Can marriages truly come back from cheating?

[ChiIIIe]

After reading a recent post on here it just got me thinking about whether marriages can truly survive cheating, and can they ever genuinely come back as good or better than before?

I can't ever imagine being fully happy and being able to forgive my DH if I discovered he had cheated. For me I think it would just signify the lie we had lived.

YABU: Marriages definitely can be the same as before with the right work

YANBU: There's no going back

I don’t think so, how can you put your all into someone who clearly doesn’t love you enough or respect you & for a relationship to work you definitely have to put your all into each other

I struggle with knowing a friends dh cheated for a looooong time and she's still with him not saying a word

Guess they've got over it

The one time I was cheated on was a 3 year BF and that was an immediate walk out from me. The hurt of a DH would be that times a million, I wouldn't see a way through it.

It can never go back to what it was before.

It can however go forwards into something new. It really needs proper thinking about what sort of future is wanted.

There's no size fits all.

Just as there is no single pattern of affair.

For me, I’m done and out the door without a second thought.

However, I have the luxury of stable employment, financial independence, supportive extended family who are also able to financially assist if called upon.

I feel that for those that stay together, only a very small percentage truly overcome it and move forward in the relationship. I believe that the majority are staying as they don’t want to lose full custody of any children and/or don’t have the financial means and support to walk out the door with confidence.

You can never trust them. Are they really going to the gym, or a different kind of cardio?

That way lies madness.

I think what is forgivable is something like a single drunken snog, with a commitment to cut down drinking afterwards. The thing is though, with the trickle-truthing by cheaters, a confession of 'it was just one snog,' usually turns out to be the tip of the iceberg.

The reason a sustained affair is abuse is because it involves gaslighting.

The unwitting betrayed partner sees an odd expression as OH looks at their phone.

"What is it,"

"Nothing, just a cat video."

You know what you saw. A strange smirk. But now your OH convinces you that you misread their expression.

In an affair lasting weeks/months/years this kind of thing is repeated hundreds of times.

It is crazy-making.

It is abuse.

No.

@LylaLee yeah I think you've hit the nail on the head there!

I think a small number can in the right circumstances. However, I think most "reconciliations" are toxic in some way either because there is hidden resentment by someone who feels trapped by their circumstances or there is just a lot of gaslighting going on.

I tried to keep my marriage going after my husband cheated. Biggest mistake of my life and I wasted almost 2 years before I realised that the trust was gone and it was never coming back and I was just making myself ill.

Agree with PP. The sex bit I can see myself getting over.

The repeated, sustained lies to enable that sex? Choosing another woman to share silly little things about his day? Nah.

(my husband has an entirely unasked for habit of telling me what he had for lunch in exact detail - I couldn't stand it if he told another person who didn't ask woman in the same way)

Yeah I think that's another eye opening thought, my DH telling the silly shit he tells me to another woman! It's silly shit but it's our silly shit.

At the risk of sounding cringey I think this is so adorable.

I kicked my DP out the day I heard he'd cheated. There had been hints a few precious times but this one was no question.

I had a 1yo disabled son and lived in a foreign country.

He tried to reconcile and I agreed to talk. There was a lot of "me me me " and my attention being on new baby etc but some points I did think he was right that could have caused the problems.

I was willing to start afresh with a few dates to discover us again.

He wanted to move in or nothing.

It was nothing for me. I couldn't recover from this knowing he wouldn't start from the beginning and build those bridges he said had fallen down. Because it meant we were t fixing the problem. I had no interest in revenge sex with others or hurting him. No interest in bringing up the ONS to hurt him.

But the fact he didn't/ couldn't respect I needed time and to build rust was a dealbreaker for me.

It was a really weird realisation when it suddenly clicked that at some point every evening, his little face would light up and he'd go, "Oh, I forgot to tell you! Lunch was a beetroot and falafel wrap, salt and vinegar crisps and a smoothie".

I never asked 😂And he never asked me about my lunch. Just a weird little ritual he started when we moved in together.

So yeah, I can see that he might enjoy having sex with another woman. I could certainly enjoy sex with another man. But if he tells another woman what he had for lunch, it's over.

Both options are false.

No your marriage doesn't go back to what it was before.

Yes with time you can build a new marriage which brings you both happiness.

He had an affair 8 years into our marriage. We split up for briefly but then got back together. That was nearly 10 years ago.

FYI before I found out I was very much of "no second chances" club. Real life didn't work out that way.

The hardest thing for me was dealing with other people's (and my own) perception that staying together made me weak. I had some therapy and I'm way past that point.

We get on better now than we did in those first 9 years ( it helps now our children are older so we get more time to do fun stuff alone and together.). All is good.

I personally couldn't get past it if I was married (which I'm not). For me the entire logic of being married to someone would be the exclusivity and the trust.

It's impossible to trust someone who has had sex or sexually oriented activity with someone when they are supposed to be in an exclusive relationship with you. There's literally no central logic holding the marriage together, its like a house without a foundation. I don't need to be married to someone for financial reasons so there's nothing else keeping me there and no upside to remaining with someone I don't trust.

I understand and appreciate that where there are shared children and shared finances there may be a strong internal logic that trumps the need for trust and exclusivity and many people may be able to cling to these practical justifications and make some sort of accommodation with it over time. And fair enough of those are the priorities.

It wouldn't work for me though.

My dad stayed with my mum who cheated and they're still together in their 80s. To be honest though it was only one reason I think they should have split and not the biggest one. She bullied me and him senseless which blighted my childhood. They aren't well matched at all. He's an intelligent, nice man. She's neither. It feels a bit of a waste of a life for my dad to spend so many years with someone like that. He could have done so much better. My mum boasts about their long marriage. 🙄

Ma6be, bit only people who e been in the situation can give an answer to this question. Hypothetical cheating is nothing like the reality of it.