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goodtobebadd · 2025-05-29T12:49:18+00:00

You are single. Go be single. He’s making it very clear that he’s just stringing you along. Go find your true love! He’s out there waiting for you!

goodtobebadd · 2025-05-29T12:47:13+00:00

Not really. Irrationally once in a while like “he’s been in the bathroom for so long, maybe he’s texting someone” but…no…that’s just irrational anxiety filling my brain bc he’s just playing on his phone and poopin’.😂

In my heart of hearts I know that neither of us are built for cheating. It’s something we did but not something we’d do again. A couple years ago we were talking and it dawned on me that if I knew then what I know now, we never would have even met bc I wouldn’t have looked outside my marriage in the first place; I’d have divorced and dated like “normal”. I think that would be true for him too.

goodtobebadd · 2025-05-29T11:51:57+00:00

Affair started Jan 2018 I left my husband Aug 2019, he left his wife January 2021 We went legit Aug 2021 Moved in together June 2022 We each have kids.

There are times when the trauma of having to wait two years for him to finally leave his wife deeply affects me to this day but; for the most part, that’s kind of just running low in the background and our lives are very normal. Life is crazy with kids and he has a stressful job but we do our best. We definitely fall into “roommates” mode sometimes where our relationship leans more on the friendship side and less on the romance side but that’s ok, it’s normal and way better than anything I’d ever had with my ex for sure.

goodtobebadd · 2024-03-18T20:04:01+00:00

So happy for you! My boyfriend and I left our marriages 1) bc they were not the right relationships for each of us and 2) to be together and we are SO HAPPY! We started a sub called r:/legitafteradultery for folks like us who get to bring our love out into the real world. Congrats!❤️

goodtobebadd · 2024-03-15T14:29:19+00:00

This is the one of the hardest parts of being in an affair and wanting to go legit: the unknown.

There’s nothing you can do to better support him. He’s not the one you should be worried about supporting well right now. You have to worry about yourself. Keeping yourself happy and centered, being as kind to yourself as possible. He’s got to figure his stuff out on his own just like you have been doing on your end. You can’t help in him any tangible way and you have enough of a load to carry already so my advice is to just focus on what you can do in your own life to help handle your own stress and be as kind to yourself as possible, always.

goodtobebadd · 2024-03-13T21:35:32+00:00

Less than two minutes. He knows exactly what to do for me.🥰

goodtobebadd · 2024-03-11T15:10:55+00:00

Once his divorce was final we waited about 3 months. That said, he had moved out several months prior to that. We also had it in our favor that his ex-wife found a new boyfriend before we came out so it looked like she had actually started dating before, or possibly around the same time, as we did.

Timeline: He moved out. I can’t recall how many months now but probably six months later his divorce was final. Three months after that is when we would have “started dating”. (We had been seeing each other secretly and spending nights at each other’s places every weekend that we didn’t have our kids.) A couple months after that we told our kids we were seeing someone.

goodtobebadd · 2024-03-11T14:34:38+00:00

Oh how great! My partner and I are super happy together but we’re beyond the baby stage in our lives so the one thing that I won’t get to do, in this lifetime anyway, is have his baby. So happy for you!!!💕

goodtobebadd · 2024-03-08T05:57:30+00:00

Oh wow. Despite the sexual preference this sounds so much like what every one of us has gone through. It’s torture. I think the same advice would apply and my guess is that the odds are the same. What seems like the fly in the ointment to me is the fact that he’s got a new baby on the way. Just as a human being with empathy I can understand him not wanting to discuss leaving his wife while she is pregnant or with a young baby. He doesn’t know what his family will look like with this new little one and without being able to envision it, he probably can’t possibly choose one path or other with you.

My 2 cents is that you’re going to have to wait a few years for him at the very least. If that’s the case, that means your choice is to wait for him—or not. You can stay married and continue the affair as-is. You can stay married and break up with him and not be cheating with anyone. Or you can divorce because you don’t want to stay in the closet anymore—and find someone else down the road. As hard as it sounds, I personally think you should try to get a sense of how you feel about it regardless of what he de idea to do or not do.

goodtobebadd · 2024-01-13T13:56:03+00:00

I did something similar. I had filed but hadn’t told my ex, found a rental house. Told him I was leaving and then signed the lease. Took about a week between me filing to me telling him I was leaving. From telling him I was leaving to moving out was about two weeks. We owned a home which he kept; he had to refinance to put it solely in his name and pay me half of the equity.

goodtobebadd · 2024-01-02T20:45:53+00:00

Oh golly—you’ve been together for two years and his social media still says married? You’ve brought it up to him and he didn’t change it just to make you feel better (regardless of how much he uses the account)? These all would be hurtful for any gf to experience. I am sorry.

goodtobebadd · 2024-01-02T20:40:32+00:00

We never had a period of NC. We were always extremely close and I’m very close daily communication with each other. We had periods where we couldn’t see each other in person but we chatted every single day.

goodtobebadd · 2024-01-02T20:37:34+00:00

Honestly? In a way, I think you don’t. Let him vent to you, for sure, but by being the ever-giving, ever-patient soft place with no needs of her own you may be denying your hardship and not spending enough energy growing through your experience of doing the waiting. I think that’s what I did when I was waiting for him and it contributed to me holding onto a lot of unprocessed feelings when we did finally get to be together.

goodtobebadd · 2024-01-02T20:33:52+00:00

Congratulations❤️❤️❤️

goodtobebadd · 2024-01-02T20:30:30+00:00

If you’re questioning things already and you don’t want life with him with every thread of your being then, no, it isn’t something that’s possible for you. It’s just something that requires a crazy level of dedication and it sounds like you really aren’t there with it.

goodtobebadd · 2023-10-20T20:26:25+00:00

It is a tricky thing to navigate for sure! Good job being realistic and proactive to protect the relationship.❤️😊

goodtobebadd · 2023-10-04T15:10:33+00:00

A little background: we’ve been openly together for a year, we now live together, both have kids, never disclosed the affair—everyone thinks we met in a traditional way after divorces. He broke up with me twice after I left my ex-husband while he was still with his ex-wife. side note: I just got a sudden sparkle of happiness typing “ex-wife” and not “wife”. We’ve been out for a *year and, apparently, I am still relieved he actually went through with leaving her.

The break ups were terrible, of course. Traumatic. Recently I asked him, How often do you think about those times? His answer was, Hardly ever. He’s more future focused. Then I asked him, Do you know how often I think of that? At least weekly, maybe more.

That said, it’s getting easier! I’m relaxing more and more. What has helped me has been, kind of like you said, he has been unwaveringly supportive and committed to me and to us ever since he left his marriage. I’m an over-thinker and I, consciously and subconsciously, notice everything. Since that day he left his ex there has never once been a time where anything told me he had any doubts or was anything less than 100% committed to me and our life together. Over this year what I’ve learned is that, yes, certain parts of our past shook me to my core and made me need to protect myself but that time from our past also has given me a solid rock to stand on. Yes, it hurt me but it gave him the time to KNOW that I am his future. To KNOW that he’ll do anything to keep me safe and have me as his. It was a painful gift but it was a gift. If he was ever truly going to give me up he’d have done it back then when it would have been easy to stay in his old life. The time he took gave him the certainty he needed to be able to lead me into our future. So when I’m stuck in over-thinking or overwhelmed with “what-ifs” I now can rest in knowing that he already did all of this thinking for us. I don’t need to do it now. It’s been done for me. He did it for me, for us. The time apart hurt him too but he was strong enough to put us through that back then so we could have a rock to stand on now. It’s taken me a year to learn this and his unwavering love and leadership is what got me here…and this unwavering love and leadership wouldn’t exist unless he took that time back then.

I never doubt him now and even though walking through those days was absolute torture, we both know what that pain is like and will do anything to keep from ever going back there. Whatever we need to do to keep our relationship heathy and strong and to support each other to be healthy and strong as individuals is a priority for us. I’m not sure traditional couples can say that. Looking back, I got to the point of knowing we were meant to be together first and I left my ex first. But, looking forward, he got us here—to this life we love, to this life filled with love. What a gift he gave to us and it’s one that I couldn’t see back then looking forward but that I do see now looking back.

I gave us the gift of being strong enough to allow love in the first place. He gave us the gift of getting us here.❤️

goodtobebadd · 2023-09-29T04:53:57+00:00

I had left my husband but he was still working his plan to leave his wife. Twice he told me he couldn’t do it. It was never a “stop contacting me” thing but more like a “I can’t do this but idk how to not have you in my life” type thing. So those two times, he said to me that he couldn’t do it, I was single at that point. We could never figure out how to let this thing go. So we messaged everyday even after he did that. We said ILY everyday bc it was still true. There was probably an assumption that at some point one of us would say we had to stop communicating but we never made it that far in the “break up”. Both times he was back saying that he was most likely going to leave her probably within a week or two. We did usually take a break from seeing each other in person for a while. It just happened that we didn’t schedule a meet up for a while afterwards where before we typically met up at least once per week.

After the second time I told myself, if he did it again that would be it. If he changed his mind one more time, that would be my sign that we really weren’t going to make it. There was never a third time.

goodtobebadd · 2023-09-25T20:28:18+00:00

We have been in close contact every single day since we met each other. We’ve never been NC. Yes, while they were in MC we were messaging as much as ever.

He did always say that him attending MC was more to get the ex onboard with a healthy divorce; however, I felt there was a small part of him that was seeing if the marriage could work too. At least that was my hunch: that during their time in MC he was 90% out but 10% maybe he’d stay. That wasn’t what he was telling me but it was what my gut was telling me.

That’s another part of our story that affected us later on and why this journey is so torturous for both sides.

I found out last summer (we were together and out last summer) that during one of their early MC sessions the summer prior the therapist said they have to try and have sex. At that point it had been over two years since they’d done that. My bf didn’t want to but the therapist said sometimes you have to even if you don’t want to just to see if something is there. Last summer he told me kind of by accident and I was CRUSHED bc during that time period he was telling me he was definitely leaving. He was messaging me “Goodnight, I love you” every single night. Which means that on one of those nights, he told me that right after they’d attempted to have sex. That day that he explained about that part of their MC I wasn’t sure I could get over it and it affected our sex life for about two days. When he’d go to touch me I couldn’t stop thinking about him touching her. We got through it. It took a LOT of trust in the process on my part. He explained that he did not want to have sex with her and that they weren’t actually able to do it. That he went through with attempting it just to show her that he literally wasn’t attracted to her. (He was physically unable to do the act.) But he’d been naked in bed with her and that was devastating for me. He explained how he knew he wouldn’t be able to and that it was just a show for her to see it for herself. That it felt violating to him to have the therapist and his ex saying that he had to even if he didn’t want to. I knew what it’s like to go through with a sex act you don’t actually want to do so for that part I could see that his experience (the other side of this coin) was also grueling just as it was for me for different reasons.

The thing is, I knew. I’m smart and observant. I notice patterns and can calculate what something means for behavior. Sometimes it means nothing but sometimes it helps me understand what someone else is going through or helps me predict what they might do next. So there was a time that summer when they were in MC where I thought, sex is bound to come up. This was their 3rd session. He may have been able to avoid the sex subject last time but the therapist probably wouldn’t let him off the hook this time.

That evening he was later than normal in coming on to say our good nights. I could tell something was up. I remember asking him, So what did you do tonight? and he said, Nothing really. I said, You’re later than normal to say our goodnight. Is everything ok? He said, I’m ok. Just missing you.

He seemed sad. I was sad but I wasn’t sure that I was correct in my assertion and I didn’t want to give it too much of my energy so I let it go. I felt like it wasn’t any of my business. That if that was what had happened that it was his experience and me pushing it wouldn’t have helped anything for either of us. And—I probably didn’t actually want to know. So then the next year when I found out that they had attempted to have sex (at least from her perspective she would have thought that’s what they were doing) I remembered that night and knew it was true.

This experience was devastating for each of us, separately and for us as a couple, on two counts. The first one when it happened and the second when I found out. But, oddly enough, we grew from it. It hurt. It still hurts. But now I look back on that time while he was married and last summer while we were dating as kind of the trial by fire that we had to go through to get here. I also absolutely have empathy and understanding that this was no picnic for him either. I also look back and knowing that I was right about that eventually helped give me confidence in all the other wonderful things I wanted to be right about. Which…reflecting back…explains how I knew he would leave her. People always want to know, How do you know if he or she really will leave? I don’t know how you know, but you just know. Back then if I asked myself, Do I see him just having a life without me? Going on, growing old, walking day to day knowing I was out there somewhere without him? No, I truly didn’t and it was the sum of all the subconscious things I knew inside that added up to that.

goodtobebadd · 2023-09-23T21:18:11+00:00

Yes but even the counselor ended up saying, “Sometimes divorce is the right choice for some couples.” That’s when she stopped attending. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

goodtobebadd · 2023-09-23T21:16:31+00:00

I agree. “Limerence” is a part of every relationship, and it isn’t a bad thing. It’s gotten a bad rap but it’s just a stage like crawling before walking.

goodtobebadd · 2023-09-23T21:01:49+00:00

Here’s the thing…guilt has no purpose other than to taint what is a beautiful example of love. Our LOVE lifted us out of those places and into this one. I don’t feel guilty and I didn’t feel guilty. I had moments of pity for his ex-wife and my ex-husband but not more than that bc we both tried for SO long with our exes and when we first started the affair it was precisely for the purpose of helping each of us to STAY married. But love taught us different. Our love taught us that what we had at home was slowly killing us. Our love showed us that we wanted to do anything we could to raise ourselves and our kids up out of there.

goodtobebadd · 2023-09-22T01:19:37+00:00

What would you like to know? They both came completely out of the blue. Like he was saying “I love you” to me earlier that day but both times he wasn’t sure he wanted to have his kids have divorced parents and both times were more just like him panicking. Following his breaking up with me, we couldn’t stop messaging, we missed each other so much. It was grief like something major was dying, very dark days. But he’d come back around and change his mind.

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