DH sent dirty text to someone else, how do I forgive?

[Fordy1974]

I found out my DH had been sending and getting dirty texts from a old school friend. Only found out cause her DH threatend to tell all on Facebook. He says it was only a month and never wanted any thing more. He's in bits, I'm angry. I don't want my marriage to end. Need advice to get pass this.

That's awful (maybe better advice on relationships board?)

Have you talked about why he did it? Where they an item in the past? Did you find out because they were threatened with exposure or did he feel he was going to get away with it?

Not to excuse his behaviour at all but maybe having to be a grown up with grown up responsibilities scared the hell out of him and he was pining for the days when he was care free?

Thank you, new to all this. Will find relationships board. He says he doesn't now why, that's why I feel a bit lost.

There is no particular way to forgive someone, it's more of an emotion than a personal decision. You can choose to forgive but if you don't feel it, you may never really feel it.

Look at it this way. He has broken your trust. That's gone. It may never come back. At the time he knew you be upset but did it anyway so that says a lot about how he feels about you. That's a lot to just forgive. It will take time, years maybe and it will never be the same.

Also, prepare yourself that there might be more to this than just texts. Have you see the messages? Did they meet up? I would speak to her dh to see what he knows, or at least tell your dh that that's what you'll do if he doesn't confess all right here, right now.

"He says it was only a month and never wanted any thing more. "

This is called damage limitation and minimising.

It may have gone further than this....

You don't have to forgive.

If you want to move on and try again that's up to you, but you are not obliged to forgive something that's unforgivable.

It will be very difficult for you to forgive until you have seen enough remorse.

Your DH may well be in bits, but he's got a hell of a lot of making up to do before you are likely to be able to truly forgive him.

Forgiveness is a powerful thing, and it's not something you will be able to give just because you want to.

Your DH telling you he doesn't know why he did this isn't going to help his cause. He needs to work out his reason why, because there will be a reason, and then deal with that for you to be able to think of forgiving.

I would think this is entirely down to how he deals with the situation - he should be ridiculously apologetic and looking at ways to avoid being such a an arse in the future. Damage limitation is not useful or helpful.

It's up to you how you respond to his dealing with this.

If you click the "Report" link next to your original post, you can ask MN to move this to Relationships.

Only you can know how much you are prepared to tolerate and what it will take for you to forgive him, as different people have different boundaries. I'd want to know every last detail about it, how it happened, why it happened - "I don't know" wouldn't be good enough for me. As long as he told me everything, and I was satisfied that it hadn't gone beyond texting, it probably wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me. But we'd have to talk about what the problems are between us that made him feel he needed to do this, and how to put those right (and no way would he be allowed to blame me for everything.)

It would be made crystal clear that he would have to make huge efforts to regain my trust, that he was in the last chance saloon and any reoccurrence would be it, over, finished. I'd also check up on his phone, emails, social media from time to time and if he quibbled about allowing this, then obviously he's not committed to putting things right so that means he would be choosing to end it.

I think the reason is that he got a sexual kick from it. He certainly wasn't thinking of your or your relationship OP

We have talked for the last 3 days, I came on here because I needed to know what other people thought without seeing the look of pity in their eyes. Thank you all for your comments.

Do you feel you have asked all the questions you want to (even the ones you are scared to ask?).

Trust is bloody hard to rebuild. But if you are wanting to try then it's do-able. But you both have to accept it comes back and knocks you off your feet at times and it is different. And if you realises you cannot move from this positively at least you know you tried (presuming he's really wanting to sort this out).

Just take your time, don't be rushed. It's a really shitty thing for him to do to you.