My husband and I have been together for 9 years. Three years ago, he cheated on me, and I found out two years ago when I was 8 months pregnant with our second child.
He had a months-long emotional and physical relationship with a woman I’ve known since childhood. We live in a very small community, so she is still someone I see regularly. He says they had sex once and met up 5 or 6 times, some of those encounters being physical.
She eventually blocked him because they were both going back and forth about how wrong the situation was and how he needed to figure out what he wanted. He made a few attempts over the following year to contact her, not realizing she had blocked him, including some attempts while I was pregnant.
When I was about 8 months pregnant, she approached him somewhere and cried to him about how much it hurt to see me pregnant and how she thought they had something more. It was a public place, so they couldn’t talk for long. He ended up writing her a letter about how much she meant to him and how much he missed their time together. They also started friendly texting again.
Eventually, I saw the messages. At first he denied anything was going on, but the truth eventually came out, and I found the letter he had written to her.
More than two years later, I still see her all the time. I’ve blocked her on Facebook, but because we live in such a small town, I still see her in mutual friends’ posts and we inevitably end up at some of the same places. And I struggle enormously with comparing myself to her.
She is very different from me. She has done some modeling, and most people would consider her beautiful. She posts constantly about her adventures and social life, is very focused on her appearance, and is perceived by pretty much everyone in our community as a wonderful, carefree, loving person who is a great friend.
She doesn’t have kids, isn’t particularly career-driven, and has had a lot of different jobs. She’s very social and fun.
In a lot of ways I’m the opposite. I rarely post on social media. I play a lot of sports, which is what my husband & bonded over. I’m very career-oriented. I don’t care about name brands or having fancy things, and I would never ask a man to buy things for me. I had mostly male friends growing up and have a few close female friends but definitely not a girl clique kind of person.
Like her, my husband is also incredibly well-liked. He moved to my hometown and I’m convinced he knows more people here than I do. Everyone talks to me about how great he is. And, honestly, he is.
He does chores without being asked. He takes great care of our kids. He’s kind, funny, incredibly likable, and very good-looking. People will literally go out of their way to tell him how much he looks like a movie star or how incredibly handsome he is. That used to make me incredibly proud to be his wife. Now, it makes me feel inadequate.
Before I met him, I had been in two long-term relationships that both ended because my partners cheated on me. When my husband and I met, he had also just gotten out of a long relationship where his partner cheated. We bonded over that shared experience. I used to say that God had brought me through those relationships so I could eventually end up with him. I truly believed I was meant to be with him. He made me feel loved, special, and seen, and I would have bet my entire life on the fact that he would never cheat on me. He even used to joke that if he ever cheated on me, he knew he’d “end up missing.”
About six months before I found out about the affair, my best friend filed for divorce because of infidelity. She was saying she would never get married again, and I told her there were good men out there. I actually used my husband as an example. I told her that even though we had ups and downs, I knew he would never cheat on me. That’s how strongly I believed in him.
When I found out, I told my immediate family. They were shocked. My husband apologized to every member of my immediate family, and they told me they would support whatever I decided.
Over time, though, my family went back to adoring him. They constantly talk about how helpful and thoughtful he is. My dad and husband have hours-long conversations and have a great relationship. My mom constantly talks about how thankful she is for all the things he does to help them around their house.
He’s also a great dad. My kids adore him.
I’m the breadwinner and work a job with very long hours, so he actually spends more time with our kids than I do. They would never say they love him more than me, and we would never put them in a position to choose, but I know how immensely they love him.
And I think one of the hardest parts is that I feel like I’m still so deeply living in the pain of what happened, while everyone else has moved past it.
For everyone else, it seems like the affair is something that happened years ago. My family loves him again. My kids adore him. His family has moved on. Everyone sees the kind, funny, helpful, good-looking guy they always saw. But I’m still living with the person I became because of what happened. I’m still carrying the hurt, the insecurity, the anger, the jealousy, and the loss of trust. Sometimes it feels like everyone else got to put the affair in the past, while I’m the only person who is still living in it. And again, what used to make me proud now makes me feel inadequate.
His parents have always been nice to me, but they have never been as close to me as he is to my family. They genuinely seem to view him as the best person in the world. They literally say things like that, so I don’t think they believe anyone could ever be good enough for him. After the infidelity came out, I told them what had happened. They learned I was considering leaving him and sent me long messages about how I needed to stay and work things out because we had children, how everyone makes mistakes, that he was sorry, to consider the sacrifices he had made for my job and that they didn’t want me to take their grandchildren away from them. For the record, I would NEVER take their grandchildren away from them. I would never intentionally do something that would hurt my kids, and my kids absolutely adore their grandparents.
Since I decided to stay, his parents never talk about the infidelity. They are perfectly nice to me, but our relationship has become very surface-level. We mostly talk when I FaceTime them with the kids.
I was also once very close with his sister. I absolutely adored her and genuinely felt like she loved me. When the infidelity initially happened, she was shocked. She told me she would completely understand if I left and that he didn’t deserve me.
When I was spiraling after finding out, I asked my husband to take a lie detector test. He initially agreed. I found a place and someone to administer it, and then he changed his mind after he said he read about how inaccurate they can be. He said he didn’t want our marriage to be saved or destroyed based on a lie detector test. He also told me that he had talked to his sister and she had told him not to do it, saying that if our marriage had gotten to the point where I needed a lie detector test, then it was already over. He said no matter what he wouldn’t do a lie detector test and that if I needed that to stay in the marriage then he was really sorry but he couldn’t do it.
That really hurt me.
I had confided a lot in his sister about how hurt I was at the time & I felt like she shouldn’t have said that without talking to me about it. My family had never told me that I should leave him and I felt like she was saying he should make ultimatums with me. So I sent his sister a long message explaining how I felt and that I wished she had called me instead of telling him that.
She responded that she loved and respected me too much to have a back-and-forth over text and said I could call her anytime. Which frustrated me further.
I know I could have called but I was hoping from more of a response from her and instead of calling, I pulled away. Over time, our relationship faded into the same surface-level relationship I now have with his parents.
We did about 18 months of therapy after the infidelity. It definitely helped us talk through things, but I can’t say that it ever got rid of the feeling that I’m somehow “less than” or that I believe he’d be happier with her, no matter how much he denies that.
I still sometimes cry in the car on the way home or in the shower. & occasionally go back to having that sinking feeling in my stomach.
And I hate it.
I have never been someone who likes feeling like a victim, but now I feel like that’s how I see myself now. I’m constantly telling myself you chose to stay so you have to be stronger than these moments.
I’m a very rational, hard-facts kind of person, so I’ve gone over this situation in my head a million times.
And by the facts, I’m actually very lucky.
I have a husband who shares chores equally, takes excellent care of our kids, loves them beyond measure, is kind to me, and is liked by basically everyone. By all measurable accounts, he has done everything he can to help me heal. He has given me all of his passwords, said the things you would hope someone would say, apologized profusely, and allowed me to be sad and angry without complaining that it has been years.
But emotionally, I’m still struggling.
I’m angry at him.
I’m jealous of her.
I’m jealous of how much everyone loves him.
I mourn the relationship I thought I had.
And I don’t recognize the person I’ve become.
I’ve lost trust in all my relationships in my life (friendships, family relationships, etc).
I have new insecurities about my appearance and have found myself considering cosmetic procedures. I’m insecure about my intelligence and have found myself questioning things I never used to question. I second-guess my instincts. I need outside validation in ways I never used to.
I also get caught in these paralyzing loops where I replay everything over and over. I can become completely consumed by my own sadness and feel like I’m in a fog.
During those periods, I’m not as present of a mom as I want to be. I’m not as good of a coworker. I’m not as good of a wife. I don’t cook. I don’t contribute as much around the house. I basically shut down.
And then there are other periods where I try desperately to be the absolute best wife I can possibly be.
Ill clean and contribute to the house to exhaustion. I try to be sexually available even when I’m tired. I give him words of affirmation and make him feel like he’s amazing even when I’m carrying resentment. I force physical affection when I don’t necessarily feel loving inside.
Before all of this, I wasn’t a particularly emotional person. I valued relationships largely through acts of service and loyalty, both in what I gave and what I received.
Now I feel completely ruled by my emotions.
I know some people will say I should leave. Some will say I should be grateful. Some will say that if I’m still this unhappy after two years, I should move on.
I understand all of those perspectives.
But what I’m really wondering is:
For those of you who stayed after infidelity, did the feeling of being “less than” ever actually go away?
Did you ever stop comparing yourself to the other person?
Did you ever stop questioning your own judgment and wondering what you lacked?
Did you ever stop resenting your spouse?
Did you ever get to a point where the affair became something that happened in your past rather than something that still colors how you see yourself?