I have been searching and reading throught this site for a few days now...
Everything I have read seems to be about people who have been married for a while (my case 18 months) and have had only one incident of infidelity - though it may have lasted for a few months or even years - <p>In my case I just found out that he had been cheating on me during our engagement - mostly one night stands - a few weeks after the "confession" he confessed he saw an old highschool aquaintance and did it again.... a few weeks after that he had a relationship type affair with this older women with 3 kids - that went on for a couple of months. <p>This last incident he didn't tell me about until I questioned him because of some suspicious behavior. <p>Is there any hope? I feel like I've been decieved from the very beginning of knowing him.
18 months and 5 or 6 different women - It sounds like an episode of Jerry Springer and living through it is misery.<p>Thanks for any insight

jeb,<p>I'm sorry for what brings you here!<p>My WH cheated on me during our engagement and I did find out before the wedding (although it was just 1 week before). I thought it was a one time thing so against our pastor's advise - I married him anyway.<p>We separated 2 weeks ago because it has been on going. I know this isn't what you wanted to hear but it's one way your marriage could go.<p>Do you think your H could have a sexual addiction? Have you gone to counseling as a couple or individally?<p>I don't have the answers to this question, but it seems as though something is going on with your H and you need to get outside help.<p>I wish you the best!

Hi, you are not going to want to hear this,
I have been with my H for 10 years, married for 5 of those 10. We split before we got married because he was cheating. I took him back, thinking we had it resolved. I think it is happening againg, or did it ever stop????? I believe it is with the same person from before. <p>It hurts more after you are married than before. I honestly believed that after we got married it would not happen again. I know that when it happened before we got married we were fighting alot, and his so called best friend was telling him he did not have to put up with my crap. After all we are not married. (We were living together and had 2 children at that time and I felt he needed to behave more like a family man, instead of running around in the bars acting like a single man)<p>Good luck to you, married or single, the decision is always tough.

To Sue and Jeb5:
Here is my first post.
I may as well be the guy you refer to in your respective messages. I had cheated on my W before we married and she was barely able to trust me after knowing, yet we lived together for about six years and she married me when I asked her to. We were married for 10Y and I found myself in an EA relationship (I hope I get these acronyms right) with a coworker without really knowing what it was I was trying to get out of it. To this day I can't say what it is I am lacking - either personally or in my M - to know why it happened, and it's 20th Ann this year. Am I just a weasel? Is there some flaw I can repair? We still have big barriers between us and it has been tough, but we remain together despite no kids or other ties but the M itself.
I had wanted to comment that there may easily be hope because I love my W and I won't leave her, but things have never been right. How do you want to fix things and why?

Please forgive my short-term memory but I've been under a ton of stress lately and do not recall your screen name.<p>I have been in a live-in committed (?) relationship for six years. The man I am living with has a serious sexual addiction that I knew nothing about when I met him. In fact, we were in our relationship for almost 4 years before I found out he was addicted to pornography. We had just moved into a new house, I was going to school, it was around Christmas time and SHOULD have been the happiest time of my life. My discovery blew me away.......literally!!! This is a man that always seemed so self-disciplined, well mannered, didn't even use profanity around me, and was never, ever sexually aggressive or asked me to do anything I found distasteful. The things I admired the most about him turned out to be nothing short of fraud. He always told me porn didn't trip his trigger and if you've seen one, you've seen them all. In other words, he is a master deceiver. I went through hell these past two years. All the predictable stages of grief and went to the very pits of despair. In addition to the porn, he started smoking marijuana on a daily basis. I am sure he was filled with guilt, and guilt produces depression. He must have needed the marijuana to cope with the depression of his double-life. I moved out because of all three things......the porn, the pot, and the double-life and lies. I was gone a total of six weeks. My plans had been to start a new life for myself. I moved to another state. The people I lived with were very nice and Christian people, but they handicapped me in alot of ways, and my depression grew even deeper and I ended up in the hospital for a week with major depression. I had no choice but to come back to this toxic environment......but my worst nightmare came true while I was gone. He has a propensity towards teenage pornography. It is his "thing." While I was absent, he became involved with a real-life, teenage girl. Their relationship has been building in intensity. She phones him 3 or 4 times a day and he treats me like I don't even exist. He doesn't even have enough respect for me to ask her not to call our house. She has even phoned at 2 o'clock in the morning. He doesn't have enough backbone to tell her not to. I think he may be doing cocaine with her also (but don't know where they get it) because he was carrying around a mirror in his hip pocket. At closer look, the mirror has razor marks on it. She is starving for attention and will do anything to get it. She comes from a family that neglects her and is living with a friend not far from us. I just found out the other day that he had a phone installed for her. My life is ruined. I have no other place to go for right now, so you can imagine what all this is doing to me emotionally. I wish that I had something encouraging to say to you, but if he is suffering with a sexual addiction and doesn't get PROFESSIONAL help, it will only escalate.<p>Starlite

Wow...Jeb5 I don't know if you are stil out there but, what i would give to find out how things turned out almost 3 yrs later. I hope for you that the outcome is a good one.

Just like you, I came across this post because I was looking for the same answers. I found out that my H was cheating on me throughout our entire courtship and continued the relationship into our M (if it was over w/ the OW then I would have never found out that he cheated in the first place).

I often wonder if I should bail now while the damage is minimum. I have my suspicions that he might have some issues with sexual addiction. He is in the navy which makes our situation unbearable. Being in the military affords him many many opportunities to cheat on a regular basis.

Is there anyone else out there that can add there wisdom and advise from their own experiences, regarding cheating before and during the early part of marriage?

Ok... Here's some good news to go in with all of the bad... My H and I have been married for 6 mths now (not long, I know, but bear with me). He cheated on me with a mutual friends sister 3 mths after we got engaged because he was afraid he'd never know what he was missing (he was a virgin). He held it in for 2-3 weeks and finally broke down and told me. I was hurt and still am (although our M is better). Since the A he has been nothing but a faithful fiance, and later H.

Through my experience I have learned that yes, people can and do cheat, and that yes, it can be overcome. What you need to do is either go over this site and work together to see what was missing to make him do it or what caused him to have the A (it worked wonders for my husband and me), or go to a marriage counselor. I know that many have had bad experiences because or recurrent A's after marriage, but there is hope. I may not be any help, but I just want you to know that there is a way.

I sincerely wish you the best of luck and hope that everything turns out for the better. Just don't give up and remember that as much as it hurts now, it could strengthen your relationship in the end.

Best wishes,
Amy Lynn

This is the exact forum and thread I was looking for- fortunately I'm internet savvy enough to have found it in 5 minutes instead of searching all night!

I'm in a huge dilemma right now. I have been seeing an international student for the last year, but she is now attending school several hundred miles away. We have made marriage plans for this summer (no ring yet because I'm still saving up!). The biggest problem is that her English is bad and she knows very little about American culture. I'm the kind of guy who's a music/movie junkie, as well as all other areas of American culture- politics, history, you name it. I've lived here in the U.S. my whole life, what can I say? But I am very in love with her (I think) and want everything to be wonderful.

One night after being at a bar with friends all day watching the football playoffs, I happened to meet this girl who is into most of the things I'm into, and we have a millions things to talk about. She is not a slut by any means (she only goes to bars once in a blue moon, and believe me I can tell, being a barfly myself over the years), but we hit it off so well we went home together the first night (several months ago) and have been seeing each other 3-4 nights a week ever since.

I ended up having to tell her about my foreign girl, but the foreign girl knows nothing about her. Of course I haven't told her about my plans to MARRY the foreign girl. To make things worse there are certain things I don't like about the American girl too- that she's overweight and messy (I'm a neat freak). But on the plus side, I love being with her and it's so hassle free because she lives close by, has a good stable career like I do, and has a car (3 things that the foreign girl doesn't have). But most of all, her and I love all the same obscure underground bands, things like that, and I've tried to end things with her many times and we just keep getting back together.

I've been going back and forth in my mind about this for 2 months now and it's taking its toll on me (not that you should feel sorry for ME, the JERK in all of this). But I'm having such a hard time with my mind changing (sometimes even 20 times in the same day) that lately on weekend nights I've been escaping to the bars alone, in the back of my mind hoping maybe I'll meet a 3rd person that I like more than these 2, and that will solve all my problems. Of course I know that's ridiculous, unlikely, and would probably make things even worse.

I already survived Valentine's day but now both their birthdays are coming up and I can't go on like this. I've missed work from being too hungover, wasted money at bars, but most of all I'm scared of hurting one of these girls, because I love them both dearly, and want them to have wonderful lives. I always despised the Mormons who practiced polygamy, but unfortunately I now understand exactly how a polygamist would feel <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as most of my friends are all biased one way or another, and you people are all strangers. The one person's advice that sticks in my mind is my own mother. She said to my surprise: "Life is very long, so make sure if you marry someone it's the right person, or you'll regret it" (I hope she wasn't subtley referring to regrets about my dad, who she's been married to for 40 years!!!!!)

I know I'm being a total assh*le, so don't worry about insulting me, I deserve it. Take care and good luck to all of you with everything you're going through.

Yes, you are an a**hole. You don't, by definition, love either one of them. Love is more than a feeling. It's how you treat someone day in and day out.

Wonder if your international girl is as faithful as you are.

TooInvolved and too fed up

Amy:

Thank you so much for your words of encouragement. I definitely see the heart of what you are saying. However, my situation is SO very different from yours. In some sense we are in the same boat right now. We really don't know what the repercussions of our H's A will be; it’s too soon to tell. In hopes of helping others like us, I will continue to update on this forum.

I'm glad that you know WHY your H did what he did. I believe that this contributed a great deal to the reconciliation of your M and healing process for you. To this day my H has revealed no why's or how's. Good luck to you as well! I'm glad you found this website and that your H is an active participant as well.


Insane:

What can I say ...you have made far too many mistakes, of which I'm not going to begin to tell you about. B/c I can tell from reading your post that you are a very intelligent young man and all ready know your short comings in this situation. I'm guessing although you were probably born and raised in the US, you are a 1st or 2nd generational immigrant, meaning that even though you are "Americanize" you have been greatly influenced by a different culture. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway having said that:

1) - Rethink marrying anyone right now. It's not clear to you what or who you want right now. So M shouldn't even be an issue. NO WAY to marrying either girl (to put it simply).

2) - Priorities. If you desire to get married then you should prepare yourself for marriage. No one wants to marry a liar or a cheat. Work on this 1st. Start by being honest w/ the foreign girl too. In preparing yourself for M, figure out what are "deal breakers" for you and what are the things that you may not like about a person but CAN live w/. This may take sometime but will be well worth it.

3) - Read the information here on MB (not the forums) about how to have a successful M.

Hope this helps.

TooInvolved:

I know that you are hurting b/c of the statement that you made. Insane might have called himself a name, but that doesn't give YOU the right to. I think you over stepped your boundaries. I believe the intent of MB forum is to help people going through marital/relationship problems.

Yes you and I are going to read some post that just ticks us off to no end. And yes there are plenty of jerks posting on MB too. But if you don't have something that is going to help someone that is looking for help, then you should not say anything at all, move on to the next post. If you want to vent, then create a post and vent towards the person that caused your pain.

White Dove-

You're right. But it is hard to stomach knowing of someone who obviously, intentionally and continually hurts someone he "loves." That is evil. Sure people make mistakes...Then they STOP! He's "going insane" not because of guilt but because he wants to have his cake and eat it too. It's all about him not what's right, not his intl. girl, not his chubby girl, who by the way, must be pretty, shall we say, indiscriminate in her sexual behaviors to sleep with a guy on the first night. But he can "tell" when girls are slutty or not. Umm hmm...His committment to his intl. girl is nil, to not only cheat but to do so wtih someone he doesn't know - because they "hit it off."

He seriously needs to rethink both Rs and the fact that when we truly love others, our thoughts and actions are for THEIR good not just ours.