Reply to He's cheating. Now what?

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "He's cheating. Now what?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Op.  I am now long divorced from a serial cheater.  A couple of things I wish I had done differently:

1) confrontation - I wish I had not confronted immediately.  I should have sat longer - collected more evidence of the cheating, gotten a lawyer immediately, and gotten an individual therapist immediately. There was a lot I should have worked out in therapy first about the kind of marriage I wanted (and were still options in the present circumstances), and what was good for ME and the stability of my kids (and there is a lot work through about the impact of cheating on the victim spouse and kids as well as divorce).  I would still have decided to divorce, but I could have probably cut much of the confrontation and therapy cycle short because it was immediately obvious that DH was not honest after being confronted. That should have been the dealbreaker for me and I should have been prepared to move immediately to divorce.(Instead I went through a cycle of confrontation, therapy, and then catching him again. I could have saved 2 years of my life, and a good therapist would have supported my instinct about his reaction to confrontation and manipulation of me.)

2) post - nuptial - at the time I was going through this - I was told these were unenforceable.  Nonetheless, it would have had some psychological value.

3) sex - I’m just going warn you that continuing to have sex with someone who has betrayed you in this way can have real traumatic impact. I was firmly committed to monogamy and had explicit discussions about this while dating.  My requirement for monogamy had nothing to do with morality but was about wanting a safe environment which would enhance my own sexual pleasure). I underestimated the betrayal trauma I experienced. I felt like I had to keep having sex with him if I wanted to “save” the marriage, but the truth is I felt like it was a form of rape by fraud.  He continued to lie to me about his sexual behavior while having/demanding sex with me.  It was gross and I did myself a lot of psychological damage by believing that I somehow had to accede to those demands in order to stay married (because I also didn’t want to have a sexless life and I didn’t want to take a lover outside of marriage.) I honestly wish I had told him at confrontation that our sexual relationship was over, that I considered myself free to have sex outside marriage without any constraints or disclosure and that whether we ever had sex together again now had to be mutually renegotiated.

YMMV, or course. [/quote]

This is the best advice! I hope OP, reads and understand this. Thank you dear poster.[/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