Questions for anyone who’s stayed with a cheat

[Lora88]

Or not even necessary a cheat , just looking for advice from women who have stayed with men who have either cheated or crossed the line in some way such as emotional affairs or sexting / texting other women.
I’ve been seperated from my partner of 11 years for 5 months now since discovering he was texting / calling escorts through adultwork website when he’d had a drink (he doesn’t have an alcohol problem) this wasn’t a constant thing but did happen once or twice a month over the last year. I managed to crack his adult work account and I can see it doesn’t look like he did ever meet them they’ve left him negative feedback calling him a time waster etc . He says he did it for a buzz sending the message was the thrill etc , I know some men will say this and it’s not true but I’ve spent 5 months digging and I don’t think he has. We’ve done abit or couples therapy and we’ve established he thinks it’s an attention thing. We have 3 children and I love our life I want to believe we can work on this , he’s never done anything else to make me question him like this just the escort thing I know for some women this is enough in its self and rightly so, but I’ve decided I want to work on it . I don’t blame myself but I. Never initiated Sex and I know this bothered him and at times I’ve had a low Sex drive. My question is for women who have stayed with men that have participated in risky behaviour crossed the line or had affairs etc how is it working out for you ? Did they change ? Older women do you regret staying ? Thanks in advance for sharing your story x

It is not working out, in the end there is no real trust and you live with a low level dread feeling and fear of getting an STI.

Not much help from me as a year and a half on I am stilling working out if I want him back 🤷‍♀️ Trust is the big thing for me . It has affected me so badly that I don’t think o can trust myself never mind anyone else. But working on that. It’s a shit place to be.

op it sounds like you are making excuses for him your head is telling one thing & your heart the other - which to choose ....only you know whats right for you

its tough been there in the end i couldn't live with the dread every time i was out of sight i was out of mind

good luck whatever you choose

My experience is that the cheater generally develops contempt for the partner who tolerates their infidelity.

@Ophelia2020

My experience is that the cheater generally develops contempt for the partner who tolerates their infidelity.

Exactly and they become more open and blatant about the cheating because they believe you can't live without them

A timely message, as I've started to have doubts about whether or not we're making the right decision. But your messages remind me how far away the idea of being happy, relaxed, confident, trusting, loved, valued, intimate actually are. And I can't bring it all back on my own without him pulling his weight.

I took back my H following a year apart after he left to live with the OW. That was ten years ago. There have been so many times I've deeply regretted taking him back. Although we get along alright and there is a lot of fondness for one another we've barely had any sexual intimacy since his return.

My husband first cheated 3 years into our marriage when our son was 2. I discovered an affair and then he confessed to hooking up with someone else too. Our marriage was a mess though and we went through nearly a year of counselling and I was much much happier with our relationship and we started to rebuild and I did love him and started to trust him again. He swore he would never hurt me like that again and I believed him...
A year ago, when celebrating our 10 year anniversary I discovered another affair that had happened 2 years previously, this one lasted 2 months and she fell in love with him and he admitted to having strong feelings for her.
Needless to say he's soon to be my ex-husband. I don't regret taking him back the first time as we have an amazing daughter as a result and I did have some truly happy years together although I won't lie, I did think about his cheating nearly every day... I have also realised that it was never anything to do with me. I did everything asked of me and suggested in counselling... He just can't resist temptation and he needs the excitement of someone hitting on him. I did believe he changed, unfortunately I was a fool 🙁

www.scribd.com/doc/225191435/John-Julie-Gottman-The-Science-and-Creation-of-Fidelity-and-Infidelity

Op I recommend some reading before you make any big decisions. Many counsellors don't really understand how infidelity works and I would not accept it was an attention thing. How much attention can a person get from a brief phone call? I suspect the buzz was really from violating your marriage and your trust. Cheating is an act of abuse and I firmly feel it should be in there with emotional abuse.

Negative Comparisons, resentment and emotional dishonesty seem to be a big indication that cheating will happen. These feelings are hidden from the partner although we may see signs that we dismiss or excuse.

When I read through articles like I've linked to, I realise how inevitable it was that my ex was someday going to cheat. These are selfish people who feel they deserve more and are prone to seeing their partner negatively regardless of what they do.

Imagine being the person in the article. Asking someone to change their personality is not going to work.

Another thing, do not underestimate the resentment he must have felt to do this. Also do not underestimate the contempt and lack of respect he's going to feel when he's forgiven despite what he says.Think about how important respect is to men and how much they value it. Most men are not forgiving about being cheated on and don't respect people who put up with it.

Many men become emotionally abusive after being forgiven for cheating.

What occurred to me was you say he contacted people on adultwork and never met them. You don't know for sure that he never met anyone, only the ones he let down.
The intent was there to do it whichever way you look at it and if you take someone back after blatantly showing intentions to cheat, they to some extent they have got away with it and how do you know they will not do it again ?

I'm going through this at the moment. I found out my partner cheated on me with 'the one who got away' 8 months into our (now 2 year) relationship. It is long distance but we talk all day every day on text and I know I'd feel so lonely if I didn't have him to talk to as I likely have aspergers and no friends and this is what's keeping me with him. But it eats at me every day and I've changed since finding out, I'm more insecure than ever, don't trust him one bit and I'm forever picking fights with him over it and over little things. Wish I was strong enough to end it

Five years ago my husband spent a year being a total bastard to me, wouldn’t touch me, was mean, told me he didn’t love me, was constantly on his phone. I got a letter from someone saying that they had had an affair and he’d broken it off, but he told me that it was just a vindictive colleague making mischief. As we’d only just got married, we’d been together a long time and he made no moves to leave, and because I was young and naive and thought marriage was for life, I stuck it out and things gradually started to improve. We had a DS together. Things were never quite the same because he’d created a rupture in our marriage and over the intervening years we got into a bad pattern where he was emotionally neglectful and I was codependent, because I’d taken on responsibility for his previous behaviour and spent the whole time trying to make him happy, at the expense of my own happiness and sense of self. He would still often stay out extremely late and I had many restless nights wondering where he was. I suppose we would have carried on like this indefinitely if I hadn’t, a month ago, discovered that he had visited prostitutes. At that point (thanks to the support of MN) I gave him the heave-ho. During which process it turned out he had cheated previously, during the period when he was an arsehole.
That was quite long and I’m conscious that it’s not exactly what you were asking for, but I suppose my experience of taking back a (at that stage only suspected) cheater is that 1) you will live in constant fear of them doing it again, 2) there’s a risk you assume responsibility for their actions and this costs you your sense of self, 3) you will learn to doubt the evidence of your own eyes/gut.
I was actually weirdly relieved when I found out about the prostitutes because I realised ever since our ‘bad patch’ (what an understatement) I’d been waiting for something like that to happen, and now that it finally had I felt like a weight had been lifted.
We too had a lovely life together, or so I thought, but I’m going to have a lovely life without him too, and one where I’m not wracked with worry every time he’s out of my sight.
Good luck OP, I’m sorry you’re in such a shit situation, remember this relationship doesn’t define you and that none of this is your fault!