r/Infidelity

I (m45) have been with wife (f40) for 20 years. We have two girls and have a relatively successful marriage. I was her first boyfriend and love, but I had many before her. I learned due to childhood trauma, I have low self esteem & worth but light up when an attractive woman flirts with me. Each time it’s the same, I wish I could be with this person as I’m on cloud nine. I day dream, online stalk, and reply the scene over and over again in my head. I love my wife but wasn’t in love at any real point. We are just super compatible. How do I have those feelings for my wife instead of these random women? Why do I get limerance instantly? Of course, this has caused me to think about divorcing my wife but I can’t do that to my young kids especially since my wife hasn’t ever done anything wrong.

I understand some people will think I’m a jerk, but I’m a sensitive emotional person who grew up feeling unloved and desperately seek that out as an adult. For some reason, my family’s love for me doesn’t fulfill it. Any honest advice is appreciated.

Hi everyone, I’m looking for some guidance on how to handle a situation I completely caused.

Recently, my relationship ended because my boyfriend found out that I had been lying to him and hiding a massive piece of my past. Before we became official, I was in a relationship with my ex, but I was micro-cheating on my ex with my current boyfriend for a long time. It eventually crossed the line into actual cheating. The reality is, I spent a long time actively chasing my boyfriend while hiding the existence of my previous relationship from him because he was the person I truly wanted the whole time.

Things with my ex ended for good only when he found out about my current boyfriend. Once that happened, my ex was permanently out of the picture, the overlap was about 6 days if I'm not wrong. But because I hid how our relationship actually started, my boyfriend now feels like our entire foundation was a lie. He feels tricked, used, and disgusted by the overlap.

On top of this, I am realizing I have a severe, chronic habit of people-pleasing that manifests as lying out of intense fear and insecurity. A massive layer of this stems from a deep-seated feeling that I was "punching above my weight" with him. Because I viewed him as being completely out of my league, it triggered intense physical and emotional insecurities. When I am faced with a situation where I think the truth will make someone mad at me, cause conflict, or make them leave me, my instinctual survival response is to hide, omit, or fabricate things to protect myself and maintain a perfect facade. I completely shattered his trust because I let my fear of losing him drive me to keep hiding the truth. I feel an immense, crushing amount of guilt, and I need to understand why my brain resorts to deceit when I feel insecure.

We had a long, emotional conversation recently. He was understandably hurt and angry, but he explicitly told me that we have a fighting chance if I am willing to do the honest work to change. Initially, he threw out a timeline of waiting until the distant future to revisit things, but as we kept talking, he shifted the plan entirely. He asked me to send him letters over the summer updating him on my therapy progress, and he suggested we meet up in person on campus move-in day this fall to discuss where we stand. He's also left me unblocked to say whatever I'm feeling with a promise to read but no promise to respond. He's actively expressed that he loves me and hopes that the girl he fell in love with is really in there somewhere.

Right now he is understandably cycling through intense pain and disgust. I have committed to doing whatever it takes to earn back his faith and the faith of the people around him. I've already booked a first of many therapy appointment to specifically dismantle my lying and people-pleasing habits, and I plan to pace my updates to him via letters so I can show him consistent, genuine growth without crowding his space. I'm also trying to think of ways to offer him full transparency, like Life360 of just my location when he's ready to see, and I have no issue with him having access to my phone or anything. I don't have anything else to hide and I don't want to hide anything from him ever again. The pain I've caused him is killing me and I plan to be there to hear him whenever we have heavy days where he feels it a lot, I will never make him feel as if I am annoyed or anything, I want to help heal the damage I did so I will keep showing up and keep offering consistency.

Is there hope? Any advice for moving forward?

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I've been in a relationship with my girlfriend(met her online but met up a few times irl) for 5 months but knew her for a year and a half and we had our ups and downs, especially during the last month where we started arguing a lot more than usual for some problems we were going through. I thought everything was fine and that she meant every word she said when she kept saying she'd love me and only me forever, however a few days ago I discovered a discord server she was in. Inside that discord server I read through the text she sent and I found out that two guys there were trying to flirt with her and that she NEVER stopped them or told them she had a bf. After I tried to ask for explanations I dug deeper and found out one of these two guys was a 21 year old streamer who kept calling her his "girlfriend" and that she NEVER said anything about it nor stopped him. Because of this, we decided to talk and call about it and I made her show her texts in dms with this streamer. What I read truly destroyed me because he asked her if she had a boyfriend and she answered that she does have one but I treat her "badly"(which I'm not trying to minimize but it was definitely not something really that true, we just often had disagreements on ways to deal with the relationship). The 21 year old streamer, after she sent that text, suggested her to leave me for someone else to which she answered "sigh who, I'm too dependent and attached", without rejecting the option completely. The worst thing about all this is that the streamer answered her by saying "You have me, if you want you can just wait 1 year for me" and she sent a text in which she said "I can't just cheat on him". The thing is, that this last text was edited and I don't know if it's the actual true one, but I can say she blocked every one of these guys a few days after she did this and before I discovered it. I don't know what to do anymore, I told her to wait a few months and made her promise to never try that shit again with anyone else and she looked genuine, she looked really remorseful: she threw up a lot of times, went to the hospital because of this, she's admitting everything to her friends etc...but should I get back with her in a few months if she actually changes or is it a lost cause? (please don't take into account it's long distance, just I beg you to answer my question)

My husband was emotionally cheating with someone else online, they never met in real life and this lasted for 5 years while he was dating me, got engaged and married (3 months ago), until the other woman found out and told him she was gonna tell me the truth and they both told me what was going on.

He told a friend that he loves me, wants to work in the marriage and be with ne, and when the other woman asked why he also said "I love you" to her a couple of times he said that he was only manipulating her. I do believe he loves me in a way and he lied to her to get attention and affection from her.

Last week the other woman sent me a text again and told me they continued talking when he was supposed to be in no contact, now I've been monitoring his phone and what sites he uses and he hasn't been in contact with her this week. Will this help? I started to do this to help him with his porn addiction, and asked him to not masturbate (we are christian), also I don't want them to text eachother again, will he keep cheating? Is there hope for reconciliation? He doesn't cheat with girls in real life or someone else through text, and I'm sure he would never have a physical affair

TL;DR: he kept in contact with ger after the first d day and I'm so confused about what to do.

Let me be cleeeeeear, I am not asking for sympathy, I’m asking for a side you rarely see.
As the WW, I always see threads about how long BP wait for WP to wake up. I’m wondering, when the WP is putting in all the effort they can, asking for therapy or even just a talk rather than complete avoidance aside from notes….how long is too long to wait?
I’m not saying this from a want to pressure BP side.
I’m saying this as we both need some sort of structure and the last 3 months has only been him saying he’s done and over, no legal movement but also no movement towards repair.
When I suggest therapy together or legal action as this limbo is getting insane for us both and confusing he says he’s 1000% sure in his choices, but yet there’s never any movement and he knows he holds all the financial power.
I let my lawyer make contact with him via email, which we found he has no lawyer, after feeding me the “I have a lawyer” days after rupture happened and “you don’t get to speak to my lawyer” whenever I move with him on actually separating.
He has said he’d deal with it this day and it’s passed, then another day and it’s passed..
I told him divorce still isn’t the route I would like but wanted to open that avenue for him since he seems to always say he wants that. Still no movement. So now I’m like is it a huge betrayal to serve him?
I get I don’t deserve shining clarity or cooperation from him, I’m just trying to navigate this with both our psychological health in mind and not mess up any chance for reconciliation there may be.
At what point does waiting for an avoidant, emotionally wounded partner become psychologically damaging for both people?

For those asking, I’m not sure how to edit my profile settings but here is the link to my previous post!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Infidelity/s/HbxfB9vA6p

I should feel guilty, but I'm so wrapped up in the emotions of what's going on it's been hard for me to consider all the bad things I'm doing.

I'm single. I've had a crush on this guy for a long time. We have had a very flirty relationship, but it never crossed the line, until recently. He was the one to make a move on me, and naturally I was over the moon with ecstasy. Finally, it felt like all my dreams were coming true.

But he has a girlfriend. They are not married, but they have been together for a few years. They live together. I always thought they were in a very serious committed relationship. But I guess I was wrong. I've met her, been out with the both of them a few times, so it's no secret that I know she's in the picture.

We've been meeting up and fooling around for about a month. In the back of my mind I know this is so wrong. But I can't stop entertaining this. I think it's because I've been single for so long and I've been crushing on this guy for a loooong time, like years. It's really intoxicating to finally be seeing him like this.

I should feel bad, I should feel so bad for his girlfriend, but I keep agreeing to see him. I have such a low self esteem, it feels like I need to keep doing this because this is the best I can do right now, even though it's wrong. I don't know.

Can someone knock some sense into me please.

We’re still technically married for financial/insurance reasons until I return to work in a couple years after being a SAHM, then we can divorce without the added stress on me.

We’re civil for our family and we’re pretty much friends with benefits now even though he‘s finally *in love* with me and is trying to win me back.

What can I do for me on what would have been our ten year wedding anniversary? It‘s on a Thursday so I’ll be home with our son during the day until my “husband” gets home from work.

TL;DR: My boyfriend emotionally leaned on another woman during a difficult time, hid parts of their relationship from me, and now I’m struggling with whether I can rebuild trust after 5 years together.

I (30F) have been with my boyfriend “Ryan” (28M) for 5 years and honestly thought I was going to marry him. We already had the ring and everything and he was going to propose this summer. I trusted him more than anyone. I always described him as the safest, kindest person I knew.
A few weeks ago his grandpa passed away very suddenly and it completely wrecked him emotionally. Around the same time, a new girl in our friend group (we’d known her for a few months at that point) “Katy” (27F) had also lost someone close to her. My boyfriend has always had a huge caretaker personality and tends to throw himself into helping people, especially emotionally vulnerable people.
At first I actually became friends with her too. We would text, talk, confide in each other, etc. I comforted her in her time of grief. But over time I started getting a really weird feeling about how emotionally close she and “Ryan” were becoming. They also started going to the gym with a group of our other friends during the evenings. My schedule did not allow me to join this group, so they spent a lot of time together without me. They would go to dinner with the group almost every week night, and he wouldn’t come home until like 9pm. They started texting, emotional venting, her leaning on him heavily, him prioritizing helping her constantly. I asked him to start coming home earlier and communicated my discomfort to him multiple times and he kept insisting nothing inappropriate was happening and that he was “just helping her.”
The thing that hurts so much is that I understand grief deeply myself. Two years ago I lost both my dad and one of my close friends within about a year of each other. So watching the two of them emotionally lean on each other while completely shutting me out hurt in a way I can’t even explain. It genuinely started feeling like I was outside of my own relationship while another woman became his emotional support person. I was heartbroken for him and wanted to help so badly, but felt like I was being shut out.
Something I should mention is that I was recently diagnosed with severe OCD. I had been struggling with a bad flair up for months prior to this and had withdrawn from many people in my life, including my boyfriend. He had communicated this to me, and I realized that I needed help, so I sought treatment. I admit and take full responsibility for avoiding it for so long and not communicating with him about it. I know it made him lonely for a while. I realize that this is relevant to the situation.
But, I started to feel like “Katy” was realizing how much “Ryan” was willing to do for his friends and started to ask for his help outside of the boundaries that his other friends would. Like, we NEVER had this issue before her. There were also a bunch of weird moments that piled up over time. One that still really bothers me is when we were at a party, my boyfriend offered me his jacket one night because I was cold, but it didn’t fit me (I am a plus sized girl) so I gave it back. Sometimes his jackets fit me, sometimes they don’t. She saw this happen. She happens to be thinner than me. I walked away to talk to another friend, and a few seconds later, she put his jacket on herself, gave him hers, told him to put it on, grabbed him and ran over to me while I was talking to another friend and excitedly went “Look! We switched jackets!” while pulling him behind her and smiling hugely. He looked guilty and clearly failed to set any boundaries with her. He denied that it was weird until much later on. Maybe it sounds dumb but it honestly felt weirdly territorial and humiliating. It even felt like she body checked me, to be completely honest.
Then as she got closer to him, she basically stopped talking to me entirely. We had been becoming friends too, and suddenly it was just radio silence from her while she got emotionally closer to my boyfriend. I kept telling him that he was seeing a side of her that she wasn’t showing me, but he kept insisting that she would always speak highly of me and really liked me. He wouldn’t listen when I told him my intuition was telling me something about her was off.
About 3 weeks ago everything exploded because I found out he had been lying to me about how emotionally attached he had become to her. I found out that they were texting when he told me they weren’t. Also calling each other. As far as I know nothing physical happened (I caught him texting her and demanded to read their texts. They were emotional and frequent, but nothing inherently romantic or sexual— mostly checking in on each other, having emotional/intimate conversations about their grief and sharing pictures of what they were doing or eating throughout the day… every day). He is extremely adamant that nothing physical happened. But during that time, he had reassured me that they were not speaking to each other. The worst part is we were literally already in couples therapy while he was still hiding a lot of the truth from me.
When I confronted her, she acted like she had no idea she was causing problems in my relationship and implied she didn’t realize boundaries were being crossed, but my boyfriend later admitted she DID know there was tension between us and she was the cause. He literally told her and she still continued to reach out to him and ask for emotional support. She also told me that she was “concerned I was setting restrictions on who she can and can’t communicate with and how.” I told her that the only person I was restricting her from was my partner of 5 years and blocked her. He had also already blocked her on everything.
Now my boyfriend is devastated and horrified. He keeps saying he thought he was helping someone broken while he himself was grieving and emotionally falling apart too. He admitted he got trapped in lies and kept rationalizing/compartmentalizing everything instead of confronting how attached he had become. He said he justified it because nothing romantic was going on and he felt like I was overthinking it. He genuinely thought he could help her while also maintaining our relationship. He has taken full responsibility for everything and is in therapy now trying to work on boundaries and conflict avoidance.
The complicated part is I still love him deeply. We still live together, but I moved into the loft. For 5 years, we have been the best of friends. He has always treated me in the most kind and loving way. He would do absolutely anything for me. We still spend time together and laugh together and honestly sometimes it feels almost normal. Then suddenly I remember I was supposed to marry this person and now I don’t even recognize my own life anymore.
I don’t see him the same way. I trusted him completely before this and now I question everything. I feel embarrassed because all my friends knew how much I adored him and how excited I was for our future.
Part of me thinks he’s genuinely a good person who got himself into a really unhealthy emotional dynamic during a period of grief and handled it horribly. I was his first girlfriend and he hadn’t really ever gotten attention from other girls. He has grown into a very conventionally attractive man after being/feeling awkward his whole life. Another part of me feels like something permanently broke and I don’t know if I’ll ever fully trust him the same way again.
I honestly just feel exhausted and heartbroken and don’t know what’s normal anymore. I am giving myself some time to process everything before making any big decisions, but has anyone ever decided to stay after an emotional affair and did things get better?

Hi all,

I think i already know the answer to this but can someone explain this to me like I'm really slow. Sometimes i feel like am.

Alot has happened in the past year. I found out that my (f38) husband (m44) downloaded hookup apps about 8 years ago, mentored a grad student who he said had feelings for him but he didn't for her, but continued to work with her until last year. He never gave me any indication he didn't love me. Then early this year, i found out that he had taken money out of a joint account and when i asked him about it, he flipped out and told me that i was too suspicious (i am). I tried to find out something on my own and he accused me of spying on him and even said that i was going to hire a detective to follow him around. We have a router and he v pays for internet services. I have the Fing app and I asked him about the extra devices showing up on the app. He refused to let me see which devices were on his Fing app and again accused me of spying on him.

He went recently to a trip to Berlin. I went through his bag and found that he had 600 euros in cash. He only told me he had 100. We had a fight. He was mad i went through his bag. He has every right to be. I asked him what he needed the other money for and he did it was private and i asked why he didn't tell me, and he would not say.

I asked him when he was in Berlin, what was he planning to do, he told me that he didn't want to answer the question. He sent me pictures of him eating places, but always carefully cropped.

He's cheating, either with his colleague, who has been in his life for 10 years or in Berlin, right?

The "i don't want to say" drove a dagger through my heart.

Advice is needed to parse this. Thanks.

Edit: I came here perhaps in search of other people with some kind of shared experience. This seemed like a serious sub. What I have received is 100 comments maybe 40% automodded through just being abusive 50% suggesting I break up my very happy and loving marriage and all bar 2 people suggesting that I am mentally ill for thinking that I can forgive someone in my life making a mistake, all be it a horrendous one. What I need to do is talk and make sure that this is sustainable before throwing away my entire life.

To the couple of people who actually took the care to try and understand my situation thank you so much. To everyone else perhaps I was in the wrong place.

My wife (37) and I (39) have been married 12 years. 6 and a half years ago when our kids were 3 she cheated on me with my best friend. At the time she had been really struggling mentally and I was not there for her or particularly engaged with the children and she used to tell me "she felt on here own" but could never really explain, she just complained the same line often that made me angry that I couldn't help her as I didn't know what she wanted. She had fallen in the trap of having a toxic friend, always looking at everyone else's perfect life and familys on insta and then drinking. She would do essentialy 2 bottles of gin a week in the evenings and I had no idea how much she was getting through as it would be away from me ( I could never stand her when she had been drinking, I thought it made her personality change away from the person I loved). Then she started getting attention by messaging me best friend in secret after they kissed at a party. I was told this happened and said I felt something was wrong but she made out like I was going mad. This ended with her arranging a secret night out drinking that she claimed was with another good girl friend. They went back to our family home and fucked in our kitchen. She turned back up to me and the children house sitting her mum's at 4am and I knew straight away.

I was so devastated it felt like such a personal attack and the aftermath was so painful. My wife was there dealing with it with me and she is still traumatised by all of it. After this we've had a few rough years lots has happened in our lives and it's been even more trauma. I thought I had got over it a few years ago.

So for context the best friend is not a nice guy with women at all but me and him have always got on well, this event didn't change my opinion of him one bit, taking advantage of someone he knew was struggling and we also had alot of business together so i didn't feel I had a choice but to carry on working together (another reason why my wife's choice felt so spiteful) and once our work had concluded I saw him much less. Well last year I started going back to the gym with him and now I'm really struggling again. I find myself unable to comfortably talk about my wife to him and vise versa. It's a daily reminder of what happened and I really thought I would be over it.

Last night I spoke to my wife and she is devastated that I'm not over it and her suggestion was what I'm sure you first thought is, ditch the friend. But I have had this friend since before I met her, he is incredibly useful and I honestly don't blame him for what happened. She knew what he was better than most a disgusting womaniser and she sort him out. Why should I be punished further and lose the only training partner I have along with his other useful qualitys because of something she did.

Tldr. Wife cheated 6 years ago with my horrible womanising best friend, I still see him but it's really affecting my life still

edit to add context to friend

Business partner, gym partner for 15 years, long term work colleague, someone I can be really open with, someone who very much understands me, incredibly reliable and trustworthy just not with women and I was incredibly aware of that, as was my wife long before this happened. I think that's why I feel much more angry towards her than him.

If you had a really good friend or family member who was a heroin addict and then you gave them heroin and they took it could you really be that angry at them. The analogy is a bit stretched but that's how I feel about it

After it happened I did speak with him he was genuinly very remorseful and was very aware he had fucked up. His relationship with women since even before I knew him has been horrendous he is a womanizer, sex addict with an incredibly poor relationship with all of the women in his life, constantly cheating on everybody. Always using prostitutes. Really really fucked up with women.

and to all those who think repalsing someone like this at 39yo is easy you must live in some utopia.

One of the last texts my ex sent me before we broke up almost a year ago was, ‘I put you first and myself second.’

That sentence still haunts me.

To put things into perspective, the same day we broke up, he told me he had been considering cheating on me with someone he met months earlier at work because he wasn’t happy with our sex life.

What hurts is that he never brought this up beforehand. Not months before, not weeks before, not even days before. I was given no real opportunity to discuss things, understand his feelings, or try to work on the relationship together. It makes me feel like he emotionally checked out long before he actually ended things.

A few days after the breakup, a mutual friend/coworker told me he had apparently said he got over me ‘instantly’ after the other woman took him out to cheer him up. That completely messed with my head because right before we broke up, he was still telling me that he didn’t want to lose me, that I was ‘the one’, and that he loved me.

I still struggle to reconcile those two versions of him, the man who said I was his future, and the man who emotionally moved on so fast it made me question whether any of it was real at all.

Has anyone else dealt with this kind of emotional whiplash after betrayal or emotional overlap?

I have read up on betrayal trauma, I have had extensive talks with my hubby. I know where his insecurities originate and I know how the mind reacts to being betrayed by questioning everything. I know all this I just want to find a way forward that does not involve sex counseling because I don't think we're ready for that.

I have always been truthful about my affairs to my husband since the start and part of that has been admitting that I was very intensely attracted towards my affair partner. I can control my actions now, I can tell hubby that I find him attractive too, I can offer myself sexually, I have even offered a hall pass just for him to gain back a bit of his lost self confidence. But I can't change what I did with AP and how I behaved with him. And the simple fact of the matter is that I behaved totally crazed for sex on that night with AP. I pursued him and seduced him. I engaged in kinks with him (which I have talked about so many times before so let's not talk about that).

And I can't lie about that, I don't want our further relationship to be built on another lie. So whenever he asks me I tell him the truth, and he rightfully hates me for it. I not only betrayed him, I enjoyed doing it. I can't comprehend how I was able to turn off my feelings towards my husband and engage in something so transitory and selfish. But that's not the issue. It's causing resentment, and he dwells on it a lot. I think at this point he hates how attractive I found AP more than the fact that I cheated.

I don't know how to help. And I don't mean it in a "Why isn't he over it already" kinda way, I mean it in the sense that I genuinely want him to not constantly put himself in such an unhealthy competitiom with someone else, though I do admit that it is my doing but I also want to help him get through it. How can I help? On the one hand I don't understand why he's so obsessive about it. I mean I do understand that he is hurting because of my cheating and I'll never question that, but I don't understand why he hates so much that I found another person attractive because I'm not like that. I won't find it offensive if my husband says he finds some other woman attractive. But I get that this is all connected and the resentment from my cheating gets carried over to all the other aspects.

At this point he's so obsessive that he compares the way I acted during my sex addiction with the way I can around him now and says I don't show the same level of craziness about sex for him that I did for my AP. But that's the thing isn't it? That night was an exhibit of the depth of my sex addiction, which is why I was so eager for male attention and AP just happened to be the most attractive guy in the bar that night so he got the benefits. I don't think it's fair for my hubby to expect me to behave like a sex crazed addict with him every night. He also resents the fact that I went to AP for sex and not him, but I did not go out that night intending to have sex with anyone at all, it all happened one after the other and I failed to put forward my boundaries and I leaned into my selfishness on the spot.

In my hubby's mind, I found AP so attractive that he got me in heat and got my "juices flowing" so hard that I jumped into bed with him. And he feels he could never compete with that. In reality, I was already deep into an addiction, I was already horny 24/7, I had already made my mind to be as reckless as possible and never meet the guy again, and I was drunk on top of all that. None of that explains why I cheated, the accountability for my cheating falls entirely on my shitty character and my lack of integrity, but I feel these factors do explain my unhinged behaviour with AP on the night of the affair and why I did so many things I wouldn't imagine doing with a stranger normally.

I don't want my hubby to compete with that guy at all, I just want us both to have fun while we fuck that's it. Because I do really enjoy sex with my husband, at least as much as I did with AP and even more on many occasions. I just want him to not be lost in this needless comparison and see that being mad at something I can't go back and change is only holding back his healing. So I want to be able to help him see that. How can I do that?

My husband and I were together for 14 years and married for 10. We have three young children and recently welcomed our fourth baby. Last summer, while I was pregnant, he began a long-distance affair with another woman. They met in June, started an emotional relationship in July, and became physical in August. She lives in another country. Since then, he has moved out and is living with his parents. He travels to be with her every 2-3 weeks.
What makes this even harder is that he has repeatedly lied about money and avoided his responsibilities. He stopped contributing consistently to our household expenses because of new business venture since before he met her, including the mortgage, childcare, tuition, and other costs related to the children. He makes promises to help financially and then breaks them. At the same time, he has rewritten the story to justify his behavior and avoid accountability and im the one to blame ofc.
I filed for divorce because I needed to protect myself and our children. I am now rebuilding my life as a single mother of four, while dealing with the emotional fallout of betrayal and the financial instability he created. I still struggle to understand how someone can abandon their family during such a vulnerable time and continue living in a fantasy while the real-life consequences fall on the spouse and children left behind.
I am posting to hear from others who have gone through infidelity, financial deception, and separation with young children. How long did it take for your spouse to face reality? Did they ever take responsibility? And how did you move forward and rebuild your life?
Before I used to go to sleep praying i didn’t wake up. Now i fall asleep praying for him to get what deserves. He says they are not together anymore but I have found a lot of evidence that they are and they are planning to live together in the same city we live.

A few casual hookups and lots of matches on dating apps behind my back. He let me go through his phone and left my place very embarrassed. He later said he understands i dont want to see him because of his infidelity. I lashed out at him as the emotions came in and called him lots of insults. He never apologized and it accelerated my anger more and more. It feels like he must've hated me, if he can't even get himself to apologize to me. What kind of monster have i been with?

I honestly feel like my entire reality just shattered and I don’t know what to do. my partner(28, FTM) and I(28, F) have been together 9 years.. I found his reddit in OCtober asking to sleep with men, (he is trans but has female genitalia). I was SHOCKED to say the least. He trickle truthed and ended up at 5 partners -- one a year during the summer. He said he did this because he wanted penetration but felt ashamed to ask me for it since he was supposed to be "manly".

Now my partner has been in therapy weekly for almost 4 months and kept framing the cheating as impulsive, shame based, “I don’t know how to resist urges,” whatver BS he could spew that day.

Yesterday I found out the truth was WAY bigger than what I knew.

One person alone lasted 2 years. Unprotected, driving an hour away, meeting at STORAGE UNITS, good s**. At least 10 separate meetups. Ongoing contact through Snapchat and Reddit, which ive asked before if any of them were on his snapchat and it was no. But this guy was able to be on there since my husband would make new reddits often. There were also other men in between. I only found this out because I kept asking specific questions. It was not fully volunteered upfront.

The part that is destroying me is that I gave multiple chances for honesty. I even gave a signed/dated letter months ago basically saying: if there’s more I don’t know and I find out later, I’m done. And still the truth didn't come? Until I had a gut feeling yesterday and asked.

Now I feel like I don’t even know who my partner is anymore.

My partner says there were “zero feelings” and that it was about shame, validation, selfishness, fear, impulses, etc. But I’m struggling because… how ashamed can someone be while repeatedly meeting up with the same person for 2 years and continuing contact? That feels bigger than “urges” to me.

I feel sick constantly. Like an actual knot in my stomach. I’m devastated because I love my partner deeply, but I also feel manipulated because important truths only came out when backed into a corner.

I also realized immediately: absolutely no baby plans anymore. There is no way I can bring a child into this level of instability and broken trust.

I think the hardest part is realizing my partner kept deciding what I was “allowed” to know because they didn’t want me to leave. Which means I wasn’t actually making informed choices about my own relationship/future. I had only ever wanted to get married once, my entire family is this way. Yet, he proposed/married me KNOWING what he was doing.

Has anyone come back from something this severe? Or did you realize the trickle truth itself destroyed the relationship beyond repair?

I KNOW IM YOUNG AND I CAN FIND HAPPINESS ELSEWHERE I'm not looking for that. I just need courage. Advice. Something. I dont know... I am scared. I don't remember a life without him but, what kind of life is this? I think deep down -- finding out it wasn't 5 one off's with random men and there was actually a 2 year affair, has changed something in me. I feel different. More sad. More hopeless.

Married 36m here married to a 30f. I'm extremely unsatisfied and trying to figure out what my next step should be. I've tried talking and chore play etc. Nothing helps. She won't give head or do anything beyond plain vanilla. I'm bored outta my mind sexually when we do have sex but she doesn't give a flying you know what. Should I just find the things I'm missing elsewhere or prepare for divorce?

Please bear with me this is a long rant.

My husband I think is a compulsive liar. At first I thought it was just to me but he showed me his Reddit and he was on forums saying he was from X country and pretending to be a dr. Giving medical advice.

They’ve always been ‘little’ lies but they’ve progressively been getting worse and worse. It’s driving me crazy and making me so distrustful of him about anything. There was a female coworker he would text a lot, but in front of me. It was always about work. But he’d text her so much to the point we’d be out at dinner and he’d be ignoring me and I told him it bothered me. He ended up changing her name in his phone and I found out but initially when I confronted him he tried to convince me I was crazy. He then said his reasoning was that I backed him into a corner and made him do it because he was tired of hearing me complaining about her.

He has really weird behaviors with his phone. It is always on his person. He’s constantly texting or on it. If he’s showing me something he’s practically hovering over me. He said he doesn’t think he’s being weird and I see what I want. He’s so hyper aware of his phone that one time I went to his nightstand to unlock it. He was in a deep sleep. Snoring and everything and he woke up when I was unlocking it.

He also has this woman from his past (who I know from school) who kept texting him intimate things like ‘I thought about you three times yesterday’ and wished him Happy Birthday. He was ‘transparent’ with me initially and showed me the messages. I told him (I was pregnant at the time) that I felt uncomfortable and I told him to tell her he was in a relationship and he refused and said he’d continue to ignore her. And she continued to text him, allegedly with no response from him. I told him at that point to block her and he immediately started shaming me saying that was a toxic behavior and he didn’t want to block her just because I’m insecure, etc. Anyway allegedly he told me he blocked her.

We were on a little road trip one time and his messages weren’t popping up on the screen like they normally would and I happened to look over and saw he had a Face ID to unlock his messages and apparently that hides your notifications. He said he didn’t know how that happened but his WhatsApp was also locked. But none of his other apps were locked and he tried to convince me he didn’t do it on purpose. He started to say I was policing him and looking for him to be guilty.

I cried the other night because I don’t trust him. He offered for me to go through his phone and in the moment I declined. A few hours later I was testing him (I know that’s crazy) but I asked if I could take him up on his offer. I honestly just asked because I wanted to see if he’d hand over his phone no problem and I was only going to go as far as unlocking it. Of course he did exactly what I thought he was going to do. He asked me why. Then he said he wasn’t going to do it. Then he said if he did that he would look at me differently and that I was invading his privacy and that it was a toxic behavior. I said okay and kept asking him to hand me his phone. I said ‘you offered’ and he said ‘well when I asked I knew you wouldn’t take me up on it’. HE then unlocked his phone and said he’d show me whatever I wanted to see, but I couldn’t hold his phone. He started scrolling through his messages and I saw that he had messages muted from all his female coworkers. He also had one of his other female friends muted. He said that he didn’t know how they got muted and it was an accident and he didn’t notice. He came up with a million excuses. He has his texts set to auto delete after 30 days but he also didn’t have any messages in his recently deleted. On the other hand, he showed me his phone without having time to prepare. Unless he got rid of everything when he offered the first time. then asked him to go through his apps because I got weirded out and he’s really tech savvy. He said you can duplicate apps and if he wanted to hide something I wouldn’t know which is odd to say. So at that point I felt defeated. I didn’t know what to even look for. He pulled up his contacts and that girl he allegedly blocked last year, was still saved in his phone and unblocked. He then proceeded to say he knew for sure he blocked her and he doesn’t know what happened. He also then said that he must have fabricated that memory but never thought to check again because she hasn’t messaged him since the last time. At no point did he let me hold his phone yesterday. I asked what he was so worried about and he said he had nothing to hide that I was just being really weird and he wasn’t sure what I would do. I’ve stressed this since the beginning though that he’s broken my trust and he needed to help me work through it and I needed more reassurance. Every time something weird happened the first thing he did was get defensive and make me feel bad. He has too much pride also which is a big part of it.

Am I being paranoid? What could he be hiding? He really doesn’t go anywhere besides work and home. He’s a big home body. I don’t know how to work through this. What should I do?

EDIT: If this is the wrong sub, please let me know. I'll delete the post and ask else where.

First of all, I want to say that I feel guilty about my actions. I was in contact with a woman who was in a relationship of more than 10 years herself, and I am guilty for being part of someone else's affair.

During our contact, she indicated that her relationship was dying and that it was coming to an end soon. That end never came. We only met up once we had fun, and we talked and shared a lot with each other. I was also her emotional pillar of support at times when she wasn't doing well, and I did a lot to be there for her.

Looking back later, when the honeymoon phase was over, it turned out that the lady hadn't been entirely honest with me or with the other person. She was quite toxic in her behavior and actions: a lot of gossiping, lying, belittling other people—anything to make herself feel better than she actually was.

I, someone who is in early recovery from an addiction and struggling with mental health, needed someone who could support me just a little bit. In the end, she said that I wasn't normal, was unstable, and wasn't doing anything about my recovery because she didn't understand what I was going through. she had me at my weakest point when I needed support myself. This resulted in another relapse, from which I fortunately recovered from.

Ultimately, she said that she no longer sees a friendship in us, and that I please will not contact her anymore. To which I responded with; Fine, then this is the last you will hear from me. Thanks for the friendship, I had a good time. And I wish you the best.

My guilt that I am part of someone else's will, I am disgusted by my deed and actions. I hereby want to be completely open with her partner and send him a letter as follows:

>Personally, I am not someone who likes to say this or approach someone in this way, but I do want to tell you the truth.

>Unfortunately, I am the second guy [name cheater] has cheated with. Although I cannot and will not be able to justify it, I hereby offer my sincere apologies. I realize myself that I was also at fault. I heard the stories about her first affair two years ago.Although I do not want to pull the same stunt, I did hear from [name cheater] what a good heart you have, and that you deserve to know this too.

>I have no hard evidence that I can provide right now, other than looking in her Discord account and searching for the name "[my name]"; this will be listed under "deleted user" and scrolling back to Feb 25. That is the date we agreed upon.

>I am not a person who likes to break up or destroy relationships. But then I ask myself the question: "If I have been in a relationship for more then 10 years, would I want to know where I stand? Is this just another coincidence or a pattern?" Personally, I would certainly like to know where I stand, how shitty the news should be.

>I hereby apologize once again for my actions and for approaching you in this way. If I could turn back time, I should never have started contact with [name cheater].

>Wishing you lots of strength

I am looking for advice on whether I should send this by post. I asked people around me for advice, some say the partner need to know, other said it would be best to put it all down.

You don't have to answer that I am an asshole, because I already know that of my actions. This is not a letter of revenge nor an emotional outburst, but to warn someone that the poor woman keeps going in circles in there relationship.

Thank you.

EDIT: As you can read, I am not the first person she has cheated with. This has to be added.

EDIT2: The layout of the letter was wrong. This has been fixed and nothing further has been added.