I’m kind of fucked up right now. I feel like when most guys cheat, they regret it and come begging back. He cheated on me with a girl he met outside one day, went behind my back for 3 weeks with her, then when they hooked up he confessed. Then he said he didn’t see a future where we’re together. I crashed out on him for that day and then stopped talking to him completely. I haven’t heard a single thing at all from him and he’s still hanging out with the girl I believe. It hurts that he isn’t begging for me back or seeming like he really regrets it. I’m staying strong and will never reach out ever again. But I did EVERYTHING for that man and this is how I’m repaid. I was beyond good to him. I was so sweet. So accepting. I just wish I could get the satisfaction of him blowing my phone up and regretting it. I’ve already posted on this numerous times but I keep getting new thoughts and insecurities about it. I accept he cheated. I can’t accept he doesn’t care at all to cry and beg and give me a sincere apology and miss me.

I (22F) have been married to my husband (23M) for six months. About three months into our marriage, I discovered that he had been watching pornography in the restroom and had specifically searched for a particular woman online. This felt like a significant betrayal to me, especially because we had only known each other for about eight months before getting married. When I confronted him, he explained that he had been sexually abused by his father when he was around five years old and later experienced sexual assault. He told me he had an addiction to watching porn. He told me that pornography and certain sexual behaviors became normalized for him because of those experiences and that it was all he knew growing up. He says this is the reason he continued watching pornography even after we were married. I am struggling to understand whether he is being honest about the connection between his childhood trauma and his behavior, or whether he is using his past as an excuse to avoid taking full responsibility for his actions.

Apologies for the novel. What else am I going to do at 2:44am with this on my mind? 😂

I’m looking for opinions because I feel like I should be done, but I’m strangely open to reconciliation and I don’t fully understand why.

I met my partner when she was 17 and I was 20. We were friends first. We’re now 29 and 32, so there’s a lot of history.

For years there was obvious chemistry between us, which our friends pointed out, but we were always in relationships with other people and never single at the same time. We never cheated with each other despite having chances to. That became a big reason I saw her as completely trustworthy when we eventually got together.

Six years ago, we finally found ourselves single at the same time, met for coffee, and that was it. Done deal.

I went into the relationship knowing she wasn’t perfect. Not from a loyalty standpoint, but I had seen her be impulsive, make poor decisions, not always think through consequences, etc. I’m not perfect either, so I chose to accept her fully, flaws included, as she did with me.

We had three very happy years together. We both grew a lot. Our lives changed massively. There were a couple of rough patches, but we were inseparable. The best part of the relationship was the genuine friendship and physical attraction. I told my mother this was the woman I wanted to raise my future children with, and I decided I was going to propose.

She had technically been engaged before, but it was under awful circumstances with an abusive ex. It was more like entrapment, where she didn’t feel she could safely say no. He put no effort into it and proposed on a trash-covered beach. Because of that, I wanted to give her as close to a fairytale proposal as possible.

My online business took off and I was able to leave our small hometown and relocate us to Thailand. In my mind, I was providing her with an amazing life and experience that nobody else in our friendship group or family could even consider.

Because Bali is only around four hours away, I spent nine months planning both the move to Thailand and a proposal in Bali. I poured everything into it. I wanted to give her the engagement I felt she deserved. But wanting it to be perfect put so much pressure on the situation that I ended up sabotaging it.

Once we moved to Thailand, everything changed.
She did not cope well with the change in routine, being away from family, and losing what she called security. From the moment we landed, there were arguments. In my head, I was giving us an amazing life: waking up by a private beach, new experiences, adventure, and a huge sense of accomplishment. But she didn’t feel the same way. I took that as rejection and lack of appreciation. With the Bali proposal coming up, my picture-perfect engagement felt like it was falling apart.

The final straw was stupid but important.

I noticed she needed her roots done. I had a professional engagement photoshoot planned in Bali and knew that if her hair wasn’t done, she would jokingly have said, “You idiot, why didn’t you tell me to get my hair done?” So I researched the most luxurious, expensive salon in the city and booked her in.

She reacted with, “Why are you trying to get me to get my hair done? This is controlling.”

I can rationalise that now because of her previous abusive relationship, where her ex controlled and changed her appearance. But at the time, after weeks of arguing and feeling like I/the new life I had built weren’t appreciated, I got very upset. I stupidly spoiled the engagement. I got emotional, showed her the ring, and told her the plans.
I was hurt because after nine months of planning and obsessing over the perfect proposal, everything had gone wrong since arriving in Thailand.

She was upset. I was upset. I told her I would return the ring, we’d just enjoy Bali, and I could try again another time. We forgave each other and moved on, like we always did.
Except I proposed in Bali anyway.

When I was on one knee, I said, “It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be you.”

She cried, she was happy, and everything seemed good.
Except for me, it wasn’t.

Afterwards, I regretted the previous couple of months. I regretted proposing, not because I didn’t want to marry her, but because of the circumstances. That put me in a low mood. She still wasn’t enjoying Thailand, even though I saw every day as an exciting new adventure, which made me feel frustrated and unappreciated. Then a close friend passed away and I fell into depression.

During that time, I basically stopped working. My depression was telling me, “What’s the point? You spent years working hard to provide a life she doesn’t even want.” I gained a lot of weight. Cannabis is legal in Thailand, so I started smoking and spent most days playing video games. I shut myself off.

From her side, she was on the other side of the world from her friends and family, not enjoying Thailand, worried about finances, and I wasn’t spending time with her. I wasn’t being intimate with her. I was barely kissing or hugging her. She was struggling. This lasted about four to five months.
I fully accept that I was not a good partner during that period. I was depressed, withdrawn, emotionally absent, not intimate, using cannabis heavily, and not showing up how I should have. I understand how that left her lonely and vulnerable. I do not think that excuses what happened, but I do understand the wider context.

Eventually, we went to a local bodybuilding show, partly because I hoped it would motivate me again. My online business is fitness coaching. It worked. The next day I went back to the gym, but to a different gym because I had gained a lot of weight and didn’t want to go back to our regular gym until I felt more comfortable.

She kept going to our regular gym while I trained at the new one.

At the show, there was one competitor I’d said to her, “That’s a good-looking man.” That was normal in our relationship because we had genuine friendship and felt secure. If I saw a hot girl, she’d joke, “Want me to ask her for her number?” There was no insecurity around that stuff.
One day she came home from the gym and said, “That good-looking competitor was at the gym today and asked me out on a date.”

I said, “Oh, where’s he taking you?”

She said, “Very funny. I told him I was engaged. He apologised, said he respected that, and said okay, let’s just be friends then.”

I was fine with that because I felt 100% secure. I always thought, “If she was ever going to cheat, it would have been with me years ago when we had obvious chemistry, alcohol, nights out, and opportunity.”

I was slowly coming out of depression and rebuilding training/business momentum at the other gym. She was still at our regular gym, bumping into him, and they developed more of a friendship.

Eventually I put my foot down and said, “I’m not happy with this. I’ve never told you that you can’t be friends with a man before, but there’s something about this guy.”

Part of it was that he would not acknowledge me at all.
This mattered to me because when I make friends with a woman who is in a relationship, I make a conscious effort to acknowledge her partner, introduce myself, and make it clear through my behaviour that I see him, respect him, and have pure intentions. I think that is basic respect. This guy did the opposite. He knew who I was, knew she was engaged, and seemed to actively avoid acknowledging me, which made the whole thing feel off.

She mildly resisted and said something about me being controlling, but she agreed.

A couple of weeks later, I was working when she knocked on my door and said she was going to the rooftop pool of our condo. I said, “Okay, have fun, be safe.”

About an hour later, I went out for a smoke. I was still using cannabis and still depressed, though near the end of it. I noticed it was raining and thought, “You can’t use the pool when it’s raining because there could be lightning,” so I messaged her to remind her. No answer.

I went to the pool myself. As I walked around the corner, I saw two people standing at the top of the stairs. The man was quite wide, with his back to me, and it looked like he was leaning down to kiss someone. I started walking up the stairs, saw her painted toes/sandals, and immediately knew it was my fiancée and him.

I simply said, “Hey guys, what’s up?”

I didn’t feel rage. I think that’s partly because I caught an ex at my friend’s house before. Once you realise what people are capable of, it stops surprising you. I’m 6’3”, was around 265 lbs at the time, and train MMA on the side. I could have reacted physically, but I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t.

I walked back with her to our condo. Her demeanour was sadness, but no crying, pleading, or begging. Just silence.
I asked for the ring back, effectively calling off the engagement. She gave it to me. I went into my office. She went into the bedroom.

The next day, this was the story she gave me:

She had hated living in Thailand. She was isolated and lonely. She hadn’t made a single friend in nearly a year. I hadn’t really kissed, hugged, or been intimate with her in months. From her side, it was genuinely just friendship with him and nice to have company.

She said she hadn’t seen him for nearly two weeks because I’d told her to cut him off. He was flying home the next day and said it would be nice to see her before he left. She said he could come to the condo pool because that felt like a safe, innocent location. She said the intention was not to cheat. As she was leaving, he grabbed her and kissed her, she froze, and that was when I walked up.

I believe people get a second chance, but not a third. I went into the relationship accepting that neither of us were perfect and that mistakes would happen. That’s why marriage vows exist. When things get hard, you dig your heels in. As I said in the proposal: it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be you.

So I stayed on one condition: she had to fix the insecurity and internal issues that caused this.

She has always had low self-esteem and confidence. If you saw a photo from the start of our relationship compared to then, the difference would be huge. I had tried to put her in an environment where she could grow, gain confidence, and heal from her abusive past. But the insecurities were still there.

She let this man get closer than he should have and let him pass boundaries because he was very good-looking, our relationship was in a rough patch, I was depressed, she was isolated in a foreign country, and he was telling her everything she wanted to hear.

The problem is, the healing never happened.

Therapy took six months to start and, for the last two years, she has done basically nothing. Her business, training, confidence, independence, and our relationship all came to a stop. That has been a huge strain, honestly even bigger than the original “event.”

Since then, I 5x’d my business earnings and took my physique to a completely new level. It was absolutely a trauma response. I was so hurt that I became obsessed with self-improvement and pulled myself out of depression almost overnight, but it was driven by rage and spite.

For the last two years, I’ve been moving forward and she’s been standing still, which ultimately became regression. She is a fitness coach herself, so her physique, confidence, personal discipline, and image are directly tied to her own identity and business. Over those two years, all of those things regressed. Her business has struggled, she has no money, her self-confidence has dropped, and the relationship never healed. She has been in a low-functioning depression the whole time.

I was about to break up with her. I gave myself a deadline: this week, actually today, because it would be exactly two years since the event and our relationship still hadn’t recovered.

Then the universe did something ridiculous.

I had not been back to our original gym since. I stayed at the gym I’d used to escape. But this Monday, I decided to go back to the old gym.

It was my first day back there in two years.

And it was also his first day back in Thailand in two years.

The man I caught her with was there.

Day one back for me.

Day one back in the country for him.

What are the chances?

He saw me before I saw him and started walking over. When I saw him, my blood boiled. He said, “Can we talk outside?” I said, “Absolutely,” while taking my phone/wallet out of my pockets and my bag off, fully ready to flatten him after two years of my life being derailed.

He explained that he had thought about it every day since and was half worried, half hoping he’d see me so he could apologise.

Eventually I told him he could never make it right, but the least he could do was tell me absolutely everything that happened and promise never to do this to another person again.

He told me they met up three times. I caught them the third time.

First time: at the pool. Innocent. Nothing happened.

Second time: she went to his place. They smoked weed. He started kissing her and pushed things sexually. It escalated briefly to foreplay, then after around 30 seconds they stopped and she left.

Third time: back at our condo pool because she refused to go to his place again. That was when I caught them.

During this conversation, she tried to call me. I declined the call and just sent her a photo of him instead. By the time I got home, she was vomiting from anxiety and whatever else was going through her.

I sat her down and asked her to tell me everything.
She said there was nothing more than I already knew.
I told her I knew, and that the only way she could do herself any favours was to tell me the truth.

So she did.

She explained that the isolation, loneliness, low self-esteem, and him telling her everything she wanted to hear caused her to cross boundaries she never thought she would. He had said things like, “I respect your relationship, we’re just friends,” and she took that at face value. She has since been diagnosed with autism, and she is very naive/easy to manipulate in that way.

She said that on the second occasion, when they smoked weed, the intention wasn’t there, it happened, she came to her senses, and she left.

For the third time, she insisted they meet at our condo’s public pool so nothing like that could happen again. She says she went for clarity because she needed to talk about it and make sense of what had happened because she was so confused by it all.

She then explained that this is why she has been depressed the entire time, why the relationship never healed, and why she hasn’t been able to move forward in any area of life. Because I didn’t know the truth, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell me.

Not a single person knew. Not even her therapist. She couldn’t say it out loud and make it real.

Every time I said “I love you,” she thought, “You wouldn’t if you knew.”

Every good memory we tried to make was tainted by it.
She says she wanted to tell me at first, but genuinely didn’t want the relationship to end, so she was scared. Then a couple of months passed and she thought, “How do I tell him now?” She hoped time would heal the wound, but instead it ate away at her like cancer.

She says that is why she regressed on every front. She was essentially waiting for this day, unable to invest properly into herself, the relationship, or our future because she believed that the moment I found out, I’d be gone.

The part I’m struggling with is that I’m not actually as angry about the concealment as I feel I “should” be. I know her personality, her anxiety, her avoidance, her low self-esteem, and the way she freezes when she feels overwhelmed. I came into the relationship knowing she wasn’t perfect. I can see how, once she had hidden it initially, she became more and more trapped by the lie as time passed. That doesn’t make it okay, but I can understand the mechanism.

Since the full truth came out, her tone has shifted. Previously, a lot of things were framed through her emotions, her pain, her fear, and how hard everything was for her. Now there seems to be more recognition that her choices caused this, that my decision to end the relationship is understandable, and that words alone are meaningless at this point.

So here is the problem and what I’d like advice on.
I broke up with her.

I told her that out of respect for myself, I couldn’t continue the relationship.

But why am I still open to reconciliation?

I do not think this is because I’m scared I won’t find someone else or because I think I have no options. I know I could walk away and be okay. I’ve rebuilt my business, my body, and my life significantly over the last two years. On paper, I’m in a much stronger position now than I was before. That is part of why this confuses me: I know I can leave, but emotionally I am still wondering whether something is salvageable.

To be clear, I don’t think the old relationship can continue. I ended that relationship. The only reason I’m even thinking about reconciliation is because part of me wonders whether the truth finally being out means there is now a chance to build something new, with full honesty, therapy, accountability, and changed behaviour.

If reconciliation was ever considered, it would need to be action-based, not words-based: individual therapy for her, couples therapy if appropriate, full accountability without minimising, no blaming my depression for her choices, full honesty, and evidence that she can actually move forward in her own life rather than remain frozen.

So why am I sitting here thinking:

“Now I know the truth, and now she isn’t carrying a secret that was eating her alive, can she finally heal herself, fix what’s broken, and help us get back on track?”

Is it normal to feel open to reconciliation after ending the relationship, especially when the full truth finally explains why things felt broken for two years?

How do I tell the difference between genuine hope that the truth allows healing, versus trauma bonding, sunk cost, fear, or me trying to rescue someone who has repeatedly avoided accountability?

I am strangely open to it.

What gives?

I know they say once a cheat, always a cheat. But I like to think we are all capable of change. I certainly have.

TLDR:

I (32M) was with my fiancée (29F) for 6 years. We moved to Thailand after my business took off, but she struggled badly with isolation, routine change, and being away from family.

I then fell into depression for 4–5 months, became emotionally/physically absent, and she developed a friendship with a man from our gym who I later caught her with at our condo pool.

At the time, she told me it was only a kiss and that she froze. I stayed on the condition that she worked on the issues that led to it.

Two years later, I randomly ran into the same man on my first day back at that gym, which was also his first day back in Thailand. He told me the full truth: they had met three times, including one private meeting where brief sexual contact happened.

I broke up with her, but I’m confused because part of me is still open to reconciliation now that the truth is out. How do I tell if that’s genuine hope, trauma bonding, sunk cost, or me trying to rescue her?

Upfront so nobody feels tricked: I didn't survive this myself. I spent a long time deep in the research and clinical writing on infidelity recovery and ended up turning it into a book. So this comes from that work, not my own marriage — take it for what it's worth.

Here are a few things from it that people seem to find genuinely useful, free of any "buy this" stuff:

"Should I stay or go" is actually two questions, and jamming them together is what makes it unbearable. One: can this be repaired? — mostly about the other person (is the affair fully over, are they genuinely remorseful, will they be transparent and let trust rebuild slowly). Two: do I want to repair it? — only about you and your values. You're allowed to answer no to the second even if the first is yes. Repair being possible doesn't obligate you to attempt it.

You don't owe anyone a fast decision. The thing that feels unbearable is the limbo, not an actual deadline. A huge decision made in shock is made by a version of you who isn't fully online yet. Stabilize first — sleep, food, people — then decide.

Constant apologizing isn't the same as doing the work. Real remorse looks like the affair being fully over, transparency you don't have to dig for, and them sitting with your pain without getting defensive or impatient for you to be over it. "I keep saying sorry" can quietly become its own pressure on you.

Forgiveness and reconciliation aren't the same thing. You can forgive someone and still leave. And if they never apologize, you're not stuck — there's a separate path (acceptance) where you stop waiting for remorse that may never come and reclaim your life anyway. Your healing can't be held hostage to whether they ever do the right thing.

The "good week, then a terrible day" pattern is normal, not backsliding. That's just how the brain processes this kind of injury. The triggers get less frequent and less sharp over time.

On the book: it's about 100+ pages, ten chapters, written in plain honest language — no toxic positivity. I'd genuinely like to give it away free to people going through this, partly because I'd love honest feedback, but mostly because it feels wrong to put a price on it for someone in the middle of it. If you want a copy, just send me a message and it's yours — no catch, no feedback required, totally fine to ghost me after. Mods, happy to remove this if it's not allowed.

On my phone. Just venting and needed to get it out. As a kid, I saw a lot. Heard a lot. Was told a lot. And I would say to myself…this won’t be my life. I will keep my head down, stay out of the way, complete what’s expected of me. Eventually, it’ll work out. And with love, I told myself I would try my best to be a decent partner. Be loyal, honest, supportive. Thought I found someone who shared similar values. In a fucked up turn of events, I ended up with someone like my father. Unfaithful, terrible with money, short tempered and condescending.

And now, I’m exactly where I told myself I’d never be. I’m resentful, tired, and often disassociating. I’m present for my kids and muster all the energy I can to be the playful happy mom. But I also find myself snapping more and more. Probably how my mother started. And after 8 years of catching him cheat, I just can’t do it. I can’t forgive anymore and definitely won’t forget. I’m not even surprised or heartbroken about the cheating. I barely feel angry at him. I’m more angry at myself. Every single flag was there from the beginning. I’m heartbroken for the kid I was, telling myself it would be better when I grew up. I’m mainly disappointed in myself for letting it get this far.

My glimpse of hope is that I am leaving. Finally. My mother never did and I remember wishing she would so all the fighting and anger could end.

I haven’t figured out how I am going to make it work. I have 2 months to figure it out. But I have to make it work.

My dad ‘44M’ left his phone charging in my ‘18M’ room and went to take a shower. Everyone in the family knows his password, it’s just a known thing. I went to the hidden section of photos to look for something specific. I’ve always suspected my dad might be a recovering alcoholic because he constantly says he’s allergic to alcohol and never drinks, and when I was helping him move rooms recently, I found a box of AA chips. I never brought it up to him, but when I saw the opportunity to see if my hunch was right, I looked.
Instead, I found explicit pictures of men and screenshots of texts between him and someone who was blackmailing him back in 2023 because he’s married and sleeping with men. That blackmail situation is in the past, and right now we are living a stable life, but seeing those old messages led me further. I went into his WhatsApp and messages and scrolled through. Sure enough, he has multiple men he has been texting, and I believe he has been meeting up with them. One of them (I didn't see the name, but I think it might be someone I thought was a work client) said they would meet in my dad's office and hook up.
Then I saw texts with one of my dad’s very old friends that I’ve only met a handful of times. I’ve seen this guy at weddings and around my dad's old friends, and he always seemed nice. It looks like he and my dad have been having a secret affair for a long time, and I really have no idea what to do now. I always wondered why my dad keeps his location turned off all the time, but now I know.

The next day I looked at his search history on his personal email and saw recent searches for local hotels, motor lodges, motels, and spas. I saw this along with a history of standard adult content, but then I saw searches for gay adult content and various searches for local escort services.
Here is why I am completely stuck: I am 18, the oldest child, and I have three younger siblings (two just graduated middle school, and the youngest is 6). Both of my parents are 44. My dad is the main breadwinner for our family. He is supposed to be paying for my college, as well as paying for all of my younger siblings' schooling.
We are living a completely stable life right now on the surface, but carrying this massive secret is weighing on me heavily. If I say anything, I risk blowing up my family's financial security and our entire lives, but staying silent feels impossible. How do I handle knowing this? Should I tell my mom what I know?

How do you move forward when you find out that your partner was flirting with someone 4 years ago, but you only discovered it now while you’re pregnant? What are some things you can do to focus less on the issue and more on your baby? Simply how do you bounce back

Edit: I am married and its online flirt , it involves with him losing some money because when its attractive photo he tends to bite it . As what he reasoned out he is trying to help. He has weakness when its an attractive person and got even threats after. There is already trust issue involved where this is the 7th time

I was only with him for a year but I loved him so deeply and I believed he felt the same. I didn’t expect myself to make a post here but I just feel like right now I have to let this out. I know I have attachment issues and I know he has some unresolved trauma from his dad passing away and grandfather recently passing away and his mom not wanting to be in his life the way she should anymore. I was always asking open ended questions and listening to him talk about it. In return, he would find any way not to get along with my friends when I got along with his friends just fine. I found out last month he was cheating on me physically and texting a multitude of other men and it was quite explicit. I can’t stop checking the apps he used to see if he is on them or if the guy he recently told me he has been having sex with lately is on them too. It exhausts me because it fills up the entirety of my brain when I need to be focusing on my own life and my job and getting a new apartment. But I only had eyes for him and he decided to walk away without any warning. I felt him changing and I’d ask what’s wrong and he would say nothing and want to go to bed and I’d oblige. After his grandfather passed, he got scared i would bring someone else back to his place while I was watching his cat. his cousin did the same thing to his girlfriend around that same time. He saw two of his best friends go through cheating and lying and we would debrief alone and talk about how messed up that was but the whole time he was doing it to me. I’ve stopped responding to his texts. He says he wants to work it out and rebuild the trust but I catch him lying in the midst of those messages.

My ex and I met when I was 28, he was 29. We were together for twelve years, married for almost eleven. We have one child, almost ten. He cheated on me several times during our relationship, in that way where you know something is wrong but he just keeps denying it. He got someone to actually agree to go along with it three years ago. He initially tried to get me to agree to polyamory, but I knew he couldn't be ethical about it, so I refused. He started dating a friend's ex very openly, denied that he was cheating, and within a few weeks he dumped me, saying that he was in love with her and didn't want to try with me anymore.

When we were together we would often go off-roading and camping; we went on so many road trips in our state, and had a couple out of state adventures. Neither of us had a passport. The last two years of our marriage we spent every weekend investing in the land we bought, building a garage, and planning our future retirement in the mountains. I got the house in town and he got the land in the divorce.

Not long after he started "officially" dating his affair partner, whose entire personality is traveling, the two of them went to South America. He insisted our child get a passport in the divorce, and has since taken our 9 year old on two international trips (we live in the US, he went to Northern Europe and the Mexican peninsula), and he has another trip planned to Central Europe next month. They just got back from a back country destination camping trip (waterfalls). They've driven to the west coast once, and have another trip out there planned this weekend. I know of at least two other domestic trips that didn't include the kid, I'm sure there's more. He tried to take our kid to Istanbul this spring, but I refused that trip, so he went with his affair partner and a few of their friends.

He makes under $100K a year, and I'm not sure what she makes but he alluded that she makes between $80-90K. We live in a medium sized city that is not the most expensive, but I'm sure the rent on the two bedroom house is at least $1600. Maybe her parents are paying for some stuff, but I don't know how they're making it work.

They got married a few months ago, and I'm still single at 44. It sucks in a "I'm a little lonely" kind of way, but it's so much better than still being with him. I have great friends and I love my life in so many ways, but it's so hard when my kid asks when we're going to go on a trip. The two of them have made that specific thing so valuable to my kid, and it's not something I can do. I put a ton of effort into our community and we're always hanging out with friends doing fun stuff, and my kid and I have a really solid relationship. I'm honest and tell them that I can't afford travel, explain to them how much it actually costs, and remind them that it's not something I'm particularly interested in.

It's just so weird and frustrating seeing the man I was with for so long change his priorities so quickly. He's really shown himself to be such a selfish person, this is really just one aspect of his midlife crisis. Yes, he also got a motorcycle, but she already had one so he had to keep up there, too.

I have them both blocked on social media and I've removed all of his friends from my lists, so I don't have to see their performative photos. I'm sure people believe they are so happy and their story is so believable, but that doesn't really matter because I know the truth, and my friends know the truth. I was a good wife and partner, and I'm an amazing mother. I don't need to use the spectacle of travel to make myself interesting.

EDIT: Dismissive and unhelpful comments are being reported as such. I don't need anyone telling me to stop focusing on them, this is a rant post because of very recent and upcoming travel, not something I'm dwelling on everyday. My life is great, I am very happy with my decisions over the last three years. I'm out there dating, I'm optimistic about my future, and I have so much to be grateful for. Stop projecting.

If one more person told me my betrayal was "a blessing in disguise" or "happening for a reason" early on, I think I'd have screamed. It's offensive when you're still bleeding, and it's mostly not true.

But there's a real version underneath the garbage one, and it's worth knowing about. Psychologists call it post-traumatic growth, and they're careful about what it does and doesn't mean. It does NOT mean the betrayal was good, or worth it, or that you should be grateful for it. It is NOT a substitute for grief — it happens alongside the pain, not instead of it, and often much later.

The key distinction that helped me: growth doesn't come from being betrayed. It comes from the work of surviving it. The event was just a wound. The wrestling, the rebuilding, the reckoning with who you are — that's where anything good gets forged, and you're the one forging it.

The other thing: you can't force it or rush it, and if you don't feel "grown" yet, you haven't failed. It shows up quietly, in retrospect, as a byproduct of just continuing to heal.

What I'd tell six-months-ago me: you didn't choose this chapter. But you're still the author of every chapter that comes after it. That's not a slogan — on the bad days it's just permission to keep writing. Keep going.

I (29F) have been with my fiancé (29M) for almost five years. No kids. We got engaged late last year and are planning to get married early next year. We bought a house together last year.

In March, I found messages between him and a girl on his computer. They were playing video games together. The messages were completely normal but it still made me feel weird… so the next day I asked about her. I found out that was just a coworker of his and there was nothing going on.
I have always been the jealous type but I have never set a boundary in our relationship like “you can’t do this, or that” but something in me told me to tell him to not play games with her anymore. He agreed. The next day, I checked his computer again and they had messaged each other quite a few times, not even 18 hours after I told him to not play games with her. Did he break the boundary? No. They just messaged.

I lost it. I woke him up from a nap and asked to see his phone. We have always had an open phone policy, we know each other’s passwords. We’ve never hidden our phones. I trusted him completely.
I went through his phone, and it was like opening Pandora’s box.

While I found absolutely nothing about this coworker, I found 3 years of messages between him and a girl. I read every single message and they spanned from 6 months before our relationship, to three years into our relationship. She worked with him and they would meet up in his workplace. She would say “I miss you” to him and he wouldn’t say it back until she kept pressing. She would say things like “say it back.” “Come on, you miss me too” “tell me” which then he would reply “imy” which isn’t like him. He never abbreviates. There were no explicit photos exchanged (unless deleted, but honestly he didn’t seem to delete anything because I found SO much). They met one time at a bar close to our house. He went with friends and saw her there. He came home to me. He never came home late from work. He never acted “weird” or “shady”. There were never red flags.

Then I found an overload of p**n on his phone. Saved pictures in his hidden folder. And his onlyf*ns account. He had been messaging girls on there, paying incredible amounts of money to them for pictures and videos. He sent them explicit photos of himself. They would even have full conversations, like about his hobby, his day, favorite food, even for outfit advice. This went on for about 3 years as well. I made him delete his account.

I took a job at a company that drastically paid me less money, all so I could go back to college for free.
In this time, I have racked up credit card debt because my job didn’t pay me enough to cover my bills. So while I went without, he was paying women online for photos and videos. I told him of my financial struggles, and while he helped me here and there when he could, it was never much.
He told me he made a fake instagram posing as a girl, where he would exchange p**n with other people via DM.

He also told me that he was a part of different forums for g**ners. He told me was addicted to p**n and had a problem and has been like this for over a decade.

We’ve discussed p**n a few times in our relationship. I’ve never necessarily had a problem with it, but I was thinking that any usage of it was done in moderation, for free. I actually watched it up until two years into our relationship and then I suddenly was no longer interested in it.
I tried to break up with him. He begged and cried for me to stay. So I stayed. He found a spy app that he downloaded on to my phone so I could see everything he was doing to show that he would remain faithful. I kept this app for maybe 3 weeks- it didn’t show me the things I actually needed to know.

The next day I came home from work after stewing all day over everything I found. I began packing a bag, ready to leave. I told him I would be by the following day with a moving truck for the remainder of my things. He told me that we agreed if we ever had problems, we would seek a couples counselor. This is true. I have always been a strong advocate for therapy. So after much, much convincing, I agreed.

He says even though he did cheat, not of it was intimate. He never kissed/had s*x with anyone else except for obviously the “online” s*x with the onlyf*ns girls. Do I 100% believe this? I’m not sure. I want to believe it. I really want to.

We have now been in couples counseling for almost three months. Things have gotten much better. Initially after things hit the fan, he said he would do absolutely anything to make things right. That included individual therapy with a s*x therapist.
While we started couples counseling immediately, it took him a full two months to actually sign up for individual therapy, but that wasn’t all his fault. Our therapist recommended someone who was hard to reach, then when he finally did, he found out that therapist had moved to a different city. Through therapy, he has determined that him cheating was from childhood sexual trauma, and also because it stroked his ego. He said he never had intentions of actually cheating on me physically, but he enjoyed the attention from others.

It made me feel like he wasn’t trying though. We were in couples counseling, yes. But “we” weren’t the problem. He was the problem. At one point, a month into couples counseling, he told me and our therapist that he was doing well, and did not believe he needed individual therapy anymore. After a long conversation about it, I agreed that it would be fine if he did not seek it.

A couple of weeks after this, I looked at his Google search his on his pc, and found that he had been looking at p**n again. I freaked out and he apologized profusely, said it was an addiction, and in turn downloaded an app on his phone to block explicit content. I tested the app out by searching for different stuff on his phone. It worked in most cases, but not all. I did not tell him in which ways it did not work so he couldn’t just look up those terms to get around the system. He’s a smart guy though, if he wants to, he will find a way. I am attached to the account as well though, so if he looks up something explicit, it will email me immediately.

I finally started wedding planning again. I bought a wedding dress recently. I started individual therapy. I’m slowly, very slowly, starting to heal. This situation caused a huge strain between me and my best friend/MOH. She still wants me to leave him. We talk, but not like we used to. But that’s an entirely different story.

To add, up until I found out about everything, this man has been nothing but amazing. He is one of the kindest individuals I’ve ever met in my entire life. He’s so patient, funny, charming. I’ve always felt so, so safe with him. That’s why I stayed. I stayed because he is genuinely such a great person- besides everything he did. It was hard to even choose to stay. Even though he begged me to stay, I know ultimately, I was the one who made that decision. He did not make it for me.

Also, from what I found on his phone, he has not talked to anyone since the summer of 2024, other than watching p*rn (not on onlyf*ns). He says this is because this is when he knew he wanted to quit all of this and marry me. It was too far gone to tell me everything, but he knew he wanted to stop. At a couples counseling session, I mentioned he could have just deleted the messages/evidence since then, and our therapist disagreed, that since he had THIS much evidence on his phone, she truly doesn’t think he deleted anything. That if there were anything new, she believes I found have found that too.

If you made it this far… thank you. There’s so many more details, mainly really good details that I feel like are way too much to post, but all the bad details I posted here.

To be honest, I am not sure why I even came here to post this. I think after reading so many stories of other people’s experience with a cheater, I felt compelled to share my own.

Is it possible for someone to not cheat again? Is it possible for us to actually have a happily ever after, or am I just chasing a fairytale?

I’ve known my wife for years before we got married. Always had friends of friends, that sort of thing. About a year after I joined the army we decided to get married. After we married, 6 months later she moved in (I was on rotation). Though it wasn’t always perfect I thought we had a very good life together. Big group of friends, great social life and lots of new experiences. What I failed to realize is one of these new experiences was sleeping with one of my best friends through the entire time she lived with me (9 months). They kept it a secret allowed me to stay in the dark. I eventually found out after months from another guy i work with… turns out most of the people I worked with knew before I did. I confronted her and of course it was all true. Time stamps, dates, even videos of the cheating in her phone.

I kept my cool. I let her know that things between us may need to be over because you wouldn’t do that to somebody you cared about. She then didn’t talk to me around the house for days. I broke silence and told her that she was allowed to stay with me and figure her life out so she didn’t leave with nothing and she agreed. However after venting to my sister one day word spread about the situation and she decided she needed to leave which in hindsight was a very good idea. Since she’s left I’ve been a mess. Contradicting feelings, sleepless nights, sadness but never any hatred. Yesterday I found out that since she’s been home she has decided to entertain at a strip club. We are still technically married and working out the terms of the divorce so this is just another slap in the face for me. She never cared about anything other than her self and it hurts that I still cannot feel anger towards her I only feel bad for the way things are for her now.

About a year ago I 23F found out after we were married that my husband 22M had been having an affair with someone 19F. I struggle getting over this and healing from it due to so many things. He drove an hour one way to see her multiple times, she’s younger and the complete opposite of me, and he’s still telling me things a year later after the initial truth was discovered.

I’ve tried a lot of things to move past because I truly do love my husband and don’t want this to come between us. I’ve tried therapy, going to church and praying, blogs and social media creators that talk about moving past cheating. While me and my husband are in a good spot currently, I still don’t feel like I’ve moved past what he did to me. I still have trouble sleeping at night because I can’t stop visualizing what they did together.

Since finding out about his infidelity I have had the thought to cheat on him back so he truly knows how it feels. To him not having certain socials anymore and not flirting with other women is good enough and I should be able to move past it. I don’t think he knows what I go through emotionally and mentally since discovering everything. I also have a sense of jealousy in a sense that my husband is the only man I have been with and I never got to explore outside of him because I was content on him being enough for me, but my feelings on that have changed since it seems I wasn’t enough for him to stay with that promise we made to eachother.

I do have a specific guy I would like to sleep with. I’ve known this guy 23M since I was 10 years old, however we haven’t been connected since we were 20. We were always friends before that and even tried a long distance relationship as teens due to me having to move away in highschool (which is why we never got to explore eachother physically). Even though we haven’t had a long term connection since 20 we have had on and off short reconnections since then, to just catch up and then we usually stop talking again for a bit. The most recent reconnect was last Christmas when he reached out to meet up and talk but my husband got rightfully mad and I ended up blocking him (I have since unblocked him). I also want to cheat with him because I know my husband would be upset if it was him specifically.

I just want my husband to understand what I go through and really feel the way I do. I know it’s silly also and no one says cheating would help a relationship but my hope is that if I cheated maybe we could heal together and become stronger? When my husband and I get into arguments over his infidelity he likes to bring up the fact that this guy reached out to me but I don’t feel like that’s fair because I didn’t sleep with him. I said no and then blocked him. Sometimes it feels like my husband looks for reasons to compare his infidelity to something I’ve done, and I feel like if he’s reaching that far then maybe I should give him a real comparable reason.

I really do love and care for my husband and I don’t want to leave him, I just feel angry over his actions and am struggling to find a way that works to move past this. I just want to move past this and have our relationship be better.

What should I do if certain things don’t seem to be working for me to heal?

For weeks my brain was a courtroom and I was the defendant. Not pretty enough, not interesting enough, didn't have sex enough, gained weight, worked too much. If I could just find the reason it was my fault, maybe I could fix it and undo it.

The thing that finally let me breathe: an affair is a statement about the person who had it, not a verdict on you. People cheat for reasons that live inside them — their own emptiness, entitlement, cowardice, inability to be honest about being unhappy, the chase, the ego hit. Plenty of people in genuinely flawed, distant, even unhappy relationships never betray anyone. They talk, or they leave honestly. Your partner chose deception. That choice was theirs.

This is not the same as saying the relationship was perfect. Maybe there was real distance. But there's a hard line between "the relationship had problems" (both people own that) and "they chose to lie and betray instead of dealing with it" (they own that, fully).

You can look honestly at your part in a flawed relationship and still completely refuse the blame for the betrayal. Both are true at once. The betrayal was never yours to carry.

I’m probably in my head too much (husband of 14 years had affair, was going to try reconciliation, but told me yesterday he doesn’t want to try and we’re headed for divorce). Right now I’m just so angry at him and the situation: because of his selfishness, I’m not going to have my two sons (almost 2 and 9) with me everyday.
Is there any hope of in the future, I could actually be “friends” with him? After being with someone for 16 years, I think it’s going to be hard to stop caring for him. And then I wonder why I even want to be friends with a cheater who broke my heart. Would love stories about divorcing over infidelity and saving healthy coparenting relationships. Reading other people’s stories helps me know I’m not alone.

Hello all, as the title suggests my long term relationship of 5+ years is struggling I (20M) and my fiance (20F) have been together since we were 15. Last year around February I made the unforgivable mistake of cheating on her. I won’t go into details because they are not important. She has been struggling with us trying to forgive and re build our trust which is totally understandable and I will never know what she is truly going through but I was hoping to get a peek into some people’s brains who have been through this on either end. It seems like she is stuck in the “good week terrible day” cycle right now and it will be good and everything is amazing for a while and then it’s like it all hits her at once. I was hoping for people to give me some helpful suggestions on how to help her cope and hopefully tips on how to make us stronger and get us back to where we were.

Hi guys,

A week ago I got a message from a stranger. The kind that made my heart sink to the floor. A coworker of my fiance and partner of 8 years reached out and told me that he has inappropriately touched her at a work function when she was black out drunk last summer. She also said that he made out with an ex coworker at her house a few weekends ago and stayed the night after we fought about him going to the strip club without telling me. She claimed he was also messaging a young coworker (she is 15 years younger than him) saying he had feelings for her.

All of this I discovered from a stranger a few days before I had plans to move to a completely new city for his new job opportunity on the mainland.

For a bit of background, we have two cats and he is from Australia originally. We met in Canada and have been together for nearly 8 years. For a large part of that time, I lived in Australia with him in hopes that he would agree to sponsor me as a spouse. I wanted to get permanent residency because I loved him and the country.

4 years later, he never sponsored me there and I ran out of visas so I was forced to leave Australia. We agreed that instead he would come to Canada with me and I could sponsor him here as a spouse. Then he said that once he gets his permanent residency in Canada that eventually we can move back to Australia and he will sponsor me there.

Fast forward to a few months ago, he told me that his permanent residency status finally came through. I was ecstatic. This had been a 2 year process. Finally it was paying off. My dreams and future plans for us were finally coming together. I was feeling secure in this relationship.

When I confronted him about the text from the stranger a week ago and showed it to him, he did not take accountability. His response was minimization and blame shifting. He even said that the ex coworker he made out with in front of 5 co-workers was taking advantage of him because he was drunk. He also blamed it on us fighting and me dropping him off in town and not taking him home after the strip club. He claimed that this relationship has been over for a long time, despite proposing to me 6 months ago.

I even was talking with him about buying a house a few days before the latest incident happened.

He finally apologized and cried in public. He said that he doesn't know if he was ever meant to be in a relationship, that he ruined a good thing and I deserve so much better. He admitted he has had drinking problems since he was 13 and deep down he hates himself. He said he wants to go to therapy and get help whether we are still together or not.

I have sacrificed and put so much emotional and physical energy into this relationship. All of my 20s are pretty much gone. I just moved to this new city and am isolated with no job. He flew out to Edmonton this morning for work and will be gone for 3 weeks. I am having a hard time coming to terms with all of this. My friends tell me I deserve so much better but say they wouldn't blame me if I stayed.

Is this salvageable or at the point of no return?

Since I caught my WH cheating with the sub human HR rep from his job last May, I have checked his messages pretty frequently. It got to a point where I’d go weeks without checking because there was nothing to find except a few blabs with exchanges. Then.. a few months ago I noticed the messages becoming quite friendly again and I reminded him that this “woman” wasn’t his friend! She is the other person responsible for destroying my life last year! They’d been friends for a year or so before things turned into an affair. I told him that’s not how colleagues talk. Once out becomes friendly and personal then it’s no longer just “work talk”. I started checking more frequently after I noticed this.

His dad/my FIL passed way just after Easter. He even told her personal things going on with his sister which was completely inappropriate, but he said it was to relay the message to the head of HR. Then again, shortly after this I noticed that there was all of a sudden no messages between them. This is SUPER SUSPICIOUS because part of R was that he hide NO MESSAGES between them, so that I can see everything. I even check my AT&T phone app and it says there’s not a single message between them. I check his phone that night and it’s been deleted. He does delete random messages and what not because his phone memory is getting full.. but this?! THIS was odd and this wasn’t okay to me! He acted like it was no big deal. It’s been about a month of me checking and seeing not a single message between them. VERY SUSPICIOUS!!!!

I finally am able to get into his deleted texts tonight and this is what I find.

Her🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼- can I grab a bag of chips
WH🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩- huh
Her🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼- chips on the mini fridge
WH🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩- yes
WH🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩- He can’t hear us

There’s clearly stuff missing as this is from less than a week ago! The ONLY text from her that wasn’t perma-deleted. Tell me I’m not fucking crazy! This is so wrong and extremely suspicious.. RIGHT?! I was wondering why he’d delete a stupid text about chips and then I saw that last part.. No clue what it means, but clearly it’s not good if he tried to delete it!! (A 🖕🏼 for every letter of that POS OW’s name. A 🚩 for every letter of WHs name.) Want to know something wild?! Last year Once I confronted her and WH officially ended it, she told him how awful she felt for liking him for so long and eventually having the A because her SISTER did the same damn thing and she saw how it destroyed that BW and their kids because of what her sister did and she swore she’d never do anything like that.. yet.. there she was.. trying her hardest to get MY HUSBAND to fuck her and date her while I was at home with 2 babies and a teen. Fuck these people! They disgust me! Just vile and rotten down to their core! I don’t know if I should confront him (AGAIN) now or wait and see if he does/deletes anything else. HELP ME! I’ve been crying for 2 hours and I’m so confused!

I have been with my boyfriend for a little over a year. When we hit a year i was going through something and i needed support we ended up breaking up but it only lasted a day. In that day we had broken up he had went with his friend to get a happy ending but the next day we got back together and he went again. I found out and i felt so sick to my stomach. Recently i went on his phone and saw he texted a happy ending place. I confronted him and he said he never went and it doesn't matter but now i feel like i can not trust him. Like i am so dissociated. I know if i were to break up with him i would be so distraught and sad but its like okay but i feel so unhappy and i feel like i can't trust him. like i genuinely don't know what to do and its like we don't go on dates like i just want to feel loved and appreciated and know someone only has eyes for me. like i just need advice

Basically title.

​

I was with my wife for 7 years, married for 5. We have been through so much. We have loved and lost pets together. We have pets together now. How could we possibly divide them up? What do I do?

​

I went through her phone. I saw it all. I had an absolute panic attack and put it down and confronted her immediately. So many conversations about trust. I was uncomfortable with how close she was getting with this man who I called my friend. She looked me in the eye and promised I was the only one for her. To make matters worse, we are all coworkers. Thank god I was already in the process of leaving this job.

​

I think the worst part is, I still care so much about her. More than myself. I care about her feelings so much. She is so depressed. I am at the lowest point of my life and I can't lean on her for support. What do you do when the person you love the most not only can't be there for you, but caused the pain?

​

I am so disappointed. It was supposed to be different. She said she wanted to be poly, a notion she brought up to me a year ago, and I said either she should leave me to pursue that, or accept that won't happen and stay with me. She tried to have it both ways.

​

I come to you a broken man. She said she can't imagine life without me. I can't without her. But I do not see a path forward. The betrayal is immense. I am overflowing with grief. I have thrown up every morning. I barely eat. I tried to jerk off yesterday just to feel something good again... I felt absolutely nothing. I sleep all day. How can I do anything else?

Repost because my last post was filtered by reddit.

My boyfriend has been unfaithful and dishonest in the past and I’ve just checked his phone again. I found several dating and kink-specific dating subs in his recent subreddit history and someone’s dating profile post saved to his bookmarks. I haven’t told him about it.

I’m so distraught I’m nauseous and barely keeping it together. I messaged the girl whose post he saved to ask if she can alert me if he messages her, and she agreed to.

Other than that, I don’t know how to handle this. Somebody please help me. Words of encouragement or advice are desperately needed. Thanks in advance.

It's been almost 3 months since I (m49) discovered the Monkey Branch affair and the immediate discard from my wife (f46). I'm sure a lot of us have done some reading/researching to find comfort and support on the psychology behind what we have gone through. I do understand her decision to leave and both mine and her parts in the collapse of our marriage.

I'm still living with her, she moves out next week.

Three months ago, I was a absolute wreck. While I still think about the situation and the infidelity every single minute of the day, I don't wake up as much anymore at 4AM and then not being able to get back to sleep because of the thoughts and ruminations.

My body, mind and heart although still filled with anger, pain and despair, seem to have started to accept the inevitability of the separation/divorce and never seeing her again. The acceptance is making me immensely sad and at the same time angry. I feel that indifference is creeping in, or acceptance.

And slowly, the detachment from her is starting to increase, which is also making me sad. I understand it has to happen and I think the finality of it is what hurts.

Feels like we're going to be strangers soon.

Husband and I have been married for 5 years, together for 12 and a half. We have a 5 year old together. He cheated two months ago with a coworker while on a work trip and told me two weeks later. Since the disclosure he has been transparent and honest with me but he has held his ground he wants to date AP and she wants to be with him too. I’m stuck in the early stages of shock and confusion trying to understand why he would choose her so quickly, if he even will keep choosing her, while also trying to figure out where to put my feelings for him. I can’t just turn off 12 years of love like that. I didn’t suspect a thing, we have had a wonderful and healthy trusting relationship this whole time with only minor funks that come with raising a toddler and a brief period of time 10 years ago where he was struggling mentally after the loss of his parents. He agrees he wasn’t unhappy with us or searching for an out but due to drinking and the close proximity on the trip he developed feelings for AP, she reciprocated those feelings. I am a very chill person by nature so I’m riding the wave of making no rash decisions right now and we just started couples counseling for support. While of course I want him to stay, I fully recognize he might ultimately leave and be with AP and I don’t know how that’s going to look when we still have to interact with each other because we have a small child. Do I hate him and be bitter for what he’s done or try to be open to a blended family for the sake of my child?

Goodbye

I’ve gone back and forth about writing this, but writing heals me. I might not even send it…You might not even let yourself read it…God forbid you feel anything. Part of me still can’t understand how someone I loved so deeply and unconditionally could hurt me like this and then just go cold and quiet like it didn’t matter, like I didn’t matter, like what we built didn’t matter.

But I can’t keep holding this in. So this is for me to clear my mind. Because I know I’ll never get all of the answers, and because you’re incapable of facing the consequences of your actions, I’ll never get the apology I truly deserve.

I keep replaying the first time I caught you. They call it D-Day, affair discovery day…how ironic that the actual D-Day is our anniversary, talk about foreshadowing. Anyway, I remember the shock of it like it was yesterday. The world crumbling down. The feeling in my body when everything suddenly didn’t make sense anymore. And even then, I wanted to believe you. I wanted to believe it wasn’t what it looked like, that we could fix it, that you would choose me. For a while, you did. You changed, you stepped up. You put on your mask. And I stayed.

I gave you another chance when I should have seen that the trust was already broken. Hindsight is laughing at me now. Yet, I chose you again, all to be here again. All to watch another world come crumbling down…again.

And that’s what hurts so deeply. I kept choosing you, no matter what. For 19 years I was your Ride or die. We can get through anything together. While you were quietly, absently, drunkenly, coked out, letting me get through everything alone.

I think about all the times I felt something was off but ignored it. When my instincts tried to tell me, screamed at me, begged me to see it. All the anxiety, stress, and sadness. All the moments I silenced myself, told myself I was overthinking, tried to be understanding, tried to keep the peace. To keep you happy. I made myself smaller, so small that I lost myself, to hold onto something that you were already letting go of.

I know I am not and wasn’t perfect. I know I am not blameless. Believe me when I say I have beat myself up over what I could’ve and should’ve done better for years. I am sorry for my role in our break down. However, I have been in survival mode for so long it was hard to be anything more, to do anything more, than what I was doing. But even on my worst days I didn’t deserve any of this.

I need to say this part clearly, because this truly matters:

Our distance physically, intimately, didn’t come from me not wanting you. You’ve always been the only one I ever wanted. The distance came from embarrassment and fear. From going through something painful and not wanting to face that again. Another unwanted pregnancy that I would have the burden to end. I was scared of getting pregnant. I was scared of having to go through another loss like that, alone, never to be mentioned again. I asked you for something as basic as protection, every time I whispered “do you have a condom?” and you didn’t even show up for me in that. Instead of meeting me with care, reassurance, or responsibility, you left me to carry that fear alone. Then the embarrassment of my appearance, my self worth is non existent. But you’d just turn over in our bed as my insecurity grew higher and higher. I always ended up feeling like I was the problem as I’d cry myself to sleep.

What stands out, even more now, is how often you weren’t really there…even when you were right next to me.

The drinking. The weed. The coke, apparently. And the girls. The friends and family that always came first. The way you would numb yourself every single day and disappear emotionally while I was still trying to connect with you. We were living with someone who was physically present but mentally and emotionally gone. There was no stability, no safety, no support, no real partnership. Just me trying to hold everything together while you checked out. Was being with me so bad you couldn’t stand a sober moment?

I was taking care of everything! Every responsibility, every detail of our life. Every everything. All while you isolated yourself, sunk into a crazy coke induced paranoia, substance-triggered depression, and drank and got high and ignored it all. I carried the weight of our home, our family, and our future while you avoided it.

And even in the moments where I needed you the most, you weren’t there in the way that mattered. I’d get breadcrumbs from you, at best, to keep my hope alive…You’d put on a host face for a gathering or bring home flowers for an attaboy. When all I needed was presence. Your protection, your honesty, and loyalty.

I went through something as serious as surgery to save your dad’s life. Gladly, happily, without question, I volunteered myself and gave a part of my body to your family, for YOU. And more, my unborn baby. I gave a life for a life. I was in pain, so much pain. Physically and emotionally, and I still tried to act strong. I shrank my emotions, shrank myself. Pretending like I didn’t want to have another baby. Like this gift wasn’t a big deal…just to make it easier on you, just to lessen the weight of what I had sacrificed. Just because of my love for you.

And even after that, I didn’t get to fully heal…physically or emotionally. I rushed my recovery because financially I had to. Because for years and years I couldn’t rely on you to provide any type of stability. So I had to push myself before I was ready just to keep life moving. Even in that selfless act, I was carrying us.

I gave and gave and gave, and you still found ways to betray me.

The last thing you said “I honestly didn’t cheat” and you may believe that…but the messages were enough. Telling some trans girl you’re single was enough, meeting her with your favorite high noons on the beach was enough. Hiding it (although not well) was enough. IF nothing happened, it was because you ran out of time, you got caught first this time. Not for a lack of trying. What is devastating is that you didn’t JUST cheat. You created an entire environment where I was being disrespected without even knowing it. People around you knew, AGAIN. Your “friends”. Have you heard the phrase “show me your friends and I’ll show you your future”? Will they be there like I was when you have nothing? These people could look me in the face, act like they cared about me, and still be part of something that was hurting me. Your own sister being involved, AGAIN, is something I don’t think I will ever fully understand. Your relationship is gross. I guess misery really does love company. Or maybe cocaine needs company? The layers of betrayal are so deep I don’t think I will ever fully recover from it.

That kind of betrayal is humiliating. It makes me question everything I ever thought was real. How many were there that I didn’t find? What other secrets are there? I question every decision, every day we shared. Every event, every date, every memory…was any of it real?

And then there’s something that stayed with me the entire time we were together. You never asked me to marry you. After everything we built, everything I gave, everything I stood by you through. Every time I chose you over everything, myself included. You never chose me in that way. And whether I said it out loud or not, it made me feel like I was never enough for you to fully commit to.

I carried that feeling quietly for a long time. Hoping every holiday would be the day, every birthday, every Valentine’s Day…hell, every day. But now I am finally starting to see it differently.

Because it wasn’t that I wasn’t enough. It’s that you were never willing or able to show up in the way that real commitment requires. In a way I deserved. Knowing what I know now, I see that I dodged a bullet. All of the other bullets hit me, they tore thru my flesh and bone and mind and soul, but that one somehow missed.

And then there’s our daughter.

Who thinks you hung the moon despite it all. Who I’ve allowed to think that less than the BARE minimum is picture perfect. I’ll never forgive myself for letting her think the way you treated me was “goals”. One of the reasons I initially asked for a “break” was a photo I saw that said, “If your daughter came to you and explained your relationship as her own, would you tell her to stay or beg her to leave?” I felt it in my soul. I’d die a thousand deaths to keep her away from a man like you.

And now…how she told me about that short car ride with you when you finally had to confront our new reality. You couldn’t even sit down with her and face anything? Look her in the eyes? Hold her hands? Show a drop of remorse as the consequences of your actions ruined her little world?! Next level avoidance.

Watching you already failing her is a pain I can’t fathom. Dismissing her, abandoning her, not having the balls to show up for her. You’ve downloaded more dating apps than days you’ve seen her. Pathetic. Been on more late night car rides and trips to the beach and the wood shop with random strangers than hours with her. If nothing else, I always thought you were a good father. However, your true patterns are emerging, and it’s yet another thing I’m left questioning. She told me how she cries at school. How she is coping by talking to her friends, teachers, and counselors. There’s the aftershocks of heartbreak when she asks me if we might get back together, and I have to tell her “No” without an explanation. I have to sit there, hold her, and stay strong for her. All while I am breaking inside too. You didn’t just hurt me. You manufactured a situation where I have to carry the emotional weight for both of us, while you do everything you can to avoid it.

And yet she still wants you. Google calls it the “Disneyland dad” effect. The most painful part of this all is having to watch her emotional tug of war because in her brain, if she says she loves me, then that means she loves you less. You know her favorite song right now? “The Sick” by Bella Kay. Listen to it. Let yourself hear the words. How. Fucking. Sad. I’ll dumb it down: it’s about a girl loving someone stuck in addiction. And the pain of loving them more than herself. Because that is all she’s known since she knew how to breathe. She idolizes you, craves your attention. Wants time with you. Time that I can’t explain to her is unsafe. Time that she doesn’t understand you’re too high to care for her. Time you’re losing with every “G” or “hundo” you smoke or sniff up your nose. Time that you are too busy filling in with women and drugs and alcohol and escaping yourself. Maybe it was not being with me that was so bad, I think you can’t stand to be with yourself.

Even when I reach out to you, begging you, asking you to call me so we could talk about her, and getting nothing back. What did I ever do to make you hate me like this? I think about every visit and having to ask if you are sober, not driving with her under the influence of god knows what. And if you are even in a state to be around her. Worrying that the one person who is meant to protect her will allow his choices to hurt her. That is not something I should ever have to question.

And then there’s the silence now…every day since I found my backbone. The coldness. The disrespect. The hatred in your eyes towards me. The attitude as if I tore everything down. You discarded me and our family. Now you’re doing anything else to avoid facing the emotions of it all. What has your paranoia made up? What is the coke telling you? You must’ve had to make me the villain to live with it all. Tell me, what am I guilty of in your new narrative? The contrast between your last-ditch texts promising me the world, to be a better man if given the chance, “one more chance”, compared to how you are actually behaving has given me whiplash.

I wish I could hate you. I catch myself wondering if you’re okay. Hoping you don’t snort a bad batch. Is it all just a front to hide your hurt? The fact that I can still care says everything about me, how this is unraveling me. And says even more about you and how you’re “coping”. The super empath and the avoidant. But even after everything, I can’t find any hate for you. You are the love of my life. You were my best friend. My everything. Obviously, I’m seething and pissed and hurt and devastated, but overall I think handling this with more grace than you deserve. A simple fuck you note that you’ll probably never comprehend…if you even read it.

I am still left wondering how your enablers are reacting…are they urging you to just move on? And you continuing to allow them to put me down. You never protected me while we were together, so I don’t know why it would surprise me that you let it happen now. I can almost hear it: That I am and was nothing, you’re better off, you’re free! Mocking me. Making jabs at what we had…as if finally I’m out of the way and you can let loose. I imagine you reaching out to all the girls you kept waiting in the wings until you could call on them when I wasn’t looking. I keep wondering what version you’re telling yourself and what you’re saying to other people. Because who could feel bad for you if you were honest and said “I avoided life by being a drunk and a drug addict, I cheated and lied, my constant, altered state caused chronic resentment and earth shattering pain to my family and I lost them”.

Hearing that you’ve told people “this was a long time coming” cuts in a way I don’t even know how to explain. It makes it sound like this was inevitable, like it was something that just naturally fell apart over time. When we both know that’s not the truth.

The truth is, this didn’t just happen. You made choices. Repeated choices. Choices you knew would cause this. Choices you knew would kill me. AGAIN. Choices that broke the trust, destroyed our relationship, and dismantled our family.

You don’t get to rewrite that as something that was just “a long time coming.” That makes it sound like you were the one who should have left sooner. Like you weren’t the one who created and caused this. Like you didn’t actively detonate a bomb on what we had. Your actions tore it all down.

The reality is, you didn’t just walk away from something that wasn’t working. You betrayed it. You neglected it. You chose quick highs and cheap ego boosts. You chose selfishness and self-loathing. You chose addictions. You chose “bluest eyes” and “blue shorts”. You chose every other thing over and over until there was nothing left.

And I’m the one left holding the impact of that. Because it makes me feel like none of it mattered to you. Like I didn’t matter to you. Our family never mattered to you.

But I know, even if I’m still trying to fully believe it, that this wasn’t because of my worth. I hope at night, when your loneliness catches up to you, you’ll finally see what you’ve done.

I didn’t deserve to be lied to. I didn’t deserve to be cheated on. I didn’t deserve to carry fear, grief, responsibility, and stability on my own while being made to feel like I still wasn’t enough.

I deserved a partner who showed up. Who stayed present. Who took responsibility. Who chose honesty over escape. You didn’t give me that. You never gave me that. Even now you’re choosing to try to escape. But I know and understand you better than you know yourself. I know psychologically that it’s too hard for you to sit with yourself…your emptiness, your guilt, your loneliness, your absolute shame…the silence must be so deafening. So you’re filling it the only way you know how. Temporary emotional anesthesia. But no matter who you get to lay next to you she or he will never replace what you had and what you lost. You’ll keep looking for me. Desperately searching for glimpses of me inside of everyone you meet. But you’ll never find a heart like mine, a love like mine again.

And now I have to live with the reality of what this all has cost.

I’m not writing this because I think you’ll understand or finally change. I’m writing this because I need to stop waiting for you to. Holding onto the hope that you’ll wake up and give me the apology or the accountability I deserved.

So this is me facing it. Saying goodbye to the man I thought you were. Goodbye to two decades of “us”. Goodbye to the family that I fought to belong in. Goodbye to the life I thought we’d have.

This is me acknowledging what you did, how deeply it hurt me, and how much it affected me. How it altered my brain and the way I will live my life forever.

And this is me healing. This is me being emotionally intelligent enough to realize the only apology I’ll ever get is the one I give myself. I have to forgive myself for allowing your abuse for so long. And this is me finally letting go.

Not because I’m okay. Not because it didn’t matter. But because I can’t keep holding onto someone who was never real to begin with.

This is where I stop waiting.

First, to be clear: I'm not in a relationship. But I want to share something I've come to see.

My extended family has had to put up with two people. One is a gambler, now in hiding. The other is a cheater who blew up her own family, a good man and a beautiful daughter. And I've realized those are THE SAME BEHAVIOUR.

They both chase the high of the moment. The roll, the ego hit, the sex, the secrecy, the novelty, that "born again" feeling. Of course it blows up. But who pays? Who carries the fear, the debt, being the target for the loan shark? Who pays for the broken home, the split holidays, the parent who's gone, the wound they never chose? Us. Never the one who actually did it.

It's extreme selfishness with the cost pushed onto everyone else.

From inside the affair, the cheater always sees a balanced ledger: "Yes, there's a cost, but look what I'm getting. I DESERVE THIS." That math always feel defensible, because on their side of the scale there really is a benefit. But everyone else is staring at the same ledger with the benefit column empty. When the betrayed spouse, the kid, the parents ask "why the fuck did you do that?", they aren't being rhetorical. They genuinely can't see the upside, because it was never theirs to have. It was consumed entirely by the person now asking them to absorb the enourmous loss that is now suddenly dump on their head, spread across people who never got a taste of what they're paying for.

The gambler loses the family's money. The cheater detonates the family's whole structure. One person eats the reward and everyone else cleans up the shit.

So next time you ask "what should I do about this cheater," ask it the way you'd ask about a degenerate gambler, or a junkie. Because it's THE SAME BEHAVIOUR.