Help me, I'm a revenge cheater and don't know what to do.

[Irishness]

Hi to anyone who's about to read this.

 

Well here goes, I have been married for four years now. When I first met my husband I knew instantly it was going to develop into a serious relationship.

 

Id been hurt in the past and was always very guarded with men I dated, however with him I felt at ease and was able to open up to him. I completely changed, before him I would've been a flirt and would always keep my options open to avoid being hurt again. But when I got with him that all changed, I changed my number and didn't give my new number out to any guys, I stopped flirting and was very committed.

 

He was so good to me and I believed he would never hurt me......

 

He was due to go on a family holiday which was planned before we met. He went, and each day he would stay in touch but then all of a sudden after a week in I didn't hear from him, I got a gut feeling and then when he was on his way home he got in touch.

 

Still this feeling wouldn't shift as since the day we met he was always inundating me with calls and texts when we were apart.

 

The night he got home I recieved a late night text and he got so paranoid and started accusing me of being unfaithful, he had no trust issues before and that more or less confirmed what I was thinking. I had no proof of course.

 

He was always posting my pics on his Facebook page, showing me off and so on and all of a sudden he stopped acknowledging me on Facebook, I would put cute little things up and he would just ignore them but respond to other people. Then all of a sudden I started getting several notifications from a girl I didn't know liking all my posts and comments, I clicked on her profile and low and behold she was from the resort he had holidayed at.

 

I knew for sure he had cheated with her but wanted him to admit it, so I tried to say, if you ever cheated I might forgive you if you were honest about it, I wouldn't forgive you if you kept it from me. I tried this and failed several times, so I just came out and asked him, he flew off the handle at me and called me crazy, it was all in head and for a while I believed him.

 

But then I just asked the girl and she confirmed it. He begged me for another chance, swore on everything she meant nothing, it was a meaningless holiday fling. He cried and told me that it was the biggest mistake and he realised that as soon he came back to me. eventually I agreed to give him another chance.

 

He would never talk about it, said he wanted to forget it as he was ashamed of himself. So we kind of just didn't talk about it even though it was bothering me.

 

The following year we were married and at that time I was so happy.

However, a year into the marriage I found out he had lied to me and he had kept in touch with the girl he cheated with right up until I finally confronted him, which was about a month after he came back from holiday. When I was at work in the evening he would Skype her, he sent her links to love songs on YouTube, he told her he was in love with her ect. He even bought her some jewellery which he designed himself at the jewellers before he came home. He even went as far as to show her profile to his friends and work colleagues and brag about it. (This is information I found out, he didn't tell me it volunterally)

 

All this devasted me, as I was lead to believe it was a holiday fling and nothing more.

 

I couldn't deal with it and anytime I tried to address it to get him to talk about to try and deal with it he would refuse.

 

I kept it bottled up for a while and then one night I saw my ex in a bar and I slept with him. I was disgusted with myself as I've never physically cheated on anyone but it was purely done out of hurt and revenge but if anything it made me feel worse.

 

I haven't told a soul about this and need help from anyone, do you think I should tell my husband? He has tried to make up for what he did and is going his best to earn trust and I did this, I can't explain it, I just know it's really getting me down and I suffer with depression and the stress of this is making my depression so much worse.

 

Please help

 

And thank you to anyone who's made it to the end of this, it was super long.

[SherrySher]

Will you feel better admitting to him that you cheated or will you feel worse? Would you admit it to him out of malice of for your own peace of mind?

I hate to point out the obvious here, but you should have never married this man knowing that all of this was bothering you so much.

Have you considered counselling? It does seem as though you are carrying a heavy burden from the pain he caused you and the lies and what you did to get back at him for it all.

Your marriage is not in a good place right now at all and couples counselling sounds like an option but it might be another option to realise that your marriage in built on very little trust and cheating on both sides and that it might not work out. I am sorry you're going through this, it's a very tough spot to be in.

It might even be a consideration to separate for now and tell him that you know how in depth he was involved with this woman and that it's been upsetting you too much to carry on for now.

[Irishness]

@sherrysher thank you so much for your reply. You're right, I shouldn't have married him but at the time of marriage I never knew how involved he was with the other woman on holiday, I found that out after we married. I wish that I never gave him the second chance, wish I'd walked away and saved all this heartache.

 

If I were to tell him it would not be out of malice, it would be because I feel bad about what I've done and don't want to go on living a lie. I feel so sick that I've cheated and lied as that's not the type of person I am. I forgot to mention it was almost three years ago I cheated and I haven't done it since but the fact Is I did it back then and instead of doing the right thing and coming clean i kept it from him. I do love him with all my heart and he hasn't cheated from then but because of the depths he went to and then what it led me to do I now have no trust in him at all. I just don't know what to do.

[ParisPaulette]

Couples counseling and there you may choose to confess or not, but I will warn you none is so indignant about being cheated on as a cheater.

 

I'm not going to say the marriage can or can't be saved, but if you both go around just bottling or shoving this stuff under the rug sooner or later it is going to implode. He will either cheat again or you will or you'll tear each other's heads off out of nowhere and the damage will be done even worse.

 

Really do look at counseling and also look at whether or not you really do think this marriage is worth saving or not. He's done some pretty crappy things and in turn you did too, but that's just kind of a big red flag that this marriage doesn't appear to be a healthy, sustaining relationship. It's also a very serious lesson, a bit too late, in why you don't marry someone when there are outstanding issues with them, but what's done there is done.

 

So for the moment put aside the cheating issues and really look at your marriage to this person fully objectively. Has your life gotten better or has it gotten worse with him, is he really willing to do anything about it and are you, to fix it?

[Irishness]

Hi thanks for the advise. We have talked about counselling and I am currently seeking couselling for own battle with depression. I would go to couples counselling but I am not sure if he would, he is the type that just gets angry and upset when things from the past are brought up and he gets really irate, that's why things just get brushed to the side.

 

I would only want to tell him as I don't want to carry on being dishonest as that's not the type of person I am usually. I don't know if it would benefit the relationship by telling him but also hate keeping something from him. I have to stress I am madly in love with him, he cheated but ever since then he has done everything he can to try and make me happy.

 

I shouldn't have married him but at the time I wasn't aware of the depths he went to when he cheated, I thought it was meaningless. And in the year after he cheated before we married he did everything he could to make me happy and prove he had changed.

 

It's just after we married I found out he kept in touch with her, was calling her up from from our home we shared together, and she was on his Facebook and all his family and friends knew who she was so it was as if she was right under my nose and he didn't care.

 

I genuinely don't know what to do, as I love him but I can't trust him because I know what I have done. I would never cheat again and I know that for sure, I'd never cheated before this on anyone, the cheating itself has made me feel a million times worse, it didn't help at all, I thought it would make me feel better because I'd got him back but it's had the opposite affect.

[Unreasonable]

Well, regardless of whether you tell him or not, you need to work on your communication and I do think you should get couple's counselling for this.

 

The fact is, you don't trust him. And if you tell him, he'll have reason not to trust you either. This is not a sustainable situation. Something MUST change.

 

I guess whether I'd tell or not is your motive. You did this, as a presumed one-off, out of revenge. Telling him will hurt him, and will probably help assuage your guilt. Now, I don't think those are good reasons to confess necessarily, but I do think cheating, even if it is simply for revenge, speaks to your character. And people have a right to know their partner's character. So, if it's for YOU, I may not tell him. If it's for him, I may.

[Irishness]

Thanks for your reply. I would only be telling him as living a lie isn't what I want, I don't want us to live with secrets. Yes cheating can mean bad characteristics in a person but I've never done it before or since, I'm deeply ashamed of my actions and would never repeat them.

 

I was in such a bad place and when I tried to talk to him about what I found out about how much she meant to him, he shut down, refused to talk about it saying it's the past. I just couldn't cope, I had no one to confide in as none of my family or friends knew he had cheated as I knew they would've wanted me to leave him as I was in a relationship with a serial cheater for ten years. So I think I'd have had some help and support maybe I would've death with this a bit better and wouldn't have cheated. I'm so confused.

[Irishness]

Hi. Thanks for the reply. I would not be coming clean out of malice, it would only be because I don't want to keep it from him and believe if we are to move forward We can't live a lie.

 

I have suggested counselling but he doesn't like to talk about anything from the past, he just flies of the handle and raises his voice, and then I just give up to avoid a row.

 

I have to mention I didn't know the extent of his infedelity until after we were married, we married a year after he was unfaithful and in that year he did everything he could to earn my trust and I forgive him but when I discovered that he actaully had feelings for her we were already married, I never knew he had stayed in contact and sent her songs and so on even after he was back at out home.

 

I confronted him with this and he was apologetic and he got upset but then he got frustrated and started to yell and would walk away from me. We just couldn't talk about it because he just got angry and I just felt I couldn't get answers or reassurance from him so I bottled it all up. I couldn't talk to anyone as none of my friends and family knew he had cheated as I didn't want them knowing as I was in engaged to a man for ten years and was unfaithful to me several times, so they are very against giving cheaters a second chance.

 

I haven't cheated before or since then, no flirtatious behaviour of any kind but for some reason I can't trust him as I know what I did and I know that he was so involved with another and lied to me even after I found out, he still kept the truth from me.

 

I feel that if I'd have known the depths he went to and how involved he was I would've ended it as I couldn't deal with it all, I would never have married him. So part of my reason for cheating was because by him keeping all that from me I feel I wasted my time marying him, I couldn't cut my losses and maybe eventually meet someone else.

[Knot2loud]

There's a lot of married and unmarried couples out there who have cheated and made it through. So there is hope. Counseling for both of you would probably be the path to take. The hard part is getting over what your partner did and then forgiving him/her. Maybe in your case it could be easier since both of you are now guilty of infidelity. It doesn't erase what happened by any means. I guess all I can say is to try and move past this. It's sad, it's ugly, it's bad... but do try - hopefully both of you will.

 

I wish you and your husband the best.

[Irishness]

hi knot2loud

Thank you for your kind words. I would love to work on my marriage but I am so scared of telling him, I'm just worried it will make things worse. I now feel so low, I have never been so depressed before, and I can't cope well with rows and so on, they bring on panic attacks and I think my husband deliberately gets itrate because he knows I am frightened of altercation, so it's his way of making sure I shut up and he doesn't have to discuss anything further.

 

I'm so unhappy right now.

[itsallgrand]

Honestly I think use your time in therapy to come to terms with how much deceit this relationship is built on and what is actually left that is healthy. I see a lot of rationalizing and denial here on your part of how bad it actually is and who he actually is. You are trying to cobble something together with a rotten foundation. I'd pour all your energy into yourself and getting healthy enough to leave him.

[Irishness]

Honestly I think use your time in therapy to come to terms with how much deceit this relationship is built on and what is actually left that is healthy. I see a lot of rationalizing and denial here on your part of how bad it actually is and who he actually is. You are trying to cobble something together with a rotten foundation. I'd pour all your energy into yourself and getting healthy enough to leave him.

 

I apprentice your advice. I don't think I am in denial about anything, I know there is problems, pretty big problems. I worry that if I do leave him then I'm just giving in, we are in love and do have a hell of a lot of good things in the marriage.

 

I just am torn between staying and leaving. Is his failure to communicate a reason to consider leaving, is my deciet a reason for leaving? I genuinely don't know.

 

I'm torn and don't know what to do.

[Hermes]

You've had good advice on here Irish. Take it.

 

You don't know what to do? Head for the counsellor, both of you.

[Irishness]

You've had good advice on here Irish. Take it.

 

You don't know what to do? Head for the counsellor, both of you.

I agree with all the advice recieved, however, opening up about feelings and talking about things with a counsellor is not something he is keen on. I've suggested it in the past and he flipped out. So when I say I don't know what to do it's because I'm not sure counselling is going to be an option for us.

[Hermes]

Of course he isn't keen, Irish. He knows full well he will have to hear and discuss stuff he doesn't want to hear.

 

"and I think my husband deliberately gets irate because he knows I am frightened of altercation, so it's his way of making sure I shut up and he doesn't have to discuss anything further. "

 

Bad communication style on his part, for sure.

 

So, then, counselling for yourself, to become healthy enough as Itsallgrand said, to leave him.

[Irishness]

Of course he isn't keen, Irish. He knows full well he will have to hear and discuss stuff he doesn't want to hear.

 

"and I think my husband deliberately gets irate because he knows I am frightened of altercation, so it's his way of making sure I shut up and he doesn't have to discuss anything further. "

 

Bad communication style on his part, for sure.

 

So, then, counselling for yourself, to become healthy enough as Itsallgrand said, to leave him.

 

I agree, his ways of dealing with issues is burying his head in the sand and shouting so loudly that I just give up.

 

I am waiting on an available appointment with a counsellor, so hopefully that helps me and gives me the strength to figure out what I need to do.

 

The thing is, within our marriage there is much love, we are very affectionate, have a good love life and we make each other laugh, and majority of the times the relationship is so good but then there is the issue of non communication when it comes to areas that he doesn't want to address.

 

I just want to know if leaving him is the best alternative in the long run.

[Knot2loud]

Well... You don't have to say anything at all then. I don't think this has anything to do with revenge anymore. What happened... happened. Forgive yourself and move on. Also, I'm sorry your husband is a jerk.

[Irishness]

Well... You don't have to say anything at all then. I don't think this has anything to do with revenge anymore. What happened... happened. Forgive yourself and move on. Also, I'm sorry your husband is a jerk.

 

I am so frightened of taking the plunge and leaving him, I have very low self esteem and don't believe I am a strong enough person to go walk out, even though I know I should. That's why I'm going to counselling to get help with myself. Then hopefully I will start to value myself a bit more.

 

Can I just add my best friend moved abroad and my father passed away a few months ago so I literally can't burden my family with this and my best friend is enjoying her travelling so don't want to ruin it for her. So I really appreciative all the advice I've recieved.

[Hermes]

All the more reason, Irish, to speak with an objective third party about all this, that is, a counsellor. And, please, ensure that you find a qualified therapist. Besides, this is not a topic to be discussed with friends and family anyhow. They do not have the objectivity, or indeed the training-.

 

With help, you will find the strength and a better life too.

[Irishness]

All the more reason, Irish, to speak with an objective third party about all this, that is, a counsellor. And, please, ensure that you find a qualified therapist. Besides, this is not a topic to be discussed with friends and family anyhow. They do not have the objectivity, or indeed the training-.

 

With help, you will find the strength and a better life too.

 

I know you're right and that's what I tend to do. I have some work to do on myself and think as much as there is happy times with my husband on a whole it's based on a lie and I don't think I can ever overcome what either of us have done.

[zeino]

I'm very sorry for everything you experienced. It's not easy to open yourself to love after being guarded for whatever reason, being deceived and also carrying the emotional and ethical burden of your own actions. Please try to remind yourself that all this was in the past and you are in today now. I don't mean that you should push everything under the rug. Only, please realize that you are in a different time, in a different situation today. You sound very depressed, guilt-ridden and anxious. You probably have a lot of anger underneath this as well. None of these are helpful to you or your situation. Your priority is to come to an emotional balance, a level of wellbeing from where you can tackle your situation more calmly. For this, I suggest individual counselling first where you can process your own stuff in your own time without any pressure. Couples counselling may have a kind of pressure on you at first and the news your husband receives there may change the entire dynamic. Your counsellor may even tell you to leave this behind, you may never know before you delve into that journey. You sound like an honest, loyal person, please stick to that understanding and try to process your feelings with kindness to yourself. That will be more constructive for everyone involved in this. Try to act from there, not from a point of anxiety or compulsive confession - that doesn't have much ethical value in itself. When you are better balanced, you can discover what you really want to do and whatever you choose to do may feel right with proper reasons and regardless of the outcome. Then if both of you choose to do so, you can work on building trust mutually and try to salvage your relationship. Or you may choose other options. I feel that your selfcare and emotional balance comes first. Everything will be better after that.

[Irishness]

I'm very sorry for everything you experienced. It's not easy to open yourself to love after being guarded for whatever reason, being deceived and also carrying the emotional and ethical burden of your own actions. Please try to remind yourself that all this was in the past and you are in today now. I don't mean that you should push everything under the rug. Only, please realize that you are in a different time, in a different situation today. You sound very depressed, guilt-ridden and anxious. You probably have a lot of anger underneath this as well. None of these are helpful to you or your situation. Your priority is to come to an emotional balance, a level of wellbeing from where you can tackle your situation more calmly. For this, I suggest individual counselling first where you can process your own stuff in your own time without any pressure. Couples counselling may have a kind of pressure on you at first and the news your husband receives there may change the entire dynamic. Your counsellor may even tell you to leave this behind, you may never know before you delve into that journey. You sound like an honest, loyal person, please stick to that understanding and try to process your feelings with kindness to yourself. That will be more constructive for everyone involved in this. Try to act from there, not from a point of anxiety or compulsive confession - that doesn't have much ethical value in itself. When you are better balanced, you can discover what you really want to do and whatever you choose to do may feel right with proper reasons and regardless of the outcome. Then if both of you choose to do so, you can work on building trust mutually and try to salvage your relationship. Or you may choose other options. I feel that your selfcare and emotional balance comes first. Everything will be better after that.

 

Thank you so much for that, it's great advise and advise I tend to take. You're right, I am very depressed, I have battled depression for a decade now and I feel it's spiralling out of control. I am riddled with guilt about what I have done but at the same time I do know that was very out of character for me and on a whole I'm a good person.

 

I will go for some much needed counselling so I can try and work on myself before I decide what to do with my marriage.

 

Thanks for the kind words.

[Hermes]

Irish. You remark

"I have battled depression for a decade now and I feel it's spiralling out of control."

 

Leaving other matters aside have you ever thought of approaching AWARE?

 

 

 

Might be good to talk to someone, in a confidential setting, there in real life...

They also have a support line:

Support Line 1800 80 48 48

[Irishness]

Irish. You remark

"I have battled depression for a decade now and I feel it's spiralling out of control."

 

Leaving other matters aside have you ever thought of approaching AWARE?

 

 

 

Might be good to talk to someone, in a confidential setting, there in real life...

They also have a support line:

Support Line 1800 80 48 48

 

Thanks for that, I will look into it.

[Sarah Hummer]

I'd say you both should not have married. Sounds like he's not over this other woman. And then you cheated so just keep it to yourself. There is no trust in this marriage so idk if couples counseling will help. It could get better if you both wanted it to . but its your decision on what you want to do. Good luck out there hope things will work for what's best.