Hello everyone,
My name is Josh. My wife and I have been married for almost 8 years. The story of my cheating pre-dates the marriage.
During the time that my wife and I were dating I had flirted with many girls in person and through other means such as texting which I believed at the time to be innocent flirting. Well, I eventually joined the military, and since we were not married yet we were separated by a couple of hours. I am a shy person, so I spent most of my time alone in my dorm. Eventually I got myself a laptop and started to explore cam sites. I quickly became addicted and spent money I didn't even have on these sites.
We got married not soon after I arrived at my base, but the cam site visits continued up until very recently. Well, things inevitably escalated because I hadn't told anyone about my problems or even seen any of it as a problem. I don't remember when it started, but maybe around 2017 I began occasionally going to massage parlors. I felt disgusting afterward, but it gave me the thrill that I was looking for. This then drove me to looking into prostitutes, and although I never got with one I contacted a lot of them because even contacting them gave me that sense of excitement that I was searching for. This is all happening behind my wife's back and while pretending to be a good and loving husband.
Well, fast forward to September of 2018 and my wife's father passed of cancer. Idk what happend, but something flipped the night before her father's funeral and I downloaded every dating app there was. I ended up getting a hotel using a credit card and sleeping with a random girl the night of her father's funeral. I did a lot of things, but I wasn't sure I ever considered it cheating. This point I knew I had cheated and it drove me literally crazy. After that I slept with 3 other girls over the course of about a month and half. I also went to a strip club and spent almost $2k for some basically nude lap dances.
Well, my wife heard my phone vibrating one night and as much as I resisted showing her I knew it was over. She looked through my phone and was torn to a million billion pieces. She asked me question after question, but I only gave her pieces of information and never the whole picture in fear that she would leave me. This came back to bite me many times. But in the end and after taking time to herself she decided she wanted to stay and work things out.
I got out of the military in 2019 and we moved into her mom's house temporarily. Over the time that we were there I betrayed her several times by downloading apps, going on cam sites, watching porn. She kicked me out of her mom's house in February of 2020 after finding out I made a snapchat that I used to talk to women. During our separation I did do some things, but I did not tell her about any of it. We worked things out again and got an apartment. I even went on some cam sites while at this apartment and she didn't know about that either until recently.
Around August/September of 2020 I decided to get serious about getting myself together. And I have been clean from everything but porn since then. But my wife and I had still had intimacy issues and it caused a fight the other day. That night she decided to sleep in another room and I was tempted and got on a cam site to try to see if someone would flash me. Well, she caught me talking to someone and here I am. The night she caught me I told her everything there was to know. I told her about all of the massage parlors, cam sites, prostitutes, the girls she didn't know about. I told her everything. Our marriage is hanging on by a literal thread and she is debating whether to stay and I am doing everything right now to convince her to. Either way, I know I have a lot of issues that I need to work through, so i'm committed to working through this all whether she stays or not. But I hope she does.
