Hi, @cookie1185. Firstly, I don’t think there is anything more emotionally, psychologically, and physically devastating than being betrayed by someone you loved unconditionally. I could walk away from my mother’s funeral less numb. I guess that’s because a funeral entices loss, sadness, and agony from an uncontrollable occurrence whereas betrayal, by definition, is premeditated. It’s chaos, sheer chaos, and I don’t envy anyone locked up in its throes, what’s more, I wouldn’t even wish it upon liable enemies. You are right. He made a very much conscious decision to take what were marital issues and trade them in for temporary release. Essentially he had sex a few times with a stranger and this was somehow supposed to make him feel better. Well, he’s lost a lot more on a really bad relational transaction, and he will continue to find more and more he’s lost as the days go by. He’s lost trust, intimacy, care, acceptance, and all the subtleties that go into constructing a 7-year relationship. He will not likely have gotten much, if anything, from this other person. In fact, having invested his frustrations and intimate details into her will leave him even more desolate when she inevitably disappears too. He’s withdrawn everything from his savings and thrown it at a dodgy investment. But he hasn’t just lost ‘money’, no, because he now owes ‘money’ to you and to his own conscience. The texted confirmation was purely abominable; I will never understand why people like this exist in the world because I am so coldly incapable of cheating on anyone. I guess that stems from my integrity and relational principles but I refuse to ever submit to that level of scum or subject others to it. It’s emotional rape and in many ways is more torturous than its physical counterpart. I feel for your situation. I feel for humanity. This stuff has always happened but it just feels as though it’s happening more and more and more. It’s depressing to say the least. Anyway, keep us updated on how you’re progressing in this and I hope you can find some calm in your days, however fleeting. You deserve better and are owed nothing. Any explanation or measure of closure he has tried to deliver should be treated in the context of his misdeeds.