Can you save a marriage after infidelity?

[Brummie999]

Has anyone out there made their marriage work after finding out their partner was unfaithful?.
we have been married 15 years, I found out in September that my husband had been involved in a sexual relationship with a woman for four months, he had ended the relationship so she contacted ne and told me all about it.
the truth is our marriage hadn’t been great for at least two years and I thought we were on a slow decline towards divorce however after talking through what had happened and why it had happened we both decided we wanted to work things through (if possible).
however I am struggling with anger/ resentment about the fact my husband sought intimacy with another woman, will the rage eventually subside, is it possible to move on from this or am I just delaying the inevitable divorce.
we have children and I’m keep to really try for all of our benefit to fix this.

No , you will always wonder , you will never trust and you will be miserable most if the time . Why would you or anyone do that to themselves?

In my experience ….
Only you will come to know if it’s worth the time & effort of forgiving & moving on together.
Your trust has been shattered & he needs to do all he can to discuss your feelings of betrayal in an adult way. He needs to answer all your questions kindly & with compassion. However I don’t think it will help to know all the gory details. Just let him drip feed or he’ll get defensive & shut you down?
I do believe it’s possible to restore a relationship but it takes work from both parties. Maybe it’ll be the kick start of moving on afresh & putting right that which was going wrong - if anything?
Id say give it a try; read up all you can about recovery (plenty via Mr Google) from this kind of betrayal to help you navigate the myriad of emotions. Would you be open to couples counselling? For sure he will need to convince you it’s all over with the OW & that his phone & laptop are open to regular scrutiny.
I’m one for recommending you play the long game. If you think love & trust can be restored then hang in there but keep your antennae up.
I reckon it will take you a long long time to recover but Rome wasn’t built in a day so take your time & providing he puts as much into the restoration as you do, see if you can work together to overcome this trauma.
You have my empathy. I wish you good luck for all your sakes.

I know two couples whose spouses cheated on them. Both couples decided to stay together. Ultimately one couple split because he found no matter how he tried, he couldn't dispel what had happened from his mind. The other couple stayed together and are still together 30 years later.
I don't think anyone can advise. It's down to your personality and whether you can get the trust back. And maybe if there's enough about your marriage that you're willing to go through a tough time in order to stay in it.

Hi am going through something similar it was years ago but just uncovered . I don't have a lot of advice but I know the emotions you are going through and I have NEVER experienced anything like it .
Don't think your losing your mind according to all the googling Ive done the rollercoaster of emotionsand pain are normal 🙁
Personally we are going for counselling as I'm not sure I am equipped to deal with it on my own .
Do NOT pay any attention to the posters telling you to up and leave . They don't know you or your relationship ( only you know that ) . I don't know for sure what the outcome will be for us ( Im hoping we can move forward but I genuinely don't know) what I do know is what we had is worth fighting for . If I had a switch to switch off my hurt and move forward I would use it because it's what I want . We both really love each other ( yes he made huge mistake that he shouldn't have and really hurt / betrayed me but ultimately we do love each other ) .
I hope you manage to work out what you want and move forward in a way that heals you .♥️

The resentment will never go, free yourself from it.

There are examples of couples who stay together and appear content and happy in their relationships so it would seem possible for some. For many others it’s not.

Of course you can make it work and put it behind you. Plenty of couples do.

If you think it’s worth fighting for, have couple’s counselling.

Plenty do
but I think it relies on really talking about your relationship, problems, why it happened and whether these can actually be fixed at root source ( ie you mention that your relationship was in decline so you need to explore why and fix that!
learning yo let go - eg at some point you’d have to stop throwing it in his face everytime you row or he’s late etc

some coupes manage this
others don’t - some don’t want to try, others try and can’t achieve it

Plenty stayed married but that's not the same thing!

I know one couple who made it work but she shared her anger and all emotions and they did a lot of counselling together so they were able to heal and move on

I’m all for counselling as well, although my partner wasn’t unfaithful we just decided to split, my own counselling has made me see why things weren’t working and what I myself, can do to stop this happening in the future.

In my opinion it is very very hard to rebuild a marriage after infidelity. You experience such a myriad of feelings, and it can prove too hard to "fix". I tried for two years after discovering exH's affair, including plenty of marriage counselling. In the end of marriage was too broken.

He couldn't do enough to fix it, and I couldn't let go of suspicion and hurt.

I don’t think infidelity is by default any worse than many of the other things which falter a relationship and put it on the rocks. Plenty of people (women?), for example, put up with years of a partner not pulling their weight, or years of a partner having emotionally checked out, or years of arguments and poor communication; and when finally on the brink of whether to divorce or not seem willing to try to forgive and find a way to work through and resolve in counselling. Ultimately those things are immense betrayals of another kind: they show just as much a lack of regard, lack of care and lack of respect for your partner and the relationship as infidelity does – if not more. So it interests me why so many people (women?) will put up with a whole load of other damaging shit and then be willing to think about forgiving it; but automatically think of sex outside the relationship as the absolute doom ball. Whereas to me, the other examples would be far more unforgiveable.

I think you’re probably in a better position to work through it, if you want to, if you examine why you thought all the shit that was going on and that you put up with in your rocky marriage for all the years prior to the infidelity was worth putting up with and not addressing or divorcing over; and whether and why the infidelity is different. Can you see it as just another symptom of a struggling marriage that you can address alongside all the other stuff that you need to? So look at it holistically rather than in isolation. And in doing so, decide whether the shit years and shit behaviours as a whole ar something you can get over and rebuild your marriage from; or not.

Yes I do , husband attempted to sleep with prostitute (couldn't actually do it due to alcohol and nothing working ) but attempted to , so same thing as cheating.

Confessed to wife 2 weeks later as couldn't live with the lie and dishonesty. Was very remorseful and ashamed.

Wife forgave him and they moved past it.

4 years on I can safely say it will eat you up inside out. I eventually left.. it's never gone away, the amount of lies and deceit was something I just couldn't get past. I take my hat off to anyone able to move past it! I already feel better, I hope he dies a lonely fat balding man..he deserves nothing less. Sounds harsh I know, but the state of my mental health because of his entitled cock brain is unforgivable. Get out, or get a bloody good therapist.

Dh and I are 15 years post DH's affair. We have a wonderful marriage and we're very much in love. Would I do it all over again, probably... but it was hard. The early days were exhausting and I was desperately hurt. DH was 100% committed to me and to making it work, I couldn't have survived it if he wasn't. That said, I was very strong through it all, which is why it was exhausting. We had counselling and fullY explored why it had happened in the first place, I had to take some of the blame, which was hard when I just wanted to rail against him. Ultimately I had to forgive him and move on, blaming him, resenting him and hating him, would've ended up with the marriage failing. I do trust him again, it don't live life expecting him to fail again or even watching for it. I rarely even think about it now, which I wouldn't have believed 15 years ago.
Whatever you decide, you need to be committed to it, it's up to you to say if that will suit you.

Yes but affairs happen to people that don’t have a strong identity of self. They are looking to boost their ego in form of another person. That’s precisely why he would have strayed. So you need to work out if he is the narc or a codependent. The latter is worth salvaging, the narc most definitely not. You can only move on if you can openly talk about his episode and how you can rebuild things. The physical has almost truly nothing to do with it. Though initially it is this that destroys you. But if you are wise to understand who the person is and it is either one or the other then you can have a great marriage. Good luck.

Sorry you’re going through this OP.

Marriages can be rebuilt after infidelity. It requires a lot of work from both parties and a true commitment to making it work again.

Your husband needs to be truly remorseful for what he has done and do whatever it takes to make you trust him again.

You both need to explore what the reasons for the affair were which is more crucial than the details of the actual affair itself.

You will need to recognise that the marriage will be forever changed, but with work and commitment and a skilled therapist, it can be a stronger, better and more loving relationship than it was before.

You absolutely need to enlist the help of a skilled therapist who can guide you both through this process - pick one that specialises in affairs and infidelity. They are expensive but well worth the money.

True healing from an affair can take up to two years. During the therapy you’ll learn whether or not you’re able to forgive and move on or whether it’ll keep haunting you.

Good luck, OP. I hope it all works out for you.

Some people can’t let it go & some can. Therapy is definitely the way to go so you have an outlet either way.

It probably does help that it was on the decline rather than honeymoon stage.

Short answer; it depends very much upon who you are and who he is.
And what you have to lose by separating.

For some its worth it to forgive and you will find your patron saints in the like of Colleen Rooney and Mrs Beckham.

For others there is nothing to drown out the current of inadequacy and comparison and you are better cutting your losses and moving on.

Neither is right or wrong.

Thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts and experiences, it has been really helpful.
my husband organised counselling for us both almost immediately which we both entered into and engaged with but I suppose I was still in shock and so after discussing the details of the affair, the issues between us prior to it and our commitment to rebuilding i decided we didn’t need anymore therapy, I actually felt super smug at what a grown up I was being, so calm dealing with all this sh*t but then came the rage!!!!!!

Those if you who have been unlucky enough to experience the fall out from infidelity will know this but I guess you go through the Grief Cycle of;
denial,
bargaining,
anger,
depression,
and acceptance
i’d had the denial (shock) and depression, didn’t have the bargaining phase (I’m not going to beg a cheat to stay) and thought I had leap frogged to acceptance but now I have hit rage. It’s not constant but ever so often I could rip his face off hence my 2am plea to you guys, thank you for the reassurance I am not going mad.

My husband is trying everything to repair his mistakes, not only the affair but also the things that led to the decline in our marriage and I am happy to work on the things I was getting wrong, it won’t have a straight forward trajectory of healing I know. Also I am resolute that should infidelity or any of his bad habits reappear then it’s over, I could not live though this again, it has been the single most distressing period of my life.

I hope those of you going through something very similar are able to be happy again, we do not deserve to feel we are not good enough when the reality is that we are but maybe the person we are committed too isn’t and whilst we are tethered to these people we won’t find someone who really deserves us.

*Caveat we don’t need a partner to complete us but it’s nice to have someone special.

It won’t go if you cling on to it and let it consume you.

Lovely update OP. Get back into counselling if you can and be prepared for this to be a very long process.

@Mister1 as a women I totally agree with you. I think this is exactly why men cheat. Unfortunately a lot of men and women aren't matched on sex drive as times goes on . Which created tension and resentment from both sides.