To think I can save my marriage after infidelity(mine)?

[Shehz21]

I'm posting here for traffic and want to get opinions/read about experiences from anyone who has cheated in their marriage.

I have cheated on DH who I've been married to for 4 years during lockdown. I have always been the exemplary wife, mother(we have a 3 year old DD) and everyone always looked up to us as being the ideal couple. I started feeling extremely lonely during lockdown and think I got caught up in the whole "new man giving attention to me" situation. I extremely regret and came clean to my husband few days ago about the emotional side of the relationship and the next day he spoke to OM and OM told him about the physical side of it. DH is totally broken as he genuinely loved and cared about me so much. He says he can never trust or love me again and staying in this marriage will only make me miserable as he won't be able to be the old him again. I really want to save my marriage and need to know whether it is possible to survive this together? Will he ever be able to love me again? Is there anything I can do from my side to bring that love out of him again?
The affair lasted 4 months and ended because I was feeling extremely guilty about cheating on DH which is why I came clean to him the same day I ended the affair. Only thing is I failed to tell him about the times I slept with OM and he had to hear it from him. Can anyone who has been through this situation help me please or share your thoughts/experiences?

Cheating is a deal breaker for me.

It's perfectly easy to have an affair during lockdown. Lockdown isn't house arrest.

It kinda was with young kids as there was no childcare options. So to go off and shag someone else OP had to leave DC with DH. Probably at home. It’s just extra shitty IMO.

The fact is that some people will forgive an affair and some won't. I tried to but I didn’t like the person it turned me into. I was paranoid and angry and I couldn’t stop bringing it up in arguments. I just couldn’t move past it. It was the lying and betrayel as I have actually been in poly relationships. He had lied to my face so many times.

You didn’t even tell him the full truth so he could make a decision. You can't make him want to fix it. If he is done he is done

no one describes themselves as an exemplary wife or mother and then talks about having a four month affair

Yeah they do - pop along to one of the married dating sites. Full of men talking about how they love their wives, their wives are their best friends.

@MiddleClassProblem

It's perfectly easy to have an affair during lockdown. Lockdown isn't house arrest.

It kinda was with young kids as there was no childcare options. So to go off and shag someone else OP had to leave DC with DH. Probably at home. It’s just extra shitty IMO.

She could have been at work. Classically unoriginal, shagging someone from work.

I'm sorry, OP, but you didn't come clean.

You told him half of it. The easy half. You lied.

And then you were caught out.

He can't trust you. How could he?

The thing is that 4 months affair when lockdown started 5 months ago is a very short time to feel lonely enough to consider an affair worthwile.

You simply don't love or respect your husband enough.

Why on earth would he want to?
You crapped all over your marriage. You betrayed him. Even when you "came clean" you bloody didn't. You minimised. Pretended you hadn't been fucking some other bloke.

If your husband has any self respect he will walk away.

You are not in control of what happens next. You forfeit that right when you fucked around. All you can do now is respect whatever your poor husband decides.

No "exemplary" mother would teach their child to accept a lack of respect in a relationship. You don't respect your husband or your relationship. He will be better off in terms of his long term self esteem without being tied to you. Cheaters often lay the pressure on the faithful person to put aside their own feelings and spout shit about making it work and relationships being hard. But. You've not tried and I think that it's unfair on the faithful one to make demands. Long term monogamy isn't for you. Now that you know that you can be more honest in future relationships. This one is over.

The OP must have misheard what it was called, it was lockdown, not bloody cockdown.. I think she misunderstood BoJo's definition of 'exercise' outside the house once a day.

From other threads it seems OP was WFH (as she is vulnerable!) and DH is a key worker.

How would you feel if it had been the other way round and he'd cheated on you? Would you forgive him??

So it's likely the other bloke whizzed round for a shag the minute her husband left for work.

Classy.

It is very serious but if the rest of the marriage is otherwise happy, then you can get past this if you both want it. Good luck OP.

I do think marriages can survive affairs but lots of conditions need to be met that havent been here. I had an emotional affair (with one kiss - MN will tell you this doesn't exist, I can assure you it does). I came completely clean to my DH immediately. We had.been having problems for a while (NOT an excuse for my behaviour) so we doight counselling. I fully accepted that I was in the wrong. However DH also admitted that he had not been giving our relationship what it needed. Our counsellor showed us how an affair can be both a cause and a consequence (again something else MN will tell you doesn't exist) of an ailing relationship. We both worked hard and that was 8 years ago, we are very happy, it never gets mentioned, it truly isnt an issue.

But as I say, I came completely clean, it wasnt physical (not sure that matters but it might to your DH) and we were both willing to work on the relationship.

You cant make him stay. That I'm afraid could be the consequence of your behaviour.

What were you thinking OP? I’ve read that relationships can work and in an odd way affairs can sometimes make relationships stronger but honestly it’s down to your husband if he can and is willing to move past it. Don’t think I could and know my husband wouldn’t.

It might help if you see this from your husbands perspective, how would you feel? What would you think? Under the same circumstances could you trust him again and would you want to try and make it work?

I tried with an ex years ago, it turned me into a monster, the relationship limped along for 12 months and then we had to call it a day, was unfair on both of us.

If it helps, maybe the relationship just wasn’t right for you to cheat in the first place, might be kinder on you both to have a clean break. Ex MIL said relationships take work but they shouldn’t be hard work all the time, they should bring the best out in you both. Should be you and him against the world, not against each other, she was so right and we’re still close. Hope you and your husband will both be ok.

IF...within ONE month of lockdown you became so lonely you started an affair, then your feelings towards the OM were already there. You might try to kid yourself and your H, but you would have eventually embarked on a relationship with the OM regardless.

Hi OP -You must have been dissatisfied/bored/lonely/depressed for you to stray. People don’t run to things - they run from things.

You had the affair because deep down you weren’t happy. Perhaps it may go even further back - you need to address the motivation for the affair. Happy people don’t have affairs.

I hope you can both find some peace

Game over I'm afraid. Not only did you repeatedly cheat, you risked your own health and that of your family, by being intimate with someone outside of your household during lockdown.

Time to pack you bags and get going. Apologise profusely to your husband and child but get out.

No one here can answer this.

Everyone has different limits about what they can take. You need to be dedicating your time to your DH to see what he can and can’t forgive and accept whatever he says. I don’t judge you, I’ve not had an affair but I don’t judge it. But you won’t find what you’re looking for here. Even if your husband does decide to try and make it work you need to investigate why this happened and how you can move forward, but at the end of the day it’s up to him.

I think the fact that you when you ‘came clean’, you still didn’t tell the truth and he had to hear from OM. It would be very hard for him to trust you again after that. What else hasn’t he been told? Even if there isn’t anything else, because you couldn’t tell the truth in the first place, he is going to struggle to trust you.
Do you want the marriage to work? Or are you just saying that now because you are feeling guilty?
Fortunately it’s now up to your husband to do the hard work of either trying to forgive you (which whilst not I possible, will be hard) or call for a divorce. He’s not done anything to warrant this situation.
Best thing you can do is give him time.

I too am quite surprised you managed to get an affair off the ground whilst in lockdown.
You omitted to tell him a major detail of the affair then he found out from the OM. I’d struggle to get past that too tbh.

NC

Yes, I've been there. And yes, we're still married. But there's nothing I can suggest you do. The ball is completely in your partner's court.

We'd been together since we were 17, never known anybody else, married 3 years, since we were 26. I was 3 months pregnant with our first at the time. We're now 5 years on, with two children.

I took the verbal abuse I rightly deserved from him. He called me every name under the sun. He wanted to know why. He thought we were happily married, expecting our first child. I tried to give him the reasons but to be honest they sounded pathetic. I was being bullied at work by one guy and sexually harrased by another whose wife was sending me abuse by email as she'd found his messages and been told it was my fault. My husband wanted nothing to do with my situation at work and a work colleague supported me through it instead. One thing led to another and I'm ashamed to say I fell into this guy's arms. We had an emotional affair for two months but then I slept with him twice.

My husband only took a day to process it but then he wanted to talk. I was all for ending it. I thought you can't fix these things, that I'd betrayed him beyond redemption. But my husband said he didn't want to lose me, he wanted to move on, forget it had happened, fix our marriage. I then agreed to do anything to make it work. I blocked the OM (it helped that he admitted he'd only slept with me as I was an emotional wreck and pregnant so he knew I was vulnerable and no commitment risk, so yeah, as much of a dick as me). For about a year afterwards it would come up in arguments, but since then we've never mentioned it. He's asked me never to talk about it again or mention it to anyone because he's ashamed. I have done everything he asked.

I'm not sure what to say. There's nothing you can do but wait and listen to what he had to say.

I think poster know she's in the wrong and wanted some advice . I don't get why people feel the need to give her a kicking and slag here off .

Move to another thread if you can't offer advice and just want to leave twaty comments .

People can move on and get over this but it's a minority, everything will be so raw for DH and it will have to come from him but if you are able to move on you both have to commit to drawing a line under you can't keep raking it up .

I don’t know how your husband will feel, obviously. I do know of two friends who stayed after their husbands had an affair, one marriage is still together ten years later, the other broke down a few years after the affair.
Some people do manage to resolve things, where perhaps there were problems in the marriage that can be worked through.
I really don’t know what I would do if I found out that DH had been seeing another woman, or what he would do in reverse. Hard to end a marriage when you have children, but equally hard to ever trust again.

Why did you tell him ? I know someone who had an affair, she has never told her husband, it was over twenty years ago now, and they are very happy together, so sometimes I wonder whether all the pain and grief for her husband and dc if she had confessed would have been pointless (she decided she wanted to stay in the marriage and so ended her affair.)