[nina03]

I've been cheated on by two different partners. The first time, in my early twenties, we were monogamous. My wife at the time had an entire other life with a girlfriend who had kids that my wife was part time co-parenting. I didn't know about it until a year after I left her. I was not surprised when I found out, though. It generally fit with her overall horrible personality.

The second time I was cheated on was in my current relationship, 6.5 years ago. At the time, we were poly. Cheating in a poly relationship has many of the same elements as cheating in a monogamous one including dishonesty, breaking relationship agreements, hiding the other relationship, or hiding the extent of it, among other things. (That is to say that the poly relationship wasn't the problem or the part that was "cheating", my partner's dishonesty and disrespect for our agreements was.) When I finally found out all of what had been going on, I was devastated and wanted to break up with my partner. He asked me to stay, and to try to work it out, then broke up with the affair partner that day.

Over the course of the next several years, he went to individual therapy and did intensive work on why he did it, and how to live with integrity moving forward. We went to couple's counseling which we are still doing, and we also attended an affair recovery class for four months. I also went to individual therapy to work through my hurt and anger. It took a long time and a lot of work, but we are healed now. Our communication is better than it has ever been. We are so close and connected, and healthy as individuals and as a couple. I didn't know a marriage could be this way.

We aren't poly anymore, because we wanted to focus intensively on healing our relationship before even thinking about opening it up or giving any energy to other people. At this point, I don't know if we'll go there again, but if we do we have much better communication skills this time, so I think it would be ok.

All of this is to say that infidelity is so hard, and there's no right answer to how to handle it. I would say, though, that if the person who cheated isn't willing to go ALL IN to make amends and do the work to heal themselves and the relationship, it's not emotionally safe to stay with that person. That means taking full responsibility for the harm they caused, and working to help heal the damage and restore trust, which includes not downplaying the harm caused by their actions. It also means not blaming the person they cheated on for their own bad decisions.

I personally am glad that I stayed, and really glad that my spouse was willing to work hard to align with his own integrity. We're living the rewards of the work we did both as individuals and as a couple, but I know that we're the exception to the rule when it comes to this kind of thing.