Is it possible to recover from an affair?

[Emmaheather]

I never thought I would be asking this and am looking for thoughtful responses. If you're thoughts are no, never, no need to comment.

My husband had an affair..... for 5 years. I know he's quite damaged (boarding school at 7 years old, rejecting father, chaotic but loving mother - never had a hot meal cooked for him, 2x awful step mothers). We were together for 20 years. 2 fantastic children. He totally regrettes the fair but he has was selfish and a shit husband for many years. He moved out 2 years ago (I told him he had to go) and had been trying to make amends since.

I won't go into anymore detail of all the turmoil but just wondering if there is anyone out there whose relationship has recovered from a long term affair?

Surely it's not just the affair, it's the lies he must have told you for 5 years.

I know someone who had an affair with a work colleague, had a child. His dw threw him out. They later got back together however I know he's slept with other women since. It's just in his personality/ego whatever you want to call it. Either his dw doesn't know or has turned a blind eye.
I'm not sure whether she's recovered from it really but learned to live with it.
You can only go by what you are able to tolerate and whether you're strong enough mentally. A one off one night stand mistake is one thing but 5 years is totally different and takes a lot of planning by the person having the affair. You have tbh with yourself as to whether you can trust him ever again. A bad past isn't a hall pass to behave badly. I hope you make the right decision for you.

I desperately wanted to believe it and I tried but once I had therapy and realised I needed to heal me and do things for me and things that made me happy I realised there was no going back. I will always have love for my ex dh as the father of my child but I now just accept we are not meant to be. I don't hate him or hold on to bitterness he just doesn't make me happy

I found the betrayal insurmountable. Your DH is your other half, supposed to be the one in your corner, the person you are closest too… and then they go and do that to you. A few months was too much for me, how you could consider going back after he betrayed you for 5 years I honestly do not know.

Why do you want him back after two years? Was a rethorical question. After all that time it is time for you to heal and to forget about him in my humble opinion.
He made his poor choices, don't be stuck in them.

Personally I wouldn’t be able to forgive and forget. I know someone who had her husband come home after he had an affair, and guess what, a few years later he did it again, thankfully she did divorce him after that.

This.

I think it's perfectly possible to stay in the marriage, but it depends what marriage means to you, and what it was before the affair (so what kind of relationship you are trying to get back to).

If you were married for mostly practical reasons then yes, you could possibly get back to that partnership.

But if you were really in love, it's not really possible IMO to stay in the marriage and have the same kind of love and trust that you might have previously had.

Hi yes you can get past it and be even stronger if you both really want it. I had a affair moved out got my own place .I got married at 18 had 4 grown up children
I think I wanted my independence. The person was married but I thought they were splitting up. we were married 40 years but he never gave up on me.we still live apart but get on really well.i go to his he to mine .he tells me he loves me and will do anything for me.children are happy now too.with living longer people are married longer I said I was sorry for all the hurt I caused.so you do what makes you happy ignore the rest .life is too short.

It can be done OP with a lot of work
my sister is (was I guess) married to a sex addict (online and in person affairs…some short term and some long term)
she refers to him as a recovering addict.

Apart from the affairs he had been a very good husband…very attentive and caring in private and public. It’s just he had this double life. You don’t say why your husband was a shit husband - was it just the affairs or was he rubbish in general? If just the affair yes it was a long time but there are obviously reasons you are exploring getting back together. It doesn’t make you wrong for wanting to do so you are not disrespecting yourself.

my sister is very open and of course the first couple of years were very difficult for her but since then things have turned a corner. I am close with her I cried with her when it all happened but since then I have seen how things have changed. It required her husband taking full responsibility for what he did. No blaming her…that ended quickly.

I think seem is the pertinent word there.

She'll probably crack and stab him with a kitchen knife some day.

Either that or she'll end up ill herself, from internalising and controlling that level of dissonance.

Anyway she's probably blamed the friend and infantalised him as the victim/idiot.

That's the usual technique.

Women do it even on here all the time.

I did try with my Ex. He had several short affairs and wasn’t treating me well. But we had a disabled child and I had had to give up my career. So I was a bit stuck. EOW would have been really detrimental.

So my Ex was very sorry, blah blah. I kicked him out for a year. He came back but we didn’t share rooms for a while. Took it slowly. He was very respectful of me, supportive. Seemed truly sorry. We did counselling. He did his own counselling.

Then once I was more confident, more sure of our relationship. Once I thought we were on an even footing.

He had another affair again.

Yours sounds more like my Ex. 5 year affair? Wow, that’s a long time to be degrading and demanding your trust. He’s likely never going to respect you again.

The only couples I know that have ostensibly overcome an affair are ones where there was a distinct imbalance of power in the relationship to start with.

The forgiving party was either financially dependent or didn't have the emotional resiliance due to low self esteem and lack of confidence to end the relationship.

I'm afraid I call BS on those who say their marriage is stronger after an affair because they talked about what went wrong, did all the hard work about what caused the (usually) man to fall into the vagina of another woman (before speaking to his wife and letting her know he was so miserable within their marriage he felt this was his only recourse). It all smacks of if we say it enough we'll eventually believe it.

I think superficially it's quite easy to put on a front to the outside world, but behind closed doors life will always a bit sadder knowing that something has been broken and can never been truly fixed, just patched up enough to keep it stumbling along, living a half life.

Well I can help you there. You ask “ how he could do this to you and the boys ? “.

He wasn’t doing anything to you and the boys. He was having fun, avoiding the work of family life and having, as you say, a lovely relaxed time.

It wasn’t about you and the children , he wasn’t even thinking about you. you said it yourself, he’s selfish , he was only thinking about what he wanted.

There is only one reason that cheaters cheat - that’s their sense of entitlement. They want something ( the fun of an affair ) and they ALSO want a little woman at home running the show. They are cake eaters.

He didn’t think he was “ throwing it all away”. He planned to have both of you . And he did a very good job of keeping secrets if it lasted for five years before you found out. That’s Olympic Gold Medal level of deception.

This type of deception and entitlement is part of his character, his value system. It’s not going to change.If you take him back you need to know this.

The minute he feels entitled to lie, steal and cheat , he will do so. That’s who he is. If you can live with that - that’s up to you.

A fling possibly but a long term affair is a deceitful duplicitous commitment IMO. X

My friend stayed with her H after his affair (not sure how long it'd been going on but it wasn't a fling). To the outside world they look like the happiest, most loved up couple you'll ever see. But, they live in eachothers pockets. I think she's scared to let him out of her sight for fear of what he'll get up to. That's no way to live.

My sister was like this initially but with time she has truly relaxed. Her husband goes to work, has his own circle of friends. That said they do more together now, they had quite separate hobbies and social circles beforehand but I don’t think it’s to keep an eye on him as he does lots on his own.

OP just try to remember the affair doesn’t say anything about you but it does say something about him. However people can change and if you think he is capable of that perhaps enough time has passed for you to try again.

My Sister didn’t really post much in forums for advice but did read them
one thing she said which I try and apply in all sorts of ways when it comes to advice is ‘take what you need and leave the rest’
counselling was much more effective for her, I think she found the snapshot of her relationship that posting in forums gave was very difficult to then apply thought and reason to whereas a counsellor had the back story and detail

hope that makes sense op and best wishes x

Not a long term affair - but I have forgiven and reconciled with my husband after a sexual affair that lasted a few weeks . It was a few years ago . I found out around a year after it happened .

It was not easy , I won’t lie. I will never fully trust him. It hurts less now , I’ve kind of sealed it in a box I think but I have days still where something will trigger the thoughts and I’ll be back there and the pain is real. I look at him differently . We have been through a lot since - we had counselling and he worked really hard to regain my trust and reassure me . But I always looked at him as the one person who would never hurt me , the one who would always keep me safe and I could turn to when I was upset , but then he hurt me more than anyone ever has . Sometimes , rarely but sometimes , I’ll feel rage at him. I’ll look at him and I can’t believe he hurt me like that . I feel sad that when we married that was it for me , he was the only man I would ever kiss again , the only man I would have sex with and I thought it was the same for him but now I have to deal with the fact that it wasn’t for him , that during our marriage another woman has had that insanity with him . Even just writing this brings up the pain .

But , on the other side - I’m glad I stayed . Our relationship is better now than it ever has been and better than I ever thought it could be . Aside from the occasional intrusive thoughts I am 100% happy. We were going through a very rough time when it happened ( I understand the reasons that led him to do it but I don’t understand the fact that he could do it ) had it not happened I have no doubt that those issues we were having would have ended our marriage . We were heading to the end and we were like strangers . Therapy helped us to communicate more and we talked more and deeper than we ever had and we still do . I’m glad I didn’t throw us away .

it is possible but he has to really work and allow you time to deal with your feelings.

I wish you all the best x

@Y0URSELF perfect explanation. Hit the nail. Ouch.

My grandad had a long term affair. Not sure when it started but before I was born and I'm 30s now. He had his own children with my grandma and then just before I was born had a daughter with this other woman. It was all secretive, however everyone had their suspicions. My uncle was the only one that knew and him and the other woman would use my uncles uni halls to stay in etc. Uncle was scared of him. My grandma found out when I was about 13, and at this point my mum and her sisters knew as well. My grandma had suspected for years and knew this other woman but used to just play it down or ignore it. Eventually when I was in my late twenties ( grandad still with both) my grandma was so ill, she was essentially an alcoholic and a recluse but refused to leave him, essentially just ignored it. She died fairly young ( late sixties) and the affair was the main catalyst. Just before she died she had a breakdown and had to go into a care home and had almost completely given up. Over the years everyone had told her to leave him, and he maintained they ( him and ow) weren't together but they were. After my grandma died he moved in with other woman and she became huge part of all our lives as grandma was no longer around and in order to keep relationship with him, put up with her ( writing this sounds bizarre and odd but so many different nuances that led to this and it was so complicated it wasn't an easy thing ). So, yes , essentially you can stay with someone who's having an affair ( ongoing) but for my grandma it actively drove her into an early grave and she wasted her life. She just felt so dependent on him and was proud so didn't want to end the marriage. I wish she had, as she would have been happy. So please, think carefully about yourself. Put yourself first. ♥️

My husband cheated with a much younger colleague 5 years ago. It lasted 2 years and she broke it off. He didn't choose his wife and family, it feels like we were the back up plan. I deserve better than this. He's so apologetic and devastated now. He'd never have told me. I feel like my life is a lie. He didn't choose me then, so I don't choose him now. Unreasonable?

Can you face getting into bed with him every night and having sex with him?

Can you bear him seeing you naked?

If he annoys you or doesn't put the bins out because he forgot for example will you just smile or think what a feckless uncaring shit head he is? Will you lay awake at night wondering what you have done when you have to clean the loo?

Dunno. Does he completely agree he was wrong and want to make it up to you and the dc ? Does he mind you mentioning it?

Will you bring it up a lot and will he moan its all the past and you are ' spoiling ' ?

Imo you will have to heal all over again when he is there.

You don't get over it imo, you accept it, move on. Your dc will be watching anyway. Might be stressful for then, given their age, and managing to keep them out if it, in case you two decide its not working and separate yet again.

No. The trust is broken. You can never go back.

If the affair is revealed, typically 43% of relationships survive. If it’s uncovered, 20%. It’s more likely to continue if you have a good relationship pre-revelation and if you have kids.

Couples therapy is pretty much essential.