It is not the same for all cheaters across the board. Some admit their guilt once caught; some even admit cheating before the BS even suspects anything, and some change their stories as evidence unfolds as you described.

When reading your post, I could not help but think of documentaries I have seen about crimes when the accused first denies everything, then when presented with evidence, changes their story, often more than once.

The real issue seems to be whether your CS wants to preserve your marriage. He is certainly behaving in a manner that is causing even more destruction. Do you think he realizes that?

To heal the marriage, and to help you get past the betrayal, your H needs to first cut off ALL contact with the AP, then be TOTALLY transparent with you, answer any and all questions, and talk with you about it with you as much as you need to. There can be no time limit on this, no matter how painful it is for him. You need to demand this of him, or there is a great chance that your marriage will fail, because you will go through life with a huge unresolved trust issue plaguing your marriage. Your H created the mess; he needs to realize that he is responsible in large for cleaning it up--IF that is what he wants. He needs to WANT to help you heal. I found that in my case, talking and understanding the reasons, though invalid, did help me heal. That, for me is what it took, and it did take a while--we even talk briefly (though not as emotionally) about the A now and then to this day and it has been 8 months ago when the affair ended. All the talking we did also helped us to see areas in our relationship where we could improve, and we have grown closer than ever before.

I wish you much luck--hopefully your H will be able to realize how much extra destruction he is causing now in addition to the pain of the betrayal, and you two can get on the path to healing.

I agree with and echo Sarah2220.

It isn't uncommon for cheaters to say "You won't move on if you keep bringing this up." But that's just their way of avoiding responsibility. He can't just sweep your questions and concerns under a rug. You are entitled to ask as many questions, in as much detail as you want, for as long as you want.

I strongly recommend marriage counseling. Until your husband accepts that "Deny, deny, deny!" isn't going to cut it, your marriage will never recover.

That's the problem. It's been 6 years since the first A and it was the first of many. He always denied there was ever sex in any of them but I have such a strong feeling in my gut it was more than just flirting through messages. Especially since it's happened more than once and he always lies right off the bat when I call him out on it. After about 20 min of bickering back and forth, he finally comes clean but it's always "just flirting and having someone to listen to me." Although he goes on Craigslist and finds causal encounter girls to meet up with him in lingerie...

It's not the first affair. It's about 3 or 4 that I know of in 6 years. Who knows what else is he did that I have yet to catch him on.

He now answers questions I have and is open to talking unlike before however, he isn't coming clean about the sex and i feel it's keeping me from healing and moving forward. We have done marital and individual therapy. He stopped going to the last 3 marriage therapy sessions so now I'm doing just individual

You may have to present him with an ultimatum, or you may have to live with what he's told you. Either way, it's up to you to decide how far you want to go with this.

In my situation, I had to find the evidence and present it to him, because I knew he'd lie about it, just as he'd done all along. For me, in order to start my healing process, I needed to know everything, and I'm sure there still are bits and pieces outstanding, but once I broke his lies, he realized that I was not going to settle for anything but the truth, and that if he lied further, there wouldn't be a future with me in it. Your gut instincts are probably true, if he had the opportunity to cheat, he probably did. If he's on craigslist, that's enough for me to know it wasn't just flirting.

I wish you well.

Personally, I would find it mentally exhausting to "find the evidence and present it" to my spouse - as betrayedintoronto suggests. There is plausible deniability, and then there is outright lying to avoid responsibility.

Still, I agree that you must decide for yourself what you can live with. If you think he is lying, then he is almost certainly lying.

Common strategies used to hide details of an affair:

1. Gas lighting. Term comes from its use in an old movie, but essentially means no matter what evidence you may have that he cheated, deny and explain away. "Oh, those panties in the car trunk? Company party gag gift I ended up with and didn't know what to do with them."

2. Don't want to talk about it. Naturally they don't want to answer hard questions or end up contradicting themselves or accidetally revealing more info than they have to. So the less it is discussed, the easier it is to hide details.

3. Why can't you get over it? Or "Will you ever forgive me? Usually said in conjunction about how it is messing up your chance to rebuild to "hash through this all again." The attempt is to guilt you into not talking about it anymore, for the reason in #2 and to shift the blame for why it isn't going good onto you.

4. I don't remember. A safe answer to avoid giving more details. You can't argue with an inability to remember. However, if you ask, "How many women did you have sex with?" and he says, "I don't remember," that is bad news. Cause there were so many of them he can't remember them all.

5. Blameshifting. In itself not an avoidance of what happened, but can be used as a diversion when you want to talk about it, like: "How long did you two meet?" "It would have been zero if you hadn't treated me like you didn't want me."

I really had a hard time with "living with what he has told me" so for the past 4 months I have dug and dug and dug... Finally we are reading together and actually looking forward to MC. He did everything... And now admits to everything.. He really wants to rebuild, although I am not sure it will last... We are going to try (there will be no next time) I am too old to go through this s$$t again.. I will be on the divorce support group lol

I can tell you this much. It has been 5 YEARS since D-day for me. We talked and talked about the affair and he responded like a robot, repeating the same lies over and over. I kept on asking in different ways, but he just kept on repeating the same story, like he has trained himself to do, as to not slide off the path of lies. So he admitted everything with lies. We have been "rebuilding" upon lies that were told to me for two years. Our relationship got better obviously because I had gotten to the point of "absolution" based on lies.. However when God controls your life, he doesn't allow shit like that to happen, so our marriage was good for a short while but while living lies, you can't change your behaviour, so our marriage was fast on a decline and me getting prepared for a divorce. That is when God pointed out to him, to reveal a lie to me (a BIG ONE). After that he had no other choice basically to go back and tell the whole truth, because that ONE lie, sent me faster on the way to divorce court, because it was big enough that the other lies he told then stood out like a sore thumb. So now I am back at D-day, having to rehash the whole affair from day one, all the way to the end with the full truth this time. This has now set us back another two years. On top of the 5 years I wasted investing in him and his lies, that is 7 years stolen from MY life. When the truth came out, It looked like healing was happening, but the end of the story, is just this PUFF of air. Here I am, back in ashes with him, but healing on my own, so wherever we end up, I know I will be OK, with or without him. I am healing and I am not going to let anything prevent me from healing. Not him, not his behaviour... nothing. I can't see the future, but I am tired of him stealing my life away from me, so at this point, he needs to get on the bandwagon, because I am moving forward, whether he joins me or not.

I am 44 years right now. 44-5=39. I could have gotten myself out of this shit when I was 39 years old and by now had a WHOLE NEW life. 5 years would have given me plenty of time to heal and start over. 39 that is a good age to restart. Every year I waste in this marriage I just get older and miss more and more opportunities to restart. The older you get, the harder it gets to start over. I can't believe after doing the math that I WASTED 5 years of my life investing in him and his lies. So this is certainly either the LAST chapter or the FIRST chapter of my new life. I am moving on. I can't make decisions for him, but ultimately HIS decision will depict whether he is in my future or not, not mine. If I leave it will be because he didn't change, if I stay it will mean he did. His decision is not affecting my moving forward, merely if he is coming along with me or not.

All five of Cole's points are, of course, correct, but #4 is the one that drives me absolutely bonkers. Even at its very best, "I don't remember" is just another way of saying "That isn't important to me."

@musclegirl: I can truly understand your resentment and anger. The feeling of investing SO MUCH time and energy, hopes, goals, and dreams in somebody else... And then to see it all go up in smoke. It was absolutely heartbreaking for me. But, to borrow a term from the game of poker, you are "pot committed." You have put so many chips into the pot that you can't bear to just fold your cards. But in relationships, as in poker, even when you have invested a lot, if you genuinely find the odds are against you the correct play is to fold your cards. Don't throw good money after bad.