What to Do When Your Husband Keeps Cheating (And You Have Kids)

In January 2009, my guest Naomi Kreske went looking through her husband's phone. She had just spent the weekend alone with three kids — a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a nine-month-old — while he was away. He came home, said he was tired, told her he was going to put the kids to bed and crash. Something in her gut said check.

She found a text thread between her husband and his guy friend that confirmed what every cheated-on woman has felt in her bones at some point. He was three months into a relationship with another woman. He wanted to leave that night.

She told him no. She wasn't walking away from 10 years and three kids without a fight.

Over the next year, he left her two more times for two more women.

If you're reading this and you've been blindsided by an affair, especially with kids in the picture, what comes next is the part nobody tells you about.

What to do when your husband keeps cheating and you can't bring yourself to leave

Naomi didn't leave the first time. Or the second. Or the third. Because her ex-husband kept coming back. He'd leave for the woman, that relationship would fall apart, he'd come back. Because she was, in his words, his rock. His foundation. He just didn't want to be inside the confines of a marriage.

He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted a wife and the option to be single.

If that pattern sounds familiar, you're not weak for staying. You're being asked to make the hardest decision of your life while your nervous system is in shock, your kids are looking up at you, and the man who broke the deal is pretending he didn't. Most women do not leave the first time. The story you've been told — that any "real" woman would walk out the second she found out — is a fantasy. The real question isn't whether you stay or leave. It's how many times you let him come back before you stop believing him.

Why surviving infidelity with kids is its own kind of impossible

When the dust settled, Naomi was a stay-at-home mom who suddenly needed an income. She and her ex co-owned a pub. She had a house she couldn't afford that went into foreclosure. She walked away from it. She had three little kids. And she had no time to actually feel any of it.

She calls those years her hot mess express. Ten years of muscling through. Ten years of straight-up function. One foot in front of the next. And looking back, she didn't even know she was in survival mode while she was in it.

That's the part nobody warns you about when you're trying to figure out how to survive infidelity with kids. Society teaches you to push through. So you do. You don't notice that you're burning out, making bad decisions, surrounding yourself with people who don't deserve you. You're just trying to make it to the end of the day.

The shame of telling your parents your marriage is over

Before Naomi told her ex he had to leave, before she pulled the trigger on the divorce, before any of the rebuilding, there was a smaller, quieter moment that hit her hard. She had to tell her parents.

Her parents are still married. They love each other. And the thought of telling them that her marriage was over made her feel like a failure. It took her two days to get the words out.

This is one of the most relatable parts of her story for me. My marriage didn't end because of infidelity, but I felt the same thing. My parents have been married 50 years. It took me months to tell them my marriage was over because I didn't want to disappoint them. I didn't want them to talk me out of it.

The shame of "failing" at a marriage isn't logical. It's a story we tell ourselves because we think love is something you earn by sticking it out. It's not.

How to start rebuilding your life after infidelity

After 10 years of survival mode, Naomi was reading a book. The author was having a conversation with her mother, and her mother said something that landed like a brick: hon, you're not winning in the love department. You go out late, you drink too much, you party with your friends, you wake up hungover, and you still expect Prince Charming to come sweep you off your feet. That's not how it works.

Naomi describes the moment she read that as a giant light bulb. She realized she was the problem. Not in a self-flagellating way. In a "what you put out is what you get back" way.

In her exact words: I am the fucking problem.

That's the moment everything started changing.

Once she saw it, she started editing. People who weren't serving her, gone. Places that weren't serving her, gone. Things that weren't serving her, gone. The bar she'd owned for 17 years, eventually gone too.

She made room for the things she actually wanted. She got brave. She got vulnerable. She started showing up at networking events even when she was sweating through her shirt. She started saying hello to strangers because that's what adults have to do when they've cleared out friendships that no longer fit.

And she got radically accountable. She stopped putting all of it on her ex. She owned her own part. Because owning your own shit is how you actually figure your life out.

Rebuilding life after divorce with kids and finding love again

Today Naomi is a Jay Shetty certified life coach. She's remarried — to a man she dated on and off through her hot mess years, who told her flat-out he'd never get back together with her, then did. They've been together since. She's about to turn 50 in July, and she says she knows who she is now more than she ever has.

The point of her story isn't that everyone gets a fairy-tale ending. The point is that survival mode is a phase, not a destination. You can edit. You can rebuild. You can find love again. You can stop being a perpetual victim of the worst thing that ever happened to you.

If you're in it right now, this is your reminder: you are not done.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should you do when your husband keeps cheating on you?

Naomi Kreske, who survived her husband's three affairs in a single year while raising three kids, says the answer isn't found in one big moment. It's found in deciding how many times you'll let him come back before you stop believing him. Most women do not leave the first time. That doesn't make you weak — it makes you human.

How do you survive infidelity when you have young kids?

The first phase is pure function — getting through each day. The deeper work of rebuilding self-worth and changing patterns can come later, but you have to give yourself permission to be in survival mode without judging yourself for it. Naomi describes 10 years of "hot mess express" before she had the energy to do real internal work.

How do you rebuild your life after divorce with kids?

According to Naomi, it starts with radical accountability. You can't control what was done to you. You can control the patterns you keep repeating. She started by editing her life — cutting people, places, and things that didn't serve her — and rebuilding from the inside out.

Can you co-parent with someone who cheated?

Naomi co-parented with her ex while also co-owning a business with him for 15 years. She made a deliberate choice to keep things civil for the kids — even if it meant her parents were "just friends" — because she wanted her children to see what a healthy adult relationship could look like.

Is it too late to start over after 40?

Naomi started her life coaching career at 42 and is now thriving at almost 50. Her answer is a flat no.

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