just arrived!

This is sooo hard!! I decided just after christmas, which was as long as i could hold out for that my marriage had finally died, if not my marriage then certainly my emotions for it. I am 42 and we have been together for about 20 years, married for 15. Two fantastic although busy and at times difficult children plus two children from his first marriage, now all grown up and with homes and lives of their own. Our first child is a honeymoon baby, 5 weeks after he was born i was diagnosed with cancer. Four weeks after that his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Oh my god what turmoil for us all at that time. As i finished my chemo his father sadly passed. From then on life has just gone steadily down hill. We got through the cancer and had to wait another few years before we could try and see if we could have another baby, In between then his mother also passed away. He is estranged from his brother and has little contact with his sisters. Half way through my second pregnancy he started to moan and complain about how i was always moody and if this is how i was then we should never have had another baby etc etc. Time moved on and we seemed to rub along ok. About a year later he told me in the throws of an argument that he thought that he was in love with someone else. In fact someone who he had met through work. We sort of got through it and then he went to her works christmas party, In a nut shell he had an emothional afair on and off with this woman for years and then 2 years ago He finally told me that it had also been a physical one. on the night of the christmas party. I found out about the emotional one through telephone bills and then he lied about it all. We decided to try to make a go of it and finally I felt that we were getting places only to discover that this september he had sent her flowers. He had found out that she had been in an accident. I understand that but then he lied again about even sending her them. Since then i have tried so hard to get past it and i cant. In some ways i do lovem him but do not want to be with hime any more because i simply do not trust him. He says he loves me dearly but i do not believe that he can given his actions. So i arrived at my decision, yet it still feels like if i ignore it it will all just go away and we can get on with life, yet the other part of me thinks i am just being stupid to keep putting up with it all. I don't know if this is because its so hard to do and its me just putting my head in the sand and wishingit all away?

I am finding it all so hard as i feel like i am the one that is splitting us up yet I am not the one who has done these things. I just don't feel like I am going to have the strength to carry it through and will end up just going back and settling for what i know.

Anyhow Hello to you all and sorry that this is a bit of an epic introduction. I look forward to hearing from you.

Hi, sometimes life can be sooooo hard - sorry to hear your story. But very briefly in my opinion when the trust has gone - it is really hard, even impossible to rebuild it.

So you have to ask yourself is your marriage worth the hard work. There is nothing he can do to rebuild your trust other than never break it again - that takes a life-time. Is he prepared for that?

The work you have to do is resist temptation - the temptation to check his phone at every opportunity, to ring him at work to make sure he's really there, to follow him when he goes out? And if you do manage to resist the tempatation will it eat you up?

This is what you are both facing if you decide to try. Once again ask your self if your love for him is worth it?

In my experience it was too hard, I resisted the temptation and it ate me up but he also broke my trust time and time again. Unfortunately this has affected me and my ability to trust other men.

You have to think about the future and the effect of trying and not succeeding.

I wish you luck and I also hope there is someone out there who has tried and made it work and can give you another opinion

I understand totally how you feel. I tried too and could not and also got the blame for not 'getting over it'.

I won't lie - it is very very hard. But in the end the thought of living in a lonely unhappy marriage was too horrible to contemplate and I wanted to be a better mum by being a happy person instead of a sad onlooker to my family.

It has made me change my view on fidelity and trust, but you can work through those with the right person.

I do know some people who have made it work, counselling and a few years of rebuilding and effort - some would say its as hard for the 'cheater' they have to accept their wrong doing, make you believe truly that they want you and no-one else and accept that it takes time and it needs to be worked through - my ex was of the mind - dont mention it again as you had your faults too. That never worked for me.

You are giving it serious thought and only you know how YOU feel about it all. Don't be scared to make your decision either way. Both ways are hard, but listen to your gut feeling x