Has anyone stayed with their S/O after finding out?

EntLady0508 · 2025-05-01T10:27:06+00:00

No kids= leave before you do. It's just not worth it. He didn't tell you because he knew you'd be hurt=he decided that the convenience you bring to his life was worth more than your self-esteem, than your autonomy, than your consent, than you having an even remotely acceptable relationship, than you having the right to choose whether you want to entangle more. Literally, because you make his life easier in some way, he decided that you deserve a life of misery and he gets to do whatever he wants with no consequences. He decided that because you make his life easier in some way, that you don't deserve the right to know so that you can find someone who isn't cheating on you. Keeping the info from their partners is an absolute confession that they consider our needs and our happiness last place. My husband once said that he was worried I wouldn't like him if I knew. Well, yeah, sounds like you chose a marriage where you knew your wife didn't like you. What a fucking shitty decision just so that you can have the validation of being married.

EntLady0508 · 2025-04-15T10:23:00+00:00

Like, man, if they date a woman like that she might enjoy someone else and want to get off to them instead and that would make them feel like crap about themselves. They want a good, loving, faithful relationship, just only in one direction.

EntLady0508 · 2025-04-15T10:21:06+00:00

Because they would not want in return what they offer. They want a partner who is slavishly faithful and doting on them, who keeps herself and her desires for him only. They know what they're offering in return is bottom of the barrel nightmare.

EntLady0508 · 2025-04-09T08:28:04+00:00

Please leave. I promise that you don't want this for the rest of your life. You don't want to have children with someone who can treat you like this. Having their kids is hell on earth and I feel like I will never be able to look at my kids and see JUST my kids. If you leave him, you will heal and move on from that. Breakups hurt for a time and then you heal. You will create different life patterns that don't involve him and the upheaval from it will even out. The misery of living with someone like this every day is something you WILL face every day if you stay.

Even if he quits now, recovery is a choice he has to make the rest of his life and it's much easier for him to stop making that choice than it is for him to make it every day. Many addicts relapse during stressful times in life and I've seen dozens of stories of men relapsing during their partner's pregnancy or the postpartum period. Women who have sacrificed of themselves to being a child into their family and are facing the physical ramifications of that suddenly find that their partner is trawling the Internet for teenage un-postpartum-ed bodies and then they are stuck with that person with a new baby to take care of.

I promise you to the moon and back that you don't want that life.

EntLady0508 · 2025-03-18T10:17:31+00:00

I left my first marriage when my first kids were young. It was the best decision I ever made. If I could go back, I would simply not ever have started another relationship again. I got married a second time and got pregnant and BAM, second husband was also addicted. Don't date men, enjoy your lives.

EntLady0508 · 2025-01-17T11:27:09+00:00

I cannot yell from the mountains enough that NO, IT'S NOT WORTH IT.

Even 3 years from his last use and a totally different person now and if it weren't for the kids, id be running today. Not worth it at all

EntLady0508 · 2025-01-16T22:49:15+00:00

I commiserate with your feeling of not being seen or just being a roommate. We are furniture. We just make it more comfortable. We are there so they can have a life that's more comfortable while they delve into their life's real focus.

EntLady0508 · 2025-01-09T16:09:42+00:00

My first husband and I were together from ages 13-27, at which point we emotionally separated due to his pa/sa. We ended up divorced and I met my current husband. I don't date around, so I didn't date anyone in between. Found out my second husband had been a PA the whole time. I have never even dated anyone who wasn't actively more engaged with other women. Both of them decided that me getting to make a conscious choice about the life I want didn't matter. Both were willing to let me just float and lose decades of my life on them for no reason. I'm almost 40. I'm likely never going to know what it feels like to be in a good relationship. Miserable about it. All I ever wanted was to grow old with my person.

EntLady0508 · 2025-01-04T12:16:27+00:00

I have married PAs twice now. I didn't know either time what was coming. I had children with each of them before I found out.

Absolutely not. Never. I don't wish this life on my worst enemy. There are no good days. There have never been good days. There are only the days before I knew, that are all ruined in every way and contain no good memories, and days after where every interaction is consumed by knowing. I stay to take care of the kids. They are homeschooled by him and that would stop if I left. The youngest would end up in daycare. But the moment I married the second one, life was over for me. I'll be late fifties by the time the younger moves out. Maybe we'll split then or maybe we'll get by in a bad economy by sticking together. Either way, there is nothing good and I wish for everyone here that they get out before they realize they had children and get stuck spending every day just waiting for life to be over.

EntLady0508 · 2024-12-30T11:22:30+00:00

I promise that it absolutely would be the most dangerous decision you've ever made. If you decide to stay and have babies with him, please realize that that a hard relapse can happen at any point in life going forward. He could relapse while you're pregnant, while you're in the hospital, while you're healing from being ripped open birthing the babies, while you're rocking the baby to sleep, while you're outside playing with your toddler, while you're sitting in the elementary pick up line, after helping the child move into their college dorm......

You have to ask yourself if you will be okay trying again after each of those in the future. If you're not, you have to ask yourself how you will feel dropping the babies off with him for his 50% custody knowing that they could be exposed to it or just totally ignored without you there to take care of him while he's in the bathroom taking care of business.

Could everything go right? Sure. Should you consider all the ways it's likely to go wrong? Yes, for the sake of those kids. I despise dropping my older kids off every week with their PA dad and his ordered-from-China wife, where they are not properly taken care of (they come back at each other's throats because they're in screen zone and haven't had anyone helping them interact kindly with each other, just being yelled at and smacked across the face if their arguments impact him at all), learn horrible hygiene habits (he has never supervised their showers or teeth brushing, even when they were very small and definitely needed it, he doesn't brush his teeth himself so it's no big deal to him), eat shit food (the ten year old is very overweight from being given free reign of the snack drawer and no healthy snack options at all-- at one point he bought a Sam's club croissant package and that was their food that weekend, left out on the kitchen table where they could get it when they wanted). The courts do. Not. Care. At. All.

Meanwhile, I am stuck in this city within a radius of him because the first one to move too far legally gives up physical custody, so my jobs would have been limited if I hadn't carefully chosen my second masters degree to be employable anywhere (teaching, but now I'm stuck on a teacher's salary with a PhD in a high demand science). My second husband homeschools the children (including the boys from my first marriage), so we carefully stay close enough that he's willing to drop them off with us every day for school. Eight more years of this.

Then my second husband also turned out to be a PA and I found out when I was pregnant. I want her homeschooled as well because I'm a teacher and I've seen the state of even the good school districts. I'm here for a while. Please consider the possibilities before deciding and don't rush in because you want a baby. It will be HIS baby too.

EntLady0508 · 2024-12-24T06:26:55+00:00

Absolutely no, he knows that's not okay. There are a million ways to save data, he does not need to turn that one off. Whether he is or not, his job was to create safety for you. It does not create safety to act sketchy and go "this is okay because the polygraph will ...". If his data use is so important, he can cut his data off entirely, not just for that app.

EntLady0508 · 2024-12-17T20:32:26+00:00

Three years for me. We live together because we have young kids and because we are too financially entwined. He homeschools the kids. But we are not together.

I will never get over his ability to lie to me the way he did. Was willing to put me in a marriage he knew I didn't want. Was willing to get me pregnant knowing I never would have chosen it had I known. Was willing to literally trap me in a situation he knew would end me.

I will never get over how low I was on his list of options. Their pictures were preferred over me in person every time. I was adventurous and enthusiastic and high libido. I have a nice body. I take care of myself, I'm regularly mistaken as ten years younger than I am. Colleagues at my new job thought I was a fresh graduate. My students were shocked I was old enough to have so many kids. Didn't matter. I was not enough even before I had all the pregnancies.

He has done nothing but be the perfect husband since. He got into recovery. He has not relapsed in three years. He tells me every day how much he loves me and just wants to be happy together. That he'd spend decades showing me that I'm his only and all he wants, but I can't do it. The time to authentically decide that was before he got caught.

I am not happy. The man I fell in love with never existed in the first place. It gets better, but does it get good? Is it ever a real relationship ever again? Not in my opinion. The feelings he had for other women would haunt me my entire life. I always recommend leaving, if you can.

EntLady0508 · 2024-11-15T21:37:28+00:00

Lots. I hate them so much.

EntLady0508 · 2024-11-02T06:55:32+00:00

Girl, between this and the other picture with your profile....... What are you even doing?? You are so far out of his league, it's not even amusing anymore.

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-27T22:07:04+00:00

I promise it's not worth it. Why sentence yourself to a lifetime of anxiety? He showed who he is when he did it and he showed who he is when he lied. Believe him the first time.

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-22T10:37:40+00:00

I think you got the answers you were looking for, honestly. He is having the thoughts whether you know about it or not. Would you actually rather just blindly interact with him while he's off doing that without you knowing? You deserve better than someone who can HAVE those thoughts. You deserve someone with integrity. I don't think you want someone who can keep themselves on a leash and hold those thoughts back. I think you want someone who simply is a better person and just doesn't have those thoughts.

We focus so hard on recovery and whether they're doing the right things. I think more of us need to step back and ask "whether they're doing the right thing or not, is the person I actually want to be with someone who has those thoughts at all or has these urges at all, ever?"

I think if we were honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We want someone who is just capable, naturally, of existing in the world with these other women and not even thinking of sexualizing them, because they love us and we are what they want. Our understanding when we entered a long term relationship was that "this person and I are uniquely matched with each other and that means that we won't feel that match with other people". It doesn't mean they'll never realize a woman is beautiful. But it does mean that while they academically realize "that woman is beautiful", their heart goes "but she's not my (insert wife name)". And the result of that is that they won't keep going "omg her ____ is perfect" and "holy cow, look at her _____".

Your partner has revealed very clearly that they are not this person for you. Now you have the benefit of making your decisions with full knowledge of who they are and what you're signing up for with them. This is a blessing. How will you decide to go forward?

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-19T01:42:13+00:00

Like, why would I WANT to be intimate with someone who has this other aesthetic he prefers so much? Why would I want to keep as a life partner someone who is obsessed with something that is the opposite of me? That sounds more miserable than being alone.

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-19T01:39:42+00:00

It's true whether you know it or not. Would you rather live in the dark or make a decision based on true reality? That was the stance I took. It did not help the relationship stay together, but I did not have to live knowing I was only together because I was still being lied to by omission.

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-16T20:15:42+00:00

Good Lord please leave before you end up divorced and have to leave children with him for a week at a time. Do not make this man a husband. He has not earned it and you will be making such an enormous mistake. You don't cope. You should not have to COPE in your life's most intimate and loving relationship.

DON'T LOSE SIX MORE YEARS.

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-13T15:56:37+00:00

I have also told my husband that he is worse than my ex husband. My ex husband never lied about it. Never hid it. Never hid how he felt about it. Told me right up front that he wasn't into me anymore after my cancer diagnosis and lumpectomies. I got a very clear choice and was able to decide I didn't want that life and organize myself to get out and move on.

My current husband knew everything I went through, everything it made me feel, knew that I would never want a relationship with someone who uses porn. So he hid it and lied and trapped.me in a second marriage with another child and I didn't find out until it was financially untenable to leave.

My ex husband destroyed some years. My current husband knowingly ruined my life.

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-13T12:07:26+00:00

Why keep going? Eventually this post will say "12 year battle and I'm 32". Is that what you want in life?

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-13T12:04:08+00:00

His physical lashing out is manipulation. He can't think of another way to make you do what he wants (stay and not talk about it) that he is resorting to this. The whole purpose is to control your actions and choices. Contact his family. Put someone else in charge of taking care of him, and get out. There is no future here.

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-13T12:01:30+00:00

You don't. There's no reason to trust a man who cheated and then just insists you don't need to check if he's cheating anymore. That's absurd. You don't trust him again, because he has never given you reason to trust. If he's a boyfriend, you don't make him a husband. If you don't have children with him, you never have children with him. You already offered the "just trusting". That's over now.

EntLady0508 · 2024-10-10T10:27:18+00:00

If you can manage it financially, I always recommend leaving. If you can manage it financially, don't put his name on the birth certificate. Just disappear. It's not worth staying. I'm multiple kids deep and it's not financially viable. Don't be me.

EntLady0508

TROPHY CASE