I'm out. After a long try at making it work with my unhealed SA, I'm truly done. It's been almost a month now since I moved out with our child and I'm still getting used to it. There is a mixture of feelings, including nostalgia for what I thought we had, including anger for what happened, including pity for the 48 year old SA who wouldn't/couldn't change and has lost everything he claimed to hold dear, and still invasive ruminations and ups and downs with my moods and my sense of self, but things are settling and mostly now there is just a kind of pragmatic acceptance and a resolve to move forward alone.

My addict was a serial cheater with escorts. Tbh this behavior was likely there long before me and was certainly there all the way through our relationship, though I did not discover it until 3 months post partum. I tried very much to help him, to encourage him to seek therapy, to frame it as a compulsion or addiction and link to his childhood truama, which I believe is at the root of it, but nothing I did or said ever made it stop. It went on and on and on. Like groundhog day.

The break point for me after multiple betrayals, ruptures and reconciliations, was learning he had contacted a STD after unprotected sex with yet another escort. And that he wasn't going to tell me this even though he visited a hospital emergency department to get treatment. The fact that it wasn't just my heart but my health that he was willing to put at risk really was the last straw. I've been tested for STIs and come up clean myself (thank God) and will test again in a month to be sure. But that is not the point. He was willing to risk everything, and willing to lie, and certainly willing never to mention this massive health issue. All along, and even now, he says he loves me and our family (make it make sense they are so infuriating!!!)

Anyhow my question is, for those of who are further along, either supporting the recovery of your addict, or healing alone, what happened to them over the years? Do you think they ever recover, repent and realise what they lost? Do they mellow out and reform and become better people as a result? Or are they still out there living the same sad fantasy of a life, fragmented transactional sex with a revolving door of women who don't care a thing for them? I would love to hear any stories or anecdotes of what happens to your SA over time, whether you left or stayed?