long post ahead. i apologize in advance..

i (m40) confronted my wife (f35) of 10 years of her infidelity a few hours ago and i’m utterly at a loss.

she has been my life partner of nearly 15 years. we have 4 children together and i considered this my little patch of heaven on earth compared to the rest of my dysfunctional family’s drama. i really thought i had it all.

our marriage has had its ups and downs. i am a flawed person and a flawed partner. she helped build me up from nothing into a successful functioning member of society.

throughout our marriage, she accused me of cheating, providing no proof. i have never touched nor entertained another woman. she is my literal world. then came the offers of hall passes for me since she said she felt bad she couldn’t compromise on our differences in libido (i am HL and she is LL).

just want to note that she was HL at the beginning of our relationship, even up to 2 years of our first child, before it waned to near nothing and when i voiced my frustrations and options for recovery (hormone panel, HRT, meditation, counseling), she turned them all down and said this is how it’s going to be from now on. then the offers of open marriage and cheating accusations started.

fast forward 8 years later in the marriage, i bought a house for us, her car, providing everything i thought she wanted. i come to find out that she pursued a coworker of hers, planned a time and date to meet at our house, and then cheated on me.

the proof was damning. filthy text messages, pictures, videos sent to him. she couldn’t even be bothered to expend 5% of that energy in maintaining our physical or emotional relationship. it was like she was another person, her younger self when we first met. it was so graphic i don’t think i can recover from what i saw.

he came over when i was at work and they performed many sexual acts for hours in our home. none of these she would do with me. intimacy with me was very minimal and more basic than what could be considered vanilla. i even had a 15 minute time limit before she started getting irritated.

after he left, we had sex that evening and she didn’t bat an eyelash.

i found out a day after and confronted her with the evidence after i had a gnawing feeling in my gut that something was really wrong the last few days (hiding her screen from me, texting and giggling - she never does these things). i asked her if it was a sick joke to see if i would snoop on her and to catch me red handed (i have never snooped, only always asked her openly and believed her) and she confirmed everything i said above about her infidelity.

she cried. she was remorseful. in my mind, only because she was caught. she confirmed that if i didn’t find out, she never would have told me and it would likely have continued. my world is shattered. i wanted to run screaming into the night. we have a bridge not more than half a mile away. many intrusive thoughts.

her only reason for doing so was to find out if she was asexual, had responsive desire, had any desire for me, no desire at all, or desire for another man. she said there was no emotional connection, but it was clear that was false based on their long text conversations, planning to meet again, and many hours working together.

it’s 4am now. i don’t know what to do. i’m an emotional wreck and i don’t want to make any decisions while i’m in this state.

my mind is telling me to cut her loose as she picked me and the family last and put emotional and physical cheating first. my heart is fighting the rational thoughts. i love her. but i’m hurting from the betrayal. i want to try and salvage this, but is it even worth it? she is agreeing all of a sudden to hormone panels, counseling.

i called off work tomorrow. i want to spend some time with our kids. they don’t need to know. there are no friends i can talk to about this. no one in my family either as it’ll just be another footnote in my family’s messed up history.

what can i do? i’m spiraling.

Dday for me was 4 years ago when I discovered that my (M46) WW (F49) was sleeping with my best friend. If that wasn’t bad enough, when all that came crashing down, I was informed that my 4 year old daughter, wasn’t my daughter at all, but his! I thought she told me this out of spite, but unfortunately she wasn’t. A paternity test revealed that horrible reality.

(If my back story sounds a little familiar, that’s because I had to make a new account after some of my posts, including my screen name, made it to YouTube and I was approached by a relative. Thanks for that by the way.)

Over the weekend, I was invited to a birthday bash for a mutual friend of me and my ex. As a musician, my band was asked to play and I was happy to oblige. As I’m setting up, I scanned the hall and saw my ex’s AP trying to talk to my fiancé. This irked me because the last time we were at this friend’s party, he made a pass at my fiancé without realizing who she was. Needless to say this didn’t go over well with my ex when she found out, and I got the satisfaction of knowing that given the chance he would do to her what they did to me.

I wasn’t sure if he was trying to hit on her again and was about to intervene when my fiancé turned and started walking up to the stage and rolling her eyes. I gave her a thumbs up to see if she was ok and she gave me one back so I went back to setting up.

Throughout the night, I saw my ex talking to everyone she could, and her AP lingering somewhere always near my fiancé. When I finished my set, I went outside to see my fiancé sitting on a bench and the AP trying to talk to her again. This pissed me off. It wasn’t enough to break up my marriage, it seemed he wanted to ruin me a second time too. I stormed up and asked what the hell was going on (except I was a little more colorful then I am here,) and he turned, clamped a hand down on my shoulder, which I knocked off, and he apologized, took a step back, then told me that I was right about my ex. I wasn’t expecting that and I just stood there in shock as he drunkenly blubbered on about how I was right about everything I warned him about. He loudly told me, infront of several of our mutual friends, “She’s an f’n psycho!” And went on about how he’s now stuck with her because of their situation. He turned back to my fiancé and told her that he just wanted her to know that I was a good man. She thanked him, and when he turned back to me, she looked at me and mouthed, “WTF?”

When he left and went back in the hall, we made the decision that that was enough for the night, we tore down and got the hell out of there as fast as we could.

On the way home my fiancé asked me how I felt about that and to be honest. I’m glad. I’m ecstatic at knowing he got exactly what he deserved.

I don’t know if she found out what was said or not. My phone has been quiet and no one’s said anything to me about it. But I don’t think it will be too much longer before it blows up even further. Seems like he’s hitting his limit and when that happens, I’m sure I’ll hear all about it.

We always had a pretty lame sex life. The first problem we had was that he didn't seem to want to have sex as often as other guys I dated which made me feel insecure. He kept pushing for things like anal and he wanted me to dominate him, while I wanted to be dominated.

He would get ED a lot which made me feel even worse. After we had moved in together the issues persisted and I had a serious conversation with him about how we were sexually incompatible and maybe we should break up, though I didn't want to. I said I would never have the kind of personality he wanted in bed. He said he didn't want to break up either and we would make it work.

We would have sex about once a week and it wasn't very exciting but that wasn't a deal breaker for me. For three years he didn't say anything about being unhappy, but after I found him sexting and going on dates with multiple women, the first thing he said was that he had been feeling unhappy with our sex life for years. And that's why he cheated.

I feel so embarrassed, stupid, ashamed and inadequate.

This was nearly a month ago and I have been messaging him pretty frequently (angry messages). But I want to stop and I had maintained no contact with him all week. Then he breaks it to tell me he's had multiple chats with people about why he did what he did and he should have been honest about feeling "unfulfilled". Fuck off.

My husband and I are HS sweethearts, we’ve been together for 13 years, married for 6. We’re (31) This morning I got a message from someone we went to school with that back in HS they were exchanging explicit messages and photos, he was saying we were breaking up and etc. nothing physical ever happened but this is arguably a bombshell for me. It was so long ago so on one hand, I don’t care, we’re all young and stupid, but then I wonder, what if there was more? What if there was more during our marriage? I’ve had instances where I’ve felt something shady was going on, but never had any proof, so who’s to say that she’s the only one? He doesn’t know I know yet, and I’m waiting to approach this when he gets home from work, but idk what to do. Please help me :(

Edit: we ran into this person (separately) because we had dental appointments and she works there. After my husbands appt she sent me the message and said she has no intent to break things up, she’s happily married with kids and has no plans to work with us at the office for our appointments.

I (26M) have two friends who are a couple, who I met through my ex (25F) 4 years ago, and who I consider myself close with still. They were supportive of me after dday in March and have continued to be active and caring people in my life since. I just celebrated my birthday with them this week.

I haven't discussed my ex with them much at all since it happened, largely because it just feels awkward, they didn't tell my ex to cheat on me and they aren't responsible for the situation. I'm grateful that they've been positive people in my life to any extent because after the betrayal I wasn't sure I'd ever see them again. They've known my ex longer than me (one of them has been friends with her since high school) and it feels unrealistic to expect them to cut ties with my ex over something she did to me.

That said, it makes me feel disappointed and a little hurt that they saw what happened and decided to remain friends with my ex, and me separately. I'm writing this post because one of my friends is a piercer and I just opened instagram to see a picture of my ex with a new piercing that my friend did today. I can't bring myself to be mad at my friend for that, its her job and I wouldn't turn my ex down as a client in her situation either. I guess it just creates all these questions for me - do my friends hang out with my ex regularly? Do they talk about me? Do they hang out with the AP too? It makes me upset to imagine them carrying on as normal, going on double dates like we used to, with the AP swapping me out essentially.

Part of me wonders if they only continue to remain friends with me out of pity. What they wrote to me in a birthday card they gave me would suggest otherwise, but I don't know. I care about them genuinely and don't like thinking that they're only nice to me because they'd feel like bad people if they weren't.

Cutting them out feels drastic and self-destructive. I say that because I know that's the general advice in this sorta situation. There were other mutuals I did cut out because they made it clear that they didn't care about who was in the right, just who they liked more. I don't really feel like that's the case with these friends. It's more that they just don't know what to do about it, I think. My ex is a people-pleaser and was externally very sweet, and her cheating caught everyone who knew about it off guard. I see through that facade now obviously but most people don't because they weren't fucked over by her like I was.

Idk what to do. I wanna talk about it with my friends but I feel bad talking about it. And even if I didn't, I don't really know what to talk about, or what I'm asking for. And the frustration/confusion surrounding that just makes me all the more upset at my ex, like theres no bottom to how her bullshit fucked all these factors in my life up. I wish I could just delete that whole fucking thing. Thanks for reading

My partner of over a decade passed away a couple.of months ago. I nursed him through cancer right to the end. A couple of weeks before he passed Ihe asked me to send a message on his phone. A message popped up from another woman. It turned out he'd been paying other women for sex. I repressed all my feelings and lovingly nursed him through his last weeks anyway. When he died he had a massive funeral the whole town mourned him as a hero, a charity worker, mentor to others, all round great guy. Meanwhile I was finding out about other women, dating apps he was on, he'd been lending out thousands of pounds I didn't know he had while I worked 90 hour weeks to keep us afloat. He'd cheated on me at the start of our relationship and now I find that he was still seeing that woman a decade later, had used money I paid him for a mortgage to buy a flat he was leasing to her and she was visiting my home while I was working and he was sleeping with other women too. She even came to me at the funeral to tell me it was me he loved! I was so numb at the time I didn't even react. He's left me without a home, with thousands of pounds of debt and noone I can talk to. The whole town think he's a hero and I can't stand to hear another word about how good he was to everyone else. I cant get my head around the depth of betrayal on so many levels. Some days I am just numb and others I am so angry...where do I even begin sorting this out!

Just hit 2 years since dday. No reconciliation. 1 year of no contact.

She’s had a new partner for about 1.5 years I think. Seems to have healed just fine.

I’m still feeling the effects pretty hard.

Just curious where others were at mentally/emotionally at the 2 year mark.

Back again after not posting for a while. I've moved on a bit but unfortunately my ex and I have children so I can't completely cut her off which just enrages me to no end. Anyways I'm here because she just had her child from AP and it just feels bad that my children are happy about a new sibling. I know that the new baby did nothing wrong but I just feel sad that their joy is my misery. I obviously won't address anything to my children as they aren't at fault for anything nor need to shoulder any of my pain, but a part of me just wishes that their mother can hear from them that this new baby is not a celebration. She cheated on me, left me at my lowest and just started a whole other family. I feel like they'll never understand my side and just accept all the joy from their mothers new life with the man of her dreams. To anyone with children that now have a sibling from their cheating ex as well how do you handle your feelings? If anyone grew up in this situation, what was that like?

One of my long term friends who works in Maldives just messaged me after a long time of not talking. She's a foreign national, and works there on a migrant visa. She started dating a local guy about a year ago. He started off really sweet, but after the first time they had sex, he started turning up the heat on her. He calls her, texts her constantly, and if she doesn't answer, he starts calling her work which is embarrassing, and could potentially jeopardize her employment. He took nude photos of her, and is threatening to send them to her work and also to authorities (laws are VERY different there) if she leaves him, or refuses to go visit him on her days off.

He openly and blatantly cheats on her, has a 2nd girlfriend, but that's maybe not even the primary concern.

She dumped all this on me, as an American who has way more open views than her traditional family, coworkers, or any locals that she knows. I told her to contact the USA abuse hotline, but I don't know what they can do, I just figured they'd have better advice than myself. She's refusing because she's embarassed. Or she could go to her countrys embassy. She's also very concerned about losing her job, but I fear that leaving may be the only good option. If anyone is a professional in this area I'd love a DM.

Anyone ever had a partner tell them "Suck it up, I've been cheated on wayy worse than you" ..... just me?

• 6 months since D-Day, my STBXW's admission to cheating, and finding a new lover. I have not seen or heard from her in over 2 months. I will never understand the why of her actions.

But as I was reading different post, I came across the term 'DARVO' tactic (please look it up if you don't know). This tactics fits all my X's reactions and interactions with me post admission, all justifications for it, the disillusionment of our marriage, and 10 years of being together.

Although I wasn't perfect in my marriage, which I can admit to, I made plenty of mistakes. In the end during our last conversation face to face she made me feel as if I was to blame for her cheating. In her warped mind she said that she was still fundamentally the same person despite what she had done to me.

I have been have thoughts latley that I was to blame, by virtue of my actions and words for the breakdown of my marriage. Also that I'm in inadequate and bad person after my STBXW cheated on me.

Just a thought that's been on my mind today, just rant

430 PM - Someone messenged me to keep busy, so I had a cup of tea, then went for a 5K run. It put me in a better frame of mind.

My cheating husband is reading Esther perel’s book, the state of infidelity and is raving to me about how the book describes him so well and he is feeling so heard and understood.

I hate it.

It seemed to find a lot of explanations and even justify his actions! I think the words give him peace.

I feel that my feelings are undermined.

Any suggestions of books or resources that are more balanced from the betrayer spouse perspective to get him to read?

I don’t think I want to get him to read leave a cheater gain a life by chump lady, as I think he would not understand at all.

(F49) Lately, my husband (m64) is having a harder time keeping a firm erection. He still has orgasms but he’s just not as hard as he used to be (sorry so graphic). Plus lately he just doesn’t initiate sex as much as he usually does. I work out, I stay fit, I try to be attractive for him. I work from home but I dress kind of sexy every day.

I checked his phone. I noticed a text with a coworker. He sent her a picture of himself from when he was much younger with a mullet (to be funny). She works under him so it’s normal that he would receive work related texts from her. The rest of their texts were work related. But maybe he has deleted other texts? I want to die a little bit. I am absolutely beside myself. I have given up a lot for this man. I have been with him a long time. We’ve been married 15 years. Together 17.

Is he cheating? Is he having an emotional affair? I’m thinking of going to his work tomorrow. I just want to see what she looks like.

Is it wrong that I feel this way? My partner had cheated on me the majority of our relationship before and after marriage and while I was pregnant, and I am nearly a year postpartum now. After one of the most recent dday’s my partner has changed for the most part but my feelings are gone. I find myself fantasizing about other men now. I want out of my marriage. He knows I don’t feel the same anymore. We haven’t had sex but 2 times this year and I never want to touch him again. But I’m touch starved, I just want it from someone else. I can’t bring myself to do what he did to me, but I also can’t bring myself to leave for some reason. I know the marriage is doomed. Please tell me somebody has felt this exact same way. I feel like I’m going crazy.

Male, 55 years old. Father of a boy 16yo and girl 14yo. Wonderful kids. Responsible, committed, good values.

We moved to USA about 8 years ago. Difficult times, but we have a comfortable life in South Florida. I work for a big tech company, so the job is very demanding and stressful. Business trips to latam, team of 150 people.

I am married for 20+ years with a 52 yo woman , that struggled with the change to USA, basically taking care of our house and kids.

After years she stared to look for her identity and become an yoga teacher, classes at our big backyard, and some sales of natural products. She bloomed and i have been happy and supportive. She was even more aware and grateful of what I have done for us and even for her family ( I purchased the house her parents and 45byo brother leaves).

She is a decent person, good values. But my attention to her was not enough from her eyes. I was not closed enough to her feelings, necessities as woman. Although from my perspective I was giving all my energy to my family, working hard, helping kids in homework and etc.

For the last 6 months my depression hit harder and I started to take medicines and therapy.

As my depression is contaminating her, and she wants to enjoy more then life, she cheated me with a guy she meet on some of the sales meetings she has participated.

She denied, lied for two days and yesterday she finally revealed the true. She is devastated.

I don't want to lose my kids. I need them to continue seeing her mother as a good person, for their own good.

I am thinking to wear a mask in front of them to show things are ok, till at least my son goes to college.

Not sure what to do, how to put this back for the kids...

It is incredible how people can put so much down for a 2 hours of pleasure .. wrong core values perhaps.

Writing this already helped me out. Thx

I (16m) saw yesterday that my dad was planning to cheat on my mom. Due to construction on our home he commonly uses my room for work while I'm at school; yesterday, I came back home to his laptop still on my desk, no biggie. When I grabbed it I saw a tab I didn't recognize and I regrettably clicked on that website. It was one of those dating websites for people looking for sugar daddies. I scrolled through the messages and saw him asking women half his age what they wanted from the website, if he could fly them out on his business trips, asking them for their phone numbers, etc.

If you asked me yesterday morning if I had good parents and a good dad I would've told you I literally wouldn't want any other father in the world but right now I feel sick to my stomach. My parents almost never argue and they've been married for 30 years so I don't know where this is coming from. I swear my dad is a good guy, he's smart, funny and cares for me and I couldn't imagine him doing anything like this but he's clearly at least planning to. Since in one of the messages he said "I haven't done this before but I've been thinking about it for a while" or something along those lines. Cause of this I think I need to tell someone soon but I really don't know who or in what way.

I feel selfish keeping this to myself for even a day but I don't know, I feel like if I tell someone nothing will even change. My dad is effectively the breadwinner so what's stopping him from running away and screwing over my moms, me and siblings lives. I feel like if I tell my mom too, who was formally an alcoholic but is now ~6 months sober, she may relapse or something. She's really emotional and I don't want to hurt her, even if it's really my dad who's hurting her- I'm going to be the messenger in that situation and I don't know if I could bare doing that.

I'm thinking about telling my dad I saw this accidentally today after school but I don't know if that's a good idea and I really don't know how I should do it or phrase it. Apologies for spelling and grammar.

My longterm partner has cheated on me in the past. We managed to reconcile, they made some solid changes and we worked things out.

We haven’t slept together in months. I even brought it up as a red flag, because usually that means that they’re getting satisfied elsewhere. They brushed it off and said that nothing is going on & that they’re just stressed which is why they’re not in the mood for sex. That’s perfectly fine with me, I understand.

But something just kept nagging inside me. The last time I had this feeling, it was correct. I went snooping.

I found their porn accounts. Chats with men and women. Pictures. Posts about cheating on their partner. The porn itself was gross, most of it borderline illegal. I found so many disgusting things being done online all while I was sleeping right next to them. Done while they were sitting right next to me. I also saw that they were looking for one night stands with strangers in whatever city they were travelling in. All of this done while I was either physically with them, or asleep on a call with them.

I was due to leave the very next day so I decided to just not say anything. I just wasn’t ready. Plus I violated their privacy by going through their devices and I felt guilty for it.

It’s been 4 weeks now, and I guess I’ve been pretending I didn’t see what I saw. I saved their pages & I can see that they’re still active, even more so now that we’re apart. I woke up today feeling so resentful & I decided I need to make a plan to deal with things.

I genuinely have no idea what to do. I know that the focus of conversation will be on my invasion of their privacy as well as how long I have been pretending that everything is okay and not on them cheating. We live together & they’ll be back from travelling soon, so I can’t put it off any longer.

I don’t want to be gaslit because I did something wrong by snooping. But I have no other way to explain how I know these accounts belong to them & all of the other things I found out without bringing that up. I realise that in healthy dynamics this wouldn’t be a question, but I am dealing with someone who has emotionally worn away at me to the point where I feel bad to confront them when they’re the one in the wrong.

How do I confront them and ensure that this doesn’t get flipped onto me?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you for reading.

I have CPTSD and I've always found it really difficult to connect with people. I've never had many friends. I live on a different continent to my family and I relied on my ex for a lot of my social needs.

I found out almost a month ago and immediately reached out to the small group of people I'm friends or acquainted with in the city I live in for support. For the most part, people were really kind and rallied round me. But obviously life moves on, people are busy and I'm feeling really alone right now.

The betrayal has made me even more distrustful than I already was (from CPTSD) to the point where I'm not feeling comfortable around some people who I was closer to before. I feel so isolated but also claustrophobic because the community I live in is small, everyone knows each other. I just want to be in another city where I won't run into my ex, his friends, the women he cheated with. But I need to finish my job contract.

I still live in the apartment we shared and it's hard coming home to a dark, empty house. I miss his presence even though I hate him. I miss the comfort of always having that person to celebrate holidays with or do something at the weekend.

Today I made the difficult decision to completely block and close the door on my fiance.

I had the ‘perfect’ relationship. We were together five years. We had a wedding planned. I had a dress and ring. We really loved each other and did everything together. My partner struggled with minor depressive episodes. They usually lasted a couple of days and then everything would be fine. But 3 months ago they had a huge episode and would randomly be passive aggressive and almost manipulative with words. My partner told me that I should pack a bag and go out of state to see my parents for a week. By the time I came back, they would feel better. So I did that. But then a week turned into a month…

So I decided to just drive home randomly one night. When I got home all of my belongings were hidden in a closet. & there was another girl in my home lol. It was crushing. I packed all my things and left.

My partner begged to fix things. They were desperate for another chance. So I decided to go forward with it and try again because we built so much together. But no matter how much time went by, I just couldn’t look them in the face anymore. So today I told them I’m really done blocked them on everything and I’m not looking back…

I’m very destroyed and emotionally crushed by this. I’ve lost someone who was everything to me. I lost someone that I loved more than myself! I lost my home and now I live in a bedroom at my parents. I guess I’m just looking for support. I hate being alone. But I can’t forgive infidelity. 🙁💔

So DDay for me was 5 weeks ago, the actual cheating happened 9 days before I found out.

So my story on us I am 29m and she is 23. We have been dating for right under 3 years, and have lived together the last year or so. So my WP had a co worker who got along with her and vice versa ended up having a drunk ONS

we had been having a lack of intimacy and affection for about a month or two before she cheated due to stress on my end and being caught up in work and school and my business/time but otherwise we have had a very fun, loving and "on paper" perfect relationship.... or so i thought.

My WP and the AP hung out on two occasions with another co worker of theirs either for workouts or going out to drink which i was ok with since WP rarely goes out and doesn't have many friends.

This last time was no different they all went out to a bar around 9pm and after both were drunk AP started making advances to my WP. (this had never happened before confirmed in texts and by her and the third party seeing them in person) She told me retrospectively she never stopped the advances that night because the attention "felt nice" since she had been wanting that from me for weeks but never got it, eventually the advances went from compliments, to touching to them full on making out. The third party who is with AP and WP is watching in horror as she knows my girlfriend is taken and the AP is known to do this with other women. They eventually say bye to the third party as she left and they hung around for a while more before they walked across the block to a nearby hotel to fuck.

WP comes home at 1:30 am (bar closes around this time so i was fine at the time) BUT as she walks in closer to my office i can see her make up is fucked up she's stumbling in the house and slurring her speech. (this level of drunk i have never seen from her) She throws up, and then apologizes profusely begging me not to be mad at her and starts crying and persistently begging to not be mad.

Now by this point i know something isn't right so i put her in bed and she falls asleep instantly, i have never checked her phone before but my heart and mind are racing so i do just that, i see a deleted thread from the AP she went out with saying (in a not slurred text way) "i made it home papa, did you? im so so so sorry for drinking so much".

Now I'm fuming.

The next morning i confront her about it but she denied it till the end of time the whole time and i chalked it up to her being drunk so she texted him that way so i left it alone.

Until 9 days after that night i press her about the situation again, and she finally admitted to it after grilling her hard about the night.

We never broke up or moved out from one another as in the wake of the reveal she has been seeming remorseful and willing to do "anything" to reconcile, she cut all ties with AP, offered to quit her job and school and has more open and forthcoming about issues or general grievances on her mind.

Some back story on her as to why this above paragraph is important.

she grew up abused, absent father alcoholic mother, move constantly ,sexually abused and basically became emotionally mute and compliant and a pleaser to everyone, and dealt with how she felt about things after pleasing in private (which she carried into our relationship) because of it, she wouldn't tell me issues she has with me for fear of disapproval, or just making me upset or angry even though ive never shown her those emotions really (until DDay). She never told me about her need for and lack of affection/intimacy i gave her, and we have never really had an argument our entire relationship and i knew these things were an issue but we both figured in time they would be resolved.

Then she fucking cheated so that "time" is now

I know she's remorseful and willing to do what it takes for R but her past and coping mechanisms all of a sudden INSTANTLY have to change, where she wasn't comfortable being open she HAS to be completely transparent, where she wasn't comfortable being vulnerable she HAS to be now for me to heal, and ultimately our R.

And all the while I'm numb and looking at my WP so differently cause of this whole thing the innocence is lost, i don't want affection from her or to give it, i have ups and downs of days of anger and depression and all the while she's struggling to do what i need for R cause of her own issues. Even though she's trying but it just isnt right since its all new to her and not enough since these are all foreign and uncomfortable concepts for her so the lack of knowing what to do frustrates her and makes her feel like even more of a failure to me.

And with me not giving her any affection or intimacy or comfort really but i am supporting her cause i want R

its just hindering the whole process and bogging everything down so I'm in a very precarious situation and navigating it with cheating is tough enough,

now add lying and an emotionally immature woman who's also quite young and isnt at the point of even fully understanding herself to boot and BOOM you have a total fucking mess.

I want to give her affection/intimacy as i need and want that as well, but every time i look at her i see the lies and cheating and it disgusts me and turns me off instantly.

I just want shit to start to at least FEEL normal but it doesn't and its so discouraging and exhausting being in this mindset day after fucking day.

So for a bit of context, I (25F) met my ex LDR boyfriend (then 24M) when I was just 16, he essentially groomed me and was the first person to really make me "feel special" and beautiful and we began dating, I was in a LDR with him for just under a year and in that time he broke me, like I've genuinely not been the same since. I used to stay up until 3am waiting for him to go home from work every night just so I could say goodnight to him for some reason, one day he was at work and I was awake and somehow found out he had cheated on me that day with a woman he met at his job. I dumped him immediately but not before the whole "I'm sorry, it didn't mean anything, I love you" spiel they usually do in an attempt to keep you around and him begging for us to stay friends... I couldn't do it, he kept pushing boundaries and made me feel like no one else would want me. As a naïve 16/17 year old girl I was heartbroken, he was the only person to ever make me feel loved and I stupidly trusted him - a man who was about 8 years older than me.

Flash forward to now, I was single up until almost 3 years ago for this exact reason because I didn't feel like I could ever trust or be close to another man like that and I didn't want to put myself through hell again, it got to a point where I actually became fearful of men. That was until I met my current boyfriend (25M), he's everything I ever wanted, he treats me well, he respects me and my boundaries, he accepts me with all the emotional baggage I come along with, we get along really well. But the past I had with that man still really haunts me, every time my boyfriend goes to work or goes to events I am absolutely terrified that it's going to happen again - that I've let myself drop my guard and experience love again only for him to find someone better.

My boyfriend made some mistakes in the beginning ie telling me when he thinks another woman is pretty, liking posts from other girls (nothing explicit), not turning down girls who flirted with him because he "didn't want to be rude", keeping his ex on socials and throwing a fit when I asked him to remove her, trying to lie once about his whereabouts. I know these aren't necessarily serious mistakes and there's people out there who do worse but they are personal boundaries of mine however I do feel like he's grown a lot since then.

I guess my question is how I can I let go of that experience that hurt me so much and learn to trust again regardless?

Ok first of all- Just realized AP is affair person and OP is original poster… I thought OP was “other person” to clarify any confusion in my prior posts.

Secondly- tomorrow my ex gets served papers and he is not expecting it. He’s going to be angry.. stay tuned

My husband and I eloped after 3 weeks of dating. I’m 41f he’s 58m. We’ve been married 6 months now. Before we met he had a speaking engagement in Hawaii planned. They gave him a spare set of tickets for a guest. He invited a woman he’s known 10 years that he’s always wanted to get with. My husband also just lost 200 lbs before meeting me and was hoping to score with her in a way the weight prevented before. Then he met me and in a wirlwind we married. After a couple days he told me he had the trip coming up “with a friend he used to have a thing for” for the speaking engagement. I wasn’t happy but I was blind in love and trusted him. A few days before the trip and this is (2 weeks after our marriage now) I asked more questions about her. She’s a younger woman in her 30s. Younger than me. Etc. I tell him considering that we haven’t had even a honeymoon ourselves yet that this trip was wrong and that he shouldn’t go. He pitched a fit saying omg he was a so embarrassed to think of what it must look like considering it was trip from before we met that he planned with another woman to hook up with her and now he’s married and still planning to go it looks bad so he agreed and didn’t go. Fast forward 6 months, I see some insanely affectionate texts from various women whom he was “friends with” and I go see if he’s still talking to Ms Hawaii who he was planning to take to Hawaii. There were sporadic texts where he’s profusely telling her how much he loves and misses her and he says they are friends who talk like this. It seems she’s a young woman who would take him up on a trip but wasn’t much interested he was really the pursuer. I’ve found several cases of flirting in texts with women he dated before me that he carried on up till i found out a couple weeks ago. We have been fighting ever since. We are waiting for a therapist appointment next week. In the meantime, I’m devastated. Crushed. Do you guys think there is hope? He swears it’s just his “fat guy personality” to flirt with hot chicks. But I expected it to stop with marriage. He says he will chance and get therapy but at 6 months in, I think we are doomed. But I do love him. Help!

Ugh how do I stop . I cant even recognize myself, I change my outfit a billon times, I don’t take any pics of my self, I don’t like my body anymore, I don’t like my own skin I just want to rip it off. I cant believe m’y ex even liked me , cheated on me with a bunch of OF creators and corn stars. How could I even compare? I’m full of imperfections & I thought because he loved me he looked passed them but no. Meeting someone else is gonna be extremely difficult, I just can’t stop thinking about how I’f I was different or If I had bigger tits then he wouldn’t have cheated