I need to know if I should be leaving or trying to make this work? What would you do in my situation. This is a throw away account but i will be monitoring it.
Ok, so I (32F) have been with my husband (35M) for 15 years, married for 5 and we have 2 kids (9F & 4F). We have had ups and downs but the last 18m has been extremely difficult. I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer back in May 2024 and then Sept we were told it is no longer curative and I have maybe 5 years left. So I’ve been doing chemo to prolong my time here and with chemo comes a lot of tiredness and stops me from being able to do housework or be intimate often (tiredness and I’m toxic while on chemo itself), so hubby has had to pick up the slack a lot around the house and put his own wants aside when it comes to the bedroom. About a month ago we were laying down and he told me that he figured out he had some childhood stuff that he repressed due to bullying when he previously spoke about it as a teen. I was open and listened and he eventually came out and told me he thinks he is polyamorous. I acknowledged how hard that was for him to tell me and his feelings and then told him I’m not ok with him doing that and that he could explore that when I’m dead (I’m into the dark humour since cancer). He agreed and we went on as normal. Recently we went overseas on a family holiday to make memories with my family and our kids and I went through his phone because for the last couple months he has been talking to some girls he met on threads and he usually tells me the convos (it’s mostly about books or their lives) but something inside me told me it wasn’t so innocent. He was looking at his phone and smiling while typing and he was just on it a lot. So I checked his phone and I found messages with other women (yes more than one woman). I went off on my own for a little bit and then confronted him about cheating and he apologised and said he still loves me and he is sorry. But I kept checking that phone and I see him saying stuff like ‘I’m poly, my wife is not but she knows’ and saying I love you to other women that he has never even met.
My problem is, it feels like he is just using being ‘poly’ as an excuse to cheat because I can’t sleep with him as much and have been a bit emotionally closed off due to my situation. We put the full talk aside until we got home from holidays and now we are home and will likely be talking soon but I don’t know what to say. He is my carer, he does 80% of the housework, he drives me to chemo and sits there for 4 hours every fortnight, he reminds me to take my meds, he cooks when I can’t. Do I stay with someone who I don’t even know if he really does love me out of connivence? Or do I leave and die alone feeling unloved? I’ve been with this man since i was 17, i thought we’d live until we were old and grey. I already lost that chance with cancer but now i just don’t know what to do.. Im so hurt over what happened but part of me is just numb to pain and bad things now that maybe i could just pretend for the rest of my short life?