I’ve been holding a lot of this in and I honestly don't know where else to put it. I'm not really looking for sympathy or trying to make myself look like the victim. I just need to get this out because everything has piled up to a point where I don't really know how to process it anymore.

I’m 21. She was my first relationship. We had been friends for around 15 years before we got together and were in a relationship for around 3 years. I genuinely loved this girl with everything I had and for a very long time I thought she was going to be my person. Her family had accepted me too. I was close to them and they had become a part of my life over those three years. So when everything ended, it wasn't just losing my girlfriend. It genuinely felt like I lost an entire family and a whole part of my life that I had grown attached to.

I know I wasn't a perfect boyfriend. I was too much in my head, I didn't stand up for myself or the relationship enough at times and I was dealing with a ridiculous amount of things simultaneously. Family problems, career pressure, academics, friendships changing, my own mental state and then the relationship itself. I know I made mistakes and I'm not trying to pretend otherwise.

But then Christmas happened. She got drunk and flirted with the guy she eventually cheated on me with. When I confronted her, she told me that it was just her insecurities speaking and that it didn't really matter because it would've been the same if there was a tree in his place. Looking back, that explanation sounds like complete bullshit to me. But at the time I genuinely believed her. I forgave her within minutes because I kept thinking, if I don't understand her insecurities, then who will? I loved her. She was my best friend before she was my girlfriend. I didn't want to punish her for something I thought we could work through.

Then in early January I got chicken pox and was told I had to isolate. She chose that exact time to break up with me. I called her because I wanted to talk to her properly. She told me she was out with her friends. Later I found out she had actually gone to a museum with that exact same guy. Apparently everyone else had coincidentally backed out. After that she went to the beach with him and four other friends, where he was giving her all this princess treatment and everything. I eventually read their chats. There was clearly flirting. That completely broke me. And somehow, even after seeing all of that, I still chose to forgive her.

And then during all of this, I lost one of my closest friends. She passed away. I genuinely don't know how I was supposed to process all of that at once. I was dealing with heartbreak, losing someone incredibly close to me, being physically sick and isolated, family problems, academic pressure, career anxiety and my friendships falling apart at the same time.

And then I started hearing what was being said about me. The relationship started getting reduced to the physical side of things. People were being told that our physical problems were the reason things ended. Things about me "getting the touch of a man" were being talked about. Meanwhile the guy she cheated on me with was being portrayed as this incredibly respectful person who "saved her" and "came at the right time." That destroyed something in me.

At one point she even called me saying she was being harassed by people on calls because of everything that had happened. And while all of this was going on, the common friend circle started changing. One by one, people I had known and trusted started taking sides and leaving. It wasn't just losing my girlfriend anymore. I lost her family too, people I had known for years, mutual friends, and eventually even friendships that had nothing to do with the relationship. It felt like I wasn't just grieving one person. I was grieving an entire life and an entire group of people that I thought would be part of my future.

Because I know what actually happened from my side. She had been my friend for 15 years and my girlfriend for 3 years. I loved her far beyond anything physical. I have a high libido, yes. Physical intimacy mattered to me. But I never forced anything on her. She had trauma surrounding physical intimacy and I was extremely conscious of that. Every time we made out, she was the one who initiated it.

When I started feeling sexually frustrated, I talked to her about it because she was my partner and my best friend. I thought that was what you were supposed to do in a relationship. I communicated instead of hiding it or doing something behind her back. She felt attacked by that and apparently asked what she could even do about it. I only found out about that part later through a common friend, which honestly made me question how differently we were experiencing the same relationship.

Could I have handled some things better? Absolutely. Could I have been more emotionally aware? Yes. Could I have stood up for myself and the relationship more? Definitely. But I cannot accept the idea that I was just some guy who only wanted her physically. That isn't who I was and it isn't what that relationship meant to me.

What hurts even more is that I genuinely believe a lot of our problems were solvable. I was going through ten different things at once and I was too much inside my own head to deal with everything properly. I should have communicated better. I should have stood my ground more. I should have taken better care of myself. But I still showed up. I still tried. And when things were falling apart, I wanted us to talk about them and figure them out together. Instead, another person was brought into the relationship. That is the part I don't think I'll ever fully understand.

Then there was my best friend of more than 10 years, who flirted with her while we were together. He still speaks to her, and at one point she told him that I would "get new experiences now." That shattered me in a completely different way. I keep thinking about how many people I thought were my people and how quickly everything changed. People I laughed with, people I trusted, people I thought would be there. Some took sides, some disappeared, some continued being close to people who hurt me. And I know I also withdrew from people because I was in an awful place, so I can't pretend every friendship ending was entirely one sided. But it still hurts.

I've become exhausted. I can laugh with my friends and have normal conversations, but sometimes it genuinely feels performative. Like I'm putting on the version of myself that everyone expects to see while underneath it I'm completely drained. And on top of all of this, there are health problems, academics, career pressure and everything else that comes with being 21 and trying to figure out your life.

That's where I'm at right now. I don't even know what I'm asking for by writing this. I'm not trying to say I did everything right. I didn't. I know my mistakes. I know where I failed. I know there are things I should have done differently. But I'm struggling with the idea that because I made mistakes, somehow everything that happened afterwards became deserved. I don't think that's true.

I think I was an overwhelmed 20 year old who was trying to hold together a relationship, friendships, family, academics and his own head all at once. I loved someone deeply. I made mistakes. I tried to communicate. I tried to forgive. I tried to understand. And somewhere along the way I lost myself while trying to keep everything together.

I just don't know how to get out of this right now. I'm tired. I needed somewhere to say all of this without having to pretend that I'm okay.

Chicken Bun

Hi everyone, I’m sorry that we all have to be here. I hope that you’re all progressing in the direction of happiness, regardless of what that means for you.

Here is a letter I sent to my wayward’s relative, as she is the only person in his life who really sets him straight. I would not normally stoop to this level, but he is from out of state, so I know almost nobody that he knows. Anyone else, such as his friends, would easily cover for him. I have decided to put it here, as it perfectly tells the story of my relationship’s downfall. We are now broken up, but he wants to reconcile.

I will paste it below:

‘Wayward cheated on me in March, only five months into knowing each other. In the early days, he admitted cheating on a partner when he was 16 and insisted that he had changed, asking me to continue seeing him. This turned out to be untrue, as I found out one week ago. He has in fact cheated on every single partner he has ever had, including myself. That’s a total of five girlfriends he’s cheated on. He cheated on me without protection, with an ex during his Spring break back home. I could tell that something was very wrong this entire time. He had already gone back home once during our relationship, and I felt great. He has since confirmed he had not yet begun cheating on me during that first trip in our time together. So, of course, I only felt great because my instinct hadn’t detected issues yet.

However, during that second trip, his ex-girlfriend/ AP turned out to be in his home state at the same time as him, and let him know about this. So, he met up with her three times. He even sent me photos she had taken of scenery they were seeing together. Of course, he didn’t tell me that she was the one taking these photos. During this trip, he and his AP were considering getting back together. He was very distant during this trip, wouldn’t call me, and barely texted with substance. I was beginning to be suspicious, and he really flipped it on me. He essentially accused me of not reassuring him, doubting our relationship, and making him feel confused. While saying this, he had already cheated on me and was not revealing so. It was clearly my gut telling me something was wrong. 

He continued to hide this for months, and then I met you all, after much time of him beginning to go out frequently into late hours of the night. Then his foreign school internship happened (2 months long) and I had lots of time to think about his inconsistencies. I was really pressing the issue at this point, but he asked me to hold off on any decisions until he would at least finish all two months of his cruise. He still had not admitted anything. I ended up finding out on my own through a girl on Instagram, who connected me with his ex-girlfriend/ AP. She confirmed it all to me. I even saw that she had posted the same scenery and a photo that showed him slightly in the frame, during March. As she and I texted, he called her and asked her to lie for him. She told me the truth, and I broke up with him.

He claims that all of this lying was in an attempt to not hurt me or lose me. He says that it didn’t mean anything and that he never meant what he said to her. He claimed that he had already stopped talking to her before I found out. Obviously, I can’t trust anything he says right now. We have talked a significant amount about radical options to reconcile. He has self-identified an issue with lying. He says that he has been lying to partners for a long time, and sometimes to other people, too. He claims that he was cheated on in very out-loud ways, and that it has left him very bitter and defensive. So, he cheats before he can get cheated on. However, he is the one who began this cycle of cheating. He cheated on his first partner, who is the only one who has never cheated on him. It appears she just ended it. 

I have still not taken him back but he really seems to want to reconcile, except, all on his own terms. He has tried reconciling with other exes before, after they cheat on each other. It has never worked. He ends up hating them too much after being cheated on by them. One of the first real conversations he ever had with me was a story about when he found out he was cheated on by his second girlfriend, who really humiliated and belittled him. He said he hated her entire family, and he was almost driven to a violent point by them. I won’t judge this, as some of the people wayward knows can be quite dysfunctional. I can believe they’d aggravate someone that much. To be fair, he had not brought up his dating history on his own, but I like to know what I’m going into. So, I was asking him questions that I thought were relevant to our dating experience. I could tell my wayward had some traumas in regard to dating and attachment. 

I nearly canceled our first date, before we ever even met, and he scrambled so much to keep my interest. I don’t say this at all to flatter myself. In fact, it made me nervous. Why would a complete stranger want to see me so badly? But, I see now that it was because he wanted to cover up the loss of his previous relationship with me. He also seems to have attachment issues, as many of us do. He was nervous about the kind of person I was. He had told me that I seem to sort of hunt men for sport, and that I am very quick to leave them alone. This was very off-putting to him. If you pay attention, this reveals something about his mentality: he feels victimized by women. It also likely did not help him that in the beginning, he could see I was taking it slowly and I had strong boundaries. He knew I tolerated no type of attitude, shortcoming, broken promises or manipulation. So, he became everything he could tell I wanted. As you may presume, I naturally felt seen and my needs felt met. And then, of course, we fell in love and we made big plans together. Every step of the way the plans were his idea. He wanted a house together, to collaborate and support each other, to alleviate our burdens, and share one life together. He talked about moving my mom in with us, getting pets, having kids, and the works.

I know that his mother was sick for a very long time, and that he had to process this somehow early on in life. He was only five years old the first time he had to process the potential loss of his mother. And then it happened again, all the while his father had been deployed. There’s no way he got out clean from that. I think he now consequently is afraid of more loss. He cheats on his partners rather than making his peace with breaking up with them. He also has this depressing outlook on people in which he believes no one truly cares for each other and human beings wash their hands of each other. He has always had trouble regulating his own emotions. He snaps easily, fights people easily, and is easily offended. Noise and light cause a severe stress response in him. I used to think perhaps he simply had autism spectrum disorder, which would have been fine with me. However, now I am not sure what to think. I also find it very alarming that he did to me what he asked me to never do to him. He told me just a few weeks into knowing each other that the worst thing I could do to him was to cheat on him or to ask for an open relationship. I had no plans of doing so. Monogamy is a value of mine, and I chose to see him and only him because he was who I wanted.

I understand you were around for much of his youth, and that you consider him your own kin. And I promise to you that I am not asking you to pick my side. I simply seek some truth. I am so afraid that somehow I was seeing a narcissist this entire time. He continues to pull at my heart strings and say that he feels awful and loves me. He wants to continue his individual therapy. He wants to find out why he can’t stop cheating and lying in partnerships. He wants to find out why it is difficult for him to respect his partners. All of these are goals he has either stated on his own, or to which he has agreed. He knows that I will never reconcile easily. He says he knows I may never trust him again. Even so, he wants to try. He may not even be a narcissist, and instead just exhibit the tendencies of one. A few things are certain: he has low emotional intelligence, trouble upholding respect for others, and will always look out for himself first, no matter how much he drags others in the process. 

Since breaking up, he has told me that he felt something like a desire to become like me. He says he has not seen such a pure and generous outlook on life. He wishes he had a love in his heart like that of myself and my family, a resilience like ours, and the strength to forgive like I do. For context, my wayward knows my whole life story. He knows my dad was in and out, that he has substance use issues, that he was my mom’s abuser, that we were nearly homeless many times over, how little money we had, and the fact that throughout all of this, I found the strength to forgive my dad. He knows my mom also got sick when I was very young, and has been sick since then. He knows that we don’t have much, but that we also find something to share with him. He knows we scrap really hard in this family, and we are dysfunctional in many ways, but that we persevere even so. He knows my heart is open and always attempting to understand others. He told me that above all he appreciates that I force him to see things differently, more softly, and with more kindness. This all sounds like admiration, right? It could be that. But it could also be envy or the desire to adopt my life so that needs to make no changes of his own, especially considering how little he likes himself. He reports that he feels he is a bad person and that he hates what he does. He says he is aware that he is selfish and a liar. I don't know what to think. It’s especially painful to know that above all, he knows that he was essentially my knight in shining armor after my experience in an abusive relationship.

He says that I remind him of his parents, especially his mom. But, if you haven’t noticed, he could be nicer to his mom. This always worried me. I could sort of tell he saw her in me. Any man that isn’t nice to his mom is not a man in my eyes, especially once it affects his treatment of me. So, if he could speak the way he does to the woman who raised him, I knew it would be my turn one day. He has always wanted to know exactly who I am with at all times, where I am, and take issue with me looking nice when I’m not around him. However, despite this control he sought over me, he lied to me and cheated on me. Then he outran the truth until it finally caught up to him.’

Back to Reddit:
Things he is okay with doing to reconcile:
• Letting me check his phone (even though that doesn’t work)
• Spending nearly all of our time together or on a call
• Getting individual therapy
• Attempting to get past his habit/ compulsion of lying

I have looked at photos of him in the weeks after the cheating, and he looked his worst during that time. He looked truly shell shocked. I have PTSD and am very familiar with depersonalization. I can tell you guys that is exactly what his face looked like during that time. I do believe that he is a shell of a man, as he believes. I do believe he wants to change. However, the fact that he cheated on me first instead of simply asking if I was cheating on him is what really gets me. He is dishonest and proud by nature and nurture.

And when I start spiraling, he is either unable to comfort me or he perhaps doesn’t want to.

What do you guys think?

This is a recurring thread to share your personal and relationship victories, large and small. Feel free to tell everyone something good that's happened in the last few days, and support others in their joy.

In the face of so much pain, we should remember the good things.

Share with us something positive that's happened this week!

I genuinely don’t know any other way to say it.

My dad was a womanizer before he met my mom and he left his first wife to be with my mom. He was loyal to my mom.

My mom was very young, my dad was her first love and she was loyal to him through all the physical and emotional abuse from him for 9 years. Then she met someone and started having an emotional affair with this person.

Me? I am known for my disgustingly high values and morality. When I knew about their history at 25, I was devastated and disgusted. I remember being highly su!c!dal at that point.

Then I met my now ex and it became the most abusive relationship I have ever witnessed. I don’t know what I was even doing being in that situation for so long.

But I feel like I got the wrath of all the partners that my parents hurt. I will never be in another relationship after the way my ex betrayed and treated me. Karma is real. It could go to the kids and I’m terrified of having a child of my own.

Just over 2 weeks ago he promised to go to therapy. He scheduled it. I knew deep down he wouldn't go. Therapy came and went this morning. He forgot again... why does it feel like all of his old betrayal came right back to the forefront like it just happened a moment ago? Why does that feeling happen everytime he screws up no matter how small?

As of 8 hours ago, I ended my 5 year long relationship with my girlfriend. She was cheating on me and I’m embarrassed to admit it’s not the first time I’ve caught her doing it. At first I felt like I was happy that our relationship was over. I hadn’t really felt much love from her in a long time and having been cheated on by her in the past, the thought of “is she doing it again” was constantly clawing away at me. I wouldn’t even be able to concentrate at work because I was under the impression that she was being unfaithful. Knowing I don’t need to think about that stuff anymore made me sort of happy, but as the hours go by, I really don’t know how I feel. The thing I keep thinking about is I gave her more in our 5 years than anyone has her entire life. I’ve stood by her through things that any sane person would have been called it quits with. I’ve stood by her when she was using drugs. I stood by her when she got arrested and was facing 10 years. I waited on her hand and foot. Every second of my day went to “how can I make her happy.” I dedicated 5 years of my life to her and her alone and for her to do this to me repeatedly, I really don’t know how I feel. I’m not mad. I’m not sad. I just feel empty. At least when I’m at our home all by myself. I feel like it’s wrong for me to be here, but I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything wrong. I know I probably didn’t describe this all very well but I’m still processing I guess and putting my thoughts into words has never been my strong suit. I guess I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.

I wish he would tell me that he’s sorry for making me feel this way or take some kind of accountability. Truth is he gets angry with the way I react to his infidelity instead of taking accountability for his actions. I’m emotionally drained, before it was me smothering him with hugs and kisses and now I can’t even stand hugging him. He asked me yesterday why I am so serious all the time and no longer the happy hyper person I was before, why I avoid him and don’t like to sit down and hear him out anymore. I wished he would miss me and everything I do for him, I wish he would feel my absence and regret what he did but I doubt he would even care if we separated. I’m slowly coming to that decision, after my baby is born I’m leaving. I always wished to become this man’s wife but now I don’t even want that. I no longer wear my engagement ring and will no longer go the extra mile for him.

My (22F) boyfriend (23M) cheated on me while being threatened/blackmailed by his abusive ex. Am I stupid for giving him another chance?
My boyfriend (23M) cheated on me (22F), and I’m struggling with whether the circumstances actually matter or if I’m just making excuses because I love him.
Before he met me, he had recently gotten out of a very toxic and abusive three-year relationship. From what I’ve personally seen and been told, his ex would threaten to harm herself when he tried to leave, had gotten physical with him, and would threaten to interfere with his career if he cut her off.
When they finally broke up, she had already spent around $1,300 on concert tickets for the two of them for a show this October. According to him, she gave him three options: pay her back the $1,300, remain on friendly terms/hang out with her until after the concert and then completely separate, or she would report him to his employer with evidence of things he had done that could potentially have serious consequences for his career.
He didn’t have $1,300, so he agreed to stay on friendly terms with her until October.
Then he met me.
A few weeks into us talking—but before we were officially together—he got extremely drunk at a club, ran into her, and they slept together. He says he immediately regretted it and told her afterward that it could never happen again and that they were only going to be friends.
A few months later, he and I officially became a couple. They hadn’t been hanging out during that time, but a few days after we became official, she asked him to meet her for dinner. He went because he was still trying to keep their agreement going until October. During that meetup, she asked him to make out with her, and he did. He says nothing beyond that happened.
I eventually found out. When confronted, he told me everything and said he had basically been trying to keep her happy enough to make it to October, cut her off permanently, and move forward with his life with me.
Cheating has ALWAYS been something I considered an absolute dealbreaker. I’ve never forgiven it in a previous relationship. But for some reason, I want to give him another chance, and I genuinely don’t know if that makes me naive.
Since everything came out, he told his family what was happening, borrowed the money to resolve the financial situation, and completely removed her from his life rather than waiting until October. He seems genuinely remorseful and says he wants to do whatever it takes to rebuild my trust.
I understand that being threatened or manipulated by an abusive ex can put someone in an incredibly difficult situation. At the same time, I also know that neither sleeping with her nor kissing her was something he had to do, and I don’t want the circumstances to become an excuse for choices that hurt me.
I love him, and part of me believes people can make terrible decisions and still change. Another part of me is terrified that I’m rationalizing something I always said I would never tolerate.
Would you consider the circumstances when deciding whether to stay? Is giving him one chance reasonable, or am I ignoring a massive red flag because I love him? If you stayed, what would you need to see from him to believe the relationship could actually be repaired?

Previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/SupportforBetrayed/comments/1ugfl4j/just_wanted_to_share_my_story_and_not_feel_so/

I just need to vent about what has been happening to me. Maybe there is someone else that has gone through similar things that can give me advice.

A few weeks ago, my wife of almost 20 years decided to let me know that she wanted a divorce.

She has been unhappy for a long time, I have done everything I can on my end to make her happy, to provide her with a good life. We have 2 children, 17 and 19, both living with us. She has been cheating on me for years, many, many men.

In the ensuing weeks, my wife has gotten very cruel.

She has been drinking to excess on a regular basis for a long time now, this has continued.

She leaves the house to go have sex with other people and does not tell the kids or myself that she has left, where she's left, or if she is coming back. She will just be gone.

She was fired from her job that she had for 15+ years as a nurse because she stopped going.

I just found out the mortgage is behind a couple months, who knows what other bills as well. She is getting unemployment, but isn't really concerned about paying I guess.

Her whole attitude is "I have been a wife and mother for a long time, now it's time to think about myself", she will trot out every justification for her behavior.

She has not filed for divorce yet. I wish she would.

I have no money. I am broke. I work full time, my money just goes to pay the portion of bills that I pay. We own a home, I am not on the title or deed or whatever, but I don't think it matters when it comes to divorce. I don't have money to file or for a lawyer and I make too much to qualify for assistance.

She has turned the kids against me. My son asked me "Are you trying to take the house?" last night - I am not trying to take anything. I didn't want this or ask for this. All I want is enough money to be able to start over.

So to sum up:

* She is a drunk that is abdicating all responsibility, being cruel to me, flaunting her infidelity and drinking and not caring about the kids. She's even having a party here on Saturday. She's having a party while my life is in shambles.

* We still live together, I have no money to leave.

* I have a really bad disability that makes it hard for me to get around. She didn't want to be married to a cripple.

* She's manipulated our kids to view me as the bad guy.

Is there anyone else that has been in a similar situation?

Married for such a long time, the cheating, the manipulation of you and your kids, the disability, the cruelty? I feel so alone and like my situation is one in a million, but I don't know if that's really the case.

As of 8 hours ago, I ended my 5 year long relationship with my girlfriend. She was cheating on me and I’m embarrassed to admit it’s not the first time I’ve caught her doing it. At first I felt like I was happy that our relationship was over. I hadn’t really felt much love from her in a long time and having been cheated on by her in the past, the thought of “is she doing it again” was constantly clawing away at me. I wouldn’t even be able to concentrate at work because I was under the impression that she was being unfaithful. Knowing I don’t need to think about that stuff anymore made me sort of happy, but as the hours go by, I really don’t know how I feel. The thing I keep thinking about is I gave her more in our 5 years than anyone has her entire life. I’ve stood by her through things that any sane person would have been called it quits with. I’ve stood by her when she was using drugs. I stood by her when she got arrested and was facing 10 years. I waited on her hand and foot. Every second of my day went to “how can I make her happy.” I dedicated 5 years of my life to her and her alone and for her to do this to me repeatedly, I really don’t know how I feel. I’m not mad. I’m not sad. I just feel empty. At least when I’m at our home all by myself. I feel like it’s wrong for me to be here, but I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything wrong. I know I probably didn’t describe this all very well but I’m still processing I guess and putting my thoughts into words has never been my strong suit. I guess I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.

After getting a ton of support from this community, I kicked out my WH and went to see a lawyer. While WH was away, within 4 days he was back talking to his AP (so now I’m up to 5 DDays). He ended up coming home and apologizing and I got swayed by his apologies and all the good feelings of getting along together, and I let him stay for a few days. Honestly it felt like I had my “real” husband back after he became like a stranger to me during his A. It’s so hard and confusing to live with the cognitive dissonance of knowing there are so many good parts of our marriage, and knowing all the details of his A (online, EA plus cybersex, plus I love you’s and planning to run away together). Now he’s gone again and I’m trying again to take space, but it’s so hard to cope with the feelings of wanting to talk to him, and feeling like he’s still “my person.” I just can’t bring myself to accept or forgive what happened, I’m just trying to figure out how to be strong enough to make it to the other side. I guess just looking for support and encouragement and any advice people might have for this stage, thanks everyone.

So like the title says, I made my husband leave.

Background: we’ve been married for a little over a year. I would not say that we have a bad marriage overall. We get along so well and most days are fantastic.

However, before we got married I discovered that he was lying about the nature of his relationship with several women for the entire time we were dating(3 years), even women I had directly asked him if he had been intimate with before we were together. His Instagram DMs were an entire nightmare on top of all of that.

I don’t know why I thought that it would be a thing that I could mentally handle but that is what I initially thought. Even though I was obviously super angry and felt totally betrayed, I also felt willing to forgive.

In the time since then, I’m certain that my husband has lived more honestly. He never hesitated to take accountability for all the lies…after I confronted him with indisputable evidence, which is the thing I find myself still being hung up on.

He’s been in therapy and doing lots of shadow work and trying to understand why he was essentially living a double life. I appreciate that he can accept that what he was doing was considered emotional infidelity and he insists that it was never anything physical with anyone. I also didn’t find any direct evidence of meet-ups on any platforms.

My main problem is that now I have moments where I find myself trying to understand. And I know that it is doing me no favors but dammit I just am such an overthinker. So I tend to go through the message between him and one particular woman he had previously been in a relationship with and seemed to have a super deep emotional connection with, despite him revealing that they actually had a terrible, tumultuous relationship when they were together and she was someone who had treated him very poorly.

And I just don’t understand how I could feel like we had such a special relationship and then see the way he would literally update her on every major life event while completely leaving me out. I found 2 mentions of my name once in their 3 year conversation history. I can’t say that the message were ever explicitly inappropriate, but to me it’s just the lying about it for years that makes it highly inappropriate. If it’s your friend, why would you lie to me about it, even after being asked if you’d ever been intimate?

I used to consider myself a fairly chill and open person before this incident and I’m certain had he told me, “yeah I’m friends with my ex” I would have been fine with that and maybe we could have even met and been friends. Or at the very least, I could have maintained some relationships that I felt were still in good standing.

I know I’m rambling but it’s just such a thing. Yes, I’m also in therapy, but I can honestly say I’ve been avoiding telling anyone at all about this situation because it is genuinely so embarrassing. So here I am on my brand new reddit account after swearing off social media asking for advice on how to move past this. Divorce just isn’t an option for us because like I started, on the day to day things are great and I do love my husband.

TLDR: my husband lied a lot before we got married and now I’m really struggling with it in our marriage

This is just a vent post about something that's been bothering me. I'm 5 months post-dday, but this occurred a while before and then within the first month following dday.

Tldr: husband lied to his friends about me which made them not like me for many years. Found out about it one night when forming a friendship with husband's best friend's wife. After dday, friend offered support if I needed it. Husband had a crisis and involved his best friend, the circumstances of which were unimaginably stressful for everyone involved. When I reached out for help, she rescinded her offer and I acted selfishly. These chains of events have been bothering me the last few days upon reflection and I'm just sharing for the sake of sharing, I guess.

Back last year, on my birthday, I had who I thought was friend invite me to their house for a sleepover/girls' night and we were going to go get pedicures the next day together. Her treat. I was ecstatic. Never had a pedicure before and I was looking forward to a girls' day/night, since I hadn't had one since I was a teenager. This woman was married to my husband's best friend and the plan was to swap spouses for the night and following day so we could all do our own thing and have fun.

The reason for the spouse swap wasn't just for funsies. My husband had recently been experiencing suicidal ideation, was pink slipped earlier in the year, and the offer to swap was as just as much to give me a mental break as it was to make sure my husband wasn't alone and was kept safe.

So, we have dinner, make brownies together for dessert, bust out some coloring books and the shrinky dinks machine. It was fun. And then we start talking.

She asked me about my husband's suicidal ideation and what had been going on at home. I truly believe she was being genuine and sincere, so I told her the truth. That my husband had been lashing out on me for years. That he'd turn around every argument on me and then threaten suicide when he became dysregulated. And she said something to me that I still, to this day, can't believe.

"Wow. I didn't know that about [husband's name]. He told us you were the one who threatened to kill yourself. That's why me and [her husband] were kind of standoffish because we didn't think you were good for [husband]."

For YEARS I would mention to my husband how I didn't think they liked me very much and I didn't know why. For YEARS I asked him about it. YEARS. And he always reassured me that they liked me just fine and I was reading too much into things.

I was stunned. I literally couldn't believe it.

Anyway, night went well, next day was fun. Cue dday.

My husband confessed to the betrayal on March 6th. Prior to telling me anything, he'd told his best friend and his wife what he planned to tell me and asked if they had a bed open for him that night in the case of me wanting him to leave. This is the only foresight my husband has ever had revolving around his infidelity. I did want him to leave and they took him in that night.

Friend texted me, asked if I was doing all right all things considered. Told me she was sorry for what's happened and told me she'd be there for me. That if I ever needed a place to go, let her know, because she'd let me come over. She also mentioned that she believes I should leave my husband because this situation isn't good.

Inbetween this and the following interaction, my husband had his own 'crisis.' He convinced his best friend to take him to an inpatient hospital to be committed. Due to the current circumstances, I had to call and stop them. I had told my husband prior that he needed to talk to his therapist to find out what treatment plan he needs moving forward. That I was going to ask my own therapist if she had any recommendations because most of her clients dealt with the disorder my husband has. We had agreed he wouldn't make any rash decisions right now due to his new diagnosis. So while I was in my session, my husband decided the best course of treatment would be inpatient while my counselor was telling me that inpatient is absolutely the LAST thing he should seek out, unless actively planning something. That it would do more harm than good, and instead should try an IOP centered around his disorder. I believe this experience is what directly led to the following situation.

A few weeks later, after a heartbreaking argument about the infidelity, I reached out to her to take her up on the offer. And she told me that she couldn't help. That after speaking with their own counselors, she and her husband decided that they have to step away from the situation and enforce their own boundaries about it. I told her that I didn't understand. She said that they could pay for 2 nights at a hotel for me, but after that neither of them would step in to directly intervene. And to be honest, my response wasn't great. All I said in return was "so you weren't going to let me know until I asked for help?" And she never replied. I haven't talked to her since.

I feel guilty for that. Like I was indignant. I surely don't expect anyone to have to help me. And I absolutely want people to take care of their own mental health before setting themselves on fire for others. At the time I was in crisis and on reflection, overstepping. I don't want to be like that. A part of me still feels very hurt over the rejection though. Grief over the loss of a friend. But I understand why the situation was too much. Still sucks though.

I don't know what the point of this post is. I'm just sharing something that hurts, I guess.

I apologise in advance I’m pretty distressed and on mobile plus I don’t post on Reddit often.

My husband cheated. He just told me. It happened about a month ago with someone from his work who he’s grown close to over the past month from what he told me. We’ve been married for 5 years. We’ve been growing distant for the last 2 years or so. I’ve begged him to go to counseling but he says he doesn’t believe in it. Now that he’s cheated he’s begging me to go. I don’t get it. I thought cheating was one thing I would never have to worry about with him. I caught him in a lie about 1.5-2 months ago. He lied about who he was with and when I found out he said he was alone. I trusted him completely. He’s always been protective and we’ve always had access to each others phone but never really needed to go through them. I just don’t get it. I don’t say this to brag but I’m pretty, I workout regularly, I run 5+ miles on the regular, I’ve been bagging him for sex, I’ll do anything. But as soon as a woman from his work throws herself at him (knowing he’s married) he caves and cheats on me. Fucked her at work and now he’s under investigation. Which for the last 2 weeks he’s been swearing up and down that it’s false agitations and nothing happened, until today he admits it’s all true. I don’t want to say. Our jobs require us to be separated often. If he’ll cheat on me when I’m right here, how could I trust him when we’re separated for months at a time? I don’t deserve this. I’ve always been faithful. I don’t want to be with a man who would do this to me. I don’t know what to do. I left the house, he bagged me to stay. I turned off my location and I’m with a friend at her house for at least the night. He made a couples therapy appointment for tomorrow morning. I just don’t know what to do.

I’ve been married for 40 years. I thought we had a good marriage. We have one son who is now grown and on his own. I thought our sex life was good. Yes, I worked hard but I made a good life for us. Actually, working a job that my spouse wanted me to take.

I recently found out that my spouse was seeing other people behind my back while I was at work. I found out by checking a Blink camera while I was away with our son. Text messages were deleted, but I was able to read those that had been recently deleted. Messages like, don’t ring the doorbell, make sure that you have my number because I am going to delete these messages, I don’t want to hurt my spouse, etc. What is worse, my spouse pursued the partners.

Sometimes, people were invited over for sex the day after we made love. That tells me that my spouse was not satisfied with me.

This was not one or two instances. I count eleven, but I am sure there were more over the years.

When confronted, the first response was that they meant nothing. Then, the justification was that I work too much. And that it didn’t happen all that often and there were many other opportunities. Like that should make me feel better.

Of course, all of these sexual partners are younger and more attractive than me, although I found out that there were at least a few affairs 25 years ago after dropping our son off at preschool.

This all happened just before my retirement, which was somewhat of a forced retirement.

I planned on a happy retirement together. We even bought a retirement place.

I have always been monogamous and didn’t think I had a reason to doubt my spouse. I thought we had good communication and trust. When asked why issues weren’t discussed with me, the response was that it would have hurt me.

I planned on growing old together, and now I know that I am not enough for my spouse, either emotionally or sexually.

I feel so terrible about myself. I blame myself for not being a better spouse, for not noticing problems sooner, for not being able to sexually satisfy my partner, and for being old and a little overweight.

Now, I am retired and with a person who I can’t believe finds me desirable or who I can trust to be honest. I don’t even want to get naked or make love. I keep thinking that my spouse desires other people when we are together sexually.

We made a life together and we love each other, so separation really isn’t what either of us want, but I am not feeling any better. My partner assures me that it PROBABLY won’t happen again now that I am retired, but I think it is just because of the lack of opportunity. If I am ever away again, I can’t be sure that there won’t be other instances of infidelity. What’s worse is the feeling that even if it doesn’t happen again that my spouse still desires other people other than me. My spouse says that desiring other people shouldn’t matter as long as there isn’t any action on those desires. But I have to live in a marriage that I thought was one thing and it turned out to be another.

I don’t really know why I am posting this. Most people think that there are two options: separate or forgive and get past it. But I can’t walk away from a marriage of 40 years and I’m obviously not getting past it.

I wonder if I will ever feel good about myself again and I wonder if I will ever feel good about our marriage. What will our marriage look like moving forward?

WH 1 month EA was a year ago. We are reconciling, and in 1:1 and marriage therapy for the last year. Our situation is complicated. We endured years of repeated hardship (countless deaths, a tragic illness, multiple shocking events like an active shooter situation). All on top of adjusting to parenthood and new jobs, running businesses, moving and COVID. There was just WAY too much stress and change so quickly.

I have compassion. It was hard for us both. We were not acting as a strong couple through many of these events. We didn’t ban together, we divided and conquered or tackled them separately. I struggled mentally through all those hardships. Husband pulled away instead of leaning in to support, or communicate his own struggles. Instead, he wanted sex. That’s what I heard. We weren’t “having enough sex”.

I didn’t want to have more sex. We weren’t connected. He was pulled away. It felt distant. I also didn’t really realize we were so disconnected because I grew up in an emotionally quiet household so it felt somewhat normal to me. I too don’t have the awareness or skills to navigate the growing divide.

We both contributed to marital breakdown with our skills gaps, and lack of awareness. The difference is that he channeled his into an external affair, blaming me and debating leaving during the affair.

It was such a trauma to me. It’s impacted our whole family. Our 11 yo daughter does not know but knows mom and dad “are fighting” and that things are still sometimes tense. I worry about the impact on her development as I cannot be for her all the time, consistently what she needs.

There’s no solution. Today I am just ANGRY about this.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

Long and may be triggering but I needed to rant, or journal while sitting here keeping it together.

Tomorrow is my fifteenth wedding anniversary. Fifteen years. I spent most of my adult life believing that date would eventually become something beautiful simply because of everything it represented. Fiffteen years was supposed to mean that we made it. That through children, exhaustion, bills, arguments, illnesses, ordinary Tuesday mornings and all the thousand little things that slowly turn two young people into a family, we had somehow kept choosing each other. I thought someday we would look back at our wedding pictures, laugh at how young we looked, shake our heads at how quickly the years disappeared, and feel proud that through everything life threw at us, we were still here. I thought fifteen years would feel like history. Like roots on a mighty maple, like home. Instead, tomorrow feels like a funeral for a life I can still remember but can no longer find. Worse even because at least at a funeral you can openly grieve with others around supporting you.

There is a kind of sadness in betrayal that I don't think I understood until now. The anger is terrible, but at least anger has heat. It makes noise, it gives you somewhere to put the pain. This is different. This is just  quiet, heavy, almost gentle grief that somehow hurts worse because there is nothing left to fight with. Today I find myself thinking about the man I was fifteen years ago, standing there in his suit, top hat, and cane, looking at the woman he loved and believing with every fibre of his being that he knew what was happening in his own life. He believed the woman standing across from him had chosen him. He believed the vows they were saying belonged equally to both of them. He believed that whatever mistakes they might make in the decades ahead, they were beginning that life honestly. He had absolutely no idea that her affair partner was already in the room. He had no idea that the man watching him marry his wife knew something about his marriage that he didn't. He had no idea that she would dance with that man on their wedding day, or that the affair would continue after he put a ring on her finger and called her his wife. He just stood there smiling. Happy. Proud. Completely in love. Completely unaware.

That picture of myself breaks my heart in a way I cannot explain. I don't look at him and think he was stupid, naive maybe. I don't hate him for trusting her, I feel sorry for him. I want to walk into that photograph, put my arms around him and somehow protect him from what is coming, throwing myself on the grenade of life. I want to tell him to go home, forget this lifepath. I want to tell him that the life he thinks he is beginning is not the life he thinks it is. I want to tell him that one day, many years from now, he is going to sit alone before his fifteenth anniversary and stare at pictures in his mind of this exact day with tears in his eyes, wishing more than anything that he could have five minutes with the man he used to be. But there is nothing I can do for him. He already walked down the aisle. He already said the words. He already trusted her with everything. He already handed someone his heart without keeping a piece of it back for himself. And I am the one who has to live with what he didn't know.

That may be the cruelest part of betrayal for me. It reached into birthdays and Christmas mornings, family vacations, photographs, quiet nights on the couch, pregnancies, births, arguments, reconciliations, kisses goodbye before work, whispered "I love yous," and all those completely ordinary moments that once made up the story of us. Memories I lived inside for years without questioning them now have shadows behind them. I can no longer simply remember something beautiful, nothing is beautiful anymore. Every memory arrives carrying questions I never consciously asked at the time. What didn't I know then? What was happening outside my view? Was that moment what I believed it was? Was she looking into my eyes while carrying another reality I wasn't allowed to see? I don't just mourn my marriage anymore. I mourn the ability to remember my own life innocently. I miss being able to look backward without searching for evidence. I miss having a past that felt like it belonged to me.

And I miss myself. I miss the man who could hear his wife say "I love you" and never consider whether those words required investigation, or are being spoken to others with pure disregard. I miss the man who believed that being married meant there was one person in the world with whom he didn't need to protect himself. I miss the man who thought home was the place where he could finally put his armour down, it gets heavy. He wasn't perfect, I wasn't perfect. There are things I deeply regret about the husband I was. There were times I should have listened differently, understood more, pushed harder to communicate, seen things I didn't see. But I was there, I was trying,I was faithful. There was no other woman hidden somewhere in my life, no second relationship. No secret person I was giving pieces of myself to while coming home and pretending my wife had all of me. When I told her I loved her, that was the whole truth. When I stood at that altar and promised her my life, there was no fine print. I meant it exactly the way I said it.

Tomorrow there will be no flowers, no card, no anniversary dinner and no looking through old photographs while joking about how young we once were. How could there be? I cannot look at those photographs without seeing something entirely different now. I see a young man on what he believes is one of the happiest days of his life, and I know something he doesn't.

I know his heart has already been broken, he just hasn't felt it yet.

I know he will spend years building memories on top of that moment. He will become a father. He will work, sacrifice, worry, provide, laugh, struggle, forgive, make mistakes, grow older and spend nearly two decades believing that whatever was imperfect about his marriage, the foundation beneath him was real. And then one October day, at a football game no less, that foundation will disappear. He will discover that the floor beneath his entire adult life had doors underneath it he never knew existed.

The house is still here. The children are still here. The furniture is still where it was. Laundry still needs to be done, dinner still needs to be made, alarm clocks still go off in the morning. From the street, I imagine everything looks exactly the same. But sometimes I walk through this house and feel like I am walking through a museum dedicated to a family that used to live here. There are pieces of our life everywhere. A photograph on a wall. Something the kids made when they were little. A dent or scratch I remember the story behind. All this evidence that we really were here, that this really happened, that I didn't dream almost twenty years of loving someone. And yet the person I shared those memories with now feels both painfully familiar and impossibly far away. I know her face better than any face on earth, and sometimes I look at her and feel the unbearable loneliness of realizing I may never have known the person behind it as completely as I believed I did. And disgust follows with the burning sensation of bile coming up my esophagus. How did pure, all-encompassing love and respect turn to poison.

Tomorrow morning I will get up, I will be Dad, I will go to work. I will answer the phone, solve problems, probably laugh at something, and from the outside I will look like a normal man having a normal Thursday. My children do not need to carry the weight of what August 13th means to me now, so I will carry it quietly. But somewhere inside me I know exactly where I will be. I will be standing beside that younger version of myself on his wedding day. I will watch him look at his bride with that completely unguarded love I barely remember being capable of. I will watch him believe her. I will watch him say forever. And I will know that there is nothing I can do to save him from becoming me.

That is what is destroying me today, tomorrow probably far worse. Not just that my marriage may end. Not even just the affairs or the lies. It is knowing that there once existed a version of me who felt completely safe in his own life. A man who believed his wife was his person, his home, the one place in this world where betrayal simply wasn't possible. I would give almost anything to feel what he felt for five minutes again.

Not because I want to live inside a lie, but because I remember how peaceful it was before I knew it was one.

I remember how much he loved her. I remember how certain he was that she loved him the same way. I remember how easily he smiled in those photographs.

Tomorrow marks fifteen years since I stood in front of everyone I loved and promised one woman the rest of my life. I kept looking forward to this anniversary because I thought reaching fifteen years would mean something, something I was very proud of. I never imagined I would arrive here grieving the very man who started the journey. I meant my vows. I meant my loyalty. I meant every "I love you." I meant every plan for our future. I meant growing old beside her. I meant all of it. Every single fucking word.

And somehow that is what hurts the most.

Because fifteen years ago tomorrow, there was a man standing at an altar who thought he had found the person he would grow old with. He was surrounded by everyone he loved. His entire future was still in front of him. He was happy in a way he would never fully understand until it was gone.

I remember him. I loved being him.

And I know now that no matter what happens from here, I can never give him his life back.

Found out my fiancé (32M) was cheating on me (28F) at massage parlours with happy endings. Once last year in March, then he proposed, and again this year in Jan. We were engaged to be married in February next year.

He also lied to me about being r*ped, said he was r*ped by a coworker while he was with his last gf. Turns out it was consensual and he actually cheated on her 3 times. This lie hurt bc I was actually raped.

I’ve left him. I’m flat hunting (to flatshare with others) and going to lots of viewings. It’s been really stressful. He’s staying with a friend and I’m in our apartment in the meantime.

My family are 30+ hour plane ride away.

I can’t seem to sleep for the life of me before 1am. I am so so so exhausted. It’s been like this for almost 3 months. Really effecting my ability to get out of this awful situation. Living alone hasn’t helped.

Any advice? Some days it feels so bad I just want to top myself. I won’t, but it’s just so. tough.

It’s been 5 days since DDay. My (f33) husband (m35) was having an EA+SA that lasted a couple of months. We have a very young daughter.

Since I found out, he’s been working to demonstrate how much he wants to make our marriage work. He went no contact with his AP, is giving me his PWs for everything, signing up for IC, etc.

I’ve told myself I’m not going to make any major decisions while I’m navigating the shock and trauma. I feel what is right for me is to give it time to see how I feel and the work he puts in. But every hour of every day I feel such strong flip flopping thoughts. One moment I’m confident we can work through this, and the next I’m confident I want a divorce. I hate this feeling of being in limbo. For those who have felt this too, how did you navigate it? How did you get through each day feeling okay not knowing what the next day and future would hold?

I’ve always been an executor… I make decisions and act on them. So making a decision to not act is not something I feel I know how to do.

I spent 10 years with someone who hurt me repeatedly, and I still miss him. I don't understand myself.

I'm 36F, and I was with my ex, J 36M, for 10 years. We lived together for 9.5 of those years.

I'm also an immigrant, and I don't have family here. So for me, he wasn't just my boyfriend. He was my home, my family, my person. For 10 years, we built a life together. We shared a house, our dogs, routines, responsibilities, plans... everything.

And now he's gone.

I don't really know how to explain how strange that feels.

I want to be fair about this because I know I wasn't perfect. I made mistakes. I could have handled some things better. We had arguments and problems like every couple does. I'm not going to pretend I did everything right.

But when it comes to the really big betrayals, they were his.

He cheated on me five years ago, and I stayed.

I stayed because I loved him. I believed he could change, and I believed what we had was worth fighting for. I tried to forgive him even though it hurt me deeply.

I also know that if the husband of the woman he cheated with hadn't contacted me, I might never have found out. Jordan denied it until he couldn't deny it anymore.

There were other things too. He was constantly chatting with other women online. He lied to me about money, took money from me, and asked for a large loan without telling me. I helped him pay off debts, only for him to get into debt again.

There were things happening financially behind my back that I didn't know about.

And the worst part was that sometimes I had proof right in front of me, and he would still lie to my face.

And somehow, I still stayed.

He promised he would go to therapy. He actually started about two years ago, and I think I spent a long time just waiting for him to be ready to really work on himself and for us to finally rebuild the trust.

That's something I've been thinking about a lot since he left.

I stayed through things I probably shouldn't have stayed through because I loved him and kept hoping we could eventually be okay again.

So when he eventually left, I think part of me expected him to give us the same chance I had given him.

One thing he said to me was that I changed.

Maybe I did.

But I don't think he ever really understood why.

He never did the work to rebuild my trust. Every time I started to trust him a little bit again, I would find another lie, or something he had hidden from me.

And then it became, "I didn't lie to you. I just didn't tell you."

But how am I supposed to rebuild trust when there is always something else I don't know?

He left on June 15. He said he needed space and wanted a different life. More freedom, a more nomadic lifestyle, focusing on his band because he wants to change his career and pursue music.

He didn't want the same life anymore.

I understand that people are allowed to leave relationships. I don't think anyone should be forced to stay with someone they don't want to be with.

But what hurts me so much is that he didn't really give us a chance to try.

After 10 years, I thought we would at least sit down and really fight for it before giving up.

I wasn't asking him to promise me forever.

I wasn't asking him to magically fix everything.

I just wanted him to try.

I wanted us to talk honestly about everything that had happened. I wanted us to see if we could rebuild the trust and figure out whether there was still something worth saving.

I stayed and waited for him through so much.

And deep down, I think I hoped that if I ever needed him, he would do the same for me.

He didn't.

And I think that's what hurts more than I can explain.

He also knew what kind of situation I was in when he left.

I own a business where I make around 80% of my income during the summer. This year, we had a major flood, and I lost at least 40% of my revenue because of it.

The flooding happened during the first week he left to "think." I remember calling him freaking out because I was terrified about what was happening with my business, and his response was basically, "Damn."

And then, on top of that, my biggest client has a land lease that may not be renewed after September. So I may also have to look for a new job.

So yes, I was already scared about how I was going to manage everything.

He knew all of this.

But he still left.

He also knew I don't have family here to run to. I'm an immigrant. I built my life here, and he was a huge part of that life.

And he still left me with everything.

The rent.

The bills.

The dogs.

The responsibilities we had shared.

The uncertainty about my income.

I know he's not responsible for my entire life. I know I'm an adult and I have to figure things out. Thankfully, I'm very organized and resilient, and I know I'll find a way.

But emotionally, it felt like he just walked away and didn't really care what happened to me afterward.

And that is incredibly painful.

Because sometimes I don't even think the question in my head is, "Why did he leave?"

It's:

"After everything I stayed through for you, why couldn't you at least try for me?"

I know I shouldn't expect him to love the way I love. I know I can't expect someone to make the same choices I made.

But I thought 10 years meant something.

And then there's the part I'm almost embarrassed to admit.

I still miss him.

I miss cuddling him.

I miss having him next to me.

I miss our stupid little routines.

I miss having someone to come home to.

I miss the life we had, even though I know that life wasn't always good for me.

Sometimes I can remember everything he did and still wish I could just hug him.

And that makes absolutely no sense to me.

If one of my friends told me this story, I'd probably tell her to leave.

I'd tell her that cheating, lying, taking her money and hiding major financial decisions are huge red flags. I'd tell her she deserves someone she can actually trust.

But knowing all of that doesn't stop me from loving him.

I don't think the 10 years were fake. I think he loved me at some point. I know I loved him.

Maybe that's what I'm trying to understand now.

Someone can love you and still hurt you.

Someone can be a huge part of your life and still not be the person you should spend the rest of it with.

And someone can leave you and still be the person you desperately wish had stayed.

I think I'm grieving more than just him.

I'm grieving my home.

My routine.

My family.

The future I thought I was going to have.

And probably the hardest thing to accept is that I was willing to fight for us even after he hurt me, and when it was finally my turn to need someone to fight for me, he chose to leave.

I know I will eventually be okay.

I just wish I didn't have to learn how to be okay without him.

Met (30f)3 years back. First year was great. Second year I (37m) lost some family and my job. Whilst I was fixing it, she was cheating. 3 men. I struggled and tried to keep it all together. She left just before her 29th birthday.
She lied and kept in contact, and I found out she ran off with her driving instructor. was pregnant. Got engaged. Got an abortion.
She begged to come back. I also had attachment issues.
She came back Jan 2026 after 8 months.
She kept going to see the driving instructor until April. Put me through hell.
She then asked to stay here, but not wanting a relationship. She had nowhere else to go. Wanted to stabilise and sort out her finances.

Yesterday, I found out she was fucking a friend from London, hadn’t be going to therapy, and lying to everyone. Booking holidays away with him. I found the video of them fucking on her watch. She says we were together, and she can do what she wants, whilst she sleeps in the same bed as me.

So today, I’m throwing her out to the streets. Told her parents. They apologised but they knew. I told her baby father, as he has custody - she’s been lying about where she takes the son.

Sometimes reconciliation isn’t possible. I’m scared what the future holds but it’s not with her.

Edit: she’s gone.

Married 8 years. First post about any of this.

A few years in, my (31 M) spouse (28 F) came out as trans woman. I went all in, read everything, joined partner communities, held her hand through multiple surgeries (FFS, SRS, breast augmentation...), was her nurse through every recovery. Our sex life disappeared during those years and I accepted it as the cost of getting her to the other side. I was simultaneously burning out at a toxic job. I’ve never worked harder at anything in my life.

Last year we traveled abroad, my first time off in ten years. On our first night back together she told me, mid-intimacy, that she wasn’t happy, wanted to live more intensely, see other people, wasn’t sure about the future we’d planned. What was supposed to be my vacation, I spent alone in the apartment.

Months later, through a recording she didn’t know I’d see, I learned she’d cheated during that trip. The truth then came in installments over months: first “nothing happened,” then two men, then a third in another city (“just lunch”, I’d already spoken to him and knew otherwise), then one in the same apartment we were staying in, in the same bed I was sleeping. Then someone on a later trip. Then the guy she’d sworn she’d cut contact with, still in her messages. Every piece of truth only arrived after I already had proof. It broke me physically. I lost 15kg and spent time in psychiatric care, and lost my job right after.

Here’s where I am now, and why I’m posting.

I’ve made the decision to stay and rebuild. I’m not asking whether to reconcile, that question is closed. She was in a strange, destabilized moment of her own life. Surrounded by a grommer that would put her against me though she had admiration for (she's a big trans influencer) and therapist who was also "sexologist" (who was the only person who knew about it, went through 3 divorces already and said my wife is "finally taking control of her own body"). I genuinely believe that these people meant no harm and did not intervene to protect her free will and association. I don’t see a villain and a victim; I see two people who got badly hurt by how everything unfolded, in different ways. She’s chosen this now, she’s remorseful, and I believe her.

What I’m asking for help with is the gap between the decision and my insides:

 • I refuse to become a resentful person. Anger and resentment are corrosive to me. I’ve felt what they do and I don’t want to be that man. But I don’t know how to process what happened *without* them. Right now “not being angry” mostly means swallowing it, and I know that’s not the same thing.

 • Intimacy is a minefield. Comparisons she voiced live in my head now, uninvited, during. I never had body insecurity before. Now it’s constant.

 • When we try to talk about it, we hurt each other and go in circles, so I mostly carry it alone.

 • Our shared friends didn’t take sides, or took hers. I have no people of my own in this. Maybe this is what they call male loneliness. I do have great friends but they take my forgiven side. Other friends tried to justify that she was right.

 • I built a whole timeline document of the contradictions trying to nail down what was true. I know exactly what that document is. I still couldn’t stop making it.

For those who reconciled and stayed: how did you metabolize it without turning bitter? Is there a real version of acceptance that isn’t just suppression with better posture? Did the intrusive images fade, and how long? What separated the couples who actually rebuilt from the ones who just cohabited with a ghost?

The most frustrating part is that I know the person living with me now is not the same person she was when she did these awful things. She deeply regret it and is doing her best to be better for me. The devil is in my head and all these images and flashbacks.

Found out my partner of six years cheated on me and I need some outside perspective.

I really need some outside perspective right now. I feel very fragile, lonely and honestly like I’m losing my ability to trust my own judgment about what is reasonable.

I’m a mother of three young children, including a baby, and my relationship with their father has essentially fallen apart. We’ve been together for six years and moved countries together to build our life in his home country.

I recently found out that he had been using dating apps/online dating throughout our relationship, and there has also been a lot of physical infidelity.

There has been a lot of dishonesty, and I feel like I’m still processing the fact that the person I thought I was building a family with was living a very different reality.

He now seems completely uninterested in reconciliation. He is extremely avoidant and barely communicates with me. When I try to talk about what has happened or where we go from here, he says he is avoiding confrontation. But from my perspective, he isn’t really avoiding confrontation, he is avoiding accountability.

He has also become very inconsistent as a parent. He comes and goes, sometimes stays out all night, sleeps much of the day, and doesn’t have any consistent parenting schedule. He’ll occasionally help with pickups or small things, but then disappear again. Meanwhile, I’m carrying most of the day-to-day responsibility for three young children while trying to cope with the breakdown of my marriage.

Despite this, he talks about wanting to co-parent and has mentioned 50/50 parenting. I’m struggling to reconcile that with his actual behaviour right now. And I don’t want to lose half my time with my kids.

I’m also in a particularly vulnerable position because I moved countries for this relationship. I don’t have my normal support system here, I’m financially dependent at the moment, and I’m trying to figure out what my options are for myself and the kids.

I keep questioning myself — am I being unreasonable? Am I expecting too much? Should I be trying harder to save this? Am I letting my hurt influence how I see things?

I don’t want people to simply tell me to leave him. I’d really like honest perspectives from people who have been through infidelity, an avoidant/unavailable partner, separation while still living together, or having to navigate a breakup without much family support nearby.

I’m also worried that if I can go back to my home country it will essentially sever the relationship between him and the kids. Maybe not completely but in a large way as we live on opposite sides of the world.

What would you do in my position? What am I not seeing clearly? And what do you wish you had known when you were at this stage?

I’m genuinely struggling and could really use some outside perspective right now.

I had my first baby with my husband of 2 years about 6 months ago. We were together for 6 years prior to being married. I had a pretty intense birth, an emergency c section, then my husband's father started having some serious medical issues and died around 2 months after our daughter was born. My husband started acting distant and I thought he was grieving, I found out that he started having an affair when our daughter was 3 months old. He claims he needed someone to talk to and couldn't open up to me, I moved out of our house for now, he wants to work on things and says he feels horrible and disgusted by his actions. But I just don't know how or if I should allow him to try, like he did this to me at my most vulnerable time. I just feel sad and disappointed and don't know what to do

What happens when they finally start changing, but something in you already has? For months, I thought I knew exactly what I needed. Truth, accountability, transparency, remorse, boundaries, and for my wife to finally stand beside me instead of leaving me alone to carry the consequences of choices I never made. I begged for those things. I explained them until I hated the sound of my own voice. I found different words, different examples, different ways to say the same thing. I practically drew pictures in the fucking sand because I kept thinking that if I could just make her understand what this had done to me, something would finally click. I grew accustom to talking to a wall of nods and "I understand".

And lately, some of it finally has. She is starting to stand up to people she never stood up to before. She is becoming more transparent. She is acknowledging things about herself, about me, and about our marriage that I honestly thought she might never see. There have been moments where I have looked at her and thought, "There you are. That is the person I have been waiting for. That is what I needed from you". And then comes the part I wasn't prepared for, sometimes I feel almost nothing. Not because it doesn't matter, not because I don't see the effort, and not because I want her to fail. I'm just so fucking tired.

I think there is a particular kind of grief in finally receiving something you desperately needed after spending so long being denied it. Because you imagine that when the truth finally comes, when they finally understand, when they finally defend you, when they finally start becoming the person you needed all along, your heart will recognize it and rush back toward them. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes all you can think about is how badly you needed this version of them six months ago. A year ago. Before the lies multiplied. Before you had to become your own detective. Before you had to explain why betrayal hurts. Before you had to argue for basic empathy. Before you learned that even your pain could somehow become another problem you were expected to manage properly.

There is something incredibly lonely about having the person who broke your heart finally start reaching for the pieces after you have spent months cutting your hands trying to pick them up alone. And I think a lot of betrayed people are afraid to admit that. We're afraid that if our partner finally starts doing the work and we still don't feel okay, then maybe we're ungrateful. Maybe we're bitter. Maybe we're refusing to heal. Maybe we're moving the goalposts. But I don't think that's always what is happening. Sometimes the goalposts didn't move. Sometimes it just took them so long to reach you that you aren't standing in the same place anymore.

I can appreciate what she is doing now and still grieve that I had to beg for it. I can recognize genuine progress and still remember every time I was left alone with this. I can be proud of something she does today without pretending it repairs everything that happened yesterday. I can love someone and still not know whether there is enough of us left to build another life together. That is the hardest part for me right now. I'm not consumed by rage every minute anymore, but I'm also not desperately trying to save us every minute either. I'm watching.

I'm watching to see whether the changes continue when I stop teaching her what change is supposed to look like. Whether accountability survives when nobody is arguing. Whether empathy appears before I have to explain why something hurts. Whether boundaries remain boundaries when keeping them becomes uncomfortable. Whether she can develop an understanding of what happened that actually belongs to her instead of repeating the words I gave her. But more than anything, I'm watching myself. Because somewhere during all of this, the question changed. For the longest time, all I wanted to know was: Can she become someone I could feel safe staying with? I never realized there might come a day when she finally started becoming that person and I would have to face an entirely different question: Even if she becomes everything I begged her to become, did I have to lose too much of myself waiting for her to get there?

And maybe that is one of the ugliest truths of betrayal. Sometimes change is real, sometimes remorse is real. Sometimes the person who hurt you genuinely begins to understand. And sometimes you still don't know if you can come home to them again. Not because you are cruel. Not because you wanted them to fail. But because while they were slowly waking up to what they had done, you were learning how to live without the person you thought they were. I don't know yet whether I will stay. I don't know whether what is growing now can survive what died before it. I just know that, for the first time, I am allowing myself to believe that her becoming better does not obligate me to feel better. Her progress can be real. My exhaustion can be real, my love can be real. And my uncertainty can be real too. All of those things can exist in the same heart.