Can our relationship survive this?

TL;DR: My partner disclosed long-term cheating/possible sex addiction. He has started therapy and SLAA, and we are trying to understand whether healing and rebuilding trust is realistically possible.

I met my bf through a dating app almost 10 years ago. We have since lived together for 8 years, bought a summerhouse together and 3 years ago we became parents to our baby boy. Our relationship has always been full of passion and love however with many many conflicts (which is not my usual relationship theme) and I’ve always felt very alone and like something was off but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what is was.

3 months ago I found out he was chatting with another woman on messenger. I confronted him, he broke down in tears and begged for forgiveness. He promised me this was the only woman. I forgave him quite easily as I believe you don’t go through a 10-year relationship without mistakes. Then 4 weeks ago I see a notification on his phone from Tinder. I don’t see much as he was putting our boy to sleep but I saw enough. I confronted him immediately and asked him to the leave the house. We did not speak for 3 days but because we have a kid we eventually had to talk.

He said he was so shameful, fully understood if I wanted to leave him but if I would at least take one couple session with him. So we did. In the session the therapist was extremely good! He pulled everything out of my bf. So it turns out he was never faithful. He had sex with 4 different women within the first 4 years of our relationship. Then he had 3 years of nothing (we bought the summerhouse, we became parents etc).

Then we went on a long holiday with our baby boy (6 month old), but on that holiday he went to a prostitute one time (never had before though).
I did not know any of this. When we came home he went back on tinder and started a pattern of downloading the app, getting matches, some chatting, then feeling guilty and shameful, delete it and then the loop started over. He went to see two tinder dates but did not engage in sexual activity as he felt something was completely off.

After disclosing all of this in therapy the therapist said he might have SLA. So he got his own psychologist and now he goes ones a week to SLAA. Not in my request but his own. He’s also driving the couple Therapy as I said I cannot be the project manager of this.

The pattern he had in our relationship started many years before he came in to my life. And I know he came from a very dysfunctional family where he ones tried to open up to his mom about a painful topic but was shamed and got silent treatment for weeks (he was 14-15 yr). A lot of other events happened and we have since this disclosure had multiple talks about his behavior and how I might have started very early on when he was left by his dad only 2 years old.

I am not here to defend him! Only he can heal himself however I do see that he really wants to he’s rid of all the lies and manipulation and start to live a “free” life. The only thing he wants is to be with me and our son.

He has during our talks been extremely honest, he tries his best to “stay” in his uncomfortable feelings, when the conversations get hard but he has not learned to develop a language for his feelings yet.

Me? I am actually not overly upset about the cheating. I am mostly sad that I spent so many years feeling so lonely with such an instinctive feeling something was off.

Is there anyone here who has tried to move forward from this! Has it been successful or is it a lost game?

I do despite his actions love him very deeply and he is an absolute legend of a dad to our son.

Thank you for reading my story 😘