How do cheaters really feel

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Have you cheated?

Im sure this thread has been created many times in the past but I'm going through hard times at the moment and finding it really hard dealing with someone I loved cheating on me and my family.

They say they felt guilty, they say it was a mistake but the way I see it is so black and white. They didn't feel guilty enough to stop it and its only a mistake now its all out in the open.

If you cheated on someone you loved or you are cheating on someone at the moment, how did it or how does it make you feel?

Please tell me the emotions, the guilt if any and how you could cross those lines knowing that people are going to get hurt. How can something that will hurt so many people make you feel so good.

And finally. When the secret came out was you relived? Did you feel remorse and see it as a real mistake? Did you carry on thinking about the affair partner and what you had and what you have lost. Did you love the person you was cheating? Did the affair end your relationship and did you have the urge to contact the AP again?

I know this will be a sensitive subject with many but I really want to see what it feels like to be on the other side of the fence.

Thank you

@WanderingLost167 he’s not “working hard at being faithful” if he’s still “good friends” with you. Does his wife know you are still “good friends” and still in contact? If she doesn’t know he contacts you, doesn’t know he still describes you as a “good friend”, and would be very unhappy if she knew he did, he’s still cheating and you are still helping him.
“Working hard at being faithful” involves going totally NC with the former affair partner.
It’s nothing less than mental torture to his wife to have to wonder what you talk about and feel for each other. If she knows you are in touch, then she’s tolerating it to maintain the marriage and her family. Poor woman.

It’s perfectly possible to have a bloody good time doing something and regret it horribly afterwards. Not everyone might, but some do. Of course it doesn’t mean you didn’t enjoy it at the time, but sometimes when people see the damage their good time cost your wife and family, they shudder with guilt and remorse every time they think of it. Some with less of a conscience might just look back on it with happy memories, but it’s bloody hard to see it that way, or of any real value, when you’re living with the awful aftermath and looking your devastated wife and children in the eye every day.

My friend’s husband had an affair. He must have enjoyed it at the time as he kept going back for more. Until, that is, the day his eldest child was looking for a a charger and found his burner phone. It wasn’t locked and the kid saw and read everything. They had a terrible shock about their father. They also had a terrible dilemma. Tell mum and break her heart, face Dad and tell him he knows and risk Dad leaving, pretend they don’t know and by omission therefore help dad cheat on mum?
They told their mum as they thought it as the right thing to do and they were very angry with Dad.
The family imploded, dad wanted to stay and regretted everything, mum couldn’t deal with it and asked him to move out.
Despite having such a good time, the father’s regret, guilt and remorse sadly drove him to suicide, his note said he couldn’t live with himself for what he had done.
His child and wife are doubly devastated, by the betrayal and losing him altogether. The older child is in therapy as they sometimes think that what they did by revealing the affair killed their dad. It’s horrendous.

Whilst this is obviously an extreme case, the visceral pain involved afterwards to loved ones renders most affairs (except perhaps an exit affair where the relationship was over anyway) very hard to keep as a good memory, when they see the ones they really love in agony or struggling with their mental health as a result of their actions. You’d have to be a pretty cold fish to grin internally and get a warm fuzzy feeling about your “good time” with your wife and /or children sobbing in front of you. I doubt his wife has any good memories about any of it either.

It’s healthy to move on after infidelity, nobody should thrash themselves for ever, nobody is perfect by a long way, but hopefully the aftermath finally gives people a conscience and they learn from it, learning never doing it again to anyone.