Reply #12: It's hard. Sometimes you think you've survived it, and years later

[jobycom]

it pops up again. The moment someone hangs up, or your spouse is late, all the fear and betrayal come back. Even little lies set off your suspicions again.

I'd say it depends on whether you believe you can trust the person again. If you have the slightest doubt, or if they block you in any way, you'll never survive it. You will never trust them, and so you will live in constant suspicion, and they will have to live with that suspicion, and it will destroy them, too.

You also have to ask why you are staying. Do you trust the person, do you want to regain what you had? Or are you afraid to be alone at that most painful moment? Are you clinging to your abuser because you have no one else to cling to? Or, like I did, are you thinking more of their needs than your own?

I think it's possible for the relationship to survive, but two things have to happen: both parties have to really want a relationship after that, and the cheater has to be willing to live under constant suspicion and having to prove their fidelity. Usually what happens is the cheater feels like everything is back to normal, and gets upset when their partner wants constant reassurance, or wants to talk about the pain they are still feeling. The cheater gets over it quickly, obviously, and the victim never, ever, does. The cheater has to want to live with that. Most relationships I know of, my own included, didn't break up with the discovery of the affair, they broke up later, sometimes many years later, when the victim finally realized they would never trust the cheater again.

One last comment: "cheating" is subjective. I've known couples who could care less who their spouse was having sex with because they were doing the same thing. Some couples even tell each other, and encourage each other, and even swing together. Cheating is all about the lying and betrayal, the putting someone else ahead of you. I knew a woman with a wild swinging lifestyle. She and her husband slept around all the time, and had almost no rules. Once, he broke one of those few rules, and it hurt her badly. I watched her trying to pretend to herself it didn't matter, and I watched her expression collapse in pain as she failed. Cheating is about betrayal, not sex.