SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi All, first time posting, or really talking about this situation outside of the house hold.

I've been with my partner for 15 years, not married, no kids.

A few weeks a go I betrayed her, being unfaithful on a night out. I told her last week, waited a little because of shame and not having the courage.

I made no excuses to my partner and apologised, I acknowledged that I'd hurt her more than I can imagine.

We're still living together but she obviously does't like me very much and has no trust in me now. We mutually decided to stay together and try to work through it.

What I'm struggling with is that part of the reason for this happening was my unhappiness in the relationship effecting my mental health prior to the infidelity. Now I don't really know what to do and right now can't see a path that will lead to us both being happy staying together.

I think I'm scared of what would happen if I said we should move on, it's been such a huge part of my live, I don't really know anything else and it is scary.

I don't actually know what I'm looking for here, just wanted to get it out.

  Moving to Wayward Side

Sorry for posting in the wrong place originally

Hi,

While I don’t know your situation or what the dynamics of your marriage were prior to your affair, I would ask you to consider this

While there are issues in any marriage, I found that many of them were a direct result of my behavior. I told myself that my wife didn’t love me any more. She didn’t show me the affection I thought I deserved. Etc Etc. The truth of the matter was I turned my back on the marriage. I stopped making the effort. As a result, the marriage suffered.

So to start, I would ask you to take a step back and try to look at things with an objective eye. Was the marriage really that bad or did you tell yourself enough lies to believe that it was so?

"I made no excuse and apologized"

"What I am struggling with is part of the reason for this happening was I was unhappy in the relationship"

I come off as harsh, know that I mean nothing personally, and as you are posting without stop sign fair, I give you credit. That being said, you know you’re full of crap right? Reread those two sentences from your post. Do you see this connection? You are making excuses.

No you didn’t cheat because you were unhappy in the relationship. That’s a justification to excuse your behavior. You are struggling because you don’t want to admit that you’re wrong and need a justification.

You cheated because you wanted to m, and you needed an excuse to allow you.

Welcome to SI and sorry that you're here. These are some pinned posts at the top of the forum that we encourage new members to read. The Healing Library has a lot of great information and includes the list of acronyms we use.

Please get a copy of How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair by Linda MacDonald. It's a little over 100 pages and is a nice blueprint for what you need to do.

IC (individual counseling) for you to dig into your whys. MC (marriage counseling) isn't recommended at this time. You both need healing to take place first. Your M (marriage) didn't cheat, you did. It wasn't a mistake, but thousands of conscious decisions to betray.

Also, you both need to be tested for STDs because there are some nasty diseases out there and you've put your partner's health at risk. We've had members die or get cancer from their wayward's poor decisions.

If you slept with a coworker, you need to go NC (no contact). And you need to find a new job. Electronic transparency, meaning she has access to all of your devices and apps.

It's an emotional rollercoaster ride for the betrayed, so be prepared for that. Apologize, apologize and apologize more. Talk about the A (affair) and don't wait for her to bring it up.

My opinion is that you betrayed her waaay before you slept with somebody else. Read ff4152's post again and think about it. If the relationship was that bad, did you talk to your partner about it, suggest couples counseling?

Fellow ws here.

Keep in mind cheating is not the product of a relationship issue. It’s a you issue. You don’t say whether you knew the person you cheated with or if you met in a bar and it was more of a one night stand?

I cheated because I didn’t do the things I needed to do to be happy. I as depressed, bored, entitled. I also didn’t know if I wanted to continue on the relationship.

What I learned is the investment and effort you make into your relationship with yourself and with your spouse is a reflection and a reinforcement that you value it. The value comes from the effort.

I will not tell you that you should stay in a relationship you do not want, that’s not fair to either of you. I think though before you make decisions you need to explore only your culpability to its status.

What I have found is that my commitment to self discovery has made me a better partner and had led to more happiness and enjoyment in general. It’s valuable work to do regardless. But you didn’t cheat because of the relationship. You cheated due to poor character traits and lack of coping skills. No one deserves to be cheated on, if you no longer wanted the relationship, I think you would have just broken up with her. But the way you have gone about this speaks volumes about the work you need to do if you choose to delve into the discovery process.

So with the ap is this an ongoing emotional affair that has moved into a physical one?

Thanks for the replies all, I appreciate them.

Trying to give a little more context below, but happy to answer questions anyone has.

It isn’t an ongoing thing, it is someone who works at the same place as me and I have had limited interactions with previously but never socially, only around work. It just happened at a work party.

In terms of my relationship, for a couple of years now we’ve been pretty much just 2 people living in the same house, we don’t eat together, don’t go to bed at the same time, don’t spend much time together, probably 15 minutes a day on average. We very rarely go out or do anything together. As far as intimacy goes, there isn’t really any, I have to try to initiate anything, and for the last 5 or 6 years it’s been at most once a year with everything else being rejected, leading me to pretty much stop trying.

Only talked about any of this earlier this year, I’ve been just staying quiet and hoping it’d get better for years now, and even after talking nothing changed and I just didn’t say anything.

I love spending time with my partner, but there’s no passion, no intimacy, it often feels like being with my best friend and nothing more.

I’m well aware that this was a decision that I made, and that’s why I just told my partner I had no excuse instead of saying the above or that I was drunk or any of that kind of stuff

You are still putting blame on the relationship. You tried once, then went dark and just expected things to get better. Then you allowed yourself to stray and used it as a justification.

Not denying that there were troubles in your relationship, but so does every single other relationship on the planet. Instead of working on it, or ending it, the choice made was cheating. Good on you at least admitting to it after the fact, that’s more than most cheaters do.

Also, you didn’t betray her once a few weeks ago. This ONS or whatever it was didn’t happen out of the blue. Many decisions were made by you to betray your partner. 100s if not 1000s of choices put you into to this situation. The ONS was just the culmination of betrayal, not the only one.

And now, you have blown up your relationship. No intimacy before? That’s probably gone for the time being. No passion? Also gone. You have deeply hurt your partner. How is she handling it? You have also hurt yourself. Integrity and discipline are vital for a long term relationship, cheating shows you are compromised on both at best.

I don’t think a relationship where there is no intimacy tenable either.

So what I would like you to think about is your role in allowing the relationship to go into roommate status. It takes two people to do that.

Sex is a byproduct of other foundations in your relationship. Small habits. Kissing and hugging in the morning. Doing nice things for each other. Supporting one another. Sharing and communicating things about our inner worlds. Emotional intimacy creates physical intimacy.

What did you do to feed the relationship?

I don't think either of us are good at communicating out feelings, not conversationally anyway.

I always tried to be supportive, and as affectionate as I could be, but when any attempt to initiate anything more than a hug or kiss was turned down for multiple years, I just hoped it would get better and then slowly just stopped trying rather thean voicing my concerns like I should have.

now I've said I want to try to fix things, mostly out of fear of the unknown, but don't feel the spark and struggle to see a way we can both be happy together

Long term relationships can keep a spark the entire time but I think it’s rare. But in any case it’s always from being intentional about it. Intentionally dating, spending quality time, working on communication. Without that work every relationship you ever have will end up like this one.

I still heard nothing about how you tried to bridge emotional intimacy. I don’t think often physical intimacy stays hot and heavy without being intentional about emotional intimacy.

Now that you have gone out and cheated you can’t be expecting to feel that right now. Part of you probably feels shame over what you did and your partner is angry with you. There is a lot of work to be done on yourself here- are you planning to go to therapy? Like individually?

I am planning on going to therapy individually yes.

I don't have an answer for the emotional intimacy comments, we used to talk, go out places, try things and it's just slowly stopped and turned into us doing very little together, maybe doing something once every 3 or 4 months.

They are totally happy with this and love having so much time on their own, but it's just another thing to add to the list that I've just hoped would get better rather than saying I'm unhappy about it.

I recommend reading about exit affairs. I think you’re disappointed your partner didn’t end it and are trying to rationalize it.
Good luck!

Ok, so it sounds like your and your partner were on completely different paths, and if you’re telling the truth, then you should have moved on.

So now is the time to actually dig in and face everything. If you don’t want this relationship don’t try to R, especially since you have no right to even ask, and especially because you don’t really want it. You had the courage to cheat. Now have the courage to leave.

Don’t blame your partner for anything. You cheated because of you and you only. You weren’t happy then you should have done something else. Don’t make excuses or justifying your actions. Don’t say anything stupid like I never wanted to hurt you. It may be true, but it’s not. Breaking up hurts less than cheating.

So just own it. Say something along the lines of I was wrong I cheated and it destroyed you, you didn’t deserve that, I should have had the courage to work with you, to tell you I wasn’t happy and if we couldn’t work out I should have done the right thing and ended us. That I didn’t and that I cheated is all my fault.

Don’t string her along out of your own guilt.

[This message edited by HellIsNotHalfFull at 1:21 AM, Wednesday, July 24th]

No Stop sign.

Going to be blunt here.

There is always a choice that a person can make. Always. Some choices are unpleasant, but it is still a choice.

What you did was make a choice to have an A.

You chose to betray your partner.

You chose your own satisfaction over your relationship.

You chose to stay in a relationship that seems to be losing steam.

You chose not to leave before you betrayed your partner.

The choices were made by you, and not your partner, or both of you.

In my eyes, a good choice you decided upon, was to inform your partner of what you did.

It also seems that there is a disconnect between the two of you which is not being addressed. Perhaps is a mismatch of your love languages? Perhaps your partner is going through something but not vocalising it to you?

You have a choice to either address the issues and to try and regain your partners' trust, or you can choose to break off.

You still have choices to make...

BTW, not that it makes any material difference, but was it an EA or PA? More details can help posters here guide you better.

Thanks for being blunt, I appreciate it.

it was a PA, one night stand.

I am glad you are still here reading. This site changed me so much for the better just by reading other people’s experiences and asking questions like you have here.

As you dig into therapy I hope you will keep us in mind as a resource. A popular book recommendation for starting out is "how to help your spouse heal from your affair" by Linda McDonald. Easy short read.

I also often recommend "Rising Strong" by Brene Brown. It’s a great look at how we hold ourselves back from deeper emotional connection, how to be more vulnerable and why it’s important, etc. I think this would be a good introduction to you on bridging emotional intimacy. I think of you love her and want that spark back, this could be enlightening for you. It changed how I show up in all my relationships.

Hi there superkinguk,

Welcome to SI. This place helped me so much and I hope it can help you too.

I'd like to echo what hikingout said as far as digging for the "why". One thing that was helpful in my process was recognizing that there is a difference between the reasons we feel tempted to cheat (situational) and the reasons we are able to act on that temptation (internal). The situational is usually pretty easy to identify and I think that's why people who are in the earliest stages of this journey tend to go there first. The internal is harder. Much harder. You have to get past shame and defensiveness and find your way to vulnerability. For learning how to drop your shields and show up without knowing the outcome, that recommend for Brene Brown's Rising Strong is a great one. The work is tough and it takes time but it is 1000% worth it, regardless of whether you and your BS attempt reconciliation or end the marriage. If you do this work, you will be a better, safer, more authentic person in all your relationships going forward. Not just romantic relationships. All of them. Especially the one with yourself.

Proceed with conviction and valor. I hope you stick around.

Best to you from this still EvolvingSoul.

Superkinguk,

Hello and welcome. Former WH here. Just wanted to encourage you to keep reading, and to post when you need to. I don't post much, but I do read on a near daily basis. There's a lot of wisdom to be gleaned here.

The Linda McDonald book and also Not Just Friends are my recommendations, along with a good IC. I'm fortunate enough here in the States to have a great employee benefit program that pays for my counseling except for a small co-pay. I'll be with my therapist 6 years this November (I'm seeing him today too).

Take care and I hope you stay with us.