Talk me off a ledge- other side of the world and just discovered cheating

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Still remember the pain of those early days. You will get through this, OP, whatever you decide.

I divorced after cheating. I will say, glad I’m not married to my former spouse, but hate divorced life every day for my kid. Constant back and forth, difficult relationship with new step-parent, divided holidays, 50% of my time with my kid gone. Terrible for the kid, and still a constant source of angst for me, many years later.

I want to be really clear that I’m not saying staying married is always better than the divorce situation described here - absolutely sometimes it’s hard to be divorced with kids AND it’s still better than staying with your spouse. But what PP describes here is why I stayed. In my particular situation, I decided staying and working it out as best we could was better than the description of divorced life here. That’s why I say to people in this situation to think really hard before making any decisions. With kids, you do not have the option to draw a line and ride off happily into a new life without the ex. Your choice is basically what PP describes above or staying with a spouse who has cheated. Only you can say which is better, but neither is great, at least for a little while.

I think this is an excellent way to look at it. I was never a big therapy person but one thing that really solidified what course I was going to take after the affair was when during a therapy session, my therapist asked me to envision my life in two scenarios. One in which you stay in the marriage, do extensive therapy, live with the betrayal (you will never completely forget it), and try to build something new and hopefully stronger from the aftermath of this horrible event. (This assumes that your partner is willing to take whatever it takes to make you comfortable staying). The second scenario is to look at your life divorced and look at ALL of it--financial consequences, shuffling back and forth, emotional turmoil on kids, would you have to move? Imagine what you are doing on weekends when you don't have the kids, do you have family support close by, true friends to lean on, etc, career. I actually wrote this all out and it was a really helpful exercise.

My therapist said that in some cases her clients were immediately clear about what they wanted to do, with or without the cheating, some marriages were so miserable that even with all the negative consequences of divorce, the clients felt a sense of peace from just envisioning a life without their spouse. Many of these marriages involved chronic cheating, addiction issues, abuse, or just prolonged fighting within the house. This was not the case in my marriage, we were far from perfect before my DH's affair but there was definitely love, peace, and a happy family life overall. Even though my initial instinct was to separate immediately, when I did a real assessment, there was no way I could honestly say that my children would be better off with a divorce in our particular situation. Now, the calculus for me changes of course if this ever happened again or is an unchangeable character flaw. There are no second chances and I have taken steps to protect myself if that was to happen. (post-nup, ramped up career, built separate network).

The point of this long post is really that every situation is truly different. Affairs are an intense source of betrayal and if you had asked me 20 years ago what I would have done, I'd have laughed and said that I had way too much pride and self-respect to stay with a cheater. When you are older and kids are involved, decisions are rarely that simple anymore. Only you can decide with some investigation, introspection, and therapy whether this marriage is worth saving and whether you think something like this would happen again. I'm shocked at how many marriages I know who have been rocked my mid-life affairs. These are not men who seemed like horrible guys or acted like douches with their wives. Some have survived and the couples seem genuinely happen, others divorced and those were really the ones where one of the spouses was unwilling or incapable of changing behavior. Best of luck to you and take care of yourself first during this awful time!

Good advice here. Definitely the first calculation is whether this is an unchangeable character flaw. If not, then weighing the two futures on offer is the next step.

There was a point when I hit a wall with my DH after his affair. It wasn't even necessarily the affair stuff; it was that the clueless selfishness that led to him cheating meant that everything was terribly imbalanced. I was like, hey buddy, I did the math, and I would have more time to myself and less stress if we were divorced. He got the picture and made some huge shifts. That was the only time when imagining divorce brought me any sort of peace; usually it just makes me feel sad and lonely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question to OP — your husband seems to have done some of the right things. But, has he said he realizes he needs intensive individual therapy? If not, he really doesn’t get it yet. He would have to do some intense individual work to really fundamentally change and not need this ridiculous third party gratification.

Yes, he has. He has reached out to over 50 therapists in the last week trying to find an available appointment.

[Anonymous]

Adding I also saw he has joined the surviving infidelity reddit and has ordered the book "how to help your spouse heal from your affair".

[Anonymous]

It's good to hear he's seeking therapy. That will probably be helpful for your family in either scenario -- whether a continued marriage, or a relatively healthy split and co-parenting relationship.

[Anonymous]

OP — this is the PP from October 2019. MY husband read that book the first week we were home and it was like a bible for him. He also was in individual therapy deeply right away as well as couples but honestly it1 is his therapy that matters most. That book is a good one to start. You and he might also want to listen to podcasts by Lisa Marie Bobby on how to survive (whether together or apart). It will explain to him that disclosure has to be full and asap and that he shattered the marriage and sometimes can be put together once but never again. Also has he told her he will never talk to her again and have you both been tested for STDs. My husband purported not to know that he could trasmit HPV to me without symptoms.

[Anonymous]

OP, it sounds like he’s doing everything right, that’s great. That bodes well for a future with him if you want it. A lot of your questions are about divorce though - are you maybe slightly relieved and looking for an out?

[Anonymous]

Question to OP — your husband seems to have done some of the right things. But, has he said he realizes he needs intensive individual therapy? If not, he really doesn’t get it yet. He would have to do some intense individual work to really fundamentally change and not need this ridiculous third party gratification.


Yes, he has. He has reached out to over 50 therapists in the last week trying to find an available appointment.

OP, this is great news, whether or not you choose to reconcile. He wants to fix himself. It would be enough, with the other things you have described, for me to take a wait and see approach for now and to sit back and evaluate whether he is committed to changing and healing me. I wish you the best.

[Anonymous]

It seems like he's actually going to work on himself (mine didn't, he kept on with the affair).

Dating in your early 30s will be a piece of cake. I was worried, but there is no shortage of men. Marriage material, stepfather quality men... who knows. I'm not shopping for that. I have zero intentions of remarrying.(divorced at 34, 2 kids).

I will say the toughest pill to swallow has been ex husband bringing girlfriends into our kids lives. Multiple girlfriends. He now has moved in with the current one, so my kids are living in her house on his custody days. It's hard hard hard to accept at first. I still think divorce was the right choice for me, and very necessary. But the sharing of my kids... I never planned that when I had them, and it sucks.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP. I've been following your story as well. My spouse has been engaged in an affair, too, but has no intentions of stopping. The details on my end are way uglier. My spouse was absolutely awful to me and still is from time to time. There was zero self-awareness or empathy or willingness/desire to change. We are in the beginning stages of a divorce that I would have done absolutely anything to avoid for the sake of our kids and for myself too. What you're describing, the steps your husband is taking to make this right? I would have died for that. Yes... as others have stated, it's going to be really hard to trust again, and there are no guarantees. But if you're able, I think it's worth it to at least try to rebuild from this. And maybe you won't be able to! And that's ok. But you can tell yourself, and eventually, your kids, that you really did try to make it work. Take care of yourself, breathe, one day/hour/minute at a time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, if I remember correctly, your kids are very young. So young that if you divorced now, they wouldn’t even remember a before time. I actually think if you were to divorce, it’s better for the kids if you do it while they are as young as possible. You seem to have a great family support system as well.

Hugs to you. This sucks. I haven’t been through it myself, but supported a good friend through the discovery of multiple affairs, the following attempt at reconciliation and now the finalized divorce a couple years later. She is in a much happier place now, and her kids are ok.

Yes, this has been on my mind as well. Our oldest is 4.5 so it would be much easier to split now than in a few years.

My ex cheated and started out remorseful but then was clearly still lying. I kicked him out when kids were 18 mos and 5 years old. Not easy to parent 2 toddlers with an unreliable and dishonest father, but better for both of them at that young age. Would have been even better if I had do e it when I first found out about cheating, when they were even younger. And would have been even better yet again had I, after kicking him out, immediately moved to parallel parenting. Co-parenting with a person who is untrustworthy, lies and lacks empathy just created more problems. I should not have included him in my separate family life with the kids as much as I did.

Do it young if you’re going to do it and move quickly to focusing on and building your own stable family unit with your kids and let his relationship with them be whatever he motivates himself to create.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Still remember the pain of those early days. You will get through this, OP, whatever you decide.

I divorced after cheating. I will say, glad I’m not married to my former spouse, but hate divorced life every day for my kid. Constant back and forth, difficult relationship with new step-parent, divided holidays, 50% of my time with my kid gone. Terrible for the kid, and still a constant source of angst for me, many years later.

I want to be really clear that I’m not saying staying married is always better than the divorce situation described here - absolutely sometimes it’s hard to be divorced with kids AND it’s still better than staying with your spouse. But what PP describes here is why I stayed. In my particular situation, I decided staying and working it out as best we could was better than the description of divorced life here. That’s why I say to people in this situation to think really hard before making any decisions. With kids, you do not have the option to draw a line and ride off happily into a new life without the ex. Your choice is basically what PP describes above or staying with a spouse who has cheated. Only you can say which is better, but neither is great, at least for a little while.

I think this is an excellent way to look at it. I was never a big therapy person but one thing that really solidified what course I was going to take after the affair was when during a therapy session, my therapist asked me to envision my life in two scenarios. One in which you stay in the marriage, do extensive therapy, live with the betrayal (you will never completely forget it), and try to build something new and hopefully stronger from the aftermath of this horrible event. (This assumes that your partner is willing to take whatever it takes to make you comfortable staying). The second scenario is to look at your life divorced and look at ALL of it--financial consequences, shuffling back and forth, emotional turmoil on kids, would you have to move? Imagine what you are doing on weekends when you don't have the kids, do you have family support close by, true friends to lean on, etc, career. I actually wrote this all out and it was a really helpful exercise.

My therapist said that in some cases her clients were immediately clear about what they wanted to do, with or without the cheating, some marriages were so miserable that even with all the negative consequences of divorce, the clients felt a sense of peace from just envisioning a life without their spouse. Many of these marriages involved chronic cheating, addiction issues, abuse, or just prolonged fighting within the house. This was not the case in my marriage, we were far from perfect before my DH's affair but there was definitely love, peace, and a happy family life overall. Even though my initial instinct was to separate immediately, when I did a real assessment, there was no way I could honestly say that my children would be better off with a divorce in our particular situation. Now, the calculus for me changes of course if this ever happened again or is an unchangeable character flaw. There are no second chances and I have taken steps to protect myself if that was to happen. (post-nup, ramped up career, built separate network).

The point of this long post is really that every situation is truly different. Affairs are an intense source of betrayal and if you had asked me 20 years ago what I would have done, I'd have laughed and said that I had way too much pride and self-respect to stay with a cheater. When you are older and kids are involved, decisions are rarely that simple anymore. Only you can decide with some investigation, introspection, and therapy whether this marriage is worth saving and whether you think something like this would happen again. I'm shocked at how many marriages I know who have been rocked my mid-life affairs. These are not men who seemed like horrible guys or acted like douches with their wives. Some have survived and the couples seem genuinely happen, others divorced and those were really the ones where one of the spouses was unwilling or incapable of changing behavior. Best of luck to you and take care of yourself first during this awful time!

This is really excellent advice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems like he's actually going to work on himself (mine didn't, he kept on with the affair).

Dating in your early 30s will be a piece of cake. I was worried, but there is no shortage of men. Marriage material, stepfather quality men... who knows. I'm not shopping for that. I have zero intentions of remarrying.(divorced at 34, 2 kids).

I will say the toughest pill to swallow has been ex husband bringing girlfriends into our kids lives. Multiple girlfriends. He now has moved in with the current one, so my kids are living in her house on his custody days. It's hard hard hard to accept at first. I still think divorce was the right choice for me, and very necessary. But the sharing of my kids... I never planned that when I had them, and it sucks.

The sharing of kids is no joke. A lot of people won’t say this, but your child/children essentially get an additional parent figure -and you have zero say in it. Don’t like their manners, their friends, their politics…doesn’t matter. They get to influence your child, in all likelihood 50% of the time. If I’d realized what this would look like, I would have stayed married until they were grown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems like he's actually going to work on himself (mine didn't, he kept on with the affair).

Dating in your early 30s will be a piece of cake. I was worried, but there is no shortage of men. Marriage material, stepfather quality men... who knows. I'm not shopping for that. I have zero intentions of remarrying.(divorced at 34, 2 kids).

I will say the toughest pill to swallow has been ex husband bringing girlfriends into our kids lives. Multiple girlfriends. He now has moved in with the current one, so my kids are living in her house on his custody days. It's hard hard hard to accept at first. I still think divorce was the right choice for me, and very necessary. But the sharing of my kids... I never planned that when I had them, and it sucks.

Dating in early 30s with two young kids? No, that won’t be easy. Even if she does find another guy to marry, she’ll then deal with baggage and other drama from the blended family.

Sorry OP but you need to fix things with your husband for your own sake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's good to hear he's seeking therapy. That will probably be helpful for your family in either scenario -- whether a continued marriage, or a relatively healthy split and co-parenting relationship.

Therapy LOL. He doesn’t need to talk about himself. He needs to stop having sex and sexting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Still remember the pain of those early days. You will get through this, OP, whatever you decide.

I divorced after cheating. I will say, glad I’m not married to my former spouse, but hate divorced life every day for my kid. Constant back and forth, difficult relationship with new step-parent, divided holidays, 50% of my time with my kid gone. Terrible for the kid, and still a constant source of angst for me, many years later.

I want to be really clear that I’m not saying staying married is always better than the divorce situation described here - absolutely sometimes it’s hard to be divorced with kids AND it’s still better than staying with your spouse. But what PP describes here is why I stayed. In my particular situation, I decided staying and working it out as best we could was better than the description of divorced life here. That’s why I say to people in this situation to think really hard before making any decisions. With kids, you do not have the option to draw a line and ride off happily into a new life without the ex. Your choice is basically what PP describes above or staying with a spouse who has cheated. Only you can say which is better, but neither is great, at least for a little while.

I think this is an excellent way to look at it. I was never a big therapy person but one thing that really solidified what course I was going to take after the affair was when during a therapy session, my therapist asked me to envision my life in two scenarios. One in which you stay in the marriage, do extensive therapy, live with the betrayal (you will never completely forget it), and try to build something new and hopefully stronger from the aftermath of this horrible event. (This assumes that your partner is willing to take whatever it takes to make you comfortable staying). The second scenario is to look at your life divorced and look at ALL of it--financial consequences, shuffling back and forth, emotional turmoil on kids, would you have to move? Imagine what you are doing on weekends when you don't have the kids, do you have family support close by, true friends to lean on, etc, career. I actually wrote this all out and it was a really helpful exercise.

My therapist said that in some cases her clients were immediately clear about what they wanted to do, with or without the cheating, some marriages were so miserable that even with all the negative consequences of divorce, the clients felt a sense of peace from just envisioning a life without their spouse. Many of these marriages involved chronic cheating, addiction issues, abuse, or just prolonged fighting within the house. This was not the case in my marriage, we were far from perfect before my DH's affair but there was definitely love, peace, and a happy family life overall. Even though my initial instinct was to separate immediately, when I did a real assessment, there was no way I could honestly say that my children would be better off with a divorce in our particular situation. Now, the calculus for me changes of course if this ever happened again or is an unchangeable character flaw. There are no second chances and I have taken steps to protect myself if that was to happen. (post-nup, ramped up career, built separate network).

The point of this long post is really that every situation is truly different. Affairs are an intense source of betrayal and if you had asked me 20 years ago what I would have done, I'd have laughed and said that I had way too much pride and self-respect to stay with a cheater. When you are older and kids are involved, decisions are rarely that simple anymore. Only you can decide with some investigation, introspection, and therapy whether this marriage is worth saving and whether you think something like this would happen again. I'm shocked at how many marriages I know who have been rocked my mid-life affairs. These are not men who seemed like horrible guys or acted like douches with their wives. Some have survived and the couples seem genuinely happen, others divorced and those were really the ones where one of the spouses was unwilling or incapable of changing behavior. Best of luck to you and take care of yourself first during this awful time!

I could have written this. Almost identical to my situation and the calculus I made. Even though three therapists (his, couples, mine) kept seeing an incredibly remorseful person in my spouse that was working so hard and showing such emotion—I was told they hadn’t seen someone so committed and so genuine and full of love for me/family, it took me a long time to come around. Precisely for the reason pp states—I was always a “no way in hell, I’m out” type person with regards to infidelity. OP- it’s a great sign he’s doing all of the legwork—finding a therapist, ordering books, transparency, researching, learning how to help you and why he did this. It’s so hard. I’m almost 3 years out and things are so much better. I wish you all the best.

There is a good deal of cognitive disassociation/compartmentalization and when reality sets in it is quite shocking to see what part of themselves, values, etc do not align with what they were actually doing.