Will we recover from cheating - part III

to believe we can make it.
So I left telling him that we both need to think a lot (he says now he cant say nothing), and that if he still sees me in his heart, in his life, he would need to come and speak to me and reassure me I can trust him again. That in the meantime, if he has nothing to say, we shoulndt be saying nothing at all. That he knows where to find me.
I need to think about myself as well, so I'm not going to speak to him, or be available, or showing myself online. And if he has something to tell me about us (hopefully that he is ready to work on a reconciliation) that I would be here.
I know I'm stronger than him and I also know I am the victim and that I'm the one doing all the work (for now) after what he did. But I also know that if I'm not the one holding us together, he is not emotionally capable to do it by himself.

My question for you reading this: do you think he will confront his demons and try again if I give him the space to clear his mind? He knows that there will be no contact unless it is to have a serious talk about our future..

I do appoligise for the long text.

I am sorry you are going through this and experiencing such a situation. The way I feel, it is a highly personal and situational decision to make.

I went through infidelity early in marriage past marriage and while pregnant with our second child. We separated for 7 months but did reconcile and lasted another 12 yrs. I truly beleive he never stepped out on our marriage again and it ended under different circumstances.

Now I say it depends on the couple, the person who cheated, the one scorned and circumstances. For us, we were both very young when we got married and both contributed to the downfall within our marriage, he acted out (BTW we are both Leo's) by going into the arms of another woman. Not condoning his behavior or choice of how to handle it, but it is what it is. When we reconciled we worked hard at our relationship and fix what was wrong. Once I took him back I could not throw up in his face his indiscretions. So for us it was like a broken bone that only healed to be stronger. Not to mention I learned a lot of myself during this time.

Now if there were different situations, I may not have taken him back. So this is a highly personal decision.

Dear Jynja,
I never been through a similar situation: being cheated on, as far as I'm aware.
Usually I don't throw sentences into to the air like: If someone cheats on me it will be over; or not over, because I don't predict my behaviour in situations I never lived before.
Therefore, I never have thought how my reaction would be in case something like this happened. But now it did, one of my first reactions was: this can transform us, can make us better, this could be a wake up call for both to realise life is too short to live in a cold war and lets grab this awful thing and make something good out of it.
So by all means, I didn't give up.

In fact, I was suppose to leave the next day after I found out. I changed my flight. But 4hours before the flight I told him: If I leave now, it will be over. So I'm going to stay for the rest of the days as I was supposed to initially.

Even though he asked me to stay before, he said he was too messed up to speak more about it. I said that I would stay anyway and we wouldnt be speaking about it.
So I stood there, kept on decorating the house, pretending and living a false 'normality'. We were both on auto pilot. He sleeping on the couch and me crying myself to sleep everynight.
The night before I left we spoke again. And again I told him I still have faith in him.Like I also told him in the airport: that all I needed was for him to tell me I could trust him and I would. But that he has to tell me that and mean it.

My aim, as you asked, is to fight for this relationship and to help him with his hurt. He already said he is ashamed and he regrets it. So now he needs to forgive himself so I can start the process of forgive him too. That's my aim. And I do love him still. That's why i'm dealing with his pain now, so I can deal with mine later. I don't think it will be easy, but I think I can do it. But I need him to come after me now, to make an effort, because even though I think I can forgive, he needs to do his share too.

However, what I would like to understand, is that being him a leo man, will my best move to keep silent and let him think what he has to think? I don't think to pressure him at this stage would be good.

What would Mrs Clinton or that Scorpio lady would do in order to save this relationship and not let him die because he was to ashamed?

Thelioness79,
I can not try to imagine the pain of going throught that while pregnant..I'm sorry.
"Once I took him back I could not throw up in his face his indiscretions"

That you said, I thought about it too. I told him, lets talk about it, lets talk about it until exhaustion and 'clean the house'. Otherwise the subject will come up in the worst possible situations and that will kill what remains of us.

I'm telling this to myself: if I take him back, if he wants to come back, I will need to train myself not to bring this subject again.

Hi again Jynja!

In an ideal world, I would seat with him and talk all we have to talk. But I had to return. We are now in different countries.
We spoke as much as we could speak while I was there. Not as much as we should, because he was too hurt to speak more.
He doesn't like confrontation, he never did. I learned that the more I push, the more I pressure, the more he goes away. In the years we've been together, even though it is difficult to control myself, the more space I give him, the easier he gets closer to me.

I'm not shutting down waiting for him to return just because I'm a princess and he needs to beg for my forgiveness. Tipically I do just the opposite: I shout, I scream, I confront, I'm a pain until I get what I want. But this behaviour usually just scares him off, so basically I'm forcing myself to be quiet in the hope that I will give him the space he needs to think about it.

I'm aiming for the "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn't, then it was never meant to be" approach. It seems you don't think that's the wisest of the approches. Being that we are in different countries and knowing that he is not ready to speak about the subect just yet.....what would be the best thing to do...if any?