One of the problems when someone has an affair is that everything that happened before that is wiped out completely. It’s as if the affair and the damage done by it trumps everything else, when often affairs are not black and white. That doesn’t mean that they’re acceptable, but it does mean that there are often circumstances which lead to an affair.
My DH was abusive. He would put me down, we went out for dinner one night and he was so derogatory about the way I ate something that I felt the only way past it was to leave the dinner uneaten.
He put all manner of obstacles in the way of me going back to work after I had DC. I had initially intended to be a SAHM but when I decided I wanted to go back there were far too many reasons why I couldn’t.
he put keyloggers on my PC to track what I was doing.
He took pictures of me naked which I didn’t find out about until we separated.
He put some kind of tracker on my phone and if I went out he would claim I’d been seen by someone with another man, when actually he’d just tracked me to where I was, and the “other man” was a friend of mine who he knew I had gone to meet up with.
When my first DC was born he told me that we had to have sex by my six week checkup, and although I didn’t want to, he made it clear the afternoon before my appointment that we would be going upstairs during the baby’s nap to make sure I could still have sex.
He proclaimed in front of friends what a great shag his ex was.
He insisted on moving away from our support network because it would be better for him and DC, what was best for me wasn’t a consideration. I moved to a town where I knew absolutely no-one, while the only thing that had changed for him was his address.
And then I started talking to someone online. And stupidly, after a few months, we met up, and we slept together, once.
And then I decided I wanted out regardless of the affair, I didn’t want to leave for OM, but I knew that the affair gave me a reason to get out, even though that meant he would be the one ending the relationship.
He did actually want to try again. But I had realised that I was free, so we went ahead with the divorce. And I have absolutely no doubt that if I’d stayed he would have made things even worse than he already had.
And yet me having had an affair had seemingly turned him into a saint overnight.
There is absolutely no question that having an affair was wrong. It is one of my biggest regrets and I can say hand on heart that I would never do it again.
But that doesn’t wipe out everything that went before it.
Once I’d had the affair I felt that I was no longer permitted to have ever been hurt by his abuse, because it seems that having an affair trumps everything else. So I walked away from the marriage, our mutual friends, I unfriended all of them so they didn’t have to feel awkward being friends with me when they knew what I’d done.
Over time some of them have come back and admitted they knew some of what he was like. Not least because he now treats his new partner the same way. But I will forever be “the cheater” while he will seemingly forever be the victim.
OP your DH sounds like an abuser. Having an affair is never justified. But it’s happened now, and it’s easy to see why. Now it seems that your guilt has led you back to the marriage because despite everything he’s done wrong in the past you’re the one who feels like the guilty party.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Yes, you had an affair, and I’ll be honest, there will be people who will judge you for it.
But that doesn’t mean you owe it to him to stay in the marriage and be subjected to his abuse until he decides he’s prepared to move on.
It’s totally ok for someone to say that they couldn’t move on.
It’s absolutely not ok for someone to feel that that means staying in the marriage and using previous events as a stick to beat someone with.
Just as people say “if you’re not happy then you should leave not cheat,” the same applies for if you can’t move on. If you can’t move on then you leave. You don’t stay to make the other person suffer. That makes you no better than the person who cheated on you in the first place.