I stayed because:
1. We have children, and my one great hope for them was that they would not have to experience the life altering pain of a broken home.
2. He confessed the A to me and gave me full disclosure within a relatively short amount of time.
3. I found I had the unexplained capacity to forgive him; I stayed because I wanted to stay.
4. He did not tell the OW that he loved her.
5. He did not bring her into our home.
6. I did not catch them in the act.
7. He was remorseful. He recognized that the A was deeper than just "an A"... there was something seriously wrong with him and he was going to work to fix it with or without our marriage.
8. I was a SAHM and had no income of my own.
9. I was not going to let OW "win".
10. I did not want to be divorced because of a stupid fricking mid-life crisis. If we were going to D it would be because of US, not because of something as cliche and pathetic as THAT.
11. He quit his job, turned his back on the OW, threw her under the bus and told me he wanted me to stay.
12. He never once blamed me for the A. He never tried to justify it. He said from the beginning that it had nothing to do with me or with her. It was not my fault, I didn't do anything to cause it, and there was nothing that I could have done to prevent it.
13. By the time I figured out that I had been in a co-dependent abusive marriage for 18 years, we were so far into a whole new relationship and marriage that it didn't make any sense to walk away. That man who had had the A didn't exist any more.
14. My NPD mother hated my WH and hadn't wanted me to marry him, and I didn't want to give her the satisfaction.
15. I loved him.
16. I believe in a God of grace, forgiveness and redemption, I believe in repentance, I believe it is possible to overcome evil with good, and I believed that in our great brokenness God was great enough to heal us and make all things new.
17. I took vows and I meant them and I wasn't going to break them just because he did.
18. I knew I had the strength to walk away.
The reasons why I stayed changed and varied moment to moment, day to day, even still. We are a year out and I am glad I stayed. But it is always fragile, and I won't ever say to my WH, "I will never leave you". I told my WH that he doesn't have to have another A for something still to be a "deal-breaker".