As a Betrayed Spouse. my first advice is to stop cheating. As a caring person, tell me why you are cheating. Simplistic, I know but hopefully helpful.

I stopped the minute it all came out...
I have no excuses for my behaviour and to be honest I feel like I want to apologise to u sincerely for the whole cheaters thing.

My story is long and very painful. In simple- my life was a fairytale- everything perfect. Perfect family perfect relationship with my high school sweet heart.
Everything just as ud dream. Dream suprise engagement. Perfect wedding honeymoon. Built our first home, travelled to Hawaii and found out we were pregnant with our first baby... we had our dream baby girl. Perfect and healthy.
She turns four. Life couldn't be better. We found out we were pregnant with baby number 2! Exactly 5 years after our first trip to Hawaii we went back and gave our number 1 girl a wonderful holiday... celebrating my dad's bday in a park- about to break the news to my family... I miscarry- horrible terrible never have dreamt of- my little girl had to stay with my sister while my hubby took me to emergency.
We picked up my girl straight after to hear her tell us that her cousin played a game with her over and over again, that it was tickling her front and back bottom....

My world started spinning.... I remember ringing my sister and her hanging up on me. I remember texting her begging her to answer as I was scared and didn't know what to do, I remember ringing and asking to speak to my dad, who at the time my mum said had left to go visit my sister urgently....

It just kept crumbling

My husband and I never spoke about what happened with our baby number 2 from that moment and that was over 3 years ago. My sister has never spoken to me and despite the police having to get involved and go through trial my parents refused to help me, my husband or our little girl. My mum was my best friend. I lost everything I worked so hard for. Straight A student and daughter who never stepped offline and my sisters who both turned to drugs and prostitution and constant trouble until recently... my parents didn't want to deal with any of it and to make matters worse, I had to do it all alone. Interviews and police coming to our house to watch therapists "play" activities to make sure my daughter was ok.
Taking in the 4 layers of clothing so they could photograph her underwear.... all while pretending in front of my girl that everything was going to be ok... the days were very long, and very hard, very painful and very long... my husband is the hardest working man I have ever known and to this day I just wished I'd have asked him for help back then. But I didn't . I made a huge mistake by trying to be strong for everybody, and yet having nobody to hold me up.

My whole intire family had deserted my baby girl when she needed people around her the most. I was the only one, and then her daddy each night late to kiss her goodnight. I tried to escape reality and the way I did it was completely and utterly 200% And more , wrong....

There is NO excuse for me turning to someone else to try and forget reality. I will ALWAYS have to feel like I am the biggest failure and to be honest I don't know how we have gotten even this far.

My husband had a revenge affair which absolutely devastated me but I soon realised that no matter what he through at me- I deserved it... but I guess it's hard... I am still human and just struggle a lot....

I am so sorry for every decision and action I chose to make - I wish with every breath in my body I could go back and do everything differently...

Honestly I couldn't hate myself any more then I do... my perfect life got ripped from underneath me and instead of holding my family together I made everything worse... I have to live with that for the rest of my life now....

Thumpa first of all I am so sorry for all you have been dealing with. That is a massive amount of strain, stress and loss you dealt with all in the same time frame. While it was not an excuse to cheat, people handle loss and stress differently. You had your family basically abandon you when you needed them most and had the loss of your baby you were dealing with and you say your husband did not speak of it after that. Did you receive any counseling yourself?
I cannot begin to imagine how awful all of that was for you.
You cannot take back what happened but you can learn from it and move forward. Sometimes these awful hard lessons bring about better things and change that is needed. I was told by my therapist that the cheating is just a smoke screen and you need to look underneath at the WHY, not the action. To me, it seems like you were sending a very clear cry for help. Only you know why but please do not continue beating yourself up because it accomplishes nothing and I think you have suffered enough. Learn from this in techniques of how to cope in healthier ways to stress and difficult circumstances. Are you going to therapy now? I would highly suggest this and forgive yourself. Are you and your H doing ok now? Hugs to you for all you have been through.

Thank you for replying... yes I see a counsellor quite regularly and he sees his every once in awhile. We've gone to a few couples counselling but I want to do more... I can't seem to get over the guilt part and even when I do- something will pop up to remind me... I feel like this is it now- this is who I am and it is devastating me because my life wasn't suppose to be like this... I don't want to feel it over and over because not only is it over but it has taught me a lot and I do feel like I've changed for the better... but it's like it's not up to me and I hate not being in control like that. I want happiness and faith and love and strength....

You have to learn to forgive yourself and sometimes that is a very hard thing to do.
Hopefully as you continue with counseling you can do this. Try to focus on the here and now and what you are learning and what you are doing to make life better for both of you. You have to take care of yourself, you have been through an awful lot. You know the saying "dont look back you aren't going that way." Think of what you can do now and in the future to make your life happier and more peaceful. Going over what you did will not accomplish anything and will keep you from moving forward. How is your husband feeling right now? BTW I had revenge affairs too and two wrongs do not make a right. I had no business doing that just because he did. I hope you both can find a way to move forward and not allow your past to continually haunt you. It will if you allow it to.

Forgiving ourselves takes a lot of time and sometimes active effort.

Like you, I will always be the wife who cheated. However, it is not all I will ever be and hopefully will end up way down the list of identities I have. I can tell you already that some good has come from the bad.

I completely agree with moving forward and not looking back but it's my husband that just continuously has a dig no matter how good the day has been- just sly remarks and petty remarks and although he is entitled to feel this way it's gotten to the point where I am human too and hate hurting continuously over something I cannot take back. I am doing everything to make the future brighter and better but he just continuously takes it back there..... may I please ask what good has come of ur circumstance gravinggirl? Thanks guys

Thumpa how long has it been since you had your D day? Your husband needs to decide either he wants to forgive you and work on things or he wants to stay stuck on what you did and not forgive. I can understand him being upset, especially if this is relatively new. Do you say anything when he gives you a dig? Have you talked about this with a counselor? He is hurting from the betrayal so it is not uncommon for a BS to lash out. I hope you can get some help in dealing with this and find your way back to each other. I can tell you that for my husband and I, it opened up much better communication and we work on giving each other more support and love. Again, cheating is a smoke screen for the why. You need to look at the why and what needs to change from that.

I agree that while his hurt is totally understandable, if you are very far out from the affair and he is still poking that wound frequently, he needs to keep working on himself and decide if he really wants to be in the marriage. Why stay together but continually sabotage the relationship and add space and resentment?

What good came out of my supreme disaster of an affair? Without it, I probably never would have dealt with my childhood baggage and codependency. Through my affair, I saw how far I would let someone manipulate me if I felt "loved." I realized I wasn't in touch with my needs and did not feel entitled to my feelings. I was always polite, always taking responsibility for others' well-being over my own. My husband and I weren't communicating well for many years, and I resented him but didn't know how to bridge that gap between us. We were both avoiding conflict. I was a sucker for addictive relationships and didn't have a sense of what is normal or reasonable in a very long-term relationship (22 years).

I am still a huge work in progress. I have been in therapy for 18 months. My affair and the lead up to it feels unreal to me most of the time.

Thank you guys for replying- it really is comforting knowing I am not so alone. It has been just over 3 years since d day and I do understand he is hurt and that's why he does it and I guess that's probably why I "let" him vent and be nasty and cruel... but like I said it's getting to the point now where I don't want to do my best and still feel like shit. That's not fair. It's hard because he suffers from depression and so when he is good- we are perfect! But then when he is low it is when he can be the cruelest... we come out of the low parts faster now (it use to take days and days!) but now it's almost just like a tantrum and he goes to bed shitty.... might last another day but I think he soon realised that he can't go any further with it- I mean it's not that I am denying anything so then what? But he isn't good at communicating. I'd love him to get some more help but u can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink....

My wife cheated on me, a number of times. I could see it was because she needed to be the "bad girl". She never saw that, and even though I continued to forgive her, decided to divorce me.

I'm so sorry... that's horrible. But atleast you know u did ur best and she was the one that didn't meet up to standard. U deserve a lot better and I know coming from me, it's not probably what u need or want to hear but I feel as tho I owe my life to my husband now for letting him and our marriage down. I failed everything I tried so hard to build and so for his forgiveness each day I feel like I am still in debt of his love. Maybe it's a bad thing but over time I am hoping we both see each other as a true blessing and not just him "keeping" me because he has power...

I understand how you're feeling. What people don't realize is that it ends up fucking up your perception of people. Because of the things you did. and you truly don't know what you have. I've stopped cheating and my husband and I will be divorcing, but he's been so great to me still with helping me out. I feel so bad that I ruined a good thing and now I feel like I'll never have him again tho part of me wants to. But again, he doesn't deserve to be cheated on by anyone. I worry that I can't be faithful to anyone. I mean, what made me do it in the first place when he's been there for me from the beginning???? What am I looking for??? I will definitely be continuing therapy and maybe we'll get back together one day....