I'm a 30-year-old man who has been in a rollercoaster relationship with my now-wife, also 30. We've been together for 5 years and married for 6 months, so we're still kind of new to the whole marriage thing.

Despite the ups and downs, I still feel a lot of love and affection for her. I am not perfect, but I would never do anything to hurt my relationships. About 3 years into our relationship, we had a daughter, who is now 2 years old. A month after she was born, we split up because my partner planned to leave the country without me knowing. She went behind my back, registered my baby without me as the father, and applied for a passport. If I hadn’t caught on to her plans, I might never have seen my child again.

We ended up in high court for about 3 months, and after a lot of money, the judge granted an order banning her from leaving the country with our daughter and giving me supervised visitation rights due to the baby only being a few months old. We were separated for another 2 months before we decided to reignite our relationship (or so I thought). Fast forward 2 years, we got engaged and married, and I got a job overseas in Malta, spurred by her motivation to leave our current country, South Africa.

We agreed I would move alone while we processed their visas, but after about 4 months, something felt off between us. After some arguments and phone conversations, I decided to come back home. That’s when I discovered she had been talking to another man in another country. Seeing the conversations and the things they shared really broke me. It hurt because she was always so strongly against any type of cheating, yet here she was going against her own morals.

Even now, I'm willing to put in the effort to get things back on track. I’ve been back home for about 3 weeks, and everything feels weird—affection, intimacy, everything feels off. We've talked about it multiple times, and things improve a bit, but it’s like we’re going in circles. I feel like I’m putting in 95% of the effort while she’s only putting in 5%.

I’m getting numb to everything day by day and starting to wonder if divorce is the only way out because I don’t know how much longer I can carry on like this. This is the second time something has interrupted our relationship, and I'm scared something else might come up in the future.

My biggest fears are that I always wanted to get married only once. I never liked the idea of divorce, so I’ve been willing to put in whatever I can to make this work. I’m also terrified of losing my daughter if I don’t get full custody or at least 50/50. Another concern is that I don’t want another man raising my daughter. Most importantly, I’m scared she might get custody and then apply to remove the order preventing her from taking our daughter out of the country, and I’ll lose her.

I’m really trying to do everything I can to prevent all these outcomes, but maybe it’s inevitable. I’m willing to put in all the money and time I can, but the possible outcome scares me.

I don’t have friends who can empathize or give me advice, so I’m turning to other divorced dads who have gone through something like this. How did you navigate these fears, and is it worth continuing to fight for this marriage?