r/survinginfidelity

I am after some outside opinions and what others make of this.

20 years ago i had a combined bucks party / hens party with my now wife, at this party my now father in law had a physical altercation with a man who was a couple of years older than me and a friend of a friend, my wife stepped in and gave this man a few stern words and he stormed off and punched a pole which split his fist open. I was never told what it was all about but just that they had a disagreement.

A couple of years latter my wife and this same man who was fighting began spending alot of time together volunteering on developing a committee for a new sporting event, at the time i was not happy about the amount of time they were spending together. During this period i was working night shift and a good friend of mine from out of town was staying at my house overnight and attended a community party with my wife, a couple of days latter my wife told me that my friend had entered our bedroom that night after she had gone to bed and asked if she would like one last drink for a night cap but she said no and he left, i thought it strange that she would tell me this out of the blue a couple of days after and had already thought my friend was acting strange aswell.

A couple of weeks latter i attended a bbq where the man who was fighting at my bucks party was attending, i became annoyed at this party about seperate issue and went home with my wife, the following morning i was sitting eating breakfast when my wifes phone that was sitting on the kitchen table received a text i glanced at her phone and seen the message from the fighting man that said “how is your crazy man this morning?” I was pissed about this but said nothing until a few weeks latter when i asked my wife what she responded to this message, she said “i didn’t get a message”.

A few months latter i found my wife laying on our bed sobbing her eyes out, i tried to comfort her and questioned what was wrong but she pushed me away and said she can’t talk about it.

Fast forward 17 years and i accidentally discover a chain of private message on fb between my wife and her ex boyfriend from before we were together, i questioned my wife about this secret communication which had been going on for our entire marriage and although all the messages were innocent chatting her reaction got my suspicions up as she became angry and defensive. Eventually she told me after 2 years of me pushing for information that her sexual relationship with her ex continued into our relationship but can’t tell me when it ended because she doesn’t remember.

i then asked if anything ever happened between her and the man that was fighting all those years ago to which she replied “ i never really liked him”.

This has got me thinking that maybe i have missed alot of warning signs in the past and the fighting man could have been one of these.
It is a terrible feeling and i have gone down the rabbit hole replaying everything over and over trying to recall it all as i am unsure now if what i have is truth or all lies.

What does everyone think?

tl;dr

have discovered wife has not been completely honest and am struggling to find out the extent if it.

For those that were wayward and went back to AP (secretly) after initial discovery and who were working on R with partner- how do you justify doing that or what did you tell yourself to be able to do that KNOWING how it would effect your partner.

How does a BS get over this? My experience as BH- I am trying to work through my WW EA, and find out later that she started back up with AP and it moved to a PA. How do I keep working at reconciliation?

I’m gonna start this by saying I know half of you guys are going to tell me to leave, but I (19F) do not want to leave my (19M) boyfriend.

To get right into it I will refer to my boyfriend as Mike. Me and him got together by coincidence August 10th of 2025. I had been scrolling through instagram, randomly added a mutual I had and thought nothing of it. Long story short he reached out to me and things evolved from there. Mike has always been a very patient, compassionate and empathetic person. He took care of me and put in a huge effort to understand me on a personal level. We never used to argue and we talked out every issue we had with each other. Before him I had never felt so cared for in my life. I have a bad history with relationships so it was like a breath of fresh air to finally have people tell me they saw me flourishing in my relationship rather than slowly dying. Mike genuinely made me happier than anyone I’ve ever met.

Some background on me is that I am mentally ill with anxiety and most notably quiet BPD. This makes my fear of abandonment and betraying multiply by 100x, as well as my general feelings. Usually I have a pretty good grasp on it but lately I’ve been falling apart. (Mike has known about my poor mental health since the beginning of our relationship)

A few months ago a relatively new and close friend of mine had been asking my boyfriend for money as well as me, I thought nothing of it and chose to distance myself. So did my boyfriend. Life rolled on and I wasn’t speaking to my “friend” (who I’ll call Lizzy for the sake of privacy). Me and my boyfriend were doing better than ever and were very close. I was having a great night on FaceTime with my boyfriend (we are an hour apart from each other and mainly visit on weekends) when I got a text from Lizzy. The second I opened the text my stomach dropped and my face turned pale. I immediately hung up on my boyfriend and began to process what I had just seen. The text read “sorry girly” and was followed by a screenshot from Snapchat of my boyfriend and her sexting. The conversation was short and started with her just venting to my boyfriend about suicidal thoughts and had lead to them texting for no longer than 6 minutes. She sent a nude and my boyfriend realized what he was doing and un added Lizzy. At the time that this conversation took place (about a week prior from me finding out) me and my boyfriend had gotten into a bad fight due to my BPD and seeing a photo of my dead boyfriend. I had gotten very angry with him and told him to not text me for a while. That’s when he went and sexted my friend.

After finding out I cut off my friend and confronted Mike about it. He came clean and opened up about a porn addiction. He had been struggling with porn and sexting random girls throughout our whole relationship and long before that. He told me he was too embarrassed and didn’t know how to tell me about the addiction so he tried to hide it. He claims that he was going to tell me about what he did with Lizzy as soon as my life had settled a bit. During that time I was going through a lot of big life changes and under lots of stress.

This whole process of finding out was very emotional for me to go through especially with my heightened feelings. My boyfriend had been nothing but perfect and this was the last thing I expected of him. One of the reasons it was so hurtful was because of how he knew about my fear of being betrayal and being cheated on. He was never secretive about his phone or anything like that so finding this out was a huge shock.

After many conversations I decided to stay with him and he decided to go to therapy for me. He hasn’t had access to any websites and has since deleted Snapchat. He has been bending over backwards trying to make it up to me for the last couple months and has been nothing but faithful since. Slowly it’s been getting better but we have been arguing a lot more and struggling in general. I don’t know if I can get over this but I so desperately want to. I love him more than anything and want to get through this but my mind won’t let me.

This we’re progressing a little bit but then something else happened. He had gone to a party and his ex had approached him. They had a civil conversation simply to try and move on from hating each other. The only reason this conversation happened was because Mikes best friend has been speaking with said ex girlfriend romantically and they wanted to clear the air for the sake of Mike and his friends relationship. During this conversation I was sent an out of pocket video of the two of them talking and immediately blew up at my boyfriend before he had even had a chance to tell me about it (him and his ex were still talking when I called) I know from multiple parties that he didn’t do anything wrong but for some reason this whole situation has triggered me just as much as the initially shock of being cheated on.

Please help, I love my boyfriend and want this work but I can’t stop rehashing the arguments and getting angry about it all.

(Whenever I bring up the topic my boyfriend is very patient and empathic. The “arguments” are mainly me getting mad and angry sobbing at him)

Can I save my marriage after a 2.5 year affair after I physically and emotionally cheated on my wife during our wedding, miscarriage, daughter’s birth, and her postpartum depression. I cut all ties with AP and haven’t spoke or seen her. I am in therapy to prevent this from happening again. I feel as though my marriage is going to end in divorce and idk how to save it. I regret my actions and full accountability for them. I do my best not upset my wife and I told her take all the time in the world to heal and talk with others about it. I gave up all intimacy with her so she could feel safe and not feel dirty after it. She has full access to my phone. I would literally do anything to save my marriage and my family. She told me she hasn’t decided to fully reconcile or leave. I know she contacted a divorce attorney to see her options but hasn’t told me. I fear my marriage is over. I’m scared, anxious, stressed and fear the worst. Any advice will help. Idk what else to do!