Almost a year before he told her. 8 Mos. since she found out.
Did he think she was going to give him a merit badge for being honest? Why did he tell her after all that time? If it was long over and there was no chance that she’d find out I have to wonder if he didn’t want to hurt her. Unless he just constantly thinks of himself.
I’m just popping in to second counseling. I don’t mean to come off as Anne Landers, but people are really good at deluding themselves and also really bad at figuring out why they feel the way they feel. A counselor or therapist is trained in digging that kind of shit out.
Also, I give your relative props; I had a boyfriend (not even a husband) cheat on me and when he confessed it was over, period. Not only was sex out of the question, but any semblance of a relationship was, too. I know that if my husband cheated on me he’d be out the door so fast. That’s a good way to ruin trust.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe she just doesn’t trust him anymore. Trust is really hard to rebuild. You can’t trust that the person isn’t physically having sex with you and mentally having sex with them; you can’t trust that they won’t do it again, with the same person or someone else. And really, you need someone trained in this to guide you. When my dad cheated on my mom, they went through it the hard way and to this day still kind of resent each other.
I’d ask my mom but I really don’t want to bring up the painful memories to her. She never really got over it because they didn’t get counseling.
~Tasha
My guess is that she can’t and she never will be able to. But he is the father of her children and so she will stick in the marriage for the sake of the children until she can’t stand it. However, don’t expect sex - that’s an unreasonable expectation. Your friend may have bought himself a celibate marriage for the sake of the children when he betrayed her trust.
That’s where my friend is. Since he screwed up and they are his kids too, they are two people sleeping next to each other in the same house raising kids.
From the OP
I mean, I understand you’re point, but you’re calling him out for finally having the balls to come clean because he had done something wrong, and it was destroying him. You can’t ignore or cover up your past, you face it, learn and grow from it, and hope for the best. Obviously he had been dwelling on it and it was a wound that he felt he needed to personally heal that was affecting his marriage.
Again, counseling to get at the root of the trust issues. At the risk of beating the point in to the ground, if she and he really want to try to make a serious attempt at this, and I think mature people for the sake of the marriage can at least go through everything they can to figure out how he can regain her trust, with the aid of a counselor who because they’re trained to can figure out everybody’s motives as a third party.
It was hurting him and it should have because he’s the one who fucked up. HE should have gone to counseling by himself to work thru his issues. He should have let his wife continue to be happy and done whatever he needed to do to be a better husband.
Balls have nothing to do with it. He should have kept it to himself and lived with the fact that he was a liar and cheater and hope she never found out because it would hurt her. Who gives a shit if he personally heals at her expense. He felt guilty? waaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I have to say, knowing someone had been lying to you for an entire year would hurt considerably worse than an immediate confession–it had to make her feel like a fool and a dupe on top of everything else, and it taints every memory of that year. He also needs to remember that it took him a whole year to make the decision to tell her–she hasn’t had even that long to have the decision to forgive him.
Pardon me, but if you exchange “infidelity” with “cancer” - the LAST way I would want to heal my cancer is by giving it to my husband in order for me to feel better. This is his mess and he should “heal” from it like the big boy he was pretending to be when he was screwing someone other than his wife. THAT would take balls - to own his mistake 100% and not expect her to fix it with her forgiveness. This is his wrong and it’s his alone to fix.
FWIW - my first husband cheated on me and the moment I found out was the moment our marriage died. He did not confess as the above person did. I discovered it quite by accident. Would our marriage have survived had I not discovered his infidelity? Probably not, but I would’ve walked away from our marriage without the additional burden of trust issues which took me several years to come to terms with.
I could never get over it, It is just not Right
Thatwould certainly be the bigger deal for me. The infedilty wouldn’t matter as much to me as the issue of trust.
The OP says they are in therapy. That will probably be the best for sorting out the communication issues in this aftermath, but shattered trust is really hard to rebuild.
In my opinion he needs to shut up and walk the walk. He’s a suave guy, and can talk his way into or out of anything. He has agreed to couples counseling, but not individual counseling. He apparently tried for a few times and gave up on it. This speaks volumes in my opinion as to what’s going on in his head. Somehow I think he thinkgs he’s going to get away from it if he shows up like a peice of meat to the counseling sessions. I really feel for those kids. They are at a rough age, where mommy and daddy mean the world to them, thier dad is still the knight in shining armor and mom is still the queen. For the these two to split…it would be very difficult for the kids.
I think she needs to define what would be “enough” in the way of repenting for what he did. He needs to do whatever that is and she has to stick by it. If he’s not willing to do that, they’re doomed.
My great-uncles lived most of their lives either in a small village near Barcelona or in Bahia. He liked his paid girls; was terribly surprised the first time that, after a trip to Barcelona with some clients, his wife asked him to “do to me what you did to the redhead”. He never realized he talked in his sleep; his wife had no problem with him dancing with other women so long as he went home with her.
How could she? Because the other things he brought to her life made up for that. Because she knew he was going home with her. She once said with a grin that “hey, where else was a housewife supposed to learn about that thing with a feather, in the 50s and in Spain?”
They do need to take the dirty laundry out, but, if the global relationship is worth it, they will find a way to forgive each other.
I don’t get this line of thinking at all. Its not the finding out that hurts, its the cheating. If he cheated on her its her right to know, otherwise you are having a relationship based on lies. Its her decision now wether she wants to continue having a relationship with a man who cheated on her. Personally i will never stay in a relationship with someone who cheated on me, and i would like to know no matter how long its been. Its not about whos hurting more or who wants to feel better, its about having a relationship based on false pretenses. I much rather hurt for a few months than go a lifetime without knowing what kind of person i am married too.
I agree, she needs to define what is enough. What about the children? Do two people need to be a keystone of a family whilst living under the same roof? With a 51% divorce rate I would think not. This saddens me, I know it saddens her as well.
Maybe in some odd way this is part of her relearning to trust him. Sort of “If I unleash all my emotions on him, and yet he still stays, maybe I can trust him”.
Another possibility, considering the reason he told her was because of guilt and beating himself up over it, for a year, of course that’s going to carry over into the relationship and she’s going to participate in beating him up over it too.
If he couldn’t heal himself over it, there’s even less chance that she will be able to.
Answering the questions shuts down the line of questioning that they should be prsuing, though. He had no idea what the other woman would do with him in bed when he decided to betray his wife. Questions about what they did in bed focuses on something that is not the problem. If he wants to stay married, he should not help his wife torure herself with images of him with another woman.
If he doesn’t want to stay married, he should not help his ex-wife torture herself with images of him in bed with another woman. Of course, he may want her to torture herself, perhaps because he resents being punished, or because he wants her to dump him, so he doesn’t have to take all the blame for the dissolution of their marriage.
My mother spent the first 34 years of her relationship with my father never disagreeing with him in public. Among other things, this means that if one of us kids asked for permission for anything when both were present, the answer would always be “no” (Dad was a fast-on-the-draw no-man, amazing that he managed to get married).
This was in reaction to having spent the previous 15 years of her life watching her parents fight and yell and call each other all kinds of names (they never got to see the “making out making up” that went on later and in private). Gramps was a travelling salesman; when he wasn’t home, Grandma was a tyrant but at least didn’t end up each and every meal in shouts.
Having both parents there is not necessarily the best of things. It sure wasn’t for Mom and Auntie.
They definitely need to chill out with regard to letting the children know their dirty personal business. Regardless of their shit, they need to act like parents who care about their children. And that means mom can’t be belittling dad in front of them. It means they have to be civil to each other. It means they have to work together.