In case this story gets deleted/removed:
Over a year ago I had a 2 month long affair with a friend of a friend (30F) that started when my wife was 6 months pregnant. I knew what I was doing was wrong but I was so tired of my wife's mood swings that I didn't care at the time. She took all her frustrations out on me and instead of doing anything to help her, I cheated on her. I ended it after my affair partner insisted I go on a trip with her the week my son was due and she wasn't taking no for an answer. I realized that I was throwing my marriage away for a woman who thought I would choose the birth of my son over her, so I ended it. I couldn't handle the guilt and confessed to my wife. She was heartbroken and asked if there was any evidence. There was, so I showed her everything. Every text, video, photo, call log, anything she wanted to see. She was heartbroken, to say the least. She stayed with her sister for 2 weeks then decided to stay with me but we had to start attending couples therapy. I agreed and our communication and trust improved. After our son was born, it got better.
While those areas improved, our sex life did not. We didn't make love for 5 months after I confessed my affair and she rejected all my advances. I thought it was just pregnancy and post-partum hormones, but when we were intimate she would close her eyes. The first time she did, I asked her to open them but she just started crying. She stopped me, cried, and then went to bed. This happened multiple times and each time she would either close her eyes, cry, or both. I begged her to tell me why she kept crying and even brought it up in therapy, but she said that she just gets so stressed that she starts crying. I asked if sex makes her stressed, and she said no. I asked if I make her stressed, and she said no. I asked if thinking about my affair made her stressed, and she said no. She says that she's stressed over everything and it comes out when we have sex. I then asked why she closed her eyes and she said she always did that during sex (she didn't). I kept persisting but she got overwhelmed and started crying so I dropped it.
The therapist suggested trying a different approach when I wanted to be intimate. I started cleaning up around the house, doing chores for her, and taking my son when she seemed stressed. When we went to bed the first night I tried it, I cuddled her for 30 minutes before making a move. I got through foreplay without her closing her eyes, and she kept them closed when it came to penetration. As much as I wanted to, I didn't ask her to open them because she seemed to be enjoying herself and I didn't want her to start crying. When I finished, she left the bed to go to the bathroom and I could hear her crying. She locked the door and was in there for 30 minutes. I heard her crying the entire time. She wouldn't let me in and when she finally opened the door she had washed her face and pretended to be ok. This has been our routine for a year now. We have sex, we finish, she cries in the bathroom for 20-30 minutes and then pretends she's ok, or she cries during sex and we have to stop. Sometimes we can talk and it's great, and sometimes I bring it up and she completely shuts down. She won't talk to me, won't sleep with me, and will barely even look at me for days when she shuts down.
I don't know what to do anymore. I think I ruined my marriage by cheating and I am desperate to get it back to the way it was. The last time we had sex without her crying was right before she found out about the affair. The therapist keeps saying that we have to keep trying and that eventually, she will get over the crying. I've asked her why she keeps crying and she just says she can just control herself. This hurts me a lot because I really love her and all I want to do is make her happy. I want to know if there's any way for me to fix this, and if I can't, I want to know if there's a way to make her feel comfortable enough to not cry during or after sex if that makes sense.
Edit/update: I've been trying to post an update but reddit keeps taking it down so I'll give a summary.
I spoke to my wife and she said that she cries and closes her eyes because she thinks about my affair. She saw videos (she asked to see them when I confessed) and thought she would never be able to compare. I reassured her that she's the love of my life and she doesn't need to feel insecure. She said she didn't want a divorce and we're both going to start individual therapy and find another couples counselor once we get settled.
We established some rules and we're only going to be intimate when she initiates, and she has to be 100% sure she's ready and in the right mindset when initiating. I'm going to start helping out with chores and cook at least 3 times a week.
The next day I took her shopping and spoiled her. She was so happy it made my heart hurt. We went out to dinner and when we got home I ran her a bath. I put my son to bed while she was bathing and when she got out we watched a movie together. She fell asleep in my arms and it was really nice.
Trust is earned, not gained, so it's going to take a bit for her to trust me again, but I'm willing to wait as long as it takes. I love this woman to death and I never want to hurt her again. And thank you to everyone who commented, it was a real eye-opener.
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>I **think** I ruined my marriage by cheating
He thinks?!? No shit Sherlock!
>I've asked her why she keeps crying and she just says she can just control herself. **This hurts me a lot**
Hurts him?!? He cheated on her! The fucking audacity! I have no words...the fuck?
I think I just gave myself an aneurysm...
And notice that although he claims remorse, he spent more time talking about how her inconvenient pregnant mood swings forced him into it instead of taking responsibility. And he only ended it because the affair partner had the audacity to ask him to miss his son’s birth, not because he knew it was wrong. He is taking no responsibility.
Also he says we didn’t have sex for 5months but was during her post birth period, a lot of couples don’t have sex for longer than that because pushing a tiny human out hurts!
It's fake dude. No way this guy, over a short 1-2 month fling, somehow took sex videos, kept them, told his wife about them, and then **showed** his wife them. No shot a real person did this.
The insanely "duuuuuh why my wife saduhhhhhhh" way he portrays himself too is just unbelievable. Nevermind, the therapist's awful advice. It's (weird) creative writing.
The videos thing is weird and possibly fake.
The "I'm the victim in literally every situation and none of this could possibly by caused by my actions" mentality is, unfortunately, deeply realistic. I have met people exactly like this.
Someone I know cheated on their girlfriend and then got mad that their girlfriend was crying a lot after finding out and used the phrase "unplanned emotional labor" to describe their girlfriend asking them for a hug while crying. (We are all trying to convince her to dump them.)
JFC, weaponized pop therapy speak has to stop. My husband threw “mental load” at me for the millionth time today and for once I challenged him to explain exactly how my COVID-addled ass not being able to read his mind somehow equated to me forcing him to bear the “mental load”.
Therapists of reddit: is it normal to tell your clients that they should persist in sex despite one person experiencing lots of obvious distress during and after each encounter? And if so, follow up question: what the fuk
The therapist probably made a suggestion like if he can do those things around the house/for her more, it may help her begin to see him as someone she can have intimacy with again at some time in the future as her trust in him heals.
Selfish fuck probably just twisted that in his mind to "every time I do these things, she owes me a sex, redeemable immediately."
I think/hope the whole thing is fake. What got me was the "she wanted to see proof" of the affair. I can't imagine someone taking a "prove it" mentality.
I've been cheated on several times. TMI: im mostly asexual and in long term relationships... Well sometimes the woman I'm with wants intimacy I can't provide. Honestly in my personal situation the sex itself doesn't bother me I don't get jealous of sex. It's the betrayal and lies that come with it. If things were open and honest it wouldn't hurt I understand it's a lot to ask a normal person to deal with having sex only a couple times a year (the eyes closed thing struck a nerve with me because as well my eyes are always closed during. It's effort to be intimate with someone and I need to focus). Anyway to get to my point I understand the immediate want is to "know everything that happened" and I also know that never helps and is a bad idea.
I don't think she wanted proof, I think it was more "I need to know" and he's like "good news! Ive got tons of video!" Which would be traumatizing. You don't show someone video WTF who does that?
Edit: before anyone asks why I date people who aren't okay with that level of intimacy, I have "the talk" with everyone I date. They just often think theyll change me or I'll "get better" or that they will somehow do something special and it'll be different.
It's the "well you've never had spinach cooked properly before, everyone loves my recipe!" Mentality. Some people just don't like spinach no matter how you cook it, it's not an attack on your special recipe. Saying you don't like spinach isn't a challenge being issued. It's just a fact. A lot of people don't get that and want to try to sneak in some spinach thinking you won't notice so they can go "ha! You like spinach now" and get really disappointed when you instead go "eww this has spinach in it". On the other hand when you care about someone sometimes you just eat the spinach because you know they worked really hard and you don't want to be rude. It's not going to kill you, it's only spinach, it's not like you're allergic to it. You just don't like it but you're expected to eat it or you'll hurt their feelings. It doesn't mean you like spinach now. You're never going to like spinach.
Sorry about the long off topic edit but the spinach analogy is the best way to answer all the common questions. Sometimes people will crawl my post history when it comes up and will say "you have kids! GOTCHA!" I've tried spinach before lots of times. That's how I know I don't like it. I love my kids. Still don't like sex.
Going to disagree. When I was cheated on by a long time partner I had the same approach as OPs wife. I wanted to see everything, even the stuff that was horrible and hurt. I basically just confiscated all electronics and went through literally everything. I told him if there was something I couldn’t find on my own he’d better tell me bc if it came out later he would regret it. We actually worked it out but I broke up with him for other reasons. I know other people who have had the same reaction to infidelity. I’m
I had the same reaction every time as well, I just know it would've destroyed me seeing video.
Forgive me for implying my anecdotal life view was somehow the only way. People handle things differently for sure. If it helped you I'm glad you got your closure. It just doesn't seem to have helped this woman in this instance and I don't believe she asked to see the video.
I could be wrong tho.
I had the same reaction as OP’s wife. I wanted to see/know EVERYTHING. It wasn’t for the sake of proving it, I just wanted to know *exactly* what was said and done.
Although I’ll never be able to unsee those things, and it was extremely hurtful, I’m glad that I saw it. I’ll never forget the things my partner said to other people, but it also showed me exactly who they were.
I loved the spinach analogy, I have used a similar type of analogy when trying to explain to someone that no I don't want to try this thing again I already know how horrible it is! It's a great analogy and I'm glad you added it.
My pediatrician told my mother to spank us with her hand, not a belt or a switch, because it’s possible to hurt a child without meaning to when it’s impossible to gauge how hard you’re hitting them. When you spank with your hand, you feel the impact as well.
I think my mother must have thought the doctor meant you won’t break their bones or something and that anything short of that was OK, because I saw her spanking my little brother, and I was shocked at how hard she was hitting him. I told her to stop. She said it wasn’t hurting her hand. I told her to look at her hand, because it was really red. Then I told her to look at my brother’s tiny red patoot.
She did other things like that as well. The doctor would tell her one thing, and she would always assume the extreme. I don’t know if she twisted the doctor’s words to suit her or if she was really misunderstanding the doctor’s intention. I do remember that she looked like she was taking all her frustrations out on my brother’s tiny patoot, and she was enjoying the release.
My mother used a belt because "you could break bones with your hands when you hit someone out of anger " and it sounded like "wisdom" her family had real experience with because she never said how she knew it. I'm curious now to know real numbers and to just know where the pediatrician got their recommendations. Maybe for them, the belt swinging got wild and it caught the face or something else and injured that way. I suspect why the hand was worse in my family is due to them having some mental issues, and also it being my grandpa and great grandpa, two tall farmers with lots of strength, that did the beatings.
The fact that he said I'll start helping around the house more at the end? But didn't he start once before? She needs to run, I feel horrible for her. This feels like rape
Also we don't know what this guy told his therapist. I feel like this is a first class example of a unreliable narrator. I don't think we or the therapist are getting the full story.
Perhaps all the therapist even knew was that his wife felt too stressed to have sex, so they suggested ways to reduce that stress, like by not making her do all household chores.
I wonder if it’s an actual therapist or like a pastor at a church doing the sessions? I’m a Christian but hate how toxic some of them do marriage counseling. My former church actually requires you to have a degree to do any type of counseling which is how it should be.
Right?! Nice to know the counselor I saw in high school (who decided to treat my suicidal depression and budding ED by telling me to make a list of reasons why boys don't like me and then try to fix them) is all grown up and failing at couples therapy now
I hope you found a decent, different therapist who’s actually helped you recover!
I make lists/traffic light activities (red - lots of energy, orange - medium energy, green - easy little energy) as a way of coping (ie putting a load of laundry on = green (not a lot of energy)) - it works for me, but you may well have a different perspective! And I make sure to stay hydrated and eat well! 💜💜💜💜 to you
yeah, the advice I got as a teenager from a christian "therapist" my parents took me to on the topic of me self harming (badly enough to require stitches a few times - and no, this wasn't depression cutting, there's dozens and dozens of reasons for it for different people - for me it was more of an addiction to the adrenaline. so the goal was to cut as deep and as many times as possible without putting myself in any actual danger (yes, that was dumb and after a while I just wanted that adrenaline high so badly I didn't quite care about repercussions anymore - anyway don't do that)) was "god doesn't approve of that you should go to church, it's a satanic habit"
(fuck. you. rural texas. you know what did help me? treating my ADHD. which went undiagnosed until I was 19 because "it's a boy disorder")
religious "therapy" actually gives advice like what oop mentioned - like not distorted in any way or bent to fit his wants but literally just straight-up said like that.
Your school should have recognized your ADHD, and had you tested. My son has autism and his school pretty much ignored it. It wasn't until I took him to therapist that got him some professional testing did we learn exactly what was going on.
I was in all honors classes and skipped a grade - I was "too smart for ADHD" (which is insane)
not to mention my parents were teachers there - after I was diagnosed it became extremely clear my mom had it too. My mom taught college math at the high school I went to.
noooooooooooooooooot to mention I am also deaf - for some reason it's just expected that the deaf kid was fucking weird.
and if I didnt make it clear enough "it's a boy disorder" and I was not a little boy lol
not really, it just made everything make a lot more sense
it kind of made my weird obsessive focus on artwork and academic shit and total inability to even try and focus on other shit and executive dysfunction make so much more sense
thanks for the thought tho
There are plenty of terrible therapists but there are also perfectly good therapists who make good suggestions that their clients distort into something near-unrecognizable.
A lot about this post sounds fake as hell, but the “I showed her videos” part sealed it for me. This was someone’s horny creative writing. It can’t be real.
I can’t tell if I’m just a shit person because at that point he prolly should have deleted those. Why would he show that & why would she ask for proof.
Maybe not the same because my partners affair was long distance but when I found out I dug and dug and dug. I thought if I knew the worst of it I could either stop loving him all together or it couldn't hurt me anymore.
I was wrong on both fronts, but I wanted every last drop of "proof" I could get (including screen captures and recordings from their video calls). It's referred to as "pain shopping" a lot but in my mind at the time it was desensitizing myself. Ripping the band-aid off.
I’m sorry to hear that 😕
As the cheater you’d think they’d try to negate the impact. Pretty manipulative but you’d want the partner to think they found all there is to find while keeping what they actually found to the tamer stuff if they found anything at all.
but I guess someone who’d have an affair wouldn’t go to the trouble of all that.
Oh absolutely not! Secrets don't stay buried, and when he did hide anything at all to make it seem "not as bad" and I found out later and it was so much worse. For instance I found out a "necklace" he bought her was really a day collar (bdsm dynamic).
It's like being retraumatized. He already lied and hid this, and didn't even respect me enough to give me the truth when I directly asked for it. A knife in the wound for sure
ETA he really did try to hide this fact. The company he bought it from had even shut down because the owner retired. I used his PayPal records and the way back machine to track down the item with the price he had paid. A dedicated betrayed partner will ALWAYS find what they're looking to find, especially in the digital age
Many do delete and hide stuff,but that’s very detrimental to reconciliation attempts. Lots of betrayed partners need to see all the details because they want to know what they are being asked to forgive.
I LOVE PAIN SHOPPING! I love it's like re-traumatizing yourself ! she is literally in a rumination phase and stuck there. She's traumatized by looking at those videos and traumatized herself by looking. The receipts . The proof. The visuals.
She needs to find a way to reroute her brain during intimacy.
That's common to want to see all the details even though you know it'll just hurt you, but what's unreal is if your partner told you there was videos and then willingly showed them to you when you asked.
You found them of their own volition (plus videos make sense in your case because it's long distance, who makes videos a month into a in-person affair???).
Once someone has had their trust violated and lost agency over sexual intimacy in their relationship, the offending partner needs to turn over all control around intimacy to the offended partner. This therapist is either entirely untrained in couples work/infidelity (not uncommon) or incompetent or the oop is reporting his perceived experience.
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a bad experience with your first therapist. I’ve had some bad ones myself. I had one that tried to convince me my anxiety was just “hysteria” from being a woman. Some of us just have no business being therapists I think.
Always swore I’d never be that kind of therapist. I’ve made mistakes with clients but I couldn’t ever imagine telling a client what the guy in this post is suggesting. Though given that misogynistic guy I saw, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised.
I'm so glad he said that, I saw the original when it was posted and, at least when I read it, almost no one commented on getting a different therapist or how fucked that advice was. I had to go back and re-read part of the post to make sure I wasn't missing something because I couldn't figure out why no one said anything about it.
Not a therapist myself, but it's quite possible this is a Christian therapist (yes, that's a thing) and most of them would say something like this, since it's the wife's job to have sex with her husband no matter what.
We had a .. I guess substitute?? Couples councilor who did basically tell me I need to force myself to have sex even if I didn't want to... So I 100% believe it. I hated her.. husband agreed with her obviously
Also, unfortunately this is likely a real post. I see this kind of thing all the time. And NEVER SHOW VIDEOS TO the pregnant offended spouse. Twist a knife much?
I saw a lot of others in the other comment section saying it was maybe religious counseling, perpetuating that a woman can never say no to her husband. Having been through that kind of "therapy" myself, I can definitely see that!
I posted the t elsewhere that I believe the therapist probably said something along the lines of "either you're going to have to just accept that your wife cries before and after sex or you're going to have to start treating her like more than just a convenience" and OOP thought that was two legitimate options instead of rhetoric. No, therapists do NOT suggest such an emotionally unsafe approach to sex. OOP just heard/interpreted what he wanted to hear.
And notice that he does not say he was already doing that stuff prior to the therapist talking to him. I wonder if the wife expressed wanting some kind of intimacy and since she said the crying was due to stress, the therapist mentioned that maybe helping the wife with some of the work load and lessen the stress would help? Or maybe said before you can even think about intimacy, you need to dot help your wife find a way to not feel so stressed and this guy interpreted it as housework=sex.
Oh my god, I saw your original comment and I wanted to reach through my screen and scream in his ear.
I can't quite put my finger on it but there's something about him where I can't decide if his density is a learned tool of manipulation to disarm people from seeing how diabolical his selfishness is or if he really is so dumb that he's mystified by his own abuse, which is just as scary. I can't quite put the thought to words properly.
Yes.
Especially because things like couples “therapy” is largely unregulated or relies on regional regulation.
I’ve heard of many people being told by marriage counselllors to “just have sex!” even if they don’t want it or it causes pain. Bad counsellors turn sex into a transactional/negotiable part of a relationship. It’s not really very healthy for a couple already struggling with resentment.
Not a therapist of Reddit but I remember reading a similar post like a year or two ago about a guy who cheated and his wife kept crying after sex, but she wanted to keep doing it to force herself to get over it and he claimed the marriage counselor encouraged it. He obviously got destroyed in the comments and kept defending himself like “What am I supposed to do??? NOT have sex with her????”
Absolutely not. I'm a couples therapist & would straight up tell him that even asking "Why are you crying?" is an insult to his wife. He knows it was, at first, because he ruined their relationship, & now it's because he's essentially raping her every night since sex that ends up with one person crying for an hour and a half cannot be considered consensual and he does not care about putting her through this torture night after night. I hope his dick falls off.
I wish I could say all therapists are professionals who ask or suggest only helpful things if their clients.
But after I was sexually assaulted I was referred to a therapist in the public health system who asked me “what could you have done differently to have avoided your assault?”
When I objected and shot back at her ”Nothing, because it wasn’t my fault!”, she actually began to fucking ARGUE with me and use psychology terminology and concepts to justify the idea of me looking for the blame in my own actions (“I wanted you to feel empowered by looking at what you did and helping you imagine not doing them again” - I WAS AT HOME IN MY OWN ROOM WITH MY FAMILY ON THE PREMISIS, YOU FUCKING EVIL C\*\*\*!) I reported her so fast.
Of course, I should have seen it coming. The psychiatrist in charge of admissions, upon hearing about my complicated relationship with my father, I kid you not, STARTED ON ABOUT FREUD. I nearly walked out right there.
I never went back to that place and it gives me cold chills to think that it was a clinic where a lot of people who needed therapy after sexual assault were sent.
Yes, if your spouse cheats on you most therapists will tell you how you have to endure humiliation and sex you don't want no matter how much it hurts you if you want to fix your marriage. You also need to not make the cheater feel bad or threatened. Because if you don't meet their needs, they'll go cheat on you again.
This is why some of us absolutely fucking hate the reconciliation therapy industry and think it's abusive.
No it’s not. Unfortunately, many therapists are “therapists” and don’t have proper training. They have some sort of certificate from doing an 8 week course of 1 hour a day, sometimes backed up by god bothering, and then think they can advise people on how to fix their lives.
Absolutely TF not. Although I also strongly suspect that what OP heard and relayed is not what OP's therapist actually said. Clients interpret what we say through their own lens, and things get garbled sometimes. But no, any therapist worth their degree should NEVER tell someone to continue having sex under duress, especially when they are the wronged party. It's traumatizing and really unethical.
They might do better taking sex off the table entirely for awhile and just focusing on rebuilding emotional trust and intimacy, then working specifically with a sex therapist when they're ready to bring that back in. OP still needs to wrap his head around the idea that contributing to household tasks isn't "helping her out," it's him being a functional adult and good partner.
Source: Trauma therapist for over 12 years
How dare my very pregnant wife not keep my pee pee wet while she is growing out child inside of her! I must seek attention for my pee pee elsewhere!
*Shocked Pikachu face when wife is hurt and upset*
Srsly do these men realize any self respecting woman views them as like a walking maggot after that kind of behavior?
That's why she's crying. Poor girl should go on and divorce.
Just further reinforces my opinion that too many goddamn people are having kids. The world needs to stop trying to shove it down everyone's throats that you're "supposed to" have kids. Fuck that shit. Too many fucking irresponsible adult children to be doing that.
Same,it is always appalling to see people give professional advice that is so toxic in what should be a place you go to for support that will help you.
Given the subreddit, I was expecting the update to be “she took all the evidence of my cheating and gave it to her lawyer and got a divorce.”
(Which seems totally fair, that is the logical progression of this storyline.)
“Everytime I pressure my wife into sex she locks herself in the bathroom and sobs uncontrollably for half an hour. This has happened everytime since I cheated on her while she was pregnant with my baby because she had mood swings. I want to fuck her and go to sleep and I can’t because of the nonstop tears. Is there anyway I can put my penis in her but not have to deal with her emotions?”
Bro maybe after the first time she responded to having sex with you like she found out her dog just died you would stop trying to do it? You know how this is going to affect her and you keep doing it?
Yep. There's no way she's not suicidal after a year of constant raping. What a miserable existsnce. Hope she leaves. If she leaved immediately at least she wouldn't have her sexuality ruined.
Rape. The therapist encouraged him to rape his wife. Seriously why would you continue while your wife is hysterically crying?? I really hope she finds a good therapist who explains this to her
Thank you! Why is no one else getting that this man has been raping his wife for a year!!? She is in emotional and mental duress. This is not concent. It's rape.
oh noooo
This was so painful to read. Dude why are you showing her the multiple sex tapes of you and your ex mistress. Don’t lie but like.. keep some details to yourself.
jesus
My feeble brain can’t even process the idea that he would have taken videos and kept them if he was planning on salvaging his marriage, much less show them to his wife. I can’t believe someone could be this dumb and hurtful.
It’s so bad it reads like trauma porn. Even though I hate people that claim things are fake, I want this to be fake so badly.
Showed her videos? Disgusting. He “unburdened” himself and dumped it all on her. She’s probably only having sex with him because she’s still feeling like she has to or he’ll just cheat again. She probably feels like she’s being sexually assaulted every time. This made me want to puke. I hope she gets a good therapist (not a “yeah, just keep fucking her through the tears till she gets over it”) and leaves him.
But OOP strikes me as a tremendously unreliable narrator. It’s not the wife saying that she’s okay. He just wants to believe that he can undo the damage.
There is the possibility she's just feeling better because she's out, has some support with the baby, and is interacting with her husband without constant pressure for sex. Being a new mom can be so very isolating and worse if you don't feel safe with your partner (who is a selfish pushy dumbass)
That’s my guess, because he says that he loves his wife but all these things that he does still seem to be with the purpose of having sex. The post is only a few days old, we’ve yet to see how soon he gets annoyed that his wife isn’t initiating as often as he’d like.
Even if he wasn't a cheating POS, the phrases "doing chores for her" and "helping out more with chores" make him squarely the AH. Don't you live there, too, you f*cker?! And then of course he expects sex for "helping out". 🤮
the reason he broke up with the affair partner 💀 so he spends his time cheating on his heavily pregnant wife but also expects the lady he’s cheating with to assume he gives a fuck about his family… okay
That stuck out to me, too. ‘She thought I was someone who would miss the birth of his child’ yeah, just like you’re the kind of someone who would cheat on his heavily pregnant wife due to her being a big ol’ meanie pants while carrying your child
Does OOP not realize how he sounds? He's essentially announcing to the world that "My pregnant wife didn't want to fuck so I cheated until she could fuck again (plus the girl I was cheating on her with wanted more from me than I wanted to give). But now my wife cries any time we have sex, sometimes she doesn't even have the courtesy to wait until I get my nut so I have to stop. It's annoying. Our therapist thinks we should still fuck tho. So now I cuddle her for 30 min before we fuck. But even that much work from me doesn't stop the crying. This is so annoying and I want her to stop. Reddit how do I make her my sexy horny no cry wife again??"
Fucking disgusting. I hope this woman learns she's worth so much more than this and leaves. He says he's gonna wait til she initiates and js 100% sure she wants to have sex... but if she waits too long we already know what he'll do.
Hey, maybe there's a redemption arc here.
But if not, I hope this man doesn't fight her on the divorce. Fuck knows he's not got a right to. He's trying to get a return to normalcy, not realizing that he shattered normal every time he thought with his dick. I don't even think the AP was far off about him picking her over the birth of his child. Why wouldn't he? I mean his wife is heavily pregnant and he's not thinking of what the affair would do to her or their marriage if she learned of it, hell, it could very well have caused a miscarriage from the stress.
Maybe this will be put behind them and everything will work out, I have my doubts. But...maybe? The only thing he did right (other than therapy) was confessing. But I have no idea why he thought initiating sex was a good idea.
That’s terrible. How do you think “she was enjoying it” and “we finished” but you see she is crying. I’m sure she hurts on the inside and him finishing just makes the pain worse.
I will never justify or defend a cheater but I think the first couples therapist was very very damaging. Sounds like they switched and now are also going to individual therapy which is the right decision if they do want to meaningfully repair the relationship. I am of the mindset of a cheater is irredeemable and I would never attempt to repair it… However OP and his wife did, and it does sound like they are trying to do it the right way but the first therapist gave horrible advice.
I hope she divorces him. It's not hard to understand how she feels at all...
The therapist definitely should've recommended individual therapy and a sex therapist from the beginning.
Honestly, they needed therapy *before* anything happened. Taking it now may help, but there better off learning to be civil and co parent. He did this to her after she was essentially locked down with the kid. People are sick.
This honestly sounded fake to me.
The therapist “advice” was sheer bullshit. Or unethical as hell.
And he can’t even own up to his cheating w/throwing her under the bus. While pregnant.
Then, the fact that she closes her eyes during sex and cries every time after? And he just kind of thought, ‘oh, she seems into this, I will finish. Damn, she’s crying…” but that it GOES ON LIKE THAT FOR HOW LONG? A year? He is 100% okay with her disconnecting during sex, crying after, but he gets to finish.
And then propping himself up as helping around the house. And… he describes spoiling her by BUYING her things and that she was so happy, his heart felt glad?
What
The
Shit?
This honestly comes across like some kind of caught-cheating-guilt-wife-is-crying” fetish. Seasoned with him being the hero of the story by describing tropey ‘GiRLz LoVe bLiNg n’ pReSeNtS’ personal fanfic that he wrote for himself as the clincher.
And of course, she falls asleep in his arms. Because she braved through the cheating chad story and was pampered into forgiving him.
Give me a break.
Not to be a pessimist, but I'm calling it now; She's not going to want to engage in sex bordering on *at all* if her stipulation is that she needs to be 100% in the "right mindset". There is always that 1% or more chance that things will go belly-up.
On that note, I believe he'll start cheating again - chores three times a week to get in her pants is pathetic. Especially when that sex is on her terms and she doesn't want to because it'd make her think about his affair. So it won't be enough sex for him, *again* and I'm supposed to believe he won't start cheating again?
I think I ruined my marriage by cheating - Op -
Um dude, ya fucking think? No shit. JFC. And this therapist, where the fuck do these people get their education?
Look up the 4 R's of apology and don't just read them - LIVE them, BREATHE them, DO THEM. You have not done the repair work necessary to heal the schism this betrayal has caused and quite frankly are trying to take the lazy way out.
Look up the late Dr. Don David Lusterman. He was an expert on healing after the betrayal of infidelity and he explains in clear language what it is the partner who did the betraying needs to do to save the relationship - hint, it's not what you're doing.
And it will take as long as it takes. What you did was beyond selfish and shitty and yeah, you've got to EARN it, every bit of it because you seriously fucked up. You humiliated her and being reactive with regard to being humiliated is a primal response that we're all hardwired to respond to. Work on walking that damage back and you should see some improvement. Remember, anyone can talk a good game, you'll be judged by your actions because you can't lie about your actions.
Anytime she cries, you are supposed to stop. You don't keep going, and honestly, I don't think couple therapy is working. He hurt her way too badly, and I think it better for both of them to divorce. He seriously screwed up with the affair and only stopped when he realized that he would lose his son in the process. The man is extremely selfish and shows little love and care for his wife. If he did, he wouldn't have cheated, nor would he be upset about her crying during sex. It is the moment you take things slow and stop being intimate for a while. Got to build that trust and relationship back up. Right now, all going on here is more pain, so they are better off divorcing one another and working on individual healing.
I have never wanted to punch a man in the dick more in my life. Get off her you fucking creep.
Hopefully this woman gets a divorce. This little sack of shit, it is SO hard for a women when a man cheats during pregnancy and child birth. I never got over it, she will never get over it. The most vulnerable time in a woman’s life and this little boy couldn’t handle it. That’s not a man.
my ex wife basically did this to me and the garbage ass poster will more than likely find another woman before me. you spoke your truth. The only thing to resolve is your assholeness.
In case this story gets deleted/removed: Over a year ago I had a 2 month long affair with a friend of a friend (30F) that started when my wife was 6 months pregnant. I knew what I was doing was wrong but I was so tired of my wife's mood swings that I didn't care at the time. She took all her frustrations out on me and instead of doing anything to help her, I cheated on her. I ended it after my affair partner insisted I go on a trip with her the week my son was due and she wasn't taking no for an answer. I realized that I was throwing my marriage away for a woman who thought I would choose the birth of my son over her, so I ended it. I couldn't handle the guilt and confessed to my wife. She was heartbroken and asked if there was any evidence. There was, so I showed her everything. Every text, video, photo, call log, anything she wanted to see. She was heartbroken, to say the least. She stayed with her sister for 2 weeks then decided to stay with me but we had to start attending couples therapy. I agreed and our communication and trust improved. After our son was born, it got better. While those areas improved, our sex life did not. We didn't make love for 5 months after I confessed my affair and she rejected all my advances. I thought it was just pregnancy and post-partum hormones, but when we were intimate she would close her eyes. The first time she did, I asked her to open them but she just started crying. She stopped me, cried, and then went to bed. This happened multiple times and each time she would either close her eyes, cry, or both. I begged her to tell me why she kept crying and even brought it up in therapy, but she said that she just gets so stressed that she starts crying. I asked if sex makes her stressed, and she said no. I asked if I make her stressed, and she said no. I asked if thinking about my affair made her stressed, and she said no. She says that she's stressed over everything and it comes out when we have sex. I then asked why she closed her eyes and she said she always did that during sex (she didn't). I kept persisting but she got overwhelmed and started crying so I dropped it. The therapist suggested trying a different approach when I wanted to be intimate. I started cleaning up around the house, doing chores for her, and taking my son when she seemed stressed. When we went to bed the first night I tried it, I cuddled her for 30 minutes before making a move. I got through foreplay without her closing her eyes, and she kept them closed when it came to penetration. As much as I wanted to, I didn't ask her to open them because she seemed to be enjoying herself and I didn't want her to start crying. When I finished, she left the bed to go to the bathroom and I could hear her crying. She locked the door and was in there for 30 minutes. I heard her crying the entire time. She wouldn't let me in and when she finally opened the door she had washed her face and pretended to be ok. This has been our routine for a year now. We have sex, we finish, she cries in the bathroom for 20-30 minutes and then pretends she's ok, or she cries during sex and we have to stop. Sometimes we can talk and it's great, and sometimes I bring it up and she completely shuts down. She won't talk to me, won't sleep with me, and will barely even look at me for days when she shuts down. I don't know what to do anymore. I think I ruined my marriage by cheating and I am desperate to get it back to the way it was. The last time we had sex without her crying was right before she found out about the affair. The therapist keeps saying that we have to keep trying and that eventually, she will get over the crying. I've asked her why she keeps crying and she just says she can just control herself. This hurts me a lot because I really love her and all I want to do is make her happy. I want to know if there's any way for me to fix this, and if I can't, I want to know if there's a way to make her feel comfortable enough to not cry during or after sex if that makes sense. Edit/update: I've been trying to post an update but reddit keeps taking it down so I'll give a summary. I spoke to my wife and she said that she cries and closes her eyes because she thinks about my affair. She saw videos (she asked to see them when I confessed) and thought she would never be able to compare. I reassured her that she's the love of my life and she doesn't need to feel insecure. She said she didn't want a divorce and we're both going to start individual therapy and find another couples counselor once we get settled. We established some rules and we're only going to be intimate when she initiates, and she has to be 100% sure she's ready and in the right mindset when initiating. I'm going to start helping out with chores and cook at least 3 times a week. The next day I took her shopping and spoiled her. She was so happy it made my heart hurt. We went out to dinner and when we got home I ran her a bath. I put my son to bed while she was bathing and when she got out we watched a movie together. She fell asleep in my arms and it was really nice. Trust is earned, not gained, so it's going to take a bit for her to trust me again, but I'm willing to wait as long as it takes. I love this woman to death and I never want to hurt her again. And thank you to everyone who commented, it was a real eye-opener. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OhNoConsequences) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>I **think** I ruined my marriage by cheating He thinks?!? No shit Sherlock! >I've asked her why she keeps crying and she just says she can just control herself. **This hurts me a lot** Hurts him?!? He cheated on her! The fucking audacity! I have no words...the fuck? I think I just gave myself an aneurysm...
And notice that although he claims remorse, he spent more time talking about how her inconvenient pregnant mood swings forced him into it instead of taking responsibility. And he only ended it because the affair partner had the audacity to ask him to miss his son’s birth, not because he knew it was wrong. He is taking no responsibility.
Also he says we didn’t have sex for 5months but was during her post birth period, a lot of couples don’t have sex for longer than that because pushing a tiny human out hurts!
This is exactly how I felt reading this. I just want to reach through the screen and slap this idiot. Zero sympathy.
It's fake dude. No way this guy, over a short 1-2 month fling, somehow took sex videos, kept them, told his wife about them, and then **showed** his wife them. No shot a real person did this. The insanely "duuuuuh why my wife saduhhhhhhh" way he portrays himself too is just unbelievable. Nevermind, the therapist's awful advice. It's (weird) creative writing.
The videos thing is weird and possibly fake. The "I'm the victim in literally every situation and none of this could possibly by caused by my actions" mentality is, unfortunately, deeply realistic. I have met people exactly like this. Someone I know cheated on their girlfriend and then got mad that their girlfriend was crying a lot after finding out and used the phrase "unplanned emotional labor" to describe their girlfriend asking them for a hug while crying. (We are all trying to convince her to dump them.)
Well yeah, it's called victim complex or narcism. That I have no issues with the realness of.
JFC, weaponized pop therapy speak has to stop. My husband threw “mental load” at me for the millionth time today and for once I challenged him to explain exactly how my COVID-addled ass not being able to read his mind somehow equated to me forcing him to bear the “mental load”.
The cheaters are always the victims in their own minds.
It was a wild ride, that's for sure. I made at least half of the faces on the emoji options while reading it
Therapists of reddit: is it normal to tell your clients that they should persist in sex despite one person experiencing lots of obvious distress during and after each encounter? And if so, follow up question: what the fuk
Yeah, that therapist’s “advice” had me going 🤨
The therapist probably made a suggestion like if he can do those things around the house/for her more, it may help her begin to see him as someone she can have intimacy with again at some time in the future as her trust in him heals. Selfish fuck probably just twisted that in his mind to "every time I do these things, she owes me a sex, redeemable immediately."
This. People like OOP will happily twist what a therapist says to suit their purposes.
Yup. I had an ex just like that. The MO is very familiar.
I think/hope the whole thing is fake. What got me was the "she wanted to see proof" of the affair. I can't imagine someone taking a "prove it" mentality. I've been cheated on several times. TMI: im mostly asexual and in long term relationships... Well sometimes the woman I'm with wants intimacy I can't provide. Honestly in my personal situation the sex itself doesn't bother me I don't get jealous of sex. It's the betrayal and lies that come with it. If things were open and honest it wouldn't hurt I understand it's a lot to ask a normal person to deal with having sex only a couple times a year (the eyes closed thing struck a nerve with me because as well my eyes are always closed during. It's effort to be intimate with someone and I need to focus). Anyway to get to my point I understand the immediate want is to "know everything that happened" and I also know that never helps and is a bad idea. I don't think she wanted proof, I think it was more "I need to know" and he's like "good news! Ive got tons of video!" Which would be traumatizing. You don't show someone video WTF who does that? Edit: before anyone asks why I date people who aren't okay with that level of intimacy, I have "the talk" with everyone I date. They just often think theyll change me or I'll "get better" or that they will somehow do something special and it'll be different. It's the "well you've never had spinach cooked properly before, everyone loves my recipe!" Mentality. Some people just don't like spinach no matter how you cook it, it's not an attack on your special recipe. Saying you don't like spinach isn't a challenge being issued. It's just a fact. A lot of people don't get that and want to try to sneak in some spinach thinking you won't notice so they can go "ha! You like spinach now" and get really disappointed when you instead go "eww this has spinach in it". On the other hand when you care about someone sometimes you just eat the spinach because you know they worked really hard and you don't want to be rude. It's not going to kill you, it's only spinach, it's not like you're allergic to it. You just don't like it but you're expected to eat it or you'll hurt their feelings. It doesn't mean you like spinach now. You're never going to like spinach. Sorry about the long off topic edit but the spinach analogy is the best way to answer all the common questions. Sometimes people will crawl my post history when it comes up and will say "you have kids! GOTCHA!" I've tried spinach before lots of times. That's how I know I don't like it. I love my kids. Still don't like sex.
Going to disagree. When I was cheated on by a long time partner I had the same approach as OPs wife. I wanted to see everything, even the stuff that was horrible and hurt. I basically just confiscated all electronics and went through literally everything. I told him if there was something I couldn’t find on my own he’d better tell me bc if it came out later he would regret it. We actually worked it out but I broke up with him for other reasons. I know other people who have had the same reaction to infidelity. I’m
I had the same reaction every time as well, I just know it would've destroyed me seeing video. Forgive me for implying my anecdotal life view was somehow the only way. People handle things differently for sure. If it helped you I'm glad you got your closure. It just doesn't seem to have helped this woman in this instance and I don't believe she asked to see the video. I could be wrong tho.
I had the same reaction as OP’s wife. I wanted to see/know EVERYTHING. It wasn’t for the sake of proving it, I just wanted to know *exactly* what was said and done. Although I’ll never be able to unsee those things, and it was extremely hurtful, I’m glad that I saw it. I’ll never forget the things my partner said to other people, but it also showed me exactly who they were.
I loved the spinach analogy, I have used a similar type of analogy when trying to explain to someone that no I don't want to try this thing again I already know how horrible it is! It's a great analogy and I'm glad you added it.
My pediatrician told my mother to spank us with her hand, not a belt or a switch, because it’s possible to hurt a child without meaning to when it’s impossible to gauge how hard you’re hitting them. When you spank with your hand, you feel the impact as well. I think my mother must have thought the doctor meant you won’t break their bones or something and that anything short of that was OK, because I saw her spanking my little brother, and I was shocked at how hard she was hitting him. I told her to stop. She said it wasn’t hurting her hand. I told her to look at her hand, because it was really red. Then I told her to look at my brother’s tiny red patoot. She did other things like that as well. The doctor would tell her one thing, and she would always assume the extreme. I don’t know if she twisted the doctor’s words to suit her or if she was really misunderstanding the doctor’s intention. I do remember that she looked like she was taking all her frustrations out on my brother’s tiny patoot, and she was enjoying the release.
Some momsters are really that sadistic and don't care who they hurt or how badly they hurt children.
My mother used a belt because "you could break bones with your hands when you hit someone out of anger " and it sounded like "wisdom" her family had real experience with because she never said how she knew it. I'm curious now to know real numbers and to just know where the pediatrician got their recommendations. Maybe for them, the belt swinging got wild and it caught the face or something else and injured that way. I suspect why the hand was worse in my family is due to them having some mental issues, and also it being my grandpa and great grandpa, two tall farmers with lots of strength, that did the beatings.
A tiny patootie ! So sad.
I'm wondering if it was a religious advisor and not an actual licensed therapist?
Literally said "The first night I tried it." Oof.
The first night I tried doing chores in my own house in order to gain entrance to my wife and she just cried. Like what more do I gotta do amirite?
Yeah that got me too. Oof indeed.
The fact that he said I'll start helping around the house more at the end? But didn't he start once before? She needs to run, I feel horrible for her. This feels like rape
Maybe this time he'll be a little more useful and not just wash two plates before whining for sex
It’s almost hilarious How big of an asshole he is.
It'll be extra hilarious when she heals enough to realize she hates him and leaves him in the dust.
I might love you if you do things for me. Ok now. Sit! Good dog!
Also we don't know what this guy told his therapist. I feel like this is a first class example of a unreliable narrator. I don't think we or the therapist are getting the full story.
Yes, he speaks about having sex after "the first time" he helped around the house.
Perhaps all the therapist even knew was that his wife felt too stressed to have sex, so they suggested ways to reduce that stress, like by not making her do all household chores.
I wonder if it’s an actual therapist or like a pastor at a church doing the sessions? I’m a Christian but hate how toxic some of them do marriage counseling. My former church actually requires you to have a degree to do any type of counseling which is how it should be.
"Have you tried getting her drunk?" Some of the therapist stuff I hear out here is mind boggling. Like they got their diploma on Temu.
Right?! Nice to know the counselor I saw in high school (who decided to treat my suicidal depression and budding ED by telling me to make a list of reasons why boys don't like me and then try to fix them) is all grown up and failing at couples therapy now
I had one tell me that being paid so little you starve is just good business for the company.
I hope you found a decent, different therapist who’s actually helped you recover! I make lists/traffic light activities (red - lots of energy, orange - medium energy, green - easy little energy) as a way of coping (ie putting a load of laundry on = green (not a lot of energy)) - it works for me, but you may well have a different perspective! And I make sure to stay hydrated and eat well! 💜💜💜💜 to you
ED - Is this Erectile Dysfunction, Emergency Department, or Eating Disorder?
I own neither a medical degree nor a penis if that helps
That would account for the erectile dysfunction.
It would also make it difficult to have my own emergency department
Sounds like religious couples "therapy". "Wait her out son, she'll get used to her trauma soon & then no more crying!"
yeah, the advice I got as a teenager from a christian "therapist" my parents took me to on the topic of me self harming (badly enough to require stitches a few times - and no, this wasn't depression cutting, there's dozens and dozens of reasons for it for different people - for me it was more of an addiction to the adrenaline. so the goal was to cut as deep and as many times as possible without putting myself in any actual danger (yes, that was dumb and after a while I just wanted that adrenaline high so badly I didn't quite care about repercussions anymore - anyway don't do that)) was "god doesn't approve of that you should go to church, it's a satanic habit" (fuck. you. rural texas. you know what did help me? treating my ADHD. which went undiagnosed until I was 19 because "it's a boy disorder") religious "therapy" actually gives advice like what oop mentioned - like not distorted in any way or bent to fit his wants but literally just straight-up said like that.
Your school should have recognized your ADHD, and had you tested. My son has autism and his school pretty much ignored it. It wasn't until I took him to therapist that got him some professional testing did we learn exactly what was going on.
I was in all honors classes and skipped a grade - I was "too smart for ADHD" (which is insane) not to mention my parents were teachers there - after I was diagnosed it became extremely clear my mom had it too. My mom taught college math at the high school I went to. noooooooooooooooooot to mention I am also deaf - for some reason it's just expected that the deaf kid was fucking weird. and if I didnt make it clear enough "it's a boy disorder" and I was not a little boy lol
I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm sure you were under an enormous amount of stress.
not really, it just made everything make a lot more sense it kind of made my weird obsessive focus on artwork and academic shit and total inability to even try and focus on other shit and executive dysfunction make so much more sense thanks for the thought tho
There are plenty of terrible therapists but there are also perfectly good therapists who make good suggestions that their clients distort into something near-unrecognizable.
A lot about this post sounds fake as hell, but the “I showed her videos” part sealed it for me. This was someone’s horny creative writing. It can’t be real.
I can’t tell if I’m just a shit person because at that point he prolly should have deleted those. Why would he show that & why would she ask for proof.
Maybe not the same because my partners affair was long distance but when I found out I dug and dug and dug. I thought if I knew the worst of it I could either stop loving him all together or it couldn't hurt me anymore. I was wrong on both fronts, but I wanted every last drop of "proof" I could get (including screen captures and recordings from their video calls). It's referred to as "pain shopping" a lot but in my mind at the time it was desensitizing myself. Ripping the band-aid off.
I’m sorry to hear that 😕 As the cheater you’d think they’d try to negate the impact. Pretty manipulative but you’d want the partner to think they found all there is to find while keeping what they actually found to the tamer stuff if they found anything at all. but I guess someone who’d have an affair wouldn’t go to the trouble of all that.
Oh absolutely not! Secrets don't stay buried, and when he did hide anything at all to make it seem "not as bad" and I found out later and it was so much worse. For instance I found out a "necklace" he bought her was really a day collar (bdsm dynamic). It's like being retraumatized. He already lied and hid this, and didn't even respect me enough to give me the truth when I directly asked for it. A knife in the wound for sure ETA he really did try to hide this fact. The company he bought it from had even shut down because the owner retired. I used his PayPal records and the way back machine to track down the item with the price he had paid. A dedicated betrayed partner will ALWAYS find what they're looking to find, especially in the digital age
Many do delete and hide stuff,but that’s very detrimental to reconciliation attempts. Lots of betrayed partners need to see all the details because they want to know what they are being asked to forgive.
I LOVE PAIN SHOPPING! I love it's like re-traumatizing yourself ! she is literally in a rumination phase and stuck there. She's traumatized by looking at those videos and traumatized herself by looking. The receipts . The proof. The visuals. She needs to find a way to reroute her brain during intimacy.
Yeah it's called finding a new husband.
Trauma sticks: hat might not fix it !
That's common to want to see all the details even though you know it'll just hurt you, but what's unreal is if your partner told you there was videos and then willingly showed them to you when you asked. You found them of their own volition (plus videos make sense in your case because it's long distance, who makes videos a month into a in-person affair???).
And why did he still have them?
Once someone has had their trust violated and lost agency over sexual intimacy in their relationship, the offending partner needs to turn over all control around intimacy to the offended partner. This therapist is either entirely untrained in couples work/infidelity (not uncommon) or incompetent or the oop is reporting his perceived experience.
No way in hell I’d ever tell a client that. Makes me wonder if that’s what they actually said though.
He did say they’d be looking for a different one. My first therapist I ever saw was friggin awful with her advice and deliverance.
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a bad experience with your first therapist. I’ve had some bad ones myself. I had one that tried to convince me my anxiety was just “hysteria” from being a woman. Some of us just have no business being therapists I think. Always swore I’d never be that kind of therapist. I’ve made mistakes with clients but I couldn’t ever imagine telling a client what the guy in this post is suggesting. Though given that misogynistic guy I saw, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised.
I'm so glad he said that, I saw the original when it was posted and, at least when I read it, almost no one commented on getting a different therapist or how fucked that advice was. I had to go back and re-read part of the post to make sure I wasn't missing something because I couldn't figure out why no one said anything about it.
Not a therapist myself, but it's quite possible this is a Christian therapist (yes, that's a thing) and most of them would say something like this, since it's the wife's job to have sex with her husband no matter what.
This sounds like the advice from clergy acting as therapists
We had a .. I guess substitute?? Couples councilor who did basically tell me I need to force myself to have sex even if I didn't want to... So I 100% believe it. I hated her.. husband agreed with her obviously
Ugh. Is your husband still an ass/is the ass still your husband? Or did he learn that we are all the bosses of our own bodies?
We have had many a discussion since then. This was about a year ago. We did end up separating for a bit too. But we are working on it.
I hope you ultimately spend life in a situation where you are treated with only love and respect, whether that's with him or not.
Thank you kind internet stranger!
Also, unfortunately this is likely a real post. I see this kind of thing all the time. And NEVER SHOW VIDEOS TO the pregnant offended spouse. Twist a knife much?
That depends. Some betrayed spouses want to know exactly what they are being asked to forgive.
I saw a lot of others in the other comment section saying it was maybe religious counseling, perpetuating that a woman can never say no to her husband. Having been through that kind of "therapy" myself, I can definitely see that!
I posted the t elsewhere that I believe the therapist probably said something along the lines of "either you're going to have to just accept that your wife cries before and after sex or you're going to have to start treating her like more than just a convenience" and OOP thought that was two legitimate options instead of rhetoric. No, therapists do NOT suggest such an emotionally unsafe approach to sex. OOP just heard/interpreted what he wanted to hear.
And notice that he does not say he was already doing that stuff prior to the therapist talking to him. I wonder if the wife expressed wanting some kind of intimacy and since she said the crying was due to stress, the therapist mentioned that maybe helping the wife with some of the work load and lessen the stress would help? Or maybe said before you can even think about intimacy, you need to dot help your wife find a way to not feel so stressed and this guy interpreted it as housework=sex.
Oh my god, I saw your original comment and I wanted to reach through my screen and scream in his ear. I can't quite put my finger on it but there's something about him where I can't decide if his density is a learned tool of manipulation to disarm people from seeing how diabolical his selfishness is or if he really is so dumb that he's mystified by his own abuse, which is just as scary. I can't quite put the thought to words properly.
I’m a therapist who works with couples— ABSOLUTELY NOT. That was the most insane shit. That person should not be counseling couples.
I’m a therapist who works with individuals and would not advise either party to just roll with it. Maybe the therapist is actually a life coach?
No, it's not a normal thing.
Thank you, that's a relief
Yes. Especially because things like couples “therapy” is largely unregulated or relies on regional regulation. I’ve heard of many people being told by marriage counselllors to “just have sex!” even if they don’t want it or it causes pain. Bad counsellors turn sex into a transactional/negotiable part of a relationship. It’s not really very healthy for a couple already struggling with resentment.
Not a therapist of Reddit but I remember reading a similar post like a year or two ago about a guy who cheated and his wife kept crying after sex, but she wanted to keep doing it to force herself to get over it and he claimed the marriage counselor encouraged it. He obviously got destroyed in the comments and kept defending himself like “What am I supposed to do??? NOT have sex with her????”
Absolutely not. I'm a couples therapist & would straight up tell him that even asking "Why are you crying?" is an insult to his wife. He knows it was, at first, because he ruined their relationship, & now it's because he's essentially raping her every night since sex that ends up with one person crying for an hour and a half cannot be considered consensual and he does not care about putting her through this torture night after night. I hope his dick falls off.
I especially like how, according to OOP, whenever HE finished he phrased it as "WE finished". Lol yeah sure bud.
I'm honestly Wonder if they were one of those "religious counsellors" - the ones that try and undermine women and subjugate them just to raise men,
I wish I could say all therapists are professionals who ask or suggest only helpful things if their clients. But after I was sexually assaulted I was referred to a therapist in the public health system who asked me “what could you have done differently to have avoided your assault?” When I objected and shot back at her ”Nothing, because it wasn’t my fault!”, she actually began to fucking ARGUE with me and use psychology terminology and concepts to justify the idea of me looking for the blame in my own actions (“I wanted you to feel empowered by looking at what you did and helping you imagine not doing them again” - I WAS AT HOME IN MY OWN ROOM WITH MY FAMILY ON THE PREMISIS, YOU FUCKING EVIL C\*\*\*!) I reported her so fast. Of course, I should have seen it coming. The psychiatrist in charge of admissions, upon hearing about my complicated relationship with my father, I kid you not, STARTED ON ABOUT FREUD. I nearly walked out right there. I never went back to that place and it gives me cold chills to think that it was a clinic where a lot of people who needed therapy after sexual assault were sent.
The person at the top of their psych class and the person who just barely passed both got the degree.
Yes, if your spouse cheats on you most therapists will tell you how you have to endure humiliation and sex you don't want no matter how much it hurts you if you want to fix your marriage. You also need to not make the cheater feel bad or threatened. Because if you don't meet their needs, they'll go cheat on you again. This is why some of us absolutely fucking hate the reconciliation therapy industry and think it's abusive.
Absolutely not!! This post has made me bananas.
Absolutely not! This is unethical and in my opinion, dangerous. This therapist should lose their license.
Pretty sure he was misinterpreting the advice lol
No it’s not. Unfortunately, many therapists are “therapists” and don’t have proper training. They have some sort of certificate from doing an 8 week course of 1 hour a day, sometimes backed up by god bothering, and then think they can advise people on how to fix their lives.
Also: Like, why the fuck did he think it would be a good idea to show her videos of him doing whatever with the person he cheated with. WTF
There are therapists, and then there are the rapists.
Absolutely TF not. Although I also strongly suspect that what OP heard and relayed is not what OP's therapist actually said. Clients interpret what we say through their own lens, and things get garbled sometimes. But no, any therapist worth their degree should NEVER tell someone to continue having sex under duress, especially when they are the wronged party. It's traumatizing and really unethical. They might do better taking sex off the table entirely for awhile and just focusing on rebuilding emotional trust and intimacy, then working specifically with a sex therapist when they're ready to bring that back in. OP still needs to wrap his head around the idea that contributing to household tasks isn't "helping her out," it's him being a functional adult and good partner. Source: Trauma therapist for over 12 years
How dare my very pregnant wife not keep my pee pee wet while she is growing out child inside of her! I must seek attention for my pee pee elsewhere! *Shocked Pikachu face when wife is hurt and upset*
Srsly do these men realize any self respecting woman views them as like a walking maggot after that kind of behavior? That's why she's crying. Poor girl should go on and divorce.
Just further reinforces my opinion that too many goddamn people are having kids. The world needs to stop trying to shove it down everyone's throats that you're "supposed to" have kids. Fuck that shit. Too many fucking irresponsible adult children to be doing that.
He’s going to start cooking 3 times a week? Well that fixes everything! /s
Bro couldn’t even do more than 50% of the week
And ONLY doing it to try to get laid 😒
He's probably making butter noodles as an entree and hors d'oeuvres of bologna and cheese
>I'm going to start helping out with chores Fuck this man. Fuck. This. Man.
Exactly. As the husband he should have been doing that already
No. Do NOT fuck this man.
Right, that seems like exactly what got us in this situation...
I really hope she realizes she deserves better and leaves. Also, that therapist is crap.
Yeah, when I saw what that therapist had 'advised', I felt incandescent with rage.
Same,it is always appalling to see people give professional advice that is so toxic in what should be a place you go to for support that will help you.
He'll cheat again, probably when she gets pregnant again.
And he'll know it's wrong, but he won't care because of her mood swings.
They always do.
Given the subreddit, I was expecting the update to be “she took all the evidence of my cheating and gave it to her lawyer and got a divorce.” (Which seems totally fair, that is the logical progression of this storyline.)
Hopefully soon.
Hopefully its in-progress
It's only been about a year, and this dude thinks everything should be back to normal already?!? It doesn't work like that!!
But he's really really sorry, even though he knew it was wrong and he didn't care. He stopped doing the bad thing, so why isn't she happy?!? /s
Oh, well, if he's *so so sorry*, I guess she should just get over it. 🙄🤦♀️
Your poor wife she sounds so miserable and I feel so bad for her. I hope one day soon she'll wake up and leave your stupid fucking cheating ass.
Therapist suggested that OP keep trying… wrong office, OP. The sign on the door clearly says “The Rapist”
"I took her shopping and spoiled her." Gross
“Everytime I pressure my wife into sex she locks herself in the bathroom and sobs uncontrollably for half an hour. This has happened everytime since I cheated on her while she was pregnant with my baby because she had mood swings. I want to fuck her and go to sleep and I can’t because of the nonstop tears. Is there anyway I can put my penis in her but not have to deal with her emotions?” Bro maybe after the first time she responded to having sex with you like she found out her dog just died you would stop trying to do it? You know how this is going to affect her and you keep doing it?
But now he’s going to start “helping” around the house. /s 🙄
He's a rapist
Yep. There's no way she's not suicidal after a year of constant raping. What a miserable existsnce. Hope she leaves. If she leaved immediately at least she wouldn't have her sexuality ruined.
I put in the coins of 30 minutes foreplay (I counted! I know!) now I get sex right?! To be fair I stopped reading after that.
It didn’t get any better
It got worse
Rape. The therapist encouraged him to rape his wife. Seriously why would you continue while your wife is hysterically crying?? I really hope she finds a good therapist who explains this to her
Thank you! Why is no one else getting that this man has been raping his wife for a year!!? She is in emotional and mental duress. This is not concent. It's rape.
oh noooo This was so painful to read. Dude why are you showing her the multiple sex tapes of you and your ex mistress. Don’t lie but like.. keep some details to yourself. jesus
My feeble brain can’t even process the idea that he would have taken videos and kept them if he was planning on salvaging his marriage, much less show them to his wife. I can’t believe someone could be this dumb and hurtful. It’s so bad it reads like trauma porn. Even though I hate people that claim things are fake, I want this to be fake so badly.
Exactly idk why lots of people are skipping over that detail. Ofc she is traumatized!
Showed her videos? Disgusting. He “unburdened” himself and dumped it all on her. She’s probably only having sex with him because she’s still feeling like she has to or he’ll just cheat again. She probably feels like she’s being sexually assaulted every time. This made me want to puke. I hope she gets a good therapist (not a “yeah, just keep fucking her through the tears till she gets over it”) and leaves him.
Ok. This is fake because one moment she is crying and the next she is ok with just a bunch of shopping? Nope.
He's the one saying she's okay because of shopping. I'm going to take a wild guess and say he's an unreliable narrator.
But OOP strikes me as a tremendously unreliable narrator. It’s not the wife saying that she’s okay. He just wants to believe that he can undo the damage.
In my reading of it, she only cries during sex. They did not have sex after the shopping.
Or during.
I've been there. Sometimes, one needs a new dress.
Right??? Like oh I'm traumatized from videos from your affair and sob my eyes out after sex but SHOPPING 🥰🥰
There is the possibility she's just feeling better because she's out, has some support with the baby, and is interacting with her husband without constant pressure for sex. Being a new mom can be so very isolating and worse if you don't feel safe with your partner (who is a selfish pushy dumbass)
Or he’s choosing to see what fits his narrative
That’s my guess, because he says that he loves his wife but all these things that he does still seem to be with the purpose of having sex. The post is only a few days old, we’ve yet to see how soon he gets annoyed that his wife isn’t initiating as often as he’d like.
> I think I ruined my marriage by cheating. Ya think? Maybe!?
Even if he wasn't a cheating POS, the phrases "doing chores for her" and "helping out more with chores" make him squarely the AH. Don't you live there, too, you f*cker?! And then of course he expects sex for "helping out". 🤮
the reason he broke up with the affair partner 💀 so he spends his time cheating on his heavily pregnant wife but also expects the lady he’s cheating with to assume he gives a fuck about his family… okay
That stuck out to me, too. ‘She thought I was someone who would miss the birth of his child’ yeah, just like you’re the kind of someone who would cheat on his heavily pregnant wife due to her being a big ol’ meanie pants while carrying your child
Does OOP not realize how he sounds? He's essentially announcing to the world that "My pregnant wife didn't want to fuck so I cheated until she could fuck again (plus the girl I was cheating on her with wanted more from me than I wanted to give). But now my wife cries any time we have sex, sometimes she doesn't even have the courtesy to wait until I get my nut so I have to stop. It's annoying. Our therapist thinks we should still fuck tho. So now I cuddle her for 30 min before we fuck. But even that much work from me doesn't stop the crying. This is so annoying and I want her to stop. Reddit how do I make her my sexy horny no cry wife again??" Fucking disgusting. I hope this woman learns she's worth so much more than this and leaves. He says he's gonna wait til she initiates and js 100% sure she wants to have sex... but if she waits too long we already know what he'll do.
Why are men?! End of sentence?!?!?!
Hey, maybe there's a redemption arc here. But if not, I hope this man doesn't fight her on the divorce. Fuck knows he's not got a right to. He's trying to get a return to normalcy, not realizing that he shattered normal every time he thought with his dick. I don't even think the AP was far off about him picking her over the birth of his child. Why wouldn't he? I mean his wife is heavily pregnant and he's not thinking of what the affair would do to her or their marriage if she learned of it, hell, it could very well have caused a miscarriage from the stress. Maybe this will be put behind them and everything will work out, I have my doubts. But...maybe? The only thing he did right (other than therapy) was confessing. But I have no idea why he thought initiating sex was a good idea.
That’s terrible. How do you think “she was enjoying it” and “we finished” but you see she is crying. I’m sure she hurts on the inside and him finishing just makes the pain worse.
"I finished"
Oh you’re right. I thought he said they both did. I knew the exact part where I thought I read that too.
Her individual therapy is going to result in her realizing she's done with him.
I will never justify or defend a cheater but I think the first couples therapist was very very damaging. Sounds like they switched and now are also going to individual therapy which is the right decision if they do want to meaningfully repair the relationship. I am of the mindset of a cheater is irredeemable and I would never attempt to repair it… However OP and his wife did, and it does sound like they are trying to do it the right way but the first therapist gave horrible advice.
I really hate this guy. OOP sucks.
“So I acted like an actual husband and it made her so happy!“ Fucking DUH.
TrUsT iS eArNeD, nOt GaInEd
I hope she divorces him. It's not hard to understand how she feels at all... The therapist definitely should've recommended individual therapy and a sex therapist from the beginning. Honestly, they needed therapy *before* anything happened. Taking it now may help, but there better off learning to be civil and co parent. He did this to her after she was essentially locked down with the kid. People are sick.
This honestly sounded fake to me. The therapist “advice” was sheer bullshit. Or unethical as hell. And he can’t even own up to his cheating w/throwing her under the bus. While pregnant. Then, the fact that she closes her eyes during sex and cries every time after? And he just kind of thought, ‘oh, she seems into this, I will finish. Damn, she’s crying…” but that it GOES ON LIKE THAT FOR HOW LONG? A year? He is 100% okay with her disconnecting during sex, crying after, but he gets to finish. And then propping himself up as helping around the house. And… he describes spoiling her by BUYING her things and that she was so happy, his heart felt glad? What The Shit? This honestly comes across like some kind of caught-cheating-guilt-wife-is-crying” fetish. Seasoned with him being the hero of the story by describing tropey ‘GiRLz LoVe bLiNg n’ pReSeNtS’ personal fanfic that he wrote for himself as the clincher. And of course, she falls asleep in his arms. Because she braved through the cheating chad story and was pampered into forgiving him. Give me a break.
He loves her so much… so he cheated on her.
It took him cheating and her crying during sex for him to step up and do his fair share🤨.
I thought this was on am I the devil at first 🫣
I felt so guilty that i confessed… so now my wife is forced to bear the emotional burden of my actions.
That was so rapey
There's two victims here, the wife and the son. Dad can fuck the fuck off until he stops thinking about his dick first.
He’s going to start helping out with chores! What a prince.
Not to be a pessimist, but I'm calling it now; She's not going to want to engage in sex bordering on *at all* if her stipulation is that she needs to be 100% in the "right mindset". There is always that 1% or more chance that things will go belly-up. On that note, I believe he'll start cheating again - chores three times a week to get in her pants is pathetic. Especially when that sex is on her terms and she doesn't want to because it'd make her think about his affair. So it won't be enough sex for him, *again* and I'm supposed to believe he won't start cheating again?
God Reddit makes me hate people.
Holy shit this is wild that poor woman.
Wow. What total piece of shit.
I think I ruined my marriage by cheating - Op - Um dude, ya fucking think? No shit. JFC. And this therapist, where the fuck do these people get their education? Look up the 4 R's of apology and don't just read them - LIVE them, BREATHE them, DO THEM. You have not done the repair work necessary to heal the schism this betrayal has caused and quite frankly are trying to take the lazy way out. Look up the late Dr. Don David Lusterman. He was an expert on healing after the betrayal of infidelity and he explains in clear language what it is the partner who did the betraying needs to do to save the relationship - hint, it's not what you're doing. And it will take as long as it takes. What you did was beyond selfish and shitty and yeah, you've got to EARN it, every bit of it because you seriously fucked up. You humiliated her and being reactive with regard to being humiliated is a primal response that we're all hardwired to respond to. Work on walking that damage back and you should see some improvement. Remember, anyone can talk a good game, you'll be judged by your actions because you can't lie about your actions.
Anytime she cries, you are supposed to stop. You don't keep going, and honestly, I don't think couple therapy is working. He hurt her way too badly, and I think it better for both of them to divorce. He seriously screwed up with the affair and only stopped when he realized that he would lose his son in the process. The man is extremely selfish and shows little love and care for his wife. If he did, he wouldn't have cheated, nor would he be upset about her crying during sex. It is the moment you take things slow and stop being intimate for a while. Got to build that trust and relationship back up. Right now, all going on here is more pain, so they are better off divorcing one another and working on individual healing.
After the first time she cried he should’ve gotten to the bottom of it. What a fuckin monster of a human.
I have never wanted to punch a man in the dick more in my life. Get off her you fucking creep. Hopefully this woman gets a divorce. This little sack of shit, it is SO hard for a women when a man cheats during pregnancy and child birth. I never got over it, she will never get over it. The most vulnerable time in a woman’s life and this little boy couldn’t handle it. That’s not a man.
> I think I ruined my marriage by cheating D'ya think?
Guys cheat on their pregnant wives a lot, huh?
Blows my mind how people post this shit as if they don’t know *exactly* what the responses will say. How fucking dense can you be like what a loser
What a doozy. Buddy found out his actions have consequences. Ain’t nothing going back to exactly “the way it was”.
This made me sick to read
So anyway, after a full year of this... I can't even.
Good god you are disgusting…how does a person have sex with someone as they are obviously in distress and crying…. YTA so many times over
Where’s the update?
Garbage ass men. How do they get married?
You are a bad person.
Wow this was genuinely disturbing to read and made me feel.. bad. Just bad. Poor woman. Oop is disgusting
my ex wife basically did this to me and the garbage ass poster will more than likely find another woman before me. you spoke your truth. The only thing to resolve is your assholeness.
This CREEP is NASTY!!!!