Rainbow Hmmm…I don't really know how to answer that to be honest, but I'll try. I had a great life, a lovely home, financial security etc, everything I didn't have growing up and I was just too terrified of losing it. I grew up as the child of a single parent with an absent father and we struggled, I struggled emotionally with it - more than anything I didn't want that life for my children, for me it would have meant I'd failed. He was a really great husband and father up until and apart from those couple of stupid drunken fumbles, and he never dreamt in a million years I'd find out. But I did find out, almost immediately, in similar accidental circumstances to yours.
It happened at that classic time in most marriages where life gets taken over by young children and duty and the daily stresses that stop you lavishing attention on one another. It was a bit of a cliche, I was stuck at home with the kids, he was out after work, blah blah, although he didn't work with the person in question, so that made things easier to deal with in the aftermath.
I decided to take a bullet for my kids and what I hoped was the greater, long term good. That turned out to be the right decision, I've never regretted it (or needed to wonder why the hell I gave him another chance) but I'll be honest, a little bit of me died that day. the innocence was lost and it's never been quite the same since. It's made me more of a realist and a cynic, but that's no bad thing, and honestly, I've been happy, we've been very happy ever since. That was the one and only rocky patch of our marriage, and we generally never argue.
I would honestly say that I have the upper hand in the relationship and call the shots, and other than the financial support when I was a SAHM, he would have been far more lost without me than I would without him, and I think he think he has always known that.
It happened, it was awful, it was a stupid mistake on his part which he regretted immediately (easy when you are caught, I know!) and it stopped.
For a long, long time there was no trust, I felt sick and tortured myself with 'what if there is more I don't know? What if there were others?' I was constantly checking up on him (secretly) but he needed to travel for work sometimes, so you just can't live like that, you have to let go and trust again or you'd go mad. Actually, I don't know that I did ever completely trust again, but I had made the decision to stay so I just had to get on with it.
But I didn't constantly act all needy or weepy, questioning him or refusing to let him go out, I played it quite cool actually, was very matter of fact about the whole thing, which I think made him nervous! He knew he'd used his get out of jail free card and there wouldn't be another, so the choice was his….
Talking about this feels weird now, because it was such a long time ago and it seems so detached from the marriage we have, and have pretty much always had, apart from that thing and I almost feel like I'm talking about someone else.
I think if we'd had a difficult dramatic relationship with lots of arguments and resentments etc., it would not have worked, but honestly, our day to day life was very happy and harmonious and always has been. Another cliche, but we really are best friends. I think that in spite of what he did, I knew that he loved me and was he utterly terrified and bereft at the thought of losing it all, especially the thought that his children would feel let down and disappointed in him. That was enough to keep him in his place after that.
For all I know, he could have done it before, or done it since, but the thing is, if he has then I haven't known about it and he's still here because he wants to be and because I want him to be and that's all that matters.
As the children got older I told him many times that I stayed that first time out of fear, both for the children's happiness and my own financial security, but that these days, I have no such fear, and if it ever happened again I'd be gone without a second thought and he knows that. The children are grown up, they'd cope and understand, and I am no longer financially or emotionally vulnerable as I was then and not remotely afraid of being alone. Whereas he can't bear to be without me, rarely goes anywhere without me and gets lonely if I'm not there for a few days.