SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Found out that my fiancée/partner of 5+ years had an emotional affair with a married man from a phone game she was playing for about a month. I told his wife. They’re divorcing. My fiancée ended it with him. I did the usual: if I am going to stay, I need full transparency, access, therapy, etc. Every 3-5 days, she says she can’t do it anymore and ends things only to come back and say she wants to try again. Same thing happened today but it doesn’t seem like she is coming back around this time. Remorse was never strong but it seems like she just switched it off today. I’m worried for the kids. I don’t want them to grow up with two homes and I think we could be really strong if she gets IC and we do couples therapy. I’m just… lost. I’ve put up with a lot over the past few years…and now this. If it weren’t for the kids, I would have left a long time ago. What do I do?

Kids are resilient. There are so many stories here from people who lived in households where the parents stayed together for the kids. The "kids" often wished they would have Divorced. It was not fun growing up in that environment.

You "believe" with therapy and work you can survive this. But the cheater is not doing the work. They are bailing again and again. Do you think that will change with therapy? I’m not saying it can’t change but I’m asking if you think the Cheater will commit to making changes and attending therapy?

Lastly your last line "left a long time ago" indicates that you are unhappy and dissatisfied with the relationship. Here’s my suggestion on what to do.

You see an attorney. You get a custody agreement hammered out between you & cheater along with visitation/custody/child support.

You don’t want to spend time and effort on someone who is not interested in addressing the issues to make things better. It is hard to get your head and heart to align. We all get that. We’ve all been there at times too.

But it is better to rip the bandaid off now and re/establish yourself than look back 10 years from now with regret. And it seems as though you already have regrets about your relationship.

I hope this helps you.

Sorry you found your self in this.

You are not alone though and besides the good company here you’ll find out help to navigate the storm. It’s a literal shitstorm, but that’s apparently what is appealing for cheaters, our partners.

Guess this means at least flies won’t have to feel alone either. Not sure about they would call it good company in their case though.

Jokes aside, the other betrayed woman divorcing the little shit made the best call for her life, serenity and healing. There’s no better option than erasing a cheater from your life and memories, when it is down solely about your personal healing and future happiness in life.

This doesn’t mean that the decision to stay preclude you from healing and happiness, but you must be conscious it is a much harder choice and you will be always fighting an uphill battle. It will never be flowing again naturally, the hill might become less steep someday if you both do the work and heal, but it will be constant work. You will never be able to fully rest, the day you stop putting effort in maintaining a reconciliation is the day you risk slipping back in the fetid swamp your partner loved so much, that they chose to sacrifice everything you had to roll into it.

So happiness and reconciliation can be achieved. If you both are ready to spit blood for it.

In your case it looks like you are struggling uphill and spitting blood while she is a dead weight if not even pushing in the opposite direction, downhill through the swamp.

Or she is intermittent, one day up the next rolling down.

You can obviously see this.

What she wants doesn’t matter, sadly even your kids don’t matter here as much as what you want. Kids are absolutely worth fighting over and even sacrificing yourself for (as you probably were ready to do for your woman before she fucked a rat) .

But if you die on that hill you won’t save them, their mother will drag them down her sweet swamp and you won’t have the strength to prevent it.

She is the only one who can help herself by healing and becoming a new person who is ready to battle uphill. But she is the only one who can save herself, you can’t help her. Best you can do is cheer her progress if there’s any. But healing is a choice. As infidelity was a choice. You can’t choose for her as you had no choice when she betrayed you.

You need to accept it. You can’t love her enough to replace the love she does not have for herself.

Choice and this is her call only.

No matter what she chooses for the rest of her life she will have to battle uphill. That’s the price of a cheater. You can’t escape yourself, she can’t leave.

But you can. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life struggling uphill, that’s your fate only if you stay with her. You can choose to leave on the plains and nourish new lands, make them bloom, forget the lies and abuse of betrayal mountain forever. Abandon your wife to the destiny she chose for herself.

Kids are collateral damage for her choice like all people who were harmed by her, like you. Unfortunately they will have to spend sometime if their life on betrayal mountain, since their mother made the decision for everyone else, you all will suffer the fallout.

But hey, they can still visit you in the plains right? They can see you flourish again, they can see there is a life that doesn’t have to smell of shit and piss like betrayal mountain and the swamp at his core, a life that celebrates the simple honest things that make humanity and life worth living and can be had.

Some day they can choose to leave for the plains too. Only your wife is destined to spend her life on betrayal mountain, she is the only one who can’t leave herself. Best she can do is working to make it a bit better, but you will always get a whiff of the piss pond when the wind picks it up.

You all can visit her sometime and just remind yourself how good is that you don’t have decided to live there.

Basically the betrayed woman picked option two. You picked option one and there nothing to shame about that decision.

It’s bravery, is admirable. Because you don’t have to live in the sewage she created.

I say go for it if you love if you feel no matter the smell there’s still something worthy to fight for the rest of your life in there.

With you both healed she may raise higher than alone, never the plains but maybe a light steep plateau.

It can be worthy and for sure you’ll build up a lot of muscles so you’ll be stronger enough to spend your life there, if you never stop fighting and working. Might be a different kind of happiness but it still is happiness.

However if it’s not changing the way you feel, that you would leave her if it were not for the kids, you are not just climbing betrayal mountain for life until you fall, you are going to feel like you are climbing her affair partner’s cock.

And while she might like that you and your kids sure are better off without her.

If she is not ready to crawl over broken glass and to bleed like she made you bleed to find her redemption, nothing in the world will make it worth.

I hope you understand the metaphor and that you can make her understand it too.

If you are not both beyond committed you will make no progress, just doom yourself and your kids to drawn in the pisspond of the swamp of her infidelity.

She chose it, she made it. What will you both choose for you now? And for your kids , until they can choose for themselves.

Good luck

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 9:52 AM, Monday, June 15th]

First off, good for you for telling the other spouse. Secondly, reconciliation just is not possible without 100% commitment from the WS and it sounds like she is not. No one wants to be in a relationship where they wake up wondering is today the day he / she leaves again.

Regarding her leaving, this could work in your favor with custody. I second the idea of talking with an attorney and I would push for primary custody claiming she has abandoned the family multiple times. If you are awarded primary custody you can avoid child support. You might even get child support from her

I think 99% of us just wanted our relationships to go back to the way we remember them the day before D-Day but it's just not possible

You have found a great place for support and advice

I'm one of those who felt a sense of relief when my parents divorced when I was 12 and my sister was 11. If it's a contentious relationship I think splitting up is better than trying to stay together. Your wife sounds like she's not in this at all. This playing games and changing her mind every few days sounds exhausting and unstable.

I'll tell you what got my wife off the fence was me taking steps toward divorce. She wasn't too great to live with when she held all the power and I was doing the pick me dance. I reached a breaking point about a month after d day and started calling divorce lawyers right in front of her. That sure changed things. It sucked, but at the same time I felt a great sense of relief just having made a decision to get out of infidelity. I was resigned to divorce and I meant it. It turns out my wife wasn't and she's been a model for reconciliation ever since, and that was a little over a year ago.

I don't know what your wife may or may not do if you follow a similar tack, but for me I decided that divorce was a better option than living with insecurity, secrets, and sharing my wife with someone else. IOW, there are worse things than divorce.

I don’t want them to grow up with two homes and I think we could be really strong if she gets IC and we do couples therapy.

You assume that IC will somehow make your WSo choose R. It actually might solidify her intention to split. The statement may - and I mean 'may'; I don't know what you actually mean - be an indication that you try to control things that you can't control. If so, my reco is to change.

Your WSo cheated because of her own issues. That doesn't mean that the BS can move along without changing. Every BS has to change themself in order to heal, if only to look at themself as clearly as possible and remake any decision that they decide needs to be remade. It's not a matter of changing to somehow bring the WS back. Rather, it's a matter of becoming as authentic as possible. Without authenticity, even a BS sets themself up for failure.

Yes. I know I'm begging the question, 'What if the authentic BS is a POS?' To that, I'll just say answering that question would take longer to discuss than I have.

As for my advice about what to do, my son split from his W about 8 years ago. It knocked our GS for a loop, but he's now a pretty cool 16 year old. My observation is that the sooner the kids have to deal with the problem, the sooner they'll heal, if at least one parent is emotionally healthy.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:23 PM, Monday, June 15th]