If your husband or partner cheated on you, did you stop loving him?

[Clotheswoe]

If your husband or partner has cheated on you, after you found out, did you lose your feelings for him?

I appreciate that sometimes people can work through these things.

But if it was unworkable, did you still have feelings for him, despite the fact you know he'd behaved terribly? Could you switch off the emotional ties on the basis that he'd cheated? Or did you find you couldn't?

Did you?
Maybe start with your story, so that it doesn’t look like you are conducting a research of some sort…

I stayed with him because we had little children and leaving would have been hugely difficult. I tried really hard to get past my shattered feelings, but I just couldn't. We ended up living like brother and sister for many years until I did leave him. Got divorced, I met and married my DH , twenty years have passed. But when I see my ex at family events, I still get angry feelings , even now. I can be civil , but that's about it. When someone shatters your feelings, it isn't easy to move past them.

Immediately. I kicked him out before he could end the sentence.

... My husband hasn't cheated, but he's been abusive, and yet I often feel emotionally attached. So I haven't automatically stopped loving him.

I was wondering if the same can happen when someone cheats.

I see what you mean - I've followed up my post to explain why I asked.

I am not sure it‘s the same with cheating.
With abuse it’s more of a Stockholm syndrome. You are not the only one emotionally attached to an abuser.
It is not really love though. Can be a complex web of feelings that is keeping you there. And it is hard to break the cycle.

Hard to say anything else without knowing more. But i hope you are safe and won’t wait until it’s too late to free yourself

Going through this now. I wish I could stop loving him then I would find it easier to end things. At the moment I still love him very much but am finding it really hard to get over.

Feeling you love your abuser is common.

Is it really love or is it a trauma bond?

Even if it is "love", if you're healthy, you'll realise it's pointless and damaging to yourself to love an abuser and they aren't worthy of it.

Also, it's not emotionally healthy to love someone who doesn't love you. And no matter what an abuser claims re moving you: a normal, decent, well adjusted person doesn't abuse someone they love (or anyone at all). They may even think they love someone, but if they abuse them then in practice, they don't. They are not well enough or well adjusted enough as a person not to abuse people they (think they) love.

You can fall out of "love" and you can fall in love with someone else (who's not abusive) if you want to, in time. It's just a matter of time spent together, chemical processes etc.

Keep in mind also that sex & intimacy caused those chemical processes - oxytocin etc.

There are loads of threads on here by people who have been abused or cheated on where the poster says they still love their partner. Many people can’t immediately switch off their emotional ties. That doesn’t mean you can’t end the relationship. It’s possible to feel emotionally tied to someone but know in your head that they/the relationship are bad for you and that you have to split up. The key point is to think with your head as well as your heart; indeed, sometimes you have to think entirely with your head because sometimes your heart cannot be trusted to look after you at all.

I should add that, if you think from me saying that abusers are poorly adjusted etc, that they can be fixed .... . They generally don't change, their characters and thinking, their desire for power & superiority in relationships, their entitlement, their selfishness, their lack of empathy, their enjoyment of making others feel bad or putting them on back foot, their lack of decency etc etc is more or less set by the time they're adults. They don't think they should change, they don't see themselves as the problem or if they do, they don't care.

They may produce poor me excuses and justifications, but those are exactly that - excuses; they don't intend to take responsibility or change.

I would read Lundy Bancroft, "why does he do that?" And Don Henessy "How he gets in her head".

You never get over it. You just don't. Whether you stay or whether you go. That type of betrayal is not something you get over, things never go back to "normal". You lose a piece of yourself and you don't get it back. You gain other things though.

Doing what works for you (and children if you have them) is key.

Initially I think I still loved him, but in the fall out of his cheating came all the other behaviours that cheating can't exist without - the lying, deflecting, minimising. Massive amount of contempt for me and a huge sense of entitlement about how things would work going forward. I very quickly started to hate him and gave up all attempts of reconciliation a few weeks in.

This is so true.

Feeling you love someone doesn't mean you have to stay, or should stay.

In other circumstances eg being dumped, you don't get to stay with someone you feel you love. You have to deal with the feelings, recover and move on .....and people do that, all the time.

Yes, it's harder when you have to do the leaving - because they are not dumping you (yet, be very aware abusers can do that easily too, depending on their opportunities) but it is essentially the same thing. It's is not healthy, fair, functional etc.; and you have to deal with your feelings, recover and move on - in spite of having feelings of "love" at that time.

*Keep in mind also that sex & intimacy caused those chemical processes - oxytocin etc.

Sorry, this should have said "causes".

Be very aware that if you're intimate with them, especially shagging but just general intimacy ..... Yotre getting tied by oxytocin.

I think abuse can be more complex than someone cheating - having had experience of both in different relationships. With abuse it often more nuanced, over a longer period of time. It’s the boiling frog syndrome - ie the idea that if you boil a frog slowly it won’t jump out and then it’s too late to jump out etc. With cheating there’s usually a moment of finding out which makes it easier to hate someone.

H has cheated twice, once in 2018 and last year - both were friendships with female colleagues, culminating in a sexual encounter. The affair last year was more serious as it went on longer, but essentially the same sort of thing.

My experience of this the second time feels the same but different. The first time was very traumatising, I had a ptsd of sorts but also some other things happened that sent me over the edge mentally that weren't related. We got through it and I thought were strong and we loved each other so much, I thought nothing could break that. If you had asked me on 3rd April last year, I'd have told you how in love with DH I am, how I adored him and he was a best friend, the best H and partner I could ask for. I regained and expanded my capacity to love him post first affair, I would even have said I was glad it happened as it changed him totally to a move loving, open partner.

He started last years affair/friendship in May, I started asking him if he was cheating in July (had an inkling in June), I found out definitely in December having spent 6 months going slowly mad. How do I feel now? Very different. My capacity to love (and obviously trust) feels reduced, like it'll never expand again. I feel like nothing is certain, my safe place that I thought we had built is gone and instead my future could now be anything. I could well end up living somewhere else in a different life, potentially with a different man, in a different marriage even. Do I love him? Yes he is my husband and father to my children, but no, it isn't the same, I'm not sure it'll ever recover. I will always think that my life could change in an instant so don't get too comfortable.

I also feel differently towards myself, I've become very critical of my body and lost a lot of confidence despite having lost 5st in the last year going from an 18/20 to a 12. I think how could I be so stupid to trust him again? Why did I not dig deeper to find evidence? How could I have been so bloody foolish? There is also shame...fool me once, shame on you fool me twice shame on me...I feel like part of me deserves and should have expected this as he did it before and I forgave him.

Right now I'm holding onto my life as hard as I can (I have reasons I cannot disclose here). But I'm not sure what I hope for or expect the future to hold. I'm just carrying on for now seeing how it plays out, in the knowledge that "everything will always be that little bit worse" and I will remain heartbroken for the rest of my days in a marriage that is forever tainted, if still workable.

No, no, no and fuck no @Franticbutterfly. You have absolutely NO SHAME in this. You were kind enough to offer the gift of a second chance. I know on MN everyone says they would LTB immediately and are applauded for it, but real life often isn’t like that. You gave him a second chance and he blew it. That is on HIM, it is nothing to do with you, at all. Not who you are, what you look like. Nothing. There is nothing you could have done differently to stop him doing this, because this is a deficiency in him. Some selfish, entitled bullshit which enables him to behave in ways that he knows, somewhere in him, are abhorrent.
if you haven’t already, have a look at the Surviving Infidelity website. Lots of useful advice on there from people who have been in your shoes. Sending positive thoughts your way (and a kick in the balls to the dickhead) xx

It’s anonymous - does it really matter?

This is trotted out time after time on Mumsnet and it’s so predictable.

• Partner number one, yes it made me go right off him, but I had young children, financially dependent etc etc. plus he was pretty abusive anyway. I did get away from him but it took me years.
• Partner number two, I really loved him, much more than number one. All the flirting and then the affairs really hurt at first, but I did toughen up and was ultimately relieved when we split some years later.

It sounds like you've had a really awful time, @Franticbutterfly . Sending you strength 💐

And to you too, @Solost24 💐

Thank you everyone for sharing. Life is really complicated. When I was young, I would have thought that if someone cheats, or treats you badly in another way, (e.g. is violent), the feelings stop. But life doesn't seem as simple as that.

What you said @Dery is very helpful, about thinking with the head, not the heart.