Anonymous wrote:If your beloved puppy drags diarrhea all across the rug, you clean it up and still love him. It's like that. Sometimes the love is greater than the infraction.

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Anonymous wrote:I don't even know where to start. Thank you.

How do people forgive infidelity? They realize how much less money they’ll have if they divorce, and then the forgiveness comes really quickly.

Anonymous wrote:I think people who "stay for the children" are really fooling themselves. Kids pick up on a lot, and they will sense that you may be living without love, living with grief, anger, tension, lack of trust etc. You are fooling no one. Secondly, the most important thing you can do when evaluating a relationship is to look ONLY at the relationship. That is, remove everything else that surrounds the relationship out of the equation (kids, finances etc). Look only at the quality of the relationship between those 2 people, and then make your decision.

Anonymous wrote:How can you trust that someone will gain the capacity for empathy? Is that something a person can really gain or work on? Isn't it just innate?

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Anonymous wrote:OP's question is "if you forgave infidelity, how did you do it?", not "Should I forgive infidelity?" I would assume they are past the point of needing to repeatedly hear the clichéd and unhelpful "Once a cheater, always a cheater." We all make mistakes, some very serious. Should it be assumed that we will 100% repeat all our mistakes?

The problem is that this person allowed themselves to get to this level through their own rationalization. You could say the same thing about other bad behaviors. Once a stealer always a stealer or once a liar always a liar or once a physical abuser always a physical abuser. Basically it takes that person realizing that they crossed a line and realize that they themselves never want to cross that line again and because the spouse holds the cards to enabling this behavior or not they are stuck either living with someone and not holding them accountable or leaving with the likelihood that they won't return. As the victim they aren't a bystander who can hold the person accountable without major repercussions to the relationship and their life. Most of the time the cheater has rationalized the decision and feels guilty about causing the stress in the marriage but not about the act and so because they haven't rationalized the actual act as bad, it's likely to repeat.

As someone who has come *this* close to crossing the line (but did not), and also someone who is very much against cheating and deception, all I can say is that it can feel like a very bad drug trip. I never understood how people could commit suicide before I felt the pull to cheat. I had to write a cringe-worthy email to the other person asking them to help me not cross the line by creating distance. They did, thankfully, and I think it was a big relief to us both as we are both married. To this day, if they made a move, I am not sure I could stay faithful. I have had crushes that one can manage before, but sometimes, it's like an out-of-body experience. We don't talk about it nearly enough as a society. My spouse is absolutely amazing, btw, so this has nothing to do with me missing something in my marriage. It was also not a case of "rationalization." I never justified these thoughts or feelings by any means. All I thought is, if this happens, and my spouse finds out, I will deserve whatever is wrath comes my way. And I felt terrible. Thankfully, it is now in the past and nothing did happen. I just hope I never have the experience again.

I mean that people rationalize their "out of body experience" to their spouse on why they cheat. Not that they spend a lot of time contemplating it.

I had that with my spouse in spades for many years. Kids/work made the relationship more businesslike and the side piece was exciting, forbidden—but I never had that all encompassing thing I had with my wife. I could go weeks without contact and meeting up with AP and put it out of my mind, but when I first met my wife we couldn’t be apart at all—the attraction and pull was that deep. We spent hours on the phone and would fly thousands of miles for just 24 hours together and back, etc.

Not all infidelity is some all-consuming thing. Sometimes it really is just a way to escape, blow off steam for an hour.

Anonymous wrote:How can you trust that someone will gain the capacity for empathy? Is that something a person can really gain or work on? Isn't it just innate?

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP's question is "if you forgave infidelity, how did you do it?", not "Should I forgive infidelity?" I would assume they are past the point of needing to repeatedly hear the clichéd and unhelpful "Once a cheater, always a cheater." We all make mistakes, some very serious. Should it be assumed that we will 100% repeat all our mistakes?

The problem is that this person allowed themselves to get to this level through their own rationalization. You could say the same thing about other bad behaviors. Once a stealer always a stealer or once a liar always a liar or once a physical abuser always a physical abuser. Basically it takes that person realizing that they crossed a line and realize that they themselves never want to cross that line again and because the spouse holds the cards to enabling this behavior or not they are stuck either living with someone and not holding them accountable or leaving with the likelihood that they won't return. As the victim they aren't a bystander who can hold the person accountable without major repercussions to the relationship and their life. Most of the time the cheater has rationalized the decision and feels guilty about causing the stress in the marriage but not about the act and so because they haven't rationalized the actual act as bad, it's likely to repeat.

As someone who has come *this* close to crossing the line (but did not), and also someone who is very much against cheating and deception, all I can say is that it can feel like a very bad drug trip. I never understood how people could commit suicide before I felt the pull to cheat. I had to write a cringe-worthy email to the other person asking them to help me not cross the line by creating distance. They did, thankfully, and I think it was a big relief to us both as we are both married. To this day, if they made a move, I am not sure I could stay faithful. I have had crushes that one can manage before, but sometimes, it's like an out-of-body experience. We don't talk about it nearly enough as a society. My spouse is absolutely amazing, btw, so this has nothing to do with me missing something in my marriage. It was also not a case of "rationalization." I never justified these thoughts or feelings by any means. All I thought is, if this happens, and my spouse finds out, I will deserve whatever is wrath comes my way. And I felt terrible. Thankfully, it is now in the past and nothing did happen. I just hope I never have the experience again.

I mean that people rationalize their "out of body experience" to their spouse on why they cheat. Not that they spend a lot of time contemplating it.

Anonymous wrote:I don't even know where to start. Thank you.

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Anonymous wrote:It's hard to understand why any spouse would stay after infidelity. I don't see how you repair that.

I used to think this and now I believe that I’d stay. DD is severely depressed and has severe anxiety and has mentioned on more than one occasion how grateful she is that her parents aren’t divorced and how hard it would be on her. Once my husband joked about divorcing me (it was 100% a joke and really quite funny) and DD overheard and freaked out.

So I wouldn’t divorce because I’d be terrified of what she would do. But I think I’d declare the marriage open, never sleep with him again, stop anything emotionally intimate, etc. I wouldn’t try to repair the marriage, I’d just be roommates. And probably divorce at some point.

My grandmother did this for decades. She only told her children after my grandfather died. They slept in the same room on separate beds, and everyone assumed it was because my grandfather had a bad back and needed a firmer mattress.

She was tired of his cheating and stopped sleeping with him He kept cheating and she probably never had sex for decades( I am assuming. Noone has ever asked her).

The children were happy and did not uspect a thing. She and my grandfather combined income and otherwise behaved like a close married couple until he died in his 80s. She lived her husband and taking sex out of the equation took the stress out of it too.

This is the way to do it if your spouse keeps cheating and you want to stay. Making peace with the sex part of the marriage. Otherwise it will eat you up.

That sounds awful. He got his jollies and she was stuck unfulfilled? What a miserable life. I doubt he loved her the way she loved him. Sad.

Granddaughter here.

It doesn't sound any more awful than splitting time with my children. And I say this as someone with an incredibly high libido.

Sex is great, but I can live a full life without it. Now, it will be hard for me to sleep in the same room with my DH and not start something. Lol

My grandmother has a full, exciting life, and she has always had it. She had her business, church, girlfriends, family that loved and supported her etc. She had my grandfather in most of the ways that counted. They made a good team and raised some incredible children. Living separately would have interfered with the way they wanted to raise their children. For example, my grandfather had his children at the table studying and discussing whst they learned every single night from 7pm- 9pm. That is one of the things they remember moat fondly from their childhood. Living separately would have made that difficult. They lived in a prime location that neither could afford without combining incomes ( even though my grandmother made very little).

Her life may not have been perfect, but it was never sad. She is a very happy person.

And funny enough she appeared in charge of the relationship when he was alive. He listened to everything she said( except for seeing other women i guess). She made pretty much all the decisions. Maybe he was guilty or maybe he thought he could get back in her pants. Lol

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Anonymous wrote:I got a front room seat ot parents going through this when I was a child. My mom told me everything and it messed my sister and I up pretty well. If you don't plan on forgiving and forgetting please leave. Also don't drag the kids into it at all possible. My husband's parents had a clean break post infidelity and my husband and his sisters fared much better.

The same thing happened to me. My Dad cheated and my Mom chose to stay. She was embarrassed to confide in any of her girlfriends because she wanted everyone to think that she had the perfect, so I was the one who got to listen to all of her stories about my Dad, the intimate details of the cheating, their bedroom issues and how horrible her life was. I was 10 years old and it had a lasting impact on my life. I wish they had divorced and lived their own separate life. I will never understand why they did not divorce. They can't stand each other to this day and they are in their late 70's.

Anonymous wrote:I got a front room seat ot parents going through this when I was a child. My mom told me everything and it messed my sister and I up pretty well. If you don't plan on forgiving and forgetting please leave. Also don't drag the kids into it at all possible. My husband's parents had a clean break post infidelity and my husband and his sisters fared much better.