SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Posting to ask for advice on whether I should reconcile or not? Most of the advice on the rest of the internet seems to be to leave and never look back in any sort of cheating situation.

When I first got married I checked my husband's phone which I never normally do. I discovered he had a short fling with an older woman whilst we weren't married. In the messages I could see that he told the woman he regretted what he had done. I also found out I was pregnant on the same day of this discovery so took it as a sign that I had to try to work things out. I also figured that I'd get the same advice from my family since we had only just got married and because of the pregnancy.

Fast forward a year later, I found out about another fling 5 and a half weeks ago when my first born son was 3 days old. He was born with clear signs of an infection and my husband insisted he is taken to hospital and in hindsight, he looked very distressed and mentioned "I don't want him to pay for my stupidity". I was oblivious. The STI clinic at the hospital we were admitted to called me in and I was told I had to be tested for STIs. When my husband tested positive I questioned him but believed him when he said it wasn't caught recently.
The doctors realised I was being naive and told me that men who showed signs of the sti usually see symptoms within 2 weeks of contracting it i.e. "your husband has been unfaithful recently". Of course this was a complete shock as I couldn't believe he would do that especially whilst I was pregnant and when I confronted him he admitted it and seemed to be open and transparent and also seems to be since. He said he met a woman at a bar whilst I stayed with my mum for a week and they met up 3 times. I have no proof of what actually happened but based on the fact he does normally just go work and home or with me, I'm choosing to believe him (also for the sake of my kHe says it was ego driven and that I shouldn't blame myself or think it had anything to do with me but of course my self esteem is crushed as was my heart.
I didn't know what to do, being in a hospital with a sick baby so let him stay with me and he has since been waiting on me hand and foot. I went into survival mode...mostly focused on our baby as almost every mother does even when not in these circumstances.
I feel so confused. He is a good dad (has 2 children from a previous marriage) and we had what I thought was a good relationship where we get on very well and deal with any disagreements by communicating. I still find it hard not to wonder why he did this to me and blame myself.
I look at my baby who has barely begun his life and feel heartbroken about potentially breaking up his family. I feel heartbroken at the thought of co parenting and not being with my son for long periods of time. My parents are elderly and are deeply affected by my sister's divorce. They think my husband is the perfect son in law and I genuinely feel like this would break them more than it does to me.
He seems to be owning up to everything and has generally treated me well up until I found out and since I found out. He says he is deeply remorseful and that he knows he is not in a position to ask me to stay with him. What do I do? It seems like all I can see on the internet is "once a cheat, always a cheat" and "run and don't look back, you won't regret it".I have no one I can really talk to about this and if I didn't have a baby then I wouldn't take the risk with him but I do think things are more complicated with children involved. I feel like I am running on autopilot and have no idea what I'm supposed to do so the easiest thing to do is try to repress it most of the time even though it is there intruding all my thoughts whilst I pretend to get on with my day in front of everyone else.

Welcome to the club you never wanted to join.

First and foremost, you need to understand that a "Good Dad" would never put his spouse's health, and the health of their children at risk and he has repeatedly done just that.

It also sounds like you are pretty CoDependent (CoD) being more worried about your parents, than your own well being because your H cheated.

You need to figure out where your line in the sand is. He has already cheated at least 2 times. So you do realize that you most likely don't have the whole story, most cheaters only share what they know you know.

See an attorney, learn what your rights and obligations are. You don't have to make any decisions today, or tomorrow, or even weeks from now. However, you need to decide what you will walk away from.
You need to focus on you, making sure you are eating, sleeping, and getting good nutrition. If the trauma is making these things difficult then see your Dr. This is a HUGE Trauma.

You also if you are willing to try R, figure out what you need to do to get back on track. What absolutes you need from him, including a time line, with all indiscretions. Therapy for him to figure out his reasons why, and fixing that within himself, complete transparency, no anger, on and on.
Check out the healing library, there is a ton of helpful advice there.

Keep reading and keep posting here.

I am so very sorry that you are here, and at such a vulnerable time in your life with a new baby. And you are right; having a child does make these situations more complicated and difficult. But you will find your way through, even though it’s hard and incredibly painful right now.

"Once a cheater, always a cheater" and "run and never look back" are cliched responses that don’t fit all situations and relationships. My husband cheated on me, and I stayed, and I’m happy with my decision.

However, given what I have learned, and from the vantage point of my late 40s, I don’t think I could ever in good conscience encourage someone in your situation to stay with a cheater. Your husband has a track record of a broken marriage, two times (that you know of) of cheating on you in the early stages/years of your relationship, and **giving you and your baby an STD.** He was actively pursuing unprotected sex with other people while you were at the most vulnerable point of your life, and he couldn’t be bothered using protection. A man who gives his unborn child an STD—who literally chose his own fleeting pleasure over his wife and baby’s health—is not a good father.

This is not a one off. This is habitual behavior by a self-centered person who has deep character flaws and no core value for fidelity and honest partnership. Tying yourself to this person for life is almost certainly going to cause you a great deal more pain. Co-parenting will come with its hardships, but you and your child are much more likely to have a happy, healthy life if you divorce this man than if you stay with him.

I’m so very sorry you are here. I can’t imagine dealing with the pain of infidelity while mothering a small baby. Take care of yourself and your precious little one, and hang in there. Big decisions take time and care; take it one day at a time and be kind to yourself.

A man who cheats on his pregnant wife is about as low as it gets. There are stds that can't kill,or seriously harm,an unborn child.

He could also have killed you.

You chose to believe him when he said it was an old infection, only to find out he lied. There is zero reason to believe he's telling you the truth now.

It's nice to be waited on,hand and foot. But he's not doing the work to become a safe partner. And he's a serial cheater.

Many bs say their ws is a good parent. He's not a good dad. A good dad doesn't cheat on their pregnant wife,and expose both of them to potentially deadly stds. He doesn't risk their child's happiness, security, and family for an OW. He sets a good example of a good man. There's more to being a good dad then loving a kid. He could be a good dad, once he's done the work. But he is not one now.

Forgiveness is earned. Over a long time, through honest,consistent, and remorseful actions.

Who is the OW? I'd investigate and find out the truth about his latest affair. And tell her husband. He deserves to know. Especially since there's an std involved.

Also, he didn't tell you. He got caught. He didn't tell you about the first affair,either. Common sense says there are other affairs He got away with.

He's not remorseful. He's regretful. Those are two different things. If he were truly remorseful, he would have told you immediately. He only told because the baby got sick, and even then he lied.

He wasn't sorry,when you didn't know.

Sorry not sure how to reply to individuals. Thank you for the responses so far.

You're right, I do realise and believe that I don't know the whole truth but I'm so broken already that I'm not sure if I want to know any more.

I thought he was a good dad in the sense that he takes care of them when he is with them and tries to nurture them but I guess that is just the bare minimum expected of any father.

Welcome to SI, and I'm so sorry that you've had to find us. In the JFO (Just Found Out) forum, there are some pinned posts at the top of the page that you might find helpful. Also, the Healing Library is an excellent resource with a ton of information, including a list of the acronyms we use.

The reason that you're having issues thinking and feeling is because you have suffered trauma, and it can affect your brain's processes. Intimate partner betrayal is one of the worst things you can experience.

You should still be in the honeymoon phase and he's cheating. Unfortunately, it sounds like he's a serial cheater and it is unlikely that he'll change his behavior. That's why you hear the advice to run.

Has he started IC to work on finding out his whys and how to become a safe partner? He was willing to put your life and your son's life at stake just to get his jollies.

There's a book called How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair by Linda MacDonald. It's a short read, but it will give him some insight into how you're feeling and provide some groundwork that he can do to help you heal.

Also, I'd suggest IC for you with a betrayal trauma specialist if you can.

I’m not recommending you to divorce or Reconcile. That’s your decision to make.

Other posters have pointed out the obvious facts. He was not upfront with you, lied about the infection and seriously affected and infected your newborn.

I want to say that if you do D, a co-parenting plan will be developed. That’s not to say you cannot have a nice relationship with him as a co-parent. But that should not dictate whether you R or D.

A D doesn’t have to be ugly and contentious.

You will need to decide whether you can get past this situation and be healed and happy. You need to be the best parent possible and if you believe this affair will prevent you from healing, then consider that situation and it’s affect on your child.

Your H is in the doghouse and he knows it. If he’s not going to therapy and making drastic changes, he may be the kind of cheater that expects you to sweep this under the rug so it blows over.

Rug sweeping will get you a second and third affair. Ask me how I know.

He didn't admit it until he got caught and I spoke to him about this yesterday. He said that that is because he wanted me to stay and I guess he thought that that is the better option. I asked for the woman's number and he said he doesn't have it anymore. I have checked his phone after the incident and couldn't find anything.
I mentioned therapy and he said he would do it but seemed to think I also think there are other things 'wrong' with him. He seems quite insecure and always seems to think that people think he is inferior or incapable or incompetent etc which is maybe part of the problem.
I am not sure if I can see myself healing from this but I fantasise that everything will be okay for the sake of my newborn. But I know thatbit is not that simple.

It's okay for you to take things day by day, especially right now. I agree with others who recommend that you start counseling because this is huge trauma at this very vulnerable time in your life. Take the absolute best care of yourself and enlist help if you need to.

As for your husband, if he's serious about becoming a safe partner for you and/or a good father to his children, he needs to get into counseling right now to deal with his issues. Like, RIGHT NOW.

I'm so mad on your behalf. My H didn't cheat on me when my first daughter was born, but he did other things that were selfish and insensitive that I have a very hard time forgetting/forgiving 34 years later. I'm not sure what you're supposed to take from that, except that, like my H, your H took what was supposed to be a joyous time and shit all over it. Speaking from experience, it won't be easy to get over that.

Wow. I'm sorry to find that you are here, especially at what is supposed to be such a joyous occasion, a new addition to your family. Congratulations on the son! The most important aspect is that you do what you need to do in order to protect yourself and by extension your son and to give yourself some grace, and if that means you need to ask friends or family for some help with a new baby, do so!

As far as your husband, wow, in some ways, I can relate a little bit. My wife and I got engaged in Dec 2009 and later that same month, I was hanging with some friends, drinking and partying, but I ended up sleeping with someone while my fiancé (now wife) was out of the country on holiday that year (my wife is from outside the USA). Suffice it say, when she returned in January, within one day of being home with me, she found the chat logs of me discussing the whole thing with this woman and confronted me when I got home. This was years before we would find SI, but she did all the things that we insist a BS do, go no contact and be fully transparent. I was about to lose her, our engagement at that point was on-hiatus or off completely. She didn't have any place else she could reasonably go at that time, as she was an international student living with me, but we did sleep separate for a bit there. Eventually, through the course of things, we began looking at trying to fix the relationship and reconciling. A few weeks later in February, we went out for dinner and drinks at one of our favorite places after my workday. Over dinner she proceeds to tell me that she is a few weeks late and thinks she may be pregnant. She took some over the counter tests later that night and the next day we got her an official test and she was pregnant. The topic of reconciliation and recovery suddenly became an afterthought to both us as we were about to become parents.

Because of her student visa status and protecting her and the baby, we opted to have a small private ceremony with my family and her sister who lived in town and we got married on May 01, 2010. I say protecting her because we needed to get her and the baby on my health insurance and there was no other option for affordable care. 13 or so years later and additional infidelity by both of us, we have since recognized that if not for that pregnancy in Feb 2010, it is quite likely that we never end up staying together. It hurts to realize that, because I do love my wife more than anything today, as reconciliation has been slower for us, but we have gotten to a good point in our relationship, she has been with me through quite a journey since then, and I wouldn't do it with any other person.

So back to your husband, you can see how I recognize a bit of myself in your post about him. It took me a long time to get my shit together and get serious about addressing my past infidelities and doing the work to affair proof myself going forward. He has to earn the right to be with you going forward. He has to show you through his actions and over the longer term that he is committed to you and your new family. He does that by finding the right therapist to hold his feet to the fire and own his shit. He does that by committing himself to total honesty and transparency. No little white lies, no matter how small. I'll give an example of the lies I'm talking about, if I'm having a conversation about something and there is a specific detail like a number, let's say the number is 34 but that specific detail escapes me, I will be honest and say, I know the number is in the 20s or 30s, but I don't remember specifically how many, and someone will provide me the correct detail of 34. I do that because the old me would've acted like I knew the answer all along and had said a number only to be corrected later. I guess it's hard to give that example, as it is specific to my work life, and a conversation I had earlier today, but I've found that for my memory, specific figures elude me a lot, but general ballpark numbers I can remember or sometimes those figures never get to my memory. But, my commitment to being honest and transparent in all aspects of my life is a change that I'm committed to doing, because when I tell the truth at all times to everyone, it is quite a freeing feeling to not have to worry about what little fib I told to this person or that person, and believe me, looking back on it, I would tell all sorts of little fibs about all sorts of totally bullshit things to make myself sound more likeable, or cooler, or whatever vanity reason I thought justified the telling of that lie.

I guess my message was that, if your WH is serious about getting help, and again, like an addict, the user has to want to get help, you can't force them to go to rehab, just you can't force your WH to do anything. What you can do though is enforce boundaries that you set. If you set a boundary that he not engage with any women on social media, texts or email without you knowing about it, and he violates that, you have to be ready to take action and enforce that boundary, up to and including a divorce. But, if your WH works on fixing his shit he can one day again become a safe partner for you or for someone else, however your marriage shakes out.

He seems quite insecure and always seems to think that people think he is inferior or incapable or incompetent etc which is maybe part of the problem.

Well..he is. He is inferior and incompetent at being a husband and a father. He should feel badly and insecure about that. This isn't something to pity him over. He'll no doubt do a lot of self-pitying for a while in the hopes that you'll join him in that and see him as a sad broken creature. If that doesn't work, you'll likely get anger and frustration from him when you don't just get over this. He's a serial cheater. He doesn't feel the way you think that he feels about this or the way that he tells you he feels about this. He may be genuinely annoyed with himself for being stupid about how he cheated (getting an STD). But the odds of him feeling the way you would if you had done this aren't very high.

I am so so sorry you're going through this.

Congratulations on your new baby. It is such a blessing.. even in the midst of this turmoil you are facing. I am so sorry that you are in such a predicament right now. I know the pain is horrible. Try focusing solely on your little one. The big decisions don't have to happen immediately. Only you know what you can handle and what you want your life to be. If you want to stay for now because of all that you are going through, see what he is going to do. Does he plan to go to therapy? How does he plan to make you feel safe? What will you need to feel safe... share that with him... whatever it should be .. he should do it and more... Let him earn you back if that is what you want. The fact is you don't know if it will work..but then that is life.. no one ever knows what is going to work and what won't, but if you rug sweep it and he does not do anything to fix himself then most likely it won't work.. For now, take a beat.. take care of yourself and your little one... Take a warm shower, feed your nugget, say some prayers ,and hop into bed for a few hours before the ritual starts all over again. God Bless.

I agree with grieving, hellfire and devastated dee. You need to look at his actions and see what it tells you about his future actions. This is not a man who admits his faults until he is caught. You deserve better.

He didn't admit it until he got caught and I spoke to him about this yesterday. He said that that is because he wanted me to stay and I guess he thought that that is the better option.

Cheaters steal from us. They take our agency, our right to self-determination, our right to choose, and use it to act in their own interest. While it might sound flattering that your WH is desperate to keep you with him, what he's really saying is that he's willing to manipulate you to get what he wants. That's not love. Love is in YOUR best interest. Does he think this is the best you can do, the best you deserve?.. a man who lies, cheats, and exposes his wife and child to disease?

Believe me, it's easy to feel sorry for a WS. We all know it. Our default is to love and protect because we are not the ones with flawed values. We look at our WS, see the crocodile tears, the snot-bubbled promises to change and we are moved. But it takes TIME for a WS to completely overhaul their values system, to root out their 'whys', and to make repairs. This early on, the emotional pleas are typically about themselves and what they want, not about us and what's best for us.

This is not to say that your situation is beyond recovery. Just that it's too early to make commitments. Every instinct we have encourages us to try and wrap this thing up, to make a decision and stick with it. The space we're living in after an intimate betrayal is soooo uncomfortable that we just want to move. But if you can resist this pressure to commit to a resolution and give yourself TIME, you can provide yourself with an opportunity to observe whether or not your WH is making real changes or if he's just love-bombing the hell out of you to get his way.

I'm so sorry for what you're going through. Just remember that you're going to be okay. It hurts and it sucks, but we're all here, still standing. You will be too.

((hugs))

Hi @OP I'm so sorry you're having to deal with the pain of betrayal especially at such a precious time in your life. My own experience has let me know that people are capable of changing for the better and a person who used to cheat can stop cheating
However the reality is change cannot be forced on a person. Your H will need to want to change and take actions in order to be the best version of himself so he can be a faithful and trust worthy husband to you and a good father to his children.

At this point it's important not to rug sweep what has happened, ask him questions if you need to and I believe it will be beneficial for him and your marriage for your H to seek counseling and later MC to help you both process what has happened and the best way forward.
It's important that your H also shows in his words and actions that he wants to rebuild the broken trust and find out the root cause that causes him to keep cheating and get the help that he needs.

No one can really tell you to leave your marriage, only you can make that decision for yourself but please try not to rush to make any decision for now. Take time for yourself and do consider IC. You will probably be going through a roller coaster of emotions but I'm praying that the near future will bring healing and strength for your emotions as well as wisdom for your decisions.