... to not leave my husband?

[welcometouniversallychallenged]

On Friday night I found out that my husband has been cheating on me.

He had dropped his old phone in the bathroom. Normally if I saw his phone lying around I'd ignore it (I would never consider snooping, and I thought we had a very open, trusting relationship), but it was his old phone (he had a new one in November last year), so I was surprised to see it at all, and when I picked it up the screen flashed on, showing his texts. Again, this was surprising as the top one showed he'd been texting this week, despite him telling me he had cancelled his contract. I opened them and saw that he was having an extremely elicit conversation with someone called 'Ems', in which he was saying things like he wanted to be with her, and how sexy she is etc.

When I came out of the bathroom I handed him his phone and let him know what I'd seen. It was bedtime, and told him he could sleep on the sofa. He followed me into the bedroom crying and pleading with me to listen to him, that he wanted to talk to me about it, that he was so sorry... I told him I was exhausted and didn't want to talk about it until I'd had some sleep.

We have a two week old baby and a two and half year old toddler.
Because we've just had a baby, this weekend has been manic with people coming to see us/ visiting family/ church etc, so we still haven't talked about it.

I'm heartbroken, completely devastated. But we now have two children together, we've been married seven years, we have just put our house on the market and are looking at buying our dream family house. Two days later, after not talking about it, I'm wondering if I'm ridiculous to consider letting it go and staying with him. He is such an amazing father, and the idea of our family being broken up is almost unbearable.

I should mention that when I was pregnant with our oldest, he did a similar thing - he joined a dating site and started messaging a woman. His brother found out and gave him a good talking to, which seemed to sort him out til now. It's a worrying pattern of behaviour, but AIBU to stay despite it?

OP - my OH had an affair a few years ago.

We had counselling for quite a while and I can honestly say I am over it I trust him and I still love him.

I think we are more honest with each other about everything than we were before.

There is one person who has screwed up here. It isn't the OP and it isn't the posters who are warning the OP that her husband's excuses for being the most banal of sleazy fucks are only slightly less ridiculous than "the dog made me do it".

It's up to Op if she thinks she can live with it and quash that questioning voice in the back of her mind. It could work for a while. Or at least until he does it again.

he said he'd allow me access to all of his devices

Apart from the secret pay as you go phone you would know nothing about.....can you live like this, wondering something like that?

Anyfucker - no not her - the relate counsellor

I couldn't forgive this level of betrayal, twice. It's too much. But I totally understand why you are conflicted.

If it was your friend not you, what would you say to her?

op I hope youre OK

Take your time with this. Create some space and distance- detach if you can. It's incredible how well you'd cope if you dumped him- thousands of women on here have talked about how hard the decision was, how hard the change was and how min better it was for them and their kids in the long run.

Only you know what you are willing to live with, what you can cope with compromising on. I wish you all the best. Congrats on your new baby, focus on her and try to put him to one side for now, if you can

Flashbang

Either the OP decides she can't trust her DH again, in which case surely it's NO sex with him again, protected or otherwise.... Or she decides she can forgive and trust him again (which may be possible - only she can decide that). If she can trust him (and it's a big 'if') then I don't see an issue in unprotected sex.

Hmm - it's a good point. I guess I kind of think that she can never ever be 100% sure that he is faithful. And she has a responsibility to her children to keep herself healthy.