Husband online sex affairs and addiction

[Ab85]

Hi, I’m 38 female and husband is 44. Over the past month I’ve discovered that for the past three years he has been secretly:

• paying for cam girls online (hundreds of pounds)
• sexting other women on hidden private messaging apps
• engaging in sexual online activity and sending videos and pictures of himself in forums and apps
• joining dozens of dating sites including one for married people looking to cheat and actively reaching out to women.

I’m devastated as in our relationship all of these things are considered cheating. We have a little one as well and I thought we were really happy. I know many have posted about this but one thing I can’t find is, if your husband agrees to have therapy and apologises, would you give a second chance? I know asking for opinions of others is perhaps not the correct thing to do, but really struggling and thought it might help to hear the experience of others. I do have counselling starting this week too. Thank you so much in advance.

I would not. I don't have a lot of forgiveness in my soul and certainly not for a man who should have been choosing every day to love me, to care for my heart, to respect me. The one person in all the world who has made deep promises to me and this is what he chooses to do... and lies about it! No, I would not forgive him, I would be devastated and I would divorce him and spend the rest of my life trying to have as little to do with his lying, cheating, scummy arse as possible.

I can't decide for you though - whatever you choose I am sorry this guy was such an arse. You didn't deserve to be hurt like this.
💐

Yeah, same as @SpringleDingle
I wouldn't forgive this betrayal either

No one can answer that for you op. Sounds like he has some deep seated issues to take it to the level he has.

He needs to be completely open and honest with you, this will enable you to make an informed decision as to what YOU want.

You can ask him to leave and live separately whilst he works on his issues, 6/12 months of living separately is nothing in the grand scheme of things and will give you the breathing space to decide what's best for you.

No.
He doesn't love you. If he did, he wouldn't have gone out of his way to put so much effort into desperately trying to fuck other people. He's a grown man, he knew that if he got caught it would destroy you and your family unit but he did it anyway. Let's not ignore the potential for putting your health at risk with STDs.
His desire for sex was greater than you or your child.
So definitely not. I wouldn't try to keep a man that cared that little for me.

No, I couldn’t. I’d never ever have the same opinion of him ever again (to put it politely ), and I certainly wouldn’t trust him.

No one can decide in your place whether you can forgive him or not. Whatever you end up deciding is okay, as long as it's good for you.
If you want to leave him, then that would be completely justified. If you want to see if this is salvageable, there are also plenty of reasons why that's a valid choice given your young family.

My advice would be to not force yourself to make the decision to stay and work on things right now, as hard as it must be to be living in limbo.
You won't know if you can work through it for a very long time. The work that it takes in a relationship to get past something like this is massive and takes years.

Give yourself the time and space to say: I don't know if I can ever move past this. I'm taking this one day at a time. If at any given point you realise that you'll never be able to forgive and trust him, you can still walk away.

This is a deep seated personality trait and for any therapy to be effective will take a long time, a long long time.

A relationship is all about trust - you do trust his apology ? Do you trust he would actively engage in therapy for as long as it takes to change ? Do you trust him to try his best for you and your child ?

I wouldn't.

I wouldn't want to be with someone who required therapy in this way.

No, I wouldn't even want to. To say I'd be put off him is an understatement. I'd think he was desperate and gross.

Did he confess in the first place, show you all the evidence, say he needs help and plead for you to give him time to show how much he loves you? Then book himself therapy in order to get the help he needs?

Or did you discover this, whereupon he suddenly decided that he loves you really and will never do it again?

My answer is VERY different, depending on circumstance.

He needs to go. He's shown his true colours. There is no coming back from this. There is no regaining trust when there has been multiple betrayals.
You will never truly trust him again regardless of counselling.
Go to counselling to work on yourself but tell him to F off. People who love you don't do these things. He's only sorry because he got caught.

Some people might view online stuff as less than cheating. However, he's not just virtual. Online dating is specifically for meeting up. It's unlikely that he would have had his visual urges catered for via that method, but he would of taken it into reality. So has fully cheated too.
What job does he do? If it involves travel away and that doesn't change, it's pretty pointless.
Whatever happens, don't take it personally that you can't fullfil his needs. No woman could. It's going to be tougher than having an affair to try and resolve. You're basically hoping for a personality change and a complete attitude towards sex and women turnaround.
There has to be major consequences to inspire a change of that magnitude. So you would have to split first. No point in his life not changing with therapy on the side, that's not going to work. He needs to move out and work on himself. He needs to understand what loss of family life feels like. He actually needs to feel that what he loses is of higher value and reward against what he's been doing.
You need to find out if he has the capacity to value his family as higher, because if he doesn't then he will not have incentive to change.
Simply, not something you can change while living under the same roof.

I wouldn’t bother , really not worth it for me, that’s just cheating a thousand times

Not a hope in hell I'd ever be able to forgive that.

One of these is bad enough- all together, absolutely no way -

It really sounds as if he is who he is. It's about dopamine and ego, not being able to cope with real life. Being selfish and disrespectful. You won't change him.

The question is can you live with it?

To err is human, to forgive is divine. Give him one chance, but be very clear one chance only.

Seriously?

To err is to make a mistake. I don't think the catalogue of errors that the OP describes could be construed as a mistake. That is a choice.

He doesn't appear to love you and has been a serial cheater for years.
I wouldn't hold out much hope for him to change and you are probably better off without him.
It awful for you to be betrayed like this.

Some men are just lead by their knobs. They honestly think about sex and women all of the time. They get a hit off the chase, the chat, the wanking, sharing and receiving videos/pics. It feeds their ego and provides a nice distraction to the mundanity of daily life with a wife and kids.

These men never ever change. They're the sad letches you see at 60 still liking posts on social media of scantily clad teenagers. Mostly they're pretty good at hiding it and only when caught do they start pleading for forgiveness and promises to change.

This is who he is. His knob and sexual desires are his master. He will not change. Nice family guy on the surface but ultimately absolutely at the mercy of his libido and desire for sexual pleasure. You will never be enough for him.

I found out my dh was on affair websites and had engaged with other women, even discussing meeting in hotels etc.

That was 10 years ago and I’ve never got over it. A bit of me died when it happened, I was pregnant too and il never forget how he made me feel when I was about to have our baby - ruining what should have been a special time when he should’ve been taking care of me.

If I could go back in time I’d have left him but I was very vulnerable as we weren’t married and I wasn’t working at the time.

He’s always maintained nothing happened (of course) and it was just akin to looking at porn.
The resentment has built up over the years, amongst other things he’s done. I very much have an attitude now of all men are shit and it’s maybe better the devil you know but it makes me sad to feel this way. I sometimes feel like I really hate him.

In some cases I would forgive, I don't believe that 'once a cheater always a cheater' I don't believe that is true at all. But this is different. This is a pattern of almost obsessive/addicted behaviour which I don't think would change. I'd be out.

it's not an addiction. that is a common excuse used by men caught with their pants down

he is a lying cheating twat. get rid asap

"if your husband agrees to have therapy and apologises, would you give a second chance?"

In short, no.

He's only apologising and agreeing to therapy because he's been caught.

As a side note, why the fuck does every single person have to have therapy these days just for acting like a dick?! Therapists must be rubbing their hands together every time another "sex addict" turns up.

Has he even apologised? Does he want therapy? Does he even care or regret his actions.