Trying to forgive

Hi I’m posting anonymously because this is hard and I’m kind of ashamed. I hope someone can give me some advice...

I met my hubby when I was 15 and we started dating right away. We’ve had ups and downs but on the whole, we’ve been solid as a rock through good times and bad. In 2015 we got married and had the most beautiful wedding.

The following year we had a surprise pregnancy and were so thrilled! Then unfortunately I had a miscarriage. It broke me. I changed into someone else. I don’t know how else to describe it. Looking back I was obviously massively depressed.

But 6 months down the line I was pregnant again and in December 2017 our beautiful little girl was born. She is perfection! The pregnancy was fine, but hard because I was constantly anxious something would happen and I’d lose the baby. I took out my stress and anxiety on my hubby. Hands up, I was just a horrible person to live with for the best part of a year.

3 months after baby was born I got suspicious. Randomly. And so I dug around and found out that my hubby had been “cyber cheating” with multiple women on multiple hook up sites. Pictures, messages, even a secret email account dedicated to his “extra curricular activities.” I was broken, I left and stayed with my parents for 6 weeks with my daughter.

He swore to me he’d never met anyone, that for him it was a way of relieving stress, pretending to be someone else, to get out of his life which had been hard. He explained he’d also been battling with depression and had thought of killing himself because he didn’t know how to be there for me in our darkest hour (the miscarriage).

After a huge bout of paranoia, I dug a little deeper and found out he HAD had an affair while away on work. He denied it until I sent him the proof, then eventually caved and admitted all the details to me.

At that point I told myself it was over. How can I ever trust him again after this?

It’s now over 4 months later and he’s been on his best behavior. I moved out and rented a place for me and my baby but to be honest he’s been here a lot, to help out with her but also because (I’m ashamed to admit) I miss him.

He wants us to work out and be ok. He says the depression is gone now and he no longer feels like this “other person”. He swears he never had any feelings for any of the women online or the one he had the affair with. I have access to his phone and computer now, and he’s let me put tracking on his phone too.

Now I’m going to be honest. I have made his life a living hell since I found out about all this. I’ve got quite a cutting tongue and I’ve said some horrendous things to him, to punish him, to make him understand the pain he’s caused me. I’ve even threatened to not let him see his baby, even though I know he’s an amazing dad and she loves him to pieces.

We’re seeing a counselor. I don’t feel like it’s helping me much. I think I want this to work out. We had plans for more kids, holidays to Disney, a happy family life. I think we can still get there but I’m scared to always live in doubt.

Has anyone been through anything like this? I’m sorry this post is so long but it’s the first time I’ve ever written all this down. It’s so hard. Please be frank with me, but don’t be too mean because I still love this man, which is obviously part of the reason why this hurts so bad...

Thank you xxx