I’ve been married to my husband for 11 years, together for almost 15, and we have two young boys. A few years ago, I cheated—not because of anything he did, but because I felt bored and restless with my life and choices. I regret it deeply.
The affair lasted about 7 months and ended before my husband found out. When he did, things got rough—lots of fighting, apologies, talk of divorce. Eventually, we decided to stay together, but he refused marriage counseling.
It’s been two years since, and things are different. Our sex life is distant, he avoids physical affection, and even friends notice he keeps his distance now. When he recently went through a health scare, he kept it from me, which really hurt. It feels like I’ve lost something important with him, and I’m not sure how to fix it or what to do next. I haven’t told anyone else and just needed to say it out loud.
What you’re describing is a marriage that’s still alive on paper, but wounded at the core. The intimacy, the trust, that sense of being “chosen” by each other—those things have been shaken. Your husband might not be cold, but he’s built walls to protect himself. When someone shuts you out during a health scare, it’s not just about the illness—it’s about a loss of safety, partnership, and trust. You’re grieving the connection you had, and he’s grieving it too, in his own way.
You’re asking how to move forward when it feels like something is broken that you can’t fix on your own. You can’t force your husband to open up or to want counseling, but you can continue to show up, to tell the truth, and to create space for real conversations—even when it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes healing takes much longer than anyone wants to admit, and sometimes it never looks like what it once was.
You’re not crazy for missing what you had or for wanting it back. And you’re not alone in feeling lost about what to do next. What matters now is whether you both want to do the work—not just to get back what you lost, but to build something new, together, out of the ashes of what happened. That’s not a guarantee. It’s an invitation to be fully honest with yourself and with him, over and over again.
This is hard. But you’re not beyond hope. You can’t change the past, but you can control how you show up today. Lean into the hard conversations, grieve what’s lost, and don’t run from the pain. Real healing takes time, honesty, and a willingness from both people to try again—even if it means starting from scratch.
You’re not alone in this, even if it feels like you are.