Can my marriage work after infidelity?

[Oranges146]

I'm looking for advice and people's experiences in this area. My relationship has had a lot of ups and downs but to cut a long story short I had an affair (I don't need to know what a scum bag I am, I'm already aware). I regret what's happened and what to fix my marriage which my DH really wants to do too. I just don't know how to do this, does trust and forgiveness come with time? Things have definitely ended with the OM and had done before DH found out but part of the problem is I work with OM. I can't just quit my job for financial reasons and I also love my job. Understandably DH doesn't want me to go back to work. Is there any way things can work in your experiences?

Your marriage will fail, because your actions will eventually prove to your husband that his happiness matters nothing to you, compared to YOUR happiness.

Even though you call yourself 'scum' in your OP, you go on to insist that unless you are both happy, then the marriage won't work. Eventually this is true. But right now? NO

If you want the marriage to last, you have to do whatever it takes to make your husband feel less shit. He won't feel happy. He may decide even after a few years, that this marriage cannot ever make him happy again, and so he might still end it. But if you want even a chance of this marriage working, you have to forget your own happiness right now.

To misquote 'Fame', "affairs cost, and right here is where you start paying. In happiness".

Do you think your husband doesn't understand the financial strain quitting your job will cause? Of course he understands it. Yet this is what he is asking. So do it. Otherwise, he knows you value your job more than your marriage (we can all see that). If that makes you feel upset and resentful, well, keep on reminding yourself "I did this.'

From now on, you do whatever it takes to earn back his trust, and you thank your lucky stars every day that he didn't end the marriage; because if he was writing here and explaining your attitude, he would be told that would be best, given your attitude.

If you can't do that - if you don't want to put your desires and wants on the back burner - then end the marriage now. Because I guarantee you it will end anyway without a huge shift of attitude from you.

Trust and forgiveness come with time and with you demonstrating that you have changed, are repentant and have somehow become trustworthy. I see nothing here that would convince me you are capable of that, if I was your husband.

Whether you leave that job or not, I would think that your dh isn't going to trust you fully anymore.

So even if you do get a new job, that won't change. And it isn't HIS fault.

I hope this works out long term. You don't say how long ago this happened, but it seems fairly recent. Just be prepared that the cheated on partner may think they want to work on this, and will try. But down the line when everything has been processed, that may very well change.

So you need to have a job to be able to support yourself fully, should it come to this.

As the person on the otherside of infidelity (albeit the grey area of online indefinitely) I echo everyone who says that it's you that has to put the work in.

My ex refused to own his actions completely (there was always a 'yeah but') and then refused to give up a lot of what I needed to move on (agreement to quit online stuff, allowing access to phone etc) and similar to you here, it was all a bit of a pity party for him.

I on the other hand kept a level head, gave him chances, tried my best and it still got me nowhere.

What I realised is that it was all on me to get over it, I had to perform all the mental gymnastics to try and move on while he showed me no effort or commitment to the cause. He's still acting the victim.

Give him what he needs. Or let him go for his sake.

On my last point, a common thing that came up for me was that I wanted him to just admit he wasn't in love with me anymore, and that's what contributed to his actions. It would have let me off the hook.

As it was, he didn't and I was forced into the position of being the person forging ahead with the separation. So I then had to occupy that space and feel guilty.

Your marriage may work but as they say on Love Island you’ll have to ‘graft for it’.

I doubt her husband is going to be convinced by the argument that she will do to work but keep her distance from the OM. Presumably she could have done that before the affair too if her role doesn’t require her to interact with him but they nonetheless sought each other out to spend time together. No reason why they couldn’t or wouldn’t do this again in OH’s mind.

It’ll only have a chance of working out if you change jobs and have no contact with the other man. Doing or expecting anything other than that is disrespectful to your husband, think about what he’s having to deal with right now and be grateful if he is prepared to try and make the relationship work. Keeping your job at the same place as the other man shows no remorse or care for your husbands feelings, why would you want him to feel every time you go to work you could be up to no good again. Give the poor man some peace of mind, don’t mess with his head even more.

At no point have I said that I'm not willing to move jobs, or that I want to go back to work as normal with OM or that I don't see what DH is going through. I've made a terrible mistake and it's something I have to live with and deal with for the rest of my life. Ofcourse I'm very grateful to DH that he's willing to give things a shot. It's the where do I go from here that I'm struggling with because I can't magically walk into another job. And no I don't want to give my career up and get any old job that will ultimately make me feel unhappy in the long term and financially insecure, but I haven't said I won't look for another role in the same profession. My post was asking for advice and others experiences in similar positions. Just because I'm concerned about my job and the future doesn't mean I'm not remorseful or don't regret what I've done and what I have put DH through.

It’s also about what your husband wants however.

You’ve been given advice from others who have been through this from your husbands perspective. It’s now up to you whether you take that advice

@Oranges146 I am reading all of what you are writing but the where you go from here to make your marriage work unfortunately means a change of job and cutting all contact with the other man. Only further hurt and problems will happen continuing to have the same place of work. Even if you’ve no intention of crossing any lines and to avoid him your husband won’t believe this because of the broken trust just now and it will give him no peace of mind, which brings anger from him towards you and it’ll drive you further apart.

@Katrinawaves thank you for your message and I am grateful for any advice and experiences that people can share.

I can only post from your husband point of view but I needed my other half to have no possibility of contact with other person to be able to start to heal. If he hadn't been willing or able to do that I would have been eaten up with anxiety that it would happen again no matter what he said.

If your husband believes that you staying in your job means a risk of another affair then it indicates that he does not trust you. Doesn't trust you to want to work on your marriage, doesn't believe you when you say that you don't want this OM, doesn't trust when you say that you won't have another affair.

If that's the case you moving jobs will not help. Because if you wanted to get back with OM you could always do it beyond work place and you could always have another affair in your new job.

So you might as well stay. But do do everything else what's advised here. Complete openness, full access to all devices and lots of love towards your husband.

I don't understand people saying that if he doesn't trust you not to continue the affair while you are in work then you might as well keep working. To people saying that I would say of course her husband doesn't trust her! She's just had an affair! This period of time is very, very important in terms of REBUILDING trust, and part of that is prioritising the relationship. If you don't prioritise the relationship it will be damaged, perhaps irreparably.

It has absolutely helped me personally as I know he's not seeing her daily. I've read plenty and we've done a marriage course that all support severing all possible contact(in partners eyes) is necessary to healing.

Sorry that was response to mandala . My husband affair is still quite raw and I'm just responding as I feel.

All very valid points of course, and I am not trying to diminish anyone's feelings which are completely justified.

It's just that thinking from the point of damage limitation and logic, rather than hurt feelings, if the OP is ashamed, terrifies and wants to work on her marriage she will be avoiding the OM like a plaque. Just because he will now be associated with something really bad.

So there is no risk there.

I am currently trying to repair my marriage after ‘D’H had an affair with a colleague
I caught them a few months after he started it, and while it was in full force with lots of talk of love and him leaving me, to give you an idea of the emotional gear shift he had to make to get his head back into our marriage.

The first thing he did was agree to look for a new job. He was very senior in the company, she was also senior but in a different department/area.
He made a daily effort to look for new jobs even though this was a great role for him - easy commute, prospects, etc
Whenever he could, he based himself out of a different site or worked from home to minimise contact with her

When she did contact him, he told me instantly.

He got a new job within 3 months, and didn’t tell her he was leaving. She found out on his last day, and then he changed all his numbers, email address and blocked her and as many of her friends as he could find on LinkedIn.

He willingly came to counselling both together and individually.
He also read many many books, and listened to many podcasts to get perspectives on what he needed to do
He also fully embraced admitting to all his faults and sought to work on them in parallel to the ‘us’ work (his attitude to money, his ideas on parenting)

No question was off limits at any time. If I wanted to wake him up at 3am and ask him the name of the bar they went to, he answered.
If I couldn’t deal with him cuddling me, he respectfully gave me space until I felt ready.
Basically there was no sulking or huffing.

In the three months between discovery and him leaving the company, I thought I was doing ok
But the day he came home after his leaving, the most enormous weight lifted from my shoulders that I didn’t even realise was there.
Looking back, I can’t see how we would ever have moved forward with them working together.

It isn’t about trust or forgiveness. It’s about not wanting him to have a constant reminder of what they had, it was about not wanting to know she would be analysing his mood every day looking for clues.

No one would dream of suggesting someone let an ex live with them under the same room as a couple, and yet you spend many many more waking hours in the office than you do at home in the average week.

In short, OP, you should like you want this to just blow over and your life should carry on without impediment
Sorry but it just won’t work like that
This needs fucking hard work, now, next month, next year.

We are 2 years on and it’s not fixed. Far from it. But we, and he, are putting a lot of work in.

Your attitude makes it seem pretty clear you don’t want to put much work in however

Our relationship survived an affair with a work colleague. The job had to go. It was a non-negotiable. Like you, for financial reasons we had to wait for a new job first, but applications/interviews helped demonstrate commitment to leaving and in the meantime lots of reassurance, very open behaviour and communication were necessary. No secrets at all! In the end we moved to a whole new area of the country for the new job! We love our new lives and our relationship is better than before but I accept we're probably in the minority! Do whatever DH needs you to do, he's feeling hurt and vulnerable and it will take a lot of time to get the marriage back on an equal footing. Good luck, and hope it works out!

Speaking from a male perspective I would say no. At the moment it's 3 weeks down the line from your poor husband finding out what you done. He will be feeling such a number of raw emotions that it will be hard for him to make any clear judgement. One minute he will be angry with you, angry with the other man. Feelings of emasculation at the thoughts of his wife doing the intimate sexual things that they had exclusively shared together. Constantly switching from sad to angry to almost denial.The enormity of it may be to hard to bear and so by trying to fix things and move forward may seem like the cure. Sadly it rarely is. He needs some space to arrange his emotions and organise his mind. Being in your company at the moment is to raw, constantly to be reminded of what you've done is not sustainable until he's had time to truly work out what he wants to do. He may internalise whats happen and blame himself, his confidence will be shot to pieces knowing another man has physically & emotionally satisfied his wife in ways perhaps he could not. No amount of reassurance from you make any difference because you still did those things. He will always compare his self to the other man and begin to wonder what was better about him.
Don't give up your job until you've found something else but I would strongly suggest one of you needs to move out to give him and you time to work it out.
Personally having been through this, my experience is that it's always tainted, you never truly recover that trust and somewhere however deeply buried it bites you when you least expect it. You watch something on tv, read about someone elses experience or hear about other people going through it and bang! It's there for you again and you can't help looking at that someone you love and feel some resentment. I want to look at my partner and not have doubt about her, what we have is between us and should not be shared with another.

Unless its explicitly in your contract that you're not allowed to date at work or you are his superior (in a reporting line) then it is unlikely to be against the rules at work. I would tell them, it wont be the first time this has happened, and with covid it should be easier to arrange for you to be distant from each other. You cant go off sick indefinitely. I wouldn't quit, I dont think it will do you any good to be sitting at home dwelling on everything and your husband does need to learn to trust you again, there are going to be opportunities to cheat wherever you work. And if it doesnt work out you don't want to be dumped and jobless.

It’s fascinating how often people in this position have jobs they just can’t leave.

I’d say it’s about 90%.

Weird. So many niche jobs.

Odd too that everyone’s commitment to their career is absent when they’re shagging their colleagues but suddenly becomes a key part of their identity.

I’d keep your job. I think your husband will soon realize that you are cold and uncompromising and regret his decision to give your marriage another go.

Animal logic is totally right - he will never forget it - the damage is done - there is a high possibility he will never forgive you. Many victims of affairs have their partners back in the hope they will stay together but by then the victim has changed too and it's too late for the cheater.

I agree that your marriage will be about to end soon too. Let him go and be happy.

You can look for a new job, then you won't have to see the OM and you can work on yourself so you don't create any more victims in the future.

I was in your situation! I transferred to a different state, cut all connections with all colleagues and moved on, my husband not long followed. At the start it was hell, but it really depends on your husband. The only thing i didnt allow was to be blackmailed over it. Time will come, you just have understand that he is not going to just wake up and trust you, it takes time. But dont let others say it wont work only you and your husband will decide that.