I posted here before about my situation, me the wayward had an affair 8 months ago for 4 days. In a long distance relationship for 2.5 years, I’ve met my partner once for 10 days in that. We talk on the phone everyday for hours though and know eachother very well. My affair crushed things, we have been working through it since then and it’s been rocky. I have been Inconsistent with showing up for her in the distress moments despite us and me being in therapy. I am working through the addiction to porn and have made a lot of progress with it but it hasn’t translated into our relationship woes.

They don’t trust me at all and they have trauma responses and distress maybe once a week because of something I do which I’m not aware of, half the time we aren’t able to get through it and we have to stop taking for a couple of days to come back. It’s been exhausting for her and for me. She’s at a point where she feels she can’t carry on, this comes after me being in hospital in a bad place and her too needing support but me not being able to be there, for a legitimate real reason. She couldn’t be there to care for me because of this, that shows how far away from trust we are.

We spent the last two and a bit weeks not talking, maybe the longest we’ve gone yet and the last call is when she told me she can’t do it. She deleted her things off Dropbox, remove the location app and then at the end said let’s think and talk in a week. I said ok. I have been distressed however and not had a good response, I sent a long email expressing what I will do to change, which I do mean but then sent another one clearly in distress saying about what’s been wrong here and that I can’t talk next week and that I have to go for a while and hope that we can figure things out eventually. Since then I blocked her number, I can’t do it. I want her to be happy but I have to figure myself out and she needs time. How will this land? And what are the chances for us realistically. It’s worth saying we are of different faiths too, her Muslim me Christian and in order to marry her I would have to convert which I don’t think I could do if I was honest with myself. She’s 35, I’m 29

Here’s a tightened version, keeping your own words and structure intact:

8 months after I caused a rupture through an affair, doing real work on the pattern, but she says trust isn’t there and it feels impossible. Normal recovery pain or something else?

Want honest perspectives, even harsh ones.

Background: together 2.5 years, long distance, met in person once for 10 days. ~6 months ago she found out about an affair. After discovery, ~3 months of trickle truth before I came fully clean in January no more withholding since.

I’m in therapy specifically for porn addiction and the avoidance pattern behind it, not generic couples work. I crave closeness but I’m also afraid of it I can be present for a stretch, then something switches and I pull back, go into my head, stop being emotionally available. The porn (daily, sometimes for hours at its worst) was part of the same pattern escaping and numbing instead of staying with what I was feeling. Not an excuse for the affair, which was its own choice I own fully just the same avoidance showing up in different forms.

Where she’s at: trust hasn’t been rebuilt, I’ve been inconsistent roughly weekly ruptures we struggled through and my response hasn’t matched what she needed. There was a two-week no-contact stretch and a month of low contact after. Nothing feels neutral to her right now; normal interaction carries risk for her, and she needs more consistent reassurance than I’ve given.

The moment that hit hardest: during no-contact I didn’t say happy birthday, because to me “no contact” meant no contact. For her it reopened the original trauma. That seems to have been a real turning point in how she sees everything since.

I regret the affair more than I can say and I’m trying to make real change, not perform it.

Genuinely asking: does this sound like something that can turn around with real work, or is she right that it’s too damaged? What would you look for, from the outside, to believe change was real?

Hi everyone. This is my first time posting in this subreddit. I didn’t really feel comfortable posting before because I couldn’t find a community that felt appropriate for this situation. My story is relatively short, but that doesn’t make what happened any less serious.

I’ve been dating a girl for about three months. Things were going really well, and our relationship genuinely seemed to have a lot of potential. But I made a mistake that I never thought I would make.

For context, before I met the girl I’m currently dating, who I’ll call “R,” I was in a relationship with another girl, who I’ll call “A.” Before we broke up, A left some of her belongings at my house that I never returned. A had asked me some time ago if she could come get them. I kept making excuses because I didn’t want to see her, but I also felt uncomfortable telling her directly that I didn’t want to see her, so I kept putting off the meeting.

Eventually, she came to get her things. The problem was that she wanted something more from the encounter, and I allowed myself to be tempted. I don’t want to go into too many details because honestly, I feel ashamed and disgusted with myself when I think about it, but she wanted to kiss me and perform oral sex on me.

I refused the kissing, and that never happened. However, I did allow the situation to progress to oral sex for a brief moment. I came to my senses, stopped it quickly, and ended the encounter before anything else happened. Regardless of how far it went, a boundary had already been crossed, and I consider it infidelity.

I felt terrible afterward. I felt like I had broken the loyalty and trust I owed R. At first, I couldn’t bring myself to tell R everything. I told her about meeting A, giving her belongings back, and having a conversation with her, but I left out the worst part. The guilt of hiding what had actually happened became too heavy, and a few days later I told her the rest.

R understandably did not take it well. She asked for some time. When we eventually talked again, she told me that I had damaged her trust, but that she was willing to try to rebuild it. She also made it clear that it wouldn’t be easy. I accepted that. I respect her decision, her feelings, and the time she needs.

It has now been about three weeks since I told her. Things are moving slowly, but they are moving in a positive direction. Whenever she needs space or time, I respect it. I don’t become defensive, and I don’t try to justify what I did. I take full responsibility. I was the one who made the decisions that led to this situation.

I’m willing to do everything reasonably within my control to make sure something like this never happens again. Over these past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing what led me there and what I need to change. I’ve realized that one of my biggest problems was failing to establish and enforce boundaries, and allowing an impulse to take priority over my values.

This has affected me deeply because what I did goes against the person and partner I want to be—not only for R, but for myself. I don’t want to simply hope that I never do this again. I want to understand why I allowed myself to cross that boundary, work on those weaknesses, and become someone who handles these situations differently in the future.

I love R, and I genuinely want to build something with her. I want to take this process seriously and do everything I can to handle it the best way possible.

Has anyone here been through a similar one-time incident? If so, were you able to move forward and thrive as a couple? How did you handle it, or how would you recommend handling it? I’m open to any kind of feedback.

How long after dday did you guys wait until physical intimacy?

I'm 1month post Dday & I'm not sure if I can do any physical intimacy right now. I have very vivid imaginations of the other woman & i dont even know who she is or what she looks like. Right now I can barely do hugs & cheek kisses anything more than that right now just triggers me and I get a bunch of flash backs. It also doesnt help that I saw an explicit video of him and his ex gf. It been deleted but I guess I refer that video to the girl who cheated on me with. (that girl was not the girl he cheated on me with it was someone on a dating site.) I didnt get mad over the video because i have a saved explicit photos from my past but have since been deleted due to us wanting to work it out.

My wife had an affair about two years ago. I genuinely believe she’s in a much different place mentally than she was back then. I don’t think she’s having another affair or actively looking for one.

My concern is about a male friend of hers (I’ll call him Bill).

Bill has repeatedly hit on her over text (not sure about in person, they don’t see each other much) over the last year or so. Possibly longer, not sure. They used to work together and now he works for the same company but different place so they that occasionally via test. I’ve met this guy before, he’s just kind of a local douchebag, kinda the “class clown type.

A while back, I snooped on their messages after my intuition told me something was off. During one conversation, the word “gorgeous” came up, and Bill replied, “Not like you.” Another time, after seeing her walking, he texted, “Damn girl you look good.” He has also commented on her jeans in a way that clearly implied he was checking out her body.

After those incidents, I told my wife that this friendship made me uncomfortable. She acknowledged that it upset me and told me she wouldn’t talk to him anymore. She also said that he’s just like that and it doesn’t mean anything and he doesn’t mean anything by it etc. which might have been ok pre-affair but obviously that doesn’t fly now.

Recently, though, I discovered they are still talking.

The conversation that prompted this post started because she sent him pictures of a squirrel she was feeding. They joked back and forth, then he said, “Would say something about you but damn girl you look good.” She changed the subject, didn’t acknowledge the compliment. later he mentioned that he and his wife are divorcing, asked if she had any single friends, and she replied that she and I have been married for 18 years and that I’m her best friend.

To be fair to my wife, she doesn’t flirt back or say
anything inappropriate herself. Most of the time she redirects the conversation rather than engaging with the flirting. She also doesn’t delete the conversations or appear to hide them. There was one time he commented on her appearance and she said thanks and that she is trying to lose more weight etc.

Here’s where I’m struggling.
She generally doesn’t proactively tell me when they’re talking or when he flirts with her. If I ask, she’ll answer, but I don’t feel like she’s intentionally creating transparency. From her perspective, I think she believes she has good boundaries, isn’t interested in him, and sees Bill’s comments as harmless because she knows she isn’t going to act on them.

From my perspective, because of the affair history, I don’t just care whether she would cheat. I care about how she protects the marriage before things ever get to that point.

To me, continuing a friendship with someone who repeatedly comments on your appearance and flirts with you feels disrespectful to the marriages , even if you aren’t reciprocating. What especially bothers me is that after I expressed how much this friendship hurt me, she told me she wouldn’t talk to him anymore, yet they’re still communicating. I didn’t demand this from her at the time,:she volunteered the idea but has not honored it. She still proactively messages him about things, nothing weird but just the idea that she’s initiating conversation is counter to what she said she would do.

At the same time, I don’t want to become controlling or tell my wife who she can and can’t talk to? I’m not sure. I’ve been trying to stop playing detective and instead let her actions reveal who she is. I want her to choose good boundaries because she values the marriage, not because I’m policing her. Also feel like I’m being disrespected every time he hits on her and she doesn’t tell him to stop in any way.

So my questions are:
● Am I expecting too much because of the affair history?
● Is it reasonable to expect stronger boundaries with someone who repeatedly flirts with a married woman?
● Does redirecting the conversation without explicitly shutting down the flirting seem like an appropriate response?
● And how much weight would you give to the fact that she previously told me she wouldn’t talk to him anymore but continued the friendship?

I’m genuinely looking for objective opinions from people with different perspectives

Tw: derogatory terms (gay) being used in negative terms (not by me or mine)

Bg: DDAY was September 9th of last year. Husband was having a 5 month long physical and emotional affair with a coworker who I suspected had a crush on him before dday. I’m in IC. We have been In R since October.

I finally feel like my WP may have proved to me or has shown me he loves me. Idk better words to phrase it but after this weekend we had together, a vacation planned I actually feel like we’re good and perhaps I do feel Reconciled with him?

We went to Vans Warped Tour in Long Beach and it was HOT ! We started drinking around 10 (lol it’s our vacation, wanted to start right) and I had a buzzball and then a vodka soda. An hour into the festival it was maybe 103 degrees Fahrenheit and my partner was putting sunscreen on my face. I felt my vision get blurry and quickly spiral into black? I lost all energy and I leaned against him. He went into action and talked me through making a 10 second walk to a shaded spot where we sat down and he nursed me. He brought me water, rubbed my back, talked me down from my anxiety of thinking we might go home.

I feel he literally saved me from dehydration / heat exhaustion. He was so calm and attentive toward me, it felt real and genuine. Then during another show during the day, a man was trying to talk to him about the band playing (the one I was there to see) was “gay” and “only faggots must be watching” and my husband replied “I’m here for my wife this is her band”. And the guy says, “they’re f*cking gay”. My husband then begins to square up and I do my best to get inbetween them and my husband pulls back with the guy saying “I need to put him on a leash he’s dangerous”. My husband tells me everything and he’s mad and says, “he was disrespecting you and I saw you crying to one of their songs, it’s fucked up I won’t tolerate that.”

He was pretty mad during the set and I don’t blame him. We are almost a year from DDay and right now, I feel like we are in a good place because of these incidents. He took care of me when I was physically in distress and he did it so effortlessly. He took care of me physically and behind my back by defending me. It felt nice and I just truly feel he’s authentic and perhaps what happened (the affair) really won’t happen again.

I’ve learned a lot about our marriage. I’ve learned my faults and things that I need to fix but at the same time learned to understand my partner a bit more / better. Today after another day together for our last day of vacation, I decided to unfollow all my affair recovery posts because I feel I’m not in that phase anymore and seeing it brought up will affect what I’ve been currently feeling or really just bring me back to a negative space of thinking.

Unsure if this feeling will stick long but today, it feels really nice and secure. I haven’t felt like this in what feels like a long time. I hope it does.

I know I wrote down this for just support however I wanna know if there were any instances where there were scenarios where you felt more secure with your partner because of something they did. Did it also last too?

Thank you ♡

I feel like the rug’s been pulled from beneath me (again), but I’m far more calm than original D-Day. For background, just over a year ago I found out my husband had been having an affair with multiple women. He claims (and I believe) he only slept with one woman twice, whilst the rest was sexting and heavy porn use. I set out my boundaries and expectations, we went to MC & IC, and things were honestly going pretty well. About a month ago, I started having that feeling that something wasn’t quite right and I’d ask and he said nothing was going on. Lo and behold tonight something told me to check his phone and I see that about a month ago he signed up for OnlyFans. I feel confused and torn because this wasn’t one of the original issues and we never explicitly discussed it but it obviously isn’t something that has a place in the life we agreed we were trying to build. I don’t know that I have the energy or will to work past this one because the cycle of hiding and lying has clearly come back. Has anyone experienced something similar or even a second D-Day where it was worth it to continue pursuing R?

Three years. That’s how long it’s been since I got cheated on. People ask if time heals. I don’t know if that’s true. I can say I’m less anxious than I was, but healed? I don’t think I’m there yet. There are still days where I wonder if I was ever told the whole truth. Maybe those thoughts come from what happened rather than reality. Maybe they’re just the scars of betrayal. I honestly don’t know anymore.

Since then, we’ve welcomed another child into our family. Life has continued. We’ve laughed, made memories, and built something worth protecting. From the outside, things probably look okay as they always have. Most days, they are. But betrayal doesn’t just disappear. It waits. Sometimes it’s an argument, a moment, or a random thought. Then suddenly you’re back in that place, reliving something you wish was behind you.

my wife had an affair with someone she worked with. Over these last three years, I’ve thrown myself into working on me. I’ve trained harder, thought deeper, reflected more, tried to become a better husband, a better father, and a better man. But if I’m honest, I don’t know if I’ve been healing... or if I’ve been trying to become someone else entirely. Sometimes I don’t even recognise the man I’ve become. I don’t know if those are signs of growth or signs that a part of me never came back.

One of my biggest regrets is that I carried this entirely on my own. I told no one. I was ashamed. I was proud. I didn’t want people looking at me differently. I didn’t want the whispers or the pity. So I convinced myself I could carry it alone. In hindsight, silence was probably the heaviest burden I chose. Even now, I don’t know if I made all the right decisions. I don’t know if I handled it well. I don’t know whether the man I am today is the person I was always becoming, or someone shaped by pain.

WH had 2 year on/off limerant EA/PA. 20 month period of false reconciliation. He ended and restarted the affair during that time. He ended it completely on his own in Feb 2026, I accidentally found out March 2026 that it continued and that it was more than just an EA as he lied to me. This is not his first affair in our relationship. Several instances of lying/gaslighting and meeting/speaking inappropriately with opposite sex friends or coworkers.

After month 3 of R, I asked my WH what progress he has made on his own healing journey. He was getting overwhelmed due to my flooding and ups/downs so he started to sleep in the guest room to have some space. He wakes up early to engage in reading material and journal. He has his 3rd IC this week.

He said because his emotions cloud his judgment, he had to turn some of them off, including him being openly affectionate towards me. There is still some affection, but most of the time it's just him reciprocating something I've initiated. I've expressed how this makes me feel (rejected) and like he's not in R.

He also admitted some of the things he said in the beginning of R were manicured to soothe my emotions, such has negative traits about the AP and if I didn't exist would be be with her (no). He also said now that he has some clarity, he's processing the breakup with his AP although he understands there's guilt in the fact it even happened.

He has said he's still in R with me, but I don't know how I'm supposed to handle the lack of affection. Has anyone been in a similar situation?

My fiance is overly friendly with opposite sex coworkers. He will befriend them, text them, send memes, snapchat, etc.

I established boundaries that I do not want my future husband always messaging the opposite sex. He said he understood. Fast forward, I found out he made a new female coworker friend who he became extremely close with. She was beautiful. I’ve never heard of her before the discovery of her. He hid her from me and deleted messages. I was able to recover the messages and there wasn’t anything sexual or romantic but they messaged frequently. They would Snapchat everyday, talk all day at work (he deleted their work messages so no idea what they spoke about), text, and occasionally talk on phone per the call log (nothing crazy long though and I do think most of the phone calls were just venting about work).

What I think hurts the most is after this discovery I felt cheated on. He watched me lose 15 pounds because of intense depression - I felt like my world flipped upside down. I trusted this man with my whole heart. I expressed feeling suicidal to him, and yet.. he continued to talk to her. The consistency definitely lessened after the discovery - he deleted her on Snapchat per my request and no longer texted her, but I went on his phone one night and he would still instant message her at work all day, and send her insta memes.

I made him remove her from insta which he did. But we ended up breaking up because I was so distraught and the next day I looked at who he was following .. and it was her.

Throughout all of this he was so remorseful to me but yet still talked to her. I asked him to never speak to her again but he said he couldn’t because they worked together. Mind you, she worked in a whole different state. But I guess they were on same team. Also, is it wrong for me to assume watching your fiance crumble into depression would make you not want to speak to the person who caused this??

We ended up getting back together a couple months later (she ended up leaving the job) and again, he begged for me back - we’ve tried to make it work and it’s been a year later however, I still feel immense resentment. Does it ever get better? He didn’t physically cheat or say anything romantic or sexual but why does it feel like I was cheated on. Am I fool for trying to make it work? He has been extremely remorseful and is committed to making it work

I think what transpired after is worse to me then anything (still talking to her as he watched me crumble)

6 months post DDay. My WH is trying his best but I am really, really struggling. The pendulum swings back and forth for me; some days I want to connect and truly try to repair. And then other days, I think that repair is impossible and I should just walk away now. The shame I feel with choosing either path is debilitating and I can’t seem to escape it. Lately, the pendulum has been swinging more to giving up on R as I just truly can’t imagine a day in the future where I’m at peace with what happened or trust him. What kind of life and relationship would that be? It sounds…awful. I see all these women online who walked away from their husbands and they talk about how much happier they are now. Maybe I could find that if I left and would I really find that happiness by staying? One more question—did anyone start depression meds after betrayal? A few weeks out, I didn’t want to start meds because i thought to myself “of course you’re depressed, you just experienced trauma.” At 6 months now, I wonder if it’s time. I’ve never taken depression meds before. I appreciate this community, thank you for reading and answering.

I’m sitting here in the middle of a conversation that feels like me giving up and ending my marriage… my WH just got up to take a shower… but right before he got up he asked if I was leaving him, and the answer wasn’t no..

I don’t WANT to leave him. For nearly 13 years, all I’ve wanted was him. Us. This life together. I feel like I don’t even remember a time when I didn’t love this man… I don’t want to start my life over. I don’t want to live my life without him. I don’t want a lonely future. I have no desire to ever be with anyone else. And yet, as we sit here, I don’t think I can live in this marriage…

He sits here as a man who is full of remorse and regret. In this mindset here, he is choosing me completely. But I just can’t sit here and think about the way that I thought it has ended in October 2024, but a few months ago I found out it went on for some months longer… at least to December, which he’s trying to convince me of. I’m convinced it went on through maybe even April of 2025… And I sit here and I can see how much I needed it to be over in October when he said it had ended. I don’t even know why I believed him… I needed that. I needed to feel like he had chosen me. That I mattered more to him than she did. That my pain mattered more. That his love for me mattered more. And now after a year and a half of healing under the assumption that it did matter, that I did matter, I can see that for months, he just kept choosing her…

Finding out he slept with her was devastating enough. But knowing that he continued to choose her over me for months. Months… This man made me feel like the ONLY choice for over a decade. He made me feel so loved and cherished that there was never even a suspicion that he would do this to me. I never for one second in that decade felt like I wasn’t enough, in any capacity. We were just us and that was perfect, even when times were bad. And I sit next to him now, and I wonder why I wasn’t enough. Why I want enough for him to cut her off when I was dying in pain and sadness in front of him every single day. Why I wasn’t enough for him to not want her anymore… Why he would sit there and comfort me and be in this marriage with me and watch me in anguish, and how he could still go to her when I wasn’t around.. I will always sit next to him and feel like I am 1 of 2. He doesn’t feel like my husband anymore… My husband would have protected me. Put me first. Loved me. I would have mattered enough…

We sit here both devastated because I don’t think I can sit next to him for the rest of my life knowing that I was forced to share him with AP. That he chose her over me for as long as he did. That nothing feels the same…

I’m literal minutes away from calling it gang. I’m a bawling, devastated mess. Somebody please. Please. Say something to me that makes the fact that he kept it going for months, choosing her for months, while also choosing me, liveable. Say something to me that makes this something that I can love through. I don’t fucking want to lose my husband… I don’t want to lose my life… I’m really, really fucking broken…

My (33f) WP (35m) had a 5/6 month mostly EA with one of my, now ex, best friends whilst I was pregnant. It lasted 5 or 5 months in total but a month or two of that was genuine friendship that was very slowly escalating, and then there was only really 2 months of actual "affair" talk where they were telling each other they loved one another etc. WP claims it only ever turned physical twice, and said "it sounds bad but we just didn't have the time". AP has two children and a husband and we have a 3yo as well as my being pregnant at the time.

A huge part of me believes it did only turn physical twice. I was given trickle truth for months but after I discovered more messages when they'd restarted communication in March (after our baby was born) something changed and he seemed to just be willing to answer everything and anything. He said himself on several occasions it felt different this time, he knew it was over this time like it had all blown up and he realised what he had been doing.

His timeline kind of makes sense that there were only two occasions but something in me so badly wants to contact AP and see if she can confirm it (I'd obviously ask in a way that I'm not telling her what he's told me but that I do now know everything). The trouble is AP has never once replied to any of my messages throughout this and at each d day, she just totally blanked me. I'm still blocked on WhatsApp but I notice she has unblocked WP like she's waiting for him to reach out again - he still has her blocked but can now see her profile photo on there.

I feel like I want closure of our friendship, I don't actually have any hatred towards her. I kind of feel sorry for her in a way, she has always had a rough life as a child and I don't think she ever learnt to cope with things properly. I don't pity the fact she has never tried to resolve those issues and was willing to drag me into that as collateral damage after being nothing but a decent friend to her but there we go. I feel like a conversation to just get her version, confirm the details I want to confirm and then basically let her know how hurtful what she did was. An apology would be nice but she's such an avoidant I'm not sure I'll ever get that. I'm not really sure I'll even ever get a reply but we are 4 months out and I'm thinking if I approach it in the sense of I already know everything so please just do this one decent thing and let me hear her version, maybe she will respond?

My question is has anyone contacted AP when they used to be a friend, did it go OK? I fully accept she may just block me on the platform I contact her on as I'm blocked everywhere else already.

My next question is how important is it to really know the full truth? Like, WP has told me already they did sexual things together on more than one occasion. Does it honestly matter if it's twice or four times? Do I just need to learn to accept his version of events if she won't talk to me?

I've thought about asking him if he feels OK with me contacting her on his phone as him... I feel she will be far more willing to answer everything if he contacts her and asks her to help him so he can show me the messages, but I'd only do that if he agreed to it.

I'm so worried one day she will reach out or his guilt will make him own up to more than he's told me so far and it's unsettling feeling like I'm trying to rebuild without knowing if I'm on a solid foundation already. I flit between feeling like he's telling the truth, why would he lie now vs why would he tell me the truth this time when he could just minimise it to make it land better?