SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’d really appreciate perspective from people who’ve lived through long-term infidelity on either side.

I’m approaching 12 months since D-Day. My husband had a long, sustained pattern of serial cheating—mostly transactional arrangements through a sugar-dating site.

The first 5 months since dday were chaotic: trickle truths, shame collapses, defensiveness, and fractured understanding of the harm. Things shifted around July 2025 when I found the Minwalla program. It finally gave structure to what I’d lived through—gaslighting, emotional neglect, villainization, and integrity abuse. It also confronted him with the full reality in a way nothing else had.

Since then, he has been doing the work:
• completed all 3 Minwalla programs
• weekly CSAT therapy
• joined a men’s support group
• documented his behaviors and their impact
• no rationalizations left
• listens to my pain without withdrawing

But there are also meaningful gaps that keep me unsure:
• His attunement is inconsistent—some days present, some days frozen.
• He operates from fear: fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of failing.
• Because of this fear, he can be passive or what sometimes feels like lack of warmth so sometimes I feel warmth, sometimes I sense fear
• Emotional expression is limited—even when effort is sincere.
• Some changes only began after I found the right programs and pushed for structure.

My deeper struggle:
He was the person I trusted most, and he chose this path repeatedly for years—including during some of the hardest periods of my life. As the betrayal escalated, so did the detachment and meanness. now, part of me wonders if I can ever see him as more than those behaviors.

I also feel torn:
One part of me sees effort and wants to believe change is possible.
The other part keeps saying, "I know what he’s capable of and it’s terrifying"

I want to make decisions with clarity, not out of fear or hope alone.

For those who’ve been here:

• If you were a serial cheater who truly changed, what flipped the switch?
• Betrayed spouses who stayed — did attunement ever become consistent? Did you reach a point where you could see them beyond their worst behaviors?
• Betrayed spouses who left — what helped you realize it was time?
• How did you weigh genuine effort against a long history of betrayal and neglect?

I’m making decisions for myself and my kids, and I want to hear honest experiences—from either direction.

Thanks in advance

I’m sorry you have been impacted by betrayal and affairs etc. I am hoping my story can help you in some small way.

My H had 2 affairs. First was a 4 year EA that I now believe may have been more than an EA. 15 years later he had a typical midlife crisis affair and he was kicking me to the curb for the much younger her woman. For six months all I heard (during the 2nd affair) was how he didn’t want to be married, how rotten I was (never heard this before) etc.

By the end of the six months I knew I had to D him. I had no other choice. That was my plan. But somehow in 30 days he managed to turn it around and we have happily reconciled. It’s been 13 years since his affair and we are lucky to have remained together.

That’s my back story. Reconciliation was very difficult the first 3 years as I had doubts. Couldn’t trust it. Kept waiting for the other shoe to drop or him to give up. Here’s what I learned:

1. I had to heal myself. The cheating spouse/partner can only do so much - the rest was on me.

2. I financially protected myself. Demanded a post nup that split certain assets up ensured I wasn’t going to left fighting for $.

3. I developed my own life apart from him. My own social circle (women) that we do things together. I started my own business. It’s been rather successful so it keeps me busy.

4. I learned who I am. I had no intention of R as I was done with him & marriage. I fought against myself the first year to R as I really intended to D. But I decided that no matter what came my way, I was ready for it. So I stopped being afraid and started being brave.

5. I learned to put myself first. Not him or kids or marriage. But myself.

6. I stopped caring so much about other people’s opinions.

7. I learned how to stand my ground and stop being a doormat. I stopped giving in when I didn’t want to. I no longer caved or gave in to his manipulation when he wanted his own way.

8. I learned how to win disagreements w/out yelling or having a big fight. I remain calm. I don’t allow my emotions to get the better of me (mostly). I learned how to shut down a conversation going nowhere by ending the interaction - leave the room, say nothing etc.

9. I learned to rely on my smarts and instincts. I learned how to rely on myself and face a crisis and make smart decisions.

10. Counseling saved my sanity during his last affair and helped me to consider Reconciliation.

I hope this helps you. Only YOU can decide if R is for you. And it’s perfectly okay to try R but decide a year or two from now the marriage no longer works and you have to end it. Reconciliation is not a lifetime commitment. It’s a commitment to try and restore the trust and love and respect you once had. It will never be the same but it should bring you happiness.

Only you know if you can R. For some people cheating is a dealbreaker. Period. No sense in wasting time if that is you.

Also there are some good books. How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair by Linda MacDonald is an excellent read. Your H may want to read it.

There are forums here for groups like serial cheaters and sex addicts etc that might be good fits for you as well.

There is also a Healing Library here that can help you with links to articles etc.

Neva,

As a betrayed husband, I am reluctant to answer your question, as I believe that how and why men and women cheat, and how men and women respond to being cheated on, can be very different.

So my answer may not be helpful, or perhaps, even harmful.

But maybe not, so here goes.

Sometime after my cheating wive’s long-term affair with a co-worker came to light, I told her that as far as I was concerned, she had left me for another man, and never returned. She continued to live with me because she was stuck with me.

I was right.

It has never gotten better.

BUT, but, but:

Many therapists, experts say that when wives cheat, they have left the relationship, left the marriage, and they don’t come back.

Certainly my experience.

But those same experts say it can be different for cheating husbands, that, often, cheating husbands remain very much in love with their wives and have no desire to leave the marriage.

So, do you believe your husband loves you? Do you love him? If so, and there are children, give reconciliation a chance. Don’t expect quick results. It may take years for you to feel safe. Many will say that serial cheaters are the hardest to cure.

If the love is gone, harder call. I’m a proponent of staying together for the kids, if you can be friends. And arranged marriages often work; people can learn to love.

Best wishes.

My husband and I have been married 50 years now.

He has had seven affairs. One of them was an EA without any physical contact (long distance) for three years. The rest were all PAs. One lasted about four months, the others were 1-2 night stands.

They occurred in 1976, 1977, 1978, 2005, 2010, and 2020-2023.

I discovered the last affair, the EA, in June 2023. He lied and trickle truthed for a year. He could not find it within himself to admit how he had been feeling towards her, his plans to meet for sex, and the things he told her about me - despite my having all the emails and texts and cards and letters…

He also continued to lie about past affairs. I had thought he had three. Boy was I wrong.

The truth came out about a year after DDay 2023. So in June 2024, I was walking out the door, and he decided he had to confess it all or the marriage was over. He came clean.

But that wasn’t enough, because he still resisted change, open conversations, and just being damn honest about his thoughts and emotions. In May of 2025, I left for a 3 week trip and told him I would not return if he didn’t take major action on changing this stonewalling behavior. I just couldn’t do it anymore.

He realized what was on the line. And finally understood that I needed the unvarnished truth, I needed conversations, I needed to understand what happened in his head and heart. He went to counseling, worked hard, invited me to his counselor sessions, and we finally got on the same track.

Since then, he has made a lot of changes. He now initiates conversations about things he has seen or read. He openly answers questions. He fills in details. He talks about his shame and guilt, the complexities of his thought processes, and his own lack of courage in addressing this.

He has his moments of retreat. I think that’s normal, because nobody wants to spend all their time examining why they did something this terrible. There has to be room to regroup and rebuild themselves, as well as the relationship, without the specter of their "bad self" hovering all the time.

The back and forth emotions for the betrayed spouse is very normal. I think it is also normal for waywards. The thing is that they go back and forth for different reasons. For the betrayed, things that vary moment to moment can be our trust level, sense of security, sense of self-worth, belief that the spouse loves us, understanding the why, fears and doubts about sincerity in recovery, etc. For waywards, it can be doubts they will ever be forgiven, shame levels, fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, sense of having to over perform, fear of looking at oneself deeply and finding out why you did this, fear of anyone else knowing the true details of your shameful behavior, etc.

On the up side, both feel good when things seem like there’s a light in there somewhere. They both swing up when something good happens, when they see or feel hope, when that moment breaks through where somehow for a moment the affair isn’t the main focus.

And it’s normal to have all of those feelings. You can’t stay in one feeling all the time.

Ki have learned that over time, the swings are fewer. There are longer times between the waves of doubt and fear, and those are filled with rebuilding the basic connection that was tattered after DDay.

Neva,

As a betrayed husband, I am reluctant to answer your question, as I believe that how and why men and women cheat, and how men and women respond to being cheated on, can be very different.

So my answer may not be helpful, or perhaps, even harmful.

But maybe not, so here goes.

Sometime after my cheating wive’s long-term affair with a co-worker came to light, I told her that as far as I was concerned, she had left me for another man, and never returned. She continued to live with me because she was stuck with me.

I was right.

It has never gotten better.

BUT, but, but:

Many therapists, experts say that when wives cheat, they have left the relationship, left the marriage, and they don’t come back.

Certainly my experience.

But those same experts say it can be different for cheating husbands, that, often, cheating husbands remain very much in love with their wives and have no desire to leave the marriage.

.

First of all I feel your pain and understand why, is a tragic realization and it is soul crushing.

It’s not the rule, we have many examples here of cheating women who reformed because they still loved their husbands and other examples of cheating men who are emotionally involved with their affair partners, so they don’t love their wives anymore.

However it is common that men can easily have physical affairs with zero emotional attachment (the high is there but is about the affair not the OP) so they may still love their wives (and do this shit to them in happy cognitive dissonance!).
It’s common for cheating women to get emotionally involved with the OP when they cheat, so they fall in love, effectively replacing their BP with the OP.

Not all the time, but those are the pattern.

Of all women I know who cheated (my wife included) that was the case, they replaced their partner with the other person .
Of all the men I know of who cheated, that was also the case, they "loved" their partner but couldn’t resist ruining the relationship by just sleeping with random girls who they didn’t care for at all.

In this forum I have met exceptions to that rule, so it’s still possible a woman can betray and still love and a man can betray and be gone for good.

That’s why the emotional affairs are harder to R, the wayward might get off it and regret, but only if and when they realize that the OP they feel in love with is trash and was always trash, exploiting their character flaws and issue.

To both you and Neva:

Yes attunement is possible, I live with the proof of that, she is in love but I don’t care about it much anymore.

From the betrayal you may develop physical disgust for your wayward partner, that was my case. You can repress it clinging to the love you had for them before the betrayal, but it will eat you.

When I accepted that since that day she became the other man’s girl and that’s forever I felt healed, peace.

She wants back, she thought she was back, she never truly was, because my body registered her betrayal as "you are no longer my woman."

So love is that here, I like her, I can accept her love and desire but I am detached, I don’t know if is possible for me to ever see her again as the person I loved. Maybe if she truly transforms into a completely different person, but it happened she was claimed and she claimed the other man, the body doesn’t forget easily.

Others did it, they R and fell in love again with their WS.
Maybe it will be your case, maybe it’s like mine. You can still nurture some love for them, you should never lie yourself if it’s true love or just "kind of like you but you are A partner now, not MY Life Partner anymore)

That’s important for healing, once you heal you will feel the answer, then a true R can happen like others here, or a fake-half assed R like me and my wife had (she is all in, I am emotionally gone).

Read heal and listen to your heart. Isn’t a easy thing but honestly from him and you is what will answer in the end

Recovery from being betrayed is a marathon, not a sprint. Your WS needs to change behavior, and a year is simply not enough time for the new behaviors to reliably take hold.

Also, you need to recover, and a year is rarely enough time for that. Think 2-5 years for recovery.

Reconciliation in much more complex than recovery - it's really two processes, not one. For R to succeed, you have to heal you, your WS has to heal themself, and you have to build a new M. The SI rule of thumb is 2-5 years. I declared victory at 3.5-4 years, but my W was still working on herself long after 5 years passed.

Watch your H's behavior. If you see continuous improvement, you and he have a good chance to R - if he adopts new behavior fast enough for you.

Unfortunately, you have to choose how much time and energy you'll give to the R effort. There are no reliable rules, except: you control your choices. Lots of people say, 'You'll know when you know,' so have some faith in yourself.

A lot of us who think R has been achieved know we can be betrayed again. We accept that because we know we can count on ourselves to heal if we have to deal with it again.

Part of me that believes the level of harm should have made the decision clear.

And yet… I’m still here.

Not because I think what he did is forgivable or small — it isn’t. Not because I trust him — I don’t.
And not because I’m afraid of leaving — I know I can leave if I need to.

But I’m struggling with the emotional reality that:
• the betrayal is catastrophic
• and still, leaving feels incredibly hard
• while staying also feels almost impossible
• and I don’t know what "the best outcome" even looks like anymore

We’ve been together 22 years, married 19. I care deeply about my family, And the idea of losing all of that — of watching 22 years shatter — brings a different kind of grief. It feels like having a bone stuck in my throat: if I swallow it, it slits; if I spit it out, it slits. There is no painless option.

This is the space I’m in. Ambivalence, grief, love for my kids, and the weight of two decades of life colliding with the reality of a catastrophic betrayal.

Does healing mean this weight gets lighter? How does one heal and what does it feel like?

Does healing mean this weight gets lighter? How does one heal and what does it feel like?

Whether you stay together or Divorce - you need to heal from this trauma, betrayal etc.

The cheater can only do so much to help the betrayed heal and the rest is on you. Whether you seek professional help or join a support group or watch podcasts or read books, posts etc. you owe it to yourself to heal. To get to a better place and restore joy to your life.

I can tell you that I healed slowly the first 3 years but did much better in year 3 when I made some changes in my life. I started putting myself first.

I financially protected myself which was a huge part of my healing.

I had to tell myself every day to not live in the past. That my H was not the lying cheating jerk he was as there was no evidence of any cheating after dday2.

I was no longer a doormat. I stood up for myself. I didn’t compromise unless I wanted to - and not to keep the peace like I had in the past.

I demanded a post nup to even consider R, which my H willingly signed.

With professional counseling I became happier and more confident in my ability to make good decisions. Living my best life lol.

While I planned to D, I never looked at it as throwing away Xx number of years. I think that is a terrible way to look at things—because of a time investment.

IMO the ONLY reason to stay is if you will be happy. I understand that sometimes there are financial implications that force people to stay together (even if they don’t want to) but i hope that is a temporary situation.

If it’s permanent then you need to find happiness in some way — even if you need to emotionally detach.

Neva,

The best possible outcome is that your idiot husband has learned his lesson, figured out what he really wants in life (you), and becomes a safe and loving partner.

That hasn’t happened, fully, yet, but your initial post lists a lot of hopeful progress, I think.

You need to give this more time. One year is not nearly enough, and it hasn’t even been one year since he has done some of the work.

And if he ends up choosing you after his sugar babes experiences, well, that will feel good, no?

Best wishes.

Neva, I find that I get very reflective as I approach the "antiversary" of DDay1 each year. It's a time to look back and take stock of what's happened, and look forward at where I'm headed.

For me, I felt much the same as you for the first year. Survived 4 ddays (he had a 3year LTA, and a 4 month EA), and still I hoped that he would change for the better, become a safer partner, and prioritize me and the marriage. We'd been married for 25 years, together 29 at dday. We had a child, a beautiful house, lots of friends, financial security - a really good life by most standards.

In year 2, I started to see that real change wasn't happening, not to the level that I needed it. You said "But there are also meaningful gaps that keep me unsure" of his behavior - exactly this. Every bullet point in your list is how mine was, too. I decided to try and stay until our daughter was older and be pragmatic. That worked until it didn't (mostly because he wanted to feel more love and passion than I was willing/able to give). At the end of year 2, I had an opportunity to try separation, and I took it, and 6 months later, I decided to divorce.

Your deeper struggle to get past his actions, your feeling torn about wanting to believe in change - I can relate!! It's not an easy journey, whatever path you take. Minwalla's paper was eye opening for me, and highlighted why *I* might never get over his past actions, no matter how perfect he was (and he was far from perfect; see bullet points in your list above). After a few months of being sad about the divorce, my stbx started to show his true colors, and his actions keep proving to me that I made the right decision by leaving him.

It's okay for you to live in limbo for a while. It's okay to take years to make up your mind. It's okay to take years to heal and repair the marriage. It's also okay to decide that you want to divorce tomorrow. It shows good character that you're thinking hard about your journey and your options. Reconciliation is never truly "done", only divorce has finality, and you can always change your mind about staying/leaving the marriage.

[This message edited by NoThanksForTheMemories at 6:10 PM, Tuesday, January 27th]

Formerpeopleperson

"And if he ends up choosing you after his sugar babes experiences, well, that will feel good, no?"

What an incredibly demeaning thing to say!

Let’s be clear:

My husband isn’t the prize here.

If he’s lucky — truly lucky — and if he does years of deep repair and moral reconstruction, maybe he’ll be in a position where I can even consider choosing him again.

The bar isn’t whether he picks me.

The bar is whether he becomes someone worth picking.

[This message edited by Neva9643 at 12:37 AM, Wednesday, January 28th]

Demeaning?

Gosh, didn’t mean it to be.

I sure wish my WW had picked me.

Best wishes.

Formerpeopleperson, I have to agree with Neva that being chosen by a WS isn't something most of us would aspire to. We might want the WS to R with us, but ultimately the BS needs to reclaim their agency in a situation where the WS had all the power. Otherwise, the BS ends up doing the pick-me dance, and that usually doesn't end well.

NoThanks,

"Why did my WS pick that AP instead of me?" Is a common question on this site.

But, who knows, maybe it’s a male/female thing, or maybe it’s just me.

I certainly did the pick-me dance before we got married. I wonder if husbands should ever quit "hunting" their wives. I think my wife liked being hunted, and getting married didn’t turn that switch off. But I had quit hunting her and AP came along, fiercely hunting.

So I returned to hunting her; too little, too late.

And I wonder if the reason the pick-me dance post-infidelity is frowned on is because it’s always too little, too late.

But maybe the only thing better than the pick-me dance working, would be getting picked without having to do the dance.

It is a male female dynamic.

If you play the pick me games a woman who has just found a partner, even if she betrayed you (or this could play even more in many cases) is unlikely to get any attraction back.

Ever noticed why the girls you never looked twice in the past are the one most likely to have a crush on you, while the one you die for did not give you the time or the day?

Exactly.

Wayward partners seem to have a similar attitude regardless of gender. (Shame may play a role) you have similar behaviors in small everyday things, it’s a human trait, just in romance you are chasing so it looks more evident to you

"Why did my WS pick that AP instead of me?" Is a common question on this site.
But, who knows, maybe it’s a male/female thing, or maybe it’s just me.

And the usual answer is, 'YOU, not your WS, are the prize.'

Have you taken that message in? Really, they ALWAYS affair down, and you'd be R'ing down if you R'ed.

YOU are the prize.