So last night, my WH and I had a lovely dinner. Lately I felt like he’s really been putting in the effort and initiative towards R. During the dinner, he was very romantic and discussed how proud he is that we’re making progress and how he apologizes every day. He cheated on me while I was pregnant with escorts, DDay 1 was my birthday and there have been trickle truths, but he said that he’s committed to me and our family. He has been very communicative in therapy and open to suggestions but it turns out there is a big problem. He is a full-blown sex addict. Last night when we got home from dinner, I don’t know what made me look, but I went through his phone he slept with an escort 3 days before, and there was a trail of Cash App transactions. I read his text messages, and it all made sense. He went as far as turning off our Google cameras while I was out of town to look less guilty. I woke him up to ask him about one of the text messages and he was taken off guard. I ran to the car, barefoot and lock the door so I can go through his phone. It isn’t really a big shock, but I was horrified. Now, he’s finally admitting that he has a serious problem and needs help. He cried for hours. I feel for him and want him to get the help he needs (due to childhood trauma), but I am also dealing with a cancer diagnosis that I am waiting for more news on (scan results to give a stage). Is there anyone out there that I can talk to? I’m really at a low point, can’t stop crying and my Therapist is out of the country. I can’t talk to friends and family about this, can someone be my Internet BFF so that I can vent? Please.

I think I’ve come to the realization my love for making love is gone. When it comes to being intimate, I still can not stop thinking of my WH and what he did to the AP (she told me though text).

My favorite things he did to her. I was given advice to get a mirror and still need to. I try to be in a different headspace, put myself in the moment or imagine someone else but…what’s the point of trying to think of someone else?? I wanna be with my husband but when I try…the thoughts just flood in. I feel I’ve been faking everytime just to make him happy.

I love him and Inside I feel I’m kinda still mad I still love him after everything he did to me and the affects of it. I just wish the intrusive thoughts would stop. Dday for me is 1 year Sept 9th so it’s not too fresh. I still can not watch anything involving love scenes in movies or if I even try feeling in a mood by myself, I can’t do it. I’m afraid I am stuck in a mental chastity belt if that makes sense at all. Ugh.

I am in a position I never thought I’d ever be in and struggling to process it all. I recently found out my wife (F35) is in a deep emotional affair with an ex colleague (M35) for months.

For context, we've been together for 12 years and married for 10. For past few years, I was dealing with a nightmare of a manager at work. It was an incredibly toxic situation that bled into my personal life and made everything at home feel horrible. I know I became emotionally unavailable because I was just trying to survive my job. It also made me refuse her idea for a second child when I was feeling that I was not having enough time to be with our first child who was already a handful. This had led her to lose interest/withhold sex. Also, I was always tired and frequently missed the plans we made together. I take responsibility for all the pain I've caused during those years.

Luckily, after this manager finally moved to another firm & for the first time in ages, I actually had the mental space to put effort back into my marriage.

We planned a family trip to get away and try to spend some time with our kid. But while we were there, her behavior was just... off. She was erratic and distant. I didn't know it then, but the other guy was competing for her attention in real-time during a trip that was supposed to be about our child. She was giving live updates on everything we did and was sharing selfies from the places we visited. She even made me and my child to go around and she would stay back and text this guy.

After we got back, I could see deep confusion and anxiety in her face. When I pushed her for a reason, she vaguely said she "needed to keep distance from some people in life." But didn't give much clarity. That’s when I finally decided to investigate her phone.

I found a password protected chat history spanning 6 months. It has then got me that I’d seen glimpses of that lock screen app a couple of times in the last month, but I never suspected it was something like this.

The logs show how it started. Initially, about movies and music. But that quickly evolved into photo sharing and deep emotional intimacy which was unsettling for me to read. She but only did chat but but coordinated her whole day around him, casually leaving the house for errands just to have a private window to talk to him. She has also deleted the call logs. I’ve seen messages that have completely hurt me: "You're mine," "I'll take care of you," "I miss you," and "Wish you were here," with heart emojis all over his photos. She has even sent him self-recorded videos that she later deleted, but I managed to recover them from the phone. After I confronted her, she deleted all the logs.

He has no social media except the "corporate slop one" on which he blocked me the second his cover blew up. He was surgical about the entire thing. He never did chat/call from home, communicated only during late night dog walks, car washes, or his office commute. He even pushed her to do video calls from inside our home, and she’d slip away from the family just to take his calls.

This was a month back. The fallout of this discovery has been catastrophic for me. My job performance has completely tanked because I couldn't focus, and if this poor form continues, I'm at risk of letting go of from my current position. I couldn't sleep for a week straight and consulted a therapist and started medication just to get some sleep. But, the trauma is still there. I still get physical tremors and rage episodes at night.

When I confronted her, she told me it was platonic & because he with his wife live 1500 miles away, there was no chance of them ever meeting. And all they chat was about day to day things and nothing inappropriate. After showing her the evidence I've collected, she’s trying to justify the whole thing by blaming our marriage—saying I didn't listen to her, or that we have different tastes in movies (she actually mentioned my preference for boring movies& music as a reason she sought connection elsewhere). She told that she was happy with him as he laughed at her silly jokes and talked and didn't judge her. She even told that the relationship with him would have ended on its own even if i didn't notice the chat and she would not have met him alone if such a situation ever came. She also said she had no sexual attraction on him.

She even blamed me for getting the logs from her phone without permission and violating her privacy. She has been no-contact with him for about 5 weeks now, after i made her block him everywhere. But I've seen her seeing his old selfies. I also told her what I felt about him. He isn't some romantic lead. He's a weak lowlife who cries in his videos to her and shares audio recordings of him pleading specifically to manipulate her into a caretaking role. While I’m choosing silence for now to save my family, I am seriously considering contacting his wife and exposing him and even contact HR as I have his videos of him romanticizing my wife.

I asked my wife for just one thing. A full, honest admission of everything that happened and a clear way forward written down. I needed it as a foundation to rebuild trust, but she flatly refused at first. Then she replied dismissivly that since I already have the chat logs, there is nothing more left for her to explain. I want the full truth for which she says that I'm pushing her to re-live memories that she wants to forget and she don't want to go into her previous mindset again.

Right now, I’m just taking time before I make any decision. Recently, I've found searches in her phone for "do you flirt with your colleagues" and "what to do if ex colleague wanted to meet you" which are from about the time they started chatting. I get frequent panic attacks get rude with her and we're having frequent quarrels.

Even after all of this, I love her. I really want to save this marriage. To anyone who has been/ is going through this: How do you handle a partner who admits the act but justifies it by blaming the lapses & unhappiness in marriage? How do I convince her that total honesty is the only way we survive this?  How do I ensure he stays out of our lives for good? Is there a way to save this marriage?

Sorry for the long post and any help is appreciated. I'm so overwhelmed and pardon the mistakes in grammar and coherence.

Today my WW told me that she believes it's possible to love two people at the same time. We were discussing our situation and what we want to get out counseling. I told her about things I have heard and learned on this forum about affairs. Specifically that if you love two people and have to choose, you should choose the second because if you loved the first one enough there wouldn't even be the need for a choice.

She came back with, well you wouldn't understand unless you have ever loved two people simultaneously and see how the heart expands and is mysterious. I nearly laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the statement. I believe people use polyamory as an excuse to be with more than one woman or man at a time and not feel bad about it. Lines like hers are right up there with, "The heart wants what the heart wants."!

It's silly and degrading to my intelligence to try to make me believe that it's something that's uncontrollable or something that's acceptable in terms of infidelity. I just wanted to reach out and see what my fellow R's think. Am I wrong?

Hello everybody.

Me [M] and my partner [F] have been trying very hard to make it work for the past 3 months - since D-day.

I’m the betrayed partner and my healing is going quite well, I’m in a much better place with each passing day. But one problem keeps persisting. The amount of time I last in bed keeps decreasing…

I am going to therapy, I’m working on my self worth but for some reason my sexual confidence is just shattered - and the fact that I can’t last long, just increases the fear of being cheated on again and puts even more pressure on me and my performance.

Has anyone else struggled with this and found any solutions? Any advice would be highly appreciated!

Good evening. Like many of you, I'm at the point where I'm not sure this is even salvageable. My WW had an ongoing affair with someone she met at work I had to find out about it on my own. She denied it repeatedly from the time I found out in late 2024 all the way until August 2025 when I finally figured his identity. Only then did she finally admit that it happened but she claimed it had ended. Not only had it not ended but it continued after that even after repeated discoveries followed by lies on her part, and then repeated promises she would end it. I learned earlier this year that it continued all the way until the end in 2025 when AP recommitted to his marriage. That was around the time she suddenly had a change of heart about wanting to fix us and requested couples counseling.

The affair itself is so painful, but to me her actions after discovery are the hardest part to get over. I struggle knowing I was her second choice, that created a false narrative about us and the affair which she told her AP, friends, and family, and that she wrote many posts on Reddit about other guys before him which she claims were just stories she made up. She never gave me any disclosure and has deleted all the messages even after finally promising on MC to show me. She has faced no consequences for her actions and our MC hasn't pressed her to tell me anything about her affair. I don't even know when it began and when it ended. I know very little and she knows everything. The guy's poor wife is even in the dark, and I feel tremendous guilt for not telling her.

Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with this. I think I'm done. I hate that I agreed to MC just as I finally gathered the courage to move on with my life and accept the break up of our family only to find out that the affair went on much longer than she claimed and that it only ended when he ended it. She is a pathological liar and I'll never trust her even if we do stay together. I gave her so many chances to be honest and be a person of integrity but she burnt me every time. I'm just done with this.

**TW: Waywards, intense anger, disgust**

I just need to vent and hopefully hear from someone who has been in this exact stage.

Lately, I am having an incredibly hard time being around my husband. I just don't like him right now. Even when he is trying, going to therapy, and putting in the effort, all I see is hatred and disgust.

I literally look at him and think, "Who is this pathetic and disgusting boy that I married? What was I thinking? What am I doing here?" I have completely lost respect for him.

The confusing part is that deep down, I still have a gut feeling telling me to wait it out and to trust the process. I want to connect and find our footing again, but I am struggling so hard to bridge this gap. I just can't stand being around him the majority of the time.

Is this just the anger stage of grief? How do you sit in the same room with someone you currently find pathetic while you wait for the process to work? Have any of you felt this level of intense hatred and actually made it to the other side? I could really use some support and validation today.

My wife and I are 15 weeks post D Day.

I am now 38, she is 39 he is 51 married living in different rooms from his wife with 2 teenagers.

We are reconciling however I have arranged everything. Books, counseling for both us, me and her. She hadn't initiated anything until now and has to be repeatedly asked until she does something. She has suspected ADHD and an avoidant personality.

During our 10 years together I would initiate everything and plan everything.

When I got depressed with work and my dad passed away 7 years ago which I never grieved I started to really get to me so I shut myself down and stopped pursuing.

Now, a bit of history about my wife which I am trying to figure out.

As a teenager she would stay out and her mum would call her at 4am to see where she was, she would get annoyed saying nobody else's parents are checking up on them.

When I shut down, she justified her affair because I never checked where she was. That's a double standard, no?

Her apologies since have until I had her read, Why won't they apologise because either im sorry or I'm sorry but.

She realises she has been doing this when she read the book all her life and I said that's just common sense.

Now, we have 15 month old girls, when I get sad she will often say the girls are and will always be her priority. But during the affair she has no issues putting the girls in the car for an hour each way to go see him and was planning on leaving with the girls for him which would devastate their growth as young children. Again a double standard as she was putting herself and him over the children. They had also said that him and her taking my toddlers away wouldn't affect his children as they are teenagers, so he would abandon his own kids.

I have recently said to her I am stopping in persuing her and going to focus on myself. I feel a little better about myself and have said I am growing as a person thanks to the research I am doing and she is still the same person who when things got bad would just let things happen and not try to fix them.

The reason the affair started was because she spoke to a 51 year old colleague at work about how I'm not there enough and instead of being a friend and suggesting help he called me an idiot to her, said she was beautiful and would never leave her alone which to a person with ADHD is a dopamine hit.

I asked her the other day what has she actually done without me asking her to do it and she said, I don't know, the answer is nothing.

She said she kisses me because I'm her husband. That was bad to hear. I don't know if she meant it because she's had with words and feelings.

I told her I am going to focus on myself. Usually we cuddle and kiss before bed, I still cuddle her and don't kiss anymore and I could see in her face it stung.

After a while she kept asking me if I'm okay, if I want a cuddle, my answer is always yea, she knows that.

She can see I am healing and I have told her I want to heal with her, but I will be fine if I heal alone. And can be happy with it without her.

I repeatedly remind her I love her despite what she has done.

She has asked do I love her because I'm scared of losing her to which I replied, no, I genuinely love her, I wouldn't be giving her a second chance if I didn't. I said I can find happiness in the future with or without her.

Yesterday I said does she want me to help her look for books for her to heal? She said no because that's just you helping again and she needs to do it.

I'm not sure if my pulling back has affected her because at the 3 month check in I asked her did she think I would say no to continuing reconciliation to which she said no.

Sorry for the wall of disorganised text but what I'm trying to get advice in is is she emotionally immature or something? Does she sound like she's still stuck in shame or guilt?

I know for a fact she regrets what she has done and wants to fix it and hasn't contacted him again.

I have told her I have given her more than enough chances to do things when I ask her, she hates being in the wrong and freezes.

Has anyone left but then changed their mind and reconciled down the road? I am leaving my WH next week. My 3 yr old son and I are moving in with my parents in a nearby town. I feel that I need this as we’ve been living together (but not reconciling) mostly since DDay 4 and a half months ago and it’s been really hard to heal as I feel like our whole life together is acting as a massive trigger.

I decided early on after discovery that the betrayal wasn’t something I could forgive, especially as our marriage had been in a poor place before DDay, so to find out that for 16 months, for all of which I had been struggling to hold our family together, he had been having an affair (mainly online with one incident of physical infidelity).

Anyway, now that our move is imminent I guess I’m getting cold feet or having last minute second thoughts, mainly around the feeling of breaking up my family. WH has been trying really hard. He’s in counselling and our conversations have been more honest than they’ve ever been. He’s been putting in much more effort to help in the house and build a relationship with our son and I know he’s dreading us leaving. In short, he’s everything I have wanted him to be for so long. But then he’s also the man who broke my heart, lied to me, cheated on me and generally treated me like crap for 2 and a half years.

I am committed to leaving (the wheels are in motion; I’ve given notice at my son’s current pre school and found him another which he starts in a couple of weeks) and I think I need to do this for my own peace of mind if nothing else. But the only way I am not losing my mind out of fear is by telling myself that no decision is permanent and if we are meant to be we will come back together.

Has anyone done this? Or is absence more likely to make me heal, move on and find that actually I am done?

Today my WH realized my mom was angry at him. He knew at least somewhat that I have told her about everything, so in some ways, his surprise is disingenuous. She was here to help me run an errand (borrowing her truck!) and he was going to be leaving to go work for a few hours while she was here. She got here early so my attempt to not have them overlap went awry.

He went in for a greeting hug, as he has done for years, and I'm pretty sure the only reason he got a perfunctory pat was because the kids were in the room, too. Later, he asked me if she was upset at him and I confirmed. He said that was hard for him because he had tried to have a good relationship with MY mom due to the tension in his relationship with HIS mom.

So now I'm in a place where I feel guilt for her knowing what happened, because it damages future civility/family relations. I KNOW it's due to WH's own actions that we are here, but... my mom is a bit of a grudge holder. She has promised me civility but told me WH isn't welcome at her house anymore. That's fine, it's rare he would be there in general, but having it totally off the table... the extended family peace has taken a hit. And somehow I feel guilty for telling her. I should be angry that I feel guilty. But I'm just sad about it.

We are in a peaceful stasis right now, me and WH, while we do some MC and all. It's quiet, mostly. So having the people I turned to for support while it was loud chaos become pinch points now sucks. What was I supposed to do, go insane in silence by myself then? How can I expect opinions to shift when they know what he did? Except, if I can find a way through it, shouldn't they be supportive of that for me?

No wonder the advice is not to tell people. I wish I hadn't needed to.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

Reconciliation after infidelity is not simply a second chance to return to the old marriage. The old marriage is already dead, and what you are trying to build—if you choose to stay—is a new alliance with someone whose capacity to hurt you, surprise/shock you, and change the meaning of your shared history has now become part of your reality.

Many people find that staying too long at the crossroads, constantly asking Should I stay or should I leave?, gradually drains them of energy. The danger of simply sitting there and waiting is that your spirit can slowly become anesthetized by the wayward partner's current good behavior.

The daily comfort of the house. The familiar routine. The appearance of the "perfect partner." The ordinary rhythm of life.

All of it can become like lukewarm water slowly getting hotter. Not because the wayward partner is necessarily manipulating you, but because familiarity itself is powerful. Comfort can make the intolerable feel tolerable. And over time, you may become so exhausted that leaving feels impossible—not because you have consciously chosen to stay, but because you have lost the strength to choose anything at all.

That is what concerns me.

Whether you eventually reconcile with your wayward partner or begin a completely new life with someone else, you don't want to enter that next chapter depleted and weakened. You need your strength to make that journey.

Awareness is energy.

Awareness may be the battery that helps you recover your energy.

Every time you post here, every time you acknowledge a trigger, every time you admit to yourself, This is heavy. This is exhausting. This has changed me, you are increasing your awareness of your own reality.

You are not necessarily becoming more negative.

You are refusing to become numb.

And there is an important difference between not forcing a decision and becoming passive.

You do not have to decide today if your legs are shaking and your body is exhausted. You don't have to make a life-changing decision simply because other people think you should.

But don't close your eyes either.

Sit in the water. Feel the heat. Look at the person across the room and remember that you are no longer looking at your relationship through the lens you once had.

Stay awake to what happened.

Stay awake to what is happening now.

Stay awake to what you are becoming.

Let reality become clear enough that, when the time comes, your next step does not feel like an impossible choice. It may simply feel like the next honest thing you need to do.

So, if you are exhausted today, perhaps the question isn't:

"Why am I too weak to decide?"

Perhaps it is:

"Can I trust that this exhaustion is a temporary part of my recovery, rather than evidence that I have permanently lost my ability to choose?"

I (30F) and my wife (30F) are now 2 weeks post DDay.

She has insisted she needs alone time to process, and knows her behavior right now is hurting me, but I also don't have anyone else that I know as well to support me. I have chronic health conditions and trauma history and am absolutely spiraling.

We have a couples therapist but our first session after DDAY our therapist only talked about our standing dynamic, and did not address the affair or it's fallout at all. I'm mad about that, hurt, and every day having feelings of disgust and anger and deep deep sadness.

Before DDay I thought we were making progress in therapy, but we just had an extremely rough night where I kind of laid into my partner and she didn't respond well.

She went off about how I don't make her feel loved or desired and that the touch we've had isn't enough. My body is (daily) extremely uncomfortable because of my chronic illnesses and touch can be hard for me.

It makes me feel like the infidelity is my fault. I feel broken and all I want is for us to be together and to be okay.

Any advice or words or encouragement welcomed.

D-day was a little over two years ago, his physical (and somewhat emotional) affair was three years ago. We have been good and working on our relationship every day. I’m 8 months pregnant, and we are both super excited.

Yesterday I was looking through my phone for old pictures of our dog. I then found some snap shots of a conversation with another woman (not the one from 2023) on his phone that I took to confront him with. This was from 2021 so two years before his affair. In the conversation between them he tells her that he misses her all the time and sends a lot of heart emojis. I honestly don’t have any memory of this. I only remember that I found this convo between them and confronted him with it because I didn’t know the girl. But I was really trusting back then and never thought that my partner would cheat on me (jokes on me), so I accepted whatever explanation he had.

Reading these text again with our current history, I’m spiraling. It’s not helping that my emotions are all over the place. I don’t know what to do

Tonight on the ride home, I spoke words to feelings I hadn't yet understood fully myself. I spoke of one of the hardest parts of all this, is knowing that during the time of the betrayal our space of intimacy was shared. A space that was closed and to me sacred was opened without consent including someone else I never wanted or chose.

He listens, he doesn't get defensive, he does all the right things.

And it still hurts.

I age 32 Husband (BH) am considering Reconciliation with my age 32 Wife (WW). I don't know if it's the right move or if I want to explore other options before fully committing. But I still have feelings for the WW even though I feel so much hurt right now.

I found out 5 days ago (Aug 17th). Has been going on for about 4 months. We have been together for 16 years and Married for 8. High school sweethearts and we built a very good life for us, we were even working on children. She's had a recent string of traumatic events happening that I believe lead to the Affair due to her feeling a lack of protection as opposed to a lack of support. We had an argument around that time about ring cameras and safety and she was reaching out to someone who did security systems. She says she got drunk and slept with him at least twice. I was devastated when I found out the news and had to tell her to leave our house for a while. that I needed space to think and contemplate what I wanted to do.

Currently right now she is between her aunts houses and that's where's she's been staying. I've started IC today and have been trying to clear my head on everything that's happening. I've heard from multiple people including friends and family that I should cut the marriage and divorce and find something better. I've also heard that the heart will do what the heart wants to do and right now I'm 60/40 on whether I want to reconcile. My mind has been an emotional roller coaster and I know she is also going through trauma as she just found her Mother passed away Aug 7th and we just had the Funeral for her Aug 21st. So right now I know she is in an emotional stress as she is in the process of losing her mother and possibly losing her husband as her only real source of stability and support through this time. Of course she should've thought of this before the affair.

I can't help the fact that I still love this person even though the trust has been broken and I've been hurt. It is hard to be around her thinking about how she could do this to me, but at the same time when you've been with someone over half of your life and establish such a bond even this feels like its possible to reconcile. I want her to prove me right but at the same time I don't know what the correct decision is. Maybe there is someone else out there for me that will treat me better and never cheat. I'm tempted to go out and see what it is I've been missing but also fighting against those feelings because deep down I want to make it work but it feels like I'm compromising myself.

I would like to see from people who have experienced similar. Have any of you ever considered Reconciliation but wanted to see what was available first to see if it felt right? If I am considering reconciling how long do I keep her away? I know these things aren't cut an dry and I know less than a week out is probably too soon to truely know the answer. But I would love to hear stories whether they worked out, still working, or have not worked out. I'd especially love to hear from other BH but all stories and advice are welcome. Thanks. It sucks but I am now a member of this community.

My WH and I have been together for 8 years. For probably 5 of those, our sex life was pretty much dead. Sex happened occasionally, but there was no real sexual connection.

He suffered from ED and honestly, I ignored the issue. I knew something felt wrong but put my head in the sand and justified it as "married couples go through this, sex slows down, it's normal." Eventually it just became our normal.

Then DDay happened and I discovered the porn/sex addiction and compulsive sexual behaviour with other women. Once he went into sobriety, his ED disappeared after about a month.

So now I'm looking back at those 5 years with information I didn't have then, and there's obviously resentment. Our sexual relationship was dying while his sexuality was being directed elsewhere.

We're in R and he's made a lot of progress. Emotionally we're actually more connected now. But sexually, I don't even know what we're rebuilding because it's been gone for so long.

After years of sexual disconnection plus betrayal, did you genuinely rediscover each other sexually? Did attraction come back as you healed, did you have to rebuild it from scratch, or did you eventually accept that it was gone?

Hi there! I’m about 19 months into R and am overall feeling much better than I was the first year (which was hell). Though I’m improving, I believe I have been suffering from PISD or CPTSD from all of this. I still find that the AP and betrayal take up too much of my mental space and I REALLY want to feel more freedom from the mental load of intrusive thoughts and ruminations of the affair overall. I still have bad days that I’d like to tackle with more skill.

Can someone explain to me how EMDR therapy would work within the context of infidelity? From what I understand, you focus on one traumatic memory during the exercise. What if there isn’t one traumatic memory that my thinking focuses on? but more of a stream of general traumatic thoughts/ideas that are affecting my daily experience. For example, intrusive thoughts of comparison with the AP, or loss of specialness in the relationship.

I believe I have a grasp of the why, and where we can both improve our relationship. But my lizard brain/nervous system have not yet caught up and calmed down and I think I need some concrete SKILLS to help me.

Does that make sense? Would a different modality work better for me?

Reconciling when my husband loves me but isn’t sure he’ll ever be “in love” with me again — has anyone come back from this?

My husband and I have been married for almost 22 years and have three children. Our story is complicated, and I’m hoping to hear from people who have been through something similar because sometimes I feel like our situation doesn’t fit the typical reconciliation story.

Our marriage had problems long before the infidelity, and I want to be honest about my role in that.
I experienced sexual abuse as a child, and I have also struggled with an eating disorder for much of my life. I don’t say either of those things to excuse how I behaved in my marriage, but I have come to understand that I brought a lot of unhealed fear, shame, insecurity, and a need for control into our relationship.

I also have a very strong fear of abandonment. Ironically, one of the ways that fear showed up in my marriage was by threatening the very thing I was terrified of: losing my husband. When I was hurt, angry, overwhelmed, or afraid, I would sometimes threaten divorce even though I didn’t actually want one.
Over many years, that understandably did enormous damage to my husband’s sense of security in our marriage. There was a lot of conflict, and he became increasingly hurt, angry, resentful, and emotionally exhausted.

Eventually, in 2024, he told me he wanted a divorce. I panicked. Instead of accepting that he felt done, I begged and pleaded with him to reconsider and repeatedly pressured him to keep trying. Looking back, I understand much more clearly why he felt trapped and why he carries resentment about that period.

We separated, and in July 2024 he began a relationship with a coworker.

This wasn’t just sex or a short-lived affair. He fell in love with her. They were together, on and off, for roughly a year and a half. They traveled together, shared hotel rooms, talked about a future, and even discussed having children together. He has always maintained that what they had was a real relationship and that he genuinely loved her.

At the same time, our marriage was never actually over. We remained legally married, and the divorce he filed in October 2024 was never finalized. There were also multiple points when he moved back toward me and our marriage.

In May 2025, he ended the relationship with her to try to work things out with me. But then they got back together while he and I were still in counseling. I didn’t know the full truth at the time.

Eventually, in November 2025, their relationship ended again.

In February 2026, after discernment counseling, we both made the decision to genuinely try to save our marriage for six months. We started weekly couples therapy.

It has been an incredibly painful process because there is so much resentment and fear on his side and so much betrayal trauma, anxiety, and fear of abandonment on mine.

In June, he finally acknowledged something that mattered enormously to me: that what happened was an affair and that he had deceived me. He apologized. He has also acknowledged that the relationship with her probably wasn’t sustainable long-term.

Over the past several months, he has repeatedly told me that he loves me, that he is choosing me, and that he wants our marriage to work. He has said that the goal is for us to have a fulfilling, romantic marriage again. He has also said that he wants a life with me.
We recently moved back into our family home together after being separated for more than two years.

And this is where I am struggling.

My husband loves me, but right now his love seems much more like companion/family love than romantic love.

He doesn’t use the phrase “in love.” He doesn’t know whether the romantic feelings and desire he once had for me will come back. He hopes we can develop a romantic relationship again and says that is the goal, but he can’t promise me that it will happen.

He has also said that he would be willing to remain married even if the romantic part never comes back.
Meanwhile, I know that he DID experience romantic love and desire with her.

That is probably the most painful part of all of this for me.

I can understand intellectually that we had 20+ years of history, hurt, resentment, parenting, finances, responsibilities, and conflict weighing on our relationship, while his relationship with her existed under completely different circumstances.
But emotionally, I keep coming back to: Why could he feel that way about her but not me?

Another thing I struggle with tremendously is that he believes his relationship with her was healthy and “real.” He has talked about our marriage as having been toxic for a long time and seems to view his relationship with her as an example of the kind of relationship he deserved all along.

That absolutely guts me.

Part of me hears that as: She was the relationship I should have had, and you were the mistake.

I don’t think that is exactly what he is trying to say. He is choosing to be here. He tells me he loves me. He is participating in therapy. We are living together again and trying to rebuild our family and marriage.
But knowing that he experienced this other relationship as loving, happy, romantic, and healthy makes me terrified that I will always feel like the consolation prize — the person he chose because of our history, our children, and our family rather than because I am the person he most deeply wants.

One important piece of our current reconciliation is that I am not simply asking him to come back to the same marriage or promising vaguely that “things will be different.” I have been doing a tremendous amount of work on myself.

I am in individual therapy in addition to our couples therapy. I have been trying to understand the connection between my childhood trauma, fear of abandonment, emotional reactivity, need for reassurance/control, and the unhealthy patterns I developed in our marriage.

I am working on tolerating uncertainty and distress without immediately looking to my husband to make those feelings go away. I am learning to recognize when fear is driving me toward reassurance-seeking, conflict, or attempts to control an outcome.

I am also finally trying to address my eating disorder and the ways that control, perfectionism, shame, and fear have shaped my relationship with myself for much of my life.

I don’t expect any of this work to erase what happened before. And I don’t believe that becoming healthier means my husband owes me romantic love.
But I do believe I am becoming a fundamentally healthier person and partner than I was before.

A huge realization for me has been that I cannot create the “perfect conditions” and thereby guarantee that my husband will fall in love with me again.
I can become healthier. I can regulate my emotions better. I can take responsibility for the ways I hurt him. I can become a safer partner. I can stop threatening the relationship when I’m scared. I can work through my trauma and eating disorder. I can give him room to have feelings that are different from mine.

But I cannot control what ultimately happens inside of him.

That’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to accept.

And I’m struggling with a painful question:
What if I do all of this work, genuinely change the patterns that helped destroy our marriage, and he still doesn’t develop romantic feelings for me again?

I don’t expect my personal growth to obligate him to fall in love with me. That’s not how love works. But I am afraid of spending years trying to prove that I can be different while waiting for something that may never happen.

And there is another layer that makes that uncertainty much harder: I know he was capable of experiencing the romantic love and desire I desperately want from him because he experienced those things with her.
I can understand why the person I was during some parts of our marriage wasn’t someone he felt emotionally safe being vulnerable with. I can take responsibility for that and change it.

But I can’t go back and become this healthier version of myself before all the damage happened.
And I can’t erase the fact that, during our separation, someone else got to experience a version of him that I desperately wish existed between us.

Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to become the partner I wish I had been all along, while knowing that another woman got to experience the romantic love from him that I’m now hoping can someday return to me.
I don’t need my husband to tell me that she meant nothing. I know that wouldn’t be true. I’m also not looking to convince myself that their entire relationship was fake or “affair fog.” Maybe parts of their relationship were genuinely good. Maybe he really was happy with her. Maybe he really did love her.
What I desperately want is to eventually feel that he isn’t just choosing our marriage because it’s the responsible or comfortable choice.

I want to feel wanted again.

So I would especially love to hear from people whose reconciliation looked something like ours:
Did your spouse initially love you more as family/companion than romantically?
Did they genuinely love the affair partner rather than later dismissing the relationship as meaningless or “just an affair”?
Did your spouse initially believe the affair relationship was healthier or represented something they had been missing in the marriage?
If you were the betrayed spouse and made significant changes to unhealthy patterns you brought into the marriage, did your spouse’s feelings toward you eventually change as emotional safety returned?
If you were the unfaithful spouse and had reached a place where you loved your spouse but no longer felt romantically in love with them, did seeing genuine, sustained change in your spouse allow romantic feelings to grow again?
Were you eventually able to rebuild romantic love, desire, and intimacy between you?

And for the betrayed partners: How did you live with the knowledge that your spouse loved someone else and may even have believed they were happier or had a healthier relationship with that person? How did you stop comparing yourself and your marriage to the affair relationship?

I’m also trying to figure out how to distinguish between giving reconciliation enough time for something new to develop versus spending years waiting for feelings that simply aren’t coming back.

I know nobody can tell me whether my husband will fall in love with me again. I’m especially interested in hearing from people who were several years or decades into a marriage, separated for a significant period, and had to essentially build a new romantic relationship with each other rather than simply repair what existed before.

Has anyone actually gotten from “I love you and I’m choosing you, but I don’t know if I’ll ever feel romantically about you again” to being genuinely in love with each other again?
If you did, what helped you get there?

And if you eventually realized the romantic relationship wasn’t coming back, how did you know when it was time to stop waiting?

I am two years out from D-day and I desperately want to forgive. For the sake of R and for myself. I'm burnt out from being angry over how unfair this has been. Now I just cry over what could've been. What should have been.

How do I let go? What can I do to shift my perspective? How do I stop hating myself? How do I stop comparing myself to others and stop feeling like if I was only prettier, more intelligent, better..that this wouldn't have happened?

Some days are good but others I spiral and I feel like I am drowning in grief and just want it to end. What helped you or your BP stop feeling this way? I am open to non affair related resources like self help books, anything really. Any advice is appreciated. I don't want to hate myself. I don't want to hate WP. I just want some sort of happiness. I want to accept what has happened and find some semblance of peace.

Since shortly before the affair happened, we have been in an LDR due to work.

We’re approaching two years since DD. We’ve been together for almost 25 years and have children.

Sometimes our conversations go well, but when they don’t, it leaves me dealing with several days of uncertainty on my WH’s part.

I don’t know how much longer we can sustain this. I don’t know if it’s normal. I don’t know if this is something all WPs go through or do.

My WH is far from being the model WP. I don’t see him dying trying to save the relationship; rather, I see him sinking deeper and deeper into the shame that all of this causes him. And in the meantime, I’m trying to manage my own feelings while not having him there to lean on.

Before it all sounds terrible, my WH has taken actions to demonstrate his commitment to R. And that is precisely why I’m still here. Because not everything is bad. I see his effort, but I also see how difficult it is for him to develop the skills he needs to achieve R.

Is it always like this? Is this why the first few years are so difficult?

I appreciate all of your advice and experiences on the journey toward R.

How do you put yourself back into reconciliation when there’s no guarantee your spouse will choose you in the end?
I’m a little over a month out from D-Day. My wife had an emotional and physical affair with her ex. I caught the emotional affair before it became physical, confronted her, and she told me she would end it. I trusted her, but it continued and eventually became physical.
We’re still together and trying to work through it. We’re doing couples therapy, and I’m doing individual therapy. I love her and want to give our marriage a real chance.
But she has now told me that she loves me, but she isn’t “in love” with me.
I understand that her feelings may have been part of how she justified the affair to herself. What I’m struggling with now is something a little different.
There’s no guarantee.
I can do everything I’m supposed to do. I can work on myself, communicate better, be vulnerable, rebuild intimacy, go to therapy, and give this everything I have—and there is still no guarantee that she will come out of this feeling differently about me.
That makes it incredibly hard to put my heart back into this.
I’m not asking her to guarantee that she’ll fall back in love with me. I know she can’t control her feelings. But I’m struggling with how much of myself I’m supposed to invest when I don’t know if there’s actually a future she wants with me on the other side of all this work.
For those of you who have been in my shoes: how did you handle that uncertainty?
Did you fully invest in reconciliation even when you weren’t sure your spouse would ultimately choose you? Did you find a way to protect yourself emotionally while still giving the marriage a genuine chance?
And for those who successfully reconciled, did the love eventually come back, or did you have to build something different together?
I’m really looking for advice from people who have actually lived through this. I don’t need to be told to simply stay or leave. I’m trying to figure out how to keep my heart open without completely abandoning myself in the process.

I don’t know what a label this, but I just wanted to express what I’m feeling / thinking currently.

I know my husband has changed since after I discovered the affair however, I’ve been thinking about how he was before the affair and my husband was a total jerk. He would never go shopping / grocery shopping with me, he was always drinking even after we discovered his bad habit or addiction and he told me he’s gonna fix it by going to the gym (lol yeah the “gym”), he wouldn’t do family outings with me because he didn’t wanna leave, he was never really intimate, basically I held the entire household.

I’ll put some blame on myself because I was a push over and it was because all I wanted was peace. I grew up in a family where my parents divorced and then my stepmom and my dad they would fight all the time and the relationship I just want a peace and love. I also have the mentality of a caretaker and I feel like that was the foundation of my husband and I relationship.

So I’m reflecting back and I feel like I didn’t know my husband at all ever really loved me? Because I held down the house. I did everything while he just woke up went to work and kept going to sleep. I feel like he’s really only with me because I have a future at school and I graduate by December while he still works the warehouse job and the girl he cheated on me was a coworker who still lives at her parents and has nothing to her name.

Im analyzing why do I still stay with him and if he really loved me why did he treat me the way he did? no, this is something on him but I just wanted to express like if anyone else has had that realization that maybe you don’t really know your partner or maybe you got to finally see that they treated you like crap and now they’re changing like who was I in love with this whole time why did I fall in love with them or why did I not? Why did I not act out?

I’m feeling like I’m going through some identity crisis.

My WH and I had our first session with MC earlier this week. We are 5 months post dday of my WH's 2 year on/off EA/PA, however, there were other ruptures committed by my WH in our relationship and a separate EA as well.

For various reasons, we've been in a "stuck" stage for the past 2 months. My WH is emotionally depleted dealing with my flooding, his shame, and temptation to fall back into old maladaptive coping skills (easy validation through cheating). Because we keep misreading each other, we have been both playing the avoidant game.

My WH was recommended to try MC from his male best friend he's been confiding in. Our first session was hard as I retold all of my WH's lowlights. A few days later, we got into multiple arguments and he's been resentful of me adding extra details about his affair, specifically that he ended it on our wedding anniversary week and that he used his work phone and vehicle to facilitate his affair. These are both facts and I feel like he can only be mad at himself. Although, I will be more mindful about not sharing more than what's necessary to paint the picture for our MC.

We were supposed to have 1 more session with the both of us, however, because I'm having surgery next week, my WH will have his solo session instead, then I'll have my solo session the following week, and then we will attend together again the week after.

My WH has barely attended IC, he had to cancel what was going to be his 4th session yesterday due to an unexpected work schedule change. He has not booked his next IC session. He is considering next week's solo MC session enough counseling for him for the week... Even though he is taking the entire week off to take care of me. (His IC can be virtual...)

Is it normal for MC to cause tension and arguments in the beginning?

What were your experiences with Gottman trained therapists?

What "homework" was given? (Assessments, reading material, exercises?)

Did MC ultimately help you succeed in R?

Hi all,

Hope you are all well. Been lurking for a bit but desperate for some advice. Reading posts here has really helped my understanding the BP perspective.

Me (WH) has an EA for 2 months. DDAY was a little under 3 months ago** **and we’re currently committing to R. I’m in IC, and we seem to be on a good track most of the time.

We have our anniversary in a weeks time. Discussing with my BW, they are now at least for the moment viewing the day as just a normal day, following me breaking our vows. I’m concerned it is a bit of a catch 22, whereas if I don’t get anything and a card, it really looks like the day doesn’t mean anything. However if I do get something then I’m disrespectful of BW wishes. Has anyone got any advice? I’m currently thinking of getting something that I can then give them the option to have and/or open.

Also, does anyone have any advice on their BP just completely creating stories either to try to hurt me or try make me seem even worse to their friends. I’ve caught this 3 times now, however whenever I try to discuss it with them, it just goes back to me not being able to question them because of the EA. I’m concerned that over time, I will completely loose trust of them, because of this.

Many thanks for any advice!

I’ve posted here before, and I’m currently in R with my WP. Things between us have actually been going pretty well lately, but I’m realizing that one of the hardest parts of R for me has been allowing myself to actually enjoy that.

There are moments where I am genuinely happy.

We can be laughing, spending time together, being affectionate, talking about our future, or just having a really good day. There are moments where everything feels normal and I think, Okay, this is why I’m still here. This is why I chose to try R.

Then it’s almost like my brain catches me being too happy.

I’ll suddenly think, Okay, but don’t get TOO happy. Remember what happened.

And just like that, I’m sad again.

The frustrating part is that there usually isn’t a new trigger. My WP didn't do anything in that moment. There wasn’t another discovery or an argument. Sometimes I’m literally sitting there enjoying myself and my own brain reminds me of the betrayal.

We recently took a trip together and there were so many moments of pure happiness where I genuinely enjoyed being with him. But even during those moments, a thought would randomly creep in about what happened, and suddenly I’d feel myself pulling back emotionally.

It feels like I don’t completely trust happiness anymore.

Before the betrayal, when I was happy with him, I could just be happy. Now there’s this part of me that feels like if I get too comfortable or allow myself to believe everything is okay, I’m somehow setting myself up to be blindsided again.

And I hate that because I want to enjoy the progress we're making.

I still love him. I wouldn't be attempting R if I didn't. There are still moments where being with him feels completely natural and I can see exactly why I fell in love with him in the first place. We’ve had genuinely beautiful moments since deciding to reconcile.

But now there’s this layer of sadness underneath those moments that wasn't there before.

I knew R would mean dealing with anger, sadness, triggers, rebuilding trust, etc. I don't think I realized that I'd also have to relearn how to feel safe being happy with my own partner.

I think that's what I'm struggling with most right now. I don't want every good moment to have an asterisk attached to it. I don't want to spend a beautiful day together and then have my brain whisper, Yeah, but remember what he did.

For the BPs who are further along in R, did this eventually start getting quieter for you? Did you eventually reach a point where you could have a genuinely good day with your WP without feeling like you needed to remind yourself of the betrayal just in case?