Back with my husband after a separation but I can't forgive what he did whilst we were apart, how to cope?

@proactiveDrum6829

You both had relationships and was it his idea to hide or your "friend"wanted it secret.

I think when in a situation like this we think we are OK  to forgive and forget but really inside do you think your spouse is all OK with your relationship you had in the separation. He may be having issues with that too.

If you are both serious about trying again... it will have to take forgiveness to move on. 

@proactiveDrum6829

I think I can understand the way you may feel: wounded, but determined and hoping to try again, but still uneasy about another person who was in your husband's life for a while (and the fact you knew the person very well indeed not making it any easier).

But...

As far as I can understand it, you and your husband separated, and each of you was in a different relationship. You agreed you should not be together, and none of you should keep the rights to "own" or control the other (if "owning" a person would be possible at all).

You both have taken separate, independent and different decisions about telling - or not telling - your ex partner with whom you are in a new relationship right now.

If this is so, why should we say OK to your relationship with someone else, at the same time referring to his relationship with someone else as "betrayal"? Why doesn't it imply treating you and him on equal terms? Weren't you actually "betraying" each other?

I think the difference is he was connected to your friend. Most people tend to treat it as a "double betrayal": being betrayed by a partner and by a close friend at the same time.

However, if your partner really had started to hate you, and you have become a pain in a neck for him, shouldn't he rather look for someone completely different, unlike you in any aspect?

Instead, your partner, who was connected to you, meets your friend, who was connected to you, too. He chose the person whose presence might have reminded him of you every day. A person who, for him, might have still brought some feel and smell of you...

How would that make you feel, seeing things from such perspective?

An old proverb says you cannot go into the same river for the second time. But did the river (i.e. the nature of your marriage) changed enough?

You said you were separated because of unhappiness in your marriage. The big question mark, I think is: How are you going to make it all working better this time? How the both of you would like to avoid the mistakes from the past, which made your relationship unbearable for both of you?

It's quite a paradox, but I guess the best thing is you've been still jealous about your husband while your relationship with him was actually over. Maybe you never stopped loving him? If so, this could be one reason enough to give it another try...

Now you are both people with some past experience. But how could that be forged into making a better future together?