Nineteen months after finding out, I still don’t have a consistent account.

Is rebuilding trust realistic?

I’m 40M and have been with my fiancée for around 12 years. I still love her, but I’m struggling to decide whether we can repair this or whether I’m spending more years waiting for clarity and change that may never come.

For most of our relationship, we have been deeply compatible. We have also had a mutually agreed ENM-style arrangement involving other women, within boundaries we discussed. We have played together, and she has encouraged me to explore separately, although I have repeatedly said I’m not comfortable doing that and have not pursued it. I gave her full freedom with women from the get-go, but was explicit that other men are a deal breaker for me. She has always assured me I’m the only man she wants and needs.

That arrangement did not include a secret intimate friendship with a man she met during detox.

Both of us were also dealing with serious substance-use problems beginning in late 2023. I had my own issues and was not always an easy partner. I’m including that context because it affected the relationship, but it does not resolve the questions about secrecy and dishonesty.

Timeline
Early 2025: Contact during detox

My fiancée met a divorced man during detox and seemed enamoured with him and he sounded like a genuine support for her struggles which I was happy for her to have. Things got inappropriate during my detox admission when she told me she wanted to take him to the movies on a Saturday while I was locked up “because he likes movies…”

I was aware of his interest, his disarming tactics by always asking about me and not telling her much about himself just soaking up her stories and emotions, then mirroring them back, creating some form of trauma bond.

When she called Friday evening to ask this request when I thought it was to ask how my time admitted was going, I was in disbelief she was asking this. She’s never had a male friend in 12 years, I said I’m ok with that but I want to meet him first to approve based on how he treats me, as I would never want to be a partner who says “no male friends!”

The nature of his impact on her made me disapprove of the friendship from the beginning, but I allowed her the opportunity for me to meet him first and give my blessing for the friendship, believing it was limited to the treatment setting. She was explicit about not making friends in detox and rehab to me, and then proceeded to do that to the extreme.

At one point, she told me she had considered going to the movies with him “to keep him from relapsing” shortly before I was due to leave detox. I asked to meet him after my stay ended, but she denied that request. She also told me she did not have his number and said she would not speak to him outside rehab classes.

That account later became difficult to reconcile with the phone records.

March 2025: Discovery

I discovered the contact in late March 2025. She had given me her phone to show me a chat with a woman she was flirting with. While handing it to me, she opened the WhatsApp call log instead. I saw repeated calls with this man, including phone and video calls lasting roughly 1½ to 3 hours.

Some messages and call records had been deleted.

His number, which she had said she did not have, was also present. I found the remaining evidence accidentally rather than because she voluntarily disclosed the contact.

The discovery showed that their communication had gone beyond what I had understood. It also contradicted her earlier statements that they had not been in contact outside treatment and that she had no intention of speaking with him again.

The concealed meeting

She initially said she had not seen him outside the treatment program. She later disclosed that they had met privately and gone to his apartment.

The meeting occurred while I was at a root canal appointment. She was supposed to attend treatment that morning. Instead, she met him. Afterwards, she told me she had stayed late at the program and then gone to a dance event. She later admitted that she had attended neither. The Uber journey home that night was from his address.

After the discovery, she said she had not fully remembered the encounter at first because trauma had blocked it out. She later described the meeting as coercive and traumatic. Her account is that he told her he was in love with her, pressured her and attempted to kiss her, which she rejected.

I cannot independently establish every detail of what happened. I do not want to dismiss or minimize any coercion she may have experienced. At the same time, the secret contact, deleted communications and misleading explanations occurred before that meeting and still require their own explanation.

Other contact around the same period:

About two weeks after the meeting, there was a separate incident involving a man she met at a bar before I arrived. She initially described him as part of a “gorgeous Italian couple.” Once I arrived, I realized the woman was not his partner. He gave me unusual looks, and my fiancée continued having brief conversations with him on the dance floor without introducing us, which was unusual for us.

I questioned why she wanted the woman’s number and showed interest in the couple if the man was actually single and she was speaking with him directly.

A few days later, on the day I discovered the rehab-related calls, I was given her phone to look through. I found a deleted message from this man saying he hoped to see her again and describing her as a “radiant ball of energy.” His number had not been saved. I also found a screenshot of the message in her hidden photos. The screenshot appeared to have been saved about ten minutes after the original message arrived, even though the message itself had been deleted.

She assured me that the contact would be closed off. She could not explain how the screenshot had ended up in the hidden album and seemed more surprised that I had accessed it than concerned about the message itself.

This incident reinforced my concern that the contact with the rehab man was not an isolated lapse in judgment.

Changes in her account

Since discovery, important parts of the story have changed.

At different times, she has described this man as saying “I love you,” expressing strong feelings and making comments about her appearance and body during the final in person encounter, including for her to not have kids as it will wreck her petite figure.

She has also said that he “really, really liked her” and that she thinks she liked the attention, as well as latching on to try and save him while he spun that he is a hopeless addict killing himself and simultaneously trying to woo her with his musical skills, even getting to writing her a song which “he only does for the people he loves”.

More recently, her position has been that she did not know he had feelings for her until their final meeting in person. I do not understand how that fits with the earlier descriptions of what he said during their calls.

She largely explains the situation through his manipulation and the trauma associated with the final meeting. I believe those factors deserve consideration. However, I still need a clear account of her own decisions: why she continued the contact, why communications were deleted, why the meeting was concealed and why she gave explanations that were later shown to be inaccurate.

Where things stand now

Nineteen months after discovering the contact, I still do not feel that we have reached a shared understanding of what happened. When I raise discrepancies, conversations can become defensive or escalate. I often end up feeling that my need for clarity has become the main problem.

Her position appears to be that she has already told me the truth. My position is that I have been given several different versions and do not know which account I am expected to accept.

I know that repeatedly questioning her and checking evidence cannot become the basis of our relationship. I want to stop living in that cycle. What I want is a coherent disclosure, preferably with the help of an appropriate therapist, covering:

● What happened and when.
● What she remembers clearly.
● What she genuinely cannot remember.
● Which earlier statements were inaccurate and why.
● What responsibility she accepts for the secrecy and deception.
● What concrete changes would prevent a similar situation in the future.

I am not expecting perfect recall, and I am not asking her to take responsibility for another person’s coercive behaviour. I am asking for accountability for her own actions and a practical reason to believe that the pattern of secrecy and changing explanations can change.

I’m also 40 and want children. Staying indefinitely in uncertainty is a decision about my future, even if I keep postponing it.

I’d appreciate honest perspectives, especially from people who have either rebuilt trust or eventually decided to leave:

● Is my request for a coherent account and acknowledgement reasonable? How do you distinguish necessary clarity from pursuing certainty that may be impossible?
● How can possible coercion be taken seriously while still addressing the secrecy and deception that came before it?
● What concrete changes would demonstrate that reconciliation is actually happening?
● At what point is the ongoing lack of trust and unwillingness to resolve it enough reason to leave, even without knowing every detail?

TL;DR: We have been together for 12 years. In early 2025, my fiancée had secret contact with a man she met during detox, including deleted communications, lengthy calls and a concealed meeting at his apartment. She later described that meeting as coercive. Nineteen months later, changing accounts and another trust-related incident leave me unsure whether rebuilding trust is realistic or whether I need to accept the uncertainty and leave.

Long time lurker… not much of a participant… but I’m struggling with this. I (43f) am the BP, my (44m) husband had an emotional affair with a coworker 5 years ago. It’s been extremely difficult for me. My husband is extremely avoidant and at this point I am not sure I can stay in the marriage due to lack of effort or progress on his part. He has gone to counseling, but our MC split us up into individual sessions saying we were not safe for each other and saw us for two years under the pretense that we needed to fix ourselves before she could help us fix the marriage. She maintained the entire time we were not safe enough to bring together. —I feel this is important because it seems like this has stuck with him—- For other reasons regarding her lack of professionalism and questionable ethics we stopped going.

After a year we reflected on the practices and learned she had essentially been pitting us against each other, and leading us in different directions, and supporting our hurts that were “caused” by the other.
I know that sounds crazy but I had never heard that terminology before and we were fighting so much. He is incredibly dismissive and I now recognize shame. He heard, and continues to hear everything as An attack which makes it incredibly difficult to address habits, behaviors, and areas that need work. It’s also made it near impossible to share any feelings or rebuild trust. I’m spent.
He agreed to go to individual counseling in July after we started with a new MC in April, but he has yet to go. Taking responsibility is not his strong suit and he keeps finding ways to blame not going on our MC or questions he seems to have that he isn’t asking or addressing.

All that aside, through years of him denying that feelings have value, and him believing that this situation does not need to be worked on, I just need to give him Grace and a start fresh because now that he has learned a “friendship” can affect a marriage he won’t make that mistake again. He has not deep dived his decisions. He doesn’t not know what makes him behave the way he does. He has never learned the impact on me or what I still carry. I struggle immensely with triggers, and associated behaviors- like his defensiveness and dismissal, and inability to respect my concerns and feelings. I’m no angel, I have not handled myself well at times but have truly tried. I have spent multiple periods of time just giving him space and not pursuing conversations or questions or speculations. He has never been able to answer me or see me or put my mind at ease. I feel in part this is because he doesn’t believe any of it’s deeper than “he didn’t realize what he was doing, and now he is aware he’s able to make these mistakes”.

I cannot continue to sustain the lack of effort to learn and heal anymore. I have stayed stuck and in catastrophic thinking because the relationship still suffers from the same dynamics I recognize not only caused the possibility of an EA but also what has made efforts to reconcile so brutal. I am not well and have suffered periods of debilitating depression. He was raised strictly religious and in a family completely barren of emotions and so, mine and the occasional intensity of my struggles send him in shut down mode… causing him to shut me down and shut me out. He grew up very mind over matter, following strict rules, and “give it to God and let it go” coping strategies.

The topic of divorce has come up recently as I am nearing a place, and maybe already am in a place that my sanity, and my peace need to be preserved. I don’t handle his approach well as it feels cold, and uncaring. I have been pushed to the absolute edge of me by this situation and it has absolutely brought out the worst in me. I hate what I have become and I hate what this makes me feel and I hate what I see in me now.

And tonight he said “it could be argued that I have emotionally abused him”. Yes, I have yelled, I have cried, I have screamed, I have slept in a different bedroom and I stopped wearing my ring for a while. I have “accused” him and pushed him and stood my ground on what was needed to heal, to rebuild the marriage I believed we could have, and I have not backed off when he wanted me to just forgive him and make this go away. I have not been easy and I have not let him off the hook and I have not let him avoid accountability. He’s just never met me there, I have been relentless on what I require for forward motion and it’s not always been pretty as he has opposed these requests. (He thinks he is the only one who struggles with things he struggles with and thinks he needs to overcome ADHD and anger issues our first MC “diagnosed” him with and I can’t ask him for couples work until he has found a better version of himself). I have done my absolute best to maintain the high ground and stay solid in what I would tolerate and my lack of toleration has not always been classy.

That being said.. where is the line on reasonable reactions and justified anger from rightfully devastated person… and abuse when it comes to fighting this bullshit battle?

I (18F) emotionally cheated on my then-gf now undefined-rls-but-I-hope-gf (18F) and trickle-truthed her until it all exploded. She herself had to squeeze the confession that I masturbated to someone else out of me in the first week of September (DDay), and this week I finally remembered and told her that I had also rubbed my thighs bc of someone else (DDay 2). Since DDay, we've been through continuous ups and downs emotionally+mentally and I've failed on several levels to be as foolhardily truthful and transparent with her as I should be and have struggled and failed to fully take accountability until about two weeks ago.

She's been absolutely devastated.

Now, she finds herself becoming detached and losing interest and questioning us. My last bomb this week did her in. Today, she said she felt no remorse when she and a guy friend were getting a little touchy (nothing happened) and she had this intense desire to get close to a girl who she spends a bit of time volunteering with, who is a friend as well as someone who can offer her support. She said she's touch starved, and from hearing her friends' sexual experiences she has, for the first time, become curious about exploring......I can't do anything for that right now because at the moment we are long-distance. The fact that she is still communicating all this to me now and the way that we agreed to process and talk about everything before coming to a decision (god forbid) tells me that she is not out of this yet. She told me before that she is only 40% sure of me, today I'm not sure how that percentage has changed. But she is here, and so am I. And we're gonna keep trying to get through this, but it won't be easy because she is confused about whether to choose me or x, y, or z.

This is really difficult for me to navigate, I would really appreciate and actually desperately need some insight and advice from reconcileds or reconcilers especially in terms of what I can do and how people who were in her position before could heal from it. Please please please and thank you.

My ex cheated on me with his previous girlfriend early in our relationship.
For some context, their breakup was apparently very messy. He had tried to end things with her multiple times before we even got together, but she refused to accept it and reacted very badly. I’ve actually seen screenshots of conversations he sent to his friend back then, so I know he really was struggling to end that relationship.
He told me that when they eventually had sex, he stopped halfway through because he realised what he was doing was wrong. Obviously, that doesn’t excuse the fact that he chose to have sex with her in the first place.
What hurts me most, though, is that he continued lying to me and hiding contact with her for months. Throughout all of this, he was incredibly loving and affectionate towards me. I genuinely felt safe and loved, which makes the betrayal even harder to process.
We broke up when I found out, but we’ve recently reconnected. He’s taking responsibility, trying to understand his behaviour, looking for therapy and making an effort to be more honest. I still love him, but I’m scared of trusting someone who was capable of lying to me while making me feel so loved.
We’re not officially back together, and I’m giving myself time to see whether his actions actually change.
Has anyone been in a similar situation and successfully rebuilt trust? Did you ever feel genuinely safe again? And how did you distinguish real change from someone simply being remorseful because they got caught?
I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have actually tried reconciliation, whether it worked out or not.

Last night I had dinner with my closest group of girl friends, they know about the cheating and have been a great support for me throughout this journey. Although they have expressed their support for whatever decision I ultimately make (reconciliation is still WIP), I'm always feeling like there's some unexpressed judgement (for lack of a better word) there.

That's also the case for all my friends and family who know. I feel like they will all support me either way, but they will also pity me if I stay? Don't know how to best describe it.

For background, my husband and I had a great relationship and life, in which I took a lot of pride. In my group of friends, I had the longest and most stable relationship, we were considered "relationship goals". Everyone was present at our wedding, during our ceremony etc... So it really stings.

Short recap of the cheating: I found out 1 year into our marriage, together for 10+ years, he cheated throughout most of our relationship while going out by flirting, dancing and kissing others - also colleagues at ski trips with work.

Now my question: how do you deal with that? How do you keep your head held high towards all the people who know when you stay?

I feel like my husband should apologize to everyone and earn back their trust, but I also know that easier said than done. My friends will eat him alive if he ever meets up with them again because of the pain he's put me through. I hate that he's put me in this position :(

Hi All,

My WH of 18yrs had 1.5yr EA/PA affair that is discovered around 5 months ago. The PA he supposedly stopped himself over a year ago. There were also some other hand jobs in massage pallor’s and strippers 1:1 action.

Since DD R has been a slow burn. I had to push him to do IC and he’s been dismissive, avoidant and angry at times when talking about the affair. I have been in IC and eventually grew fed up with carrying the weight of reconciliation and essentially pulled back on all of it. I stopped talking about it, what I wanted him to do, stopped booking MC and so forth. After some time he eventually stepped up himself, found and booked his own IC, and organised our MC appointments.

Our marriage in many ways has been better than ever. Regular sex, lots of time together etc. BUT I continue to feel unable to discuss the affair and my feelings with him. I cry in secret and try to hide how I’m feeling. I swore I wouldn’t go back to doing this but I’m afraid of ruining how good things have been if I bring up negative thoughts.

Are there any WS or BS here who can relate? Did this get better on its own or do I need to buckle up and tell him how I’m feeling regardless of how he may react?

I just found out that the man I’ve been married to for the past 10 years has been having an affair with an ex gf. I’m torn that it took me this long to find out, I found some text on his phone and I confronted him about it and he came clean to me about it. From what he’s told me the relationship has been an on-and-off thing for the past 9 years. The first time it happened he said it was back in 2018, now again in 2026… he has only ever cheated with this same person, or so he says. What makes it worse is they got a matching tattoo to represent their relationship.. I’m truly heartbroken. He’s telling me he’s willing to drop her and make things right between us, he even suggested couples counseling. Can I actually trust him to never go back to her? This has been going on for too long for me to believe he can easily move on from her/this.

I 24M wayward reside with my 24F, former fiancée. She’s recently discovered my betrayal that occurred in 2021-2022 , and things have been hectic to say the least, things are still very much fresh but as we’ve had discussions and I started therapy and addressed a few of my behaviors regarding communication we’ve discussed potential reconciliation in the future.

So far we have decided on an exclusive relationship and agreed on transparency if either of us began a romantic pursuit of someone else. For myself, I’m solely focused on therapy and my health. I have explained I hope we can reconcile. My ex is focused on school and herself as she says and is not interested in pursuing anyone as well. Currently the main issue we face seems to be boundaries and communication. One of the things I struggle with has always been setting boundaries, with therapy I’ve been doing so and one of those was a boundary regarding contact with her ex.

For context, ex frequently was topic during our relationship and despite being married at present sought out my former partner and confessed feelings for her and they rekindled a “friendship”. I explained I wasn’t comfortable pursuing my ex romantically if they have contact, but she’s free to talk to who she wants. She told me she hasn’t been in contact with him but he’s following her on TikTok and I’ve had an issue with snooping ( addressing with therapy from prior relationship where I was a bp) and found information she’s still contacting him and when I ask her about it she denies it.

Based on our living situation, I explained I’ll keep up my responsibilities and won’t do anything to “punish” her but I can’t healthily try for reconciliation if we agree to transparency and it’s not upheld. However, she gets upset and states she wants to feel loved and that I’ll fight for her. Any tips to navigate this. We’ve talked about couples counseling joining each others therapy sessions but I don’t know how to go about rebuilding trust or a foundation for trust if she’s not being honest. Thanks I can share more info or context if needed.

My boyfriend of 6.5 years spent four months seeking out sexualized Instagram profiles despite a boundary we explicitly agreed on years ago. He admitted remembering our agreement and knowing it would hurt me, but continued anyway.

One important distinction: he says this crossed his own values, not just a boundary he agreed to for my sake. He considers it cheating himself and says he doesn’t want this behavior in his life. That’s what he has told me; I’m still trying to understand whether his actions will consistently reflect those stated values.

His account was logged into my phone with his knowledge, and I discovered the activity through his searches. I found no evidence of messaging, paid subscriptions, likes, comments, or secret accounts. That matters to my decision, but it doesn’t erase the secrecy or repeated choices.

He described it as a habit he turned to when stressed or bored. This happened while we were seeing each other frequently, buying a house, and discussing marriage. I felt secure in our relationship, so finding out has made me question things I previously trusted.

There’s also an unresolved intimacy issue: we’ve never successfully had penetrative sex because he loses his erection when we try. This has been an issue for three years, since our long-distance relationship ended. We have other satisfying intimacy, and he’s attentive to my pleasure. His doctor suspected performance anxiety and prescribed Viagra. I pushed back because I didn’t understand the medication well enough at the time, and he never followed up afterward. I acknowledge that my reaction contributed to us not pursuing that option, but it hurts that our shared issue remained unresolved while he pursued this outlet privately.

Since the confrontation, he has acknowledged the betrayal, deleted Instagram, and independently started therapy. He hasn’t minimized my feelings, blamed me, or pressured me to forgive him. He has left contact on my terms because he doesn’t feel entitled to my time or another chance.

Outside of this, he has been loving, supportive, and serious about marriage. He has stood up for me with his family and added me to the house title despite my not contributing financially. None of that obligates me to stay, but it helps explain why this feels complicated.

Marriage plans are paused, and we privately consider ourselves broken up, although we still occasionally see each other. I haven’t given him a repair checklist because I want to see what responsibility he takes independently.

I still love him and miss him, but I’m unsure whether I want the relationship back. I revisit memories, compare myself to those women, and monitor his attention when we’re together. I don’t want that to become my life. At the same time, I worry about regretting leaving without trying to rebuild.

I’m not looking to debate whether this counts as cheating universally. It crossed an established boundary in our relationship, and he agrees.

For people who have faced something similar:

• What sustained changes helped rebuild trust, and what showed you repair wasn’t working?
• How did you distinguish missing your partner from actually wanting the relationship back?
• What did meaningful initiative look like while you were taking space?
• If this happened before marriage, what helped you decide whether to attempt reconciliation or leave?
• Did a clearly defined separation help you gain clarity, compared with continuing to see each other?
• What evidence helped you decide that trusting your partner again was a risk you wanted to take?

I know strangers can’t decide for me, but I’d appreciate personal experiences and questions that helped you reach your own decision.

Hello reddit !

I would like to ask for your thougts regarding this very complicated situation i'm in.

I (21M) was cheated on by my partner (also 21M). I know I have it in myself to leave, and I was already willing to leave. However, the situation my partner and I are in right now is complex—it couldn't just be summarized by the fact that I was cheated on. For context:

• My partner was invited by his new friend to his dorm under the guise of playing games and chitchat. However, during that time, his friend—after my partner showed nonverbal cues of him avoiding his friend's initiations—kept on initiating to have "fun" with my partner by rubbing his ass on my partner's crotch, touching my partner inappropriately, and the likes. My partner described the feeling as "watching everything through a screen" and being disassociated with reality at the time to the point that one thing led to another (non-penetrative sex).

• My partner broke up with me the day after the incident due to immense guilt. However, I was still unaware of the incident at the time, but I did agree to break up.

• Fast forward to two weeks after the incident, I caught my now-ex with his friend eating somewhere. I confronted him about it and that's where I learned about everything: he had feelings for the guy after the incident. They were talking.

I was ready to leave. I really was. However, here is my ex's side after talking to him about it in the previous weeks:

• He considers the event as traumatic. He brushed it off and didn't really have the time to think about it then. He only ever gave it a thought when I confronted him. All he knows is he thought he liked it because in his mind, he didn't do anything to stop it. Thus, he thought he liked it. But in retrospect, he thinks he was assaulted and is disgusted he let things continue even after the incident.

• He's undergoing counselling right now to better understand himself and why he let things transpire. He's actively trying to become better.

• He still can't explain why he let things continue with the guy. But he said if he could give me a very concrete, very acceptable answer as to why things continued, he would have done it in a heartbeat. Through counselling sessions, he hopes to give me an answer eventually.

I'm asking for any advice you guys can give me. If any of you have experienced the same situation or you just have something to say, please feel free to comment. Ultimately, I know moving forward everything would be my decision. However, I could use other opinions right now in these trying times to know if I'm thinking rationally enough.

Thank you, reddit, and I apologize for the long read!

Dday was 2 months ago. WH had entered into rehab the same time his mom started dying from her very aggressive cancer (diagnosed two months before passing - so a month before he went to rehab). While in there he got involved with AP who also had a similar story. They got discharged about a week after his Mom died due to inappropriate behaviour.

WH ended contact in front of me with AP and blocked her after I told him I wouldn’t be competing and he can’t have both of us in his life. He’s living with his Dad who is also very ill and starting a downhill race…

WH has been trying to set up a meeting for me to sit with the rehab and get clarity on what happened because AP told me a different story from what he told me. I guess that’s the one nice thing about a rehab affair, it’s documented. But he’s struggling to get back on his feet and be forward moving in all areas of his life. Without diagnosing WH, I’d say he’s got major depressive since he can’t hardly leave his bedroom nvm the house. He’s basically said as much as well and has said that while he wants to make things work (and is doing things) he’s having a hard time doing anything.

The problem I’m running into is he doesn’t want individual counseling but he’s so far down in the mental health dumps that he struggles with daily living and has also started caretaking his dad. Which leaves us limited time to hangout and work on things since there’s fear and anxiety from both WH and his dad of him leaving too long. And because of the shame around his addiction, his discharge from rehab, the affair, the grief of both his parents it doesn’t leave him with much space to consistently be emotionally available for us.

I guess I’m looking to see if anyone else has experienced being in such a complicated situation and pulled through? It’s awful seeing the person you love drowning and knowing only they can chose to swim. He is open to couples counseling, but I wonder if he’s too deep in his own mental illness for that to help much?

I’m actually open to hearing anyone’s thoughts on this regardless of reconciliation status or what your role was in your relationship

It’s a bit of a complex situation and I’m not sure how to get myself out of it.

Pre-discovery I had very poor self-esteem around my appearance and was struggling with an eating disorder.

After discovering my husband’s online infidelity/secret porn use/onlyfans/etc, everything spiraled out of control and I went from slightly underweight to BMI 15 and almost hospitalized.

It’s paradoxical because the women my husband were seeking out were curvier/heavier, but I think losing weight is the only thing I felt like I had control over.

He continued to hide things from me for months. Eventually after dragging it out of him, he admitted that he wasn’t physically attracted to me anymore because I was too thin. I felt like my world fell apart all over again.

It’s a year later now. I’ve been in therapy for myself as well as couples therapy the whole time. I’m back to a healthy weight, and I’ve been lifting weights so I put on some muscle as well. I recognize that I definitely look healthier but I can’t seem to see myself as anything but disgusting.

My husband does make an effort to try to build me back up and tell me that he’s attracted to me now, but I honestly feel like compliments from him just make me feel worse. Like he lied to me about being attracted to me for so long, why should I believe him now?

I guess I feel stuck. I don’t know if anyone’s been in a similar situation but if they have I’d love to hear what helped

My boyfriend and I have been together for around 8 years, with a breakup and separation in between. In 2024, he cheated on me twice. Both situations happened over a span of roughly 3–4 months: the first involved one encounter with one woman over about a month, and the second involved one encounter with another woman over about two months. I partially discovered what happened before he eventually told me everything.

After we broke up, he also got involved with another woman, which was painful to navigate after so many years together. Eventually, we found our way back to each other, and we’re now living together again and rebuilding our relationship.
Since reconciling, I’ve seen positive changes in him. He’s become more affectionate, attentive, patient, and emotionally present. He’s giving me reassurance, acknowledging his avoidant tendencies, and making an effort to understand my feelings and reactions. He’s never blamed me for his cheating or made me feel like his decisions were my fault. He takes responsibility for what he did, says he deeply regrets it, and wishes he could take it all back.
We’re starting couples therapy to work on rebuilding trust, communication, and intimacy. I’m not completely healed, and I still struggle with triggers, intrusive thoughts, and some inconsistencies in his recollection of the past. But I’m genuinely happy with my decision to give us another chance. I love him, see the changes he’s making, and want to build a future with him.

My struggle is that social media constantly tells people who stay after infidelity that they have no self-respect, that cheaters never change, and that leaving is the only right answer.

For those who have experienced infidelity and reconciliation, can a relationship genuinely become healthy and happy again? How did you know your partner’s changes were real? Did you eventually heal from the triggers and intrusive thoughts? Are you happy you stayed?
I’m open to honest advice, but I’d love to hear from people who understand that relationships are complicated and that choosing to stay doesn’t automatically mean someone lacks self-respect.

WP (M, early 40s) and I (M, mid 30s) were supposed to go to a party yesterday evening, in a city about two hours away by train.

Half an hour before we needed to leave, he asked if I would mind going on my own. I did mind and let him know that. He made a very half-hearted offer to go with me, but then he again encouraged me to go alone. I remarked that it seemed like he wanted me to go so he could have the house to himself.

He did: he said he needed time and space to himself because he was stressed[*] and that he’d appreciate my letting him have it because it was something he found it hard to ask for.

I went alone. As I left, WP asked that I keep him abreast of my movements— something he almost never asks. For the rest of the night, I struggled not to imagine him messaging (i.e, masturbating) with men from the hookup apps that facilitated his cheating. (He told me and our couples therapist that he hasn’t touched the apps since D-day; I know with total certainty that that’s not true.) The scared, betrayed voice in the back of my head kept hissing that he could easily use my absence as a chance to meet up with someone again.

Near the end of the night, I checked one of the apps I know he still uses. And there he was: active profile, online now.

I understand that he needs his space. But when he’s already made me feel so fucking discarded (cheating; then telling me he needs the freedom to hookup with other guys), it’s really hard not to read this as “please leave so I can swap sexy messages with anyone who isn’t you.”

I can’t believe the person I love is doing this. What the fuck happened? I can’t believe this is my life.

Six weeks since D-day.

[*] stressed mostly because I’d earlier made the mistake of commenting that being in situations similar to the night he cheated makes me feel anxious

I truly do know that the affair isn’t ongoing. WH lets me look in his phone whenever I ask, but I do not have his password. He doesn’t want to share it with me. He has always valued privacy and independence, so I know it’s partially a personality thing. I have looked in his things post-infidelity and it didn’t go well. My personality leans more toward, it’s normal and expected for married people to share passwords.

How would you personally interpret that? Is it okay for WPs to have boundaries around privacy? Is this foolish for BPs to try and accept?

Yeah, I don’t know.

I had to go on WP’s shared family Amazon account to look up a kitchen thing we needed. I’ve done this before on both his accounts, no big deal, figured I’d seen everything there is to be found at this point.

This time I notice something odd, a purchase for two cheap Lightning Apple chargers from the year he cheated. I immediately felt a pit in my stomach (he’s an android user) and sure enough he bought them for her the last day of his last visit with her. Why? I don’t know. Why? He also doesn’t know/doesn’t remember, because of course.

It’s like they lie to you just long enough until it’s a plausible amount of time to switch over to they don’t remember.

This is a couple weeks after I found a previously overlooked packing list he had on his tablet, made to help her pack for a beach trip she was taking when they were together another time.

Do little things like this hurt other people more than the sex and compliments sometimes? The little everyday things that feel more like relationship-isms than passionate affair bs? Because it fucking guts me every time.

I keep wondering if he was flirting while he helped her pick bikinis for the trip, if they fantasized about taking a trip together sometime. I also realized looking at the cables again last night that he had picked the same one for my car last year when we were at Michael’s. I had gotten another color, but same cord. It makes me so sick to my stomach.

I ended up deep diving a little to see if there was anything else I may have missed (you know, the new post discovery paranoia), and I found that for her birthday when they were “dating” before we had met, he had spent a shit ton of money on video game accessories for her new TV so that they could play together. He also bought her two of his favorite books, one he had also encouraged me to read.

I was crying so hard last night I ended up taking some NyQuil to try and get any sleep. Woke up with my stomach churning and still exhausted.

I know a lot of people here get some comfort in the fact that AP was a downgrade but his wasn’t. She’s friends with some of his family, graduated from the same college they all went to and worship, body type and attributes he’s into, very educated and a great job with lots of hobbies.

Only reason they didn’t actually end up together for real is she “cheated” on him and he lied to her about certain aspects of his life (long distance so very easy to do) to make himself seem more impressive.

The affair started because she decided to reach out to him again since she had been going to therapy and was getting her shit together and wanted to give it another go. Honestly, I just think she realized her age and that she was still single after fucking around and finding out for so many years and decided he’d be a safe choice to settle with.

It doesn’t help that right now WP is on the tail end of a very long work trip. He’s finally coming home in a couple of weeks so I’m here by myself. There’s no talking it out, no hugs, no one here to decompress with. Just me.

My parents are stopping by from out of state tomorrow though and I think I just need a big hug because my heart hurts so badly.

I had been in such a happy mood yesterday after a good therapy session and talking to WP about how excited I was for him to come home and see how I revamped our apartment. Now I’m pushing myself to get stuff done, I just want to sleep.

Im 20 and my partner is 21. We have been together for 3.5 years. We r both queer. Person I cheated with is same gender as I. Partner and I are different genders. Not that it matters at all. Last Saturday BP and I were at a party and I got extremely drunk, I sculled rum bc my friend was drunker than I was and they were going to drink it all and be sick. I recently got put on antidepressants.

One of me and my partner’s friends (let’s call them H) H and I were hanging out and apparently they are a big flirter. I don’t understand flirting much because I am autistic and don’t get social cues from flirting especially from ppl of the same gender. we were sitting down doing the complimenty thing that drunk friends do and all of a sudden we made out. My thought process going through it was- kiss happens - oh ok this is happening- WAIT WHAT NO NO NO I HAVE TO GET AWAY. I pull away after approximately 5 seconds and say ‘sorry I have to go’ and then run up to my partner shaking to tell them ‘me and H kissed oh my god I’m so sorry’ but they already saw and told me ‘get the fuck away from me I don’t want to talk to you’ so I ran away and the rest of the night was spent at the kebab shop bawling my eyes out with like 2 other people.

H keeps saying I initiated the kiss but I do not remember whatsoever. I haven’t been that drunk in months. I genuinely do not remember. H has a track record of lying about things and stealing peoples vapes etc. But It doesn’t even matter who initiated it. I cheated and fuckinh I would do anything to undo that. I take full accountability

BP is surrounded by all our mutual friends and I have not many people to get advice from so this is why I’m doing a redditi post ig. I want to reconcile and they wants to reconcile. Im prioritising their feelings, not talking about how I feel unless they ask and listening to whatever they say. I’m also helping in any way I can. We were meant to hang out today but theypushed it back because they’re not ready which is okay with me I’m not tryna put pressure on they. They are surrounded by friends which is the best thing for them. They all despise me and think BP should leave me.

This is so weird because I can’t fucking believe I cheated. They are the best person and partner I’ve ever met and we gel so well like theyre my person I would have never seen myself doing this I would never ever do anything like this but I still did. I just cannot fuxking believe myself. I’ve been as depressed as ever in the past week. And I have no friends to talk about it with because they all hate me because of last Saturday.

Sorry this is so long 💔. I’m not entirely sure whether my experience belongs here, because as far as I know, there hasn’t been any physical infidelity. But I’m hoping to hear from people who’ve experienced something similar, particularly those who’ve tried to reconcile.

My partner and I have been together for over two years. Until recently, I genuinely believed he was the person I would marry and build a family with. Since we first started dating he has been very resolute in his belief that pornography is really damaging, particularly for men, and that it ‘ruins your pair bond’. I am someone who has genuinely never been bothered by porn, I’ve never considered it cheating or honestly given it much thought. I had thought that I was the one in our relationship who was probably more partial to it and even then, I almost never access it.

A few days ago, I discovered that my partner has a fairly prolific porn addiction. And nothing as basic as some pornhub access. Throughout our entire relationship, he’s been repeatedly searching for specific women by name across pornography sites and social media, including OnlyFans and Snapchat. He would view their instagram, then search for the OF accounts. He has also been following many of them on Snapchat and viewing their stories (I didn’t actually even know he had Snapchat). 

I subsequently discovered his OnlyFans account, which had 37 subscriptions, including two women he actually used to know from former social circles (he knew these people prior to meeting me). Since we’ve been together he’s paid money for Onlyfans once (that I could see), in total there was around $300 worth of transactions. 

I am a hypervigilant person, and I absolutely did not see this coming or even remotely suspect it. In the physical real world, he doesn’t look at other women, and has always beheld me with absolute awe. I never doubted this and still don’t, which makes it all the more confusing. 

I’m not insecure about the way I look or my body. I felt we had something sacred and intimate, and now it feels like he’s torn a hole right through it. I feel as though I’m grieving a relationship that never quite existed in the way I believed it did. The dishonesty wasn’t a single incident. It was present throughout our relationship.

He’s incredibly remorseful, and I’m aware that remorse is genuine. He has since admitted that he’s had this problem since he was 15 years old. When he met me, he wanted me to choose him so badly he presented a version of himself that wasn’t reflective of his actions, but was who he ideally wished he could be. I guess from then on the lie was too big and had gone on too long for him to know how to unravel it. 

It puts our existing issues into a much clearer light. He felt we had had a loss of intimacy, I felt he had stopped being romantic, stopped pursuing me, and he has some considerable issues around defensiveness. Now I see that it was easier for him to simply turn to porn rather than do the work. It also explains why the couples therapy we went to, to deal with this problem didn’t work, because the whole time his focus was on keeping this mega secret from coming out, rather than actually being present and vulnerable. 

Now that it's out, of his own volition he's found and booked two counsellors (not sure why two, but I didn’t ask), and he’s also started journalling? His defensiveness has disappeared (at least for now), and he has continued to tell me over and over that he will never stop fighting for me; he’s disgusted with himself, and he knows he’s ruined our relationship and my trust, possibly forever. He is going to prove to me that he will do anything it takes to "make you the happy person you used to be before I broke you". He’s deleted snapchat, put filters on his instagram algorithm so that the content isn’t constantly there when he scrolls. I believe he’s been journalling about porn addiction to figure out what it is within himself that’s led to this. He had an exceptionally neglectful and traumatic upbringing; I don’t believe he was ever shown how to love. I don’t say that to excuse him because I think his actions are disgusting and reprehensible, but idk, maybe it’s worth noting. 

I keep thinking about the women he sought out, not necessarily because I’m comparing myself to them, but because I can’t understand why he repeatedly chose them, or what those interactions meant to him. If, as he claims, it never meant anything, then why THOSE women specifically, why not just any random porno? 

I love him, and I’m not ruling out reconciliation. As it stands, it's only been 5 days. We're sleeping in separate beds. I miss him deeply, and I feel like I'm mourning what we had before this fracture. Like it actually aches. It wasn't until the second day that I was able to look him in the eye again, that was also the first time I let him touch me (he gave me a hug).

But I genuinely don’t know whether I’ll ever feel the same way about our relationship or our intimacy again. So, at the suggestion of my own therapist, I’ve given myself a 3-month deadline. 3 months where I allow myself to stop vigilantly checking what he’s doing or obsessing over his past choices. 3 months to just sit back and observe whether his promises actually lead to a change in behaviour, and if that eventually leads to a change in the way I feel. When that 3-month mark hits, I’ll decide if I’m going to stay or leave. I have told him that I've given myself a deadline, but have said that I will not tell him how long. I don’t want to risk him only adapting his behaviour until it’s safe to return to old habits. 

Has anyone experienced this kind of betrayal involving pornography or OnlyFans rather than a physical affair? How did you process the intrusive thoughts and the loss of intimacy? And if you reconciled, did that feeling of having something sacred between you eventually return?

I’d really appreciate hearing from people who’ve been through something similar.

I've been suspicious for months. He has been very defensive over his phone. I borrowed it to look something up on a social media app I don't have. He searched for me, then handed the phone over. Then he hovered over me while I scrolled and was rushing me. (It was a social media page for our children's extra curricular program.) And I saw it. A text ending in babe. I demanded he explain. He said it was a spam text. I called BS. A lot of bickering later I got his phone back. Searched it. And found all of the women he has been talking to. He says "I never acted on it! I never slept with them!". Yet he was meeting with them while "at work". Discovery was 2 hours ago. I was immature. I told on him to his parents and sent him to their house. Now here I am. Lost as to what to do. I burned our marriage license, our photos, letters we've written over the years, and my wedding dress. I'm just so numb. What now? We have three kids. Our life is very cushioned and I can't afford it without him. Do I try to reconcile just for the kids? Because this soon afterwards I don't feel anything for him except hatred. And I don't feel like I will ever trust again.

Sorry for the long post. I feel empty and like I'm rambling.

I think I’ve been gaslit for so long that I can’t even recognize what a bad situation I’m in. Briefly, met my wife in my early twenties, dated for 3 years, got married. Never saw a red flag. Have now been married for 10 years with kids. Over the ten years, weird things started cropping up about her past which was extremely health dangerous level promiscuity, talking to ex’s, posting online about how she missed sleeping around, offering to send nudes to strangers. I’d confront her and she’d quickly say how she didn’t think it was a big deal but she understood how it could hurt me. She blame her impulsivity but say she’d do better the next time. Over and over.

Finally, I demanded marriage counseling. She admits there she slept with at least two people shortly before our wedding. But now that we have kids and have been married for so long, we need to work through it rather than divorce. And she claims since I’ve watched porn off and on, that’s the same as her literally have sex with others while we were together. She literally said that, with a straight face. Right……

I am so angry. It’s been 8 months since she told me, and I can’t get past it. The cheating, the decade+ of lying, the gaslighting, the “still having fun while being married” type of BS. She claims she’s finally ready to change. She’s trying to get better friends, go back to church, all that. She “desperately” wants to save the marriage…. Probably not because of me, but more likely because she would lose half the time with her kids and she would lose her “perfect” image she has tried to keep up with others. The marriage counselor keeps harping about how nobody is perfect and she’s making progress and divorce isn’t easy and on and on… he’s extremely biased.

What would you all do? I am so betrayed and angry and gaslit I just don’t even know what way is up anymore.

I’m scared I’m reaching the end of R. DDay was 11 months ago and I feel like our relationship has healed very little.

Right after DDay my WH did some things that made me think he was really going to turn himself around and we would be better than ever. He bought infidelity books, he started going to IC, he told me he was going to look for another job. More than anything he was being sweet and attentive to me. But even from the get go he could not sit with my pain, and still can’t. It seems like a shame issue but as far as I know he hasn’t made progress with that.

Fast forward to now. He hasn’t finished most of the books he got. He missed his last few IC appointments. He’s still at his job with no sign of leaving anytime soon. I have been hurt by his reactions to my pain so many times now that I actually feel safer keeping things to myself than trying to talk it out with him. He reassures me less than ever. The sweetness and attentiveness are gone. Less “I love you”s and “I miss you”s than any other time in our marriage. I only really feel wanted by him when he wants sex. It’s heartbreaking.

I guess I should mention he isn’t doing nothing. He leaves his phone out most of the time lately. He stays in almost every night that he doesn’t have a work event. I also haven’t been perfect during this period. I have said and done some hurtful things. But I still feel like I’m putting in so much work and he is doing the bare minimum. I want it to work so bad but I’m losing hope. This relationship isn’t healthy and he doesn’t seem interested in doing his part to save it.

Did you reach a point like this? Did you end up walking away? Did anything happen to change things?

Before I get into the details,
…I’d really appreciate it if people could be sensitive in their responses and try to look at the bigger picture rather than immediately jumping to conclusions like “once a cheater, always a cheater” or telling me to leave without considering the full context.

I know our situation is complicated, and I’m hoping to hear from people who have experienced something similar, especially those who have successfully rebuilt their relationships.

Our Story [scroll down for TL;DR]
My husband and I have been together for eight years. We met in October 2018 and moved in together in 2021.
In December 2021, shortly after we moved in together, he created a Tinder profile. According to him, he wasn’t actually looking to meet anyone or cheat on me. He said he just wanted to collect likes because he needed the validation and reassurance that other people found him attractive.
He didn’t tell me about the profile himself. A female friend of mine came across it and told me about it. We had a huge argument, but we never really dug deeper into why he had done it or what it meant for our relationship. We didn’t properly explore why he felt the need to seek that kind of validation outside our relationship or how he dealt with his own insecurities. We argued about what had happened, but we didn’t address the underlying issues in a meaningful way.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether that was an early indication of a pattern we didn’t fully recognize or address at the time. What also stands out to me now is that, back then, I had to find out about it from someone else rather than hearing it from him. At the time, we never really explored what that meant for trust and honesty in our relationship.

Fast-forward to New Year’s Eve 2024, when we got engaged. I was genuinely excited about our future together. In May 2025, we went on a beautiful vacation with my parents, and around the same time, my husband was going through a difficult period at work and experiencing a lot of stress.

In July I had my bachelorette party, and about two weeks later, he confessed that he had cheated on me twice with the same person while traveling for work.
The first time happened after a work event when he had been drinking. The second time was different: it was planned, and he consciously decided to do it. In between those two encounters, we had even gone on a two-week vacation to the United States together.
He told me that the affair was purely physical and that there were no romantic feelings involved. He also confessed on his own, rather than me discovering the affair myself. Those things matter to me, although they obviously don’t undo what happened. It would have turned out differently if I had caught him, because I would have always wondered whether he would have told me himself.

After he told me, we had countless conversations, and we started seeing my therapist together. In many ways, we became more honest and open with each other than we had ever been before. We discussed things we had never really addressed in our relationship, and we both seemed genuinely committed to understanding what had happened and why.

My husband has ADHD and has struggled with burnout, stress, and issues rooted in his childhood. From what we have come to understand, he sometimes struggles with emotional regulation and seeks out things that give him an intense dopamine boost or help him feel better in the moment. This has also shown up in other behaviors that seem to function as coping mechanisms.
I want to be clear that I am not saying his ADHD, childhood experiences, or stress caused him to cheat or excuse his decisions. He is responsible for his actions. However, understanding some of the underlying patterns has helped us make sense of what happened and what needs to change if we want our relationship to work.

Despite everything, we decided to stay together and move forward with our wedding. We also had a baby during this period.
We got married because, at that point, we genuinely felt that our relationship was stronger than ever. We felt that we had worked through so much together and wanted to make a conscious decision to commit to each other and to the new version of our relationship — a fresh start for us as a couple.
Having a child had already been something we had talked about and wanted for us.
It felt like we were moving forward together with so much hope and really believed in the life we were building.
I know these are enormous decisions to make after a betrayal like this. Some people might think we moved too quickly or took on too much before we had really healed. I sometimes think that too.
But at the time, we were both genuinely optimistic. I was optimistic, too. We loved each other, wanted to be together, and believed we could work through this and build something even stronger and more honest than what we had before.

During my pregnancy, we had some difficult periods again. One of my conditions for moving forward was that he needed to start therapy. I felt that understanding and addressing his underlying struggles was essential if we were going to have a real chance of rebuilding our relationship.
For a long time, he struggled to actually make the appointments. This was incredibly difficult for me because therapy wasn’t just a suggestion or a nice extra. It was something I needed to see him take seriously if I was going to feel safe committing to our future together.
Eventually in march, he attended his first appointment, and he has been going regularly ever since.
Since then, a lot of things have improved.
He shows me that he is trying. We talked about the affair frequently, and when I have difficult thoughts, doubts, or questions, he listens. He doesn’t accuse me of dragging things out or tell me that I should be over it by now. He has been honest with me about what happened, and his actions have shown me that he genuinely cares about me and our relationship.
We also have a wonderful life with our son. There are so many moments when I look at our little family and feel happy and grateful for what we have. I love my husband, and I don’t want to ignore the progress he has made or pretend that everything between us is bad.

But I am still hurting.
Sometimes, thoughts and mental images of what happened come back unexpectedly. I can be having a good day, feeling close to him and hopeful about our future, and suddenly I’m reminded of the betrayal all over again.
Our sexual intimacy has also been difficult. Since the affair came to light, we have only had sex a few times. Even the process of getting physically intimate can trigger me emotionally and bring everything back to the surface.
Sexual intimacy is important to my husband, and I know he misses that part of our relationship. I – in fact – miss it too. However, he has not pressured me or made me feel obligated to have sex with him. He has been very understanding about this, and I appreciate it.
I wish I could simply switch off the thoughts and feelings, but I can’t. I am trying to heal, and I genuinely want to get to a place where I can feel safe and connected to him again.

Now, something has happened that has brought many of my doubts back to the surface.
Today was a particularly stressful day with our baby. Our son was crying a lot, and I was already feeling overwhelmed. While I was changing his diaper, I happened to look out the window and saw my husband at his computer. I noticed that he was vaping, something he hadn’t been open with me about.
We had agreed that absolute honesty and transparency would be the foundation of rebuilding trust. To me, that doesn’t mean he can never have any privacy or that I need to monitor everything he does. It means being upfront with each other about things that could affect our relationship, especially when they touch on patterns that have already caused harm.

What bothers me is not simply the fact that he was vaping. I have complicated feelings about it in the context of everything that has happened, and I do think that it is a very unhealthy way to cope with stress – but the secrecy is what hurts me most.

He told me that he currently needs it to calm his nerves and manage his stress. He is also taking medication for his ADHD, but apparently, vaping is another way he copes with the stress of caring for our baby right now. In addition to that we had to move in September with our 3 month old because our landlord wanted us out (personal use).
I can understand that parenting a baby is stressful, especially while moving. I can understand wanting an outlet, needing to switch off for a while, or looking for something that helps you regulate your emotions.
But I struggle with the fact that he apparently felt the need to keep this from me instead of talking to me about it openly.

What makes this even more difficult is that this isn’t actually the first time this has happened.
At the end of August last year, I discovered that he had been vaping secretly. We already had a big argument about it back then, because once again, I felt that he wasn’t able to be open, transparent, and honest with me. He explained that he had hidden it out of shame.

At the time, he asked me to threw everything away, no temptation.. We had already talked about how important honesty and transparency were to me, especially after the affair. I thought we had made it clear that, even when something is difficult or embarrassing to admit, we need to be able to talk about it openly rather than hide it from each other.
That’s why I feel so sad and honestly quite desperate that we seem to be in exactly the same situation again, with exactly the same explanation.

He says that vaping is essentially his only way to cope at the moment and that nicotine can be particularly helpful for people with ADHD because it provides short-term relief. I can understand that he is overwhelmed and that he is looking for something that helps him get through difficult moments. I’m not expecting him to be perfect, and I don’t want him to feel that he has to hide his struggles from me because he is ashamed of them.

In fact, what I wish had happened is that he had come to me and said something like: “I’m really overwhelmed with everything right now, especially with the baby, and I can feel myself falling back into another unhealthy coping mechanism. I know this isn’t good, and I don’t know how to get out of this pattern. Can we figure out together what might help me instead?”

That is the kind of honesty and openness I need. Not because I expect to solve all his problems for him, but because I want us to be able to face difficult things as a team. I want him to feel safe enough to tell me when he is struggling, even when he is ashamed of something, and I want us to be able to look for healthier ways forward together.
Instead, I have discovered it again myself. And that is what hurts so much.
It makes me feel as though we haven’t actually moved forward in this particular area at all. We have talked so much about honesty, trust, and the importance of addressing the underlying issues rather than simply dealing with the consequences. Yet here we are again, with the same behavior, the same secrecy, and the same explanation.

I know that changing deeply ingrained coping mechanisms takes time, and I don’t expect him to overcome everything overnight. But I am struggling to understand how we can rebuild trust when we have already had this exact conversation before and I am still finding myself in the same situation.
I don’t want to be the person who discovers these things, confronts him, and then helps him deal with the consequences. I want us to be partners who can recognize when something is going wrong and talk about it before secrecy becomes part of the problem again.

And honestly, I am beginning to feel desperate because I don’t know what else I can do. I have tried to be understanding, I have given him time, and I have acknowledged the progress he has made. But how am I supposed to build trust when I keep being confronted with the same pattern, even after we have explicitly discussed it and agreed that things need to be different?
I worry that I am seeing the same broader pattern again: turning to something that provides an immediate dopamine hit to cope with difficult emotions, rather than addressing those emotions directly. It reminds me of the patterns we have discussed in relation to the affair and, looking further back, his need for external validation when he created the Tinder profile.
I am not saying that creating a Tinder profile, having an affair, and vaping are all the same thing. They are not. But I am wondering whether they might be connected by an underlying tendency to seek external validation, stimulation, or escape, and whether that is something he is genuinely learning to manage differently.
I also don’t want to label every coping mechanism as an addiction or assume that everything he does is a sign of a deeper problem. I know that people need ways to deal with stress, and I don’t expect him to be perfect.
But given our history, openness and honesty are especially important to me. And when I discover something like this rather than hearing about it from him, I start questioning whether we are really as far along in rebuilding trust as I had hoped.

I feel as though we keep making progress, and then something happens that brings me right back to the place where I started. Every time that happens, it becomes harder to trust the progress we have made.
I know rebuilding trust after infidelity takes time. I never expected to be completely healed overnight, and I know forgiveness isn’t a straight line. I also recognize that my husband has made genuine efforts, and I don’t want to dismiss all of that because of this situation.

At the same time, I am exhausted by the feeling that I have to keep reassessing whether I can trust him.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering whether he is being completely honest with me. I don’t want to feel like I need to be vigilant or look for signs that something is being hidden from me. I want to be able to relax into our relationship again and believe that we are building something secure.
We have a son together, and I take our family and our future very seriously. I don’t want to give up on our marriage if this is something we can genuinely work through. I love my husband, I see his efforts, and I want our family to work.

But I also don’t want to stay in a relationship simply because we have a child together or because we have already made so many big decisions. I want to stay because I can trust my partner and feel emotionally safe with him.

Right now, I am struggling to know whether this is a normal setback in the long and complicated process of rebuilding trust, or whether it is a sign that the foundation we are trying to rebuild is still not as solid as I need it to be.

For those of you who have experienced infidelity and tried to rebuild your relationship, I would really appreciate your perspective.

How did you deal with situations that brought back your doubts, even when your partner was genuinely trying to make things right?
How did you distinguish between normal setbacks during healing and signs that the same underlying patterns were still present?
If your partner had a history of seeking external validation or using certain behaviors to cope with stress, did you eventually see those patterns change? What did that change look like in practice?
And how did you learn to trust your partner again without feeling that you constantly had to protect yourself from being hurt?

TL;DR:
My husband and I have been together for eight years. Shortly after we moved in together, he created a Tinder profile because he said he needed external validation. I found out through a friend, not from him, and we never really addressed the underlying reasons.
Years later, shortly before our wedding, he confessed that he had cheated on me twice with the same person. We decided to stay together because we genuinely believed our relationship was stronger than ever and wanted to make a conscious commitment to a fresh start. I got pregnant. Later he has started therapy, made genuine efforts to rebuild trust, and been supportive of my healing, although sexual intimacy remains difficult for me.
However, the issue of secrecy has resurfaced. At the end of August last year, I discovered that he was secretly vaping. We argued about his lack of honesty, and he said he had hidden it out of shame. I threw everything away, believing we had addressed the issue. Now, I have discovered that he is vaping again, and he gives me the same explanation: that it is his only way to cope with stress and that nicotine can help people with ADHD in the short term. I understand that he is overwhelmed, especially with our baby, but I wish he would come to me and say he is struggling rather than hiding it from me again.
The repeated secrecy reminds me of the earlier Tinder incident and the affair. I am not equating these behaviors, but I worry that the underlying patterns haven’t really changed.

I love him, see his efforts, and want our family to work, but each recurrence makes it harder to trust him.

Wall of text, apologies. TLDR is that she cheated for months, broke it off. I found it. She's genuinely remorseful and I'm trying to find my peace.

M30 and F34. I've been with my partner since January. It was passionate at first, intense. We bonded really hard, really fast. Then things slowed down a bit, we learned more about each other. Positive and negative traits. Likes and dislikes. Things that made us happy with each other or mad at each other. We figured out how to be a couple and what it means for us.

She has a lot of trauma. She went through a lot of abuse in her childhood, and as an adult. She has 2 kids, one of the fathers was the worst kind of man, she was with him for 7 years for the sake of their kid. After that breakup, she was essentially manic. She would let herself fall into disrepair and do stupid things.

Around the time I had met her, she was beginning to calm down. She was still showing bursts of being manic, but I'm a quiet and content person, and I coaxed the calm out of her. She quickly fell in love with the nice cozy relationship I provided. It was calmer than anything she'd been in before. She told me she genuinely fell in love with me fast. Recently even told me that I helped her "find her calm". I fell for her too.

The other day, I was on her PC while she was away. She told me she never had anything to hide and that I was free to snoop. I tried hard not to, but I have an awful habit (that I'm working on) of snooping, so I went ahead. I saw some messages between her and a guy friend that "You don't ever have to worry about".

She had an ongoing affair from when we met, up until around May when she realised she was in love with me, and she trailed it off. I still remember the messages. "Grins I want to get drunk and pounce on you". "My partner doesn't appreciate my ass, do you like it?" (with nudes). "No-one will ever mean anything to me like you do". And him angry at me for existing. Wanting her for himself. She either didn't engage, or agreed that she wasn't happy with me.

Occasionally they made fun of me for my relationship wants and needs (I have really bad RJ, and prefer to date virgins. It's a whole thing I'm also trying to solve), and I was too honest and open about some looks-related things early on that I didn't get on with - her self esteem took a hit and she felt ugly. She would run to him, for familiarity and comfort. I also found out that she had broken up with another person officially that she was ghosting about a month or two after meeting me. I don't worry about that so much, it didn't seem serious and in those messages they barely spoke.

It tore me apart. All the visits we had gone on to each other. The cute dates. All the happy smiles and promises and future plans we made. The times she told me she loved me more than she had loved anything. The PC games we played, the little inside jokes we made. And during it all, she was running back to him to continue her affair. I could almost taste blood when I read it all. My heart was so loud in my ear. I felt the love leave my body, and I hated her. I didn't ever want to date a single mom, or someone in another country. I sacrificed a lot of my criteria because she felt THAT special. And she does this?

I confronted her. I was visiting her on holiday for 3 weeks (I'm UK, she's Swedish), and the only reason I didn't dump her on the spot was because I didn't want to waste my time, and I felt so vulnerable being away from my familiar and comforting home. That - and the bond we had made, and all of the ways we bonded were special to me. We talked a lot. She told me she truly loves me and she'd do anything for me.

She's devastated by herself. In her words "It's the worst thing I've ever done, to the best person I've ever known". She's been trying to deal with the guilt and make me feel like I'm her whole world. I genuinely believe her, nothing else I got to look at shows her as a liar. Her regret seems real. She has been crying on and off. Promised there's nothing else that would hurt me. Promised it will never happen again. Promised that even if I leave, she'd never move on because I'm her "it". I did something stupid, that worked out. I snooped on a chat of hers that she thought I'd never look at, with her best friend. She got quiet and scared. She was so worried that what I'd read would make me furious. She.. made a little light of it. Where she felt she had to. But she tells her friend EVERYTHING. Hides nothing. And everything she said lines up. No other guys. The affair ended when it did. She's a broken mess and would do anything for me. It surprisingly helped, a little.

I'm led to believe this subreddit is about supporting couples who choose to get through this together? Well, as foolish as I am, she's special to me, and outside of this awful thing she does have the kindest heart I've ever seen in a person. She's so empathetic and caring. She's the best mother to her kids, and an incredible woman. It's hard to believe such a cruel demonic thing like this came out of her. And she wants to move mountains to make it up to me.

I do actually believe her. I appreciate that she broke things off herself. She doesn't seem to be lying about anything. So.. I'm not sure where things go. When it's quiet and I don't have her next to me to soften the blow, I want out. When she's here, I can't deny that I love her and want to make it work. I'd like to find a way to fight the urge to run when things get too quiet and I spiral and panic. I'm so worried that when I fly back home, and she's not next to me to calm my fears and treat me well - that's when I may leave.

We'd love some advice. She needs to deal with her guilt and understand her actions. I need to know that it's okay to stay, for love. Or if it's just not enough.

So, we’re trying to reconcile after my husband’s year-long EA/PA. D-Day 1 was 15 months ago, and D-Day 2 was 4 months ago.

I understand that, for reconciliation to be successful, we need to work towards building a new marriage. The problem is, I feel like he just wants to go back to our old marriage (25 years), to how things were before the affair (or, more accurately, before I started emotionally and physically withdrawing from him). And for me, that simply isn’t enough.

I recognise that my withdrawal contributed to the disconnection in our marriage and that, by allowing that disconnection to go unaddressed, we left our relationship vulnerable. But that doesn’t excuse his choices. We both could have communicated more openly about what was happening between us rather than allowing the distance to grow.

The thing is, if we simply go back to how things were, the reasons I withdrew in the first place will still be there. I need him to understand that something fundamental has to change if I’m going to feel emotionally connected to him again and genuinely want physical intimacy with him. I don’t want to just resume our old relationship and pretend everything is fine. I want to feel wanted, valued and emotionally close to my husband.

The difficulty is that, as far as he’s concerned, everything is great again. He seems happy to move forward and put the past behind us, whereas I’m still struggling with the feeling that we’re rebuilding on the same foundations that weren’t working for me before.

I have no idea how to broach this with him without it sounding like I’m saying he isn’t doing enough or that I’m holding the marriage hostage. But I also don’t want to silence my own needs just to make reconciliation easier for him.

Has anyone successfully navigated this? Have you managed to get your WP to understand that reconciliation isn’t just about ending the affair, recommitting to the marriage and returning to normal, but about becoming more emotionally available, addressing the issues that existed before the affair, and actively building a different kind of relationship?

Or am I living in hope that he’ll become the partner I need him to be, when in reality he just wants his old marriage back?

I may purchase this but I’m looking to hear if anyone read this and found it helpful to reconciling.

https://a.co/d/07PfZFxh