Successful reconciliation stories after cheating

[Strawberrina]

Hi Mumsnetters,

My husband had an affair with a younger work colleague in 2024. We reconciled and are working through things and fixing our marriage. I have read many stories here on Mumsnet of married couples reconciling after one of them had an affair, but then eventually deciding to separate for various reasons. Please share with me successful reconciliation stories.

She’ll still be one point of this triangle OP, whether you are aware of it or not. He won’t necessarily tell you if he still has feelings for her. In fact, he very likely wouldn’t.

Emotions, usually quite strong ones, come with affairs. It’s extremely naive of you (and some other posters on this thread) to say she should mean “nothing” to him now. It’s not that simple and the feelings will linger for a while, sometimes a long while, especially if this person is denied to them.

No cheating partner will willingly admit they still have feelings for their AP, especially if they are trying to keep the primary relationship together. Feelings don’t just disappear though.

I see. Well at least he’s being honest. Although that may be “prep work” for leaving you for her if she does move back.

While he still has feelings, he’s always going to be a flight risk.

And loving an affair partner does not always mean they will leave. Leaving is really, really hard for many reasons - financial, family, friends etc.

‘Declaring feelings’ when you’ve chosen to stay with your wife, isn’t about being honest. It’s about holding onto your sense of ego, he believes he’s a good person, who got caught up in a terrible situation, where he had to make some self sacrificing decisions to stay with his family rather than be with his soulmate, his true love. It enables him to maintain his star crossed lovers narrative and that is very problematic for reconciliation as it is still ALL ABOUT HIM. This is cognitive dissonance in action.

He gets to play the sad sausage caught between his family commitments and the love of his life while continuing to cause pain to his wife.

There is ZERO remorse in this man.

Sending hugs. Then comes the worse if we complain, rather than move on quietly, the bitter label comes.

I thought about it and decided I’d rather be perceived as bitter than actually become bitter.

This! I tried to forgive but I never forgot and once the trust is broken it’s very hard to move forward. Four years of trying to reconcile and the resentment just got worse - by the time I left I actually hated the man I married.. sadly I realised the way I’d been treated was absolutely disgusting. I’m now four years on - life is far better and I still can’t stand the sight of him. I wish you well l, I really do. But from personal experience it’s very hard to ever recover.

What does this man have, or do, that would make you sacrifice yourself in this way?

He is making an utter fool of you and you are accepting it. Why?

Do you love yourself, at all?

Why don’t you think you deserve better than this?

It's a complicated situation to say the least! It is true that I cannot control what other people do, I can only control my own actions. He knows very well that if he cheats on me again, that would be the end. No more chances.

When I found out about my husband’s affair, I confronted him and asked him to leave. After a few minutes I hesitated and seemed to back off, I was floundering, I couldn’t think straight. I asked him to stay. He said “you’ve always said no second chances, so why?” And then he pulled a little questioning face. I have never been so hurt in all my life. He used my forgiveness and boundaries after the first time to get me to finish with him. The forgiveness he’d begged for, the forgiveness he’d always told me had made him love me more, the strength he’d told me amazed him, he threw it in my face and used it to get out of our marriage. He mocked, not directly, but oh yes, that’s what it was, he mocked me for what I’d thought was my best quality, my loyalty. My forgiveness and my boundaries were belittled in one sentence. I struggled for months over that.

Boundaries alone won’t stop them, they need to work on why they did it, or they won’t be able to stop themselves the next time. I don’t believe “once a cheat, always a cheat”, but I believe “once a cheat, untreated, always a cheat”, the cycle can be broken but not if they don’t take massive steps to do it.

Hi @Avictimofcompassion thank you for sharing.
Was this after your husband's first or second affair? You write in your post, "He used my forgiveness and boundaries after the first time to get me to finish with him."

@Strawberrina sorry, I should have quoted my first post to give context. Yes, one affair at 7 yrs and another 16 yrs after that, the second being much more devastating. After the first he was full of remorse and promises, which I believe he truly meant. But he was untreated to find the root cause and when the depression hit he resorted to finding external validation in another woman. It ultimately failed as like I said to him at the time, “you’re raking your biggest problem with you, yourself”.

@Avictimofcompassion Are you still together? Or did you leave him after the second affair?

I confronted him and what happened was 2 pronged, I asked him to leave, but he did want to go anyway. He moved in with his ap., by all accounts it was a shit show for them both, I’d thought his depression was bad when we were together but on the occasions I saw him then, he was a wreck, he violently shook all the time and our dc said he just cried when they saw him.
We aren’t together but we are friendly and do spend time together. He is in therapy and it is working wonders tbh. I wish he had had it after his first affair and he says he wishes he had too, as it is working so well, he says he’d have saved himself years of self loathing. We aren’t together but he’d be back like a shot if I let him. We’ve been apart 3 years, he’s been working on himself for 2 years and he’s a different person. Much more at peace than I’ve seen him in years, if ever. I’d never take an untreated man back again.

Hi @Velvian thank you for your post. My children are adults and are both in their 20s. My youngest not long ago had a child of his own, so I'm now a grandmother.

@BeetrootLentilsGoatsCheese Of course I do love myself. We have been together for many years, it will be our 30th wedding anniversary this year.
We have children, now a grandchild, two houses... we've built a life together.

You are in a much better position than a lot of women in your situation who may have young children and big mortgages. You are young enough to have a life that you deserve and whilst you say you have built a life together he took that security away from you and the whole marriage became a lie.

It sounds like you’re only asking for success stories and whilst some people have got through infidelity the majority of couples can’t move on. You deserve better and there has to be mutual trust in any relationship but unfortunately it’s not there in yours

Are your children aware of the affair and if so what’s their views on the situation.

My father had an affair, well, one was discovered - maybe there were other instances - he was a careless idiot - an absolute clot TBH. It was hell when my mother found out - I don't know how long the crucifixion went on - my mother treated him like a dog and I've no sympathy for him but we (the kids) had years of this - blowups from my mother over anything suspicious she wanted to take him to task over (and I don't blame her one bit) but honestly, it ruined our childhood - I wish she had left him. In a way I'm glad she stayed to make his life hell but it wasn't good for us as kids and he was too much of a retard to leave - I guess he must have thought it would blow over: dear reader - it didn't.

After my mother died - basically all 3 of us cut ties with him. I haven't seen him since my mother's funeral in 2007 and have no idea where he lives or if he's alive and frankly we couldn't care less. My mother wasted the last (2007-1977) 30 years of her life on him and I'm divided on how I feel about how she handled it - on balance I think she was weak by not leaving him but it's a complicated decision to have to make when you have 3 kids under 15. It's a shame she didn't have a life without my father in it and without all the stress of dealing with the aftermath of the affair - I like to imagine that she would have had a happy life without him - she was a happy, quirky, dippy, innocent soul at heart. My father was a pathetic POS IMHO who had no broad life experience and basically no experience of women in general.

If it was me I wouldn't waste my time trying to continue but as they say... YMMV.

@VitruvianManWithHisPantsOn do you think she had ptsd from the affair? It seem to be quite common. I really do believe cheating is abusive - the damage it does to loved ones is immense. I am sorry your childhood wasn’t how it should have been and I think it’s good you can see it from a variety of perspectives and still see the person your mother was.

Her life had a bomb thrown into it and I try not to judge someone for doing their best when thrust into a shit situation that someone else caused. It sounds like she did her best for you. I do think women sometimes stay as they recognise shared care with an imbecile isn’t good for the kids either. Someone with poor self control, poor decision making skills, who is capable of making poor choices might not be best to share care with. Too many people are blindsided - we see it on here - they believe their marriage was good and the man was a good one. Maybe she felt leaving her lovely kids with a clot who prioritises ego boosts and dopamine hits over his family was a step too far for her.

Infidelity destroys so many people’s mental health, memories and lives - it’s abuse.

Similar thing happened to me. There was a shift in the dynamic of our relationship whereas he always immediately backed down during any minor disagreement. He accused me of having the moral upper hand and that id ultimately us his affair against him to ‘win’ so he’d just cut to the chase and begrudgingly do or say what he assumed would please me. That wasn’t my MO at all and it was just an excuse to play the victim.

Save yourself the time and just move on without him would be my advice.

@UninitendedShark Thanks for your comment and for sharing your experience. Are you still with him?

@CKN My children are both in their 20s and know about the affair. I think they are disappointed in their father. It's not something I've discussed with them though, but they do know about the affair.

Two affairs - 1st one he refused therapy, i saryed because no jobs and three small kids and unmarried. I stayed but no sex or intimacy deapite still sleeping in same bed. We bought a gouse and i felt like this was a good life despite lack of sex. 7years later another affair. He has started therapy about six months earlier. Now he is in individual psychotherapy and we have been having couple therapy (not counselling) for six months. Im also in psychotherapy. WE are working through many many issues. It is excruciatingly expensive but i feel it is worth it. We have sex now and our relationship has been transformed. We are very fortunate to be able to afford so much therapy. I dont know if it will be long lasting but for now things are good. Planning to get married in the near future.

No I am not still with him. I tried to make it work. I had 3 kids aged from under 6 months to 5 yrs old and no job. I had PTSD and was very, very unhappy, partly with myself because I couldn’t get over it for the sake of my kids. Grief does strange things to your thought process. In retrospect I’d have an asked him to leave a lot sooner than I did and then I could have begun the healing process much earlier. I don’t even think he left because of any realisation that I needed space from him, but because he just couldn’t be arsed with what I’d become because of him and things weren’t back to normal. Like the poster I quoted before, he had forgiven himself but was irritated that I hadn’t.

I firmly believe that infidelity is a sign there’s something wrong/missing from your relationship. So the affair is a symptom, but not the cause of problem.

However, it’s incredibly difficult, and for me impossible, to regain absolute trust after infidelity. I tried, and in some ways so did he, but as soon as we encountered the next life stressor he strayed again, and because I’d ‘forgiven’ him once, he assumed I’d forgive again.

If you can figure out why he did it, you stand a chance, but for me, like most people, the trust was gone and it was never the same after that, and when I caught him the third time I sent him on his way.

DH and I were able to work through this. He changed noticeably afterwards, genuine remorse, put me first, appreciated me more. That was 8 years ago, and he died this April of cancer. I am so glad, to the bottom of my soul, that I didn't walk and we were together until the end. We were meant to be together.

@Magicpaintbrush thanks for sharing! It seems to me that successful reconciliations after infidelity are rare, based on the responses I have received so far.