Pressure to decide

it´s only been about 6 weeks since he finally told me about the different affairs or the cheating he had done.
It was a lot more than I thought it was, I didn´t have any proof, I had my gut feeling and then some lies I had caught him in, not lies about cheating though.
I have been very careful of accusing him of cheating because I was in a mentally abusive relationship where I was accused of cheating over and over again when I hadn´t and I would never cheat.
I have been a complete wreck since he told me, right before x-mass, thank you very much. We have four children in our home, three teens and a baby that I have with him, so not much time to talk about it, not at all as much time as I need to talk about it. On top of that, he didn´t tell me the truth or the full truth right away and I really had to be careful and calm when asking questions about it, so that he would not just get upset and leave. he thinks I talk to much about it and want´s a brake.. I don´t get a brake so I can´t give him a brake. I don´t think he deserves a brake or really even deserves to be with me.
So most of the cheating happened before we got married, at a time when we were in a long distance relationship.
I had specifically asked him if he would like to be monogamous or if he would like to be in an open relationship because of the distance, he said he would like to be monogamous with me and had many reasons and experience with open relationships to back up his choice.
I am very intense when I love someone and I thought that I had finally found the right person who liked all my touching and caring for him. I knitted him a sweater and went on to knit his whole little family sweaters to show my love for him and them. Meanwhile he was having affairs with two different women, who he would keep in touch with and then when in town he would have sex with them, he also paid for sex once in that time and then also had sex with a nurse who had taken care of him after a fire he was in a decade ago, and then he also flew to a different state to have sex with this one woman who tempted him with sexy photos after exchanging numbers after one of his shows, this all happened before we were engaged but then he cheated again in London on a work trip one night when he bought himself a blowjob. He says he had started feeling guilty and wrong about it and considered to stop before the three last times, and each one felt worse and worse .. I ask myself if that is true, what is going to stop him next time? I also ask myself, is there any way to trust someone who has this kind of a problem and treats you with such disrespect and honestly it feels de-humanizing to be cheated on.
I told my best friends about it because I had to, they are all very supportive of me and won´t judge what ever decision I make. My teens also know now, I tried to keep it a secret from them but it wasn´t possible anymore and they just want me to feel better obviously. I feel pressure from him, the teens and some of my friends to make up my mind, but my mind doesn´t feel ready.
Thanks to this site I read the " just found out" and saw that it´s normal to take up to 6 months to make any decisions and I am relived but at the same time I want to move forward with my life and make a decision and just get this over with but of course it´s not how this shit works...
Thank you all who read this, any advice on how to make the right decision, any signs of true remorse or the opposite ?

12 comments posted: Saturday, January 27th, 2024