Has anyone confessed to an affair and managed to save their primary relationship?

[RoverandRuth]

I am at my wits end.. me and dh hit rock bottom a few months ago. I made a huge mistake and slept with someone else - twice. Me and dh have now got a reasonably good relationship... but he doesn't know about the betrayal..and I am about to tell him later thsi week.

I love him dearly. I don't want us to split - ever. Through my own stupid fault I feel I am going to blow his and my 2 young dds' worlds apart... and I know I deserve it..even given the appalling state of our marriage at the time it happened...which is no excuse.

I am desperately hoping he will want to stay with me.. to work through it... to stay as a family. I have no idea how to go about telling him..how to process it all..what he needs to be able to do this.

Has anyone else confessed to an affair and come out the other side? Please, if you can help, I would really appreciate it. Please do not flame me. I know I did wrong. I feel sick to my stomach at the furore I am about to cause.

I agree with the above post from heleninahandcart.

But I also think, as Madabouthotchoc said on page 1 of this thread
"The problem with not telling him is that the secret will be a barrier to intimacy that won't be easy to break down - secrets have a tendency to poison the relationship. Also in order for a relationship to recover from an affair, weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the relationship as well as the betrayer need to be addressed properly."

I would suggest that you have counselling to address the problems in your relationship as well as looking at why, when your relationship hit rock bottom, you chose to cheat on your DH, rather than talk things through.

I don't think you should tell DH (unless of course you have an STI) but I do think that this secret could make rebuilding your relationship with DH difficult which is why I think you need to talk to a counsellor so that you can address your own vulnerabilities and those of your relationship with DH.

I am going to sign off now from this thread. Firstly though, I want to thank all those who have posted sensitively to the situation I found myself in - it helped enormously, and as Baguette rightly put it, last night I was so very fragile, and where it not for the supportive posts, god knows what would have happened. Other posters have every right of course to slam behaviour and mistakes OPs have made. I posted publically and I accept this... it is upto them if they wish to reflect on what they said. What I will say is that I'm so very very grateful for those of you who balanced these negative posts. My opening disclosure was a desperate cry for help coming out of a very desperate situation (one of my own making, I accept that..) Those of you who posted supportively, and those who privately messaged me played a huge role in me not losing it last night. Anyway, all looks fine on the STD front. The clinic ruled out some STDs fairly immediately and said the 'spot' I'd found was an ingrown hair follicle. A few others I have to wait for the results but I am feeling so much more relieved now. Whether I 'fess up or not is something I need to think through, and I do need to address why I made the mistake. I have to some extent already. I know it won't happen again. Thanks again for the supportive comments.

Good Luck to you Rover. Don't blame you for signing off, I'm more than happy for you to PM me if you wish to talk. As has been said on other threads, there are people on MN who use it as a sounding board because they've been hurt in the past - what they forget is there's a real person behind every story. Bad things happen to good people and I really think you've punished yourself enough now.

All the very best Rover, I hope things work out well for you in the future, and you can put it, as far as is possible, behind you.

Rover, I haven't posted on your thread so far, but I want to wish you all the best too

I'd tell him rather than risk him finding out. I was found out. We are still together and very much in love, but it rocked us to the foundations. We are better now though. I appreciate what I almost lost and he doesn't ignore me or take me for granted anymore. It was three years ago, we have been together eight years. Two kids. I was desperate for affection and was recently bereaved and doing my degree with a baby and full time job as well, not that it's any excuse. I just felt like last on the list, most of all dp's list. This guy just said all the right things.... He was an arse, he would never have taken me warts and all like dp has, nor given me and my kids a good life .

thanks god for that!!!! move on and be goodXXXXX

Good luck Rover

I've been in the same situation. I chose to tell my partner. He did go absolutely beserk. But after a few days was willing to give it a go for the kids sake. The only problem i have is that it wasn't just a sexual affair i had, i fell in love with someone else. Right now, we are still in the middle of thinking of a solution. Go with your heart. Good luck.

Just my two cents. There are two ways of looking at this. You can either try and guess what the outcome of confessing will be and weight these up. Or you can do what you think is morally correct a priori. I think for most people that would be confessing.

If you take the approach of trying to work out what will happen, you can hopefully get the answer that causes the least damage. If you try and do what's morally right, you might have terrible consequences, but you will have known you've done the right thing