Reply to Is it okay to divorce a remorseful cheater when you have kids?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP again.  The OW is married with three kids.  My husband tells me that OW's husband confronted OW and she denied the affair, but OW's husband didn't really believe it.  I have had no contact with him or OW.  Husband claims he ended the affair because he felt crushing guilt, and that he ended things a couple of weeks before I asked him about it.  I believe that somewhat because I read their emails (he let me right when he admitted it) and they show the same story.  But who knows what he does now.  I don't trust him but I also feel like if he wants to hide an affair he knows how to do it.

As for money, we make basically the same amount of money and I'm actually better off because I have no debt, while he has significant student loans that he never wanted my help with.

It's such a mess.  PP who divorced after two years, what made you finally decide that?  PP who is still with the husband six years later, do you have peace?  Why are you so unsure of the future?[/quote]

I'm the 6 yr PP. DH had a summerlong thing with a coworker. We had been married 8 years when it happened and had very young children. We had what I considered a good marriage, and I did not see it coming at all. It was shocking. I went from having total 100% trust in him to the foundation of my life crumbling.

I do have peace now. It took a long time. We separated, which was helpful, and we did couples counseling. DH switched to a non-travel role at work, which meant he no longer was able to see the coworker, who was in a different office. I took steps to verify that he didn't have contact with her. Once he came out of the "fog" (a term from the Surviving Infidelity board: like he was bewitched & irrational) he wanted to reconcile and live with me and the kids, and he was willing to demonstrate that.

Here's the thing, which is reflected in the uncertainty expressed in my first post. After you go through something like that your marriage isn't the same and doesn't go back to the way it was. I called it Marriage 2.0. I love him, and I trust him, but it's not the same kind of trust I had as a twentysomething getting married. I value his companionship, his abilities as a father, and having a partner for practical and emotional support. I don't necessarily expect as much as I once did from him, and I would never put myself in a financial position of dependency on him. It is not romantic, but in a surprising way it has made our relationship stronger.

I mentioned that we could still divorce because, well, we could. Not to be bleak, but anyone's marriage can end at any time, and there are no guarantees. Knowing that is the price of staying married.

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