Relationships and Coping Community

I caught my husband having an emotional affair with a woman from our childs sports team. My daughter innocentally mentioned "the friendship" to me when I took her to practice one day and that obviously got my suspecions up. I confirmed it later when I found pages and pages of phone calls between husband and OW on our phone bill. After a discussion, Husband said it was done they were never going to contact each other again and that OW didn't want to come between me and him. that was early August

Fast forward a few weeks to a month. We were working through issues and things were going really well. We were doing family things and everyone was getting along, all was well, actually really good. Best months of our marriage. A few more good months passed until late Oct. Our anniversary came and husband didn't get me anything. So I began to get anxious about what that meant etc.. etc.. etc... He gave several excuses. 1) It snuck up on him and 2) He didn't think I was going to get him anything. (I bought him a real nice watch). So after getting the excuses, he also mentoned I wouldn't find anything in the phone records. So I'm starting to get suspecious again because I had a gut feeling about him mentioning the phone bill.

So one night when he was getting our child to sleep I went through his emails and sure enough that a month after he told me things were 'off' between OW and him, he was sending her emails telling her about things that happened in our life (leaving me out of the stories). They took everything to his personal email and another phone (implied they talked in the emails but I don't know what numbers) to keep it off of his phone records. I totally lost my composure and started screaming and grabbed his phone and ran out the door and drove the car to a parking lot where I could be alone and go through his phone and take all the time I needed.

What it amounted to husband was telling her things about our family but leaving me out of the story. If he saw her driving on the road he'd send an email saying he saw her. He had three email addresses and three phone numbers for her in his phone.

Based on there being NO phone calls to her phone or from her phone on that last phone call when I was told 'it was over', I think they came to an agreement to contact each other so they wouldn't get caught.

So here we are today. I am devestated. He hid it once, told me it was over, I believed him, I thought everythign was going well, when in fact he was still involved with her. He swears there was no physical contact, but I told him I haven't even processed what that could mean. i'm still stuck on the deception, the betrayal, the lies, the fact I had NO idea he was still sending and getting email and talking to this person. I had No idea. I told him once a cheater always a cheater and if we were dating, I'd walk out the door to never speak to him again. Unfortuanatly we're married and have a developmentally delayed child so walking out isn't exactly an option as I do NOT want him to raise her and I don't think I can phsically raise her alone. He initially blamed me for it, but I wouldn't hear or agree. He finally admitted to being sorry when I found about the last set of emails. But I do not trust him. He asked if I thought he was still talking to her and I told him I would have said no back in late August, but would have been wrong. I can't tell. There's no way for me to find out if there is any communication between them.

How do you get past the feeling of untrust? He's really screwed up this marriage. Never would have I thought of him having a secret woman, but now, I have no idea if he does or not. I hate being in this position of wondering if every time I turn my back if he's emailing her.

Suggestons please. Counseling starts monday but I'm not hopeful it will help. What's done is done and can't be undone. The marriage will never be same.