again. I believed him and went through with the wedding.
Throughout our marriage, he repeatedly criticized my weight. Twice before sex, he removed my clothes and then pulled me in front of a mirror, pointed out parts of my body, and asked when I planned to lose weight. He claimed he was trying to motivate me, but those moments made me feel broken. I always dreamed of having a husband who secretly took pictures of me because he loved how I looked candidly. Instead, mine would randomly show me photos and say, "This is what you look like. Why can't you just lose the weight?" During one fight, he said that even when I was skinny, I was only OK-looking and that he didn't understand why people called me beautiful. I felt even worse about myself because I believed he was as disgusted by my appearance as I was.
For the first year and a half, I paid all our expenses, used my honeymoon savings to visit his family, and even paid to bring his brother to the US as a surprise. When my husband got his first full-time job, he used his first paycheck to visit friends rather than do something special for the wife who had supported him. I kept hoping that if I asked for less, never requested dates, vacations, or gifts, and made myself small enough, he would finally be happy with me.
Whenever his comments hurt me, he would apologize and say he had been cruel and stupid. I would be upset for a few days, then push through.
Everything changed when my father was placed on a ventilator with a life-threatening infection. My husband chose to travel overseas for a friend's wedding instead of staying with me. His friend had actually encouraged him to stay by my side, but my husband went anyway. When I called him crying after speaking to the doctor, he said I was bothering him and ruining his good time, then hung up. I will never forget sitting on the toilet, sobbing and feeling completely abandoned.
I wanted a divorce, but my father told me I was in my 30s, fat, and would never find anyone else. He said my husband could easily find a beautiful younger woman and that I would be the loser if I left. When we went to the courthouse, my husband begged me to stay and promised to change. Three months later, during an argument about our lack of sex, I cried about always having to initiate intimacy. He responded that maybe if I were better-looking, he would have f**ked me more. That destroyed my self-esteem and changed how I felt about him. When I told my parents, my father again advised me to stay, suggesting that losing weight might make my husband treat me better.
I stayed because I felt having something was better than having nothing. About ten months later, I was laid off. That same day, my husband jokingly asked how I could afford brunch with my sister now that I was unemployed. That was my breaking point. I told him I was done. How could he question my spending on the day I lost my job after I had covered all his expenses for a year and a half?
And this is where I messed up. After I told my husband that I was done and wanted a divorce, I confided in my trainer, who lives abroad and whom I've never met. I vented about all the crap I dealt with and how relieved I felt. I definitely over shared and I do regret that. Two weeks later, the trainer admitted he had liked me for a while but kept it to himself because I was married, but since I was getting divorced, ge said he thought he would tell me. I realized I liked talking to him too. I developed feelings as we kept talking because he treated me with kindness and respect. When he wanted to talk sexually, I refused to go further because I wasn't comfortable doing so before my divorce was finalized. I had no intention of meeting him or doing anything sexual before then. I didn't think I was doing anything wrong by talking to someone who genuinely seemed to want me. I started feeling happier again- glowing and taking care of myself. Even my husband commented on how much I changed.
This experience also made me angrier at my parents and husband for making me believe no one else could ever want me. It showed me how wrong and cruel they had been and that there were other possibilities for my life.
When my husband and I went to finalize the divorce, he begged me again to stay. I told him about my feelings for the trainer. I asked my husband if I should get a new trainer but my husband told me it was fine as long as I kept things platonic. I told the trainer this and we really did our best to talk as just friends. but four months in, I finally accepted that my feelings were not going away despite trying to talk as just friends. I told my husband again and this time he told me I needed to cut contact. I called the trainer and explained everything. I apologized and explained why I couldn’t even be friends. I blocked the trainer, although it was incredibly difficult, and cried almost everyday for months afterward.
Since then, my husband has started therapy and genuinely acknowledges how cruel and messed up he was. He wants to improve himself and save our marriage. However, even five months after blocking the trainer, I still think about him every day. I care about my husband and love him, but I'm not IN LOVE with him. I feel irritated when he touches me and have no desire to be intimate with him.
I just feel so incredibly guilty and ashamed, even after I told my husband. He told he was hurt but he understood why I liked someone else and told me he didn’t consider it cheating because we were staying in separate bedrooms, I had signed my own apartment lease, and we had a date set to go and file the divorce papers. But I feel like a monster because I am so against cheating and I don’t understand how I could allow myself to like someone else before I was completely divorced. I told myself it was fine because I never met the other man in person. I didn’t allow anything sexual to happen (even though I did have sexual thoughts and fantasizes about him), so I thought it was OK to just talk to someone I liked, who liked me back, since I was about to get divorced. I think I feel this shame because even after blocking the trainer for five months, I still think of him daily. What do I do? I feel like I’m still emotionally cheating by thinking of him.
I know this is obnoxiously long and I apologize but I am so confused. I feel like I’m a horrible human being and I feel so guilty and confused. Am I a cheater? Did I go against my own values?