Reply to Can someone explain the mindset of someone who gets cheated on and stays?

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Reply to "Can someone explain the mindset of someone who gets cheated on and stays?"

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[quote=Anonymous]I haven't read through all the responses, so I'm not sure if my story is unique or someone above has gone through something similar.

I am American. My husband is European, from a country where having mistresses is so normal that they show up to funerals and stand alongside the wives (okay, I'll tell you in case you haven't guess, he's from France). His grandfathers had mistresses. His father had a long affair. it is what he grew up seeing an it was normalized.

When we were first dating, about a year into it I found out he was sleeping with at least 4-5 different women the whole time we'd been together. I was devastated and broke up with him.

A few months after we broke up he called me and wanted to talk. He's now my husband, so it goes without saying that he was someone I deeply loved (I did then and I do now). Because I loved him so much I met up with him and he spilled his heart out to me about his wants and needs. In addition for him growing up thinking affairs were normal, he also had some real trauma - his mom had an affair and left his dad when he was only 2 years old. He has real abandonment issues when it comes to women - started with his mom and self-perpetuated by him having affairs and cheating on every girlfriend he ever had.

So....I thought a lot about it and really tried to understand his perspective. I started to understand that him sleeping with other women didn't mean that he didn't love me. It fulfilled a deep need of his to know that he could always find someone else if he were abandoned.

So, we got back together. And damn if we didn't get married not long after. Happily so. I told him i didn't mind if he had affairs, and for the first few years he did. And then things started to slow down and taper off. Now he hasn't been with another woman in probably 6-7 years. I wouldn't mind if he did, because I understand the reason behind it. But I think he's so confident in my love for him and the strength of our marriage that maybe his fears of abandonment are fading away.

We are really happy together. We laugh all the time. We have a great friendship and a great sex life. He's my best friend. None of this would have happened if I hadn't opened my mind up to his cheating and tried to see things from his perspective.[/quote]

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