After infidelity - those who are still with their partners

[Looksgoodingravy]

We are working through it, it's been four months, we have better days than bad, I know things will never be the same again and there are chinks of normality coming back into our lives again, I'm hoping we will be stronger than before, it will be different. I know my dp is deeply deeply sorry for the hurt he's caused, he's working hard to build those bridges.

My question I suppose is have you forgiven your partner? I know I'll never forget but I know I've got to forgive so that I can move on, I know I will forgive when I feel ready to but is it a necessary step to take...I'm just letting some sad feelings out tonight, I feel sad for the 17 years we had before I found out, seems a lovely carefree time now not one wrapped in pain and hurt.. time to move on and bring the good bits back into my life.

Last day at work for week and a half. Feeling quite strange atm. A week away with DH and the kids is going to feel very different this time. We are putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to make this work and do things differently. A entire 7 days in close proximity, in the rain (going to Cornwall!) and potentially bored and/or whingey children may be quite a trial. Prior to this I put the children first and DH and I had to make do with the time and energy that was left over (not much). Can't do that this time. It's going to be a very different sort of holiday. Quite nervous.

Good luck ormi tomorrow we are off to Florida for 2 weeks. Fingers crossed for us both and anyone else due to spend long periods of 'quality' time with their DH's!

Thanks for your comments ladies, noted and appreciated. We are off to counselling in a minute and for the first time I have a list of things I want to talk about.

May not have time to post again before I go on holiday, if not (((hugs))) to everyone and keep strong xxx

Good luck to those going on holiday.

MOS - hope counselling is good.

Hope the holidays help x

easier to forgive if they show remorse. if they carry on as before and no remorse not much point really. Hope it works out for you.

Can I join this thread - just found out about "D"H sleeping with another woman. I am mad at him, but we've been going through a rough time lately, not excusing him, but I think I want to give it another shot. I just can't face the thought of dating again as much as anything else, and such hopes for the future, after a tough time recently things were starting to look up - famous last words! Been married 10 years - and just feel like its been a waste!

At the moment just feel sick, but have DD to think about. We were meant to be trying for another baby! Looks like that's put on hold then. I look at him and can't believe he'd do something like this.

How do you go about trusting again ..... am so mad with the other woman at the moment - found out from a letter in DH's pocket when put jeans into the wash. (She'd given it him the day before.) And in it she told him to give my DD a big hug from her! Oh and apparently its only his decision whether we have another baby and not hers or mine! I'd be carrying the baby for 9mths WTF. (She is a married mum of 3 by the way that he used to go to school with and who got back in touch with him this May.)

Please tell me it gets easier - as at the moment I'm just trying not to cry in front of DD. Sorry for venting but only person I can talk to in RL, and who wouldn't be judgemental about considering staying with him, is in hospital.

icky - can you start your own thread so that you can get more support? x

Sorry - just thought would be safe here - as don't want lots of people shouting at me to leave the bastard!

Icky - its a hard road to travel but if your dh is truly sorry then there can be hope. I'm four months in and it's been one of the hardest journeys of my life Has your dh shown true remorse?

Sorry for the brief reply but another one having a short break this weekend with dp and ds. Trying to get everything ready.

Hope all of you going on holiday have a fab time and hope it helps with some of the healing.

Might be back on later if I get everything sorted x

MAD and ORM your posts earlier today resonate when you talk about how you used to feel the need to organise and control everything.One thing to come out of our long road to recovery and counselling is that around the time DH got involved with OW I had become more bossy and controlling,especially regarding our joint business.But DH acknowledges that I was under a lot of pressure from other areas ,eg. Elderly parents and also ill although we didn't know it at the time.

Consequently the more I struggled to keep tabs on everything the more my DH detached at a time he should have been stepping up his support IYSWIM?He also used to hate to say 'no' to anyone, customers in particular - an insecurity probably driven by having lost a business previously.I just felt overwhelmed at times and that translated in me being tense and snappy.Our counsellor helped us see our roles had become less mutually adult and more parental ( me) and rebellious child (him) and that was another factor in him becoming secretive and withdrawing from me.Makes sense now, and the first and hopefully the last period like this in a long marriage where we'd always made a great team.
But it took months and months for the anger to subside ,and hours and hours of talking to see the bigger picture.And even after all this time on 'hormonal' days it can still get to me that he just didn't talk.

Yes MAD it's been good to relinquish control and have a more even relationship.
.

Ps. Icky so sorry you are in the this awful position.All of us on here know only too well the massive rollercoaster ride of emotions you will experience.Hope reading back through our posts can help.
Wishing all of you going on holidays all the best x

Icky has started her own thread.

Star - that's interesting, I agree my controlling behaviour got worse when DH met OW and our relationship definitely became parental. I think it was a response to the fact that he was pulling away from us all ...

Hi icky - stay in here - sometimes you will get lots of people telling you to leave him.

Is he sorry? Has he ended it with her?

Until you know whether it's over, or if he wants to pursue her, then it's hard to know what to do.

10 years seems to be a common time for this to happen....

Get some support in RL too - you will need it. Fall apart if you need to, I certainly did in the first few days. The shock & disbelief will have you all over the place.

Take care & a big hug.

I meant if you started a thread in relationships you can sometimes get people telling you to leave the bastard. It's not always helpful at this point - you need to be able to assess the situation before you make any rash decisions that you may regret later. It works for some, but I found that I needed H around to be able to question him & get him to support me in looking after the kids - it's the least he can do right now.

Hi Icky. so sorry that you are going through this.

Fwiw, I think the only way you can rebuild trust is if your husband is truly, genuinely sorry and is completely honest with you, when you ask awkward questions and want to hear the details of what happened. If he tries to evade answering or refuses to tell you everything you need to know, then I don't hold out much hope of recovery.

From what I have read on this thread, the person who has cheated, must sort out their own issues, otherwise it could happen again. From my own pov, if my husband had tried to defend or protect OW, I would not be able to get past that. Not saying he should put all the blame on her, because he is responsible for what he does, only that I would not be able to swallow him defending her to me.

You have every right to be angry with the OW. I said upthread that if I could hurt her and disrupt her life the way mine has been disrupted, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would tell her husband, personally - that would make me feel better.

Agree with MOON if you can get some RL support as well as on here it will help.I confided in a couple of trusted friends who had known us as a couple for years and they were brilliant.They supported me and remained very unbiased as to what I should do.When I was really down and angry it really helped that they were quietly rooting for us to make it as a couple.It helped me to see the bigger picture of our marriage and how sad it would be to walk away from an essentially good guy who had got himself in a bad situation.

But as SHORTER says so much depends now on how truly sorry your DH is ,and how much effort (it should be massive) he's prepared to put in.

As for feeling angry with OW.To this day I still do.I forgave my DH - I had to to build a future with him- although I will never forget.I will never forgive her.And if that's not PC and makes me a bad person (forgiveness is very fashionable at the mo I feel) then so be it.I can live with that.

Also yes MAD with hindsight I now can see my tetchiness and need to feel in control of things came from a sort of white noise of unease quietly humming in the background around those months DHs friendship with OW was developing.
A very deep intuition was telling me something had shifted between us.About 3 weeks before I found out we went out for our wedding anniversary,a celebration that usually means a lot,and although we had a nice evening I can remember feeling flat.But because my default setting was one of complete trust,and I had no suspicions how on earth was I supposed to know?
I gave myself a very hard time about not being being more vigilant,more intuitive but then had to accept I couldn't have controlled or changed a situation I knew absolutely nothing about.

star - I do get what you mean, and I used to kick myself for being so blind.

stargazy I can also associate with feeling flat and a background realisation that our relationship was going through a 'just living together' phase rather than living life together - iykwim. We were just going through the motions.

I never in a million years would have guessed he would have turned to another woman. I never had any intuition that someone else was involved which maybe made it all the more shocking and stunning when I found texts on his phone.

Trying to get a balance of talking out what happened, with me going on about the shock to me, the hurt, the devastation, not being able to trust and wondering if I ever knew him etc - and then balancing it with not wanting to be the only thing I want to talk about.

He comes across as genuinely remorseful - lots of crying from him (which on other forums some shout means he's not sorry!). He's doing lots to reassure me etc but it's still early days. I also bought the book "How to heal your spouse after your affair" for him - haven't given it to him yet as not read through but after skimming it I can see he's doing all he could be doing as someone that is genuinely remorseful and wanting the marriage to work.

Glad this thread is on - felt at times I was being flamed for not 'leaving the bastard' on another thread. I left first DH and took all the kids with me, was self sufficient financially without benefits and me and kids were better off. So it's not a case of being the pitiful dependant who can't work up the courage to leave.

Don't know about anyone else but before this happened to me I was so blase about people having flings/affairs. Had no idea about the devastation (such a cliche!) it caused.

I also realise that people who have never been through it cannot really give advice or understand what it is really like.

Before I would have said - in fact I did on a couple of occasions - that the woman should leave him. That if one partner was unfaithful then the other should dump them - no question. Things are never that simple.

Probably too late but good luck on your hols orm, mos and gravy

icky I'm so sorry you're in a position to need a thread like this. It will take time, don't even worry about trusting him again right now, you need time to figure out how you feel about what you've learnt. I cried constantly for days at the start but it does get easier, has he finished it? I came onto this thread for similar reasons to you, I couldn't cope with the idea of all the leave the bastard advice. It's been useful to hear from and see how others are coping.

star I think if ow knows what she's getting into she's absolutely to blame as well and I have to say making sure her dh knew in my case helped as it didn't feel like I was keeping her dirty secret for her, it's made my life more difficult in the short term but I'm still glad I did, i was glad to hear shed squirmed her way through it, at the time letting her tell him felt like I was being nicer than she deserved but I needed to know he knew everything a few weeks later so asked if she'd told him everything and realising how painful it had been for her to do that was sort of satisfying, just a shame it meant such a nice guy had to be hurt in the process.

We had a bit of a breakthrough last night, he's been putting a lot of pressure on himself to be further through this process than we are, trying to catch up to me in terms of fixing it, and that's been causing problems, mainly because I'm nowhere near as fixed as he thought, he was reading into every bit of affection. He finally gets that actually it's going to take time for me to get any further than wanting to get the fun back into our family and seeing how we go. Hes also realised he has to let me be hurt and angry at the pair of them for it to get any better, living so close is like a scab that I can't stop picking, and some days like yesterday I get so angry, that's unlikely to get much better for a while I suspect. Don't know where we will end up but right now that's ok.

hahahaha not too late!
As if we didn't need anymore stress, just as going to airport got a text from the worlds favourite airline saying our flight is now tomorrow! DH and I rushed top airport as no sense from anyone on phone and BA having 'operational difficulties' and flights delayed for 24 hrs plus!

Kids devestated but I'm trying to remain calm whilst sorting out our car hire, tickets and everything else we'd booked for this evening/tomorrow

Hope everyone ok x

Hector - I always told my H that I'd kick him out if he ever cheated on me but like you said, it's not quite that simple, especially when kids are involved.

I've had to put up with a whole web of lies after I found out - he told me it was some woman he worked with & when I told him I'd emailed her, he said it was a woman who he met down the pub. Then followed 4 weeks of me asking him about it - he said they'd only kissed & it never sat well with me. I could just sense that something wasn't right. I eventually discovered that it was a full blown affair.

He'd lied to her in the conversations that I read, telling her that he told his mum & sister about them & they were supportive. So, he was deceiving everyone.

To think that he was capable of such a web of lies astounds me. In some ways, I think he bloody lost the plot - he had a very stressful 8 months before he embarked on the affair.

He has the book now - how to heal your spouse - and I just hope that it sinks in big time for him. He is more apologetic these days but sometimes when I see how other people's H's are being, it does make me wonder whether we have anything worth saving.

He has counselling, has stopped working away & says he wants to see if we can reconcile but he's not confessing undying love or appearing to be very scared about what he could lose. I can only hang in here because of the reading I've done & how it's made me see that there can be many different reactions & timescales to this kind of thing.

I'm more concerned about my kids than myself at present. I know that I'll be fine on my own if it ends up that way.

I'm veer between being hopeful & then just wanting to tell him to go.

It's all so bloody sad at times - these selfish men that don't stop to really consider the consequences of their actions. Thinking they can have their cake & eat it.....

Packed and ready to have a family weekend away tomorrow.

The tears finally came last night. It was like a pressure release valve. I've not cried in four months. Feeling flat today .

Think it's possibly the fact we're going away and trying to act normal and happy for our 5 yo ds, the reality is mummy is going through hell
One moment I think I can do this and the next I look at dp and wonder how he could have done what he did to his family, risking everything for his own selfish gain.

I've taken a deep breath and WILL enjoy this short break. Getting away from the house for a starters will do me the world of good.

I also said I'd never take back a cheater. Just goes to show that you really don't know until it happens to you.

Take care ladies, I'll probably pop on here while we're away, hope you're all doing ok today xx