SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I'm so sorry you're here, best club nobody wanted to join. Also married and now divorcing a serial cheater currently. Let me just say this, my soon to be ex EVEN cheated after he signed a post-nuptial agreement with infidelity clause giving me the lions share of the assets. Serial cheaters may "think" they can white knuckle their addiction but they can and will continue.

Life360, or no other app is going to stop a serial cheater, location services can be turned off whenever, save yourself the pain.

Take care of yourself, CT101

Currently going through this…. 18 years together, 2 children…. Forgave him time and time again (physical affairs and many times caught inappropriately messaging other women prior to children- probably had affairs I don’t know about!)

He has now left us for OW and her child…. currently going through the pain, heartache and damage he’s caused me and our children.

It’s damaging but I kept forgiving and thought he’d change for our family…. but no he’s now living with OW. I literally gave him everything support and forgiveness (for supposedly depression and me neglecting him!) and he’d treat me like crap as soon as another woman showed him attention.

I’m hoping we will heal in time but it’s a painful process especially trying to not blame myself for keep forgiving and accepting him back when he just betrayed me over and over and let our children down again.

You’re young and will find someone who will love you and respect you that you deserve. Please don’t bring children into the mix…. You know what he’s doing - I knew but I continued to let things go and now it’s been the most traumatising time for us all having to rebuild me and my children’s lives whilst he plays happy families with someone he barely knows when I should have let go years ago to save all this heartache 😢

had just gotten out of a physically abusive relationship

With all due respect, you're still in one, except the abuser plays nice all the while repeatedly betraying you when they get the chance.

Extricate yourself from this relationship, because he will do it again.

Please don’t do what many husbands and wives do and start trying to find out how to help him help himself. He might have issues from childhood, but that does not help you at all. You could spend the rest of your life picking up behind him, and slowly dying from 1000 stabs. That’s not a life that’s a sentence.
Whatever is wrong with him goes deep into his soul and you cannot fix him. He would probably have to spend 10 or 20 years in very intense therapy to figure out what he’s doing. In the meantime, whoever is with him is going to be miserable. Don’t let that be you.

Remember you cannot fix him, change him, love him enough to see him change. So you look after yourself by moving on.

I use this often….sorrow comes in the night but joy comes in the morning. Look East, find the sun and get going.

Hi, I'm also married to a serial cheater and here's one thing that the discovery of this has really hammered home for me: the multiple infidelities aren't something your husband did, they are an expression of who he is. Who he is, how he feels inside, how he feels about marriage in general.

He doesn't have boundaries around your relationship, so his behavior reflects that.

He is currently trying to create artificial barriers to cheating, like the Life360 and passwords, but first of all that places the burden on YOU to track him and trace him and hold him accountable. That sounds like a full time job for you. But none of those artificial barriers change that he himself doesn't respect your marriage. If he truly respected it, his behavior would reflect that and it simply does not and very likely will not.

Essentially he's like a dry drunk right now. All of his feelings, thoughts, coping mechanisms and preferred behaviors he had while cheating are still all there inside of him, he's just (maybe) currently holding himself back from cheating under duress. But that temporary duress doesn't change all of the parts of who he is inside that made him want go to marital therapy with you for infidelity while simultaneously having sex with other women and telling them he wants to impregnate them. That's who he is, whether he's been threatened into a pause or not. And what happens six months from now when you don't have time to track him or check his phone and that same life stress that makes some months especially busy eats into him and he cheerfully fires up his favorite cheating app? What has fundamentally changed since he was in therapy and also having multiple affairs?

I've really had to come to terms with the fact that my husband is who he is inside, and who he is is someone who doesn't see marriage as a barrier to having relationships with other women. That's a completely consistent through-line in his behavior, as it appears to be for your husband. And yes my husband does feel love for me, but his behavior shows he doesn't respect me, respect our marriage, or even respect himself. Love isn't enough. It needs respect and empathy and the motive to achieve real partnership, which means compatibility in the boundaries around your relationship. So yeah, our husbands probably do love us, but if that love doesn't come with respect and shared beliefs, how much weight does that feeling of love really have in the marriage?

We get to choose whether we want to be in the marriage with the exact person they have shown themselves to be, the person our WH's really are. Not the fantasy of them that we really want to cling to, but do we want to be married to someone who feels the way they feel about marriage as evidenced in their words and actions?

I'm not going to tell you what to do about your marriage, but I do think you should think about yourself right now, center yourself in your thoughts about your marriage during this time. What are your boundaries, your needs, your true feelings about marriage, and are those things compatible with the person your WH is as shown in his most consistent actions? Does he share those boundaries and feelings about marriage? Think about YOU more than you think about him in this process. What do YOU need, and what are YOUR dealbreakers? And can the person you were in therapy with meet those needs and not act on your dealbreakers?

I’m sorry you are here and that you are experiencing serial infidelity. I really commend the focus you are beginning to put on yourself. I do not subscribe to the word ‘broken’ that is sometimes bandied about here as it seems to suggest there is a perfect model, but we are all imperfect. I wonder what you learnt about yourself in therapy and what you are learning about yourself on your you dates. It sounds like you are growing up and into yourself whilst your WH is currently running away from himself, and whatever the reality is he is shunning, maybe being settled, growing up, responsibility, all that adulting stuff. There may be shame around the low sperm count adding to the mix, ‘real man’ inferiority he tries to sublimate through his need to ‘conquer’ other women. Thee may be an upbringing of male privilege and entitlement added to he mix There’s simply not enough information for me as a stranger on the internet to get the full picture or to tell you to run in capital letters. If therapy can break through to his inner fears and vulnerability, then he can stop running away from himself and become the man I am sure he really wants to be, not the child he currently is. But in the meantime, you can really focus on yourself and build the you and the life you want, with or without him. Do not become his parent either. That means doing the 180. I see signs of hope. He got into therapy, he’s giving you passwords. It is not yet a healthy relationship. But focus on getting into as healthy and independent relationship with yourself as you can. It may be that he can also develop a healthy relationship with himself and then the marriage has a chance of also becoming healthy.

As a 60 something year old woman married to a serial cheater, they don't change. I'm willing to bet he has chat apps on his phone and dating profiles online right now. Get out while you can, do you really want someone so 2 faced to be the father of your kids?

I'm sorry this has happened. It's exhausting is it?

I posted similar yesterday. Dday1 was months after we moved in together. Dday2 was days after we married. I should have left. I tried but I believe everything he said. I was so worried that in my late 20's I'd never meet anyone else and settle down to start a family. I would have. I wished I'd left but I stayed and 10 years on we have children and he never stopped cheating.

At 39 I now need to navigate through this mess with beautiful babies. I've finally woken up to the trauma bond I have with this man who's emotionally abused me for 15 years but I am linked to him forever and that's suffocating.

Get out, enjoy your life. It doesn't need to be this hard. You deserve better.

I will be brutally honest with you. Your WH will never stop cheating, he will only get better at hiding it. I have been there as an optimistic 28 yr old that thought that I could make this marriage work and I am now a defeated 45 yr old contemplating divorce.
You are young, cut your losses and run far far away from this man. Never under any circumstances bring a child this marriage. Please make sure to test for STD’s. He has no right to put your physical and mental health at risk.
I hope you make the right decision. It’s easier to end the marriage now than once you get more emotionally and financially tangled as time goes on.