My (25F) husband (25M) cheated on me and I thought I could get over it but my heart is shattered, should I stay and give it more time or go?

We’re both 25. We’ve been married just under 2 years, dated for a year and a half before we got engaged, and we just had a baby at the beginning of this year. Things between us lately haven’t been ~amazing~ but not by any means bad, but I could tell something was definitely off. He was just a tiny bit more distant than normal. We were still having sex regularly, he was still affectionate and would talk to me, he was still an amazing, doting father to our 8 month old son, but I could tell he was holding back just a little bit. So after a couple of months of this weird, in-between good and not good thing we had, I did something I’m not proud of. I went looking through his phone when he was asleep. And what I saw turned my entire world upside down and broke my heart.

He not only had been cheating on me, but had a full blown emotional affair with a woman he kinda sorta works with. He’s the manager of a corporate jewelry store and she is a manager at another location in his district. So he doesn’t see her every day, doesn’t interact with her all the time, but still has the occasional conversation with her when their company does district-wide events. The texts I saw indicated that he wanted to leave me and our son for her, that he wanted her to be his wife, that he was in love with her, and had never felt this way about anyone before her. Naturally I was furious. I confronted him. He didn’t deny it. He told me the truth, that he wasn’t in love with me anymore and he was in love with her. But he swore that they both mutually decided to not do anything about their feelings, forget everything, and move on with their lives. He insisted he wanted to make our marriage, our family with me work. He apologized profusely, said it’ll never happen again, said he’ll never speak to her again, and that although he doesn’t think he’s in love with me anymore, he knows that feelings come and go and he still loves me unconditionally and thinks his feelings will eventually come back if we put work into our relationship.

Normally I wouldn’t tolerate cheating of any kind, I’d break it off immediately and never look back. But we have a baby. A real, little person who depends on the best of both of us. And I don’t want to hurt him by breaking up our family. I don’t want to end things. I still love him deeply. So I said we could fix things. I could, with time, forgive and move on if we were both willing to put in the work. Go to therapy, talk more about what makes us unhappy in our relationship, admit where we could both be doing better/doing more for the other person.

This was 3 weeks ago, and he has followed through on his end of it. I know it’s going to take a long time to be okay again after something like this, but I can tell he has been putting a lot of effort into changing the the things I said I wanted him to change. We’ve started going to therapy, we’ve been talking openly more, and things have been a lot better. Our sex life has been amazing. But I am still so hurt and so broken that he did this in the first place that I find myself questioning every day if I can really, truly, forgive and move on. I want to so badly. The depth of his betrayal just hurts me so badly that right now it feels like I can’t move on from it. I am constantly paranoid he’s still talking to her and just got better at hiding it. I check his phone all the time. I make myself physically ill with worry over what he’s doing and if/when he’ll do it again.

Who else has gone through this? Who has come out on the other side of a situation like this? Should I cut my losses and get a divorce and move on? I’m so lost. I wish I could talk to literally ANYONE about this but I feel like I have no one. Please help.

*tl;dr - my husband cheated and I told him I could move on with time but I’m doubting if I can. Should I just call it quits and move on? Should I give it more time?

Submitted November 26, 2021 at 03:33AM by lzo24759 https://ift.tt/3xoBz4C