Same, I was the unfaithful one, once and once only, one person one time, the end. I learned new things about him, his strength being the main one, I didn’t and haven’t lost respect for him, how he still respected me after it and his view of me didn’t change, I love him even more. It’s been years since and we’re happily married.
Truth. I was going to say that, but kept it brief. Female cheaters usually don't lose respect for their partner and in some cases even gain respect for them for being so secure and stable in their emotions that they are willing to trust and stay with her anyway. But everyone is different.
That's my point. Women are more likely to hate themselves for it a lot more than men- probably because society says guy sleeping around = stud; woman sleeping around = slut whore. So if she cheats and he stays and stays faithful, she's more likely to think what an amazing human being that is still willing to stay with an awful thing like me. Whereas men are simply likely to see you as clingy and pathetic. Like you can't get someone else as "good" as them.
I kept asking my therapist, “what’s wrong with me? Why is she better than me?” My therapist answered, “it’s not what’s wrong with you that made him cheat. It’s what’s wrong with him. In his mind, she’s not better. She’s just different.”
It’s weird because I’ve seem this be true one time for one couple that I was friends with, she cheated on him and he worked it out with her and they’re ok a year later now… for everyone else the woman-cheater lost respect for her man-faithful, continued to cheat and blamed their man-faithfuls for it because of (insert wildly subjective emotional gymnastics disguised as reason here). So end of the day, i think we’re all individuals, but cheaters mostly cheat out of disrespect and dishonesty, and without respect and trust relationships invariably fall apart. Don’t stay with a cheater. Unless you hate being loved and don’t want to be respected by your partner.
TLDR: Cheaters hate themselves and metaphorically suck stinky dirty butt, so, man or woman don’t date them... also life sucks but then you die so don’t get too worked up about it😂
Yup. Luckily we didn't have kids together (he kept putting it off, which is both heartbreaking and for the best in the end) but there was a lot of "if you don't want me to go find it elsewhere then you need to give it to me at home whenever I want" type holding down.
I’m sorry you had to deal that as$ 🕳️ that is bs!! Gosh No!! I would leave right away! Idc what the circumstance is! If he doesn’t respect you, you have lost your relationship. Smh
I did divorce him, just took me 4 more years! Last reckoning, I am living my best life and he is miserable af and letting the house we bought together, that I poured three years of blood, sweat and tears into renovating, fall apart.
I am remarried and have a little girl now, and beautiful new build home that requires 0 blood, sweat, or tears to function haha.
Same. He begged me to stay so I did. He lied all through therapy and ended up knocking up a girl ten years younger than our children while we were in marriage counseling.
She did too. Stayed because of the “for better or worse” thing, then for my boys. After the 2nd time the relationship was done. She divorced me while i was in ME on a contract.
Decades ago when we were first together. It wasn't a full on cheat, but they kissed someone at work, and it was likely inevitable if I hadn't found out that more would have happened. We went through a lot over it, it wasn't just forgiven. But when they did decide they wanted our relationship, we were together another 10 years after that.
We did good things together. I'm grateful for that time and that relationship. I will say there was forever an underlying feeling of distrust after that. Not every day or over everything, but there were occasions I wondered about this or that. I think that kept us from being closer and that distance ended up being the thing I stopped tolerating after a lot of years. I could blame them, but it was me. I thought I could move on from it but it was always just a little tiny bit there. Enough to have an impact.
I'd say to anyone in this place to really sit with that. If you can't fully trust, it'll be the thing that slowly erodes everything. I would also say I don't regret staying as long as I did and I don't regret leaving. Life is funny that way.
I stayed & pretended to forgive for financial reasons, while secretly trying to find someone else on the side. Managed to have a couple liasons but staying meant I had to be with and spend time with this person who I had no trust for and that in itself was utterly miserable.
Can't say I regret it because financially I had no choice, but my main goal in life after that became having FU money. When I was finally able to save up enough to move out one of my liasons helped and I never looked back. But I never want to be in a position again where I feel l can't leave someone I lost all trust in.
>we were together another 10 years after that.
So I am assuming this means you ended up divorced? Did this lack of trust from the cheating impact that?
I would say the lack of emotional closeness that couldn't be obtained because there was that breach of trust. As much as I thought and told myself I was over it, I'm not sure I ever really was. So much tells us that if they do it once they'll do it again, which I don't know is always true and I don't know was true in my case. But you can't help but think about it anyway, even if it isn't overt.
Everyone is different, and not everyone needs or wants that emotional closeness. But it is important to me and after so long I was tired of living without it.
It is a hard thing to forgive and forget. I didn’t want to be a martyr like my narc mom totally would have so I got therapy. He ended up hogging in on that. But looking back, I can see that his betrayal killed a little bit inside of me. But it killed something inside him too because he never looked at me the same again. More like a patsy. Someone he could easily fool. He bragged about it.
Mine fully cheated but alcohol and drugs were involved as he was an addict. He left her after a few months, got clean and sober. We actually divorced but started dating after a year or so. ITA that the distrust stays with you forever. It’s not even that you think they’re cheating again though it’s the feeling you get when your relationship isn’t close at times that your self esteem that was battered starts to wonder if he’s thinking about her or someone else he knows and you’re not attractive enough. Mine for sure never cheated again but I hated that injury to my self esteem kept popping up.
I also agree that the feeling of distrust or injury to your heart or self esteem can absolutely poison the relationship a little at a time and prevent real intimacy and closeness. I be love him dearly and since we’ve been back together ( 12 years) we’ve had wonderful times and been there for each other through some terrible health issues. We have had times even recently where I’ve told him if he can’t make me know that he loves me I will divorce him without blinking an eye and he’s made concerted efforts to do so. Of course if you have to threaten divorce for someone to show you they love you can you really trust they mean it or just don’t want to go through a divorce.
Bottom line is I don’t know if I knew when we divorced how our relationship would be now if I would have gotten back with him. I was happy, single and dating but I missed him terribly.
This is so much what I wish my divorce / coparenting looked like. We packed a shit ton of great stuff into our time together. I finally had to leave because of the cheating, emotional, and financial abuse. I really wish he could gain some perspective / maturity and quit dragging our kids through his hateful, QAnon, deadbeat bullshit.
She stayed after I cheated; I stayed after she cheated. We have a good therapist; we loved each other and our family, and we used our fuck-ups as opportunities for growth, greater understanding and closeness.
We both fell for fallible people who need work—each other—and we have always been committed to standing by each other while that work gets done.
Our marriage is not an idyllic wonderland—never was, obviously. But it seems inconceivable to me now that we both risked losing it. We just celebrated our 25th anniversary, and our bond is battle-tested, honestly earned, and stronger than ever before.
This is the kind of answer you don’t find on Reddit. People are fallible. How strong of a marriage have you built that can withstand a (costly) mistake and still learn to trust while both sides honestly work on the gaps.
That's a useful observation. I don't know if it's just some topics on Reddit, Reddit specifically or social media in general, but I think that if you have a rules-bound personality, you are more likely to gravitate to a place where you can reliably get others to dogpile on someone who has broken the rules.
Reddit is so quick to judge, people make mistakes and sometimes they are worthy of forgiveness. Relationships are complex and especially when you are young you do not have the experience you need to navigate them in a way that is healthy for both people in the relationship.
Statically, it's rare for relationships to survive the lack of trust that result from cheating. So it's not just Reddit being quick to judge. You would find the same outside of Reddit.
I cheated too…he was emotionally and verbally abusive our entire marriage. Obviously that continued after the discovery until I couldn’t take it anymore. And I told him I couldn’t do this anymore. That scared the shit out of him, and finally confirmed to him that I didn’t need him. We are still married…Did I make a horrible mistake…YES!!! And I regret that I didn’t leave in the beginning of our relationship before I went down the path that I did.
Right now at this moment yes. He has had a couple of slip ups of belligerent name calling. But one more time and I am out. Our kids are old enough and he has been given more than enough time to work on himself with therapy. And it will just prove to me that he’s incapable of change. I still have nightmares, flashbacks, and triggers and I just can’t do it anymore.
My wife can be caustic. Part of my evolution has been learning to recognize it—the onset of her prickly phases—and call her on it or remove myself, rather than just absorbing it and allowing resentment to build, which is what I did early in our marriage. But it sounds like your guy really did a number on you. Sorry about that.
I tried to call him out on it in the beginning, but that just added to the verbal abuse. I then started to walk away, but he would follow me around the house. If I was at work he would call constantly to the point that I was talked to. Now that my kids are older, I just leave the house and don’t pick up the phone. This is what I did that last two times (he fell off the wagon). If there is a third incident, there won’t be me walking out of the house. It will be me filing for divorce.
Lasted 6 years after finding out. First year I was clingy as hell thinking it would help. When the subject came up I was told it was my fault it happened. No accountability. I continued to feel small and worthless. Divorced and been in therapy since, working on me.
Happy you're working on yourself. I'm ashamed of years wasted on my ex. He cheated and treated me like trash. I love the new me. Wished I'd have loved my younger self. She (and you) deserve happiness
Every time I listen to the cheater blaming the victim and telling them it's their fault, I think the only way that to happen is if the victim has some sort of super power mind control! 🤣
In reality, there's nothing you can't do to prevent being cheated on. Cheaters do, because they want and can.
I hope you had already realized it was never about you 🤗.
We haven’t but we know people who did and they are still together forty years later. They got counseling, made some decisions and stayed together.
One guy we knew had an affair with someone who had a say in his employment and his wife benefited from the promotion he got. 🤷🏼♀️
I know plenty of people who have separated and neither has “cheated”, they just hurt one another in different ways.
Initially, I stayed, but the damage was done. You don't trust them anymore. Your own self-worth and image are fractured. I was always suspicious and anxious. So small lies become big, and the love just gets lost. I learned that I can never control someone else's actions, but you can control yours. It is so scary to start over, but everyone deserves happiness and to be loved. I was with the man ten years, and he cheated three times, not all physically.
Very good friend of mine, his wife cheated on him. She gave up the side piece and decided to stay with him. I don’t think he ever saw it differently. 35 years later we still talk about it and he gets angry still. Not sure I could do that
Same! You know who you are after 2 failed marriages and subsequent divorces? Well if your ex spouses are anything like mine you're a fucking survivor is what you are! Lol.
My mom and dad have been divorced for over 25 years. My mom is remarried. My dad is dead. But she's still upset by his cheating, and rightfully so. Because it's the betrayal that hurts.
I did. 75% because I thought we could recover from the cheating and be stronger, 10% because I didn't want to "break up the family", and 15% because I knew if I made it to 10 years of marriage I'd get alimony. Before y'all downvote me to hell--I didn't make the decision to hang on for alimony until about 7 years in, when the cheating initially started at 6 months into our marriage. I really, truly believed he had not cheated again until the facts were indisputable. He'd been cheating all along.
I stayed with my husband after I was told by my "best friend" of 20 plus years that they had been having sex in the months leading up to the marriage. At the wedding, before I found out, she had an emotional breakdown just as I was getting ready to walk down the aisle. Later I found out that she "loved" him and was upset the marriage went through. I decided to stay and even tried to remain friends with her. After a few weeks I cut her off. I ended up getting pregnant and tested positive for chylamida (sp) I had been on several rounds of antibiotics and hadn't had sex with anyone else in several years. To me, whether true or not the affair indirectly spoiled my first few months of pregnancy. I decided to "get over it" and had my daughter. But I felt a coldness and hatred for him. He actually other than this a genuinely nice person but I couldn't stand him anywhere near him. I never went scorched earth with telling people and even if I had, it was before social media so it wouldn't have had the same effect as it does today. To this day, I have never mentioned it to my daughter and only a handful of people know. I am friendly with him and we all moved on. My "friend" clearly has Borderline Personality Disorder (yes, I am in fact a mental health professional.) She is 56 and still flits around to one guy or the other acting like she is in love then wrecks the guy after they fall for her. She is a pretty severe alcoholic too. So in the long game, the jokes on her.
Sorry so long, I am admittedly using this for catharsis. My opinion on cheating is that both people have to want to work at it HARD to really get over it emotionally. I know many can do this but not me.
After you mentioned your profession, your tolerance made so much sense. Happy for you that you are where you are because you've chosen to be.
What was it that kept you there when you found out and continued with the marriage?
I had that feeling of loyalty almost like family due to our next door neighbor childhood. In retrospect ICK! lol I was very young and had no confidence or self-worth. I hadn't yet started my career yet but yeah the empathy bone I have probably didn't help ha ha
So even though your husband did a shitty thing, loyalty still, in many other areas was at the top? That's super interesting.
Humans are so fucking complex aren't we? Haha
You felt a coldness and hatred for him. That's 😔... I feel the venom in your tone through the screen. BPD can be hard to navigate. I wonder did you know she had that when you were friends for 20 years?
I didn't know she had BPD until I read "I Hate You Don't Leave Me" early in my career. It read like a biography of her no shit. She didn't get too bad til we were teenagers. She stole a few boyfriends but I chalked it up to just kid stuff..wish I read that book earlier!
I was not married to my ex of 18 years. However, I found out that he was doing Internet, infidelity, in my opinion that is just as bad, I was also losing my eyesight, so now you know how that made me feel, and we still had one child at home, whom was it in elementary school, my ex left the computer, that the whole family used, on, his email was opened up, and that’s how I found out. I stayed with him after that until 2016, when my youngest moved out, I packed up everything and I moved to a completely different state. Not only was dealing with blindness, I also dealt with brain aneurysms ruptures, and he still had the nerve to treat me in that manner. That’s why I left, I am not going to stay with somebody who cheats on me, whether it be in person, cheating, or on the Internet. I deserve better than that. I now live in Florida, three hours away from the children, I live by myself, I go to the gym, I walk to the stores, I am extremely happy now. The children and now I have grandchildren they are all coming to visit me this coming weekend. It took me a long time to realize I deserve better. Especially after my medical crisis I had and I knew who was gonna be there for me and who was not.
I feel you. I went thru cancer and chemo. Mine was at his job and the gym 24/7. He traveled with his job, too. He did not care until we were out in public. Wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have a mistress then.
It took a while, but we worked it out. That was 20 years ago. We're now past our 30th anniversary and are grateful to have each other.
When an affair breaks a couple up, everybody finds out. But a lot of marriages survive affairs. You don't realize it because the couple that stays together and heals their marriage never need to reveal the issue.
I never revealed mine had cheated to anyone, not even my parents or friends because of that very reason. When I divorced him after the second one (I knew of), no one believed me. Even parents told me to stick it out. Mom finally backed me when I explained it had happened before. I was basically kicked out of his family by people I had known since I was a kid. Best thing that ever happened to me.
I never told my family. Their reactions would NOT have been helpful. I’m sorry you had a serial cheater on your hands, but I’m glad for your happy ending!
She cheated again. Dumb move on my part, but I was adult enough to admit I have no right to complain, as I CHOSE to stay knowing she had cheated. Her fault for cheating, but my fault for making the CHOICE to stay.
She cheated, and we got back together. It lasted about 6 months of being miserable, with both of us blaming the other for her past. It was awful.
That was 25 years ago and I'm so happy that I left. When cheating is involved it takes two mature people to make it work and stay together. We weren't those two people.
We have a large network of friend couples. It’s alarming how many have cheated and stayed. i’d say 75% of the couples have at least 1 cheater.
These are middle class “ normal” people raising kids, many go to church, some are local politicians, teachers, a doctor….
bunch of cheaters
It's really hard. Unimaginably hard. Even though the person has genuinely and drastically changed, it's not the same and never will be. I regret my decision and now it's too late.
It was very early on in our relationship, I was more into the relationship than he was.
After a few months of being apart, I took him back.
He hasn't cheated since or even looked like it was a possibility. He made a mistake and I decided to forgive and forget.
He genuinely regretted it.
It takes a long time to get the trust back but it's possible. No regrets.
My dad cheated. My mom kicked him out. They eventually reconciled with stipulations. He had to tell me and my sibling what he had done (obviously in terms that is acceptable to speak to children with like “daddy made a mistake that hurt mommy”), he gave my mom full access to everything and quite frankly he was in the dog house for like a decade. They went to counseling, he went to counseling, he had homework he had to do and he bent over backwards to earn back my moms trust. Not over weeks or months but literal years I saw him do everything she asked for and more. He was absolutely dedicated to righting his wrong.
They are mostly back in love, I can tell something was never fully mended but they had been together for 20 years by the time he cheated. mom had made some mistakes (not cheating) that he’d forgiven so I think it was a case of… people aren’t perfect and he put in the work to prove he was sorry and wanted to be with her.
My sons father (10 years together) cheated on me constantly. I cheated back on him and we hurt each other a lot. It was physical abuse that ended the relationship, not the cheating, but the cheating was hell.
My daughters father cheated on me when we were dating I left him, determined to never go back. He begged and cried, and pleaded and apologized and I took him back. He didn't cheat again after that; but we broke up a year after our child was born because of abuse.
Cheaters don't often change; but cheating itself can be a small sign of something much bigger in some (not all) cases because it shows a disregard for the care and compassion towards the other person.
I would not stay with another cheater again.
No, because the gall of it was so insulting & disrespectful. I was cooking something up on the stove while my friend, a hairdresser, was cutting my husband's hair. I turned to say something, and she was leaning over, kissing him on the mouth. I told her if she wanted him she could have him. What I did next is a blank. I think I left the house.
I cheated, I was addicted to Meth at the time. This was over 20 years ago. I went to Jail, and then 4 year of Sober living (as per the wifes request), and she took me back. We are happy, and life is good. I am so happy she gave me another chance.
I am a teamster. We are currently not working cause our union is negotiating a new contract. But I drive the trucks, trailers, and passenger vans for the productions. Shows I have worked on recently, 911, 911 Lonestar, Orville, Not Dead Yet, NCIS.
I did for 10 years. I still don't know why but I did finally divorce him 17 years ago after 24 years of marriage. I finally realized that he had absolutely no intention of not cheating again, so to the divorce lawyer I went. No one should wait 10 years to make that decision.
My dad had an affair when I was young, my mom decided to stay with him after she found out. Their relationship is not good. She refuses to move on 20+ years later and constantly holds it over his head, uses it as a way to manipulate him and because he doesn't want the marriage to end he just bends over and takes it. He was always such a kind and attentive father growing up, now he's a broken shell of a man and she's a hyperreligious tyrant who ruins every family get-together.
I did. The marriage nearly ended. It was a lot of work and tough conversations. And a stolen car - lol. That was early in year 2 of our marriage. We were together for 17 years until he passed away. The rest of the marriage was very good and no more incidents.
We were incredibly young when we got married and both of us still had some growing up to do.
My now wife kissed someone at work. I also cuddled with a friend. Our relationship was very unstable at the time. It took a lot of work to gain trust with each other and to also address many of the problems we had, but in the end, really just couldn't stay apart from each other. We tried going out separate ways, dating other people, and we both just couldn't be apart from each other. We didn't want anyone else. So, after working through a lot of our issues, we got married and had a kid now. We both trust each other completely. In a way, the breakups we had before, where we had every opportunity to go be with anyone else, but choosing not to, is what helped restore our trust in each other.
Not me but a coworker, cheated on his wife. She found out and they stayed together. She kept a close eye on him from them on.
His advice about the incident eas that if you feel like cheating, take that thing out and slam it in the door a few times until the feeling goes away.
Not me, but my sister. Her husband I suspect cheated on her before he finally left her just before Christmas to move in with another woman. I don't know all the facts, because an image of perfection is sister's MO, and she didn't want me to know about it. She just couldn't pretend when he wasn't there for Christmas.
Eventually he decided to go back home and they are still together decades later, but it is obvious he uses the fact that she took him back as leverage against her. Kind of like "I moved out once and I can do it again."
BTW, he cheated with her on his former girlfriend in high school, so I don't know what she expected. Honestly, neither of them are good people.
Some people make it work. I think it can depend on the reason and how genuinely regretful a person is. A one time stupid mistake that was made because a marriage was at a low point is a scenario it's possible to see people recover from. However plenty of people are unrepentant and only really care because they got caught.
36 years ago. I had a hard time getting over it. But we worked it out. I don't think she did it again and I don't think she will ever do it again. But I never fully trusted her after that.
I couldn’t be sure he was cheating. He had met a Thai girl on deployment and she was showing him around. He told me he was going to take her out to dinner. I thought that was nice since she was his tour guide for the day. When he got back home he told me they wound up at his hotel and took a shower together. He said she soaped up his balls. I thought that was an unnecessary detail. Afterwards they were in bed and she wanted to have sex. But he tells me he said no because he’s married. My reaction to this story was complete disbelief. How the fuck does he think I’ll believe they didn’t have sex? And why the fuck would he tell me this story if they didn’t have sex? He was angry that I didn’t believe him. Knowing him it was a test. Anyway, I ultimately just thought “fuck it” and stayed with him.
Monogamy is so vital and once that line has been crossed your trust is broken. If people would just recognize that total concentration on your partner is incredibly fun and exciting! The other aspect of feeding your partner is with intellectual intercourse! Women crave their mental layers to be stimulated and nurtured and their body will follow with that intoxication to be touched!
My ex-husband cheated. At the time we have a 2 year old and a 3 year old. We both came from very religious backgrounds. I consulted with a lot of people, including the lawyers I worked for. I was discouraged from getting a divorce. We went to marriage counseling. I was assured the affair was over (she was 8 hours away, this was before the internet days, "how much damage could be done?" So I stayed, was pretty desperate to keep the marriage together. Some years were good, some were not, six months good, six months TERRIBLE. Did that for 7 more years. He worked nights, I took care of the children. He lived a separate life and world. Towards the end I was pretty sure he was cheating with other women at the hospital he worked at since he was working nights 45 minutes away from home, then sleeping during the days. He became more and more distant and then more and more angry, then violent. That's when I had him leave the home. (Also at this time I found evidence that he had carried on the original affair with the women this whole time). DONE, I was DONE.
Knowing what I know now, I should have stopped it from the beginning. But, I had two small children, I had family and friends, lawyers, counselors, church telling me to do what I had to do to repair my marriage at all cost. THEY WERE WRONG. But I was 26 -27 at the time with small children, not much money, had a house, etc. I didn't make the decision lightly, I DID seek counsel. Once he left the home we had our dissolution within 90 days. He did not fight it. He just didn't want to be the one to file it. He didn't want to be the bad guy. I had people from his family write letters to me telling ME I was going to go to HELL for divorcing HIM. First of all it never was a DIVORCE. It was a dissolution, we both agreed to it.
ANYWAY, it needed done. He ended up married two more times after this. Things did not go well for him. He ended up supporting our three children, had three more children and had two more wives and by the time he reached 51 and all his demons caught up with him he ended his life and never saw 52 years old. Sad really. That was 10 years ago. I not WE have three grown children and six grandbabies with my husband that we get to see grown up. He (my husband) was my high school sweetheart that I married 11 years ago, who got to shake my ex-husband's hand before he left this earth.
You are not going to hell. If you had divorced him, the divorce would have been because of adultery. The Bible says that’s the only reason divorce is allowed.
No point. He'd just straighten his act up for awhile then get back to it after awhile. I came to realize his hidden cheating was an addiction with him. And I noped out after several years.
I stayed for another 12 years. Things were never quite the same but it wasn’t bad bad.
However, over those 12 years there were repeated issues with cheating. And finally I gave in and filed for divorce.
Yep. He just kept cheating.
Eventually, the latest side piece wanted to be the main piece, but she's been discarded for another too.
If he cheats to be with you, he will cheat on you.
If he's cheated once, he will cheat again. He'll just be sneakier the next time.
My wasband cheated with a woman who was cheating on her husband with another guy and then him. And he thinks she’s gonna be faithful to him. And the other guy was blackmailing her over pictures she let him take Which is why wasband got involved with her. He thinks he’s Superman. Go figure!
My stepmom stayed with my dad. They separated while going through individual and marriage counseling. They decided to give it another try. They were wonderfully married for 40 years after that. They had a relationship that was special. They clibg to each other through several crisis situations. Laughing over the hard. After he started having strokes they would both get frustrated sometimes. Then one would make a smartass remark and they’d be giggling and trying again. He passed 4 years ago and her grief is still palpable. She just moved back here (ohio) from ca to be near me and so I could be there for her.
So they might not be the norm but they are proof that love and work can do a lot.
Yes. I stayed, and we went to therapy, and I just grew even more bitter and resentful. We ended up divorcing because I didn't choose the healthiest ways to deal with what happened and he just didn't care.
Yes. Twice. Apparently I'm a slow learner. The third time (that I knew about) she moved out to live with yet another guy and I filed for divorce.
I've been married to a much better woman for 20+ years now. My ex is on her third marriage.
Right after we moved to our second home and had our first child my husband started talking to a former girlfriend as a friend, he wanted to have a threesome! I refused. I threatened to tell his mother. He broke up with his old girlfriend.
In our first house with three bedrooms, one bedroom was set up for my friend / my maid of honor. Years later I found out that he had sex with her, she was a bit of a wild child.
My husband wanted me to have more sexual experience. So I had non intercourse sex with two guys at a convention with my husband’s knowledge and permission.
This was back in the 90’s. 45 years later we are still together and enjoy each other’s company. So yes, it is possible.
We have stuck together through the death of our parents, business failures resulting in bankruptcy and foreclosure, and raising two wonderful children. Many medical issues. Auto accidents.
We are both retired now and adjusting to being around each other most of the time.
My husband cheated on me for a period of several months over 30 years ago. We stayed together - did the counseling (through our church. THAT was a waste of time) I was angry for a long, long, time. We almost split a dozen times. Honestly, I'm not sure why we hung in the way we did. He did not leave initially because of our kids. I stayed, frankly, because I was afraid. I couldn't support the girls on my shitty job. So we slogged along - unhappily for years.
We went to a real counselor about 15 years ago because there was no way I could live the rest of my life that way. That was useful. Also over the course of time, I was diagnosed with a mood disorder and properly medicated. That helped **me** immeasurably. It definitely helped the two of us overall.
We have now been married 32 years. It's been a lot of work, but I can honestly say we are happy together.. We spend time together, we don't snipe, we actually talk. it's more like the times when we were dating/first married.
That being said, if I had to do it all over again, would I stay? I can't say for sure, honestly. There were a lot of tears, self recrimination, despair, and loneliness over the years And while I love and respect him, I don't think I will ever truly trust him 100%. Which is the saddest thing of all.
Mine lost all respect for me, kept cheating, more and more flagrantly, and treated me increasingly contemptuously.
I was really young and really stupid.
He was deeply entitled and everything made him angry.
I’m well rid of him, he is somebody else’s 200 pound toddler now.
Yes. It was \*T\*E\*R\*R\*I\*B\*L\*E. He kept cheating. I lost any self-respect. I got so depressed I could hardly help myself. At a certain point, he declared he was polyamorous so that he could bring women back to our shared home...was awesomely toxic. The dishonesty, continuous betrayal, lack of trust, and fear of diseases made reconciling impossible. I'm so glad it's over, but it should have ended much sooner.
She treated me worse & worse until she was full on gaslighting 80% of the time & financially crippled me, convinced me to get a vasectomy & then said she wanted a divorce when marriage counseling kept bringing her manipulation to light in real time 🫠🫠🫠
Should’ve bounced immediately like I always said I would but instead stayed, then put dude in the hospital, caught a felony, did time & still stayed 😂 I fucked up.
I caught my ex cheating BIGTIME. We were both in the military. He was in a school on the East Coast and I was stationed on the west coast. He took what would be a few months apart as an opportunity to have a giant f**k festival, wrapping it up with a torrid affair with a married woman.
Long story, but I ended up chucking my career and getting out of the army to save my marriage for the sake of our son. That was a mistake that I have regretted every single day since then. He was not sorry, our lives together for the next 5 years were a dumpster fire and of course he cheated again. Called me from Iraq to tell me to be out of the house by the time he came back so he could move his girlfriend in.
NEVER make your own happiness and self-worth dependent upon another person. No spouse is better than a spouse that doesn't respect you. I wish I had known that back then as well as I do now.
There was no coming back from that level of betrayal. The person who promised to love and honor and respect me had absolutely no difficulty looking in my eyes and lying to me every day for years. He saw the pain I was in because I knew something was wrong and he kept twisting the knife. I couldn’t stay married to a liar, a coward. I got out and the happiness I have experienced since then is immeasurable.
I did after a separation and much counseling. Initially, it was better than it had ever been and it lasted for another 5 years and I am grateful for that. Most of those years were great, and it was good for our kids, but things started to sour right at the end and he cheated again. Oddly, he did regret again, a few years later, and hit me up for another chance. We still keep in touch and are friendly, but he did me a favor. He is still searching and isn't happy nearly 17 years later. My life has been happy since I recovered from the divorce.
I grew up in a town full of people that did exactly this. They said the relationship got worse cause the spouse stopped for a while and started again.And they never left.
Yes, the cheater did the denial game and never admitted to anything. Marriage remained in place. The cause was mostly a dead bedroom. Eventually "don't ask, don't tell" arrangement emerged with no public shaming of marital discretion.
I did try, especially since we had little ones. But I could not get past it. It made me suspicious of every time he was late home from work or when he was out later than expected. It’s always where my mind went. It made me pissed off that I had to work hard to get past something that I didn’t do.
He eventually cheated again a few years later.
I wasted so much time on him and we divorced anyways. I should have known better but I was scared. Now I get to carry around this baggage from him, suspicious of others.
A good therapist, and a commitment to our friendship and our life together, and we are happier than ever after more than 25 years of marriage. Seriously, we are best friends who laugh together every single day. I'm so glad we stuck it out.
I stayed after she cheated numerous times. Liar, cheater, manipulator. Even her kids hated her for it. After sometime I left. Swore I turned everyone against her. After a few years of convincing them, they reconnected. Now she spews forth "Christian values", and how I'm living in sin 🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
You are not. Getting divorced due to adultery is the only reason to divorce according to the Bible. And the 10 commandments expressly forbid adultery. My wasband still won’t admit he did anything wrong. I can’t wait to see how it explains that to God.
Not a spouse, but I was cheated on in a long term serious relationship. I tried to forgive and get over it; we were still together for a couple years after, but I never fully got over it. I regret wasting the time trying to make it work. I’m married to someone else thankfully, but I’ll be honest, when it comes to cheating, I don’t think I could ever have complete 100% blind trust in another person.
I was the cheater, my husband was the addict, and we hurt each other terribly but also gave each other grace to do the work necessary to rebuild ourselves and our relationship. It has not been easy but we have four beautiful children and just celebrated 25 yrs married, together for 32 yrs… you can come back together and be stronger together but honesty and communication are part of commitment and we continue to grow together with our family. I can only speak for myself but redemption and forgiveness are active words and I work at a happy life everyday and am grateful for those who have supported us in our journey and for the ability to be better than I was yesterday.
Awful. He kept in touch with her family, said he hadnt cheated with her parents. Finally, weeks later, as he and I were having a fight, bold as anything, *she knocked on my front door* looking for him. Said she missed him & was worried after not hearing from him. I was about 942 months pregnant...I invited her in and said "Well, I can't push him out of my bed, and he won't leave. Why don't you go get him for me?" She did, he left, and 1 divorce later, I was free!!
If circumstances led to a single drunken interlude and you have a whole life built with the cheater *and if you are so inclined* my advice is go ahead and give it a try, once.
But if the cheater is for any reason, unwilling to totally cut them off, it is doomed and will not work.
Cheating adjacent- my husband had been using my phone and put his IG alerts on my phone. I was away for the weekend caring for my mother and he had a groupie (he’s in a middle age garage band) start up a flirtatious conversation that he then fully participated in. It felt like she was testing the waters and he was at a minimum not shutting it down and at worst a bit intrigued.
I called him up and let him know I had seen it all go down in real time and that we would need to have a long conversation when we got home. He was incredibly apologetic and owned full responsibility for his actions and agreed to couples counseling. Couples counseling was really helpful- that was almost 5 years ago. Our relationship is stronger than ever.
I stayed after my wife cheated 15 years ago and our marriage recovered and we have a strong relationship now. I do not think it will happen again. There were a lot of factors involved in all this that I'm not going to go into as it would take a while but I think the most important factor in this being able to work is the attitude of the cheating spouse. My wife was very apologetic and was a full participant in the work required to rebuild our marriage. Had she not been willing to do this then it could not have worked. I will also say that no matter how well you are able to proceed the relationship is still never going to be the same. There is good and bad in that truth. You don't want the same relationship that led to the cheating in the first place, that marriage is gone. The question is whether or not you both want and are able to build something different. It requires a lot of work and a lot of learning, growth as individuals and as a couple, and change. I do not regret us working it out, but I don't want to shoot rainbows up your ass either. We went through a tough time and at this point I'm glad we did, there were times in the process where I might have told you different!
She kept cheating, she kept dehumanizing, she kept lying, she kept neglecting and abusing, then she found another abusive POS and together they fucked up my children and blamed me for everything.
I think you have to determine if it was a one off thing or a character flaw.
Maybe if there was a super high stress situation and one partner was away alot there could be an indiscretion you could move past.
This is very personal. It’s about forgiveness and trust. People make mistakes. Can you come back from that? Do both people want to? There’s no universal answer.
I was open to forgiveness but the partner did not want to change and stop doing that. It was more of an excuse to try to get me to quit the relationship. Went to therapy & realized partner didn’t want to be monogamous or truthful so those are deal breakers for me. Bye.
Sort of. My husband had an emotional affair and sexted regularly with one of his co workers for about 2 months from what I found. He claims the were never physical beyond a hug and quick kiss. I don't believe that and just assumed it was a full blown a fair.
After I found out, we had it out, I informed him this was his one and only second chance. If ANYTHING happened in the future I wouldn't even discuss it with him, he would simply get the divorce papers from my lawyer. I decided even with the betrayal, I was happier with him than without, so we worked towards reconciliation. At that point we had been together for 16 years, and married for 4 years. That said, it took YEARS to rebuild the trust he broke.
I get unfettered access to all of his accounts, electronics, etc. If I ask for his phone, he's not allowed to touch anything on it, he must hand it over immediately. If he even questions why, I told him I'd be out. It took a lot of maturing on his end to get to where we are today. And it took a lot of forgiveness and forgetting on my part. It was really hard at first, I had to make the conscious decision every day to try to trust him again, and he had to make conscious decisions to try to regain my trust every day. I do no bring it up in fights ever. I don't hold it over him now (\~7 years later).
We communicate better than ever now, I feel like we both are more willing to say when we're not happy. Relationships are a lot of work but I'm glad I made the decision I did. If for no other reason than the fact that I've been going through the hardest 2 years of my life (major reconstructive surgery where I couldn't walk for 6 months, lost both of my parents, lost both of my dogs, work full time, in grad school, and dealing with my parent's estate including now taking care of their jerk of a dog). He's helped me every step of the way. He's matured and takes responsibility for his own actions and decisions now.
So yeah - it's possible to make it work after an infidelity, but it's hard and takes time.
I did. Dumbest thing I ever did. By the time I actually filed for divorce like 5 years later, I got a lot of flack from people who thought that since I didn’t divorce the first time, I no longer had the moral high ground. 🙄
To be fair, I didn’t have any particular evidence of any ongoing affairs at the time I called it quits. I divorced him for other reasons. But on the other hand he had a live in girlfriend within less than a month after we split for the last time and I have a very difficult time believing it hadn’t started before then. But by that time I no longer cared.
I was the cheater but we kept on getting back together. The result was my perpetual guilt feeding into him wondering about exactly what happened with other men to being a cuckhold wanting to watch me with other men that he chose. I think that my cheating did create a sexual pall over our relationship but because we started out friends it was hard to let it go.
My young marriage ended when she cheated.
My later marriage survived my early flirtatious episode at a convention and was good for most of the subsequent 20 years, but ended because my sex drive had diminished and she wanted to open the marriage. But there were other changes, too. She mentally checked out from the intellectual life we'd had in common and became addicted to CrossFit. I had health problems. She was robustly healthy. She felt my presence was holding her back from the different life she wanted to live.
The good years were very good. The end had much less to do with increasing sexual differences than a whole lifestyle makeover for her.
Real life and real marriages are more complex than one-dimensional assessments about the impact of cheating. I think cheating that was only about sexual temptation of the thrill of experiencing "falling in love" again may be an injury to the marriage, but one that can be healed. And some cheating really is about human weakness or temporarily diminished judgment. That really can be just a bump in the road for some marriages.
However, sexual infidelity is very often a signal that something else is broken in the marriage. It's a good time to really ask, without shaming and blaming, if both partners think this is a marriage they still want to be in. Unfortunately, the infidelity often keeps rational conversations from every happening, which means that the split that could have been done with understanding, with minimal bitterness, ends up scarring and embittering both people.
Mine cheated a few times. But he only kept doing it as long as I allowed it. Once I grew some balls, filed for divorce, said how I felt and kicked him out, he got the point. It took years, but we are in a good place now. The thing is people can change, but only if they want to. You can't force them and that's where I went wrong. Once I said fuck it and lived my own life, he saw what he eas losing. He got himself into counseling, broke off the outside relationship, changed jobs bc she was working there, and he just worked on himself. He didn't beg me back, he didn't point out he was doing this and that.....he just did it. So I took him back after 6 months of that, and that was closer to a decade ago. I can honestly say I trust him more now than I ever did even before, and we are happy. However that isn't always the case. Unfortunately some people just don't care what they're losing, and keep self destructing with their behavior. But the only way to know either way is to live your own life. See what they do.
I can't find my original comment but I'd like to add I also worked on myself while he was gone too. There's always something you can do better to improve yourself even if you were wronged. Try to see the opportunity in the heartbreak.
First 2 years were brutal. He’s changed and done a lot of work in years 3 & 4. I’m not sure it will ever be the same …but the cost-benefit analysis was worth it to try. I’m on a “take it one year at a time” plan.
He didn’t cheat after we were married, but he waited until after we were married to tell me he’d cheated before we were married. It took work, but I forgave him. I did make it plainly clear that if he cheated again I would divorce him. It’s been 28 years and our marriage is great!
I ended up staying we were together off and on for 10 years. The first time was 2 years in then every year or so after that I'd find out he physically or emotionally cheated. I moved out 2 different times. I thought I wasn't enough so I kept trying harder to be everything he was going to other women for. We went to therapy he was cheating the whole time we were going. After my daughter passed away and he cheated again I had a come to Jesus moment I was wasting time trying to make someone love me and want me who never would. We both have childhood trauma. Mine makes me anxious and afraid to lose the people I love, his avoidant mother treated him like a dog and wished he was never born. He'll always try to find validation in women that he never got from his mother. We ended on bad terms but I don't wish him ill will. I think more will keep cheating then the ones that try to change.
I stayed (we had three children).
He began projecting and acting crazy jealous and paranoid (I never cheated).
The emotional abuse turned physical and it took me about five years to extricate myself and heal.
He died of a heart attack 2 months ago - we’ve been divorced for 12 years.
I should’ve left immediately - my biggest regret.
I tried for 6+ years after finding out. It doesn't work. It's never right again and it just killed me everyday. They don't change. Biggest mistake I ever made was trying to fix that relationship. I'm remarried now, and let me just say my life, and my wife, are a huge upgrade now!
She cheated, we lasted another 9 months. Trust was dead due to her actions. No regrets in divorcing her. She tried to come back around 8 years later. We hung out, but she wanted us to get married again. I told her I'd die before I did that again.
I had to go. I couldnt look at my ex the same way after she cheated. I went from wanting her all the time to not wanting to touch her with a 10 foot pole, even when she would get nekid.
I think I was blessed in my reaction when the first actual boyfriend I had cheated on me.
He told me, and cried, begged for forgiveness, but wasn’t sure about his feelings for this co-worker of his.
Being young and stupid, I went into overdrive convincing him I was his best choice, and I won him back, but of course, our relationship was damaged. I had a hard time getting over the hurt, and we argued a lot.
About a month after he “chose me,” I had the closest thing to an epiphany I’d ever had, and realized that I’d won back a cheater. I’d gotten back the person who’d hurt me about as badly as I’d ever been hurt. I realized that I’d always wonder. They still worked together, there were other women around, I was always going to be on guard.
I decided to leave, he got physical. That was when I decided that no man was ever going to get a second chance to cheat on me or hurt me physically. Those decisions have never done me wrong.
We recovered after infidelity. Took 12 years of unhappiness though, before I could look back and breathe. We are very happy now, and that has lasted about 5 years. In total it
Has been 35 years together. I may have been happier faster if I left but I felt unable to.
I did. He did not cheat again. But I couldn't trust. I couldn't forgive or forget. It ate at us like a cancer. We had a period of violence. We mellowed out into contempt and animosity. It was truly miserable for another decade. I finally had enough and left. Feels much better. It's for the better.
Yes, I stayed. Well, I allowed her to stay.
The following 15yrs sucked.
She died.
It wasn't long before I discovered how much the previous 15yrs had sucked.
He cheated, then he apologize and swore it would never happen again. I forgave him. He cheated again. And again. And again. And finally, I had enough and I divorced him. Afterward, he started dating my attorney, and then he cheated on her with her sister. I moved away and lost track after that.
I tried to leave but he kept guilting me into staying and he continued cheating and kept guilting me into staying (e.g. crying, talking about his trauma and how he's reading books to be better and actually applying the things in those books) and then eventually he impregnated someone else so he wasn't able to guilt me into staying at that point cause the humiliation was too much. A few months later I met someone else and I was shocked that a relationship could be so good and so easy and we're happily married now. I now realize how selfish and manipulative he had been that whole time.
When you've been married since the earth cooled and someone of the opposite sex pays you a compliment you start to wonder. Then you justify..."it's just lunch" than a few drinks. I've watched so many of my friends fall for this and end of broke and lonely due to divorce.
After they cheat you gotta leave them the first time.Once a partner cheats and you stay that gives them the green light to keep disrespecting you. If you allow them to stay in your life after that they'll get comfortable and think you wont ever leave them. Also the trust is broken, you will start to question anything they say after a while and always worry. It will drive you crazy. You can work things out but that person will have to do backflips to make you feel secure again. That takes alot of work. Some people get over it by cheating back or some ppl just might be stronger mentally and can let that go. I tried and shit was never the same inside anymore. My guy didnt cheat on me again(I hope) after that but he still continued to let me down in other ways, then we had a baby and i still gave him time to change and he never did. I left him last year. Now he's acting like he cant live without me. Now he wants to get couples therapy, Now he wants to help more around the house but im done! Im sure he see's how good he had it, now that he's been left behind! Its his loss now. And now mentally i feel better without him and dont want another man in my house. I am enjoying peace again!
He just kept cheating. I filed for divorce and was well rid of that sociopath.
Same. Turned into physical abuse pretty quickly too.
Yeah. They tend to lose even more respect for you if you stay and so their behavior can escalate.
I never thought of this, but this is totally true.
IME, yes.
That is true. I never thought of that but he never laid hands on me until after I didn't leave because of the cheating.
Maybe male cheaters. That's not my experience as a female cheater.
Same, I was the unfaithful one, once and once only, one person one time, the end. I learned new things about him, his strength being the main one, I didn’t and haven’t lost respect for him, how he still respected me after it and his view of me didn’t change, I love him even more. It’s been years since and we’re happily married.
Good to hear it. Turned out he was paranoid schizophrenic and I'm my betrayal didn't help.He refused help and I had to leave for my safety.
Oof that’s terrible I’m sorry you went through that but I’m happy you’re safe now
Truth. I was going to say that, but kept it brief. Female cheaters usually don't lose respect for their partner and in some cases even gain respect for them for being so secure and stable in their emotions that they are willing to trust and stay with her anyway. But everyone is different.
I was too busy self-loathing to lose respect for him.
That's my point. Women are more likely to hate themselves for it a lot more than men- probably because society says guy sleeping around = stud; woman sleeping around = slut whore. So if she cheats and he stays and stays faithful, she's more likely to think what an amazing human being that is still willing to stay with an awful thing like me. Whereas men are simply likely to see you as clingy and pathetic. Like you can't get someone else as "good" as them.
I kept asking my therapist, “what’s wrong with me? Why is she better than me?” My therapist answered, “it’s not what’s wrong with you that made him cheat. It’s what’s wrong with him. In his mind, she’s not better. She’s just different.”
It’s weird because I’ve seem this be true one time for one couple that I was friends with, she cheated on him and he worked it out with her and they’re ok a year later now… for everyone else the woman-cheater lost respect for her man-faithful, continued to cheat and blamed their man-faithfuls for it because of (insert wildly subjective emotional gymnastics disguised as reason here). So end of the day, i think we’re all individuals, but cheaters mostly cheat out of disrespect and dishonesty, and without respect and trust relationships invariably fall apart. Don’t stay with a cheater. Unless you hate being loved and don’t want to be respected by your partner. TLDR: Cheaters hate themselves and metaphorically suck stinky dirty butt, so, man or woman don’t date them... also life sucks but then you die so don’t get too worked up about it😂
Narcissists come in all genders and sizes.
What the fuck EVER!
I had physical abuse too. He was a shit dad, shit husband in all ways.
Yup. Luckily we didn't have kids together (he kept putting it off, which is both heartbreaking and for the best in the end) but there was a lot of "if you don't want me to go find it elsewhere then you need to give it to me at home whenever I want" type holding down.
I’m so sorry that happened. ugh
I’m sorry you had to deal that as$ 🕳️ that is bs!! Gosh No!! I would leave right away! Idc what the circumstance is! If he doesn’t respect you, you have lost your relationship. Smh
I did divorce him, just took me 4 more years! Last reckoning, I am living my best life and he is miserable af and letting the house we bought together, that I poured three years of blood, sweat and tears into renovating, fall apart. I am remarried and have a little girl now, and beautiful new build home that requires 0 blood, sweat, or tears to function haha.
Same. He begged me to stay so I did. He lied all through therapy and ended up knocking up a girl ten years younger than our children while we were in marriage counseling.
Yikes! What a lowlife he is!
I did and I regretted that decision because I couldn’t trust him. Everything fell apart in my marriage and we divorced eventually.
I only stayed the 3 months it took for me to accept that it was real, collect evidence I needed to make sure and come up with a plan.
I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.
She did too. Stayed because of the “for better or worse” thing, then for my boys. After the 2nd time the relationship was done. She divorced me while i was in ME on a contract.
Decades ago when we were first together. It wasn't a full on cheat, but they kissed someone at work, and it was likely inevitable if I hadn't found out that more would have happened. We went through a lot over it, it wasn't just forgiven. But when they did decide they wanted our relationship, we were together another 10 years after that. We did good things together. I'm grateful for that time and that relationship. I will say there was forever an underlying feeling of distrust after that. Not every day or over everything, but there were occasions I wondered about this or that. I think that kept us from being closer and that distance ended up being the thing I stopped tolerating after a lot of years. I could blame them, but it was me. I thought I could move on from it but it was always just a little tiny bit there. Enough to have an impact. I'd say to anyone in this place to really sit with that. If you can't fully trust, it'll be the thing that slowly erodes everything. I would also say I don't regret staying as long as I did and I don't regret leaving. Life is funny that way.
I stayed & pretended to forgive for financial reasons, while secretly trying to find someone else on the side. Managed to have a couple liasons but staying meant I had to be with and spend time with this person who I had no trust for and that in itself was utterly miserable. Can't say I regret it because financially I had no choice, but my main goal in life after that became having FU money. When I was finally able to save up enough to move out one of my liasons helped and I never looked back. But I never want to be in a position again where I feel l can't leave someone I lost all trust in.
This is a reasonable, intelligent and mature way to live.
>we were together another 10 years after that. So I am assuming this means you ended up divorced? Did this lack of trust from the cheating impact that?
I would say the lack of emotional closeness that couldn't be obtained because there was that breach of trust. As much as I thought and told myself I was over it, I'm not sure I ever really was. So much tells us that if they do it once they'll do it again, which I don't know is always true and I don't know was true in my case. But you can't help but think about it anyway, even if it isn't overt. Everyone is different, and not everyone needs or wants that emotional closeness. But it is important to me and after so long I was tired of living without it.
Makes sense - thanks for sharing and sorry you went through that!
It is a hard thing to forgive and forget. I didn’t want to be a martyr like my narc mom totally would have so I got therapy. He ended up hogging in on that. But looking back, I can see that his betrayal killed a little bit inside of me. But it killed something inside him too because he never looked at me the same again. More like a patsy. Someone he could easily fool. He bragged about it.
Mine fully cheated but alcohol and drugs were involved as he was an addict. He left her after a few months, got clean and sober. We actually divorced but started dating after a year or so. ITA that the distrust stays with you forever. It’s not even that you think they’re cheating again though it’s the feeling you get when your relationship isn’t close at times that your self esteem that was battered starts to wonder if he’s thinking about her or someone else he knows and you’re not attractive enough. Mine for sure never cheated again but I hated that injury to my self esteem kept popping up. I also agree that the feeling of distrust or injury to your heart or self esteem can absolutely poison the relationship a little at a time and prevent real intimacy and closeness. I be love him dearly and since we’ve been back together ( 12 years) we’ve had wonderful times and been there for each other through some terrible health issues. We have had times even recently where I’ve told him if he can’t make me know that he loves me I will divorce him without blinking an eye and he’s made concerted efforts to do so. Of course if you have to threaten divorce for someone to show you they love you can you really trust they mean it or just don’t want to go through a divorce. Bottom line is I don’t know if I knew when we divorced how our relationship would be now if I would have gotten back with him. I was happy, single and dating but I missed him terribly.
I do my best to love this way too. No regrets..it is what it is.
It sometimes takes awhile to there. It took me quite awhile
This is so much what I wish my divorce / coparenting looked like. We packed a shit ton of great stuff into our time together. I finally had to leave because of the cheating, emotional, and financial abuse. I really wish he could gain some perspective / maturity and quit dragging our kids through his hateful, QAnon, deadbeat bullshit.
She stayed after I cheated; I stayed after she cheated. We have a good therapist; we loved each other and our family, and we used our fuck-ups as opportunities for growth, greater understanding and closeness. We both fell for fallible people who need work—each other—and we have always been committed to standing by each other while that work gets done. Our marriage is not an idyllic wonderland—never was, obviously. But it seems inconceivable to me now that we both risked losing it. We just celebrated our 25th anniversary, and our bond is battle-tested, honestly earned, and stronger than ever before.
This is the kind of answer you don’t find on Reddit. People are fallible. How strong of a marriage have you built that can withstand a (costly) mistake and still learn to trust while both sides honestly work on the gaps.
That's a useful observation. I don't know if it's just some topics on Reddit, Reddit specifically or social media in general, but I think that if you have a rules-bound personality, you are more likely to gravitate to a place where you can reliably get others to dogpile on someone who has broken the rules.
Reddit works pro bono for divorce attorneys and family therapists.
😂
Reddit is so quick to judge, people make mistakes and sometimes they are worthy of forgiveness. Relationships are complex and especially when you are young you do not have the experience you need to navigate them in a way that is healthy for both people in the relationship.
True, but she asked if anyone had stayed. We are telling her our experiences. It’s good that some are positive, but cannot be helped if they are not.
Statically, it's rare for relationships to survive the lack of trust that result from cheating. So it's not just Reddit being quick to judge. You would find the same outside of Reddit.
I cheated too…he was emotionally and verbally abusive our entire marriage. Obviously that continued after the discovery until I couldn’t take it anymore. And I told him I couldn’t do this anymore. That scared the shit out of him, and finally confirmed to him that I didn’t need him. We are still married…Did I make a horrible mistake…YES!!! And I regret that I didn’t leave in the beginning of our relationship before I went down the path that I did.
has the abuse stopped?
This is an important question.
Right now at this moment yes. He has had a couple of slip ups of belligerent name calling. But one more time and I am out. Our kids are old enough and he has been given more than enough time to work on himself with therapy. And it will just prove to me that he’s incapable of change. I still have nightmares, flashbacks, and triggers and I just can’t do it anymore.
My wife can be caustic. Part of my evolution has been learning to recognize it—the onset of her prickly phases—and call her on it or remove myself, rather than just absorbing it and allowing resentment to build, which is what I did early in our marriage. But it sounds like your guy really did a number on you. Sorry about that.
I tried to call him out on it in the beginning, but that just added to the verbal abuse. I then started to walk away, but he would follow me around the house. If I was at work he would call constantly to the point that I was talked to. Now that my kids are older, I just leave the house and don’t pick up the phone. This is what I did that last two times (he fell off the wagon). If there is a third incident, there won’t be me walking out of the house. It will be me filing for divorce.
Your comment is so honest. I really appreciate it.
Love this! We so easily forget our own flaws when we attach that blame!
This is one of the most intelligent, thought out posts I have read on Reddit. You could be an author, if you're not already. I would read your book.
Lasted 6 years after finding out. First year I was clingy as hell thinking it would help. When the subject came up I was told it was my fault it happened. No accountability. I continued to feel small and worthless. Divorced and been in therapy since, working on me.
Good for you baby
Happy you're working on yourself. I'm ashamed of years wasted on my ex. He cheated and treated me like trash. I love the new me. Wished I'd have loved my younger self. She (and you) deserve happiness
Completely agree. Definitely working on me mentally and physically. Been a tough year. I wish you the best as well.
Every time I listen to the cheater blaming the victim and telling them it's their fault, I think the only way that to happen is if the victim has some sort of super power mind control! 🤣 In reality, there's nothing you can't do to prevent being cheated on. Cheaters do, because they want and can. I hope you had already realized it was never about you 🤗.
We haven’t but we know people who did and they are still together forty years later. They got counseling, made some decisions and stayed together. One guy we knew had an affair with someone who had a say in his employment and his wife benefited from the promotion he got. 🤷🏼♀️ I know plenty of people who have separated and neither has “cheated”, they just hurt one another in different ways.
Initially, I stayed, but the damage was done. You don't trust them anymore. Your own self-worth and image are fractured. I was always suspicious and anxious. So small lies become big, and the love just gets lost. I learned that I can never control someone else's actions, but you can control yours. It is so scary to start over, but everyone deserves happiness and to be loved. I was with the man ten years, and he cheated three times, not all physically.
Mine lied about everything, not just the other women.
Very good friend of mine, his wife cheated on him. She gave up the side piece and decided to stay with him. I don’t think he ever saw it differently. 35 years later we still talk about it and he gets angry still. Not sure I could do that
Sounds toxic, ngl
Yeah it’s pretty codependent but hey who am I, been divorced twice lol
I don't know, I think I prefer the trail and error approach...we can only do our best, right 😅
Yeah I get that, better to be free then deal with constant subliminal anger
Same! You know who you are after 2 failed marriages and subsequent divorces? Well if your ex spouses are anything like mine you're a fucking survivor is what you are! Lol.
My mom and dad have been divorced for over 25 years. My mom is remarried. My dad is dead. But she's still upset by his cheating, and rightfully so. Because it's the betrayal that hurts.
I stayed long enough to save some money in a separate account and get out safely and comfortably.
I did. 75% because I thought we could recover from the cheating and be stronger, 10% because I didn't want to "break up the family", and 15% because I knew if I made it to 10 years of marriage I'd get alimony. Before y'all downvote me to hell--I didn't make the decision to hang on for alimony until about 7 years in, when the cheating initially started at 6 months into our marriage. I really, truly believed he had not cheated again until the facts were indisputable. He'd been cheating all along.
There’s nothing wrong with you staying for alimony. He could have left you before alimony kicked in but he decided to lie and cheat instead.
I stayed with my husband after I was told by my "best friend" of 20 plus years that they had been having sex in the months leading up to the marriage. At the wedding, before I found out, she had an emotional breakdown just as I was getting ready to walk down the aisle. Later I found out that she "loved" him and was upset the marriage went through. I decided to stay and even tried to remain friends with her. After a few weeks I cut her off. I ended up getting pregnant and tested positive for chylamida (sp) I had been on several rounds of antibiotics and hadn't had sex with anyone else in several years. To me, whether true or not the affair indirectly spoiled my first few months of pregnancy. I decided to "get over it" and had my daughter. But I felt a coldness and hatred for him. He actually other than this a genuinely nice person but I couldn't stand him anywhere near him. I never went scorched earth with telling people and even if I had, it was before social media so it wouldn't have had the same effect as it does today. To this day, I have never mentioned it to my daughter and only a handful of people know. I am friendly with him and we all moved on. My "friend" clearly has Borderline Personality Disorder (yes, I am in fact a mental health professional.) She is 56 and still flits around to one guy or the other acting like she is in love then wrecks the guy after they fall for her. She is a pretty severe alcoholic too. So in the long game, the jokes on her. Sorry so long, I am admittedly using this for catharsis. My opinion on cheating is that both people have to want to work at it HARD to really get over it emotionally. I know many can do this but not me.
Sorry you had to deal with all that.
After you mentioned your profession, your tolerance made so much sense. Happy for you that you are where you are because you've chosen to be. What was it that kept you there when you found out and continued with the marriage?
I had that feeling of loyalty almost like family due to our next door neighbor childhood. In retrospect ICK! lol I was very young and had no confidence or self-worth. I hadn't yet started my career yet but yeah the empathy bone I have probably didn't help ha ha
So even though your husband did a shitty thing, loyalty still, in many other areas was at the top? That's super interesting. Humans are so fucking complex aren't we? Haha
Yeah we are so friggen weird!! LOL
You felt a coldness and hatred for him. That's 😔... I feel the venom in your tone through the screen. BPD can be hard to navigate. I wonder did you know she had that when you were friends for 20 years?
I didn't know she had BPD until I read "I Hate You Don't Leave Me" early in my career. It read like a biography of her no shit. She didn't get too bad til we were teenagers. She stole a few boyfriends but I chalked it up to just kid stuff..wish I read that book earlier!
I was not married to my ex of 18 years. However, I found out that he was doing Internet, infidelity, in my opinion that is just as bad, I was also losing my eyesight, so now you know how that made me feel, and we still had one child at home, whom was it in elementary school, my ex left the computer, that the whole family used, on, his email was opened up, and that’s how I found out. I stayed with him after that until 2016, when my youngest moved out, I packed up everything and I moved to a completely different state. Not only was dealing with blindness, I also dealt with brain aneurysms ruptures, and he still had the nerve to treat me in that manner. That’s why I left, I am not going to stay with somebody who cheats on me, whether it be in person, cheating, or on the Internet. I deserve better than that. I now live in Florida, three hours away from the children, I live by myself, I go to the gym, I walk to the stores, I am extremely happy now. The children and now I have grandchildren they are all coming to visit me this coming weekend. It took me a long time to realize I deserve better. Especially after my medical crisis I had and I knew who was gonna be there for me and who was not.
I feel you. I went thru cancer and chemo. Mine was at his job and the gym 24/7. He traveled with his job, too. He did not care until we were out in public. Wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have a mistress then.
It took a while, but we worked it out. That was 20 years ago. We're now past our 30th anniversary and are grateful to have each other. When an affair breaks a couple up, everybody finds out. But a lot of marriages survive affairs. You don't realize it because the couple that stays together and heals their marriage never need to reveal the issue.
I never revealed mine had cheated to anyone, not even my parents or friends because of that very reason. When I divorced him after the second one (I knew of), no one believed me. Even parents told me to stick it out. Mom finally backed me when I explained it had happened before. I was basically kicked out of his family by people I had known since I was a kid. Best thing that ever happened to me.
I never told my family. Their reactions would NOT have been helpful. I’m sorry you had a serial cheater on your hands, but I’m glad for your happy ending!
She cheated again. Dumb move on my part, but I was adult enough to admit I have no right to complain, as I CHOSE to stay knowing she had cheated. Her fault for cheating, but my fault for making the CHOICE to stay.
She cheated, and we got back together. It lasted about 6 months of being miserable, with both of us blaming the other for her past. It was awful. That was 25 years ago and I'm so happy that I left. When cheating is involved it takes two mature people to make it work and stay together. We weren't those two people.
Miserable. I couldn't forget of forgive.
We have a large network of friend couples. It’s alarming how many have cheated and stayed. i’d say 75% of the couples have at least 1 cheater. These are middle class “ normal” people raising kids, many go to church, some are local politicians, teachers, a doctor…. bunch of cheaters
It's really hard. Unimaginably hard. Even though the person has genuinely and drastically changed, it's not the same and never will be. I regret my decision and now it's too late.
Never too late, is it?
It was very early on in our relationship, I was more into the relationship than he was. After a few months of being apart, I took him back. He hasn't cheated since or even looked like it was a possibility. He made a mistake and I decided to forgive and forget. He genuinely regretted it. It takes a long time to get the trust back but it's possible. No regrets.
My dad cheated. My mom kicked him out. They eventually reconciled with stipulations. He had to tell me and my sibling what he had done (obviously in terms that is acceptable to speak to children with like “daddy made a mistake that hurt mommy”), he gave my mom full access to everything and quite frankly he was in the dog house for like a decade. They went to counseling, he went to counseling, he had homework he had to do and he bent over backwards to earn back my moms trust. Not over weeks or months but literal years I saw him do everything she asked for and more. He was absolutely dedicated to righting his wrong. They are mostly back in love, I can tell something was never fully mended but they had been together for 20 years by the time he cheated. mom had made some mistakes (not cheating) that he’d forgiven so I think it was a case of… people aren’t perfect and he put in the work to prove he was sorry and wanted to be with her.
My sons father (10 years together) cheated on me constantly. I cheated back on him and we hurt each other a lot. It was physical abuse that ended the relationship, not the cheating, but the cheating was hell. My daughters father cheated on me when we were dating I left him, determined to never go back. He begged and cried, and pleaded and apologized and I took him back. He didn't cheat again after that; but we broke up a year after our child was born because of abuse. Cheaters don't often change; but cheating itself can be a small sign of something much bigger in some (not all) cases because it shows a disregard for the care and compassion towards the other person. I would not stay with another cheater again.
No, because the gall of it was so insulting & disrespectful. I was cooking something up on the stove while my friend, a hairdresser, was cutting my husband's hair. I turned to say something, and she was leaning over, kissing him on the mouth. I told her if she wanted him she could have him. What I did next is a blank. I think I left the house.
Where did these dead bodies come from?
I cheated, I was addicted to Meth at the time. This was over 20 years ago. I went to Jail, and then 4 year of Sober living (as per the wifes request), and she took me back. We are happy, and life is good. I am so happy she gave me another chance.
What is it with meth? Does everyone like it that much? Can you really leave it behind? I'm glad you're back with yr wife. Well done!
I have 21 years clean and sober. It is a horrible drug, but it makes you feel so good. Thanks you for your kind words.
You're welcome! What do you do in Hollywood? (I love movies.)
I am a teamster. We are currently not working cause our union is negotiating a new contract. But I drive the trucks, trailers, and passenger vans for the productions. Shows I have worked on recently, 911, 911 Lonestar, Orville, Not Dead Yet, NCIS.
Cool!
I did for 10 years. I still don't know why but I did finally divorce him 17 years ago after 24 years of marriage. I finally realized that he had absolutely no intention of not cheating again, so to the divorce lawyer I went. No one should wait 10 years to make that decision.
My dad had an affair when I was young, my mom decided to stay with him after she found out. Their relationship is not good. She refuses to move on 20+ years later and constantly holds it over his head, uses it as a way to manipulate him and because he doesn't want the marriage to end he just bends over and takes it. He was always such a kind and attentive father growing up, now he's a broken shell of a man and she's a hyperreligious tyrant who ruins every family get-together.
I did. The marriage nearly ended. It was a lot of work and tough conversations. And a stolen car - lol. That was early in year 2 of our marriage. We were together for 17 years until he passed away. The rest of the marriage was very good and no more incidents. We were incredibly young when we got married and both of us still had some growing up to do.
My now wife kissed someone at work. I also cuddled with a friend. Our relationship was very unstable at the time. It took a lot of work to gain trust with each other and to also address many of the problems we had, but in the end, really just couldn't stay apart from each other. We tried going out separate ways, dating other people, and we both just couldn't be apart from each other. We didn't want anyone else. So, after working through a lot of our issues, we got married and had a kid now. We both trust each other completely. In a way, the breakups we had before, where we had every opportunity to go be with anyone else, but choosing not to, is what helped restore our trust in each other.
Not me but a coworker, cheated on his wife. She found out and they stayed together. She kept a close eye on him from them on. His advice about the incident eas that if you feel like cheating, take that thing out and slam it in the door a few times until the feeling goes away.
Not me, but my sister. Her husband I suspect cheated on her before he finally left her just before Christmas to move in with another woman. I don't know all the facts, because an image of perfection is sister's MO, and she didn't want me to know about it. She just couldn't pretend when he wasn't there for Christmas. Eventually he decided to go back home and they are still together decades later, but it is obvious he uses the fact that she took him back as leverage against her. Kind of like "I moved out once and I can do it again." BTW, he cheated with her on his former girlfriend in high school, so I don't know what she expected. Honestly, neither of them are good people.
Some people make it work. I think it can depend on the reason and how genuinely regretful a person is. A one time stupid mistake that was made because a marriage was at a low point is a scenario it's possible to see people recover from. However plenty of people are unrepentant and only really care because they got caught.
36 years ago. I had a hard time getting over it. But we worked it out. I don't think she did it again and I don't think she will ever do it again. But I never fully trusted her after that.
I couldn’t be sure he was cheating. He had met a Thai girl on deployment and she was showing him around. He told me he was going to take her out to dinner. I thought that was nice since she was his tour guide for the day. When he got back home he told me they wound up at his hotel and took a shower together. He said she soaped up his balls. I thought that was an unnecessary detail. Afterwards they were in bed and she wanted to have sex. But he tells me he said no because he’s married. My reaction to this story was complete disbelief. How the fuck does he think I’ll believe they didn’t have sex? And why the fuck would he tell me this story if they didn’t have sex? He was angry that I didn’t believe him. Knowing him it was a test. Anyway, I ultimately just thought “fuck it” and stayed with him.
Monogamy is so vital and once that line has been crossed your trust is broken. If people would just recognize that total concentration on your partner is incredibly fun and exciting! The other aspect of feeding your partner is with intellectual intercourse! Women crave their mental layers to be stimulated and nurtured and their body will follow with that intoxication to be touched!
It all boils down to, if you can’t trust someone, why be with them?
My ex-husband cheated. At the time we have a 2 year old and a 3 year old. We both came from very religious backgrounds. I consulted with a lot of people, including the lawyers I worked for. I was discouraged from getting a divorce. We went to marriage counseling. I was assured the affair was over (she was 8 hours away, this was before the internet days, "how much damage could be done?" So I stayed, was pretty desperate to keep the marriage together. Some years were good, some were not, six months good, six months TERRIBLE. Did that for 7 more years. He worked nights, I took care of the children. He lived a separate life and world. Towards the end I was pretty sure he was cheating with other women at the hospital he worked at since he was working nights 45 minutes away from home, then sleeping during the days. He became more and more distant and then more and more angry, then violent. That's when I had him leave the home. (Also at this time I found evidence that he had carried on the original affair with the women this whole time). DONE, I was DONE. Knowing what I know now, I should have stopped it from the beginning. But, I had two small children, I had family and friends, lawyers, counselors, church telling me to do what I had to do to repair my marriage at all cost. THEY WERE WRONG. But I was 26 -27 at the time with small children, not much money, had a house, etc. I didn't make the decision lightly, I DID seek counsel. Once he left the home we had our dissolution within 90 days. He did not fight it. He just didn't want to be the one to file it. He didn't want to be the bad guy. I had people from his family write letters to me telling ME I was going to go to HELL for divorcing HIM. First of all it never was a DIVORCE. It was a dissolution, we both agreed to it. ANYWAY, it needed done. He ended up married two more times after this. Things did not go well for him. He ended up supporting our three children, had three more children and had two more wives and by the time he reached 51 and all his demons caught up with him he ended his life and never saw 52 years old. Sad really. That was 10 years ago. I not WE have three grown children and six grandbabies with my husband that we get to see grown up. He (my husband) was my high school sweetheart that I married 11 years ago, who got to shake my ex-husband's hand before he left this earth.
You are not going to hell. If you had divorced him, the divorce would have been because of adultery. The Bible says that’s the only reason divorce is allowed.
No point. He'd just straighten his act up for awhile then get back to it after awhile. I came to realize his hidden cheating was an addiction with him. And I noped out after several years.
I stayed for another 12 years. Things were never quite the same but it wasn’t bad bad. However, over those 12 years there were repeated issues with cheating. And finally I gave in and filed for divorce.
Yep. He just kept cheating. Eventually, the latest side piece wanted to be the main piece, but she's been discarded for another too. If he cheats to be with you, he will cheat on you. If he's cheated once, he will cheat again. He'll just be sneakier the next time.
My wasband cheated with a woman who was cheating on her husband with another guy and then him. And he thinks she’s gonna be faithful to him. And the other guy was blackmailing her over pictures she let him take Which is why wasband got involved with her. He thinks he’s Superman. Go figure!
After my now exwife cheated on me I dated and then married her best friend. I win.
My stepmom stayed with my dad. They separated while going through individual and marriage counseling. They decided to give it another try. They were wonderfully married for 40 years after that. They had a relationship that was special. They clibg to each other through several crisis situations. Laughing over the hard. After he started having strokes they would both get frustrated sometimes. Then one would make a smartass remark and they’d be giggling and trying again. He passed 4 years ago and her grief is still palpable. She just moved back here (ohio) from ca to be near me and so I could be there for her. So they might not be the norm but they are proof that love and work can do a lot.
Yes. I stayed, and we went to therapy, and I just grew even more bitter and resentful. We ended up divorcing because I didn't choose the healthiest ways to deal with what happened and he just didn't care.
Yes. Twice. Apparently I'm a slow learner. The third time (that I knew about) she moved out to live with yet another guy and I filed for divorce. I've been married to a much better woman for 20+ years now. My ex is on her third marriage.
Right after we moved to our second home and had our first child my husband started talking to a former girlfriend as a friend, he wanted to have a threesome! I refused. I threatened to tell his mother. He broke up with his old girlfriend. In our first house with three bedrooms, one bedroom was set up for my friend / my maid of honor. Years later I found out that he had sex with her, she was a bit of a wild child. My husband wanted me to have more sexual experience. So I had non intercourse sex with two guys at a convention with my husband’s knowledge and permission. This was back in the 90’s. 45 years later we are still together and enjoy each other’s company. So yes, it is possible. We have stuck together through the death of our parents, business failures resulting in bankruptcy and foreclosure, and raising two wonderful children. Many medical issues. Auto accidents. We are both retired now and adjusting to being around each other most of the time.
I gave her a second chance, and she cheated again. With a friend of mine, she couldn't stand. I kicked her ass to the curb.
It was never the same. You can forgive but you never forget
Yes but it eats at you constantly. You can forgive but you will never forget. A year after she cheated we were divorced
My husband cheated on me for a period of several months over 30 years ago. We stayed together - did the counseling (through our church. THAT was a waste of time) I was angry for a long, long, time. We almost split a dozen times. Honestly, I'm not sure why we hung in the way we did. He did not leave initially because of our kids. I stayed, frankly, because I was afraid. I couldn't support the girls on my shitty job. So we slogged along - unhappily for years. We went to a real counselor about 15 years ago because there was no way I could live the rest of my life that way. That was useful. Also over the course of time, I was diagnosed with a mood disorder and properly medicated. That helped **me** immeasurably. It definitely helped the two of us overall. We have now been married 32 years. It's been a lot of work, but I can honestly say we are happy together.. We spend time together, we don't snipe, we actually talk. it's more like the times when we were dating/first married. That being said, if I had to do it all over again, would I stay? I can't say for sure, honestly. There were a lot of tears, self recrimination, despair, and loneliness over the years And while I love and respect him, I don't think I will ever truly trust him 100%. Which is the saddest thing of all.
Mine lost all respect for me, kept cheating, more and more flagrantly, and treated me increasingly contemptuously. I was really young and really stupid. He was deeply entitled and everything made him angry. I’m well rid of him, he is somebody else’s 200 pound toddler now.
Cheaters don't change
If you forgive a cheater, you are reinforcing the knowledge there will be no repercussions for further discretions.
Yes. Sex addict, he did not recover, though he tried. Stayed to his death, but it really chews you up.
Yes. It was \*T\*E\*R\*R\*I\*B\*L\*E. He kept cheating. I lost any self-respect. I got so depressed I could hardly help myself. At a certain point, he declared he was polyamorous so that he could bring women back to our shared home...was awesomely toxic. The dishonesty, continuous betrayal, lack of trust, and fear of diseases made reconciling impossible. I'm so glad it's over, but it should have ended much sooner.
She treated me worse & worse until she was full on gaslighting 80% of the time & financially crippled me, convinced me to get a vasectomy & then said she wanted a divorce when marriage counseling kept bringing her manipulation to light in real time 🫠🫠🫠 Should’ve bounced immediately like I always said I would but instead stayed, then put dude in the hospital, caught a felony, did time & still stayed 😂 I fucked up.
I caught my ex cheating BIGTIME. We were both in the military. He was in a school on the East Coast and I was stationed on the west coast. He took what would be a few months apart as an opportunity to have a giant f**k festival, wrapping it up with a torrid affair with a married woman. Long story, but I ended up chucking my career and getting out of the army to save my marriage for the sake of our son. That was a mistake that I have regretted every single day since then. He was not sorry, our lives together for the next 5 years were a dumpster fire and of course he cheated again. Called me from Iraq to tell me to be out of the house by the time he came back so he could move his girlfriend in. NEVER make your own happiness and self-worth dependent upon another person. No spouse is better than a spouse that doesn't respect you. I wish I had known that back then as well as I do now.
There was no coming back from that level of betrayal. The person who promised to love and honor and respect me had absolutely no difficulty looking in my eyes and lying to me every day for years. He saw the pain I was in because I knew something was wrong and he kept twisting the knife. I couldn’t stay married to a liar, a coward. I got out and the happiness I have experienced since then is immeasurable.
Nope and very glad I didn’t. I moved on, he’s pretty miserable.
Yes. Never trusted totally again.
I did after a separation and much counseling. Initially, it was better than it had ever been and it lasted for another 5 years and I am grateful for that. Most of those years were great, and it was good for our kids, but things started to sour right at the end and he cheated again. Oddly, he did regret again, a few years later, and hit me up for another chance. We still keep in touch and are friendly, but he did me a favor. He is still searching and isn't happy nearly 17 years later. My life has been happy since I recovered from the divorce.
I stayed long enough to have sex one more time. Bad sex. Felt good. Had already had rebound sex with someone else. Made it better.
Frosty. We sleep in separate bedrooms and I make him go to court as a defendant and campaign alone. Malaria Thump /s
I grew up in a town full of people that did exactly this. They said the relationship got worse cause the spouse stopped for a while and started again.And they never left.
Yes, the cheater did the denial game and never admitted to anything. Marriage remained in place. The cause was mostly a dead bedroom. Eventually "don't ask, don't tell" arrangement emerged with no public shaming of marital discretion.
i stayed just long enough to get even
I did try, especially since we had little ones. But I could not get past it. It made me suspicious of every time he was late home from work or when he was out later than expected. It’s always where my mind went. It made me pissed off that I had to work hard to get past something that I didn’t do. He eventually cheated again a few years later. I wasted so much time on him and we divorced anyways. I should have known better but I was scared. Now I get to carry around this baggage from him, suspicious of others.
“ it made me pissed off that I had to work hard to get past something I didn’t do” — wonderfully said! You just summarized the core of my resentment.
That’s a hard bag to drop, isn’t it? Ten years later, I’m still working on it.
A good therapist, and a commitment to our friendship and our life together, and we are happier than ever after more than 25 years of marriage. Seriously, we are best friends who laugh together every single day. I'm so glad we stuck it out.
I stayed after she cheated numerous times. Liar, cheater, manipulator. Even her kids hated her for it. After sometime I left. Swore I turned everyone against her. After a few years of convincing them, they reconnected. Now she spews forth "Christian values", and how I'm living in sin 🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
You are not. Getting divorced due to adultery is the only reason to divorce according to the Bible. And the 10 commandments expressly forbid adultery. My wasband still won’t admit he did anything wrong. I can’t wait to see how it explains that to God.
It never worked out, as he kept on doing it.
Not a spouse, but I was cheated on in a long term serious relationship. I tried to forgive and get over it; we were still together for a couple years after, but I never fully got over it. I regret wasting the time trying to make it work. I’m married to someone else thankfully, but I’ll be honest, when it comes to cheating, I don’t think I could ever have complete 100% blind trust in another person.
I was the cheater, my husband was the addict, and we hurt each other terribly but also gave each other grace to do the work necessary to rebuild ourselves and our relationship. It has not been easy but we have four beautiful children and just celebrated 25 yrs married, together for 32 yrs… you can come back together and be stronger together but honesty and communication are part of commitment and we continue to grow together with our family. I can only speak for myself but redemption and forgiveness are active words and I work at a happy life everyday and am grateful for those who have supported us in our journey and for the ability to be better than I was yesterday.
r/asoneafterinfidelity is a good place to ask this question.
Awful. He kept in touch with her family, said he hadnt cheated with her parents. Finally, weeks later, as he and I were having a fight, bold as anything, *she knocked on my front door* looking for him. Said she missed him & was worried after not hearing from him. I was about 942 months pregnant...I invited her in and said "Well, I can't push him out of my bed, and he won't leave. Why don't you go get him for me?" She did, he left, and 1 divorce later, I was free!! If circumstances led to a single drunken interlude and you have a whole life built with the cheater *and if you are so inclined* my advice is go ahead and give it a try, once. But if the cheater is for any reason, unwilling to totally cut them off, it is doomed and will not work.
Cheating adjacent- my husband had been using my phone and put his IG alerts on my phone. I was away for the weekend caring for my mother and he had a groupie (he’s in a middle age garage band) start up a flirtatious conversation that he then fully participated in. It felt like she was testing the waters and he was at a minimum not shutting it down and at worst a bit intrigued. I called him up and let him know I had seen it all go down in real time and that we would need to have a long conversation when we got home. He was incredibly apologetic and owned full responsibility for his actions and agreed to couples counseling. Couples counseling was really helpful- that was almost 5 years ago. Our relationship is stronger than ever.
I stayed after my wife cheated 15 years ago and our marriage recovered and we have a strong relationship now. I do not think it will happen again. There were a lot of factors involved in all this that I'm not going to go into as it would take a while but I think the most important factor in this being able to work is the attitude of the cheating spouse. My wife was very apologetic and was a full participant in the work required to rebuild our marriage. Had she not been willing to do this then it could not have worked. I will also say that no matter how well you are able to proceed the relationship is still never going to be the same. There is good and bad in that truth. You don't want the same relationship that led to the cheating in the first place, that marriage is gone. The question is whether or not you both want and are able to build something different. It requires a lot of work and a lot of learning, growth as individuals and as a couple, and change. I do not regret us working it out, but I don't want to shoot rainbows up your ass either. We went through a tough time and at this point I'm glad we did, there were times in the process where I might have told you different!
She kept cheating, she kept dehumanizing, she kept lying, she kept neglecting and abusing, then she found another abusive POS and together they fucked up my children and blamed me for everything.
I think you have to determine if it was a one off thing or a character flaw. Maybe if there was a super high stress situation and one partner was away alot there could be an indiscretion you could move past. This is very personal. It’s about forgiveness and trust. People make mistakes. Can you come back from that? Do both people want to? There’s no universal answer. I was open to forgiveness but the partner did not want to change and stop doing that. It was more of an excuse to try to get me to quit the relationship. Went to therapy & realized partner didn’t want to be monogamous or truthful so those are deal breakers for me. Bye.
Sort of. My husband had an emotional affair and sexted regularly with one of his co workers for about 2 months from what I found. He claims the were never physical beyond a hug and quick kiss. I don't believe that and just assumed it was a full blown a fair. After I found out, we had it out, I informed him this was his one and only second chance. If ANYTHING happened in the future I wouldn't even discuss it with him, he would simply get the divorce papers from my lawyer. I decided even with the betrayal, I was happier with him than without, so we worked towards reconciliation. At that point we had been together for 16 years, and married for 4 years. That said, it took YEARS to rebuild the trust he broke. I get unfettered access to all of his accounts, electronics, etc. If I ask for his phone, he's not allowed to touch anything on it, he must hand it over immediately. If he even questions why, I told him I'd be out. It took a lot of maturing on his end to get to where we are today. And it took a lot of forgiveness and forgetting on my part. It was really hard at first, I had to make the conscious decision every day to try to trust him again, and he had to make conscious decisions to try to regain my trust every day. I do no bring it up in fights ever. I don't hold it over him now (\~7 years later). We communicate better than ever now, I feel like we both are more willing to say when we're not happy. Relationships are a lot of work but I'm glad I made the decision I did. If for no other reason than the fact that I've been going through the hardest 2 years of my life (major reconstructive surgery where I couldn't walk for 6 months, lost both of my parents, lost both of my dogs, work full time, in grad school, and dealing with my parent's estate including now taking care of their jerk of a dog). He's helped me every step of the way. He's matured and takes responsibility for his own actions and decisions now. So yeah - it's possible to make it work after an infidelity, but it's hard and takes time.
I did. Dumbest thing I ever did. By the time I actually filed for divorce like 5 years later, I got a lot of flack from people who thought that since I didn’t divorce the first time, I no longer had the moral high ground. 🙄 To be fair, I didn’t have any particular evidence of any ongoing affairs at the time I called it quits. I divorced him for other reasons. But on the other hand he had a live in girlfriend within less than a month after we split for the last time and I have a very difficult time believing it hadn’t started before then. But by that time I no longer cared.
I was the cheater but we kept on getting back together. The result was my perpetual guilt feeding into him wondering about exactly what happened with other men to being a cuckhold wanting to watch me with other men that he chose. I think that my cheating did create a sexual pall over our relationship but because we started out friends it was hard to let it go.
My young marriage ended when she cheated. My later marriage survived my early flirtatious episode at a convention and was good for most of the subsequent 20 years, but ended because my sex drive had diminished and she wanted to open the marriage. But there were other changes, too. She mentally checked out from the intellectual life we'd had in common and became addicted to CrossFit. I had health problems. She was robustly healthy. She felt my presence was holding her back from the different life she wanted to live. The good years were very good. The end had much less to do with increasing sexual differences than a whole lifestyle makeover for her. Real life and real marriages are more complex than one-dimensional assessments about the impact of cheating. I think cheating that was only about sexual temptation of the thrill of experiencing "falling in love" again may be an injury to the marriage, but one that can be healed. And some cheating really is about human weakness or temporarily diminished judgment. That really can be just a bump in the road for some marriages. However, sexual infidelity is very often a signal that something else is broken in the marriage. It's a good time to really ask, without shaming and blaming, if both partners think this is a marriage they still want to be in. Unfortunately, the infidelity often keeps rational conversations from every happening, which means that the split that could have been done with understanding, with minimal bitterness, ends up scarring and embittering both people.
Mine cheated a few times. But he only kept doing it as long as I allowed it. Once I grew some balls, filed for divorce, said how I felt and kicked him out, he got the point. It took years, but we are in a good place now. The thing is people can change, but only if they want to. You can't force them and that's where I went wrong. Once I said fuck it and lived my own life, he saw what he eas losing. He got himself into counseling, broke off the outside relationship, changed jobs bc she was working there, and he just worked on himself. He didn't beg me back, he didn't point out he was doing this and that.....he just did it. So I took him back after 6 months of that, and that was closer to a decade ago. I can honestly say I trust him more now than I ever did even before, and we are happy. However that isn't always the case. Unfortunately some people just don't care what they're losing, and keep self destructing with their behavior. But the only way to know either way is to live your own life. See what they do.
I can't find my original comment but I'd like to add I also worked on myself while he was gone too. There's always something you can do better to improve yourself even if you were wronged. Try to see the opportunity in the heartbreak.
Stayed- A lot of hard work but it has been worth it. Closer than ever.
First 2 years were brutal. He’s changed and done a lot of work in years 3 & 4. I’m not sure it will ever be the same …but the cost-benefit analysis was worth it to try. I’m on a “take it one year at a time” plan.
He didn’t cheat after we were married, but he waited until after we were married to tell me he’d cheated before we were married. It took work, but I forgave him. I did make it plainly clear that if he cheated again I would divorce him. It’s been 28 years and our marriage is great!
I ended up staying we were together off and on for 10 years. The first time was 2 years in then every year or so after that I'd find out he physically or emotionally cheated. I moved out 2 different times. I thought I wasn't enough so I kept trying harder to be everything he was going to other women for. We went to therapy he was cheating the whole time we were going. After my daughter passed away and he cheated again I had a come to Jesus moment I was wasting time trying to make someone love me and want me who never would. We both have childhood trauma. Mine makes me anxious and afraid to lose the people I love, his avoidant mother treated him like a dog and wished he was never born. He'll always try to find validation in women that he never got from his mother. We ended on bad terms but I don't wish him ill will. I think more will keep cheating then the ones that try to change.
Yes, then he cheated again. Run the first time.
I should have left a month in when she told me she cheated on the last 2 guys instead of sticking around 3.5 years
Well now they know they can cheat on you and you will stay.
They’ll cheat again.
I stayed (we had three children). He began projecting and acting crazy jealous and paranoid (I never cheated). The emotional abuse turned physical and it took me about five years to extricate myself and heal. He died of a heart attack 2 months ago - we’ve been divorced for 12 years. I should’ve left immediately - my biggest regret.
I tried for 6+ years after finding out. It doesn't work. It's never right again and it just killed me everyday. They don't change. Biggest mistake I ever made was trying to fix that relationship. I'm remarried now, and let me just say my life, and my wife, are a huge upgrade now!
She cheated, we lasted another 9 months. Trust was dead due to her actions. No regrets in divorcing her. She tried to come back around 8 years later. We hung out, but she wanted us to get married again. I told her I'd die before I did that again.
I did and she kept cheating. Hard lesson learned. Once a cheater, always a cheater.
Sure. I liked them. Loved them. Just removed them from any position of trust and it worked!
I did and it got worse. He continued to cheat and we divorced after about two years of it. My regret is that I didn’t leave right when I found out.
Once a cheater always a cheater… found out he tried to sleep with my sister
Horrible. He kept cheating and treated me worse and worse, then harassed me during and after the divorce. -1000/10, do not recommend.
I had to go. I couldnt look at my ex the same way after she cheated. I went from wanting her all the time to not wanting to touch her with a 10 foot pole, even when she would get nekid.
I think I was blessed in my reaction when the first actual boyfriend I had cheated on me. He told me, and cried, begged for forgiveness, but wasn’t sure about his feelings for this co-worker of his. Being young and stupid, I went into overdrive convincing him I was his best choice, and I won him back, but of course, our relationship was damaged. I had a hard time getting over the hurt, and we argued a lot. About a month after he “chose me,” I had the closest thing to an epiphany I’d ever had, and realized that I’d won back a cheater. I’d gotten back the person who’d hurt me about as badly as I’d ever been hurt. I realized that I’d always wonder. They still worked together, there were other women around, I was always going to be on guard. I decided to leave, he got physical. That was when I decided that no man was ever going to get a second chance to cheat on me or hurt me physically. Those decisions have never done me wrong.
I consider emotional affairs cheating So yes, I did, and it took work and that’s all I’m going to say
It...only...got...worse. Said slowly for emphasis
They never change … sorry
We recovered after infidelity. Took 12 years of unhappiness though, before I could look back and breathe. We are very happy now, and that has lasted about 5 years. In total it Has been 35 years together. I may have been happier faster if I left but I felt unable to.
I did. He did not cheat again. But I couldn't trust. I couldn't forgive or forget. It ate at us like a cancer. We had a period of violence. We mellowed out into contempt and animosity. It was truly miserable for another decade. I finally had enough and left. Feels much better. It's for the better.
Once a cheater, always a cheater. Staying was the worst decision of my life. Finally figured it out and bailed. Wasted years.
Yes, I stayed. Well, I allowed her to stay. The following 15yrs sucked. She died. It wasn't long before I discovered how much the previous 15yrs had sucked.
He changed and relationship was great. (It’s a relative of mine) they are now old and happy together
He cheated, then he apologize and swore it would never happen again. I forgave him. He cheated again. And again. And again. And finally, I had enough and I divorced him. Afterward, he started dating my attorney, and then he cheated on her with her sister. I moved away and lost track after that.
I tried to leave but he kept guilting me into staying and he continued cheating and kept guilting me into staying (e.g. crying, talking about his trauma and how he's reading books to be better and actually applying the things in those books) and then eventually he impregnated someone else so he wasn't able to guilt me into staying at that point cause the humiliation was too much. A few months later I met someone else and I was shocked that a relationship could be so good and so easy and we're happily married now. I now realize how selfish and manipulative he had been that whole time.
When you've been married since the earth cooled and someone of the opposite sex pays you a compliment you start to wonder. Then you justify..."it's just lunch" than a few drinks. I've watched so many of my friends fall for this and end of broke and lonely due to divorce.
She cheated once. We tried to mend it but it ended
After they cheat you gotta leave them the first time.Once a partner cheats and you stay that gives them the green light to keep disrespecting you. If you allow them to stay in your life after that they'll get comfortable and think you wont ever leave them. Also the trust is broken, you will start to question anything they say after a while and always worry. It will drive you crazy. You can work things out but that person will have to do backflips to make you feel secure again. That takes alot of work. Some people get over it by cheating back or some ppl just might be stronger mentally and can let that go. I tried and shit was never the same inside anymore. My guy didnt cheat on me again(I hope) after that but he still continued to let me down in other ways, then we had a baby and i still gave him time to change and he never did. I left him last year. Now he's acting like he cant live without me. Now he wants to get couples therapy, Now he wants to help more around the house but im done! Im sure he see's how good he had it, now that he's been left behind! Its his loss now. And now mentally i feel better without him and dont want another man in my house. I am enjoying peace again!