If you stayed after infidelity

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I was you. Exactly. Almost exact situation, response, and timeline. Then at 5 months post DDay, dday 2 came in the form of him secretly confiding in a female coworker about what we were going through which was teetering on an emotional affair. Then at 7 months post dday, he started on depression meds, was very clearly instructed by the doctor to not drink on them at least for the first 6 weeks. A week after he started them, he was at a family party with our young daughter, had 2 drinks, and drove home. I'm filing. I was with him for 20+ years and don't even recognize the person in front of me. It's terrifying.

I think you are way over reacting.

Ok- maybe you're fine with someone taking a med they're instructed not to drink on, trying to drink on it for the first time while driving your kid, but I'm certainly not. I specifically asked him if he would be drinking at this party and he said no. I asked him before they came home- have you drank? No. An hour later pics on social media with him holding a whiskey. It's the intentional lying.

It bad but to jump to divorce is crazy.

Having sex with someone else, an additional emotional affair with a coworker, lying, hiding drinking, drinking and driving our kid on meds he's not supposed to be drinking on...not really sure what offenses are even left to commit besides physical abuse

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I want to answer this question even though it may not be from the side you are asking for. Why did I stay after infidelity?

I stayed because I care about my kids, because my anger / hurt needed to be taken care of (within or without a marriage), because my spouse loved me regardless.

I'm not sure it was fully the right decision. But at the same time I don't fully think it was the wrong decision, either. My family is intact, my children older, and if we were to divorce now, they'd be past the middle/high school high drama time.

My answers really are the same as those above, I think. But it was me who was unfaithful.

The wrong decision was your infidelity in the first place. And, no as a cheater you can’t speak to why somebody betrayed stayed.

From your description here, I wouldn’t stay with you. Not once did you mention what you did was wrong or you stayed because you truly love your spouse and the infidelity was a complete mistake and biggest regret. It’s not clear either what actions you took to help your spouse.

You sound like you stayed because after cheating you wouldn’t be able to support yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I want to answer this question even though it may not be from the side you are asking for. Why did I stay after infidelity?

I stayed because I care about my kids, because my anger / hurt needed to be taken care of (within or without a marriage), because my spouse loved me regardless.

I'm not sure it was fully the right decision. But at the same time I don't fully think it was the wrong decision, either. My family is intact, my children older, and if we were to divorce now, they'd be past the middle/high school high drama time.

My answers really are the same as those above, I think. But it was me who was unfaithful.

It's offensive for you to post in this thread. Stick to the ones written by cheaters. No way in h*ll do you have any perspective on what it's like to be betrayed in a marriage. And, you sound pretty callous.

[Anonymous]

OP- you have been married a long time- 20 years. Men aren’t like women. 65% of men that have cheated said they were happy to extremely happy in their marriages.

Women aren’t the same. By the time a woman cheats, she’s checked out. She’s looking for an exit or emotionally removed thereafter which is why I wouldn’t listen to women cheaters and their stories. It’s not the same.

Confession is a good thing, not a bad like some pps suggest. Watch what he does from here,, weeks, months after the explosion of this. His actions will mean everything.

Try not to make rash decisions in the heat of the moment when you are in shock and filled with anger. One day at a time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP. It was a work acquaintance who works across the country and is also married with young kids. She is leaving the company, moving abroad, this was a final work event she traveled for. He said it wasn’t planned, there had never been inappropriate communication (they’d met once before and never worked together). They were with a large group and were socializing but not spending time just the two of them talking, left separately at the end of the event, ran into each other at the conference hotel after had left. Talked in the hall and she invited him for a drink and he stupidly agreed and then ….

He swears on the lives of our children that it was one time, he’s never so much as flirted with anyone before, it was stupid and he regrets it and is deeply remorseful. Cries daily and is in therapy, speaking with clergy. Wants to make it work if we can but also says he knows if he loses me it’s his fault.

While I have NO reason to trust him since he broke my trust, maybe I am an idiot, but I believe he is remorseful and this isn’t something he has done before. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stay with him.

This is a red flag. This is an extreme overreaction to 1x cheating and would make me concerned he had been having a legit affair for an extended period of time. He’s probably crying because he got caught and lost his AP.

I can't speak to either side from any sort of personal experience, but I bet if I had done that I would cry every day about the terrible mistake I had made. It would kill me to have hurt my spouse so badly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP- you have been married a long time- 20 years. Men aren’t like women. 65% of men that have cheated said they were happy to extremely happy in their marriages.

Women aren’t the same. By the time a woman cheats, she’s checked out. She’s looking for an exit or emotionally removed thereafter which is why I wouldn’t listen to women cheaters and their stories. It’s not the same.

Confession is a good thing, not a bad like some pps suggest. Watch what he does from here,, weeks, months after the explosion of this. His actions will mean everything.

Try not to make rash decisions in the heat of the moment when you are in shock and filled with anger. One day at a time.

There is no basis for this. It's just not universally true. Between this comment and the "confession is a good thing" as though that's always or even usually true is ridiculous. You sound like someone without a whole lot of life experience and a lot of black and white thinking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I was you. Exactly. Almost exact situation, response, and timeline. Then at 5 months post DDay, dday 2 came in the form of him secretly confiding in a female coworker about what we were going through which was teetering on an emotional affair. Then at 7 months post dday, he started on depression meds, was very clearly instructed by the doctor to not drink on them at least for the first 6 weeks. A week after he started them, he was at a family party with our young daughter, had 2 drinks, and drove home. I'm filing. I was with him for 20+ years and don't even recognize the person in front of me. It's terrifying.

I think you are way over reacting.

Ok- maybe you're fine with someone taking a med they're instructed not to drink on, trying to drink on it for the first time while driving your kid, but I'm certainly not. I specifically asked him if he would be drinking at this party and he said no. I asked him before they came home- have you drank? No. An hour later pics on social media with him holding a whiskey. It's the intentional lying.

It bad but to jump to divorce is crazy.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP. It was a work acquaintance who works across the country and is also married with young kids. She is leaving the company, moving abroad, this was a final work event she traveled for. He said it wasn’t planned, there had never been inappropriate communication (they’d met once before and never worked together). They were with a large group and were socializing but not spending time just the two of them talking, left separately at the end of the event, ran into each other at the conference hotel after had left. Talked in the hall and she invited him for a drink and he stupidly agreed and then ….

He swears on the lives of our children that it was one time, he’s never so much as flirted with anyone before, it was stupid and he regrets it and is deeply remorseful. Cries daily and is in therapy, speaking with clergy. Wants to make it work if we can but also says he knows if he loses me it’s his fault.

While I have NO reason to trust him since he broke my trust, maybe I am an idiot, but I believe he is remorseful and this isn’t something he has done before. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stay with him.

This is a red flag. This is an extreme overreaction to 1x cheating and would make me concerned he had been having a legit affair for an extended period of time. He’s probably crying because he got caught and lost his AP.

I can't speak to either side from any sort of personal experience, but I bet if I had done that I would cry every day about the terrible mistake I had made. It would kill me to have hurt my spouse so badly.

+1 you have a conscience

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP- you have been married a long time- 20 years. Men aren’t like women. 65% of men that have cheated said they were happy to extremely happy in their marriages.

Women aren’t the same. By the time a woman cheats, she’s checked out. She’s looking for an exit or emotionally removed thereafter which is why I wouldn’t listen to women cheaters and their stories. It’s not the same.

Confession is a good thing, not a bad like some pps suggest. Watch what he does from here,, weeks, months after the explosion of this. His actions will mean everything.

Try not to make rash decisions in the heat of the moment when you are in shock and filled with anger. One day at a time.

There is no basis for this. It's just not universally true. Between this comment and the "confession is a good thing" as though that's always or even usually true is ridiculous. You sound like someone without a whole lot of life experience and a lot of black and white thinking.

.

When it comes to infidelity/cheating. Yes. It’s wrong. Period. No gray in that area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP- you have been married a long time- 20 years. Men aren’t like women. 65% of men that have cheated said they were happy to extremely happy in their marriages.

Women aren’t the same. By the time a woman cheats, she’s checked out. She’s looking for an exit or emotionally removed thereafter which is why I wouldn’t listen to women cheaters and their stories. It’s not the same.

Confession is a good thing, not a bad like some pps suggest. Watch what he does from here,, weeks, months after the explosion of this. His actions will mean everything.

Try not to make rash decisions in the heat of the moment when you are in shock and filled with anger. One day at a time.

There is no basis for this. It's just not universally true. Between this comment and the "confession is a good thing" as though that's always or even usually true is ridiculous. You sound like someone without a whole lot of life experience and a lot of black and white thinking.

.

When it comes to infidelity/cheating. Yes. It’s wrong. Period. No gray in that area.

+1. I took Ethics in undergrad. People justify hurting people, lying and their poor character in all kinds of ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP- you have been married a long time- 20 years. Men aren’t like women. 65% of men that have cheated said they were happy to extremely happy in their marriages.

Women aren’t the same. By the time a woman cheats, she’s checked out. She’s looking for an exit or emotionally removed thereafter which is why I wouldn’t listen to women cheaters and their stories. It’s not the same.

Confession is a good thing, not a bad like some pps suggest. Watch what he does from here,, weeks, months after the explosion of this. His actions will mean everything.

Try not to make rash decisions in the heat of the moment when you are in shock and filled with anger. One day at a time.

There is no basis for this. It's just not universally true. Between this comment and the "confession is a good thing" as though that's always or even usually true is ridiculous. You sound like someone without a whole lot of life experience and a lot of black and white thinking.

.

When it comes to infidelity/cheating. Yes. It’s wrong. Period. No gray in that area.

Nobody said it wasn't wrong. READ, people. I was arguing that women always use infidelity as an exit. This is not true. At all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I was you. Exactly. Almost exact situation, response, and timeline. Then at 5 months post DDay, dday 2 came in the form of him secretly confiding in a female coworker about what we were going through which was teetering on an emotional affair. Then at 7 months post dday, he started on depression meds, was very clearly instructed by the doctor to not drink on them at least for the first 6 weeks. A week after he started them, he was at a family party with our young daughter, had 2 drinks, and drove home. I'm filing. I was with him for 20+ years and don't even recognize the person in front of me. It's terrifying.

I think you are way over reacting.

Ok- maybe you're fine with someone taking a med they're instructed not to drink on, trying to drink on it for the first time while driving your kid, but I'm certainly not. I specifically asked him if he would be drinking at this party and he said no. I asked him before they came home- have you drank? No. An hour later pics on social media with him holding a whiskey. It's the intentional lying.

It bad but to jump to divorce is crazy.

+1

Dp. Everybody is different. This poster decided that it wasn’t acceptable to them so divorced. You are allowed to have a different reaction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP. It was a work acquaintance who works across the country and is also married with young kids. She is leaving the company, moving abroad, this was a final work event she traveled for. He said it wasn’t planned, there had never been inappropriate communication (they’d met once before and never worked together). They were with a large group and were socializing but not spending time just the two of them talking, left separately at the end of the event, ran into each other at the conference hotel after had left. Talked in the hall and she invited him for a drink and he stupidly agreed and then ….

He swears on the lives of our children that it was one time, he’s never so much as flirted with anyone before, it was stupid and he regrets it and is deeply remorseful. Cries daily and is in therapy, speaking with clergy. Wants to make it work if we can but also says he knows if he loses me it’s his fault.

While I have NO reason to trust him since he broke my trust, maybe I am an idiot, but I believe he is remorseful and this isn’t something he has done before. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stay with him.

I am the PP who said her DH made up wild lies to cover his tracks. Oddly, my first day of discovery of his cheating came in a very similar way - work was having a going away party for him. He had invited me to go but (naively and with complete trust) I encouraged him to go alone and enjoy the evening with coworkers. One of them came on to him (or so he said) and he ended up cheating. He tried to pretend it was just a one time thing, but when I was able to look at his email, it was clear they were in continued contact and she was writing him love letters by email. He strung her along by telling her he was only committed to me because he had kids - not at all what he was telling me at the same time. So, I’m sure at the moment he was giving her the same kind of vibe that encouraged her - it wasn’t some surprise that she came onto him and she didn’t just pick him without having some kind of signal that her advance would be welcomed.

My only advice to you is - the issue isn’t whether you can trust him again, the issue is whether his behavior over time is sufficient to earn your trust back. You get to decide and communicate what that means for you, but it is entirely and only within his control to decide whether to behave in a way that earns trust. For me that meant complete honesty and transparency from him, his full commitment to individual and marital counseling, no drinking or substance abuse of any kind and screening by psychiatrist for depression or other MI and commitment to working with pdoc fully if meds were prescribed.

I understood that recovery from infidelity isn’t a straight line. I didn’t put a timeline on how long I would stay. The appearance of full remorse and commitment lasted about 6-10 months. About 2 years in, I sat down and gathered all evidence and thought about his behavior over time and decided on balance his behavior wasn’t something I or my kids could live with. It wasn’t that *I* couldn’t trust him, it was that he was continuing to behave in an untrustworthy fashion.

One last warning - clergy is not an appropriate source of therapy for infidelity.

YMMV, of course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I was you. Exactly. Almost exact situation, response, and timeline. Then at 5 months post DDay, dday 2 came in the form of him secretly confiding in a female coworker about what we were going through which was teetering on an emotional affair. Then at 7 months post dday, he started on depression meds, was very clearly instructed by the doctor to not drink on them at least for the first 6 weeks. A week after he started them, he was at a family party with our young daughter, had 2 drinks, and drove home. I'm filing. I was with him for 20+ years and don't even recognize the person in front of me. It's terrifying.

I think you are way over reacting.

Ok- maybe you're fine with someone taking a med they're instructed not to drink on, trying to drink on it for the first time while driving your kid, but I'm certainly not. I specifically asked him if he would be drinking at this party and he said no. I asked him before they came home- have you drank? No. An hour later pics on social media with him holding a whiskey. It's the intentional lying.

It bad but to jump to divorce is crazy.

Having sex with someone else, an additional emotional affair with a coworker, lying, hiding drinking, drinking and driving our kid on meds he's not supposed to be drinking on...not really sure what offenses are even left to commit besides physical abuse

That is ridiculous. Emotional abuse, financial abuse, extremely controlling behavior, public disrespect, sexual coercion, stonewalling, no compromise on major life decisions—all worse than cheating. Drinking and driving is also worse. Just cheating? Whatever

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP- you have been married a long time- 20 years. Men aren’t like women. 65% of men that have cheated said they were happy to extremely happy in their marriages.

Women aren’t the same. By the time a woman cheats, she’s checked out. She’s looking for an exit or emotionally removed thereafter which is why I wouldn’t listen to women cheaters and their stories. It’s not the same.

Confession is a good thing, not a bad like some pps suggest. Watch what he does from here,, weeks, months after the explosion of this. His actions will mean everything.

Try not to make rash decisions in the heat of the moment when you are in shock and filled with anger. One day at a time.

There is no basis for this. It's just not universally true. Between this comment and the "confession is a good thing" as though that's always or even usually true is ridiculous. You sound like someone without a whole lot of life experience and a lot of black and white thinking.

.

When it comes to infidelity/cheating. Yes. It’s wrong. Period. No gray in that area.

Wrong, there is a lot of gray. Divorce does not fix that cheating happened. People who jump to divorce are dumb. Divorce shouldn’t be an emotional reaction. You have to really look ar reality of what divorced life looks like.

I would not divorce if I could not trust the kids with dad half the time. I would not divorce if everyone’s quality of life would plummet and be unrecognizable. All of these things have to factor in.