How long did it take for you/your spouse to feel balance/normal after an extra marital affair?

[Anonymous]

how long did it take for you to feel okay again if you or your spouse stepped out? Did you go to counseling? If you did, how long did you stay in counseling? Did you stay together or end up splitting? What words of wisdom would you like to tell someone who is going through this and wants to try to stay together? I'm interested in both parties view: the person who stepped out and the innocent spouse.

[Anonymous]

Never goes back to 'normal'. Relationship is changed forever.

Good luck getting past it.

Whoever stepped out does not respect the other person or the relationship/marriage.

[Anonymous]

Infidelity ruins a marriage to the core and those resentful feelings never go away but the hurt does eventually.

Imagine a movie of your broken heart being played over and over and over for years making you question everything, trying to understand why, then going deep into your memory to rethink, retrace, trying so hard to remember every single day before you found out, visiting that time again and again because you feel you had to have known but you didn't and now you feel so stupid.

YEARS. It took me YEARS. And today in my more mature self, I can honestly say it was not worth the misery. If I could roll that movie back, I would have just walked away but I didn't so I dealt with the hand I was given.

The person that cheats rarely if ever feels bad about what they've done. They say they are sorry but they aren't. Because they are self centered.

The cheated on carries a 50 pound bag of guilt and shame over something they didn't do yet paid the price.

Then one day you say. f that. I did nothing wrong, I deserve to be happy too. And you either let it go or you go. Once you decide your fate, you feel better.

[Anonymous]

My ex cheated and I left. Shortly after, my BFF's husband also cheated. She stayed with him and is trying to work it out. It has been over three years, and she is still reeling from his actions. I don't know if they will ever truly recover, but they are both really trying. They both do individual counseling and then attend couple's counseling.

I think that she still feels afraid that he might do it again. She was dumbstruck when it happened and never even thought it was a remote possibility. They are good people, though, and I hope that they can make it work.

In my case, I knew that I would never be able to trust my spouse again. He knew before we married that if he ever cheated that I would divorce him. In some ways, I think he cheated to cause the divorce and end things quickly. It was the right decision for us to divorce.

[Anonymous]

It's been almost 20 years since I caught my mom cheating, and our relationship has never been okay since. It probably never will, because I learned things about her character and judgment that I can never un-learn, and she is still with the guy. It severely, permanently damaged our relationship.

[Anonymous]

Never. Sounds glib but it's accurate: you never get back to where you were.

[Anonymous]

The best you can hope for is a new normal. But it takes years.

For some people it's a big relief to have everything out, address various issues in the marriage, and re-commit. But it takes years to genuinely get to that point.

[Anonymous]

Here are my words of wisdom for someone who is going through this and "wants to try to stay together". The relationship will not survive unless the perpetrator comes fully clean about what happened, engages in intensive therapy to understand the reasons within him/herself (not within the "relationship") that lead him/her to take steps that could be so destructive of the marital relationship and the spouse/family, and cuts off all contact with the AP and becomes fully transparent about feelings/behaviors/activities and makes necessary changes in his/her own behavior.

How long does it take to feel okay again? I felt "OK" immediately in the sense that I didn't blame myself or feel diminished by it; however, I felt sad for years -- mostly because the infidelity continued in various forms with various people despite DH's insistence that he wanted to stay together and would stop. And, although I was 100% confident and happy about my decision to end the relationship, I and my family permanently suffer negative consequences of the affair (negative affect on my career, reduced family income, loss of friends, damaged relationships with family members, emotional trauma to kids).

Read up on "infidelity trauma". I think it describes very well the PTSD-like impacts of affairs. Like PTSD, these symptoms can last years. You may think everything is fine, and then one day something happens that brings you right back to the first moment it happened.

On the bright side, have we found a new normal? Yes. Am I happier without him than I could ever have been with him? A thousand times, yes.

What I realized was that the problem wasn't just that he was unfaithful. The problem was he was a liar, self-centered, and unable to control his impulses. Who wants to live with that?

[Anonymous]

The overwhelming majority of cheaters are terrible people that will not change despite repeated lies that they have or will. I know a handful of them and none have changed, instead all have grown more manipulative and deceitful over time until it ultimately ends in catastrophe for one or both spouses (and any children). If you're the innocent spouse, the best thing you can do is acknowledge the cheating for what it is, a knife in the heart of your relationship and a sign of a morally bankrupt person that you should eliminate from your life. If you are the cheater, you should develop the character you lacked before cheating and do your spouse a favor by encouraging them to leave you as soon as possible as peacefully and amicably as possible. And by cheater I mean the person who engaged in a continuing sexual affair. Not the person who gets drunk and makes a human error. The only people I know that felt "normal" after an affair were living in an extreme and unhealthy form of denial.

[Anonymous]

OP, I think you are being given a pretty pessimistic view here so far. I hope you seek multiple sources of information on this query.

[Anonymous]

I cheated on my wife because I was angry about certain power dynamics in the marriage. The other woman was not married and someone I had been friends with for a few years.

My wife never found out but the dynamics changed in the sense that I took the initiative to ask for marriage counseling and we were able to better cope with our differences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think you are being given a pretty pessimistic view here so far. I hope you seek multiple sources of information on this query.

I agree. Not everyone divorces. Many people work it out.

In most cases, partners cheat to fill an emotional void. Unless that issue is addressed by both sides in the relationship, the marriage is unlikely to last.

[Anonymous]

I can't speak from my own experience but my BFF's husband cheated a few years ago. They worked it out. Then he cheated again about a year later, with someone different. They worked it out once again. Then recently she found racy text messages between him and yet another woman. She continues to work things out but doesn't trust him one bit. She's constantly holding it all over his head. I really don't know what the point is as they don't even have kids. Some guys just aren't faithful. Not sure if that's the case with your husband, OP.

[Anonymous]

Are you the one who was having "hot sex" with your husband within 2 weeks of discovering his affair? The desperate need for denial is coming across in this post the same as that one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't speak from my own experience but my BFF's husband cheated a few years ago. They worked it out. Then he cheated again about a year later, with someone different. They worked it out once again. Then recently she found racy text messages between him and yet another woman. She continues to work things out but doesn't trust him one bit. She's constantly holding it all over his head. I really don't know what the point is as they don't even have kids. Some guys just aren't faithful. Not sure if that's the case with your husband, OP.

Your friend has no self esteem.