When do you finally throw in the towel after affair discovery?

[Pickle991]

Discovered DH has had multiple affairs throughout our 10 year marriage, 6 months ago. We have 3 young DC.

The latest lasted a year and was clearly emotional as well as physical. He ended it, but I had to tell him to, and we are trying to work on the marriage. He is in counselling.

My question is, how long do you carry on trying before you give up? We are still fighting non-stop and it’s been months. Details have emerged about the latest AP over time, he wasn’t entirely upfront from the outset, particularly in regards to how he felt about her.

I thought I would feel better making sure the OW is off the scene. I don’t. I thought there would be some improvement by now. He thinks we should be moving on but I can’t. I feel like he will have just gotten away with it. We’re not close physically or emotionally. I feel like I will never have definitive answers as to ‘why’ beyond the standard responses, I don’t even think he knows himself half the time. I don’t know if I still love him.

For those who have been through this, when do you throw in the towel? Was there a moment you knew it was definitely ‘over’, after the initial shock and fear wore off? Do you feel like trying to reconcile was just a fantasy? Sometimes I think it’s just not possible.

He wants to move on? To the next affair, no doubt. It doesn’t sound to me as though there’s any point in your staying with him. Do the best thing for yourself and get rid.

It took me two years, and I have just decided it cannot continue. Good luck OP.

Forget the counselling for him, total waste of time and money, you are flogging a dead horse.
Get counselling for yourself instead regarding self respect, self esteem esteem and self confidence so you can get this deadbeat out of your life.

Yep I’d go down the counselling route for yourself too.

I have to say, you are talking about several affairs, not just one. He didn’t show he actually wanted to make things better. You had to tell him to stop seeing the OW.
Im not sure that’s salvageable. To be able to recover from an affair, you need to see the cheating partner to actually make efforts to save the marriage. Just now he isn’t (bar the counselling? But who knows what he is talking about there).

@neverfunny sorry to hear that. That’s a long time to keep trying. What made you decide it just wasn’t worth it?
@SantiMakesMeLaugh yes he’s doing the ‘textbook’ things and is on ‘best behaviour’ but don’t know what counselling it going to fix tbh if there’s no love left between us, but not sure how to know when that is or if that comes back after the initial shock, or when, or how long to wait and see or if just staying is causing more damage in all honesty.

I just realised that after two years we were back at where we were before he had his affair(s) and soon enough one or other of us would be looking elsewhere. Funnily enough i got past the affair but struggled to move on from the betrayal of all the people around me who had known.

I don't think many marriages survive an affair, let alone marriages with a serial cheater who can't even be honest about what happened and had to be forced to give up his latest lover.

Why do you believe you had to bother with all this at all? For me (and many others) it's all over pretty much immediately. There's no legal, moral or other reason for you to have to try to stay with him.

I can understand how some people can move on from a one off affair (not me, mind). But I doubt a serial cheater will change. They honestly believe it's an OK thing to do. They don't feel guilty about it. They don't care what it does to you.

Free yourself from this.

@neverfunny oh god that’s awful. Like a double whammy. I’m so sorry. Why did no-one think to tell you? I would always want to know.

and yes I do wonder once we’re past the ‘crisis’ stage how things will look. Whether we’ll just end up even more disengaged because all we do now is fight and talk about it all. I struggle to remember how things were before and how I felt about things, like it was an an entirely different life with a different person! I didn’t think we were in trouble as such, but I suppose not amazing. After so long being together is it for anyone? And then if it wasn’t even that great before how will it be better after this? I don’t know if I believe in affairs making couples ‘stronger’. Maybe after a ONS. But not multiple affairs.

it wasn't that nobody thought to tell me, more that everyone was complicit!

@neverfunny 🥺🥺 can’t imagine how horrible that must feel. Just the betrayal of your DH is enough.

It was one affair in our case but we are still together 2.5 years down the line. There have been multiple occasions when I’ve almost thrown the towel and in all honestly, there’s a very good chance that may still happen. It’s the disrespect and level of deceit that went into the affair that I’m struggling to overcome.

As someone who said I would never tolerate any degree of unfaithfulness, I shocked myself by trying to work through it. Had it been multiple affairs, I wouldn’t have even tried. X

I discovered my husband had had 2 affairs when my eldest was 2. I discovered both in one go. One was a fling when he was working away for a week, the other was more prolonged and definitely an emotional connection. Anyway we had a year of counselling and went on to have another child. When she turned 4 I discovered he'd had a 3 month long affair when she was 2 years old... Maybe something about kids being 2 that made him cheat?!!! This one he'd fallen in love with but he had ended it and I knew nothing of it.
Anyway, it took me 3 months after that discovery to end it. I think it would have been sooner but my dad had a heart attack and I had to go and look after him and could only focus on him.
Even when I ended it though it was a trial separation... He asked for a year to have therapy and fix himself. Can you guess what he did??? Yep.. within weeks of leaving he was on all the dating sites. So that's when I filed for divorce.

@Mama05070704 thanks for your reply. When you say one off do you mean a ONS? Just physical? Or was it a long term emotional affair too?
and I’m the same, never thought I would tolerate cheating but it’s like your whole world changes and I feel like I’ve lost a sense of who I am sometimes, and like we’re just clinging on out of fear.
I don’t know if a marriage can survive when there were deep feelings for someone else. Is there so much different between one ‘purely physical’ affair, or more, given the motivation and the betrayal was the same? I don’t even know.
and yes the planning involved in the deception is next level shocking.

@Angustiada oh gosh I’m so sorry to hear about that, and your dad too.
I do wonder if the whole ‘counselling’ thing is just a band-aid solution. A whole year and it seems like nothing changed.
it sounds like you did the right thing. I hope he is at least being a good father to your DC!

He doesn't sound like he's making an effort to get through it, just expecting you to 'move on'. He should be jumping through hoops for you now to make you feel secure and apologising daily if that's what it takes.

The worrying thing is that you had to 'make' him end this latest affair. Didn't he really want to? Is he still missing her? No wonder you feel like this.
Imo once the trust has gone from a marriage then it's dead but I guess if the perpetrator can prove that he has changed / made a terrible mistake / wants to make things right then maybe it can be saved. It doesn't sound like your DH wants to do this though.

“Forget the counselling for him, total waste of time and money, you are flogging a dead horse.
Get counselling for yourself instead regarding self respect, self esteem esteem and self confidence so you can get this deadbeat out of your life.”
this^^

you ask how long? 1 day to organize a move out.

What’s the reason you are clinging on other than having kids? You have no emotional or physical closeness and reading your post it sounds completely unforgivable to me and you are flogging a completely dead horse. Why are you putting yourself through it?

For me, when it gets to "multiple" affairs, it is over.

I think in an ideal world, we would all leave ar the first sign of affair. I do believe that majority of cheaters will cheat on you again. But I understand its hard and I'm not so certain I would if I found out my DH has cheated.

But if he has done it more than once ? Off he goes. This wasn't one mistake. He sought women out multiple times , for me that's too much

I'd also be very hurt at the strong emotional connection. I'd never forgive an affair I don't think, where he has feelings etc. A one night stand, or something purely sexual I'd be more willing to look beyond. But if he's out handing his cock AND his heart around? Well there is nothing special about our relationship.

The fact you had to tell him to end with her and he was reluctant is alarming. He obviously didn't want too even when you found out. Most cheaters I'd imagine would be giving it the whole "I'll block them, I'll never do it again" this tells me his heart isn't in it to change or make it with you. It's only a matter of time before he does it again.

I wouldn't waste more time with someone who cheats on you repeatedly and head isn't in it to try to change.

@Pickle991 at the time I found counselling to be really helpful and it definitely helped us to communicate better. But I was also made to feel like I was partly to blame for the cheating which massively affected my self confidence. It turns out it was nothing to do with me at all. He has major issues... At the time of the final affair our marriage was fine, we were happy, even he admitted that. He just said he needed the excitement of it and the ego boost of being desired.
2.5 years on, I'm happy, in fact soooooo much happier, but it's been a long, tough road.

@justamushypea its not like he says it in a dismissive way, it’s more like he can’t cope with the constant going over it and wants to get back to some kind of normality I guess. But what is normality now?
and no he didn’t end the latest when I found out. I think in all honesty he was waiting to see what I did first so he wouldn’t lose her, and then yes I told him he needed to end it if we were going to even think about trying to work on things and he agreed, but yes I suppose I made him, in that sense.

I don’t know if he is missing her. It was how he was behaving that made me suspect with this one and that’s how I found out. Like he would get frustrated if something last minute came up at home that meant he had to stay in, in a way that seemed disproportionate. Presumably because they had plans and he wanted to see her? And more emotionally distant. It just seemed odd. So that’s how I found out.

I think he is regretful but he hasn’t said it was a mistake. How can it be. That many times, the planning, having feelings for her.

I found out about the first long-term affair, after tolerating 2 years of utterly shit behaviour that was all blamed on depression/me/us. In those 2 years I had tormented myself trying to fix things to no avail.

I didn't end it then as he fell apart and I felt I had to try or owed it to my children, and of course I couldn't abandon him. I tried, and he tried (a poor effort for a few weeks), and I just remember feeling so lost and so trapped. It was during covid, and I was isolated from everyone. I remember thinking how much longer can I do this for, what if I waste more years in this horrible situation, how many more do I give... Etc etc. I was so tormented, and it was the feeling of trying to drag and cajole him along with me.

Then, thankfully, I found out about the second affair just 5 short months later and that was it. It was a relief really. I don't know how I stuck at it all for so long, how I lost myself and my self respect to such a level that I felt total and utter responsibility for another person, responsibility to fix them and our relationship, at huge cost to me. I mean, the further away I get, the more clearly I see he has so many issues, and it's a mother he needs and wants, not a partner. He's still a mess whereas I immediately felt so much freer with the split. There's a whole other tonne of shit behind all this, but that's the high level overview.

Bottom line, I reckon cut your losses and save yourself. The cost to your happiness, your wellbeing, your self-esteem, your security etc, is too much. You might not know it yet, but you deserve so much more. And being alone is infinitely better.

You get out whilst your still young enough to have decades of happy years in front of you either on your own or with someone else. You do not do what myself and other women here have done and waste decades on a serial cheat whilst hoping for your happy ending. I called a halt to my marriage after 38 years because of my husbands serial adultery. I’m happy and my and my adult children have gone on to make good lives. I don’t regret not doing it sooner because that would hold me back and life really is too short to be going through it with an emotional ball and chain round your ankle. However, my advice to anyone else in this kind of marriage Is - get out before life passes you buy in the blink of an eye.

@RhiRhi1996 yes that’s the thing. Multiple affairs can’t be a ‘mistake’ can they?

and no he didn’t block her. He deleted everything straight away, any evidence, her contact details from his phone. All of it.

I do think that the last few years of the relationship being so shit helped me to make a swift decision as I had been grieving for years. I knew there was little left to save, and that I couldn't rebuild it alone. I will never forget the loneliness and confusion, that disappeared with the end of the relationship. And I'll say that I always credited myself with being strong and resilient. Now I recognize that strength and resilience as masking an ability to deal with shit, to face the music, to take off my blinkers and do the right thing. I wasn't strong, I was abandoning myself because I couldn't deal with my reality.

‘For me, when it gets to "multiple" affairs, it is over’

Yes. Because multiple affairs are a very clear indication that there really is something amiss in the person who does this.