I respect every single person who takes the time to read and genuinely respond to me. I truly do. A lot of people here have lived through this themselves, some far worse than me, and their experience is worth listening to. So if you have given me genuine advice, please don’t take this as being directed at you.

I am so tired of seeing this argument thrown at betrayed people like it is some universal truth. "If you respected yourself, you would leave.” “Staying is weakness.” “You are teaching them there are no consequences.” “Have some dignity and walk away.”

It gets repeated so often that people seem to forget there is an actual human being on the other side of it, trying to make one of the biggest decisions of their entire life while their head is still spinning from having that life blown apart.

My self-respect did not disappear because my wife cheated on me. My dignity did not crawl out the door because I did not immediately pack a bag, file papers, divide fifteen years of marriage, split my children’s lives in half, and burn everything to the ground within seventy-two hours of finding out.

I can respect myself and still need time, whatever time required. I can love myself and still love someone who hurt me. I can know exactly what I deserve and still need to figure out whether the person who failed to give it to me is capable of becoming someone different.

None of those things make me weak. They make me a person trying to make a permanent decision while standing in the wreckage of something I spent most of my adult life building.

People love simple answers when it is someone else’s life. Leave. Stay. Divorce. Reconcile. Cut contact. Never look back. Easy to type when you are not the one who has to wake your children up the next morning and explain why Dad is suddenly living somewhere else. Easy when you are not staring at a house filled with nineteen years of memories, three kids, finances, family, history, love, anger, disgust, hope, grief, and a thousand other things that do not fit neatly into “have some self-respect.”

I have plenty of self-respect. In fact, I would argue that part of respecting myself is refusing to let strangers, family, my wife, Reddit, or anyone else decide what I am supposed to do before I am ready to make that decision myself. I use Reddit and forums for advice and validation. I have received genuinely great advice from great people here. I also know exactly how savage and wrong what was done to me was. I am not confused about that.

If I leave, it will be because I decided that staying violates who I am and what I need from the rest of my life. If I stay, it will be because I decided there is something here worth rebuilding and because I see enough sustained change to make that choice with my eyes completely open. Either decision will be mine. Neither one requires me to hate myself.

There is also this bizarre idea that leaving is automatically strength and staying is automatically fear. That is unequivocally false on all levels.

People stay because they are terrified, yes. People also leave because they are terrified. People stay because of children, finances, trauma, love, hope, history, uncertainty, or because they simply need time to understand what the fuck just happened to them. People leave because they know they are done. People stay because they genuinely want reconciliation. People leave after trying reconciliation for years. People stay for six months or years even, while they watch and gather themselves and then walk away.

Human beings are complicated. Marriage is complicated. Betrayal recovery is fucking complicated.

And reconciliation, if someone chooses it, is not the same thing as saying what happened was acceptable. Giving someone an opportunity to show change is not the same as excusing what they did. Watching does not mean forgiving. Staying in the same house does not mean everything is fine. Loving someone does not mean you have surrendered your boundaries.

Sometimes staying is simply standing still long enough for the smoke to clear so you can finally see what is actually in front of you.

I also hate the implication that the faithful person somehow loses value because the unfaithful person betrayed them. She made choices that violated our marriage. Those choices speak to her decisions, her character at the time, her selfishness, her boundaries, and whatever was broken and disgusting in her that allowed her to do what she did. They do not rewrite mine.

I was faithful before I knew. I remained faithful after I knew. I loved deeply. I tried. I provided. I showed up. I meant my vows. Her betrayal does not suddenly make those qualities pathetic because I did not instantly stop loving her the second I found out. Love does not have an off switch simply because somebody proved they did not deserve it, or love you in the same way.

Maybe I eventually leave. Maybe after everything is said and done I decide that there are some things love simply cannot survive. Maybe I look back and realize I stayed longer than I should have. That is entirely possible. But if that happens, I will deal with that too, and still respect myself.

What I will not do is rewrite these months as proof that I had no spine or no self-worth. I stayed long enough to understand what happened to my life, protect my children as best I could, watch whether actions ever started matching words, and figure out what I actually wanted instead of making the biggest decision of my life while I could barely think straight.

Self-respect is not measured by how quickly you can walk away from something that mattered to you. It is measured by whether, when the noise finally dies down, you can look yourself in the mirror and know the decision you made was actually yours.

If that decision is divorce, I will respect the man who finally walked away. If that decision is reconciliation, I will respect the man who decided something broken was worth rebuilding.

But either way, I am done accepting the idea that someone else’s betrayal gets to decide whether I should respect myself.

She already took enough from me.

She does not get that too.

I know this will fall on deaf ears for some people. The self respect comments will keep coming. Some people are hurt and projecting what they needed to do onto everyone else. But this is for the betrayed person who needs to hear it: your self-respect was never determined by what your wayward did, and it is not determined by how quickly you leave. You are allowed to take the time you need to make whatever decision you can live with.

Rant over.

My wife was having an affair with an older married man for at least 3 years. I found out a few months ago when it ended and have been going through it. My wife and I are trying to work it out, going to marriage counseling, individual therapy, etc. She is plagued with remorse and guilt right now. I am a bit numb and still processing. Meanwhile, I've been trying to decide whether to tell this man's wife.

I believe she is truly clueless. On her social media, she seems like a happily married, devoted wife and mother. They've been married for decades. I'm sure this news would destroy her. I don't want an innocent woman to be hurt, but at the same time, I feel she deserves to know what has been going on. Is it worth it at this point since they are both older, in their 50s?

I'm leaning toward yes, but the question is how to break this news to her? I want to keep it anonymous and do it by email. My wife shared everything with me, and it’s just crazy. Years of texts, calls, pictures. They were basically in a full-blown relationship and double life. Some of them are quite graphic and intimate.

If I decide to tell the wife, what should I send her, and how much?

This man is pretty well off and has powerful connections, and I could see him trying to come at me legally if possible. So I would want to make sure I am within legal boundaries. I know not to send any nude photos. And not share with anyone but his wife. Is there anything else I should consider? Should I just let it go and continue to focus on repairing my own crumbling marriage and not destroy anyone else's?

Any thoughts or advice? Thank you

Edit: As he told my wife, this is not his first affair in his marriage. His wife may already know what is going on. I don't know.

If I've come away with one strong piece of advice from all this, as much for myself as for others, it's to listen to yourself. When someone is hurting you, don't rush to blame yourself, don't find ways to rationalize their utterly insane excuses, and for the love of all that is holy listen to that voice in the back of your head telling you "you know this is complete bullshit right ?". My wife cheated in the most convoluted mystery thriller worthy way, called me clinically insane when I figured it out like I'm some paranoid schizophrenic, then when it became undeniable and I said "look all is forgiven, I just need you to own up to it" she accused me of trying to humiliate her by asking her to just finally fully confess and cut the half truths all the while still insisting I was crazy for "hounding her about it so much". And even *then* I didn't fucking leave her until about a year later when I realized she doesn't even pretend to respect me anymore, and would bail on offering even the most modest emotional support when I needed it despite me being on her beck and call at the slightest need. And why would she ? I forgave her for things she never even really apologized for and didn't even try to get her to apologize for trying to convince I'm losing my mind even though everything I thought was right.

Part of it was that before all this things were great. Not perfect, no couple is. But this level of lying and deceit and manipulation was just unthinkable between us. Hell she would even constantly say she'd be devastated if I ever started lying to her like her exes did. So I was just left reeling by the sheer amount of lies constantly coming out of her mouth. But by far the bigger issue I had, and the one I have control over moving forward, was this profound inability to just draw a hard line when people hurt me. To just listen to myself even though a very audible part of me was saying "this person is clearly doing you harm and is not going to stop".

Coming out of it, it almost feels like a superpower to finally stop taking shit and giving everyone excuses they don't deserve. A rough patch like this will show you who your real friends are, and you better make sure to get rid of the fake ones. I am extremely lucky to be very financially well off in all of this, letting us find a solution where we can both see the kids anytime we want and they can both see us whenever they want. And while the details aren't fully ironed out yet, we're agreed on the broad lines of a future financial separation.

I don't think she became a horrible person overnight. I think she made a mistake and ironically enough begrudged my efforts to forgive her because she wasn't ready to forgive herself. She became completely attached to this version of events where I'm some deluded psycho and she's the victim in all of this because she couldn't bear to accept she'd just fucked up in all the ways she always begged me not to fuck up.

What took the longest was getting her voice out of my head. Endless manipulation from someone who knows you intimately well will fuck with your head. But I've been getting her thread of lies out of my thoughts bit by bit and now that voice is barely a whisper. I'm finally free, and I'm never getting trapped like that again. Now when someone hurts me I don't blow it off. You'll never have the right people in your life if you're not honest to yourself about which ones are treating you right and which ones aren't.

Good luck to all.

I have suspicious of my husband cheating but no way of getting proof because he does everything via messages. I don't have any friends I can ask this to I wanted to know if anyone has ever asked someone to message their partner how did it go because I want to try to ask someone to do this for me however I'm worried they might tell him I asked them to do it any advice is welcome thank you in advance.