SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

First of all I want to say that I’m not an English native speaker, so I apologise in advance if this is hard to read.
I (F25) am married to my BS (M28) and have been together for over 8 years (married 2.5 years).
I have cheated multiple times and I feel this devastating shame and guilt every day of my life. I cannot get over the fact of having hurt the love of my life. Our relationship context is we are this perfect couple who never fight and we really feel we are "one" together. Sounds cliche but I really do believe he is my soulmate. And this is a reason on why he forgave me so many times.
I cheated on him for the first time after a month of dating. I was 17 and got really drunk and had a one night stand. Second time was with a class mate 3 years later, again drunk, we kissed on that first week and then we met up at a uni party the next week and had sex.
The third one was over two years ago, with a uni class mate again. This time there was no sex but kissing and touching acts.
I am a person that had mental health issues and diagnosed with borderline personality. Until recently, I never loved myself, quite the opposite. I was always the attention seeking type and never knew when to stop or say no. I have to say that I never even liked any of the guys I cheated with. Not even physically! As I mentioned before, I just wanted to seek attention and feel attractive. I really dug deep in why did I cheat, even with my therapist and it really doesn’t have anything to do with my husband! He is amazing, he loves me so much, he makes me feel attractive and is always there for me. My husband’s feedback on me is that I am such a warm hearted person, that I take so much care of him and he feels so loved by me. I know it’s hard to believe due to all these disgusting things I’ve done, but I really do believe I’m not a bad person. Nothing can justify the cheating, but every time I did it I was extremely drunk, I could never ever do anything like this sober in my life. I wouldn’t even approach men sober. AGAIN, not justifying anything just adding some facts onto my story.
Alcohol makes me act and do things I really don’t want to do, also, once I start I cannot stop drinking. This is why I don’t drink anymore unless it’s with my husband. Also, I am in a much better place right now. I cannot believe how much I’ve evolved as a person since 2 years ago. Of course I am still working on myself every day, still going to therapy and figuring more stuff out, but the progress is there and I am proud of it.
I would want to ask you all for your opinion on the following:
Do I deserve to forgive myself? (I know deep down I do, I just don’t know how… and I know it’s a long and tough process but I just hope time can heal)
Second question would be that last time I told my husband about the last infidelity I remember not sharing details, not that he asked for them but it could be that I just said we kissed and no sex when actually there where more than kissing involved (inappropriate touchings while watching a movie). This is making me feel somehow very guilty, like if I lied to him or something. But I don’t want to open the wound again just to add those details and hurt him so badly after over 2 years! I feel that would be very selfish. What would you all think about this?

Thanks a lot of reading this. I highly appreciate your thoughts and opinions on my story.

[This message restored by Webmaster at 12:37 PM, Thursday, October 31st]

[This message edited by Healingwife12 at 11:28 AM, Wednesday, October 30th]

Hi-

A couple of things jumped out at me:

When couples get together very young sometimes there aren’t the skills needed for a long term relationship. Adding to that, our frontal lobes are not formed. So my first piece of advice is to maybe invest in learning. Dr. Gottman has some great books and tools.

I also when I was younger wouod point at we never fight. But conflict and conflict resolution are two major skills to have. When people don’t fight, it can mean that they also don’t speak up. I am a very accepting person but what brought me here really was that I was avoidant and didn’t recognize my needs and wants and convey those to him. I was always thinking "let’s just have a good day today" and I would brush things under the rug.

My husband and I have similar sensibilities, and we don’t really "fight" either. But we have both gotten more self aware and less avoidant. I found that I actually had a lot of unstated expectations and over years of marriage, kids, bills, and life in general those can get lost and rebound as resentment.

I also think because you guys got together very young some couples like that can be codependent. I am not saying you are but that would be part of the education that you could get or seek through reading or through therapy.

Not being able to just drink one drink makes me think that alcohol may not be the best thing for you, even with your man present.

Next, you are carrying a lot of shame, guilt, etc. and we all do to a certain extent. But life is long and carrying excessive amounts will affect every aspect of your life. Ask me how I know!!! I like the book "rising strong" by brene brown because it allowed me to see how that was disrupting my ability to experience connection. Most relationships are attachments, which is a normal aspect, but connection is about being vulnerable, and feeling emotionally safe, and all sorts of things go into that recipe.

Lastly, my feelings are honesty is important for excising rot. Building a foundation on honesty is usually best. That being said, I don’t know what details you are holding or their significance. I think it’s important that our significant others know everything pertinent. We all can recall details or additional stuff that isn’t significant, nor does it change the picture. But if you said "we didn’t do xyz sexually" because you know you didn’t do that with him- that’s a problem. Both from a truth perspective, but also from understanding yourself.

I think IC is always a good idea if you can afford it and genuinely want to become
More self aware, work to resolve past trauma, and learn to have a different relationship with yourself.

Our relationship with ourselves flow into all our other relationships. If we don’t love ourselves no one will convince us we are worthy of love, and over a long period of time it’s easy to start blaming the relationship or the spouse for not feeling loved. But it’s our responsibility to know we are lovable and that our needs are communicated.

I also would look past the alcohol and ask yourself more curious questions about other contributing factors.

You are very young and life is very long. You are redeemable and you need to see that in order to overcome the factors that likely feed into the heavy drinking and cheating. It’s not a life sentence of you deal with those things now.

Healing,

Do I deserve to forgive myself? (I know deep down I do, I just don’t know how… and I know it’s a long and tough process but I just hope time can heal)

Time never heals. Time and honesty, time and understanding can be helpful. You've come to the right place to work on yourself. Two good books for you to read are: Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass and How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair by Linda McDonald. Hikingout's advice is excellent, as always.

Hikingout, I can’t thank you enough for your message. I literally cried reading it.
You are right, we are completely codependant. I will work on it, I am already going to therapy and have been going for 3 years. I know we got together very young but I also know he is the one. I will work on myself everyday, I just want to become the great wife he deserves and stay at that level forever.
Thank you again.

Thank you both for the book recommendations. I’ll definitely give those a try.

Second question would be that last time I told my husband about the last infidelity I remember not sharing details, not that he asked for them but it could be that I just said we kissed and no sex when actually there where more than kissing involved (inappropriate touchings while watching a movie). This is making me feel somehow very guilty, like if I lied to him or something.

Honesty starts with ourselves, and that can actually be the biggest hurdle. It's not that you feel like you lied to him. You did lie to him. "Not being sure if I lied" was one of my classic avoidance techniques to get out of facing up to what I did. When you tell the truth, you remember it.

Your betrayed husband (BH) deserves to know that there's more to tell and to decide for himself what he wants to hear. And if he does, you need to be absolutely honest, no matter how scared you are of the consequences for either one of you. Letting it out in bits and pieces is like stabbing your partner, letting them heal a bit, and then stabbing them again. It is far less cruel in the long run to get everything out in one go, even the things you never believed you could admit.

Hi Bravesir Robin and thanks for your comment.

My therapist told me that he would be the one needing this extra information and it would be selfish from my side to spill it out 2.5 years after. I did not lie to him, his question was if there was sexual intercourse and I said no. I was 23 back then and did whatever was best with the tools I had back then. It’s not fair for me to judge how I handled it in the past with my actual intelligence. And to your comment of me knowing that I lied…, let me tell you that it was such a traumatic moment that no, the entire conversation is blurry to me. So maybe I lied in the sense of not giving him all the details. But truth is, he also didn’t ask for them.
Thanks a lot for your opinion, I do appreciate it.

[This message restored by Webmaster at 8:57 AM, Tuesday, November 5th]

[This message edited by Healingwife12 at 11:28 AM, Wednesday, October 30th]

I don’t know if you are still reading but I am guessing you have had some sort of shame attack or feel scared. I hope when you are ready you will come back. Many of us have been where you are and can help. Take good care.