Therapy with cheating husband, do I need all the details of what he has done?

[Jstsaying123]

I recently found out my husband had been cheating, I'm not going to go into all the details, but have been together for 18+years,have kids etc. Life isn't always easy as most married people will agree. Anyway I'm still not sure I know all the details of what my husband did. The therapist is asking why I need to know all the details and if that will end up hurting me more. I feel I want to know everything, but I can see her point. So help me out here, would it matter how many women your husband cheated on you with? Is 1 the same as 10?.... Obviously my head is a mess, but I think it does matter. I also think if 2 months or 2 years down the line something else comes out from this time that he hasn't confessed, it will break me and ruin me for good. I want to believe what my husband says and trust in the therapy process but I still feel I need to know all of it... Advice please, especially from anyone who has been in a similar situation xoxo

Op you sound as if you are still in shock and it’s only been a few weeks since D day.

Why don’t you give yourself some breathing space and time to process it all? You don’t have to decide anything now.

Ask your husband to move out for a few months so you can work out what you want. Of course he will need to arrange to have his children come and stay with him - EOW and one night a week is a good starting point ( assuming you are the main carer).

This will give you time and space to work out what you really want. With his constant performance husbanding. Because you sound like you are being railroaded by him and his agenda - which is to stay and have things the way that suits him.

And guilt tripped -

“ Look how hard I’m trying to fix this - I’ve read a book. So you need to forgive me for shagging other women for years “.

And pressurised by your therapist who seems to think that she knows what you need better than you do .

Your Op suggests that his infidelity has been going on for years. You don’t have to decide what you want to do in a few weeks. But you need space to work it all out.

I’d be wondering why your husband didn’t do all this work on your marriage before he decided to cheat. Rather than now - after hes been caught.

Why didn’t he tell his family before he decided to have the affairs, so they could talk him out of it and make him accountable? Is he telling them now so they will pressurise YOU to stay with him?

@Lovereallywins

Is it the details you really want or need to know or the motivation behind it? For us it was understanding the motivation. Being able to ask whatever I needed to was helpful and he was supported, as was i by some friends who were trained in this kind of therapy. More than 20 years later we are still together and stronger and definitely in love because we fought hard for our relationship and we’re prepared to be honest and really learned to communicate with one another. If you both want things to work, you honestly can get past this. As for knowing the details, I can’t recall details that hurt me at first. It is a tough road and there maybe times where you are overwhelmed or seem to go backwards but there is hope, please be encouraged, people can grow and change and remain faithful. Wishing you both well and hoping you find the path that is right for you

Thanks, I think I needed to hear a positive story. I'm definitely at the overwhelmed stage. He is definitely trying to communicate better and putting in the work. I think the motivation why is important to know, you are right. Sometimes I just spiral with all the thoughts. In 20 years, he has been a good husband (except for that last year when I felt he had checked out and something wasn't right). He has been a good dad including to our son with special needs which definitely put a strain on both of us over the past couple of years. I'm in no way excusing his actions. He was wrong, he hurt me so much. He is being open, getting help to work on himself which will improve us long term (if I stay). I believe he is still in love with me and I am in love with him. But I need to see if I can trust him again, and if I can't then in my opinion we won't last as trust is essential. Thanks again for all the replys, I needed to hear all the different stories and the impact it had on you. I'm so sorry any of us have had to go through this.... At this moment I'm not making any decisions to stay or go. I'm going to build myself back up (somehow) then I will be able to trust my decision. He can keep doing work on himself, and once I feel a bit more myself I will think about couple counselling. X

The therapist is only questioning me to help me find out what I can forgive

Trouble is, if you're attending together, the above means you're disclosing your "full hand" which enables him to play things accordingly. Depending on how you found out - confession or discovery - it's very unlikely he's told you the lot, and this way I doubt you ever will

Are you sure joint therapy's wise at this point, and that it wouldn't be better to get some for yourself before taking this step?

I know that I don’t forgive or forget, so it would be the end of the relationship for me.
But I can understand you wanting to know, and I think you have a right to know. You are his wife and the mother of his children, he will lose nothing by telling you the full truth. However you might find that you don’t believe his full truth.
And don’t forget to get an STI check.

I would save your money - don’t waste it on therapy that will line the pockets of the therapist - the outcome is the same - he cheated = you will never trust him again. Use the money for your divorce.

So help me out here, would it matter how many women your husband cheated on you with? Is 1 the same as 10?.... Obviously my head is a mess, but I think it does matter.

It wouldn't matter to me because I wouldn't be in therapy trying to fix myself over his mess. I would be freeing myself of the bastard, saving my money and getting on with my life.

I heard a story only yesterday about a chap who got caught out by his wife. He admitted the affair to her and they have tried to move on but it's taken several years.
Last week, the wife unearthed a box that the husband thought he'd stored away and she found a multitude of info regarding holidays her husband had taken the lover on.
She now feels that she's been deceived all over again and wasted the last few years of her life.

@GinIronic

I would save your money - don’t waste it on therapy that will line the pockets of the therapist - the outcome is the same - he cheated = you will never trust him again. Use the money for your divorce.

I disagree, get therapy just for you. It was one of the wisest decisions I ever made and it saved my sanity. I left my husband, and my therapist gave me the space and permission to explore all of my options, she never steered me in a specific direction but also challenged my thinking or pointed things out to me gently.

Get the right therapist but not with the goal of forgiveness in mind, with the goal of preserving your mental health.

If want to know who and how many/how long etc, but I’m not sure it would be helpful to know what they did. You’ll never get those pictures out of your head.

If you want to move on and start again I think on some ways you have to think of this as a new relationship, rather than an extension of the old one. Not cheating - but something similarly huge - broke my DP and I up. We would go over and over it during every argument with him insisting I see his side and him insisting he saw mine. We would never agree. In the end I told him that to have any chance of moving on we needed to leave that in the past where it happened and start again without it hanging over us.

I appreciate that you need some info and it sounds like he’s been pretty forthcoming with it, and seems remorseful, which is a positive start.

But just be aware that if you know all the gory details about how they did things you’ll never want to do them yourself because it will remind you of her. If he tells you they went to London and stayed in a hotel, every city break you take will remind you again. If he tells you she performed certain sex acts, you’ll feel like he’s comparing you whenever you do it.

My advice would be to decide if you want to give it a go and then try and firmly plant it back in the past and start afresh with a new attitude on both sides about how precious and fragile relationships can be.

I’d

He is very remorseful, he arranged the therapist and is going himself, he is reading books on how to be a better husband etc he has told his family which was a big deal because they are old skool and were really hurt by his behaviour...

But it sounds like he was caught/his infidelity was discovered... so presumsbly e'd be doing none of those things if he hadn't been, he'd be going on his merry way, and not have felt the need to do any of them. The therapy should've been done before he cheated, so he either didn't cheat or left.

It all seems like its aimed at damage control, self preservation and manipulation really when it's done like this.

You get the impression it's all about keeping the wife in place, so he suffers no real loss or inconvenience etc. Unpleasant but nothing like real consequences for his decisions re his marriage, family, finances, status quo etc.

*The therapy should've been done before he cheated, so he either didn't cheat or left.

Just to add .. maybe this sounds idealistic but many of us have been in potential.cheayjng situations, where we may or may not have followed through to cheating; and we all know it was usually a series of decisions, a series of lines - each one cumulatively "lower" than the previous that that crossed to get to the point of cheating. There's usually plenty of scope to know what you're heading toward and mslr the decision about what sort of person you want to be, what you owe your partner how much you value your relationship etc.

how precious and fragile relationships can be.

If the cheater thought they were precious, you wouldn't be in this position (!)

I think unless you've actually been in this situation, it's really just hypothetical to say what you would do ie. the marriage would be over, I couldn't stay with someone after infidelity etc..

I know most people would say they could never stay with a cheater, and I definitely used to say that before it happened to me in real actual life. When I found myself in the exact situation with a mortgage, baby and a toddler.. Well you just try and find a way forward.

Your marriage may or may not survive. It will be up to both of you to see how you can move on from this. Separately or together. But please don't feel pressured to do anything rash like ask him to leave straight away or any other highly emotional mumsnet style simplified reaction to a complex problem. It's your life and you move as slowly with it as you like.

It'll get better. One day at a time. Talk loads and demand as much transparency as you need.