We Both Cheated. We’re in MC but looking here for advice.

This all came to light two weeks ago. We've gone to marriage counseling twice since, and we're doing "ok", but it's still been rough. Lots of ups and downs, talking, expressing our emotions, and figuring out how to move on. We both agreed that divorce is our last resort, and we want to stay together. We're trying to navigate reconciliation and forgiveness.

We've been together for 8 years, married for 5. We have a young daughter and our marriage is overall a happy one.

So I'll start with me... 2 years ago, I went out with some coworkers for happy hour. Long story short, we ended up having a few drinks and I ended up having sex with a female coworker in the bathroom. Details don't really matter, but she made a move, started kissing me, took my hand and dragged me to the bathroom where I proceeded to cheat on my wife, who was at home with our daughter. At the time, of course I knew what I was doing was terrible, but I did it anyway. Afterward, I could hardly look my wife in the eye. I cut all contact with this girl immediately, and decided I would never do anything like that again. I trickle-truthed my wife and told her a girl had kissed me. She asked if anything else had happened, and I said no. That was it. I decided to take it to the grave - wallow in the suffering and guilt and not allow myself to relieve myself of the guilt and hurt her by telling her. I decided to focus on being the best husband and father I could be and never allow myself an opportunity to do that again.

Now, my wife. Some background: I met her in class in college. I was 21, she was 24. She had a boyfriend of 6 years at the time. We started out as just study buddies and worked on some projects for class together. About a month after I met her, she tells me her boyfriend broke up with her. Shortly after that, we started to have sex. I was her rebound/breakup therapy, and I was totally OK with it. They were still living together at the time, but I thought whatever, we're just FWB. A few weeks went by and I started developing feelings for her. Stupid 21-year-old me, asked her to be my girlfriend before her ex had even moved out of the house. She said yes, and we were then bf/gf. About 2 weeks later, her ex finally moved out of the house. Her cheating occurred 2 weeks after that, so 1 month after we had the "girlfriend/boyfriend" talk.

The night she cheated on me, she didn't answer her phone for several hours. At about 10pm, she calls me to tell me she's sorry, that she left her phone in the car, she was at her friend's house studying for a test. A few months go by, and that night stuck out in my head as a strange one. I finally got her to admit that she had gone over to her ex's house to talk, as he asked her to come over and have a discussion about where they stood, etc. She said she feel asleep on the couch and drove home in the morning. I pressed her on this occasionally for years, as it just didn't seem right. She always swore nothing happened, and she told him that nothing would happen, that she was going over there just as a friend to talk and help him move on. Eventually, I decided I was being crazy and dropped it.

Fast forward 7.5 years to 2 weeks ago. That night popped into my head, and I pressed her again that if she cheated that night, to just come clean, because I deserved the truth. This time, she broke down and confessed that she did end up having sex with him that night, and it was the last time. I believe her. Why? I clearly remember the night and the week that followed. The following night, we were hanging out and her ex called while I was there. I told her she needed to answer and tell him that she and I were together. So she did. He asked if we had been having sex. She said yes, and he lost it. He ended up getting very violent toward her that week, making threatening phone calls, and she got a restraining order against him immediately. So, yea. I know for a fact that was the last time.

After she told me this, I confessed to her that it wasn’t “just a kiss” at happy hour, and that I had sex with that girl in the bathroom. Obviously, she was crushed. We both were. We both sat and cried for a bit, naturally got a bit angry, and we went back and forth for a few days before our first marriage counseling session.

Listen, I know I'm objectively the bigger asshole here. I cheated on my wife with a baby at home. Asshole, scumbag, POS, I know it. Remind me in the comments, if you feel like it. She's working to forgive me, and I'm working to forgive her. The issue I have with her isn't so much the sex, it's the lying. She lied to me about that night for many years - through a proposal, and engagement, a wedding, and a birth of a child. I lied too, and we both give the same reason - that we didn't want to hurt the other person, and we were also afraid that we would end the relationship over something that we vowed to ourselves to never do again.

My cheating was a careless ONS with no regard for my marriage, my family, or my commitment to them. I was an asshole with no integrity, I know it. Her cheating, as she says, was an act of confusion, fresh out of a 6 year relationship, and had many unresolved feelings. Someone told me this could be classified as "transitional" cheating. Wife told me she did agree to be my girlfriend, but truly wasn't ready. She said she should have waited and took time to herself. From the time they broke up, to the time she cheated on me, was just over 2 months. However, it was still technically cheating, and she did lie to me about it. The same I did to her.

So here we are. Our marriage counselor has been awesome. She knows everything and is helping us work it out. We’re also beginning individual therapy next week. My wife said she can forgive me, and she wants me to forgive her. I'm optimistic that we can work through it all, but I wanted to see if you had any advice. Yea, we're fucked up. Yea, we may have a long road ahead of us, and yes, I should be burned at the stake. But we want to be with each other. Like we told our counselor - If we could take a magic wand and erase these two incidents + the lying, we'd have a pretty much perfect marriage. Any tips for moving on? Or perspective on how we can make sense of everything and "let go"? Thank you in advance.

Tl;DR: We both cheated on each other at vastly different times in our relationship. We both lied to each other about it. We want to stay together and make it work. We know it's going to be a long process, but we're going to try our best anyway.

13 comments posted: Friday, October 23rd, 2020