Ok so I am new here and I don’t know how to explain without a lot of you guys thinking I am a huge ass but here it goes. I am married, 40 years old, and having way more sex than my wife. Now I am not proud, or happy or any other word you can use. That is why I’m giving this a shot. I own my own business (pizzeria) and currently having sex with all but 1 of my female employees. They all know but don’t seem to care. A couple of them have turned me onto a world I had no idea existed. Group sex party’s, couple swaps, I mean the list goes. With each new experience I become even more obsessed than the previous. I can’t stand the person I’ve become and i want it to end.I look at myself in the mirror and want to die. How can I ever tell my wife??
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Honestly your Wife deserves to know right away, you’re putting her at risk by having sex with other people and her.
If you really want to make changes, then actions will speak louder than words and your marriage may well not survive, but you owe it to yourself to be honest and get help, and let your wife decide whether she can forgive you and stand by you…
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You need to tell your wife straight away. You’re not just risking your marriage and health, but also her health. Are you at least getting regularly tested?
Sleeping with your employees is also pretty messed up because of the obvious power imbalance there.
I think you need to seriously look at your actions the harm you’re doing not just to yourself but to others. Your wife should be allowed to decide on her own health risks, you’re making that decision for her. I also don’t know if any of your employees is having sex with you out of fear of losing their livelihood… Like… If you really want change, there’s help available, but it all starts with honesty. It starts with giving your wife back her agency.
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If you don’t, why should they? And again… power imbalance.
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Don’t tell her the full details until after you have found some sober time (within a legitimate sex addiction recovery program, accountable to other people in recovery from sex addiction). Telling her now is premature and will cause unnecessary pain and trauma to you both, that is not helpful for either of you.
You should stop having sex with her, for her safety, and you should get tested.
Your behaviour is fairly common for sex addicts. Always chasing the next “fix”, the next high, the next escalation of sexual “acting out”.
Take this questionnaire and see where you stand. After you’re done, ask yourself if you want sobriety, and if you do, please message me and we can talk about sex addiction recovery:
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Cos telling her he has sexual health concerns and then not telling her why he has these concerns until it’s convenient for him and he’s got some sober time isn’t gonna blow her fucking mind to pieces lol. If they’re in a monogamous relationship and she trusts him that is.
If he tells her ANYTHING, this is already a botched disclosure so if he is to warn her in any way or ask her to get tested, homie here is morally obliged to tell her everything or her pain of suspecting but not having betrayal confirmed is going to be unbearable.
It’s so beyond fucked up already. Just go for the honest route, man, just don’t make her pain any worse at this point!
I was your wife, fyi.
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So agree she has the right to know right now.
It goes beyond him getting sober time.
Its about the fact he broke the marriage vows and trampled all over them.
I was that woman too.
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What he should do is visit a sex addiction recovery meeting immediately - there are hundreds online - and get some input from people who have substantial sobriety. He should share what can be shared without violating the boundaries of the meeting.
He hasn’t botched the disclosure yet and he doesn’t have to. By acting promptly, everyone can have their needs met (at least insofar as is possible within the betrayal he did).
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Yeah she has a right but that means shit. She also had a right not to be emotionally abused and gaslit and her trust betrayed and that happened anyway so.
My point was she has a right to get the whole story. Not slices of it, insinuations and “concerns”, the whole truth, as much as OP can handle it. The only thing that’s going to make this shit even worse is the salami slice tactic.
Which is why SA advises to hold out on disclosure until you’re able to tell the full truth. I’m just saying, dont tell her some shit now and more shit later. Just make a clean breast of it and give her that decency.
I’m sorry you also Laura. Solidarity.
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@jgar0093 sex addiction and disclosure is a much-researched process and there is a lot of good reliable info from clinicians and sec addiction recovery groups online. There are stages.
Full disclosure is a detailed process and is what is recommended to be delayed until suitable professional and/or sex addiction recovery can be found.
Search “sex addiction full disclosure” (also “sex addiction formal disclosure”) for more information. If you would like to message about it, please message me.
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Yeah, I wasn’t that woman. But I am a woman.
OP’s wife deserves her agency back. Her needs matter 10,000 times more right now than his addiction, sobriety, disclosures or whatever other bullshit. She is being hurt. Her health is being put at risk. Would she still consent to sex with op if she knew what he was doing behind her back? I’m sure there’s a word for that…
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So, according to this article, the whole disclosure with the help of a therapist happens after the person who was cheated on finds out they were cheated on. It’s something you do with a therapist after both partners decided to continue working on their relationship.
Your wife deserves her agency back now. Not later. She gets to choose right now if she’s staying in the marriage. That only happens with honestly.
No, you probably shouldn’t lead with full details about the orgies. But she deserves to know you cheated.
Telling Your Partner: The Disclosure Process in Recovery from Sex Addiction
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This is an excellent article @jgar0093 and advises that a formal disclosure be done in a structured way, in consultation with professionals or sex addiction recovery experts. The article does not suggest doing it immediately. There are preliminary steps that must be done first. You can learn more about these in your recovery work at www.SA.org or www.SAA-Recovery.org
You should not do a staggered disclosure. The article specifies that disclosing part of it is deeply traumatic, whereas an appropriately prepared and delivered formal disclosure - with consultation with professionals and recovery resources - can mitigate the harm to both parties, including especially your wife.
The article says:
There is no set time the disclosure should happen, but generally, 90 days after both partner and sex addict make an earnest commitment to individual recovery and therapy is a good time to schedule a disclosure.
So there is work to do before a disclosure can be done safely.
I agree.
The impact to her mental health, self worth, emotional well being is going to be huge, especially if she thinks they’re happily married and all is well.
She needs the facts so she can make the decision of whether or not she wants the marriage to continue if she does she may agree to address it in therapy and get to the underlying reasons he did it.
He could be a sex addict or he could’ve just been doing it ‘because he could’.
Either way he will need therapy if he really wants to change and she will need to it understand its not her fault.
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His wife should know asap. Not all the juicy details at first, but just the basic info about the cheating. I think it’s just cruel to postpone to telling to the wife.
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And how exactly is the partner meant to make an earnest commitment to anything if she doesn’t know she’s been cheated on?
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To do that would create additional (preventable) trauma for her. The article Amy linked above gives a useful overview of how “staggered disclosure” (which is what you are proposing) is deeply traumatizing. A structured, formal disclosure, prepared in consultation with knowledgeable professionals, significantly reduces the effect of trauma and helps everyone involved to find healing (at least as much as is possible).
I agree with Matt. Disclosure after a little time in recovery. The article says 90 days.
How do you think is wife will react?
It won’t be easy and if he is this early in sobriety it will further break him.
His wife truly deserves to know.
It’s just the “when” I’m not sure about and I’m no psychologist.
My only advice here is that man you need help. Big time. I say that with all honesty and trying to help you.
You need to get into therapy and meetings and work the program.
Many people have overcome sexual addiction. But you need help asap. The way to get help is to start working on yourself. Stop the sexual activity for a day and then two and then 3.
Some days you will have huge urges. Just keep going.
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Being told in front of a stranger would be even more humiliating to me, she should have all the facts and then be allowed to make a choice if she wants to engage with a therapist.
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This thread is infuriating. The article I linked talks about a ‘staggered disclosure’ AFTER the initial discovery. AFTER. Full, formal, therapeutic disclosure AFTER. AFTER the discovery. AFTER the wronged party decides to continue the marriage.
Maybe the partner doesn’t want to commit to couple’s therapy or recovery. Maybe she doesn’t want to understand sex addiction. Maybe she doesn’t want a ‘formal disclosure’ from a husband who was trained on the right words to say by a therapist. Maybe cheating is her dealbreaker. Maybe she doesn’t want the details. Maybe she wants to know he cheated and that’s good enough reason to walk away.
Anything less than allowing her to make that choice about her life is as manipulative as the cheating was.
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