Husband is Having Unprotected Sex with Strangers

I am going to start off with stating: 1) This is my first ever Reddit post (so please go easy on me and give me CONSTRUCTIVE feedback. 2) This will be a long post, there is a lot to unpack here.

I (29 years old) have been with my husband (31 years old) for 10 years and married for almost 3 of those years. We were blessed with a son last year who will be turning 1 next month. When we first met in 2015, he was 20 and I was 19. He was fresh out of the military and I was a sophomore in college. Given that we met on tinder, It was very apparent that although he was interested in me, he was still talking to other women. A couple months into meeting, we slowly started “dating” and hanging out although we never officially became boyfriend/girlfriend. After about 4 months the first red flag popped up. He fell asleep on my bed with a fb message feed opened with a woman who had the exact same name as me and I saw him calling her the very same nicknames he’d call me. Looking back that is REALLY when I should have walked away but I was a smitten 19 year old who was falling in love. By the time summer of 2015 came we decided to go our separate ways and didn’t talk for almost 3 months, at this point I thought we were done but of course around the holidays I hit him up and found out he was homeless and struggling.

I opened my college apartment up to him and we ended up living together for the next 7 years before we ultimately got engaged and married. During my last 2 years of college (2015-2017), I was the main financial source. By the time I graduated in 2017, my husband still hadn’t had a job and we were getting ready to move cities. In 2018 he finally got into a college-to-career program that really helped him as a military veteran figure out how to fit into civilian life. In the 7 years that we dated from 2015-2021 (before getting engaged), there is not a year that went by that he did not cheat on me, and in the most humiliating ways. There were lots of woman on dating apps that he’d form emotional connections with, and a couple that he did meet up with to have sex. In 2017 I accompanied him to travel out of state to attend his father’s funeral. On the 2nd day of the trip I got food poisoning and was stuck in his childhood bedroom all day with vomiting and diarrhea, while he went to go meet up with his high school sweetheart “to talk”. Learning about that was so painful and looking back I still don’t know how we got through that. In 2018 he formed a side relationship with a classmate in his college program who I ended up confronting, but again I chose to stay with him. In 2019 he started exploring his sexuality and actually met up with a locally famous drag queen to have sex. There’s A LOT more instances of cheating but those are some of the more dramatic incidents.

Now here we are in 2025 married with 1 child and although I am now almost a year postpartum, I am still struggling to get back to feeling like “me” again. I am finding out that about 5 months ago he began talking to multiple women again. But this time it’s on language exchange pen pal sites, AshleyMadison.Com, and porn websites like AdultFriendFinder.com. What blows my mind is that he is now paying to commit adultery and there have definitely been instances in this last year where he claimed to not have the money to pay for things we needed for the house and/or our son. This time around he is getting out of control as he is reaching out to men and couples asking for threesomes and to be a cuckhold. 10 days before Christmas our son was taken to the ER for a cold that was affecting his breathing. That night my husband met up with a woman he met on adult friend finder and had sex, 2 days later I confronted him and declared that I wanted a divorce. I wanted him out of the house and began contacting lawyers. But my mother (who is African and a pastor) intervened and worked really hard to mediate, basically putting into perspective that this is our son’s first holiday season and that we need to try and remain civil for his sake. Although it was one of the hardest and lowest points of my life, I agreed to allow him to stay in our home and try to work things out.

This week I have now found out that he went back to have sex with that same woman 2 days after New Years, and slept with another woman. But he did not use a condom which is REALLY sending me over the edge. On top of this, he has consistently maintained several “emotional relationships” with women abroad through his pen pal app. One of which lives in Brazil, who he constantly slandered me to. For months he would stay on the phone/video chat for hours and on her birthday sent her flowers all the way from here in the United States. I ended up speaking to both of these woman who ironically are divorced single moms who left their own husbands after years of being cheated on. I can’t blame them or be mad at them because he used a fake name, made up many lies about his life to them, had them both fooled that he is single and living on his own. I guess I am making this long post to just get advice from anyone who chose to stay with a spouse who is a serial cheater, and I am wondering if there is hope that all of this can and will get better. We are both Christians although I grew up in the church as a pastor’s kid and my husband only came to know the Lord in his adulthood. Prior to getting married, I kept all of his infidelity low key because I was naive, in love, and really wanted my family to accept him. This time around I have exposed him to my family, his family, and some of his friends. Yet because we are married and now have a baby, there is overwhelming pressure to stay and try to work this out.

It is very obvious that my husband has psychological issues and addiction to sex/pornography. I’d also like to add that he is adopted and not close or involved with either his biological or adopted family. I think he has mommy issues and identity issues. Last week I told him that I could never humiliate and hurt him how he has done to me because I actually have a moral compass and integrity. He responded with “so do I, I am just unwell right now”. I believe that my husband is a good guy and decent father, he is a terrible boyfriend/spouse/partner but I truly believe that with God anything is possible and that he can do better. But I am just not sure how much longer I am willing to wait around for him to “get better”.