Can infidelity ever save a marriage?

[OnACloud]

This could be controversial and I’m absolutely not trying to make light of infidelity, I’m currently struggling through the aftermath myself.

Ive been in a faithful, mostly happy marriage for 27 years. Up until now. I discovered a few months ago that my DH was having an affair. I was devastated. Now he is out the other side and working hard to repair our marriage he is also devastated and totally ashamed.

I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores of our situation except to say that our relationship had become mundane. We were bimbling along without giving each other much attention. The causes of his infidelity are deep rooted, however, I am fully aware that he is fully responsible and he made the wrong choices.

Coming to terms with everything is tough and I’m struggling but there are times when I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t have hit absolute crisis point (his affair). Would we have continued drifting apart? If he’d have told me he thought we weren’t in love anymore (which I know he should have done) would it have been enough of an awakening to save our marriage? I’m not sure.

Anyone else understand what I’m trying to say here?

@0shit I feel like you but 6 years down the line..I stayed but have never really forgiven and never felt 100% the same. My head says to forgive and like your situation he was desparately sorry , but my heart just isn't quite where my head is- it just kind of 'snuffed the candle out' - I do care, we get on fine but it kind of killed a romantic attraction - we've been married 27 years

@letthatmango and much of that applies to where I am at too if I'm honest. I have become a pragmatist and I put myself first now an awful lot more. I became too co dependent I feel and never put myself first -

Part of that has for us involved me not accepting ANY responsibility for what he did. I refuse to accept any blame. We were both in the same marriage only one chose to cheat. I will not be pulled down that alley

Bravo!❤️

What is the point of even thinking about this - about what might have been? It didn't happen.

@Questionsquestions23 I hope you’re okay? X

A few years ago, a couple I'm close friends to went through similar. They'd been together for 30+ years and had fallen into a rut.Unfortunately, there was an OW. Or, at least he'd had his head turned and he told her that. 'Fortunately,' that woman was me and I don't do affairs and loved them both dearly so didn't feed it. They split up for a few months and reflected and worked on themselves. I stayed well away from him during that time but still kept contact with her.It was simply that they knew each other inside and out and there was nothing new or exciting anymore. They both started doing things for themselves, developed new hobbies, saw more people. He realised he couldn't live without her and that I was nothing (in his world) compared to her.They put the effort into their relationship, fell in love again and now, 4 years on are as happy as they've ever been. The truth was, they'd both become comfortable and had neglected the relationship a bit. Not each other - they still loved each other - but the relationship. I just represented something shiny, new and different. A novelty. It was tricky for a few months but they're now as close as ever and everyone recognised that his 'crush' on me was a symptom and not the cause of the problem. Our friendship survived it too. I don't know if it would have been different if he'd actually had an affair. At least there were no mental images but it was very difficult for her at the time all the same.I'm not sure I'd even have considered it in her shoes. It felt like a huge betrayal of the friendship to me at the time so I can't imagine how she felt but I admire her hugely. She is one of the bravest and most generous people I know. I'm glad they worked through it.

My experience is that you both have to really want it to work and put that effort in for the rest of your life.

After XHs first affair, our marriage was in the best place it had been for ages for 3 years, as we both recognised we had stopped putting in effort.

However, his effort started waning, then came the next affair. He didn't try at all hard to fix us after that time, so it was inevitable when affair 3 came along. That was it for me. I was done.

So whilst I think an affair is a shake up in a marriage, both of you have to make the thing work and keep on making it work after.

@GreyCarpet amazing story. This is what happens when flawed human impulses are met with honour and compassion which is in turn is met with likewise + self awareness, honesty and backbone.
A 20+ or 30+ marriage is a successful relationship whichever way you look at it, isn't strange that it should lose its way and cracks to develop almost without noticing when it becomes the Gibson not the primary focus of your joint lives together. A relationship so long takes you through a lot of massive changes in life, some of which can include a loss of ones identity or just good old over familiarity...
That same relationship can be the one to take you through the next stage of your life but to need to relearn yourself is not unusual never mind to need to reappreciate each other.

Thanks for sharing @GreyCarpet , that’s a really interesting perspective.

@Globules Im sorry you went through all that, I hope you have found happiness now.

You seem to be assuming the ‘forgiver’ is a woman and the unfaithful partner a man, but I can think of one instance among people I know well where it was the other way round. I wouldn’t call him ‘delusional’, just someone who valued the marriage enough, despite the affair, to think there was something worth keeping.

OP I was in your DHs position and had the affair. Very similar in that it was a colleague and a mostly emotional affair - we met 3 times (different countries) and kissed but didn’t go further than that, although we had no communication in between meet ups. My DH found out by reading my therapy journal (I had put us into couples therapy and individual therapy after the first kiss) and went INSANE and behaved very badly in the aftermath of discovery - went and threatened the OM etc.

We are still together almost a year on, and it has taken a lot of very hard and painful work to get here. What I would say is not that the affair saved our marriage but it did act as a release valve and a catalyst to repair it. In our case my DH had been behaving very badly prior to the affair and I was under a huge amount of stress - which doesn’t excuse the affair, but in many ways it was the least worst option as really the only other option I had available was to leave which would have been hideous and not amicable with horrible consequences for our young kids. My DH has totally forgiven me for the affair because he has recognised the root cause of it, and I in turn feel horribly guilty that I turned away from the marriage and hurt someone I love so profoundly.

I don’t know if we could have moved forward had we both not agreed that the marriage was in dire straits beforehand. If you reflect on how things were between you what do you think? This is not to put the blame on you (or my DH) for cheating, but I do think you can draw a distinction between cheating for the sake of getting sex or attention, and cheating as a maladapted response to some fundamental needs not being met in a marriage. Only you and your dh can figure out which it is. In our case it has been much easier to repair trust as he recognises that I am not out and about looking for a third party relationship - my affair wasn’t about that. For me, I’m much clearer now that if I ever feel like that again I do need to leave. We have both made big changes in ourselves and how we relate to and communicate with each other.

good luck.

You do sound as if you are making excuses through @OnACloud . Your comments on the OW show you are placing more blame on her as a serial adulterer and awful person than the person who betrayed you.

I stayed with a cheat. I made every excuse known to humanity despite my anger. I was full of ‘this has made us stronger’ and ‘I am setting the boundaries and behaviours now’.

But fundamentally someone who will choose themselves and choose to cheat rather than speak to their partner, who would rather the flattery and excitement of an affair than the hard work of maintaining a long term relationship will always err to that behaviour, in my experience.

My ex was only sorry and willing to work on things as long as I was not angry or resentful after the initial period of finding out. As long I went back to trusting him before I was ready. When he got fed up of making an effort he went straight back to looking for flattery and excitement elsewhere and blamed me for it.

Maybe your husband is different but for me, cheating breaks the relationship irrevocably.

I think that’s a very fair post from the unfaithful person’s POV.

I thoroughly enjoyed Alain de Bottom’s book ‘The Course of Love’. It’s a really wise novel about marriage. It deals with the themes you’re dealing with in a really rounded, emotionally intelligent way. I think you might find it chimes with you.

https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/alain-de-botton/course-of-love/9780241962138?cq_src=google_ads&cq_cmp=18075688485&cq_con=&cq_med=pla&cq_plac=&cq_net=x&gclid=Cj0KCQjwk96lBhDHARIsAEKO4xausg2B_u6ULBrlvJgFsAwEuNcHRdso83v2ySR6xPP2dvYqIpBkc3IaAlvQEALw_wcB#GOR007733732

This is a love story with a difference. From dating to marriage, from having kids to having affairs, it follows the progress of a single ordinary relationship: tender, messy, hilarious, painful, and entirely un-Romantic. It is a love story for the modern world, chronicling the daily intimacies, the blazing rows, the endless tiny gestures that make up a life shared between two people. Moving and deeply insightful, The Course of Love offers us a window into essential truths about the nature of love.

Relationships are messy and unique.

So yes some affairs can be the jolt everyone needs.

Sometimes it irreparable though.

Base honesty is what you need now.
Impossible to predict where that will lead you.

I don’t have any experience in affairs, but I do have a relative and friend who have both been through affairs. What I do know is, it takes courage and strength to try and give it a go, and a certain level of selflessness when children are involved.

Everyone getting hung up on honesty here, and whether he’s being truthful about what actually happened - it’s pointless. That was what happened before, and you need to move forward to get through what happens next.

Wherever you end up with this relationship, I hope it’s a happy place for you. If you’re happy, your children will be happy. If you struggle, after all of your research and after all of your efforts, to move fully past and the pain keeps resurfacing - then seriously consider moving on. Because whatever his reasoning, whatever the catalyst, you deserve to be happy without baggage. Don’t just consider, can you be happy with your current partner. Consider, could you be happier with someone else - without this painful baggage.

One life.

Affair or leaving? It really wasn't your only option was it though? How about talking to your partner and acknowledging your feelings before having an affair?

How did the wife find out about this out of interest?

Ofc I had tried that @Gingerboy22 and been met with an absolute blank wall - accused of being unreasonable, angry, irrational etc. I really had tried all the normal ways to solve these things. Not that I thought “aha the next step is to go and cheat” - but with hindsight it really was one of the only two escalation points I had available, which is I think the gist of the OPs question.

She asked him outright if he had feelings for me and he told her he loved me.

Thank you. I am so very happy now. The end of a 20 year marriage is hard, but I could no longer live with someone I didn't trust any more. Happiness is easy to find after so many years of having to work at making things work.

Had he declared any feelings to you before this?

I'm approaching 2 years after d-day following DH physical but short affair. Our marriage (married 20 years, 2 x DS) had broken before the affair really, the affair was a symptom not cause.
The situation has taught me in particularly how a marriage should be, the work that both partners need to invest and we weren't doing this, hence the breakdown.
If DH had not gone down the whole conspiracy theory rabbit hole at the same time I think we could have saved our marriage but we both want different things now. If we were going to stay together the marriage would have been totally different - I would say leaving it 2 years has been long enough for me to come to a decision but for others it may take longer. Give it as much time and as much effort as you possibly can and realise it won't ever possibly be the same, an opportunity to really start afresh?

@OnACloud that's the thing, at times people know the relationship is on the rocks, but with kids, and general family life they carry on, then the eventual happens eg affairs, then it's the usual could we have saved the marriage etc.

Overall the marriage was on the rocks once couples become more like friends and go through the daily grind.