Has anyone successfully recovered from infidelity with couple’s therapy?

[TreadingTrepidatious]

Infidelity was discovered within my marriage last night, and we have an appointment with a marriage counselor on the 24th (which feels like forever away!). Just wondering if it’s helped anyone to get their marriage back to a good place, and if you’d be willing to talk about the process. Thanks in advance

Okay, this one made me laugh aloud. Thanks for that 🤣

Something isn't right here, apart from the obvious.

Yes, I do! DH hasn’t been holding back with regards to expressing his desire, and he’s been talking with me so much more. I’m so pleased and thankful and proud of and in love with him 🥰

If you’re committed to making things right and recognise how devastated your DH was, why didn’t you do one of the easiest possible things post discovery and block your affair partner? How is he still able to contact you?

I actually cannot stop reading this thread, it's like an alien trying to pass as human and using MN to test out emotions and how to react....

But not so I love that you didn’t cheat… or keep your marriage vows.

It makes no sense!

You also won’t holiday in a place you don’t “fancy”, although he probably wants to go alone, enjoy having the DC alone, so he knows he can do it.

Honestly OP, be prepared when he returns.

You beat me to it, almost! I think this must be some kind of runaway sentient AI!

I genuinely don’t feel bothered at all by the thought of DH having sex with someone else as long as my needs are met,

Is that what love is for you - the mutual fulfilment of needs? As if a relationship is a list of tick-boxes, and as long as they're all ticked, everything is hunky dory? Follow the flowchart and you can't go wrong?

I'm not against the idea of an open marriage - more comfortable with it than most of MN - but this is on a totally different level. A cold and lonely one, it sounds like.

Me too! I was convinced Op was male because the flowchart is such a tone-deaf male action, but this paragraph:
“DH hasn’t been holding back with regards to expressing his desire, and he’s been talking with me so much more. I’m so pleased and thankful and proud of and in love with him 🥰” is just so gushing and girly that I’m doubting myself again.

I'm wondering if it's someone who knows what a strong reaction infidelity gets on here and is enjoying messing with people over it. The story might even be true, it's possible, but whatever the purpose in sharing it here, it isn't to gain marriage counselling advice. OP is adamant that they're staying together and madly in love, so what advice on marriage rebuilding could he/she be looking for?

There have been holidays that I’ve wanted to go on that DH did not. So I took the children on my own.The “flowchart” I proposed is similar to the thought process I had when deciding to do that. (No, I did not include “force your spouse to go on holiday with you” as an option. That to me seems like being rigid and inflexible… and actually kind of abusive.)

He’s a big boy; he can make his own decisions, and he can certainly handle caring for the children for a few days with the help of multiple family members. He’s not torn up about this and “needing support” like you’re making him out to be. I’m sure he will be pleased to come home to a clean house, anyway.

NGL, I do feel a bit validated that DH is feeling a percentage of the stress that I have felt when minding the children in that place the last several times we went. But of course, why would a man listen to his silly wife about the nature of child minding when on holiday? What does she know about it?

Since I had sent AP nudes and we have some professional overlap, I didn’t block him in case, for whatever reason, he decided he was going to try to blackmail me. It doesn’t seem like he would be the type, but if he was, I would want to know and get ahead of that.

I did let DH know that AP messaged me again. He commended me for not responding.

JFC

For someone who claims they want to save their marriage you sure seem to have spent a long time pondering why people other than you are to blame for your affair. Your spouse for not 'meeting your needs', your affair partner for coming on to you, and lastly, yourself.

Oh, and for someone who wants to save your marriage you are still chatting away to your affair partner, but only for the selfless and altruistic reason of protecting future victims like yourself, by trying to dissuade him from having future affairs. So noble of you OP. Have you told your spouse that you two are still chatting? Or is this another deceit?.

You have to be trolling.

We do engage in a lot of power play in our relationship, though usually I take on a more submissive role. He rarely denies me sex, with the exception of the times he is sick, busy, exhausted, about to leave for work, etc. You know, reasonable reasons. We also have sex pretty much whenever he wants, as, let’s just say… it is not difficult at all to get me in the mood. 🙈

But there were things going on that made me feel like he wasn’t super excited to have sex with me, the way that he used to be when we first started dating, and I really missed that. I did express it a few times, and he made marginal improvements until he found out about the affair. I suppose he didn’t explain the whole not-wanting-to-seem-in-control-and-not-desperate thing then because it would have ruined the effect, and he didn’t get how important it was to me.

Within six weeks sending nude photos? You’re really stupid!

I’ll chew on that. I can’t think of much right now, other than perhaps that I tie too much of my value to being found desirable by men. My husband said to me that I am an “accomplished seductress” and I was surprised by how much pride I felt.

I just can’t help but think if I’m resolved to either trying to communicate my needs to DH in order to get them met or having to go without them (and of course, time will tell how well I can do that) then what else is there?

When I‘ve struggled with other temptations, usually putting a plan in place and additional preventative measures to assist if my willpower is weakened does the trick. That generally requires awareness of the temptations, though. Before the affair, I believed I was immune to the temptation of cheating because I thought “I would never do that,” and that I had successfully recognized when I was developing feelings before and stopped interacting with the objects of those developing feelings… This affair has put my guard back up for that sort of thing. I am more vulnerable than I thought,

My husband said to me that I am an “accomplished seductress” and I was surprised by how much pride I felt.

Mmm. Turning men on. It's very difficult, you know. A fine and exquisite art.

I did. He doesn’t know either

And why is it that you would “not touch a married person with a barge pole?” Is that because you would be disgusted with them for even being open to cheating, or because enabling their cheating and the betrayal of their partner is wrong and you feel a moral obligation not to do that? (Both, perhaps?)

I did not say that APs have an obligation to prevent cheating, necessarily. They are not in charge of any other adults but themselves. They have a moral obligation to not enable cheating, and if every potential AP refused to knowingly enable cheaters, a lot of infidelity would be effectively prevented. They are complicit in the affairs of people they know are taken.

Again, I’m not blaming DH for my actions. I am not shifting blame or responsibility off of myself. I am, however, putting additional blame on AP for his part in all of this.

DH says I was not while the affair was going on, and I believe him, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I think I am now, but I should probably check in with DH to make sure he feels that way.

>Perhaps invest some time in becoming that person for your spouse.

I like that idea! Thank you

I mean, if you’re in a relationship with someone who doesn’t tick all your boxes, with whom you’re not exchanging mutual/complementary value, and you’re not meeting each other’s needs… I’m gonna hand you an LTB, honestly, because you can probably do better. I know it sounds a bit clinical if you don’t put in words about the warm, flowery, heart covered, fairy dust sprinkled feelings of love! but objectively… that’s what relationships should be.

And yeah, if you follow the flow chart, you won’t cheat on your partner. Because cheating isn’t on the flow chart!

DH and I have both been APs in the past, if I’m being honest, and I used to believe that none of the responsibility or immorality fell on me, because I was not the cheating person. But I’ve engaged in debates with other people on the subject (long before the affair) and they changed my mind about it. So it is something I like to talk about, when the subject arises.

As I said, I haven’t spoken to AP in over 4 weeks. The day DH found out, I texted him once to say we couldn’t talk anymore. Three days of radio silence after that, he messaged me to say “I hate that we can’t talk anymore,” and the lecturing I gave him was with DH’s explicit permission to respond… DH actually said it would be okay to respond to his most recent message last week, a single “hey,” but I decided that not responding would say what I wanted to say best— that this is over; I am not interested, so please stop messaging me.

Well, there’s “turning them on” and then there’s getting them to be enamoured or obsessed with you. It’s such a thrill to do that

But I’m not asking about that. I’m asking about your understanding of your spouse’s needs. You don’t seem to have any! Everything is focused on your own egocentric needs and experiences. I strongly suspect you’re autistic which would explain the responses you’ve given, your tunnel vision, your strong need to be right, your lack of empathy towards your spouse and your inflexibility.

I don’t care about your reasons for cheating (isn’t it always “my needs weren’t met, poor me!”) or your reasons for not accompanying your family on holiday (you sound selfish and self-righteous). I didn’t ask you about those. You assume everyone wants to know about your experiences, your rationale, because that’s what matters first and foremost to you. They don’t.

You asked if it was possible to save a marriage after cheating. What many people have been trying to tell you is that yes, it can be possible but it takes putting your own needs on the back burner, making sacrifices, prioritising your partner, a huge amount of empathy…..none of which you seem capable of.

Rather than demonstrating how you intend to do these things when people have explained this clearly to you, all you’ve done is engaged in defensive arguments about the semantics of love or made pointless analogies which minimise your guilt, and even a flowchart, endlessly talking about your needs and your experience. I asked you what about a flowchart for your spouse and even then you replied with a new imaginary flowchart centred around your desire not to go on this holiday. Your experience. Your needs. Again. You’ve barely mentioned your husband or what he is going through, what he feels or wants or given any indication of empathy at all. You are almost clinical about the whole thing.

You’ve had an opportunity to show your partner how you can put your needs to the back on go on this little holiday they wanted with the kids, but instead you chose to decline and offered them options where they could go alone, with others or somewhere YOU liked. There simply wasn’t an option of you doing what they wanted. You even gloated how right you were that they were indeed having a stressful time, just as you said! Well done you.

I’m sorry but I don’t believe your spouse should enter into therapy with you. I think you’ll make it all about you and pay lip service only to hearing their narrative. I don’t think you’re capable of what is needed. You clearly have one lens and it is firmly centred on yourself, as every one of your posts has shown.

ew. ok I said I couldn't stop reading but I think I'm done. You're either rank or crazy or both.