Hi Anna – Thanks for sharing. I hope you’re still on this forum! I’m going through almost the same thing and it’s very challenging. My husband secretly took thousands from our savings to pay off his secret spending and mounting credit card bills. It’s very painful that he lied and gaslighted to keep me out of our finances. I’m trying to learn how to recover from financial infidelity and how to trust him again. He admitted all when he couldn’t hide it anymore, and now that it’s all out he wants to make amends. One of his ideas is to shorten his own spending allowance and to reallocate that to another account until he’s paid us back (partially anyhow). But we’re talking thousands and it would take him minimum 2 years to pay it back. I don’t want him to attempt to live with such a low amount of spending money that he fails and overspends again or resents me for years while he tightens his belt. Even though it was a significant amount, he took from our savings so there are no credit card fees or urgent bills that we can’t pay. In your opinion, should I forgive the debt or allow him to try and repay it?

Not sure if I should include this, but I’ve always made more money and shared everything with him. I worry that forgiving this debt and not allowing him to pay it back is not giving this betrayal enough weight. While I want to do what’s best for him to move on from this in a way that means growth and change for our marriage, I need to maintain some self value and not feel like the punching bag who magically also provides the solution while he doesn’t have to deal with consequences.

I’d appreciate any and all advise from Anna or others who’ve gone through situations with financial infidelity.

– Jones