My husband and I have been together since I was 15 and he was 18. About 8 years together now, and married with a two year old. I recently "found" some inappropriate conversations with girls that were like six years old. (I went looking for them. I cannot explain what possessed me to do this and I was very sorry. This is why they tell you not to look through each other's phone/social media) I confronted him about it, we cried, and we promised never to talk about it again. At the time the messages were sent, I was 18 and he was 21, and he had just asked me to marry him. He freaked out a little bit at the permanence of our relationship. We were kids. It was a big mistake. I don't blame him for not bringing it up sooner, because I've always said things like "There are no second chances with me, if you cheat I will leave. period." It just goes to show that you never know how a situation will feel unil you've felt it. There are a few reasons why we turned out ok. 1. I apologized for digging for it before I confronted him with what I found. "I did something bad, and found out something about you that made me feel awful. I'm sorry for violating your trust, but now we have to deal with this" I waited to bring it up until I felt like I had sufficiently calmed down. 2. I had created an ideal of him in my mind that he couldn't live up to. I remembered our early relationship through rose-colored glasses because he was the "perfect boyfriend" After we got married and had a baby and bills and adult stresses, I started to miss that carefree relationship, and it created resentment between us. This is part of marrying your high school sweetheart I think. It's hard to transition into adulthood together. This incident killed that ideal. Smashed it in about 3 seconds. This was the worst/best part for me, because it meant that that perfect boyfriend I remembered was flawed. It made me see him as more human and capable of mistakes, and ultimately strengthened our relationship because we chose to grow. 3. The messages were not sexually explicit, and they were old. They were definitely innappropriate. They were between him and 2 past girlfriend/flings . Stuff like "Remember when we made out in this place? I still think about that sometimes..." and then talking about missing this or that. If I had found out about the behavior at the time, it probably would have ended our relationship. Because I found out about six years after, I gave pause. We had a six month old baby, and i had no job, he takes care of everything. and I love this man, like I'm insane in love with this man. 4. When I said I would never bring it up again I meant it. I don't use it as leverage in our relationship, I didn't tell my family or friends, I didn't stalk the girls or continue digging through his phone. We talked, we learned, we cried and that was it. He has always been reliable and trustworthy, and is still the most kind-hearted and loyal person I know. He was just very young, dealing with some very adult feelings about our future together, and reacted in a destructive way. Sorry for the novel about my life, but the simple answer is I guess that in a weird way the "cheating" allowed me to feel more authentic feelings for my perfectly flawed husband, and taught me to be in love with who he is now for everything he is, and not for some shallow image I had of him when he was still practically a child and we had no responsibilities. In a weird way, we needed me to find those messages.