This 29-year-old woman and her 31-year-old Husband both have been cheated on in serious relationships before they ended up together.

This shared awful experience is something they really did bond over. They have now been together for 7 years, and they got married 6 months ago.

“To summarize, we had a bit of a romantic-comedy style of courtship, with challenges we overcame and solidified our union,” she explained.

“Over the years, we faced more challenges together, always as a team. After his grandparents died, we started having issues between his family and their treatment of me, he had issues defending me against them, which hurt greatly both me and him (not entirely relevant, but just showing we have other general issues).”

“Those issues kind of got put on the back burner, as we got married in a small and quick ceremony 6 months ago. I have been on the search for a career position since then, having recently earned a graduate degree.”

She knows everything should be a high point in their Marriage right now, but she messed it all up by cheating on her husband.

She feels gutted that she went through with this, and she absolutely hates herself for doing what she did.

She hasn’t told her husband about her infidelity yet, and she’s not even sure she wants to follow through with it.

“Why I cheated: a horrible combination of…temporarily low self-esteem and not receiving enough attention at home,” she said.

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“I’m used to being a boss…that gets [stuff] done in my personal life and career. Having been in an admitted slump following my degree, especially with application rejections, higher cost of living, etc., has lowered my feelings of self-worth. I’ve admittedly been depressed.”

“At the same time, my husband is working long hours and sleeps most of the time when home. I have brought up concerns with this before, insisted I needed more of his conscious hours, but I empathize his job is very stressful. That doesn’t remove my feelings of being lonely, however, or wanting attention from my husband.”

Everything made her turn to social media to seek validation from strangers, and this came in the form of her posting steamy photos but progressed into her exchanging messages with men in her area.

Two weeks ago, she decided to meet up with one of these guys in real life, and they agreed to meet at a park.

As soon as arranged to meet him, she knew she would have regrets, but she hooked up with him anyway. After she left the park, she blocked this guy and has not been in contact with him since.

In the aftermath of her cheating, she felt an exciting thrill, but it faded out after about a week or so.

She then attempted to be the best wife possible to her husband, and she decided she should keep the secret of her infidelity and take it with her to her grave in order to not hurt her husband.

They both are painfully aware of how heartbreaking it is to have someone you love cheat on you, and their exes used their cheating to dump them both.

“So I thought that would be my path, to spare my dear, sweet, amazing husband that pain and deal with the aftermath myself,” she said.

“Because I dearly love him and do not want us to end, I want to work on our issues. To me, this was a horrible decision that I will always regret, not a tool to hurt my husband. I woke up this morning gutted. Probably because we had such a lovely weekend together. Gutted with the thought of what if he finds out 2, 5, 10, 30 years from now? What if he thinks all those years weren’t genuine? Moreso, what if he doesn’t find out and I make memories with him over all those years, and they are marred by the guilty associations in my mind? I don’t think I can live like that.”

She does not want to lose her husband; and instead, she wants to build a better marriage with him.

However, she wants to save him the heartache of knowing she cheated. She wants their future to be nothing but full of honesty, and being honest was actually included in their wedding vows.

Yet, she went against that, and in turn, not telling her husband about what she did does betray the very foundation of their marriage.

She’s so conflicted that she thinks it might be best to tell him about a fake scenario; one of their friends cheated, and does he think the other person would want to know?

That way, she can try to figure out if she should tell him the truth or if she should simply keep it to herself for the remainder of her life, as she initially planned to do.

“He’s sending me sweet texts right now at work, and I’m sitting here balling my eyes out,” she continued.

“If you are reading this, please don’t make the same mistake I did. I would give anything to take it back. I tried to think about how I felt being cheated on, and I tried to think about my dear husband’s response, but, in the moment, my mind was clouded…I cannot stress this enough: don’t put yourself where you’re in the situation with any options to cheat.”

“I don’t know if I can deal with the look in his eyes when I tell him. Will I ever see that devoted look of love in his eyes directed my way again? I’m not sure if I’d rather live in suffering silence or have this reality where he may not love me as much anymore.”

You can read the original post on Reddit here.

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