Why I Gave My Cheating Husband a Second Chance

Something had been niggling at me for a while and it all came to a dramatic conclusion on Wednesday night.

About a month before he had gotten himself a new phone, he had never really been that interested in technology but he seemed to quite like his new Samsung. He had started playing a game online with his brother and it seemed to be occupying him a lot. He would go upstairs to call him as they played the game online, he told me the game froze when they tried to use the game to talk.

I didn’t think too much of it at first. But I did start to notice that even when he was sat in the same room, his eyes were glued to his screen. He hadn’t figured out how to mute the phone completely and every couple of minutes I would hear it go off with a buzz.

“Just talking to my brother” he’d tell me. And that was okay. Until it wasn’t.

I had this feeling in my stomach, call it intuition if you will, but I just knew that something wasn’t right. He was about to go out to the car when I asked “Can I see your phone a second?”. I’d never really been one to snoop, and even if I was, I’d struggle without his thumb print to unlock it.

“Why?” he responded, tucking it into his pocket. That unsettling feeling settled even more into the pit of my stomach.

“I’m not sure yet”.

We went backwards and forwards for an hour. He tried every manipulation he could. “If you trusted me, you wouldn’t need to see my phone”. “I’m planning your birthday present with my Mom”. “I’m sorry if I have upset you by being on it too often, I’ll stop”.

The contract for his phone was in my name (it was the only card I had on me when we signed up for it) so I was certain that I would be able to get into it one way or another. With each excuse, my resolve did waiver, until finally.

“I’ve just been talking to this girl from college, she is depressed, like you were. I don’t want you to get mad because I’m talking to another woman”. We both knew that I wouldn’t get angry just because he had been talking to someone, if it was innocent.

Still he resisted opening the phone, until eventually I managed to open it myself.

He whispered he was sorry as I scrolled through the messages.

“Good morning beautiful”

“I wish I was in bed with you, giving you cuddles”

And worst of all.

“I want to meet up, give you lots of cuddles in person, does that sound good to you?”

Tears rolled down my face and I nausea washed over me. I couldn’t look at him. Instead I looked around at the house we had bought three years earlier and as he whispered his apologies and told me that he only wanted me, I wondered how the hell I was going to get out of this.

I kicked him out. Got him a bag of stuff and dropped it off at his Mom’s.

He texted and he rang, he told me he would do anything.

I rang my friend. He asked me three questions:

Do you love him still? - My answer was yes, but I was so hurt.

Do you want to have him back? - My answer was yes, but how could I trust him again?

What would put you in a position where you felt like you could take him back? What would you need?

This last question stumped me. He told me not to worry about sounding like a psycho control freak. He had broken my trust and if he wanted to come back it would have to be on my terms. So here was my answer:

He is banned from using his phone for anything other than work and talking to family.

When asked to hand his phone over, he does so immediately and without question.

No passwords (and I have passwords for everything that has to have a password).

No more lies - If he lies about one thing, even if it is the smallest lie (for example whether he vacuumed the floor) then he is gone.

He does not speak to any female (other than for work) that he is not related to.

Obviously as trust builds again these are subject to change but he wanted me back, and he came back with the understanding that he had hurt me and I did not trust him at all. He tries to manipulate me, or change these rules then he is gone.

So my husband is still sleeping next to me, for now. I want to trust him again, but that is a long way off, and I am still very hurt.

I will assure you of one thing though, there won’t be any third chances.