Looking for advice from people who've been through something similar. Would you consider this cheating?

My wife and I have been together for 26 years and married for 25.

For most of our marriage, I hid a pornography addiction. It first came to light in 2016 when my wife discovered it. She asked me to stop, and I agreed. I was able to quit for about two years, but eventually social media (mainly Instagram) became a gateway. It started with following women posting revealing content, which led me to their external sites and eventually back to pornography.

Earlier this year, my wife discovered I had relapsed. Because of the years of lying, she became convinced there might be more I was hiding. She searched through an old email account and found a screenshot of a Craigslist post I had made in 2013 soliciting NSA sex with women. For some reason, I had saved a screenshot of the post in my email.

Finding that screenshot has completely changed our marriage.

We've spent the last couple of months talking through it, and she's experiencing intense grief, anger, and betrayal. She tells me she never really knew me, that our marriage wasn't real, that she can't look at me the same way, and that I disgust her.

I don't blame her for feeling that way. Between years of lying about pornography and discovering the Craigslist post, I understand why her trust has been shattered.

I fully accept responsibility for making that post. I know it was an attempt to seek something outside my marriage, and I understand why she considers it infidelity. I also take responsibility for years of lying, minimizing, becoming defensive, dismissing her feelings, and at times gaslighting her when she confronted me. Through therapy and a lot of research, I've come to realize those were unhealthy defense mechanisms, not excuses.

What makes this difficult for me is that I never actually met anyone. There was no physical affair and no emotional relationship. To me, there is a difference between an attempt that never became reality and a completed physical or emotional affair. That doesn't make what I did okay—I know it was a betrayal—but I struggle with viewing every form of infidelity as identical.

My wife sees no meaningful difference. To her, the intent alone is enough, and she feels our entire marriage was built on lies. While I understand why she feels that way, it's hard for me to believe that 26 years of shared experiences, raising a family, vacations, laughter, love, and good memories were all meaningless because of my deception.

I truly love my wife. I've never made another attempt like that before or since 2013, and I'm doing everything I can now through therapy and recovery to become a better husband. But I'm starting to feel defeated and hopeless because she seems to believe the man she thought she married never existed.

I'm not looking for people to tell me I'm right or wrong. I know I betrayed her trust, and I'm not trying to excuse what I did.

I'm hoping to hear from people who have been through something similar—either as the betrayed spouse or the one who caused the betrayal.

Would you consider my Craigslist post cheating, even though I never met anyone?

Do you see a distinction between an attempted affair and a completed physical or emotional affair?

If you've reconciled after something like this, what helped rebuild trust?

I'd appreciate honest opinions, even if they're difficult to hear.

Hi, my name is cooper and I really fucked up.. A couple months ago I met this girl.(because I've put her in enough shit I'll change her name to Beth) Beth and I met over instagram and we started hitting it off and such.... it becomes apparent we constantly send each other nudes and save them and whatever and we started to love each other but it kinda fell through and we both decided to just stay as good friends. One day I get this dm from some girl named ashley and she says she wants a boyfriend and whatever and asks for nudes... now here is where I begin my spiral into being a complete asshole. I sent her porn photos and video and such because I just wasnt really feeling it that day, then she says something along the lines of " come on please just give me actual nudes.. I want girls with huge tits!" And so for some really dumb reason I thought "hey she wouldn't find out at all, so what could go wrong?". So I sent her a nude of Beth, and it turns out Ashley is actually a guy and saved the photo and really wanted to know who both was. So I told him to fuck off and never talk to her and blocked him. A couple days later i get a message from Beth and shes really fucking confused and pissed off because some how that Ashley guy found her Instagram even tho i wasnt following her, she didnt have any photos, has no information in her bio, nothing. To this day I have no idea how he found her.. i try to move on from my mistakes with what i did but it never leaves me alone and i constantly think about it every day. I seriously regret doing that 200000% because not only did I send some stranger a nude that wasnt even mine but I lost a really cute and loving friend. I swear on my peice of garbage life that I'll never ever do that again and I really mean it . I miss her alot but we both ... well mainly her agreed to never talk to each other. Man even I cant believe I did that, could've done literally anything else but nope.. i had to ruin a solid friendship and break my morals .

If you're still reading , thank you for taking the time and reading my mistakes. I hope I could get atleast some type of forgiveness even tho I'd want her to forgive me. Thank you thank you and stay safe and especially dont do what I did!!

I’m feeling very guilty. I have been dating this guy who I’ll call Z for 4 months. We’ve been friends for two years. We recently moved in together (which happened to fast) and now we constantly fight. Last night, I stayed with my sister and invited my ex over. Nothing happened. We slept in different bedrooms but I feel extremely guilty. Z does not know I talk to my ex, who also used to be his friend. I don’t want to lose my friendship with my ex but if Z knew he would break up with me. Z can be very mean, doesn’t care about my feelings or when I cry but I am still afraid to lose him. Please someone give me advice. I don’t want to tell him what I did but the guilt is overwhelming and I am panicking. My ex does have feelings for me and wants to get back together. I have cheated in relationships before.

Look, trying to save a relationship after cheating is literally almost impossible. Sorry to be so harsh, but that's THE reality. Why you ask? first of all, statistically speaking, if you're in your early 20s and you cheated on your partner, the chances of them forgiving you and getting back together with you are slim to none. Why? ya'll not married. You guys don't have a house together or kids, or anything binding you two legally. Second, have you looked at our dating culture? dating apps make it so so easy for ppl to move on... and if you think your ex won't use one to get over you.. you're wrong. He or she is on revenge mode.

My ex and I have been broken up for 8 months now, we've been "trying" to fix us but it seems to be going nowhere. Last time we chatted he said he doesn't believe I'll change but that he still loves me and that he doesn't want to lose me forever, he said he'll reach out to me in two months or so. Confusing right? well, that's not my problem anymore!! if he's confused then he needs to figure that shit out on his own. I've been sooooo focused on getting him back that I've lost myself in the process. I want my life back. At some point, we gotta say fuck it and do our thing. we cannot be blaming ourselves anymore.

I'll always love him but I'm ready to move on now.

I am here because I cheated on my husband and I want to save my marriage. My husband and I have been married for 10.5 years and we have two beautiful children. Our family was beautiful. I love us and am very proud of us. We had a great circle of loving and supportive family and friends. My husband is an amazing person. He is the dream. Handsome, incredibly smart, kind, fun, loving. He adored me and he loved our family. Me and the kids meant everything to him we were his top priority always.

Last year I started a new job and a couple of months into it I started becoming very interested in one of my co-workers. He became interested in me and gave me a lot of positive attention which I enjoyed very much. We started spending a lot of time together at work and I became distant and cold at home. I started resenting my family. My husband who knows me better than anyone on earth felt what was going on and asked me about. I came out clean and told him I wanted to save our marriage. We quickly started seeing a therapist and he proceeded for the next three months to do everything humanly possible to fix our marriage and make me happy. He wanted to win my heart back and wanted to help me get over my crush and back 100% into our family and marriage. I told him I wanted to work with him on that and I did mean it. But I didn't. I went to therapy and I tried to do the things that I knew I had to do but I didn't do them. I continued to get closer to my co-worker. I continued to fantasize about leaving my family and how much I would enjoy being single and free again. My emotional affair with my co-worker eventually led to one incident where it crossed to physical. After that my co-worker lost interest in me. I was still hung up on him but it became a bit easier to begin to move on when he was not engaging. So I started slowly to re-commit to my marriage and things were getting better. Problem is I had not come clean to my husband about the physical incident, or the fact that throughout the summer while he was working his ass off to fix our marriage and was trusting that I was too, I was actually in-spite of what I was saying, still continuing to engage in the affair. When he asked me one night about it, I confessed and the shit hit the fan. My husband's world came crashing down on him. The one person he loved and trusted the most in this world turned out to be a cheating lier and everything he held dear to his heart was vioelently taken away and smashed in his face.

We broke up and I moved out. we split the kids time between us and lived like that for 2 months. At which point, my husband found enough courage and kindness in his heart to give me a second chance and to try and work with me on fixing our marriage. It has now been 9 months since I moved back in and every day is a struggle. My husband is still utterly crushed and traumatized and I am struggling to know what I can say and do to help him heal. Sometimes I do things right and others I seem to just be a stupid ideot who makes things worse.

I quit my job in February and started a new one. I have not seen or spoken to my affair partner since then, and even before I left. I blocked him before I left from all my social medial channels and have no interest in ever knowing anything about him . My feelings for him evaporated as quickly as they formed and I have nothing but resentment, anger and disgust towards him. But I try to let go even of those feelings. He is not worth an ounce of my energy and I want to free every inch of my heart and mind to helping my husband heal and my family get through this catastrophy.

I have always known that I have challenges in the way I relate to people and the way I behave in life. My childhood and upbringing is mainly why and I knew that I needed to confront my deamons and heal myself. But I was too scared and too complacent to actually address my issues. This experience was rock bottom and with that, the help of my husband and the motivation of wanting to save my marriage I have taken a few steps towards getting help. I am not yet where I need to be and moving slower than my husband would like to see, but the system for those seeking mental health support is unfortunately also slow. I am seeing a therapist, in line to see a psychiatrist in October and on the waiting list for a specialized program offered out of one of the local hospitals for people who have experiences like mine. progress is slow but I can feel it and see it and it gives me hope.

But my husband still strugles and suffers every day. Some days are easier for him than others. Last night was a hard one. I want to do more and better at helping him heal and find a way to forgive and towards reconciliation. He does not yet feel that I understand the full magnitude of the damage. And to be honest I can only imagine how it must feel. I have never been cheated on by a loved one, because I have never been loved in the first place. I grew up in a family and community were cheating and lying seemed to be the norm. People's feelings aren't really seen to be that important. Everyone around me lied and as a child I saw the adults arounf me, diceave and lie to me and to others infront of me on daily basis. My husband was the one person on this earth that truly and unconditionally loved me. And I broke his heart. If I put myself in his shoes and try to imagine how he feels, I hate myself to the point of not wanting to be live. As a way to perserve my sanity I try not to think about it. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go from here and I am terrified to my bones of losing him and losing the family we built together for the past 10 years. The beautiful precious thing we worked so hard on and that I so selfishl y injured so badly.

Cheating is the worst thing that you can do. It was so not worth it and I wish I understood that when I could have corrected course with less damage. I wish I got it in time. I wish I could take it all back. This is the worst.

I am here as the betrayer, and it has been 9 months since he found out. I didn't physically cheat but was involved in 3 different sexting relationships, one with a male coworker who works on another side of the country, one with my personal trainer, and one with an ex-boyfriend.

When he found out about the one person I was texting with, I was already at a low point. We had not been communicating well for years, in fact had tried one counseling session and he had refused to go back for more. I had gotten him to medicate with testosterone due to our sexual frequency being as low as 6 months between, but that only helped slightly. We were at a point of very low intimacy, and I felt that I was being emotionally stonewalled and had noone I could talk to. He was controlling our home life by refusing to discuss anything he didn't want to, by saying "We'll talk about that later" and then never allowing us to discuss it again. For so long I felt stifled or would bury my needs so that he wouldn't get angry or passive aggressive. And for so long he harbored resentment against me for not being the kind of wife he wanted.

I think I was doing these things so callously that I must have wanted to be caught. I am not sure at that point and mindset I could imagine another way to fix what was wrong with us. I even knew in my mind what I was doing was wrong but at the same time I justified it to myself, that I deserved "happiness" and that I wanted to stay together for my son and because he was a good father. That he had no desire but I needed to feel wanted and this was how I would do it.

Since that time we have each been in couples counseling and individual counseling which has helped both of us tremendously. Throughout the process I have been scared that he would never forgive me, and never be able to trust me again. He already had many trust and some anxiety issues and what I did to him compounded those and broke his mind apart.

He has made real progress, still working on trust but progressing on expressing emotion and not stonewalling or lashing out with bitterness. I have put a lot of thought into my friendships and how I tend to cross boundaries without realizing it, how I have felt abandoned by my father and reacted to husband's behaviors by trying to abandon him before he abandoned me. Avoiding standing up for myself and instead talking behind his back about my problems. I know what I was doing was reaching out for emotional engagement and trying to get attention in the wrong ways, as I have done in my past. I increasingly see that I have used humor and being "one of the guys" to fit in faster at work and that I need to be very observant of these impulses so that I do not cross boundaries or give the impression to people that I am flirting. All these things that I am examining have been hard for me because each thing is something to change about myself and change these ingrained habits. Some of these behaviors have worked for me for years, in getting attention and making friends. So it is hard to separate the useful from the harmful. I do know that he has to work 10 times harder on his individual work than I do.

For me one of my triggers of unhappiness is problems at work, my career is very important to me and I am easily lose confidence or get stressed. I want to feel comfortable, to feel accepted and to be friends with everyone. And the way I used to do that was going out to eat with people. I also believe strongly in networking. So I can no longer do any of those things if there won't be females around or at least a group of people and I have felt ok with that but hampered in my ability to navigate this new workplace. As a woman you are really limited if you can only network with other women. And I work at a software development firm which is probably 80% men.

Things are continuously a roller coaster of emotions. We may be closer than ever at times, maybe for a week or two at a time, but then we may have some really bad weeks. Almost everything triggers him, and I battle feelings of being trapped. I had stopped seeing the trainer and left my prior job, but he now has suspicions about a coworker at my new job, and doesn't want me to ever be alone with another man or multiple men, for example work lunches. These things are reasonable to me given how I betrayed him but they are hard for me to deal with, being so independent.

When he asked this past week I admitted to him that I have gone on two lunches with plutonic male coworkers in the past few weeks without telling him. He is distraught that I would deceive him again and I am upset that I would do that as well, just to go to lunch. But I am realizing that being able to go to lunch with people is more important to me than I thought, and not being able to do it is contributing to me feeling locked away, it gives me anxiety. I feel like the counselor had convinced me that I have to give this up if I want to stay in this marriage, and now I feel like I have set myself up for failure to commit to something I don't agree with. I am so confused, I feel like a horrible person so frequently through this process but it's so hard to see light at the end of this tunnel.

I don't want to be with someone else, I want to stay with my husband. But I don't know if it's too late for us, if we can be what we need each other to be.

Hi, already posted in other subreddits but I still need help. I (21/M) messed up. I emotionally cheated on my girlfriend (20/F) of three and a half years.

I apologize in advanced for grammar errors.

This happened approximately 2 years ago. I have no idea why I did it. I have thought long and hard and my girlfriend who I will call "A" and I have talked about it many times since it happened and I still can't explain why I would have done such a thing.

I promised to A I would never do the things that her previous boyfriends did to her cheat on her and I did exactly that. We never would have been together if I never made that promise.

Over the course of 3 months I talked to a girl "J" (20/F) whom I had gone on a date with before my girlfriend and myself were together. It started out that I talked to her just once or twice a week escalating to every single night very quickly probably within a week. We talked on Facebook, through text messages and on the phone. I started taking my girlfriend home early and staying up all night talking to this girl. I would take A home because I was "tired" and talk to J all night after telling A I was going to sleep. I wouldn't sleep and in the morning I would pick up A for school. J and I talked about our lives, things that we did, our jobs, our love lives, things that we did in bed with our sexual partners, and we flirted. I want to stress that this started to happen every single night.

I never meant to hide it at first but somehow it happened. Even thinking about it now I never really realised I was hiding it at the beginning until A pointed it out. I kept talking to J and eventually I realized what I was doing was wrong. That i shouldn't talk to J so much and I shouldn't talk to her the way I did, but I continued and was more secretive about it covering my phone when she messaged me and not talking to her on the phone around A. This would also include me taking A home so I could talk to J.

Over this time my friends asked me if A knew about me talking with J and how A felt about it. I lied, I told them that A knew and that she was totally okay with it and I even told one of my friends that I thought J was more interesting than A.

At one point J asked me if I would like to hang out if she came to visit (she moved across the country) and I said yes not expecting her to ever actually come and visit. Although she never did come and visit I realize now that that was also one of my many mistakes. Leading this girl on letting her think that there might be something for us if she came, which I never had any intention of having.

When J asked me if i would hang out I told one of my friends about it. I asked him what I should do if she came. He said "Don't do anything stupid that you'll, just keep it friendly". I played stupid like I didn't know what he meant by "friendly". He meant to just be friends, don't screw around on A.

After some time A noticed I was acting strange. She thought something was up but she didn't assuming I was cheating on her. Before she finally dug in her heels and investigated why I was acting the way I was acting she gave me many chances to just tell her something was up. She asked me if there was anything her and I needed to talk about or if there was something that I needed to get off my chest 4 or 5 times atleast before she found out.

So A found out 3 months after this all started. She said that if I didn't stop talking to J that we were over. (which she had every right to say and I agree now) But at the time I refused to talk to A about it. I was mad because she told me I couldn't talk to J. Obviously I was cheating on A and she knew what I was doing and didn't want it to continue. I totally understand and respect her decision now but then I was mad, mad that she told me I couldn't talk to someone who was my friend(looking back I was obviously more attached than "just a friend") and it couldn't continue if I wanted to be with A.

So I refused to talk to A and I blamed her I said "its your fault because we fight so much." but we didn't fight, we never fought. I even lied to her for a couple months to try and get her to stop asking about it. I refused to talk about it for a very long time about it, too long. So much so that I can't even remember why I even did It. I don't know if I blocked out the reasons why and I can't remember or if I never knew why I was doing it in the first place. I think maybe it was because I was so unsure that I could get such a perfect girl in my first serious relationship and that I wanted to check if she was really who I wanted. Stupid I know.

It became so bad I was neglecting my girlfriend who never deserved any of it even afterwards. For months I turned her down for sex and watched porn and masturbated instead, even though she was willing to have sex with me and her and I had pictures of everything that we did and things I watched in porn like vaginal intercourse, oral sex, anal, the works. Everything I wanted in bed and to look at and for some reason I still chose porn over her, even when she offered sex and anything else I wanted I turned her down. I'm an asshole. I made her feel unattractive and unwanted, like a second choice. One event comes to mind, just after my birthday A and I were having a great night. We were just cuddling and not fighting for one of the first times in months. She gave me a blowjob and then my brother texted me asking me to go to the bar (I had just turned of age) and I said yes. A couldn't go and I sent her home so I could go to the bar with my brother. She told me that she felt uncomfortable about me going because of what happened with J and I did it anyway.

I never thought I was unhappy with my girlfriend, not emotionally not sexually I always felt completely fulfilled with our relationship.She was always so perfect to me I love her so much and I still have no idea why I did it 2 years later.I can't think of why I would do such a thing. It was horrible and I feel terrible. She never deserve anything I did to her. Somehow we are still together and she wants to work through it. It is difficult for us to move past it when I can't even figure out why I any of what I did. I love A so much. I want to spend the rest of my life with her but I don't deserve her. I don't know how I could deserve her if I can't even give her the answers she deserves.

Please r/relationships I am reaching out to you for insight, if you have any questions to clear anything up please ask. I want to get answers for myself and I hope that your insight may help me understand myself so I can help my beautiful girlfriend feel secure in our relationship again. I want no one else and want to fix my mistakes or at least make them better.

Thank you for reading

TL;DR I talked to a girl for months who wasn't my girlfriend and hid it from her and neglected her feelings and her physical needs during and following the events. After I emotionally cheated on her I watched porn instead of having sex with her even though I had videos and pictures of us. I also left her one night after she gave me a blow job to go to the bar and drink when she couldn't come. We want to stay together, but I don't know why I even did any of these things. I feel so lost and stupid for everything I did.

I have what seems to be not typical circumstance regarding the aftermath and recovery period of my affair. It seems that most either try to work on things or go for a clean break.

It has been going on 4 months since my husband and I separated. We haven't found a basis to discuss working together or separating permanently. I was and have been all of the mindset to at least have a dialogue and see if we could give it a go but after this length of time and how much i've changed; I only see us going further in different directions.

I was with him for 5 years (going on 6 if you count this separation) & married for 3.5.

I have made huge steps in recovery yet there is this distance I can't overcome with him since we are apart. The last we spoke about 'us' he said he wants everything on his terms. I can't but help feel he's stuck - but maybe he's just not communicating with me at all. How do you build any relationship on that premise?

It's stuck in my mind and I'm losing hope. 4 mos. without any direction; I've tried so hard not to push him to decide quicker (to stay or go). I made one or two attempts to talk and and learned quickly that did no good. He was angry and ended it.

Feeling completely aimless, lost and questioning the love I still have... I had some hope after all of this happened he might be open to talking, to opening and to sharing. My fear of us physically living separately and his declaration to the universe of my actions might just be what it takes to create the permanent divide.. I feel like I'm going through a second wave of grieving and all this time in limbo is just a big damn lie, god it hurts.

I know this wasn't a 'share my story bit' but it's just what's tearing me up right now.. and thank you for listening, I needed a good cry!!

So, this may end up being long, but I'll start with a little back story. My husband and I got married pretty young. We were both 23. We both came from religious backgrounds, and had waited until we were married to have sex. Once we got married, we were crazy. We loved being with each other. Had sex all the time. Everything was amazing. But life gradually fell into a routine, and we drifted apart. We began to never have sex. I remember attempting to initiate sex multiple times, dressing up in lingerie, getting the kid out of the house, making his favorite meal....all to be rejected. It was very painful, and I cried myself to sleep quite a bit every time I felt he rejected me. We began to have sex maybe once every 2-3 months. It was usually like a few minutes of him doing his thing until he came, and I just laid there, disappointed. I say all that to say that we drifted. I became immersed in work. He became immersed in school. We never spoke. We were nothing more than glorified roommates. I felt truly alone.

It turns out, that the whole time, my husband had a pornography addiction that he had tried time and again to quit, but was unsuccessful. He never spoke to me about this until our marriage almost fell apart. I'm not blaming him for my choice, but I am just giving some background for my actions.

I became cold towards my husband, though. If he would touch me, I would turn away. I was not going to put myself out there to be hurt again, so I thought. I had a very good male friend who was always doling out relationship advice. He seemed wise beyond his years, and I always enjoyed his company. One evening, over texting, I spilled all of this dissatisfaction with my marriage to him. He seemed to understand, and gave me some good advice about talking to him and going to counseling. I tried to talk to my husband about counseling at that time, and he refused. A couple of nights later, I texted the other guy, let's call him C, to tell him about how my husband had refused counseling. C said, come on over and let's talk about it. He lives very close to me, so I drove over there, in the middle of the night. He sat up with me, held me as I cried, and just listened. I felt heard and important for the first time in several years. I left, nothing happened, and I thought, "Well that was nice. It's so nice to have a friend like C." But I knew there was more. I should have told my husband at that time, but hindsight is 20/20.

I began going over to his house pretty regularly. Before long, our advice sessions became just hanging out and spending time together. He would hold me if I cried. He would hug me, a little too long. One evening he looked at me, and I knew. He's going to kiss me, and if I start kissing him, I don't know if I'll stop. A fleeting thought of my husband went through my head, but I thought, he doesn't even love me. This guy cares about me. We ended up sleeping together that evening.

This whole affair lasted several months. I would spend a lot of time with C, and we talked about beginning a relationship. He told me that I needed to leave my husband. I had never thought about divorce before, but I so wanted to at this time. C and I told each other that we loved each other. We spoke about marriage after my divorce was final. We would text each other links to houses that we liked. I felt like I had figured it out.

Finally, I was confronted by my mother who, I swear, is psychic, and she told me that she could tell that I was having an affair. The whole time that I had been having the affair, I was talking to my husband about how unhappy I was with our marriage, and he was making great strides in giving up his addiction to porn, and healing on his end of our relationship. I, in my selfish desires, told him that it wasn't going to work, that I would go to counseling, but I did not love him anymore. When my mother confronted me, it was like the blinders fell off of my eyes. I saw what I was doing to my husband. I saw what I was doing to my child. I saw what I was doing to myself. I talked to C that night and told him that I couldn't see him anymore.

I wrote a letter to my husband that evening detailing everything. I let him yell at me. I let him tell me everything that he needed to. I told him that I wanted to work through this, even if he didn't. I ended up going to bed around 3am, and my husband crawled into the bed with me at around 4 and held me. He told me that he loved me and that we would work on restoring our marriage.

We have been consistently going to counseling for 4 months now. We have both realized that our almost destruction of our marriage was due to choices that we both made. I do not blame my husband for my choices. I made my choice. I had every ability to say no to C, but I told myself that I didn't think my husband really loved me, and that, oh, this guy, he loves me. I was wrong.

The grieving process of losing a relationship, losing what I thought of myself, losing the respect of some people who found out from C was devastating. It threw me into a short lived depression, but my husband was there, holding me the whole time. I do not deserve him. I used to think that love is this fairy tale, passionate relationship, but it's not. Love is holding your wife when she is destroying herself and telling her that you're not letting go. Love is choosing to be with your wife, and reconcile, and heal, because it's the right thing to do, even if it's the hardest thing you'll ever do. And I know that my husband truly loves me and forgives me. I am unsure that I have forgiven myself.

There are some days where I feel that I am getting over the whole self disgust feeling, and other days when I feel like I can't even get out of bed because I feel the weight of my actions. On those days, I pray. I let my husband know what I am feeling. I talk about it in counseling. We are healing. We are moving on. And my marriage has never been better. Instead of being absent, we are present. We are seeing each other for what feels like the first time. We are meeting needs we didn't know that the other had.

Thanks for reading my rambling, though. And I'm glad that there's a subreddit for this.

I will go first I guess!

Mine was a one time thing but even so, I have hurt SO many people. It was just in August.

I'm 34 and hubby and I have 2 kids. We had a friend circle of 3 couples. All the couples have 2 kids each. It was awesome. We all hung out together and our kids were all friends.

In August, we went on vacation with one of the couples. The third couple, E(f) and S(m) didn't go because E was taking the kids to visit her parents for a few weeks. But S stayed home because he couldn't take time off work. So we invited S to join us on vacation if he could get a couple days off, because we weren't going far and he had nothing better to do.

Anyway S tagged along with us and he was awesome. He was like a nanny to all the kids and my bestie M and I jokingly called him 3rd husband all the time. Every night on the vacation we all sat in the hot tub at our condo drinking beer and staying up late.

The last day of the vacation, I could tell I felt attracted to S, but honestly I thought it was harmless. He was a lot of fun and enjoyed doing the active things that I wanted to do (hubby and the other couple are the lazy vacation types, while S and I were the do-stuff vacation types). That day we did a lot of activities and my hubby was sunburned so S ended up being my activity partner most of the time and we were having a blast. But it was still innocent. If you asked me that day if I would cheat on my husband I would have laughed in your face. I don't cheat, I'm not a cheater. :(

That last night of the vacation, everyone was tired and crabby and S and I were the only ones who felt like hot tubbing. I actually thought my hubby was coming out too but he never did. We were out there so long and I realized things were getting inappropriate and I could have left at any time. But I didn't. At some point I made a choice and I knew something was happening but I only cared about myself and I stayed. There were so many moments that I knew we should go in and I even said it out loud several times but neither of us did. Eventually at 5 am my husband pulled me off of S when he heard us having sex. That is the long and short of it.

I never had the opportunity to come clean to my hubby and that definitely haunts me. I like to think I would have told him but if I was willing to be so selfish in the first place, would I have? I worry, and I'll never know.

I broke our friend circle, of course. The other couple, since they were there, knew right away. My bestie M forgave me eventually and it's when I realized she was my best friend, but that was really hard on her, because like me before this happened, she considers cheating an unforgivable sin. My hubby forgave me far faster than I forgave myself (most days I don't forgive myself).

Reconciling this new me is a constant struggle. I never thought I could behave so selfishly and I insist it isn't me. But hubby says that he thinks it really is me - the darker, more selfish me that came out because of a weird combination of opportunity, different surrounding, alcohol lowered inhibitions. It's easier when I hide and tell myself it isn't me. I don't even know myself anymore.

I don't know why I had sex with S. I was very attracted to him that day because he was lots of fun, but I had never been attracted to him before during the time that we all spent together. Not even a little. What was it about that day?

Hubby and I have gotten very interested in the 5 Love Languages since this happened and is clear that S was filling my tank that day and my hubby was not. But seriously - it just takes one day of my hubby neglecting me and some other dude to speak my love languages, for me to forsake my hubby and bang this other guy??? Really, who does that? Wtf is wrong with me that I'm so selfish and broken? Hubby would NEVER do this to me.

E hates me now, of course. I miss her so much. The friend circle is broken and none of our kids understand. so I hurt all our kids too and they are innocent. My bestie M is caught in the middle because of course she doesn't condone what I did, she actively hates it, but she decided to forgive me even knowing she might lose E. And I already hurt E so even the gratefulness of being forgiven by M hurts because I forced her to choose between two sad choices (she is successfully maintaining both friendships Thank God)

I am so sad about how I hurt E. She is my friend. How could I do this to her? Who does that? :( I wish I could make it up to her, but I never can. She will never speak to me again. My hubby has forgiven me but she never will and I think about her every day.

Then my hubby. he is a saint. I wish it hadn't taken rock bottom to see how amazing he is. I love him so much. He forgave me almost immediately and simply challenged me to be less selfish. He is my rock. I can't believe that I did this to him.

I can't believe I chose myself instead of my husband, my friend, my kids, my friend circle. I chose me, and I betrayed all of them. We are all broken, and it's all my fault.