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.