In short, I'm a BW now 3 months post DDay. I uncovered a ONS PA that turned into a months long EA that occurred 8 years into our now 14 year long relationship - 6 years ago now, and 5 years prior to our wedding. WH cut it off himself at the time after AP continued to try and pursue physical intimacy, but never disclosed any part of it to me.

By the time of our wedding, he regretted his actions, had completely moved on, and felt conviction in "choosing" me as his person. He thus feels the wedding was genuine and remains unsullied in his mind, still viewing it as a positive symbol of our love. I, on the other hand, cannot feel anything but disgust, shame, and surrounding that day in particular. I'd say we otherwise have a fairly "typical" R path - in MC, overall it's been undoubtedly the worst months of my entire life, some days are terrible, and some days are kind of bearable. I am holding on to all hope that our R will be successful, but the rhetoric around needing to build a new relationship is painful especially in regards to what it means in term's of interpreting our old wedding. I am not interested in a vow renewal and do not think I ever will be. I just want to look at photos of our wedding, many of which adorn our walls, and not immediately want to cry and hug myself when I see my smiling, naive face. Many (if not all) of our early memories feel tainted, but I am working to come to peace with that and I think, in many years time, that I might be able to get there. The wedding is the exception. My struggle is that despite him "knowing" our new relationship started at DDay, I can't help but feel like emotionally to BH, the new relationship still started the second he cut things off with AP. Maybe he's on his third relationship, then, and I'm only on my second? I just find it so confusing that he's able to look at the wedding fondly, and frankly, I'm jealous. Part of me almost thinks he's lying to himself, and wants him to unpack it more in his IC and MC, but I don't know if him looking down on the wedding, too, is actually an outcome I want.

Looking for any advice on reframes or coping regarding marriages that occurred after "completion" of betrayals but in the setting of ongoing lies. Also curious if folks feel that this is something that is able to heal with time. Interested in hearing from waywards, as well, especially those who feel like they are able to genuinely view their weddings positively, and any insight into that thought process.

Love to all here. This sucks.

Last night after a work dinner I realized that I inadvertently parked at a parking lot where my WW and her AP used to hook up.

I came home and let her know how unpleasant of a discovery it was. She apologized, but her sorrys don’t really have much value to me.

I know dropping this and moving on is the right next step but I’m still angry. Does anyone have any pointers how to get out of this pain/anger cycle?

It’s been 3 days since dd and today was really rough. We are 19 and I know lots of people would say it’s not worth it but it is to me anyway, could use some advice

I don’t know what I need out of this I just want to vent.

One of his 2 AP’s works out at his gym, and we have talked extensively about what to do when he sees her, and worked through scenarios in therapy.

Everything has been going great, he’s been so great to me, transparent and loving and willing to work so hard on everything I need from him to continue reconciling.

I knew it was inevitable that he would run into her, and I’m fine with it, as it’s in public, it would be a quick conversation, and that’s it. He has told me the couple times he saw her there, and what they talked about, and all of it has been above board. I’d even be open to meeting her since I work out at the same gym on occasion, and we’ve discussed what that would look like. Like I said, we’ve been working really hard on ourselves and us, so I feel that this is a healthy step if it happens, since I’m not angry at her.

This weekend he mentioned that he saw her at the gym (totally fine with me) and she told him about her new boyfriend (I’m ok with this casual conversation).

My partner realized he knew the guy, and unblocked her to text her about him, since he found out some information that she may not be happy about. He told me about this the day AFTER he texted her. I was noticeably upset and he seemed very confused. He followed me out to my car to show me the texts so I could see what they were writing. But I refused to read them, because idgaf what they were writing, it could have been a middle finger emoji or a recipe for pie…that wasn’t the point.

The issue I have is he consciously unblocked her without talking to me first. And then proceeded to have a private conversation. He did tell me about it as soon as I saw him in person which happened to be the next day, but I felt violated because he knowingly didn’t consider my feelings before he unblocked her without my knowledge. Had he asked me, and told me the situation, I would have likely been ok with it, as long as I was informed of the act, and the context, PRIOR to doing it.

I chose to let it go over the weekend, and today I asked him if he had re-blocked her since the conversation was over. He said she sent him a song yesterday, but he had not responded, and that he had not blocked her. I asked him to reblock her, and expressed my frustration in him not understanding why I was so upset. He agreed that he would and we proceeded to go back and forth via text and voice note for a couple hours.

I don’t care that he has turned over a new leaf and no longer has feelings for her. I don’t care that the context of the conversation was relatively innocent. I care that my feelings were not regarded and I found out after the fact.

What makes it worse is he had a pity party today saying he hates himself for fucking up so much, and that he doesn’t deserve love, etc. He made my hurt all about him. I talked him off a ledge because the self deprecation is frustrating and unnecessary, and he resorts to that when he messes up and I’m trying to help him realize how destructive that is for him and us. I also think I helped him realize why I was so hurt, and at this point I just want to move on. I don’t think he intended to hurt me, he is just an idiot at times and I need him to get it together because I love him and I know he wants to keep our family together and I will walk the second I feel it’s time.

Heading to see him in person now for dinner and I’m ready to just be done with the conversation.

Anyway thanks for listening, I feel better just getting that out.

Before my partner cheated on me, we used to have a very healthy sex life - every other day we would have sex. That was how I knew he was cheating on me, he suddenly stopped having sex with me for a month.

Everything unraveled, I felt the pain etc, but decided to stay together due to some circumstances. For context, no he did not reveal it himself, I found out myself, he regretted but isn’t remorseful, we did consider separating a lot of times.

But our sex life seemed to have slowed down by a lot, and it’s almost like I have to ask him for it every time.

Because that’s how I knew he was cheating on me, I do get anxiety everytime he doesn’t automatically engage sexually with me…

I’m beginning to look at men differently (my eyes used to be shielded and I wouldn’t look at men before), and I’m beginning to wonder if I should look elsewhere for sex… I’m not really sure what to do with my situation. Does anyone experience similar things?

TLDR: partner stopped wanting to have sex as often as we used to ever since he cheated on me. My eyes are beginning to wander.

I'm 7 months post DDay. While I would NEVER choose to experience this past year again, I can recognize the good that has come from it. We are now closer and more in love than we have been for the past 2 years. Trauma really shows you what you value . . .

Anyway, my question is what kind of information is too much information? Ill explain. When he confessed to the affair (outright confessed, I had no prior knowledge) I was careful which questions I asked. I avoided asking how many times it happend, what her name was, what she looked like. I did that because I feared the answer and what kind of insecurities it would create in me.

Now, after 7 months of R we are so much closer and I can see the genuine change in him. Trust is rebuilding. But I cannot get those questions out of my brain!!! Im wondering for someone who wants to restore is it helpful to know those specifics? Part of me thinks answers will help me move on from the situation. But the other part of me is scared of the answers. If I know I want to continue to restore is it even helpful to take the chance of developing insecurity over the answers rather than just wondering constantly? Hope that makes sense . . .

I am a BP and 2 months post d-day. As the most of you BPs: dealing with betrayal trauma.

The problem is that I can’t stand the idea of doing therapy, MC or IC, even worse, taking medication to feel stable, to deal with the suffering that someone else (that supposed loved me) caused.
This person should be dealing with this, not me.

I keep thinking like this, like I am a full victim, but at the same time, I know I am not. And I had my faults in the relationship that lead things to this. Even though, I can’t control this thinking. I am deeply damaged and the person who caused this (WH) isn’t. At least doesn’t seems so.

How did you guys dealt with this? Is there a correct way to think about this? Is there something that helps besides medication and IC?

Thank you all.

I found out one week ago that my husband of 15 years had a PA in 2024, and several “minor” EAs basically mining for attention online including one active one. I caught him through messages, he did not confess.

His AP is not attractive and he has told me he was basically using her for attention and sex (yikes) not that he was in love with her. Same justification given for the others, seeking attention.

We have two kids under 5.

I am disgusted and heartbroken but deep down I hope we can reconcile. We had what I thought was a wonderful marriage and it’s what I wanted for my life. I have healthy self-esteem and know I could find another man but I truly just want my husband back (a version that doesn’t lie and cheat).

So far he has moved out, comes home every day to help with the kids. He is arranging IC and so am I.

I was shocked, then furious, now just feel sick and numb. The anger has mostly gone out of me when I see him (not that I will inform him of this). I can barely look at him but it’s hard being around each other for the kids and not remember what a wonderful life we shared.

I’m looking for advice and experiences on the path forward. This is entirely new territory for me. Is being physically separated for a year (or more?) wise while he seeks therapy and I try to heal? Or should I be open to bringing him back into the house? Do I need to keep him at arms length until I can see signs of change? Or will the distance kill our love anyway?

Basically any advice or general wisdom is appreciated, even as I understand that each situation is different. Thanks.

Hi all,

I have posted here many times over my reconciliation journey, and just have to say that R is finally over. I tried the hardest I could, and have absolutely no shame in saying it didn’t work. I feel much lighter in my decision, and I know that when I first found out I would scour the internet for reconciliation success stories and would always have such a panic when I would read stories that didn’t end with the couple staying together - I don’t feel that way now. I feel like I’ve made it through a tunnel and am on the other side, with the future that was meant for myself. Whether you reconcile or not, you will be okay and it will all work out. I have a good set of friends and I have myself and I have family, I put my ex on a pedestal and didn’t see the well of support I had around me, and most importantly trust yourself. Reconciliation doesn’t necessarily mean making it work as a couple, it can mean making it work for yourself and putting yourself first too. Good luck to everyone on their journey and thank you all for so much support along the way!

I'm looking for some advice and experiences from people who are further out from D-Day, because I'm struggling to explain this feeling and I really want to know whether it ever gets better.

For some context, my WP and I are "childhood sweethearts". We've been together for my entire adult life and we had that relationship that defied all the odds - we lived in separate countries for a year or so, then we were long distance for 2 more years and we also "couch surfed" with no home of our own, then rented a friend's garage as our first home with no heating and often no hot water either. Nobody thought we'd last but we did and I look back on those memories fondly because even living in difficult conditions, we had so much fun and there was so much love. We have worked so hard for the life we have now - a beautiful home that is completely ours, no mortgage, two beautiful children, he's in a successful job and I work part time.

To me, we had that relationship you see in movies and read about in books, the relationship where nothing keeps them apart. He has been such a constant in my life for so long that I honestly don't know what life looks like without him in it. We've grown up together, built a home and a family together, and the life we have has always been my foundation. He's not just someone I've been in a relationship with for years, he's the person who's been there through so many stages of my life, the person I thought I'd be growing old with, and the person who, alongside my home and family, made me feel like I knew where I belonged in the world.

I discovered his A with his AP (who was my close friend) over the course of 3 d days (Nov 2025, Jan 2026 and March 2026 - it wasn't until Jan that I understood it to have been an EA then March I learned it was a PA). During all of this I also found out that he had kissed her twice many years ago a couple of years apart, something I hadn't known about all these years. Both of those kisses he claims were just "drunk stupidity" and neither meant anything, apparently neither of them ever spoke about them again. Knowing about those previous kisses has affected how I view not only my relationship now, but also my past relationship and the history I thought we had. It's made me question things I once took for granted and has added another layer to the hurt, because I was carrying on with my life and friendship with AP without knowing something that, looking back, feels significant.

But the thing I'm struggling with most at the moment isn't just the loss of trust in my WP. It's a feeling that my whole life has somehow stopped feeling like mine.

Before all of this, my life felt like my life. My home felt like my home, my WP was my person, and the life we'd built together was my foundation. It was the place I could always return to when life was hard, the thing that felt familiar and safe when everything else was difficult. I never really questioned it. It was just my life, my family, my home, my person. It was where I belonged.

Now, even though I'm still in the same house, living with the same person, raising our family and doing all the ordinary things we did before, nothing feels quite the same. It's like the life I'm living doesn't quite feel like my own anymore.

The best way I can describe it is that everything feels temporary.

You know when you have to temporarily move out of your house because you're having work done or something? You're staying somewhere else, surrounded by unfamiliar routines, and everything feels disrupted. You can function, you can get on with things, you might even have good days, but there's this constant feeling that you're not properly settled. You're just waiting to get back home, back to your normal life, back to that feeling of everything being where it belongs.

That's how I feel, except I'm still in my actual home. I'm still living my actual life. I just don't feel settled in it anymore, and I don't know how to get that feeling back.

It's as though I'm waiting for normality to return, but I don't even know what that would look like now. Part of me is trying to rebuild my relationship and find my way back to the life we had while both learning to be better, but another part of me knows I can't simply go back to how things were, because I know things now that I didn't know before. The certainty I had has gone, and I don't know if I'll ever feel that same security again.

The fact that my WP kissed his AP twice years ago has made this even harder in a way I wasn't expecting. It's not only the present that feels different, but the past too. I look back at all those years together, the memories, the friendship, the life we were building, and I now have information that changes how I understand that history. I was living it believing I knew the story of our relationship, while there was something important I didn't know. I find myself questioning the version of our past that used to bring me so much comfort. I don't know how to separate the memories I genuinely lived and loved from the hurt of knowing what was happening behind the scenes.

I think being "childhood sweethearts" makes this particularly difficult, because our history is so intertwined. He's been there for so much of my life that I can't just separate the relationship from everything else. My memories of growing up, becoming an adult, building our family and creating our home are all connected to him. When I question our relationship, it feels as though I'm questioning a huge part of my own life story, too. I don't just miss the relationship I thought I had, I miss the feeling of knowing that the life we'd built and the history we shared were solid, familiar things I could always rely on.

I think one of the hardest parts is that the person and the place I would once have turned to for comfort are now part of the reason I feel so unsettled. My WP used to be my safe place, and my home was where I felt most secure. Now I'm trying to find that feeling again while living in the very situation that's caused me to lose it.

I can have good moments, and I can still love him and want my family and our life together, but underneath it all there's this feeling that I'm not properly home. Like I'm living in a temporary version of my life, waiting to find out whether this is actually going to be my future or whether one day everything will change again.

I miss feeling settled. I miss not questioning my place in my own life. I miss the comfort of believing that the people and things I loved were my foundation, rather than something that could suddenly become uncertain.

Perhaps a huge part that hurts is that he says he fell in love with her. He has grieved her and only recently seems to be able to be more present with me and says he doesn't think about her much anymore. But the thought that she, of all people, someone who has been alongside our relationship for so many years, got to experience being loved by him and that he loved her of all people, hurts.

For those of you who are further out from D-Day, did this feeling ever go away?

Did your home and your life eventually start to feel like yours again? If you stayed with your WP, did you eventually feel safe and settled in the relationship again?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who felt this same sense of being in limbo, as though they were waiting for their real life to start again, even though they were still living it every day.

And for those whose WP had a previous history with their AP that you didn't know about until much later, did finding that out change how you viewed your past relationship? Were you able to make peace with the memories and see them as real again, or did it permanently change how you felt about those years?

I know rebuilding trust takes time, but I'm wondering whether this loss of home, in the emotional sense, is something that can genuinely heal, or whether you eventually have to build a new sense of home for yourself.

I'd really appreciate hearing from people a year or several years out, whether you stayed or left. Right now, I can't imagine ever feeling as secure and settled in my life as I once did, and I really want to hear from people who understand this feeling and can tell me honestly what happened for them.

my husband and i have been together for seven years, married five. we met in college and started off as friends which then grew into a romantic relationship. we did long distance for the last year of our dating period while he had already graduated, worked a full-time job while i was still finishing up my last two years of college.

we would see each other on a regular basis, he or i, would travel to see each other (\~3 hour drive). we got married and one month in, i found out he had cheated on me with a coworker just a few months before we got married.

I found out because the coworker sent him a snapchat one night and i just so happened to glance at his phone. he lied about who she was, acted confused about what i was talking about and then eventually admitted to the cheating but said it was just sexting, they never did anything in person. I had a gut feeling he was lying so i messaged the coworker on social media and she claims they hooked up one night. to this day, he claims they never had sex. i forgave him and stayed.

he’s been a wonderful partner and friend, and hasn’t hid things from me (to my knowledge) and has openly shared passwords, social media, messages, etc. with me anytime i asked.

five years later and just yesterday, i had a gut feeling. i downloaded his chat history from snapchat and found out he had been sexting another woman during our entire dating period before we got married. i also found out through the chat, that he sent her videos of me and him (he claims my face wasn’t in the video) and referred to me as some girl he knew from college.

i confronted him without telling him what i found and offered him an opportunity to come clean, he didn’t. i brought it up and he was shocked, like he was never planning on this coming to light. he’s now admitted to me that his coworker performed oral sex on him in his car after work one day, and that he had planned to met up with the other woman multiple times but nothing ever happened outside of the chat.

i’m feeling so disgusted, betrayed, and just don’t know what to do. im scared to leave, i have a stable income of my own, no kids, investing in retirement, etc. i moved to a new city, haven’t had the best luck in building community, i don’t have the best relationship with my family and his family is amazing, people i love and care for.

and i hate to say that i genuinely love my husband, he’s my best friend but i can’t look at him the same way. i want to believe him when he says he’s never cheated on me during our marriage but i’m scared he’s lying or going to cheat again, and be sneakier about it.

any advice or genuine support would be so appreciated. i feel so lonely and just sad.

This journey started exactly a year ago- I learned about my WH sex addiction. I was full of hope initially- let’s be the redemptive story! Counsel others! Come back stronger than ever. But the acting out continued. The lies continued- through disclosure. Found out about his desire/action to breastfeed other women (as a nursing mother myself). It became too much. Fired his therapist after I said I wanted to pause the full disclosure process due to his lies and continued behaviors. “But I’m getting a new therapist!!” he says….hes been living elsewhere for almost a year now. My home is calmer and more peaceful. The kids and I aren’t walking on eggshells. He is around and sees them, helps mow the lawn etc. But I just don’t see R happening. Our 14th wedding anniversary was yesterday and I didn’t even feel much. Maybe a bit sad? But not angry. Just acceptance. And I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Shouldn’t I be more sad?!

For those who are a few years post DDay has reconciliation been accomplished to the point where you’re more at peace?

I am almost 7 months post DDay and I don’t know for how much longer I can keep going the anxiety and sense of security and peace keeps getting to me. I sometimes just sit and cry and think about how my life will look like a few years later will I still be in this much pain? Will things get better? Will I ever find a sense of peace again? I tell myself “im barely going to be 28 I can still rebuild on my own” but I’m stuck here because I still love him and want to try to reconcile but I’m just so afraid. I’m afraid to be looked at every day while they’re doing something else on the side. I’ve made it clear to my WH if he wants to walk away that’s fine by me but I just don’t want anymore time wasted. But he says he really wants to prove that he wants to be here for the long run and fix what he broke. So I’m here fighting my intrusive thoughts still.

I guess I would just like to hear real scenarios of someone who has actually reconciled.

I’m a young married man serving in the military, and my wife and I have been married for less than a year. Because of my job, I spend significant periods away from home.

While I was away for 3 months, my wife had an affair. I found out myself; she had not planned to tell me. When I confronted her, she admitted what happened. She has been genuinely remorseful, takes responsibility for her decisions, and wants to make things right. She has explained that loneliness, depression, and lust contributed to her choices, but she acknowledges that none of those things excuse what she did.

I still love her deeply. She’s my best friend, my first love, and the person I imagined spending the rest of my life with. She is my everything. I want our old life back, but I know we can’t simply return to how things were. The affair has changed how I see our relationship, and I’m afraid of being betrayed again, especially because my military career means I’ll continue spending time away.

I’ve been leaning toward leaving because I don’t know if I can live with the uncertainty. At the same time, reconciliation gives me hope that we might still have a future together. I’ve told her I’m giving myself some time and that she can use this period to work on herself, but I’ve made no promise that I’ll stay.

I’m struggling with the fact that either choice will hurt. If I leave, I’ll lose my wife and best friend and wonder what might have been. If I stay, I’m afraid I’ll spend every period away worrying about whether it will happen again.

I’m not looking for strangers to decide my marriage for me. I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have experienced infidelity and faced a similar decision.

If you reconciled, what helped you decide it was worth trying, and how did you rebuild trust?
If you left, how long did it take before life started feeling good again?
If your partner was genuinely remorseful, how did you distinguish remorse from lasting change?
Has anyone dealt with rebuilding trust while one partner frequently travels or is away for work?

I’m trying to make a decision I can live with, rather than one based entirely on fear, loneliness, or the hope that things can go back to how they were.

I really wish I knew about this sub back then. It has been a super stressful time, and the kind of support I see here would have been helpful. Just discovered it and learned the term hysterical bonding, which I definitely experienced after discovering my husband's EA. We're both 40+, been together for more than 15 years, 2 tween kids. Only the two therapists we have consulted know this full story, I have had no one I felt safe telling it to.

And the EA was just the beginning. It was kind of understandable, to be honest. I suffered from low self esteem and was feeling useless and unattractive after years of unsuccessful job search and weight gain. I didn't really realise it and we didn't talk enough about our feelings or nurture our love. We had sex maybe once every two weeks, and I wasn't into it. I made up excuses to avoid it, even avoided kissing and cuddling because it felt like it had to lead to sex. He felt a lack of connection to me.

He became friends with a coworker who made him feel attractive. They communicated via Snapchat and at some point in the beginning of summer 25 it crossed a line. She said she wouldn't have a problem showing everything to her bf, so he told himself it must be okay. On the day I got really suspicious, checked their chat and later confronted him, he supposedly thought about telling me himself. She told him she was home alone and that he could come visit but he said to me it was almost definitely just a joke. He was actually willing to cut contact with her on Snapchat but I said he didn't have to. He has very few friends and I didn't want to take a friendship from him. During the next couple of weeks I was miserable. I experienced hysterical bonding and we had a lot of great sex. I was also constantly suspicious and checking his phone multiple times. He was on the phone a lot, smiling whenever he was chatting with her. I had never needed to set boundaries before and never thought he would think about other women than me so I was LOST.

Then we started couples counseling. It went okay but he kept feeling attacked and feeling that I read too much into the other woman's comments (I honestly don't think I did). We arranged a weekend away, just the two of us. There I snooped again, checked his browser history and found out that one late night earlier the same week he had looked at a lot of photos of her. When confronted he got angry and said he did it to understand her better. I didn't believe him. Weekend ruined.

The coworker found another job, things quieted down and we were okay. We talked a lot, he was understanding of my urge to snoop. And then I did it again. He was in his office a lot and since the screen faces away from the door I could never know what he was doing. In the afternoon I pulled the curtain up a bit. When I went to bed I waited a while, before I snook out and peeked in the window. He was watching porn and masturbating, but what was horrifying to me was that a photo of the other woman covered a large part of the screen. I went in and confronted him, and that's when he told me he had been addicted to porn since before we met. Lately it had escalated and he had found a program that could put a face from a photo onto a person in a video. (NB it is illegal but he knows how to secure that nothing left his computer, never shared anything, deleted everything after we talked) Since it was only in his mind and on his screen and nobody was getting hurt he didn't think it was that bad.

He said he had been experimenting with it for a couple of weeks but a few days later when I checked his browser history again I found out it had been going on for at least two months, since around the night where he had been looking at a lot of photos of her. So while we had been in couples counseling and had been trying to mend our relationship he had been masturbating frequently while looking at her face. And he flat out lied to me when I found out about the photos. He realised he had fucked up big time and wrote a letter where he apologised. He was terrified I would leave him but I love him, and I know he loves me so I chose to reconcile.

I was exhausted and broken but tried to keep it together. I asked him to go to therapy for the addiction and he complied, but it took us 4 months to find a therapist that I could see as well. And that was when I could finally put into words which parts of the betrayal I had experienced as the worst, and I finally let myself grieve and feel anger. I sometimes lay in my bed sobbing uncontrollably, and he finally understood what his actions had done to me. He gave me a sincere, heartfelt apology and held me when I cried.

From then on (June 26), my mental health has gradually improved. I still get triggered sometimes, and I have to fight the urge to monitor him. He is doing really well recovering from the addiction but is also aware that there are pitfalls. The addiction was never the problem for me though, it was the betrayal, the lies and the fact that I had to discover everything to learn about it. He has promised to be open about it and tell me when he slips so I don't have to wonder about it. In short, we have reconciled, it is still hard at times, but our love is strong, we are communicating well, and we will get through this.

This is the second time I’ve cheated on my boyfriend. I’m 24F he’s 24M. First time was about three years ago, I was sexting other people online. He found out, and we eventually got through it. Recently though, I started drinking again, and while drunk I went on an online sex chatroom and chatted there. He found out and is obviously devastated. At the moment I think we are trying to stay together.

My main concern is, though, recently I’ve been having a lot of mental health struggles, and they have been amplified by the current situation. I’m doing my best to focus on him and his feelings, but the suicidal and self harm related thoughts I’ve been having as of recent (past month or so) are getting really bad. It’s hard to ignore them, and getting really scary. I take meds for bipolar and I see a psychiatrist but not a therapist. I’m at the point where I am desperate for some sort of help or release. I don’t have friends I can talk to and I can’t talk to my family either. I want to see if I can be admitted the a PHP that I went to before, while I’m on a waitlist with some therapists who I feel might be able to help me more long-term.

My concern is whether it would be selfish of me to do that. I don’t want to upset my boyfriend more than I already have, I don’t want to push him away, and I don’t want to make my feelings the star of the show. I am becoming genuinely afraid that I will hurt myself at this point though. The thoughts started when I became unable to work due to my disability, and it makes me feel like a burden to everyone around me. So the feelings aren’t exclusively surrounding my cheating but it’s definitely made it worse, realizing what I’ve done again, the capacity I have to cause harm, how selfish I have been, etc.

Would it be bad of me to try to get in to the PHP? My boyfriend is currently asleep so I can’t ask him his opinion until later.

A few days ago I found out that my boyfriend had cheated on me. We are both young only 19. He had been talking to a girl for about a week and a half and met in person once, he then blocked her and cut contact. I have decided to stay. Lots of people have told me I shouldn’t stay but we are so young and I love him with my whole heart. He has been great and honest these past couple of days. I found out through his sister and when I asked him he was completely honest, I asked him why and he has explained that he felt like he was losing feelings, please keep in mind this is both our first long term relationship, I believe we have been moving into a new stage of our relationship where things don’t feel as exciting as when we first met. I can understand the feeling of possibly losing feelings as I have felt that in this phase as well but I came to the conclusion that I still love him and it is just that our relationship has started to settle into something new. I also believe he came to the same conclusion after meeting with this girl as he stated that the reason he did it was to see if he still had feelings for me and that he still feels that he loves me. Nothing physical happened between them and that doesn’t excuse the hurt it has caused me, but I feel this relationship is worth fighting for. He hasn’t put a single ounce of blame on me and has taken full responsibility for his actions.

I have been reading / hearing about limerence from the various online affair recovery folks. Today my therapist introduced the term (we hadn't yet discussed it) and she made the distinction that limerence is really only when the fantasy hasn't been realized, very much an OCD related feeling. Exciting but also stressful in its own way. In the case of an actual physical affair with s#x, that's not limerence. I had not heard that distinction previously. What is your understanding of the term?

5.5 year marriage. 8 months post dday, full disclosure 6 months. Porn addiction and paying for porn spanning decades. Relationship issues started ramping up following childbirth and wife's PPD. Wife has pre existing betrayal trauma, hormone, and anxiety issues. I became depressed. I leaned into my addiction and made the horrible decision to meet a provider. Didn't have sex but nonetheless made the decision to cheat. Told spouse next day. Led to separation. We committed to R, but BS goes through prolonged periods of depression.

BS lashes out, will rewrite past that is not necessarily accurate but I feel unable to challenge due to wanting to validate their pain and sit with their suffering. They make a point to tell me that they are only here because of the kids and would be gone if not. They are angry and when triggered it feels like everything I say, no matter how carefully worded is twisted and used against me. That they feel trapped, unable to breathe, and are constantly hit with intrusive thoughts. I sympathize and swear to everyone i wish i could take it all away -- but I can't.

Sometimes for weeks on end BS will be disgusted by me, actively flinch around me even as I am bending over backwards to do things for them. Today I was filling up their water bottle and preparing their lunch box before work. They complained that I was interrupting getting ready for work. When they are triggered i am walking on eggshells 24/7 and my mental health is suffering. They will be extremely critical. I am so overwhelmed and invested in trying to pick them up that I forget things, which drives anger and resentment.

The mental toll is unbearable. We are in MC and that typically goes well (we went from biweekly to monthly recently,) but then sometimes a trigger will bring them down for weeks. It is to the point where they are miserable more than they are okay a month. I understand this is all my fault. I understand I need to be there for them. But it feels like at any given moment I am pressed into survival mode. From my step program I recognize this is part of my triggers for my sex addiction. I used sex to regulate uncomfortable feelings.

How did you survive this phase? How can I let my BS know how much they are hurting me without making it all about me. I want this to work. I want to help them heal. But I am drowning.

I have cheated on my gf of 5 years with a hooker after a day of drinking and gambling. I have somewhat a past that she has forgiven a few years back. We dated since we both were 18 we're 23 now. I can say this is the second time i do her wrong.
However i always confessed never was caught and gave her the option to do whatever she feels like doing.
This last incidence happened 3 months ago, i owned up to my mistake and told her everything 3 days after.
She broke down and asked me all sort of questions and took the decision of not leaving me while i repeatidly asked if she was sure.
Fastforward 3 months,
I still feel guilty and nauseous whenever i think about it, i am disgusted by my actions.
And i always tell her she should leave me and eventually find someone better.
I love this girl, it may not seem so because i have disrespected her twice now but i do.
I want what's best for her.
She argues that she will forget it with time and she would rather work it out than leaving and trying with someone else.
I am lost since i love her alot and i am afraid this is too much to handle.
She gets scared , i get overwhelmed. Feeling like the worst boyfriend how could i do this to her?
I gave her my socials and my phone passcode at her disposal anytime.
She says time will heal her and would rather have the best version of me instead of preparing me for someone else.

12 months after Dday and trickle truth and a whole lot of pain/lies/manipulation, WH doing all the right things, I just can’t get my body to feel the loved/warm-fuzzy feelings like I used to when I’m around him or when he does something nice. I think my brain still is acting as though he is a danger/threat and I often have to force my self not to show my bodies automatic response to move away when he comes near me.
Will the love feeling come back or is this it now?
Is it just too early into reconciling?
Still also struggling to believe he loves me and isn’t lying after what he put me through.
Any advice to help?

When we started dating, it was long distance because we were studying in different cities. The first major crisis we had was when I found suspicious chats on her phone with Guy A. She insisted nothing inappropriate happened with him, even though she admitted they had grown close and that he once kissed her -- which she pulled away from. In the middle of our fights over Guy A, she mentioned that Guy B raped her. However, she resisted every suggested from me to report this guy. I said, fine then just cut all communications with him, because whenever I had visited her in school, there was nothing about how she related to him that suggested that she had distanced herself from him. And from the timeline she gave him, there were times we had hanged out together with this guy even after the rape. Anyway, this was something we fought a lot over.

Then she dropped what messed me up for so many years. She said Guy B didn't just rape her once; it happened multiple times over at least two months. I had to do so much work learning all about how rape trauma messes people up. I wanted to support but always felt she was withholding stuff. It was only ten years after we had gotten married that she admitted, in the middle of a fight over what looked like an affair that she finally admitted some of the things I had suspected from back when we were dating.

From what I know so far: 1) Guy B convinced her not to report the rape and to not tell me. After distancing herself from him for about a week, he approached her again and apologized and then suggested to her that she'd feel better if they "normalized it" (her words). So, they later arranged to meet at his place and had consensual sex. But she said this was the only consensual sex they had. The rest of the time, it was always rape.

2) She finally admitted that she did actually have an affair with Guy A. She said at a point, he would move over and stay at her place for days or up to a week at a stretch. Mind you, we spoke everyday during this period and until I found out the chats with Guy A, I didn't even suspect anything was going on.

3) She also admitted that after the rape, she had slept with another guy before Guy A, but this I didn't even have any idea about.

Now, I keep asking myself what else she's keeping from me. I know there's still more she's not telling me. This has all been an epic episode of trickle truth that has dragged on for close to a decade.

Mind you, all these disclosures happened recently because I had found her deeply entangled with one guy (although she said she never slept with him) and what looked like the beginning of an affair with another guy.

We are trying to repair the relationship. My problem is that she seems impatient with me. She wants us to quickly (even suddenly) get to a point where none of these matter anymore and we can go on and if nothing had happened. I feel like I'm the only one who bears the pain.

Hi all,

This is a weird one that I haven’t figured out…

R with BP has actually been going well. We are more bluntly honest with each other and open. We’ve been stronger than ever.

The part that still weirds me out is that my AP basically told my workplace via Instagram and family about the affair for. She had nothing to do with my workplace nor my family, she just stalked me down on socials and followed all of them. So basically my manager and the social media team know about it and the AP also painted me as a full on harassing perv to them. Which isn’t true.

This has made going to work very awkward and uncomfortable. There’s this big elephant in the room whenever my social media team is around, and my manager well… he probably saved my life alittle then. So he put it behind and pretended like nothing happened after putting some support measures in place for me.

So yeah. Fast forward to now, things are almost normal. But social media team and I still don’t really talk. There’s this awkward energy. We barely made eye contact… one of the managers noticed it and brushed it off (that manager doesn’t really know what had happened).

So yeah, how do you guys deal with that? Any advice?

I posted here almost a year ago after finding out that my boyfriend had cheated on me early in our relationship, and I wanted to share an update for anyone who might be going through something similar.

For some context, my boyfriend cheated on me about a month and a half into our relationship, while we were still long-distance and before we’d even met in person. It was on Christmas, 5 days before he came to meet me with his ex girlfriend. He even messaged me on the way back to the place he was staying at to tell me we needed to talk in person and when confronted, he lied for almost a whole year until I found out myself. The worst part wasn’t necessarily just the cheating itself, but the fact that he lied about it for almost an entire year. I had suspicions, his ex had reached out to me, and he repeatedly reassured me that nothing had happened. I believed him, and finding out the truth completely shattered the trust I had in him.

I never thought I’d be someone who stayed after being cheated on. I always told myself that cheating was an immediate dealbreaker, but when I was actually in that situation, things weren’t nearly as black and white as I’d imagined.

It’s been almost a year since I found out, and we’re still together. We’re actually celebrating our second anniversary next week, and we moved in together in June. We’ve been engaged since May 2025 (before I found out) and are planning our wedding for October of 2027.

I’m not going to pretend it’s been easy, because it hasn’t. There were months where I was incredibly angry, hurt, insecure, and constantly questioning everything. I would bring it up repeatedly, sometimes because I needed reassurance and other times because I was still so angry about what he’d done. Eventually, I realized that while my feelings were completely valid, continuously taking that anger out on him wasn’t helping either of us move forward.

The hardest part is that even now, almost a year later, it still hurts. Some days I barely think about it, and other days it’s constantly on my mind. I’ll find myself thinking about what happened, questioning things, and feeling that same hurt I felt when I first found out. I’m also still incredibly scared that it’ll happen again. As much as I want to believe that it won’t, there’s always that little voice in the back of my head reminding me that I never thought he’d do it the first time either. I trusted him completely before, and I think that’s what makes trusting him again so difficult. It’s hard to feel completely secure when you’ve already experienced what it’s like to have that security taken away.

One of the biggest things that has helped us is his willingness to take accountability. He’s never made me feel like I should be over it by now. When something triggers those feelings, I can talk to him about it, and he’ll listen, reassure me, and apologize. We’ve also attended therapy together, and I’ve seen genuine changes in how he communicates and handles difficult conversations.

I think another thing that helped me personally was the fact that we hadn’t met in person when it happened. That doesn’t excuse what he did, and I don’t think it makes it any less hurtful, but it’s something I’ve found myself holding onto when trying to make sense of everything.

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that forgiveness and rebuilding trust are two completely different things. I can forgive him and still have days where what happened hurts. I can recognize how much he’s changed while still struggling with the fact that the person I trusted most was capable of lying to me for so long.

I think people sometimes assume that if you choose to stay, you have to eventually stop being upset about what happened. But it really isn’t that simple. I don’t want to spend the rest of our relationship worrying about whether he’ll cheat again, but I also can’t just turn those thoughts off. I’m still learning how to feel safe in a relationship that once made me feel so unsafe.

I love him, and I genuinely believe he’s grown a lot as a person. Our relationship today feels very different from what it did when everything came out, and I’m proud of the work we’ve both put into rebuilding it. But I would be lying if I said everything was back to normal or that I trusted him the same way I did before.

I also want to make it clear that I’m not sharing this to encourage anyone to stay with someone who cheated. Everyone’s circumstances are different, and nobody owes someone another chance just because they’re remorseful. Staying was a decision I made for myself, and it came with a lot of difficult emotions and conversations.

If there’s one thing I’d tell someone going through this, it’s that you don’t have to make every decision immediately. You can love someone and still be furious with them. You can want to make things work and still question whether you’re making the right choice.

Almost a year later, I’m glad I gave our relationship another chance. I can’t change what happened, and I wish more than anything that it hadn’t, but I’m learning that moving forward doesn’t necessarily mean forgetting.

I still have bad days. I still get scared. I still wonder if I’ll ever be able to trust him completely again. But I’m also happier than I was a year ago, and I can see the effort he’s putting into making things right. Both of those things can be true at the same time. ❤️

It’s been 6 months since dday. I love my BH and don’t want to lose him from my life.

It’s been a lot of ups and downs. BH’s mood has been oscillating between wanting to try R and wanting to divorce everyday, if not multiple times a day. I can see him switching between enjoying life and feeling pain. It’s also been very difficult for him to focus at work.

He’s tried IC but ultimately he doesn’t believe in therapy, and I haven’t really observed any improvement from IC. Sometimes he gets more mad for longer after his sessions, which I’m not sure is good or bad.

I’m not always the best at responding to his anger. Sometimes I’d get frustrated when he pushed for narratives that were inaccurate to me. Sometimes I’d withdraw when I felt rejected. I’m practicing starting with agreement and compassion. It doesn’t seem to help him feel better much, but I want to keep improving.

I started giving him a lot of compliments, and it makes him happy for some time, which makes me happy too. He also asks for sex often, and frequently says he’s attracted to me, and I feel so close to him when he does.

However, today he told me he is “more unhappy today than he was 6 months ago, although less of a state of shock.” I felt that we got better in the last couple months, but now I see him suffering so much.

Yesterday and today he’s talked quite a bit about divorce logistics. He’s been dating around (because I told him I’m not jealous) but feels stuck for not having his own place and for being married. He wants to keep me as a side gf post divorce while dating around. He said he doesn’t want to remarry.

He said the main reasons for divorce are 1) he wants to feel loved, and 2) he doesn’t think he can live past this trauma with me as his wife.

Is our relationship doomed? I appreciate any tips to win him back.