You should probably ask her

You can’t. Ever.

Trust is like glass, once it’s broken it will never be the same again

I think you can answer this question yourself. If the roles were reversed how would you answer this question?

Would you forgive her? How? Why?

Time my friend. Time. And the understanding that she will never trust you fully again.

My two cents: go to a professional(instead of random internet strangers), and ask why you did it. Try to fix the part of your relationship that led you to seek out another person in the firstplace.

Why did you do it? Let’s start there. Please unpack.

Pro tip btw:
You can’t hate yourself into being a better person (I’ve tried). All you can do is continue to show up with love and compassion and grow into who you want to be. Bonus if your partner actually cares and will join you in your journey.

Some opinions as someone who has been on the other side of this:

1. Recognize that if she decides to not divorce you, from now on, no matter what you do, how much of a new leaf you turn, etc., there will always be at least a little bit of doubt about you. That feeling when you find out you’ve been cheated on by a long-term partner never quite goes away - it gets smaller and less nagging, but never completely disappears. If you want to stay with your wife, you’re gonna have to accept this.

My discovery happened almost a decade ago. I would have been well within my rights to dump her ass and never talk to her again, but I didn’t. I thought it was at least worth trying to stick around and see if we could work things out before doing that, given we made that whole “till death do we part” oath and were still breathing. She was not owed this - I did that for me. Things are better, and we are in a much, much better place than we were. Still, this pops to mind at least once a day, and has every day since it happened.

2. Go see a couple’s therapist yesterday - first, to create a venue where she can express her feelings about all of this, what she wants to do, and what she needs; next to start having an open, 100% honest discussion about where your head is at and behaviours, and finally to start shopping tools for completely transparent communication going forward. Treat this seriously and pay fucking close attention.

3. Follow this up with some therapy for yourself - very few people choose to cheat because they’re loving life. Start identifying where you need to work your own shit out. Again, take this deadly seriously. Encourage her to do the same.

4. 100%, no exceptions, complete and utter honesty and transparency going forward. She wants to see your phone? Hand it over. She wants to know where you’re going/what you’re doing? Tell her, with proof. She wants you to have a tracking app? You download that shit. She wants the nastiest details about what the hell happened? Do warn her you’re concerned it will hurt even more, but if she wants to hear it anyway you tell her. By dint of your actions, you’ve lost your right to both be in the relationship and keep a self-defined level of privacy - if you don’t like it, start looking at divorce. If you two start healing, the need for this kind if stuff may start to diminish as the level of trust comes back up.

5. Check in with her, often. How she’s feeling, what she needs, etc. Pay attention, respect it even if it involves something that may hurt you emotionally. Do NOT throw shit in her face - keep in mind, YOU’RE the one who fucked up, and who now wants to move on with her as your partner. She just discovered her husband did one of the shittiest things a spouse can do to someone they claim to love. It’s a very different experience.

6. You could do everything right, do all the therapy, open communication, working on yourself and the relationship you want. If she decides that she can’t do it, she can’t. Recognize this. Accept this. She doesn’t owe you shit.

Not gonna lie to you man - you have a tough row to hoe. I will say, with time and a shit ton of work, it’s possible to remain together, and both of you be happy about it. But there will now always be a pre-cheating and post-cheating division when thinking about your marriage. The goal, if you are remaining together, is to build something much better and stronger than what you had before. That may happen, that may not. But putting the work in gives the greatest probability of success.

Best of luck to you - seriously, you fucked up, and fucked up BIG, but we are all human, and therefore liable to fuck up. No matter what the outcome of all this is, learn from it and grow.

3 day old account asking Reddit tier questions

Mariage Conseling. Internet strangers aint paid for this shit lol.

If you want out of the marriage, then this is the time. No point in working on a marriage you don’t want.

If you want to stay then:

Couples counselling. Seriously. It is not cheap, but it’s a lot cheaper than a divorce. It also resolves unhealthy tension and issues in the relationship. You might even get out of it with a lot better marriage than before you cheated.

Do that for a long time. Show that you care by taking initiative, and resolve this with a counsellor and your spouse.

I also believe it is possible to regain trust, and to forgive.

You did a bad thing, but don’t let it define you. Now you got to set it right, show her that you actually care about her. Do the hard work and make the relationship stronger than ever.

You should not tell anyone you cheated, if your wife does, then you have to accept that. She might feel that this affects her honor and standing amongst other people. So let her decide if people should know or not.

Anyways, good luck! Be patient and be kind. You can do it! 👍

As others have said, open communication is critical. It is necessary but not sufficient.

You’ve probably been thinking through why you cheated and continued to cheat. However it can be really difficult to go deep get the true answer by yourself - brains tend to generate reasons/excuses in a way that minimizes your responsibility and preserves your ego as best it can. If you try to explain what happened to your wife and give a facile or self-serving excuse, you could make things far far worse.

Many people find that the process of talking with a professional (a counsellor or therapist) can get deeper than doing this by yourself. You will get to a more profound and authentic understanding of yourself and of steps you can take to be the better person you want to become. By knowing yourself better you are able to properly apologise and explain to your wife why you betrayed her trust. You will also be able provide some evidence that you are not going to do this again. Broken trust takes a long time to repair - self discovery and improvement is a process, not a single event.

Another thing to consider is whether you and your wife can have constructive conversations about what happened and what your hopes and wants are for the future. If conversations rapidly devolve into arguments and anger, it may make things worse (but every relationship is different). If you worry that those conversations may spiral out of control, or will not be productive, I’d suggest doing this with a neutral, professional third party like a relationship councillor who can facilitate the conversation.

Those are a few ideas - they are certainly not comprehensive and YMMV.

Ok, let me try to approach this seriously.
You need to figure out some things:

1. Why did you cheat

• Because you were angry with your wife?
• Because you like the other woman?

2. If a similar situation arises in the future how are you going to react

• “I won’t do it again” is not a good answer. “I’m going to do X instead” is better.

You don’t have to respond to us here, think about these things and talk about it with your wife.

I’ve been in your position. If you really want to regain your wife’s trust, the only thing you can do is be someone who is trustworthy. The rest is up to your wife.

In my experience, the worst part of cheating isn’t the act itself. It’s starts off simple enough. You just tell some “small” lies about where you’ve been or where you’re going and your spouse most likely shrugs it off. But lies compound and suddenly you find yourself stacking lies on top of lies, trying to hold back the sea of lies. You begin to feel like the story of the dutch boy trying to plug holes in the dam with his fingers, except you built the dam and filled the sea behind it with shit. And you know if you don’t keep plugging holes all of your shit is going to come spilling out. It becomes fucking exhausting.

I looked at the person I had become at the end of my affairs (as in multiple) and I hated him. He wasn’t me. At least he certainly didn’t feel like me. At some point I decided I didn’t want to live like that anymore.

There’s a lot of merit in the phrase “the truth will set you free.” You can tear down the dam and drain the sea of lies. But when I say the truth, I mean all of it. Your wife has a right to know the whole truth, down to the last detail. To her, your life has to be an open book. She needs to be able to ask you anything and know that you will be honest with her, even if it’s something she’ll be hurt by. In fact, it’s ok to preface answers with something like, "I’m afraid my answer is going to be hurtful but if you really want to know I will tell you.

Living your life with integrity is hard sometimes but it’s still much easier than living without it.