Reply to If you stayed after infidelity

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "If you stayed after infidelity "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics