I kicked him out that night. I was done. I met with a lawyer. He came around to watch the kids. He lived in his car for a month. I honestly was ready to move on. I told him get your own place. I started dating. He found out I was dating and went crazy. I think it was then that he realized that he was actually loosing me. He never thought I would go anywhere. He had never worked so hard to get me back. He has totally changed how he treats me. Things are different. Not because he regrets cheating but because he really does not want to loose me. I took him back in about 5 weeks.

O,

2 years of attmpted R activites.

Walked out after 2.4 yrs never looked back.

Gmarie12 - sounds like he viewed you as a challege again --- I hope he gets his "act together" --- so that he doesn't have to have that taste in his mouth again -- meaning --- if you let your guard down --- I hope he learned his lessons....

Living in hell with the realities of how awful no horrible my H/CS affair really was....and the more we find about him and his "flaws" and abilities to do what he did the darker it is getting....this goes beyond the hurt and betrayal "love never broke anyone's heart, it never left anyone scarred, it's not realy love if it tears you apart , love never broke anyone's heart"..." its the losing of love thats to blame" Vince Gill

If he hasent. I will find out and I am 100% ok with leaving. One thing that his cheating has done is increase my self sufficiency. I will be happy with or without him. Its funny he is the one holding on now. He wants me next to him all the time and Im ready to take my girls and go out and leave him by himself. It is a feeling of empowerment. I used to alyways stress on what he is doing. Now Do you. Make or decisions and I will make mine. The chase will never end now. He better hold tight.

You mentioned "girls" - I have read studies that the CS/WS are almost always the parent that is the opposite sex of the "children" being rasied.

So if you have "girls" more then 1 - the father will be more willing to cheat - if you have "boys" it will likely be the mother.

The reason for this is - that because the "moral" upbringing and responsibility is on the parent as the same sex as the children and the other parent subconsously believes that no matter what they do - that parent - that the kids will always love them even if they go into crazytown -- It's stupid and nutty but what I have seen that makes some sense.

Now if you have and boy and girl then most likey it won't be either and you will stay together --- again most likely but there's never a guarentee.

He (your WS) needs you by his side all the time? Again -- you are the challenge now --- there will be a time when you may let your guard down and his challenge in his head is over and he might go into crazytown again.

Challenges are short lived -- real "love" is someone who u go through trails and tribulations with... This dude hopefully understands the difference and "cleans his act up" for good.

I guess the "children" thing does not apply to step families, because my CS....waited til his children were 18 and no longer part of the equation by court order....in fact the affair started with the last visit from his daughter....and I often ask him what he would say to his daughter if she were living what I am living, if some man had done this to her....his answer....kick him out, and don't look back, and yet he begs me to do the impossible and forgive him because he can't imagine life without me, NOW it may well be tooooo late for that.....

While there were many times since her A that we both could have should haveleft eachother, we have not. sometimes i feel it is more destructive if we did not try, but i am always the one hurt in the end. BUt i am too darn stubborn to just walk away.

Very interesting about having two girls and the opposite spouse cheating. Onyx. Yeah hes ready for me to get pregnant again. (Would be much less of a challange then). Not gonna happen. Don't need a boy that bad. I do not believe that I will ever be able to let down my guard with him. I do not trust him with my heart anymore. Still not sure if I want to stay due to that. I no longer am able to open up to him. If i trusted him enough to talk to I wouldent be on this site. All I can do is take life as it comes mbecause it is what it is. I am truly a changed person and I will always know I can do w/o him, so if he no longer finds me a c"hallenge" and he starts messin up. Good luck with that chick. Enjoy her. I will be out and I will find someone new. It only took a week to find 3 dates after leaving him and they did not care if I had children or not. I know I will find someone worth while. I dare him to start messin up again. No more tears. Im done cryin and ready to start living. My real problem is if I really want to stay despite the changes.

We are still together. The process has taken a couple of years, but still continues. The good times are definitely much greater than the stressful times, as most mornings I awake to a world no longer dominated by infidelity.

The wife is present in the kids life again! The kids are doing great and enjoying life.

I did not blame myself for the infidelity. I took an appropriate amount of blame for the real issues in our marriage.

I said hell to the no to the bullshit re-writing of the marital history. I was there, so when in the affair behavior and she would come to me with comments about the problems in our marriage that were clearly all bs to support her affair behavior, I simply said, No, that is bullshit, as I was there too, and that is not the case, but if you insist that was the case, our doors lock from the inside, not the outside, nothing is keeping you in this house, hasta la vista 9even when it pained me on the inside to say such a thing).

She will now say that she cannot believe some of the things she said to me about out life and marriage.

I will also say, they felt downright abusive at the time, but I knew they were coming from deep confusion, not a sadistic side, as this is a person I have known for 20+ years.

If you can get your wife into NC with her POS affair partner then over time y'all can deal with reality. Right now, if she is in the midst of the affair, any attempts to work on your relationship are a mix of working on the actual relationship and fog induced bs.

PS: we have both sexes with our kids -- so I guess I need to cheat too to keep the validity of what you read in tact?

Just kidding.

My situation is a bit complicated.
About 12 years ago I suspected an A. I found phone records and confronted him. He denied and then admitted to a female friend I didn't know about. Swore that's all it was. After kicking him out for about a week, I let him back under the assurance we would get help. I figured I would get him to admit the truth in counseling.

That never happened and we went with our increasingly more unhappy and dysfunctional marriage.

2 years after that I overheard his cousin, who was also my friend, talking on the phone and referred to her cousin and it sounded like she was saying something about this cousin meeting with his ow. I couldn't be sure as it was through a wall.

I confronted her, she said no no and gave me some lame alternate reason for what she was saying. She then said that even if she was aware of him cheating, she would never tell because it would ruin our friendship.

That to me was the clue I needed. I went home from this conversation and confronted H. He denied my suspicions and we cried and he swore how much he loved me and would never ever do that to me blah blah. He was very convincing.

He then created a huge rigt between his cousin and I by fighting with her. Not sure what was said since I wasn't there but she stopped communicating with me altogether.

In these two years I had a third child. I continued for a few years with periodic confrontations. Feeling sure he was hiding something. Maybe multiple affairs, I didn't know. On year 3 just months after the cousin incident I found I was pregnant again.

By the time baby number 4 was about a year old, I stopped confronting him. I just stopped caring. Assumed he cheated, treated him like a lying sac of shit and figured one day I will leave. That I will never grow old with him and his lies.

That day came when my youngest was scheduled for brain surgery at 6 years old, my oldest was struggling with addiction and being enabled by my H.

I had finally had enough. I kicked H and oldest son out so I could focus on youngest and the other 2. It worked. I could breath and felt completely capable of my new single divorced mom life.

It lasted a few months before H realized I was DONE. Once I wrote up a seperation agreement and planned to make it legal he suddenly decided to tell me everthing.

And the everything was a lot more than I had ever imagined. It was not a few brief affairs that ended out fear of losing me after being caught. It was one long 3 year long A that resulted in a pregnancy. A month before I found out I was pregnant with my youngest son, she told him she was pregnant.

He then broke it off with her and spent the next 7 years dealing with her pregnancy and helping raise the oc.

Crazy shit right? So anyhowsers, that dday was nearly 3 years ago. We have been through hysterical bonding, hatred and hurt, tears and break up but are finally on the other side.

The oc visits, knows and adores his siblings, and they love him.

I believe part of the reason I was able to get through this, is because I spent about 10 prior to dday assuming with 99% assurance that he had cheated. I hardened my heart over those years and took our good times as temporary and expected that for the most part we were a done deal just waiting for our expiration date.

The truth set me free as it did him too. Freedom of my soul, mind and heart came with a heavy price as the truth was a lot to swallow and work with.

If my H was not 100% willing to do everything he can to improve our marriage be the H I always needed from him in the past, I wouldn't be telling my story this way. I would telling of my divorce.

Infact at close to our 1 year dday, I took a few months off from any relationship with him because I had gone frome hysterical bonding to pure hatred. Everything he did created such rage in me. I wanted to choke him and beat the life out of him for causing me so much pain. For ruining the memories of my kids. I couldn't look at family photos from the A years without wanting to vomit from the hurt.

Those few months gave me the prospective to work on forgiving him for my own peace of mind. I forgave him so I could function. Wether I divorced or ecconciled I needed to forgive. Those ,onths gave him the prospective of how badly he Hirt me.

The hysterical bonding phase fooled us both into thinking all was well and that I was m,ovign forward quite easily. We didn't do the work to improve the marriage.

We are almost 2 years post that break up and 1.5 since forgiveness and rebuilding and living together. Up until the getting back together and forgiveness wwe were living separately. We lived separately for over a year.

Sorry I rambled but my story is long and confusing and I feel like it starts from when I first suspected.

onyx- I was cheated on almost 6 years ago. Since then....

- I have been to at least 5 therapists (together and separately),
- read countless articles and books
- participated in this forum for 5 years, and several others
- gained several betrayed friends that I regularly discuss this matter

What did I learn?
Don't believe everything you read.....especially statistics.
And.....All of it has limited value and your opinions will fluctuate over time.

People cheat because of Opportunity and Desire. We can debate ad nauseum over where the opportunity and desire are rooted in.

Therapy has value, although it's more limited than most imagine. It can be helpful if it's permanent. Once it stops, things revert back.

The fact is....most cheaters that WANT to stay married will do whats necessary. Over time, they will return to the mean (like most things in life), and with that......cheating.

goingtobeok good to hear you are on the road to recovery. You standing up to your WS should be an example for everyone - the "fog" I really think is the AP blowing up your WS and your WS having all these stupid resentment things that they now feel as if they have control over you so now they will say stupid stuff to you cause they feel like you are weighed down and have no place to go or call their bullcrap cause they have this other option over here.

My WS when she was starting her affair would say things like

Gmarie12 brings up a very interesting point - if you can't open up to your WS/CS because you think they will use that to keep in their pocket to then use againist you or use it at some point to go off into crazytown - then you as a person do not feel safe - if you do not feel safe and do not feel like you can open up - that too would open you up to being valnerable to an affair.

onyx
Guess I can blow your statistics out of the water. My H is the cheater and we have two sons, no daughters. So they will have to watch what MOM does to know how to behave respectfully. Although they are both adults now and were 16 and 20 at the time of his A.
We never did split up and H was the one who told my about his A. But he did so because he was going to leave me, but never did leave the house. I went through all of the emotions that most BS go through. I held on as tight as I could in the beginning because of shock and fear. I went through my period of anger. Not sure I'm finished with that one yet! And I'm trying to get through acceptence, it has been two and a half years since Dday and I still struggle.

Blind....I hope you are wrong about once a cheater always a cheater. If I thought that was true, I would quit this R right now!!
I think thats what you meant, right?