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I had a long conversation with my daughter the other night. She shared with me that she still has some anger with me for not leaving my WH when he cheated on me years ago (Dday #1 was 11/15/15). She is still angry with him and said she probably always will be. What he did "was just wrong". In her words, he hurt me deeply, probably more than she will ever understand. She's right. He did. Despite all the time that has passed, I'm not who I was before. I'll never be that person again. I can forgive a thousand times over, but I can't seem to ever forget. He crushed my soul.

I didn't realize how much she held on to her own pain regarding her father's infidelity. It saddens me. All I ever wanted was for her to have a loving relationship with her father, since I lost my own father at a very young age and never had the chance to experience that. My WH took that away from her. That angers me.

His actions were so destructive, so selfish, so cruel.

Anyone out there considering cheating on your spouse/partner, please think really hard before you take any actions. The consequences are permanent and cause irreparable damage. Not only to the person you are cheating on, but your entire family.

If you think about it, she's also experienced betrayal trauma but in a different way than you did. She might benefit from IC with a betrayal trauma specialist.

My father cheated on my mother twice in the 1980's and years later my baby sister began IC to work out her feeling of hatred towards my father. As Leafields said, she sustained trauma too and IC would likely benefit her as well.

My experience from my father's betrayal of my mother was to ride in a pickup truck for nearly a full day immediately following her DDay watching her crumble from breaking down after discovery. It left a lasting impression on me that I'll never forget.

[This message edited by Copingmybest at 9:55 AM, Wednesday, June 26th]

My husband is a serial cheater and is in a recovery process.

His father and both his father’s brothers were serial cheaters as well. As a boy, he grew up watching all of this. During our recent recovery therapy, he said he had always considered sex as a thing of the flesh for men, what he saw, how it was talked about.

And through our therapy he sees it so much differently now.

I wonder if it would help if your husband and your daughter could have some therapy together, to heal this pain? I ask because I see my own husband changing dramatically, and maybe your daughter hasn’t had that opportunity to see his changes in the way he thinks and feels, and to hear his remorse personally. It might help.

I didn't have kids with my ex who cheated on me, but I did grow up with my mother and an abusive stepfather. I watched my mother become a shell of her former self as she walked on eggshells around him and bended over backwards to make him happy. She had very little emotional bandwidth left to dedicate toward my needs. Worse, without even realizing it, she often projected her sadness, anger, and frustration at me.

Every time I read a post on SI where the BS spends years consumed by the affair, going through cycles of false R, trying to psychoanalyze their WS, suffering through the WS's alternating bouts of self-pity and petulant anger, and/or spending hours of their day spying on or trying to track their WS's every move, all I can think of is:

"Where the heck do your kids fit into this? Why are you dedicating yourself to fixing a grown-ass adult when you have an actual child who needs you?"

This is probably the first thread where I've actually voiced this feeling, because it's impossible, I recognize, to do so without sounding like I'm accusing a BS of being a bad parent... which I assure you, I'm not.

But the reality is that many people choose to stay married to cheaters (and abusers of all sorts) because they're paralyzed by fear of how divorce will impact their children... without taking into account the potentially worse damage that will be inflicted upon them by staying.

To put it another way: you might not want to move your family from a beautiful 6-bedroom house to a dingy, cramped apartment... but if that house is contaminated by toxic waste, the apartment is the healthier option.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 4:09 PM, Wednesday, June 26th]

"Where the heck do your kids fit into this? Why are you dedicating yourself to fixing a grown-ass adult when you have an actual child who needs you?"

I've had to forgive myself for this. It's what keeps me up at night the fact that my kids didn't have a healthy mom for so many years all because I was afraid to leave. It has taken YEARS of therapy, 2 stints in the mental hospital, but I finally left. Unfortunately the damage was done and I don't get those years back with my kids.

The consequences are permanent and cause irreparable damage.

They absolutely are and this is why I am not pro R. I will never forgive my xWS for what he did, the damage to our family and my mental health, my children's mental health. Sure some WS are redeemable and some M's recover but that damage will always be in the history of that M. Personally now that I have left and am on the other side of this I would never entertain staying or trying to work it out again.

[This message edited by crazyblindsided at 4:30 PM, Wednesday, June 26th]

Bluer than Blue, spot on post.

Often a D is better than sticking together and trying to R when there is almost no chance of that happening.

My eldest D harbors a lot of resentment towards my H, and has flat out said that she respects me less for staying. DDay was 20 years ago when she was 15. That was also right about the time that her depression and anxiety was starting to emerge, so she had a rough go of it for a while.

About 2 years ago, she and H were having a deep conversation about life choices; he mentioned his affair(S) and she lost it. She didn't know there was more than one. She didn't speak to us for a few weeks.

One of the reasons I wanted to R was stability for my kids. If she really thought about it, she'd realize that her life was better for us having stayed together. We R'ed well. It hurts that she thinks less of me, but I have to work at letting that be hers, which is hard.

SacredSoul and DeservesBetter, what were your daughters’ relationships like with their fathers before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the affairs?

what were your daughters’ relationships like with their fathers before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the affairs?

We didn't tell our kids about his infidelity until a couple of years after we separated for a month. Had she known at the time, she probably would have been very angry. When she found out, things had largely settled down, and it wasn't a big emotional revelation.

It's funny, but I don't remember there ever being a big shift in how they interacted until her blow-up a couple of years ago. Right after that, she started dating a great guy and working on herself, and in that process, she's detached quite a bit from both of us. Which is great. She's almost 35 and that needed to happen.

I think the resentment that she carries today, and the lack of respect for me, was likely mostly about her finding out that her H of one year had been cheating on her. Her DDay was one year before the blow-up. She ditched him and never looked back once.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 2:05 AM, Thursday, June 27th]

BluerThanBlue, Prior to the A, my daughter and her father had a very close relationship. The time they spent together was special. When he did things with her, he was completely focused on her. I worked part-time when she was younger on the weekends and that was their time to do all the dad and daughter things they enjoyed doing together. I was actually envious of their relationship back then because I never had that with my own dad.

When the A began and long before I knew it was going on, things began to change between them. I chalked it up to her becoming a teenager more than anything. But, he became more volatile emotionally and would get "short" with her (and me) over the stupidest things. Their relationship became tense and they began to fight a lot. It took me a long time (2 years) to figure out he was leading a double life and then it made sense.

After Dday, all I wanted to do was keep my family together. She didn't find out about the A until 4 years later. There was a time within those 4 years she came to me in tears to tell me she thought he was cheating, and I lied to her and told her he wasn't. That plays a role in some of the anger she harbors toward me still today and I can't blame her. My traumatized brain told me I was protecting her when I assured her everything was fine, but I was actually only protecting her father really. The "grown-ass adult" who didn't deserve any protection whatsoever.

Now, she is in a stable relationship of her own with a nice young man who seems to really love her. She has come into her own and has very strong opinions on many things. She gets in disagreements with her father pretty easily these days (mostly due to differing opinions/beliefs). She no longer idolizes him as she did when she was a little girl. She loves her father, but holds him at arm's length. Their relationship is permanently stained unfortunately.

Thank you for posting this.

Many folks take the stance that they are staying in the M for the sake of the children. I have been on both sides of the fence as well as a child with a cheating father.

It is important for folks to realize there is damage to the children whether you stay or go. Many of us think our children do not know what is going on. I was also in one of those relationships saying the words "We never fight in front of them", "They do not know what their father did", etc. (Ohhhh but they did/do).

Both scenarios require work and healing and the trust is broken. My children will feel those effects and ripples forever.

My husband believed that our adult children (ages 40, 37,36 at the time some with young children of their own), were unaffected by his actions . He was/ is totally in the wrong.
We are entering sixth year of R and our family dynamics shifted towards polite indifference as far as loving is concerned.

My oldest suspected infidelity but never told me. He had proof that something was going on.

They were angry, pissed off etc. at his treatment of me. My oldest son threatened him if he was unfair in a cash settlement to me during our separation.

I suspect that my daughter and maybe one of my sons, thinks I’m nuts to stay with him. We never talked about this since it is my decision not theirs to continue R. All they want is for me to be happy.

Their relationship with their dad is cordial today. I also suspect that they take full advantage of his financial generosity with little love towards him. Yes there are thank you’s but little else.

I know this is where I feel sadness…I imagined our family life to be full of love but it is full of cordial indifference. Yes, we laugh, we talk, we enjoy one another’s company when together, but there is no show of genuine affection from them to him. It’s like as a family we are reliable and present but emotionally remote. It’s superficial. My husband does not tell them he loves them either. He never really did, thinking back.
Emotional clam that he is.

They won’t even try to tell him they love him. That was completely shattered, destroyed. I see that. I feel that. I believe they have accepted their feelings and they have moved on with their own lives. And yes they are in therapy for other reasons as well.

No one asked for this in their lives right? As a mother I still feel a huge responsibility to protect my children. And maybe just maybe our family is as good as it will ever get.

This post is hitting me way too hard. On dday2, when my WW confessed everything to me, i yelled at her that she betrayed not just me but our entire family. At the time she went super defensive and denied the kids know anything that she was super careful. Which is gross and proves my point of how deeply the betrayal goes.

Turns out my oldest knew almost everything already, and I’m sure the younger ones will know in due time.

I hope my oldest understands why I am in R.

What a mess.