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The very short history is that we’ve been married for 7 years, she was a SAHM for 6.5 years, we have two kids (4M and 6M) + one from her previous marriage (13M). In Aug of 22 she started working as a teacher and ended up having an affair with a co-worker starting in Dec and ending sometime around late May / early June. Her DDay was in late Feb and I played “pick me” for a while. At the time she said she made a huge mistake, but didn’t see how I would be able to forgive her and that I deserved better than she’s done to me. I thought that was BS and she was trying to soften the blow of not wanting to even try to work on repairing our marriage, so I filed for divorce. Despite all this, we mostly stayed friendly. I just didn’t see the point of being nasty when we have to co-parent now.
Then my jaw was on the ground. She didn’t want anything from me. I make 2.5x what she does and she didn’t want child support or her share of the house (we have at least $100k equity in it), she didn’t want her share of my 401K (another $100k or so…). Nothing except 50/50 custody rotating weekly and to make sure she had either Christmas eve or day each year. She said she didn’t deserve any of it because “I broke our marriage and don’t think I deserve any of that.” Dumbfounded I suggested we use part of my 401K to pay off every single piece of debt we have with an APR over 8%. We sign paperwork Monday (7/31).
A few weeks after I filed she said she was moving in with him and that she “cant afford” to live on her own in our area without help. I didn’t believe that at the time. She moved in on a Sat and was clearly upset about it. She kept apologizing to me about everything as her things were loaded (he wasn’t there). I was very cold and had been for weeks. Sunday I get a knock on my door and there she is, dressed in church clothes begging me for another chance, any chance. I told her no and went on the date I had scheduled, leaving her at my house. Before I left as she was so emotional I told her to go see a therapist with her problems, they wouldn’t be mine anymore soon. She said she would but that she can’t afford it, so I offered to pay. I’ll be honest, I did not expect her to go, but she made an appointment within a few hours of that and has been going weekly since.
Between her going to therapy, not wanting anything, and being extremely flexible around the kids our conversations became more frequent. One day she called excited to tell me about a cert she finally passed and I invited her to dinner out with me and the kids. At that dinner she told me she had moved into a separate bedroom and was treating him like a roommate. She asked if my answer was still “no” and if I’d consider letting her take me on a date. I did, and that lead to us talking daily and several more dates.
Fast forward to today:
She planned to move out of the house with him, but the apartment fell through. I told her I wasn’t comfortable with her moving back “home” and so she has paid rent for August. But asked if I would consider letting her move back into my house. She even offered to write a short document saying she had to be out by Sept 1st, so that if I didn’t want her home the paperwork was already done and she’d move out. If not, I could just rip it up.
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She’s doing all the right things and there are so many little things that are too small to add, but cumulatively amount to a lot. I’m so very stuck on the fact that she’s living with him and wants to come straight to my house without living on her own first. She’s not pressuring me about this and I feel like she’s respecting that boundary while taking baby steps towards it. I’m afraid if we live together again too soon it’ll undo what we’ve done so far, on the other hand, I obviously do not want her or my Kids around him, even if it’s for another couple of weeks or a whole month. My therapist gave me the advice that the only way to fix a relationship is by being IN a relationship and it’s got me rethinking my position on this.
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TLDR:
I’m divorcing my wife after she had an affair. She ended the affair but lives with him and we’ve been dating again. Should I let her move back in?
6 comments
My advice is to finalize the divorce and property settlement first.
In all of this about getting back together, you talked about her and what she wants. There wasn’t much of YOU in there. Personally, once cheated on, I’m done. However, how do you feel about her? What do you want?
In order to figure that out, you might take some soft no contact time (i.e. about the kids but nothing else) and go on a few dates yourself. Decide if this is the relationship you really want or if you might do better.
I usually am very judgmental about indefinitely, i’m not going to lie. It really seems she’s remorseful, made a horrible mistake and wants to attempt to prove to you she can do better.
If she’s in therapy, you’re in therapy and you’ve already started casually dating again i’d 100% listen to your therapist and just be IN a relationship and fix it from the inside out. Obviously don’t jump back in 100%, still have your guard up but she’s giving a lot of green flags beside her initial betrayal.
Ultimately you don’t have a lot of choices if you’re very uncomfortable with your kids around her affair man (which is completely understandable)
you either need to get over it and understand for a month or so or just let her move back in.
If my husband did exactly what you described to me and we were in this exact situation, i’d let him move in temporarily and see how it works out. Let’s be real, you have the upper hand and if she does anything cruel or repeats history, it’s “easier” to just cut her off if that makes sense? like the ball is in your court.
You’re being tempted by the familiar. It hasn’t even been a year since she blew up both your lives, neith of you have truly had time to adjust to the change.
And she hasn’t had enough time to demonstrate that she’s improved. The affair and also the not taking any money in the divorce are both signs of serious self-destructive behavior. She needs to work on herself a whole lot more before you even think about getting back together, and honestly you do too.
You got out of this clean, stay out.
Sounds like a bad idea to me. She may genuinely regret her mistake, but has she really done the work to earn a second chance? If she wants to get back together — because she wants to be with you, not just because you’re the easiest default option because it didn’t work out with him — then I would want to see her show evidence of changing before she moved back in.
In terms of affording her own place, she should have taken child support, which would have helped her find appropriate housing for her and the children. You should be able to go back to the court and make adjustments. Or you can offer some other arrangement that compensates her for the time she spend as an unpaid SAHM.
If you live in an at-fault jurisdiction for divorce, and you ‘forgive’ your spouse, then she is no longer at-fault. Going on ‘dates’ with her is a bad idea, legally, until your divorce is finalized. You can’t give forgiveness and then take it back, in the eyes of the court.
You should work up a custody agreement with your attorney, see if you can get primary custody while she’s being nice.
Uh. I don’t think she gets credit for “not wanting anything” when she then used her being uwu so poor and broke to justify moving in with her affair partner and getting you to pay for therapy, plus asking to move back in with you. If she can pay rent while living with him then moving in with a roommate should also be doable. She chose to move in with him instead of getting a roommate and finding a new place.
I don’t see someone who understands what they did. I see someone who knows how to make it seem like they do, and to flagellate themselves enough in front of you to get maximum sympathy from her “poor me” displays.
If she wanted to be with you, I think she would have said “I do want to do everything to can to make it work, I understand how much I’ve wronged you and will understand if you don’t want to but will do everything I can to repair our relationship and earn your trust back.” In the first place, when the affair first came out.
Instead she used the “you’re too good for me” thing, so that she could not continue the relationship while not having to own up to wanting to end things.
I think it’s likely she moved in with the other guy,m because she wanted to, and it either didn’t work out or she realised he wasn’t a good match, and so now is coming crawling back when she realises how good she had it.
You know her, I don’t though. So you will have a better take on if she’s genuine or not. Definitely don’t rush into dating her again – if you are thinking you’d like to give her another chance though you could start with some joint counselling to talk about the affair, why it happened and whether it will happen again, to start to think about whether you want to give her another chance.