- Joined
- Aug 20, 2022
- Messages
- 28,009
- Points
- 113
For spouses in Singapore whose partners cheated repeatedly and you chose to forgive repeatedly, what made you continue staying each time?
GeneralI’ll start by sharing what triggered this post.
A friend of mine forgave her husband multiple times. Both affairs happened while she was pregnant. Not just a one time lapse, but proper affairs. She chose to stay each time.
Now she questions him almost every day. She is constantly trying to understand why. Watching this unfold, it takes everything in me not to say what I’m honestly thinking, that maybe he keeps cheating because he knows she will keep forgiving.
When people say they are “staying for the kids,” what does that actually mean in reality? Is it about shielding the children from divorce, maintaining financial stability in an expensive country like Singapore, keeping the flat, avoiding custody battles, or preserving a certain family image?
If the cheating was not a one time mistake but a full blown, ongoing affair with emotional attachment, how did you process that? Does it feel different from a one night lapse? What made you believe the relationship was still worth saving?
Did practical factors influence you such as the cost of raising children here, mortgage or BTO commitments, dual income dependency, childcare and enrichment costs, or simply the fear of starting over alone? Or stigma from elders?
Emotionally, how do you survive repeated betrayal? Does forgiving multiple times genuinely bring peace, or does it slowly chip away at your self worth?
At what point do you decide that staying for the kids is actually harming you or even modelling the wrong kind of relationship for them? How do you tell the difference between resilience and self sacrifice?
What if it's a repeated infidelity within marriage, especially when it is not just a mistake but a sustained affair?