Completely Totally Lost

So, my husband and I have been together for 6 years. We dated for 2 years, and have been married just over 4. It's been a hilly road, to say the least.

When we met, I was pregnant with my oldest. He stuck with me, helped me when I thought I was going to give her up, but then stuck with me when I didn't. He even asked me to move in with him, and later that year he proposed to me in front of both of our entire families. The sex was always great, we resolved issues that came between us, and learned how to be a family.

We got married the next year. The whole time we were together, he struggled with anger issues but never once hit me, struck me, or harmed my daughter. He ended up adopting her as his own. Not a year after getting married, we started to argue over many things as most couples do. We'd fight, leave the house, stay at our parents for a while, but nearly never overnight.

I in all honesty admit to having an emotional online affair. I confessed, he took me back. Another argument led me to wanting to leave but that night (or maybe a night or two after) we ended up conceiving our second daughter. I was sick the whole time. He was loving and supportive. She was beautiful and looked just like him.

A few months before her 1st birthday, his boss accidentally left her 6 month old in the car and the baby passed away. My husband was the one who found her when he was walking his boss out to their cars after work. It seriously, seriously screwed him up. I tried everything I could do to help him, get help, but he ended up losing that job and enlisted to start the fire academy. More tension built up and I went out with friends the night before he started the Academy. I told him who I would be with, and when I would be back. He said it was fine but when I got home, another fight. I left, stayed at a friends (he was not going to be home that night anyway). He texted me to please come home, that he needed me, and I didn't. Within a month, I moved out and back in with my parents. Within a week of that, I slept with someone else. We maintained joint custody of our kids and he blindsided me by filing for divorce without telling me. This whole time, he's not working because he has learning disabilities and going through the academy while working just wouldn't be possible. His mom helps him with money so it's doable.

I counter petitioned and felt miserable as I sat across the table during our mediation session with the attorneys. He even asked me out for lunch afterwards. It just didn't seem real. Realizing I loved him, but just didn't know how to deal with him, I came back.

We didn't go to counseling. We didn't talk about our issues. But I stayed by his side. I tried to adjust the behavior I know I needed to. But within another 6 months he was "done trying" and "nothing was ever going to change". By the time I had convinced him it could, and he was ready to come back, I told him I wanted him to leave. In August of this year, he left and moved in with HIS parents.

Being a single mom, yet again, had made me realize our issues aren't unfixable. We both make the mistakes of keeping things in until it blows up.

Now, after he has kissed another girl and told me he was trying to move on, he told me he can't come back "right now". That he's not ruling us out getting back together in the future, but that he needs to find himself. And that me sleeping with another person wasn't actually as damaging as I thought because he understood I became a mom young and got married young and curiosity was natural. And he needs time. He keeps telling me - give it time.

So my question is this - do I believe him? I know there's nothing I can do to change his feelings for me. So for the sake of our girls, I'm trying very hard to not lose it every waking minute of the day. Is all he really needs time, or is he just stringing me along because he doesn't want to hurt me that bad? He tells me things like he still feels something deep in him when he kisses me, and that when he kissed the other girl (who doesn't like him as more than a friend) that it didn't feel even close to that. Yet he also says he wants to move on from our marriage and that he can't wait to move out of his parents and back to the town I live in to his own apartment so he can be closer to our kids again. He was even over last night to go out to dinner with our kids because he feels "it's important to still do that". He texts me randomly throughout the day, calls when he gets off work even if it's late, but yet I know he will do stuff like go to strip clubs with his buddies and get dances and has a whole other life I'm just not a part of (he never went to clubs when we were together - ever).

Am I really another victim of just waiting it out and seeing what time does? I feel like everything I want to do is what I shouldn't do but I'm still in love with him. I know we can fix it. I know we can do it. But I have no idea how to show him we can.

Thanks in advance for your understanding.