How To Leave After Cheating. Help!
Last week, I went through my husband’s phone (first time I’ve ever done this. Definitely the last!) and discovered he was cheating on me. One was an affair, the rest were “innocent flirting” but still inappropriate as they were co workers and none of the messages were work related.
He has a very loud personality. Everyone loves him, he is funny and makes everyone laugh. He loves the attention, and deep down I’ve always know this.
When I went through his phone, he reacted like he never has before. He ended up (unintentionally) hurting me by pushing the door over my feet and continuing to try and push it open. He claims he thought I was just making it up, screaming and begging him to stop because it was hurting, to get him to stop trying to get the phone back.
Here’s my problem. I adore him!! I love him so much. We do have children together, a blended family. I’m his third wife. He is so charming and handsome and can be very sweet. He’s very protective and takes care of himself and I know he loves me.
But the pain of the cheating is unbearable. Every time his phone goes off, I freeze. When he is at work, I’m worrying. I feel completely disrespected as he was laughing with one of these women in the messages because he was “pretending to me that he didn’t know her.”
How do I leave? How do I leave the only person who can heal this hurt when he’s the sole purpose of the pain?
@crimsonLand4331 I am so sorry. It's not just the disrespect of cheating, it's even worse: the way he reacted when you told him about it shows that he can easily become violent. If it happened once, it will surely happen again. He showed his true face: he acts charming when everything goes well, but the moment things don't go the way he wants to, he becomes aggressive. He's a danger not only to you, but to your children too. You must protect yourself and them. Ignoring things and pretending you're not hurt in order to preserve the illusion of a perfect relationship can't work in the long run.
The point is that, of course, you feel so tied to him that you don't know how to leave even when you know you should. It's very common in abusive relationship: abusive behaviors shows up much later in the relationship, when you're soo deeply involved with your partner that it's very hard to leave. Hard, but not impossible. You don't have to this alone. You identified the problem, now you have to work on the emotional strength required to value yourself and your children and cut ties with the past. In order to do this, you must find other sources of happiness, other strengths that have nothing to with him. Your children can give you strength, but you can also look for support through therapy or other forms of psychological support. Here you can find a list of organizations that help (usually for free and anonymously) women in abusive relationship, you can find one near you: Hot Peach Pages
Whatever you don't, don't lose sight of the goal. You can't stay there. Think about what advice you would give if a friend of yours told you what you just told us. You'd tell her that she deserve more, she deserves to be safe, valued and respected. And you do too!
Thank you so much!
