Dear DSO: "Should I Forgive Her After Her Affair And Work On Us?"

All right, folks, we have another entry for the Dear DSO page on the Dad Starting Over website, and you can submit your own story or your own question to dadstartingover.com/dear-dso. And today's question comes from Matt. The subject is Mental Turmoil Help. Matt says, I need some insight from someone who has been through and seen it all, or most of it anyway. Help this overthinker out. He says, sure, you've heard this before. Married 10 years, together for 13, 2 kids, 11 and 6. Our relationship has its ups and downs like most. However, 9 months ago, guess what? Wife had an affair. Ooh, sorry, buddy. With what I thought was a family friend. Wife went out of town for a friend's birthday party, was not in a good emotional state at the time. I'd like to know what that means. And this, quote, friend decided that it was a good time to make his move. And guess what? It worked. Worst part, I didn't find out right away. My gut feeling had me navigate her many lies and recounts of the night until I finally manipulated the truth out of her months later. My wife has always had self-esteem issues, and now with, quote, rose-colored lenses off, There were tons of red flags that should have indicated that this was a possibility, as outside validation was always a contentious point throughout the relationship. Quote, "Don't worry about it, I come home to you," she would say. Well, until she didn't. She had a bit of a rough childhood, adult trauma, and mental health aspects that all weigh in. My point now is that she says she wants to make it work and go to marriage counseling. However, still waiting for her to book the appointment. I do still have some feelings for her. Obviously, she's your wife, and would like to possibly make it work again for the kids. However, I obviously have huge trust issues, and she has to get off her butt into therapy to address her issues. Think there is something to salvage here, or am I just prolonging the inevitable and setting myself up for more pain down the road? I realize I've made mistakes. I'm willing to work on them. I'm just afraid that I'm being used for the support aspect, and eventually I'll get burned again. So yes, Matt, heard it before. This is probably the boilerplate template for guy that has been cheated on as far as guys that reach out to me and ask for help. And those guys ask for help in the form of coaching. And if you're watching this or listening to this and you're interested in one-on-one coaching or counseling with myself, you can go to dadstartingover.com/coaching and see the rates for myself and the other coaches on the team. If the rates are too high for you, you can join our member group, the DSO fraternity, and that chops the prices roughly in half. Sales pitch over. Um, back to you, Matt. So yes, very, very common. Um, I am oversimplifying to the point of being possibly, uh, very insensitive. I'm definitely not following the, the template or the playbook for your typical marriage therapist, counselor, psychologist, because I am none of those things. I'm a guy who's been through this, and I'm a guy who has spoken to hundreds, if not well over 1,000 men one-on-one from all over the world who have been through basically, Matt, this exact situation. And the situation, again, to oversimplify, is you, Matt, married a person who doesn't have the proper tools in her mental toolbox to navigate the difficulties, for lack of a better word, of a long-term monogamous relationship by your estimation. And you're probably right on the money. She seeks out validation and attention from others. Makes her feel good. And nothing makes a person feel good more so than a new romantic partner. So when new romantic partner possibilities come into her purview, if you will, yeah, she's going to jump right on it because there's no other higher form of attention and validation. Well, I mean, welcome to being a human being, right? Well, the problem is, is that she agreed to be your wife, and I presume the understanding was you two would be, um, the only sexual partner or romantic partner for each other from now until the day you die. That was the understood dynamic between you guys. And she has, by virtue of her behavior, shown that actually, I don't know if I can stay to that strictly sexually monogamous lifestyle. I think I need to get my quote needs met elsewhere, which I guess is cool as long as you, Matt, are cool with that. And if you're like 99.9% of the men I talk to, you ain't cool with that. Which by the way, good for you. You don't have to be cool with that. You have every right in the world to say this is a deal breaker for me. I'm sorry. Now, nobody's perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. People slip up every now and then and they do things that are not necessarily in the best interest of the, quote, family unit or the marriage or whatever it may be. It could be something as silly and innocuous as going and spending a little bit too much on something that you always wanted, knowing that your spouse would be against it, but you went ahead and bought it anyway. That's one form of going outside of the lines. And then all the way to the extreme end of the spectrum, which is Taking your clothes off and rubbing your dirty bits together with a person outside of the relationship, that takes a whole other level of holy crap. You got to decide what you're cool with on that spectrum, and you need to verbalize that and say, this, if ever is done, is a no-go for me. Sorry, love you, but we're done. Basically, that's what you need to do with wifey here, but to her credit, I guess you could say. She says, I want to work on us. I don't want to give up on us. I made a big oopsie. I got problems and I need to work on them. But you pointed out no therapy or counseling session has been booked yet because you did what a lot of guys do, which is said, go ahead, you book the appointment. Let's see how serious you are about this. And it's not happening, is it? Going into therapy, talking to somebody about your problems, of which it sounds like she has some childhood issues and stuff that happened into adulthood and all kinds of stuff, sitting down with a third party, if you will, and talking about all that stuff and saying, let me show you what a broken little girl I am, or boy, or whatever it may be. That's a big freaking deal for a lot of people. And a lot of people are like, I am not going there. And a lot of people will throw away their family and their relationship if it means go ahead and avoiding that really uncomfortable vulnerability of talking to a counselor. They'll just— they'll weigh the pros and cons and they'll say, me sitting with a counselor and digging up all this dirt on myself and uncovering all this hurt and this trauma, that sounds so terrible. But if I don't do it, I'm going to lose my husband and my family. Oh well, I guess I'll just lose my husband or my family. And that's really heartbreaking for a lot of people in your shoes, Matt. And that may very well be what you run into here. It's one thing for her to say I want to go to counseling. It's another thing to do it. And she may very well just keep kicking the can down the road and hoping that you forget about this little affair thing and move on. But to your credit, you realize, is this probably going to continue on later in life? Yeah, probably. From what I've seen, most definitely she's going to slip up and do it again. Um, the real mind-eff is going to be, Matt, this is probably not her first rodeo, buddy. If she in fact has the trauma that you speak of, if she in fact has, uh, this lack of boundaries, as we say, and she allows other people into the fold, so to speak, then yeah, she's going to do it again and again and again. And yeah, she's probably done it before in some way. Probably emotional affairs is how they often start. Sometimes they stop there, rarely. Usually it escalates to physical pretty quick. As you can see, all it took was literally a birthday party away from you and all it took was another guy to go, "Hey, good looking," and away she goes. She's done. Affair time. I'm going to assume she's probably still in contact with this gentleman. That's, I was gonna say, not unusual. In fact, that's the typical. You don't just do the most intimate of acts with somebody else and then forget about them. Usually not. Usually people stay in contact. And it could be argued, especially for the ladies, they form a very tight emotional bond as a result of the physical bond. So if you have a one-night stand or a little slip-up and you really feel connected to that person, you're not just going to drop them like that. Typically it's, you know, a lot of texting and phone calls and sneaking around and little meetups here and there. So yeah, my prescription is twofold. One, wife, I love you. I do. Otherwise I wouldn't have married you. And we made some beautiful kids together. And I was hoping that we had a future together, one of fidelity, one of sexual monogamy. But I see that that ain't in the cards with you. I made a big oopsie. That doesn't make you, wife, a bad person. That makes you a person who is damaged, obviously, to the point where doing the old sexual monogamy thing with one guy who fathered your children is a no-go for you, apparently. So we don't match in that way, and I am not going to go years and years with you getting hurt over and over and over again. That's not how this works. Sorry. So I'm gonna have to let you go. Let her go. Let her get help. Um, hopefully, fingers crossed, she gets the help that she needs so she can work on this so that her subsequent relationships aren't all giant dumpster fires. If you're like most guys, you're gonna sit back and watch this woman disintegrate, and it will be dumpster fire after dumpster fire, unfortunately. Um, or maybe not. Maybe she'll surprise us all and she'll really turn things around. If so, awesome, good for her, high five. But yeah, sometimes these things get pretty nasty, and sometimes the man in this scenario, uh, your scenario— because I hear from men who've been cheated on— often end up with full custody of the children, believe it or not. Not because of her infidelity— that has nothing to do with anything, basically— but because The infidelity is the tip of an iceberg, of a large giant iceberg that's sitting under the water, and that iceberg is comprised of a lot of trauma and a lot of baggage. And sometimes that later comes out in the form of substance abuse, abandoning the kids, running off with strange men, who knows, all kinds of terribleness. So don't be surprised if things go really sideways, get really screwy. And you end up being, uh, mom and dad to those kiddos. Pretty negative, cynical of me to say, but I've seen it so many times that I'm just giving you a little bit of a warning, a little bit of a heads up. Things might get a little hairy for you. Uh, but I said this was a twofold thing. The part 2 is, Matt, the most difficult part, which is now that wife is out of the picture— and she'll never be 100% out of the picture because she's mother to your children— but let's just say as far as romantic relationship is concerned, she's off the table. Now you're left with a clean slate, so to speak, and you're going to be tempted to just go out and replace her right away with another one, another woman, another partner. Don't do it. You need to have a big fat timeout. And the reason you need a big fat timeout is because you need to figure out, Matt, why did you get in a relationship with a person like this? And why did you endure and overlook all of these red flags over the years? Because as you admit, there have been a bunch and you didn't have to tell me that. I could have told you that. I have a lot of guys that come to me and say, "No, this just came out of nowhere. I don't know where this came from." And then 10 minutes into our conversation, we uncover like 30 red flags. But you're smarter than that and you realize, "Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff going on here." Cool! So why'd you just completely overlook it form a long-term relationship with a woman, procreate, make a couple of kids, devote yourself to her for life when you know this was a very broken individual? Are you Mr. Nice Guy, fix-it guy, knight in shining armor trying to save every hurt woman you see out there? If so, definitely need to take a break from the old dating game. Go into therapy, talk to a psychologist. Talk to a trained therapist, somebody who works with codependency issues, works with childhood issues that I'm sure you probably have. This didn't come out of nowhere. There's a reason you connected with and stayed connected to a woman like this. You need to get to the bottom of that. Best of luck to you, buddy. I'm sorry this happened to you, but welcome to the club.