How do you "forgive" an affair?

hollydolly said:
sooo you're talking as tho' it was just a one night stand..a digression... but here we're talking about full fledged affairs. This an emotional and physical transgression.. It might have gone on for months or years... you've been lied to all along...
..you may find as I did that during his affairs he didn't use any protection, therefore putting my life in danger , without a care..just to fulfil his sexual wants..


if you could forgive that knowing that this is now a part of your O/H's personality that you didn't know about before. that they've chosen to hurt you in the most awful way .. .. then good for you.. and the chances of them doing this to you again..would be very high...
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I was talking about any kind of affairs, one nighters or on going. I never said I would forgive this. As feywon said, "It depends on how you define forgiveness." Not allowing them in my life again is a decision independent of forgiveness. But I would not concern myself with forgiveness. I would concern myself with leaving the relationship behind me and just moving on. I've had a couple of old girlfriends from years ago that cheated on me. I think I've forgiven them. I must have. At least I don't hate them or cling to a grudge. I hope they have done well with their lives.
 
Had my wife returned to the marriage, I would have taken her back subject to the conditions below.

1. Never, ever, under any circumstances can she communicate in any way with the other man for the rest of her life.
2a. If the other man reaches out to her, she does not respond and immediately tells me. If he sends her something, she immediately shows it to me. If he tries to contact her via a third party, she immediately tells me. Total openness would be required and that includes email, phones, etc. Yes, even the work ID and email, regardless of company policy. I would have done the same.
2b. If she tries her best to avoid him but he is insistent, we go to court and get a No-Contact Order. We notify the law each and every time he violates it. No warnings. No exceptions.
3. Get counseling. Both of us together. I will take responsbilty for problems I caused. But, she is fully responsible for her affair.
4. Avoid any friends or relatives who aided and abetted the affair. Completely, totally, no exceptions.
5. If the guy shows us at our house, I have a shotgun, a shovel and an alibi, and, I get to use them.

#5 is a joking. :oops:

Sadly, for me, and our children, she was too far gone. It would have been work, but I knew guys who had survived and rebuilt the marriage. But that was not to be. Therefore, I took a friend's advice and I adopted the philosophy of "living well is the best revenge".
 
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My understanding is you forgive once then you move on. If your relationship is long term then you try to forgive and move on . Life is complicated. If your spouse is steady but then fell thru the cracks. Try to forgive. Most times failures like this are part of getting older. What if? suppose that? I would have been different if?
If you have been married a long time it is for a reason. The "two shall become one" as the bible says. Most times affairs leave you empty and longing to go home. Will my spouse forgive me?
What you found out in your crazy and wild fling was that what you had was the best.
I know.............I went there. What I had was the best. I was fortunate and we are married now 54 years.
 
hollydolly said:
sooo you're talking as tho' it was just a one night stand..a digression... but here we're talking about full fledged affairs. This an emotional and physical transgression.. It might have gone on for months or years... you've been lied to all along...
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Hollydolly has a point. An ongoing affair needs to include frequent deceptions of various types. The affair can't be sustained without them. Sometimes they are outright lies, but often they are lies of omission. "I went out this afternoon and spent some time at the park. (But, I won't tell you that I also called my Mr. LoveyDuvvy and talked to him form 45 minutes while in the park ).

I was always shocked that my wife could have lied so well and so often to me. She was a master of it. Fooled me completely.

Edited to add: She must also have lied a lot to our children. They were old enough to understand cheating in a marriage and how bad it is.
 
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JustDave said:
I was talking about any kind of affairs, one nighters or on going. I never said I would forgive this. As feywon said, "It depends on how you define forgiveness." Not allowing them in my life again is a decision independent of forgiveness. But I would not concern myself with forgiveness. I would concern myself with leaving the relationship behind me and just moving on. I've had a couple of old girlfriends from years ago that cheated on me. I think I've forgiven them. I must have. At least I don't hate them or cling to a grudge. I hope they have done well with their lives.
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yes retrospect and time gives forgiveness. I forgave my first husband for his affairs, and for his thieving, and for his gambling, because I divorced him 40 years ago....

I cannot forgive my current husband for what he's done... because I'm still married to him, and he's caused me such horrors, and upset like I;ve never suffered before and didn't deserve to suffer, especially now in my older years.. .. I got completely and utterly blind-sided..
 
Aunt Bea said:
It’s all too complicated for a one size fits all answer.

I could overlook a sexual indiscretion much easier than a true romantic affair.
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I'll give the short story... We were having a hard time on several level's... And a seemingly wonderful lady stepped into my life. Over a few weeks things blossomed into a romantic relationship. Nothing sexual happened.. not from her lack of trying... I done my best to refrain from taking advantage of the situation.... DW decided she deserved something on the side and wont go into that either...
It took years but we rebuilt and looking at 40 years in Jan...
No one is perfect
 
old medic said:
I'll give the short story... We were having a hard time on several level's... And a seemingly wonderful lady stepped into my life. Over a few weeks things blossomed into a romantic relationship. Nothing sexual happened.. not from her lack of trying... I done my best to refrain from taking advantage of the situation.... DW decided she deserved something on the side and wont go into that either...
It took years but we rebuilt and looking at 40 years in Jan...
No one is perfect
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see... it took ''years'' for you and your Wife to recover from it... and you hadn't even had a physically intimate affair...imagine if you had ...
 
How do you forgive an affair? You don't have to forgive. It deserves natural consequences.
As the saying goes, "Once a cheater, always a cheater". Don't let someone hurt you over and over.
And don't assume you have to be the one to walk out the door.
No. The cheater is the one to leave, and you get the house, car, pets, kids, and half the assets
 
fuzzybuddy said:
I'm a tolerant type of guy, but ain't no way in hell would I forgive an affair. For me, it would be don't let the door hit you. Both my exes said they knew it would be over in a split second if they had one.
Have you forgiven an affair? How do you "forgive" an affair?
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Same here.

Those evil people are purged from my life.

I occasionally have to communicate with ex #2, who didn't "officially" cheat, but "fell in love" with a guy on the internet with late night sexy talk. After I moved out, he used her for sex for a few months then dumped her. 👍
 
C50 said:
I wasted ten years of my life trying to get over my wife's affair, only to catch her in another. Lesson learned.

I think if a person is capable of screwing someone else and going home to your spouse/children/partner acting like nothing happened there's something wrong with you. To commit infidelity a person needs to lack the correct characteristics to be in a mynogamis relationship, so shouldn't be.
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yep this was one of the major things that I couldn't get over that my husband was coming home and acting like normal.. we were going out as normal as a couple and all the time he'd been screwing . a whore at work ...literally... .. and even on his days off just prior to me discovering what was going on.. he;d tell me that he'd been asked in for a planning meeting .. and he'd go off mid morning.. and come home around 5 0r 6pm.. and after the whole thing burst..I found on his so called planning meeting days.. he was paying for a hotel room..

..and this was during the height of Covid. and he wasn't even vaccinated...
 
officerripley said:
I was living in a big city area when I was in my 20s back in the 1970s and almost all the guys I worked with (both married and single) were always going on about how "open" marriages were the only way to go, that monogamy is biologically unnatural for men.
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That's fine if people think that and want to live that way - as long as they are upfront with their partners and both (all) partners know and accept this in advance

Different scenario then as it wouldn't be cheating if it was honest and upfront all along.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
I'm a tolerant type of guy, but ain't no way in hell would I forgive an affair. For me, it would be don't let the door hit you. Both my exes said they knew it would be over in a split second if they had one.
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Did they? Have an affair, that is.
fuzzybuddy said:
Have you forgiven an affair? How do you "forgive" an affair?
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Neither Hubby nor ever had to make that decision. My sister and sister in law both were faced with that decision and both managed to forgive and move forward. I'm not sure that I could.

I Know that I would never forgive violence against me or the children.
 
My first wife had two (that I know of). Neither was due to my failings. I know many say that, but its really true here. The first affair was likely because I was either at work or night school (4 nights a week) or working in the yard, etc. I got a promotion and we moved to another state, and she came with (along with our 4 young kids.

It took about a year for us to get fully over it. But she never asked for forgiveness, and I really never did forgive her, but I shoved those horrible times down a hole in the back of my head and we actually had several fairly good years afterwards. Funny, she told me later that she had gone to a divorce lawyer, and she told her she had no grounds.

But one day in our 21st year of marriage, I came home to an empty house (and safe, and bank accounts). She did leave me something though, about 7 charged up credit cards! My thought was she had an emotional breakdown, and had zero thought there was someone else. Two weeks later I get a call from my daughters neighbor, a woman I knew from having get togethers with my daughter.

I said, Cxxol is not here (thinking she called for my wife). The woman said, "I know that. You know where she is, she is with my husband". I thought I would faint, and then I got really angry. No folks, my only sin in all this was working too many hours. In 21 years of marriage I was faithful and good to her and the kids. And she would tell you that too.

Anyway, the wife contacted me a week later and talked divorce, and in 3 months it was done. I confess to this day, I have not forgiven her. She blew up a wonderful family and all my hopes and dreams.

But, there is a bit of justice here. Her boyfriend didn't turn out to be all that he appeared to be. "Slick" (my nickname for him", suddenly found his business in bankruptcy, and his fancy Buick 225 was repossessed. Then it turns out he had two previous marriages, and was behind on child support and had bricks put on any earnings (he went to selling cars).

Then, he lost his hair, and his personality and decided my ex could support him. Eventually he died in their apartment, and she came home to his body.

Folks, I apologize for "too much information" here, but the original question brought it out of me. I guess in summary, its very possible to forgive an "affair" happening once, but never twice.
 
January said:
That's fine if people think that and want to live that way - as long as they are upfront with their partners and both (all) partners know and accept this in advance

Different scenario then as it wouldn't be cheating if it was honest and upfront all along.
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I've heard about people who both spouses were in agreement from day one that the marriage would be an "open" one and years later, at least one spouse would have regrets about it (if memory serves, there were kids involved). I think that some people don't give enough thought to how things are going to affect their children unfortunately; that was the case in my upbringing.
 

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