Marriage is a mess after his affair and my revenge sex

I’m in my 30s and my marriage is on the rocks. My husband came clean about having an affair, which then set off a chain reaction of revenge flings from me.

What hurt the most about his affair was that he really cared about this other woman – it wasn’t just about sex.

I still love him, so I agreed to try to make things work, plus we also have two young children to consider.

I just couldn’t let go of the anger and humiliation I felt and had revenge sex with other guys – once with an ex and a few times with another man.

I think I wanted to prove to my husband that I was still sexy and desirable and that other men wanted me as well.

It’s all just a horrible mess now. He knows about these flings and keeps saying he understands why I did it and he’s prepared to move on.

I don’t think we can get over all the lies, cheating and hurt we’ve inflicted on each other and feel it might be best to call it a day.

I’m not sure we can ever get back from this and be happy again. What do you think?

Coleen says

Well, I don’t believe you can with your current attitude. The only way you will do it is if you both commit 100% to working on the marriage. Look at it another way – maybe this is rock bottom and if you can get through it together, neither of you will ever make those mistakes again.

However, I think if you’re feeling this negative, it’s definitely worth having relationship counselling.

If you haven’t really talked about what happened, you’ll never move past it – a week, a month or a year down the line, it will come out in an argument and you’ll start blaming each other.

You reacted the way I did many years ago when one of my exes had an affair, but I had terrible guilt afterwards and never did it again.

At the time I was young – in my 20s – but I promised myself that if I ever felt like that again, I’d tell the person I’m with.

With hindsight, what you should have said to your husband was: “I now feel vulnerable enough that if someone paid me attention, I’d go for it”.

So you both need to change. You don’t say why he had the affair and why your marriage was vulnerable at the time, so you need to work out why it happened, in order to recognise the signs.

The trust has gone on both sides and it’ll take time to rebuild it.

Your relationship might not be the same again, but it can be good in a different way if you’re willing to commit to it.

I wanted to prove to him that I was desirable