I just found this out a week ago. We have been together for a decade and married for 4 yrs. We have a toddler and I’m six months pregnant with #2. I discovered his sexts and payments to another woman after I saw an odd text pop up on his phone. Confronted him and he admitted to it (with multiple women, over the course of many years) but said nothing physical ever happened and he had no intention of actually meeting these women — he was getting off on the online interaction.
I am struggling because he has framed all of this as a “kink” that he has for video chatting and sexting with women he seeks out online, often in exchange for payment. I haven’t had a chance to read through all the chats and messages (I told him not to delete anything because eventually I want to work up the nerve to read it all, but who knows if he’ll honestly comply), but I feel like he is minimizing what he did by explaining it as a shameful kink/fetish as opposed to an intentional violation of me and our marriage. The way he talks about what he did and why he did it makes it sound like he feels like a victim, talking about how he has struggled against this urge for a long time (since his teenage years). It feels like a cop out to me.
I’m starting IC this week and I’ve agreed to MC in the future, but not right away. He has also agreed to start IC. I haven’t ruled out divorce, but for now I am willing to try to work through this for the sake of our kids.
I don’t know what advice I am actually seeking here, but I feel like I don’t know what questions to ask or what boundaries to enforce in order to pursue healing and get some sense of true remorse from him. I just feel completely lost. Meanwhile he seems to be trying really hard to put on a cheery face and act like our lives are still generally the same.
Advice/input/general thoughts welcome. I don’t know what to do next or where to go from here.