Please Help Me - Advice from those who have survived cheating

[Sexless30]

OK here we go, please bear with me....

I found my DP had been texting very inappropriate things to another woman in September. We entered crisis talks, spent some time apart and went in to counselling. He initially told me that it was a one time thing, the physical side went only so far and he walked out and left her when it got to heated. I always doubted this but he stood firm with his explanation. Fast forward and we've been doing great, talking more openly and regularly attending counselling, talking about the future etc.

Recently I found more messages (they were from the end of last year, beginning of this year, so he was true to his word and has not contacted her since I initially found out) that clearly described 'memories' of some 'special' evenings together. He has now admitted they did in fact have sex more than once. I am a mess and I don't know what to do. No cried of LTB please, I need to hear from women (and men) who have worked through this type of thing successfully. I am not making any rash decisions, I just don't know how to process this. Can you ever forgive them, even if you never forget?

"Husband lost his best friend and other close friends, they never did speak to him again" - I bet you that was the shock that made him reassess what kind of a man he was. Bit cynical, sorry

Intimate betrayal is the worst trauma I will ever experience. It strikes at your very soul, when you find out how little you mean, how you are kept around because you are of use, makes you wonder about your attractiveness, your lovability, worthiness. I wouldn't wish this crushing pain on anybody. I was heartbroken.

I tried for 7 years to keep my family together. But he just wanted it never mentioned again and to carry on. The only person he felt sorry for, was himself.
The rows and drama caused a lot of damage to my children. Then he did it again (justified of course! I was such a bitch ... )

I think about what I could have done different. It was all a mess really.

Sorry @Sexless30, I was just trying to say that there isn't any perfect solution, the pain is the pain is the pain and you have to get through it.

If I had any advice, I would say - he has shown you what he is capable of, being a selfish, uncaring, disconnected (not that in to you), deceitful person.

Does he want to change those unpleasant characteristics, or does he want to get away with it.

I would watch very carefully for those clues, and then trust my gut. You actually don't need those characteristics in a life partner, that way lies deep pain.

Because YOU not hurting, YOU not being devastated, YOU going back to innocent faith in trust, YOU getting over it by yourself in your own time - not going to happen.

So what feedback is he giving you?

Like another person said, a relationship only survives an affair if the other person is totally honest. Your boyfriend lied to you and seems to continue to lie.

I think it's quite a manipulative and malicious act to go to counselling to work on an emotional affair when really he knew he had also overstepped the physical boundary too.

More lies and manipulation. For me, that would been it. It shows a total lack of disrespect and how he still in 'liar mode'

Your choice to stay.

So he cheated then lied about it. How moving forward can you trust him? Every situation is different but there's not really many success stories here. Can you be sure he won't do it again? In a few years time are you going to be here again with a similar story? Only you can decide to stay I personally couldn't no matter how much it hurt at the time

a relationship only survives an affair if the other person is totally honest

Thing is though, you can never really know if they are being totally honest. Only what they tell you and if you believe what they say.
They've already proven to be dishonest and unfaithful so you're only taking their word for it if you believe they're being honest and telling the absolute complete whole truth. Chances are they will only say what they have to and what you already know. They more often than not will keep some info aside. It's up to the other party if they choose to believe the version of events they're being told, doesn't mean it's the complete truth though. As the other party has already shown who they are, they will think nothing of keeping the lie going.

Nearly a year now. And yes , he only admits what he knows I can prove. Says he didn't want to upset me ! Too late, he?!And he gets annoyed if I question too much.Or doubt him .
And I think about it all every day, every night. Cant sleep.
We went to counselling where he had to answer direct questions from therapist. Painful to watch him struggle to tell truths.

I did come away thinking we could stay together . But then I question everything and it is exhausting . If you decide to stay together , you really have to be able to truly move on.

Funny how all these guys do the same thing.

OP
With the greatest respect, you ARE doing the pick me dance.

Partner cheats, lies...they go for counselling. Other partner has even more counselling.
All so that you can be ok with him lying to you.
Isn't that the biggest 'pick me' dance of them all?

I'm not saying this judgementally, I've been there ( in nearly every relationship).
I wish that instead of ME turning MYSELF inside out to accommodate disloyalty, I had just left.
HE should be getting himself, on his own to counselling.
I really believe people grow and change, but the remorse ain't real if it's only triggered by being caught.

they go for counselling together*

Another one who tried to make it work here.

DP had a historic affair, which I suspected at the time & confronted him, which he denied.

I had lost my confidence & believed him. We went on to have children, so the whole course of my life changed.

Later I found emails which confirmed a long affair; I confronted him & he eventually admitted it - but a very minimised version of events (didn't tie in with emails).

He wouldn't tell me who she was, doesn't know why he did it. Total lack of insight in to his own behaviour & even worse - he has never said he is sorry to me!

So no honesty/transparency, continuing lies, lack of integrity. Totally unable to understand the effect it's had on me & why I am upset.

He has come out with absolute shit "I haven't got a bad bone in my body".

I think he's chosen the "I am a nice guy" narrative & cant face up to the fact he is a liar & manipulator.

I had counselling on my own & it was life-changing.

I cannot stay with him; I don't even like him any more.

We are separating & going through mediation.

Don’t make my mistake and waste another ten years ‘fixing’ things before you finally see the light. It remains my biggest regret ever that I stuck with the marriage and didn’t end it when I should have done (kids exams, parents ill health etc,etc). ‘D’H just got more clever with his phone and I was humiliated all over again.
Fast forward another two years - I’m approaching 60. Have peace of mind which no amount of money can buy, a wonderful relationship with my children (he has no relationship, none of them speak to him) and I’m happier and more relaxed than I have been in a decade.
Staying together isn’t the be all and end all.

I haven't read all of the replies but I found out when I was pregnant with our second child that my husband had had a one night 'thing' with someone. He says just a kiss, I will never really know the truth. Anyway, based on this information and being heavily pregnant with a toddler, I decided to carry on with our marriage and not break our family up. He was very remorseful and we went on to have 10 more happy years together.

Two years ago I found evidence of a full blown affair and I asked him to leave that day when he got home from work.

My point is that I have since discovered that things like this are rarely a one off. Yes it took another 10 years and I don't regret those 10 years at all but he did it again and my God it hurt so much more the second time when our kids were old enough to understand.

I hope you can work things out but if I'm honest, although we had 10 more good years together, I never really trusted him completely and that first time killed something for me.

OP, do you have children together? If not and you are not married I would change my advice and say leave now. Being married and having children together complicates things even more.

Depends on lots of things.

Trust needs to be rebuilt and that takes time.

You need to be wanting it to be fixed for the right reasons ( not that it will cost you too much to LTB) and you both need to be transparent with everything!

It's a very slow process a bit like snakes and ladders game, one slip and you end up at square one again.

In all honesty, if there's another option I'd seriously consider that too and you are always just one slip away from back to the beginning again and life's a bit short for that shite.

He's lied to protect himself. If he genuinely wanted to be open and honest he'd have told the whole truth, knowing that by doing so might be the final nail in the coffin for the relationship (probably a very hard thing to do). But he chose, once again to lie to protect himself and for his own selfishness. The thing for me would be that no only did he lie about the affair, but he continued to lie. Not for the OPs sake, but for his own sake as that was what HE wanted to do. He's yet to put the OPs thoughts and feelings above his own. I couldn't get past this but.

I find this an interesting turn of phrase: "In his defence (if he has one) he has been true to his word and told me where he is all the time, and I have full access to all his accounts. He just forgot to delete things from many months ago."

But he hasn't been 'true to his word' has he? He didn't just 'forget to delete things'.

You asked him if he'd had sex with her and he said no which was a bare faced lie.

How can you ever trust him again? You're supposed to be working on your relationship and he's still lying.

You have spent 8 years living with a liar and a cheat. Why would you want to waste any more time on him?

I think continuing a relationship after an affair depends on one thing.

Did he confess or was he found out?

If he'd done something he was ashamed of, came to you and confessed, turned over all evidence and was genuinely contrite, then that is a very different thing to you finding and reading messages or some other evidence, confronting him and 'forcing' an admission out of him.

One, in my opinion, can be worked on. The other, nope.

I agree that discovering and fighting for information will make you wonder if it would have still continued had you not found out. This would trouble me no end.

My dh confessed to kissing a colleague. He got on his knees and begged for forgiveness. He answered all my questions which I asked over and over in every which way. We went for joint and individual counselling. He bought books for us to read together. He allowed me to call him all the names under the sun. Despite this I still struggled but we worked together. We are in a good place now.

I completely understand why people lie. They do not want to be outed. They do not want to accept the actions and face the consequences ie. losing a relationship, losing friends, losing respect.

All, thank you for your messages. I am not sure what I am going to do tbh. I want things to work, but like many of you say perhaps there is no hope.

I am financially safe, the house is in joint names and we have a deed of trust. I earn my own money and could easily step away.

He says hes told me everything, her version of events matches, but like many of you have said, perhaps they've been in contact and the trail was deleted.

I am in my own counselling (for unrelated issues) and will continue to work on me. He has agreed to go to his own individual counselling and for now we will continue joint counselling.

I can't make any decisions yet, but perhaps I will soon, once I cant work out whether I can forgive and never speak of it again and learn to deal with the trauma.

I don't know how hearing from others will help as we are all unique in how we deal with things. Only you know if you can ever trust him again, if you can't, you should not waste your time on him

Think snakes and ladders ... do you really want to live like this. If you are incredibly strong willed you can . But it really really takes its toll on you. Just be aware of that.

Glad you have a therapist to talk to in confidence. Best of luck !

If you don't mind me asking, OP, how old are you & do you plan to have children.

If I was mid-20's I'd run for the hills.

My ex husband had an affair I decided to stay, then he then had another and I felt like if I stuck with him the first time I should stick with him again. My existence was miserable.

I decided to stay with him and work on myself. I lost a couple of stone, worked on getting myself happy with who I was. Focused on my career and progressed it, made a point of going out and making new friends and getting my own life separate to him that didn’t depend on whether he cheated or not and whether we stayed together or not. (Prior to this we had mutual hobbies and friends)
I got super happy with my life and realised I didn’t need a cheating scumbag in mine anymore and we broke up.

He was horrified because it was 2 years post affair and he thought it was ‘sorted’
It wasn’t sorted it just took me a while to realise I deserved better.

I think when you find out about an affair and it feels like your whole world has imploded and it’s so much easier to initially jump into forgiveness because you just want your world to be ‘right’ again and back to how it was before it was destroyed.

Sadly that doesn’t always happen op you always have the life before the affair and the life after. The life after always filled with doubt and suspicion and knowing that you’re ready to leave if it happens again.

If you’re staying with him my advice would be to prioritise yourself now, prioritise your career you happiness, if you want to take up a hobby to make friends then do it. You need to be 100% happy with who you are because once you are you might see things differently.

If you're going to get through this HE needs to understand that he has to be 100% honest with you no matter how detailed/ disgusting and painful it is, otherwise you'll get stuck in this cycle of constant questioning > not believing him> uncovering more evidence>further hurt/ upset/ breakdown of trust >more questions> repeat

This book has some useful advice
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Can-Ever-Trust-Again/dp/140880946X

You don't need to make any rash decisions. You're perfectly entitled to try and work on it if that's what you want and still walk away in a few months/ a year if you feel it can't be fixed.
If it comes to that, it'll be through no fault of your own OP
Good luck and sorry for what you're going through, I know how fucking horrible it is

As well as being honest, he needs to be genuinely and visibly remorseful and prepared to do anything you need him to do to prove that he is serious about rebuilding your relationship and earning your trust.

I gave up, personally. It took me too long to get there, but I'm so glad I did. I felt relieved of a massive, massive burden when he'd left, I hadn't realised just how totally and utterly soul-crushing it all was until then.

@MakeMineALargeProsecco I'm 30 and yes I plan to have children at some point