Reply to Three months after I discover he cheated and this is what he says

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Forgiveness takes a long time.  He didn't just forget your birthday, he betrayed you and betrayed his wedding vows.  He needs to understand this.

You need counselling and, ultimately, decide if you are better off with, or without, him.  Men frequently say, "It meant nothing," but it meant a Hell of a lot to the woman who has been betrayed.   I wish you the best.[/quote]

OP here. I'm very resistant to the idea of divorcing because we have young children. I'm willing to "stick it out" for their sake - I know this is an unpopular approach on DCUM, but it's true. I'm doing my best to focus on myself, on self-care and doing things that make me happy. The relationship is kind of on the back burner for me at the moment - if I start thinking about it too much I just get so upset. It's so much more difficult than I could have imagined. [/quote]

so you are just assuming he'll take care of himself sexually for months until you're ready to move ahead with the marriage?[/quote]

His sexual needs are not her problem at this point. Her healing is. When he made a choice to cheat, it was like he took a hatchet to her and hacked her up. So now she needs as long as it takes to heal from those wounds, and if it means he misses out on sex with her for a while, those are the consequences of his actions in injuring her. She's suffering the consequences of his actions. Does he get a free pass from any suffering? Surely he can learn to be a big boy and care for her and allow her to heal. If he can't, he's not worth having around.[/quote]

I'm the wife. I cheated because our sex life was terrible. My husband's response was to insist his parents travel to our house and take care of our children for a long weekend so we could go away and start fresh. If he had moped - for MONTHS! - about my cheating, I would have been gone.  If the reason the husband cheated was primarily sexual, her taking non sexual time to heal will drive him to cheat more, or to resent her. Just telling it like it is.[/quote]

Like it or not, this is the truth. [/quote]

This. Cheating is such an opportunity to demonized one spouse and sanctify another. Some spouses make a unilateral decision to make the marriage pretty much celibate. No one who expects monogamy while enforcing celibacy gets much sympathy in my book. I agree with the guy up thread who said that if you're going to spend months and months licking your wounds and doing the whole mopey dopey act, it's time to move on because you'll never reconcile your differing sex drives.

Or you can just spend your time on message boards like this, where you'll be told your husband is Satan and that he's got profound character flaws that have nothing to do with you or your own sexual behavior.

"No! Studies have proven that men in happy marriages cheat!!" Annnnd...insert click bait article from Psychology Today or Redbook some other pop psychology magazine geared towards women readers.

[/quote]

This is just what you tell yourselves to make yourselves feel OK about doing something wrong.  I totally agree with you that it is not reasonable to expect a completely sexless marriage.  But that isn't a license to cheat.  It is a license to approach your spouse to either 1) improve your sex life or 2) ask for an open marriage or 3) ask for a divorce.  Just because you don't want to do 1-3 is no reason to lie and manipulate a spouse to stay in the marriage.

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