This is very long so please ignore if you wish. I think there is so much in OP’s question which gets to the absolute conundrum of trying to decide what to do after infidelity that I wanted to answer fully.
It highlights how time alone never heals the pain, without serious commitment to truth and honesty and radical change.
I’ve addressed each point separately.
Can a marriage recover after a long affair and years of limbo? 90 replies
ZanyRoseNewt · Yesterday 16:47
I’m 52, married 24 years with four children (16–23). After discovering my husband’s six-year affair with a work colleague three years ago, revealed through a chance discovery, we’ve been in repair phase trying to find a way to build a new chapter together.
Very common age group where affairs happen, child raising years are tough and especially if one parent takes on the majority of the childcare, disconnect can happen and albeit gradually and unconsciously, separate lives start to be led. However, this is no excuse for infidelity. Remember you discovered this, he didn’t decide to tell you himself. Everything that has happened since, without him telling you the truth, or begging your forgiveness, has been him minimising it and avoiding the full story in what has now become a very long damage limitation attempt.
A lack of emotional connection (not enough sex for him and not feeling that he makes me happy) was the driver for the affair.
Absolutely no it wasn’t. Not one bit.
The driver for the affair is him. His avoidance of the issue and decision not to address it within the marriage was his own personal choice. His decision to ‘solve’ his ‘issues’ by pursuing another woman was his personal choice. He had other morally right choices which he disregarded. Nobody forced him to have sex with another woman. He chose to. You are not responsible for his choices, he is. He’s an adult, a grown man!
The actual drivers for the affair were:
his avoidance of discussing his sexual needs/ perceived relational problems with you
his ability to compartmentalise and lie
his preference of easy dishonesty to uncomfortable truth
his ability to justify his bad behaviour by creating a narrative about you and external factors
his consequent attribution of blame to you and external factors rather than looking within at his own clearly deep personal flaws
His alleged ‘lack of sex’ did not force him inevitably into an affair beyond his control, his ‘not feeling that he makes you happy’ did not force him inevitably into an affair beyond his control. it was always within his control.
He did not discuss any of this with you or give you an opportunity to say what you felt about this and work on it together. He kept you in the dark, unilaterally removed your voice and agency so that he could take an easy, more exciting panacea for his alleged issues. Many people in affairs create or greatly magnify issues where there are none to justify their actions, frantically groping around for something, anything at all, that doesn’t make it their fault. He avoided discussing it with you because he wanted sex with another woman. If he’d discussed it with you and you were willing to work on any of it he’d have had no excuse, so he chose not to.
None of that is your fault.
He isn’t just the driver for his affair, he’s the fully liveried chief chauffeur, ready to go wherever his entitlement and ego took him.
He said he had wanted to end the affair after a couple of years but felt unable to face the fallout, especially the effect on our children.
Utter rubbish. People do what they want to do and he wanted to do this. He could have ended the affair as secretly as he maintained it, no fallout whatsoever.
He’s trying to minimise it by effectively saying the last four years don’t really count. Every minute was his choice, every minute counted. Even if they didn’t (they so, so do) the first two years apparently did and that’s more than enough. Way more than enough. He wasn’t ‘unable’ he was unwilling.
The revelation floored me; I had no idea he was leading a double life and the scale of the deception has been hard to process. The level of deceit and exceptional skills for lying was something I’d never have believed would exist in him. I trusted him implicitly.
Of course it floored you, you were being deceived. The man he portrayed to you and the man he was being in reality are two different people wrapped up in the same man. He chose to only let you see the positive side of himself. You had no idea.
Of course you trusted him, you’re his wife. It’s absolutely not your fault that you didn’t see it, he lied to you and hid it all.
I also discovered that many of his family members and close friends knew about the affair months before I did.
Unforgivable of them. They absolutely should have told you. Nobody should know things about your marriage that you don’t. I don’t side with the ‘none of their business’ ‘let well alone’ crowd. Him letting them know or them finding out made it their business whether they liked it or not, (again: his bad) and it was always, always your business to know this.
I’ve tried to contain the fallout, telling only a couple of trusted friends and shielding our children but it’s left me feeling inauthentic, like I’m observing a life I never chose (and the worry that at some point the truth will be out and everyone will then know, which could be worse).
Bless you, he’s lucky to have you. Know that shielding and protecting others from this was and is his job: it was always his role to shield and protect his loved ones from any kind of harm, even before his decision to be unfaithful.
If the truth comes out it’s all his fault, not yours. Shielding the children I understand but if it does come out and they get hurt, remember it’s on him, not you.
You recognise that you did not choose this life and you are right. That is why you feel like an observer. This shows that logically therefore, you must also see that somebody else did exactly that: they did choose it. This is why affairs are only ever the fault of the betrayer, never the betrayed. He made a unilateral, secret choice when there were other more ethical options. He didn’t have to cheat, he chose to.
His choices excluded you and gave you no chance to object or refuse to participate. You were secretly manipulated into unwittingly participating in the fake reality he was presenting. He knew that if it ever came out, that this is how it would change your life, yet he still chose it.
Until now I have suppressed questions and truth seeking, carrying on stoically, while internally trying to process and eventually make peace with what’s happened.
This is why you feel you are living inauthentically, because you are. Without the truth, there are only lies. You are existing (not living, this is not really living) in a ‘pretend normal’ state, whilst the humungous elephant in the room gets ever bigger and more obstructive. Suppressing questions is not healthy and guarantees that you will never get any further than you are now: stuck in pretend normal with huge questions marks over the past, future and even your present. Who the hell knows what he’s up to even now, given that he’s never faced any of it and prefers avoidance and lies to tackling his problems and the truth? You have every right to ask what your reality really was and is. To show any kind of remorse he should actively want to be truthful and in doing so beg your forgiveness. He needs to voluntarily give you any information you need to process this and make decisions about your future. He’s controlled the information long enough and kept you in the one-down position. Time to level up.
Our marriage has always been respectful, considerate and steady, with typical ups and downs but nothing major.
For six years he has had no respect, been completely unsteady and inconsiderate. There was no marriage for six years, your ‘ups and downs’ probably, unbeknownst to you, hinged on how well his affair was going during that time. This is more than major, it’s a very real potential death blow without the truth and his full remorse, and even with that, it’s very probably too late if he continues to lie and withhold the truth.
But now I’m reflecting on our relationship and what may have been missing,
His honesty was missing, I’ll save you the reflecting. Reflect on his behaviour, not yours.
Whatever he and you did or didn’t do in the marriage isn’t about the affair, the affair is a totally separate issue. Looking at what part you both played in the marriage comes after he tells the truth and crucially after he stops blaming you. Until he takes responsibility, full responsibility, I wouldn’t discuss the marriage issues, you’ll just give him more stuff to try to blame you and excuse himself with.
seeing everything in perspective, analysing how our relationship was stacked up and triggering the need for this affair.
It didn’t trigger the need for his affair, not at all. You really, really need to see the lack of link between his choice to have an affair and any marriage issues you both had. He needs to analyse his choices and why he was ok with making them.
Any marriage issues should only ever trigger a need for a two-way honest, open discussion with strategies agreed on to work on the marriage. That is all it should trigger.
His flaws triggered his choice to have an affair. If you are forced to do a bad thing where there were no other courses of action available, to you, you look without at the circumstances that caused it. If you make a bad choice where you could have chosen differently, you look within at what personal shortcomings you have which caused you to choose to do such a thing.
Now, I feel stuck, unsure how to shape our future. We love each other, but something has always felt absent, as if we never reached that deeper level that makes a relationship truly exceptional. But relationships are not like Disney movies in reality – they need work, I appreciate this relationship could be fantastic if we worked hard.
Without the truth, without his remorse and without him taking full responsibility, you are absolutely stuck and will never move any further forward in any kind of work on the marriage. The old marriage is dead.
Before you even think about rolling your sleeves up to help him do any of the hard work, however, he has a great deal of hard work to do himself.
The elusive thing that has always felt absent is very likely honesty and the truth. Dishonesty is also a desire to not be truly known by others. A desire to hide who we really are and what really motivates us. We fear rejection if we show others who we really are. True intimacy in a relationship is where we feel wholly safe to be honest, authentic and show our true selves, warts and all, to our partner. If we hide things or try to be somebody we’re not, nobody can ever love us for who we are. We never give them the chance to. We will never feel like we are enough, (because we are secretly ashamed of our hidden shortcomings) and that gap in authentic reality creates and maintains a disconnect. Real intimacy was absent, because his true self was hidden.
But how is this realistically done? If that isn’t possible, should we just accept this is the best level we can achieve? People have much harder, difficult and painful lives than what we currently have.
It is done through honesty and very hard work, firstly on his part. The only work you do is for yourself, on your own healing and self esteem, separate from whatever he needs to do. You can’t and shouldn’t do it for him. Accepting this level as all there is, is to embrace inauthenticity, which should never be acceptable. Until he answers all your questions without defensiveness, commits to radical honesty in all things and gets help with his own personal issues, until he accepts full responsibility for his choices to be unfaithful, you haven’t even started repair yet. Nowhere near: repair is currently being actively avoided and kept at bay, by never asking questions, suppressing the truth and constructing a ‘fake normal’ life masquerading as a marriage.
This is not a marriage, it’s two people co-existing with no real intimacy, who know that there is a huge hole in their relationship where the truth belongs. The old marriage is gone forever. You can either accept that the old marriage is dead, get honesty and truth back between the two of you and see where that leads you, or accept that the old marriage is dead and decide to separate and start new lives afresh.
People very probably have harder and more difficult lives on a practical level than you do, but the experience of intimate betrayal is said to be second only to the death of a child, so no, not that many people probably do have a more difficult life than you currently. You vastly underestimate the trauma of this. Not your wealth nor material possessions, nor even your loving family and friends, can take this pain away. Only he can make a start to fix this, if indeed anyone can, or you can by leaving or asking him to leave.
They are all great blessings to be grateful for, of course, but your life is currently only a gilded ivory tower from the outside, devoid of the truth, or peace and happiness within.
We should feel grateful for the chance to repair and appreciate the family unit we have?
“We”??
He should feel grateful that you are allowing the chance for him to try to repair. You owe no gratitude to him just because he has now chosen to love and stay with you, he should have chosen that every day of his married life and not strayed elsewhere. He deserves no gratitude from you, for returning to where he promised to be all along. There are no medals for doing what he should have done as a bare minimum every day anyway.
He’s been dealing with significant work-related stress and anxiety for several years, so we haven’t yet started regular therapy as he doesn’t feel he’s well enough to tackle this right now.
Excuses, excuses…. he’s done another number on you, OP. He’s more coward than ill, more perpetrator than victim.
My tiny violin just broke, sorry. His stress and anxiety are of his own making, now he’s using work as an excuse to avoid the truth. He’s doing what he always did, excuse, avoid, deny, sidestep his problems, look outside of himself for the cause of his problems, never within. And use it all to keep you from asking uncomfortable questions.
Keeping the job and providing for the family is his priority.
You should be his priority now. You. You and his family should always have been his priority.
It always was his responsibility to remain in gainful employment and provide towards his family. If he wants to keep his family he desperately needs to get to therapy. I recommend individual therapy initially, he’s nowhere near ready for couples counselling. Please don’t do that yet, he needs to take responsibility for this himself first. He needs as top priority to get honest with you and (for the love of Pete!) finally get honest with himself about who he currently is.
For now, we’re coasting, focused on keeping the family running smoothly, which we do well.
You’ve very probably always pulled your weight and always done it well, and of course he does actually do this well. He’s done that for years whilst also living a double life, so doing it now without the stress of his then ongoing affair (if it is indeed over with no contact) must be a piece of cake to him in comparison.
I am absolutely certain that any contact with the affair partner ended 2 years ago
Make absolutely sure of that, you’d probably be most unpleasantly surprised at when it actually did. They all lie about this, affairs always end messily and clean breaks are rare. You need the truth about where and how it ended right now.
and I’m sure that he would never embark on another affair whilst married to me.
Unless he owns this one completely and tells the truth, there is absolutely no reason why he wouldn’t have another affair. Without honesty he’s not a safe bet at all. He can’t even tell the truth about this one so hiding stuff will be even easier next time. Until he starts telling you the truth, don’t believe a word he says, he’s currently a proven liar with no desire to come clean. Some people only cheat once, but only if they got honest and were prepared to face themselves, face the truth and learn from it all.
Eighteen months after discovering the affair, I had a serious medical event and was lucky to survive. It sharpened my sense that I need to honour my life and purpose. With my parents gone and no family beyond my husband’s, the weight of this journey feels huge.
I am so sorry about this, life is short and precious, so look honestly at yours and decide what you want. If he can’t provide it, don’t waste another second of your very precious time with him.
I’m financially independent and believe I have the strength to build a new life if needed. But I feel lost, unable to move forward with clarity or decide which direction to take. Living in this limbo is exhausting, ground hog day never ending.
How do I find the lucidity and confidence to shape the second half of my life? Is counselling (which type?) the answer using it to honestly confront what needs work for couples therapy to brutally expose the areas to work on or appreciate that we should respectfully decouple or fashion a different type of marriage?
I think you already know what you need. You use words like ‘clarity’ and ‘lucidity’ which tells me you know what the opposite of those words is: obscurity and darkness. In other words secrets, lies, dishonesty, hidden facts, fake reality, uncertainty ….
You have no truth in your life, that’s why it’s an eternal Groundhog Day. You live in a perpetual fog. You can’t see the past clearly, it’s full of lies, the present is clouded by it and the future is uncertain because you don’t know what the past and even the present are. Nobody can plan for the future in this position. We cannot find authenticity, inner peace and hope for our future without clarity and truth. You are going nowhere, with or without him, without the truth. The only thing that needs brutally exposing is exactly what he did where, when , with whom, for how long (the real number) and how he ended it. Why he found himself able to make such awful choices and why he decided to stop, why he wants his marriage exclusively now. Blaming you or the marriage is vetoed, he has only himself to blame and until he understands that you’ll both get nowhere.
For those who’ve been through something similar, I’d really value learning what skills, frameworks, philosophies, or (radical) constructive approaches that have helped you.
What helped me was getting the truth from a totally remorseful husband who hated himself and who he had become with every fibre of his being and would do absolutely anything to try to put things right again. And did.
Not accepting excuses and bullshit after what he’d done to me.
Putting firm boundaries in place and always having ducks in a row, taking legal advice and having plan B ready to go. Deciding that no matter how painful, I would love myself and leave if he couldn’t love me and stay faithful. And he knows that.
I don’t want to walk away based solely on the magnitude of the infidelity without first exploring whether the relationship can be meaningfully rebuilt and reshaped.
Totally understandable but the onus is on him and getting to the truth if you really want to start to try. Even after all this time you have got nowhere because without honesty you never will get anywhere else.
It’s possible, but not at present, he’s getting away with murder by rug sweeping and crying stress and anxiety. He’s had no consequences or boundaries or ultimatums and needs to realise that choices have consequences. He has no motivation to get brace and face the truth and change. None. As he is currently I’d cut my losses and leave or ask him to without a major, major change from him.
This is enormous, but ultimately if you do want to try again, it’s your choice.
Thank you for reading.
You’re welcome, this is terrible stuff (I know it is) and I can’t stand seeing someone who sounds like a nice, decent woman trying to hang on to her marriage and keep her family intact, choosing to be held hostage by a coward and his total inability and unwillingness to face and own his shit choices and serious character flaws.
Shame on him OP, time for him to get serious about taking responsibility, time for him to find some courage and integrity and try to fix what he broke or get out.
No point waiting any longer, you’ve waited far too long already for the truth.