MemberYuck. While I sincerely hope you somehow have a beautiful marriage and life together and prove us all wrong, I see the chances of that happening (without more significant cheating incidences) as very slim to none. You are dating the luckiest guys in the world, for his woman to forgive him of such terrible things.
Member@BewilderedBee: well good luck, i did not mean that to come off as being mean! i just know how hard it is to walk away from someone you really love when they are hurting you. but you don’t want to look back and wish you took everyones advice to leave you know? it is very hard for people to change their ways, even if he does truly love you
Memberbut honeslty does anyone ever look back at the past and say “i really wish someone had told me to walk away” or that people could have advised you through it. because i know i have. and although this decision can only be made by the OP, there are a lot of BEEs here to help out in making a choice she can live with forever.
@giru618: that was a really good post. i understand what you are saying to her. it is true that she has to make the decision, and none of us can understand the situation like she does. she is the one who has to live with her decision.
Member@BewilderedBee: I hope everything works out for you, I really do. But I’m going to be honest and say that you sound just like my former fling’s wife.
If I didn’t know that they were already married I would have PMed you with what I thought your first name was and told you exactly what kind of man you were with. The kind that lays low for awhile after he’s been caught and then gets smarter about it. He had a seperate email address for me and we worked together anyway.
I agree that you’re just telling yourself that it’s his second chance, but I know that if he ever slips up and gets caught again there will be a third. And a fourth, and a fifth…
Member@swarlesk: “One thing I really don’t like about online forums in general is everyone seems to think everything is black and white and everyone that disagrees is doomed to a lifetime of misery.” YES!!!! I totally agree.
OP I am never one to say, “leave him” it’s never that easy. Nobody should judge you and say you’re a dummy for staying with him. You do what you have to. This is advice from the bees but it’s totally up to you in the end. If you feel that he is telling the truth when he says he will change, then go with it. But the people that say that he is lying are full of it because how sure can they be? You know him more than anybody here.
Anyway, my advice is to think really hard about your decision. Because if you see this cheating issue coming up in the future (like in arguments things like that), then there is no point in forgiving him.
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MemberMemberI also don’t think any of us can judge your relationship. Honestly, in your position, if I found out my SO was cheating on me, I don’t know that I might not stay and give him a second chance. I love him. It must be an incredibly hard thing to do.
I just wanted to say that I really think, in addition to your couples counseling, you should consider private therapy sessions for yourself. This has to be traumatic, and working with a private doctor can help you work on how YOU feel instead of focusing on how your relationship is as a couple. I would also recommend, as PP said, going away to stay with a friend or family for a while. Even going away for short statys every so often over the next few months might help you get some perspective.
Finally, you should definately postpone your wedding until you feel you can trust him again.
Good luck. I wish you the best.
Member@BewilderedBee: id just really like to try and convince you this is the wrong choice.
not only are you going to have to snoop around, and constantly be a detective but when things do end, and you try to move on you will have a hard time having a normal relationship. you will not trust people, you will feel you have to snoop on the next guy etc. you will constantly wonder if every guy you ever date after this is cheating, because you made the mistake to stay with a cheater. you really should not have to live every day wondering where he is, what he is doing, who he is with 24/7.you will drive yourself absolutely crazy. You will no longer be you, and that may ruin the relationship also!
it is also a vicious cycle. when do you leave the second time? but what if he cries to you and says he will change, okay then the third time… and fourth etc.
if i told my fiance i cheated , that i had done this to him, and he stayed i would loose all respect for him. because how can you respect someone who doesn’t respect themself? and I am sure your SO has done the same…….
Member@pookiesmom: This is one of the most well written and astutely thought out posts I’ve ever read since I’ve been on WB.
Applause. Standing ovation.
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Member@pookiesmom: Here here.
I give it 2-3 weeks before he does something questionable again and 2-3 months before she catches him. He’ll probably move his cheating to a work computer. People like this don’t get better- just better at hiding their indiscretions.
MemberI have read this whole thread and I have to say, while I agree that these situations rarely turn out well, I also think it’s insanely harsh to just up and tell the OP that she’s basically an idiot for trying to salvage her relationship. I think that there is a way to survive infidelity and that the whole “once a cheater, always a cheater” holds true for some but not for all. I cheated before (in a sense and not on my current FI) and would never ever consider it ever again. People grow, they change and sometimes it takes someone loving you through it, even when you are clearly in the wrong, for you to see that making the change is necessary. Counseling, communication, and setting clear and solid boundaries is not a bad idea.
OP, if giving a second chance is what you are choosing to do, please take care of yourself first and be firm in your boundaries and what YOU need. Also, through it all, be ready to leave, find some strength and hold to it. Stick with counseling, even if in the end it turns out to be just for yourself. Love him still if thats what you are choosing to do, but find a way to love yourself more. Value yourself more. It’s one thing to WANT to be with someone and love them, it’s another thing to NEED them so much that you sacrifice yourself. As much as I love Fiance and want him in my life, I do not NEED him and he knows this, which makes him work harder for our relationship and for me. I hope that things work out for you in the best way possible and that you find happiness. Good luck.
MemberOK, I finally created an account so that I could comment on this. You say that you won’t listen to advice from people who haven’t been there, even though it seems that most of these ladies have been exactly where you are. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I am going to tell you my story. I apologize for the length of this, and if you choose not to read through to the end, I understand.
Before I met the guy who I thought was the love of my life, I had a string of bad relationships with cheaters. Once I caught them, I dumped them because I believed that I was not the type of girl to forgive infidelity.
Then I met “Steve”. Honestly, the way our relationship began (no strings, friends with benefits, etc.) probably should have clued me into the way our relationship would eventually play out, but I was young and head over heels for him.
The first time he cheated on me was right before we moved in together 1.5 years into our relationship. I found out a week after we moved into an apartment with a locked one year lease. He had a met a girl at his work, stalked her on Facebook, and hooked up with her. He told her that he, “lived with his ex.” When I found out they had been seeing each other for almost a month. When I asked him when he planned on coming clean he said, “I was going to wait and see how things worked out.” I found out it was going on because he was being very secretive with his phone (taking it everywhere, even to shower, turning away from me to answer texts or check Facebook, etc.) and one day when he forgot it I looked through his texts. I wasn’t proud of my snooping, but these ladies are right in saying that if you have a gut feeling that something is going on, you’re probably right.
So what did I do? Stupidly, I forgave him because I was so in love and had never had a connection with anyone like I had with him. Up until that point our relationship had been so easy and I thought we could get that back. We couldn’t. I felt like his mother, not his girlfriend. I was constantly checking up on him, looking through his email on our shared computer, questioning who he was with and where he was, the works. I was a nervous wreck. Everything put me on edge. A Facebook comment from a girl I’d never heard of, phone calls late at night, all of it. Probably the thing that hurt the most was that this other girl was worth pretending I didn’t exist.
And what was he doing? Pleading with me to forgive him, telling me I was the love of his life and that he wanted to marry me, telling me he didn’t know why he did it and that he needed help. Oh, and sneaking around with a coworker.
One night he didn’t come home from hanging out with coworkers, and when he finally showed up at almost noon the next day he lied and told me that he’d done coke, because he knew that even though I hated when he did it, I’d find it preferable to the truth. The truth was that he’d been screwing around with the aforementioned coworker and I only found out by checking his email the next day. In his chat log was a message from her asking if he’d gotten away with it, and he told her that he’d just told me he’d done coke instead and I’d bought it. I screamed, cried, threatened to leave, but he begged me to stay and I let him convince me that once again it would never happen again.
He cheated on my twice more after that, the last time while he was living with me rent-free for a summer. I had it. I felt horrible about myself because I’d let him walk all over me for almost four years because I loved him so much and because I told myself that he could be a better man. I don’t doubt that he loved me, but love isn’t always enough to make a person want to change who they are.
I know that you love this man, and that you envision a life with him. I understand where you’re coming from and that you don’t want the “what ifs” after ending the relationship. But I can tell you that most cheaters don’t change. I found out a long while after we broke up that “Steve” had been contacting women from the “Casual Encounters” Craig’s List board through almost our entire relationship, even when he was swearing that he loved me and that I was his soulmate.
I’ve since met my soulmate. He’s a man who I can fully trust with my heart. I know that he is where he says he is and that he would never, ever do anything to hurt me. I cannot even begin to tell you how freeing it is to feel like he loves and looks after me as much as I love and look after him.
I apologize for the length of this, and I really do wish you all the best. Infidelity is incredibly tough to deal with regardless of which way you choose to address it, but if at any point you do decide to end the relationship, I promise you that someone worth your while is waiting in the wings if only you open your heart to the possibility.
Member@BewilderedBee: Hey, I just wanted to pipe in to say that I support your trying to make this work still, it that’s what you want! My fiance never did something exactly like this, but basically he lied about hooking up with a friend I was suspicious of and when months later I saw an e-mail to her being like “don’t tell [opalescent], she wouldn’t understand” I almost broke up with him. I confronted him, and it turned out that he just thought I wouldn’t want to know the truth. We had a big heart-to-heart, uncovered various secrets we’d been keeping from each other, and became closer than we’d ever been before – with him now knowing for sure that I valued honesty above all else. I told him that if I ever found out he’d lied about something big like that again, I would end our relationship right then and there. A year and a half later, and we’re still closer than we were before the incident and totally open and honest with each other.
Anyway, if you think what you have is both salvageable and WORTH salvaging, ignore the naysayers and do what’s right for you.
On the other hand, you also need to be realistic about whether you can meet each other’s needs. If he really does have this need for sexual adventurousness, then you need to understand that upfront. I think you need to talk to him honestly about what behaviors of his he thinks he will actually be able to change – and which are ingrained in him, and he will never be totally happy without. If he needs new sexual partners to stay excited in his sex life, then forbidding him from doing so might just mean he’ll cheat again a few years down the line. Have you considered whether you’re okay with some sort of open relationship as long as he’s honest and tells you everything? I’m not saying it will necessarily come to that – maybe he is really ready to be with just you for good – but you should use your judgment and consider all options.
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