I Cheated on my Wife

for the love of God don't reply to that text. Don't interact with her in any way, block the number, etc.

There is a lot of judgement on this thread, which I suppose is to be expected but only you can know what you will do if you decide not to tell. Will you use this as the event that makes you really appreciate your family, or will you damage your family further down the line?

I offer the following not as an excuse btw, what you did was wrong, but I think you said yourself you didn't understand your own actions. These are potential physiological reasons for what you did. We are evolved primates, we have evolved to a point where we have higher reasoning but occasionally the primitive brain/desires reasserts itself. The work of anthropologist Robin Dunbar (Oxford University) shows the vast majority of primates are not monogamous, and very few undeveloped tribes practice it. It is a relatively modern social construct. The behaviourial economist Dan Ariely (Duke University) has done research into how sexual arousal impacts on decision making. When a man is aroused his decision making changes and he is likely to engage in riskier behaviour.

I've seen it suggested you should get counselling to understand why you did what you did (from people who don't hold with the above I imagine), if you take the Jungian view that all relationships are shaped by the early dynamics in a child's life, you may as unconsciously been acting out a power play to right a perceived wrong your unconscious believes you suffered at an early age. Every relationship (not just intimate, but with friends etc) is dominated by these unconscious complexes that we can not access (hence you often see people make the same mistake with multiple partners etc). Only you know if this is true of your life and your relationships but judging from your comments I would think your underdeveloped primate brain temporarily overpowered your reasoning capacity due to your state of arousal.

You are better than your actions and personally, I don't think you, or more importantly, your wife and children should suffer for your mistake. We are not perfect and we can all make mistakes, the great thing about our evolution is we can learn from them. If you break up your family, your life will go on, your wife's life will go on, your children will probably be absolutely fine, the world won't end and in time you and they will be happy again but despite all that, I would say stick with the woman you love and show her every day she's the woman you want to be with. Go whole-heartedly into this Christmas period and if you can't make it work, be honest with your wife and let what happens happen.

Again, good luck, hope it works out.

Op, my husband cheated on me also. He didn't tell me I found out for myself months after the fact. I think it was worse discovering a web of lies and deceit and trying to get the truth out of him was hell.

You have made an extremely foolish mistake by swopping numbers with this woman. This is how I discovered his deceit it was in front of my face the whole time and I didn't know it. He had been texting back and forth with this woman and I hadn't a clue. It was his behaviour that gave him away. I had a gut feeling and I acted on it. I searched our house and found some phone bills and a large number of texts to a particular number. I rang that number and hounded that woman as to why she was texting my husband eventually she gave in and told me the truth ... He denied everything of course, I took his phone and rang her number and surprise surprise she was listed as being one of his friends, they hadn't been in contact in months but that didn't matter to me. I kicked my husband out that very day into the gutter where he belonged.

The week before I caught the ex cheating I was away with friends for one of their birthdays. We were in a nightclub and a bloke approached me I flashed the rings and said your wasting your time I'm married lad. He reached into his back pocket and took out his ring and put it on his wedding finger and said " so am I, and we all do it" I told him my husband wouldn't do that. Exactly one week later i was packing up my own husbands things! Oh how naive I was!

This woman has your phone number and can contact you whenever she likes. I assume she knows your name also, are you on social media? If so your also very exposed, she can find out about you from that also. Finding her and blocking her doesn't work she can log into anyone's Facebook and find you on theirs. Ireland is a really small country to be honest and it may happen one day that you are caught out when you least expect it...

To all the people who want to believe that this doesn't happen that often I'm sorry to say that in my opinion it does. I have many many male friends both married and in long term relationships and only one has been faithful to their partners that I know of. Most of them have cheated on stags to be honest. Most of them also feel no guilt about it or push their guilt down after a few weeks. It's fairly depressing to be honest and I have no faith in men or relationships anymore because of it. And to the people who will ask ... Yes I give my friends hell if they tell me they have cheated, but that's as far as it goes, I don't tell the wives or girlfriends just like no one told me. Everyone shoots the messenger.

The fact that you exchanged numbersspeaks volumes about your intentions though, don't you think?

arayess wrote: »

Why tell her, when you risk the consequences of being turfed out and losing your wife and kids? Only a fool would put himself in that position.
Notwithstanding the foolishness of the initial decision you made but what is done is done.

He CHOOSE to have an affair and therefore MUST deal with the consequences. You're right,what's done is done and now the op must live with the fallout of his poor decisions.