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I apologize, this is a long one...
So I am new here and just feel like I need to talk to someone about my wife's emotional affair. I am still discovering just how deep this rabbit hole goes every day. First a bit of background, we were married 5 years ago, this will be my 2nd marriage and her 4th. I am an engineer and she is a therapist (sometimes not such a good combination and displays quite a bit of Irony as well since she did her doctoral thesis on Cyber affairs!), and unfortunately an adult child of an alcoholic. We adopted a foster child about 2 years ago and are currently fostering 2 more. We moved across country away from our families and our friends about 3 years ago and moved again still almost 1200 miles from our families and friends due to my promotion. So this should fill in the complicating factors and I will elaborate on them a bit more as I tell my story.
Where to begin.... Well, upon our first move it was quite tough for my wife as she is very tight with her family; I on the other hand can live comfortably with only seeing my family on rare occasions. During this time she had several blow ups, yelling at me for dragging her away from her family and a job she loved, threatened divorce multiple times.
It wasn't about 1 year after the move that I noticed the cell phone lighting up when we both should have been asleep. I ignored it at the immediate time but looked on her phone later to find a few chats with a guy on yahoo messenger. The messages weren't to concerning but I made note to monitor her communication when I could. It was around this time she actually accused me of seeing someone to which I handed over my phone and said take all the time you need to go through my phone, I told her I had been cheated on in my last marriage and knew how much pain it caused and would never cheat for that reason among others. She took the phone and upon not finding anything gave it back in disgust. Over the course of a couple of weeks the messages to this stranger began to get flirty, and I was demeaned, slandered, and just portrayed as a lowlife husband. I would check her phone at night when she was asleep, and when I saw "I Love you" on the screen, I was furious. As I was in a new place with no support network other than my family back home, I called my sister to talk about it. We talked and she suggested I talk with my wife and try to work things out. I told her I would. Later that day, I was accused of cheating again; this was the opening I used to let her know what I knew. She claimed that I was emotionally shut off and that She knew I had chatted with women in the first few weeks when we were dating. I admitted that I had yes, but the moment we got serious in our dating relationship, I cut off all communication. She said it didn’t matter and that the damage was done. I was incredulous over this and stated that not only did that not justify what she was doing; that the damage she was doing was far worse. It did no good. We discussed it for what seemed like forever and at some point I told her about talking with my sister about it, that apparently was a huge mistake which still gets brought up today when she gets angry with me, that I hurt their relationship and she has never treated my family kindly since. Well, the next day she came to me and apologized profusely and said she would no longer contact him and wanted to work on our marriage. I accepted her apology and acted like I believed she would not contact him but I knew I would verify it at night and I did nightly then weekly, then occasionally.
Well she kept her word - for about a year - Around this time; we got a phone call from her mother saying she had some bad news. My wife's ex-husband #3 apparently still loved her and was trying to work with her to get the house refinanced back in his name and had had an argument with my wife over the house refinance had also had an argument with his new wife and was upset and decided to OD on pain meds in the house he and my wife still jointly owned. So now we have another house and payment. She took his death very hard and I noticed the phone on at night again with her back to me. I checked her messages and sure enough, back to the same person, her messages were about how her ex was really the love of her life and that she really wished she had stayed with him instead of getting remarried to me, and that she regretted moving so far away to be with me. This time I confronted her and told her she needed to cut all ties with him. She said she just wanted to talk with him to see how he was doing, and to talk about her ex's death, she said she would delete her Yahoo IM account. I told her to do it in front of me and she did. I did notice IM back on my laptop a few weeks later but a key logger I have installed on it shows it isn't accessed anymore; I keep it there in case she goes for it again. This was last year and so far, so good - with this guy.
Enter her Ex fiance - Well about 3 months ago, I notice the lit phone again. It's her ex-fiance, apparently his marriage is about to end with his wife due to her drug use and neglect and he has 2 autistic sons. My wife specializes in autism in her practice and she claimed she was helping him find services for them. I begin monitoring conversations again, this time I got a bit more complex with packet logging and routing all in-home traffic through a router I can monitor. Well, again the same pattern, innocent texts and messages get more and more flirty; I become a worse and worse husband. A charge shows up on our account for a spa in her ex's hometown, she gives me a lame excuse saying her best friend back home was passing through and she wanted to give her a gift at the spa, I told her I saw through it, to which she denied it, again and again. Then our 5th wedding anniversary, I get her a diamond ring, I didn't even receive a card. The night of our anniversary, I see a chat message to her ex saying she just knew I would give her something materialistic that says "I Love you" - REALLY! This comes to a head the next night when she accuses me of beating her and our children. At this point I go into self protection mode. I photograph the messages including one she sends to her best friend saying how bad of a husband I am but at least I have never hit her only hours after she tells her ex that I did. The next day I talk to a lawyer about it, they wanted a $5000 retainer but gave me a number for a free legal advice line that operates once a month. So I must break my silence to one of the ladies I was communicating with during my early dating relationship with my wife. My sister is a lawyer and she introduced me to another friend of hers years ago that was also an attorney, we dated a bit but it was a long distance relationship and I met my wife not long after. So I sent her a face book message asking if we could talk. Not 1-2 days later my wife blurts out that she wants to look at my phone. I hand it over after opening up the very message I sent to my sister's friend. She saw it and went ballistic, I told her I knew everything she had said about me and that I was contacting her because I was concerned about the false accusations she was making about me and I wanted to talk to a lawyer, and I knew what happened when I talked to my sister the last time. She said she didn't want me talking to her again and that we both needed to shut down our face book accounts. I did and she did, and she said she would stop communicating with her ex as well.
She did stop communication with her ex, through conventional means at least, now she has gaming apps on her phone where she chats with him. My packet logging picks them up. The bashing of me does subside and it appears to be a bit more professional for a bit, but then it returns back to the way it was. She returned back home for a week with our son, so I didn't think I had to worry, when she returned I noticed messages talking to him about driving halfway to meet at a restaurant and it coincided with the time period she left our son with my parents and borrowed their car! I asked about this and she made up some story about trying to meet her bestfriend who cancelled, I didn't believe it but acted like I did. Then the phone calls begin because she suspects I can see her messages, her first call to him lasts 97 minutes. Then the calls happen daily, this month, the cell phone bill has a total of 536 minutes of calls to me and 839 minutes of calls to him. She will bring up little bit of how she is helping him with his kids in conversation to which I ask her to cease contact with him. It goes unheeded. Now she has begun texting him away from here and deleting her texts before she gets home, and is very protective of her phone, even sleeping with it, I have to grab it off the charger and sneak glances occasionally, or sneak it from beside her in bed. The last thing I saw was her talking about putting bunk beds in the house so all the kids will be comfortable together, and that their visits will only get better in the future and that she was hurt by him leaving her before the wedding but she could forgive him. I am unsure of the context of the messages as she had deleted the earlier messages from her phone. She has another trip planned in March and has already filled him in on it. I did learn of the trick of putting a voice activated recorder in her car from this forum, so far I only have one call that I was able to catch that was clear after playing with the sensitivity and other settings of the recorder. In it she says she just wanted to call to hear his voice and that she couldn't call back in an hour because she will be at home but could text him. She is back on facebook and rarely communicates with him in this manner but just this week I see some very inappropriate messages to a guy she knew in college about oral sex and asking why they never got together and that she wanted to meet him to surprise a mutual friend when she comes down in March, to which he insinuates a threesome and she calls it cute.

So this is where I am now, despite my distaste for drama; I now seem to live in a soap opera. As I write this I realize this in itself is therapy and clarity. While just reading it objectively it causes me to think leave her ASAP. Why don't I? I consider myself a strong willed person and can indeed detach from my emotions, but what I don't want to happen is to lose my son permanently and secondarily the one passion in my life outside of my family if she should decide to go after me in the divorce just to hurt me. My wife has said to me in anger in the past that she will get custody because she knows the system and that extreme circumstances must be shown for me to get custody, that I will not see our son except on rare occasions and she would take him back halfway across the country. She has threatened me with this and I know she will push for it. My life passion is flying and my other big concern is for my aircraft that I have saved my entire life to buy. When I fly during all of this it takes all my stress and worries away and has kept me sane and offers one of the few things I look forward to during my week. I have been passionate about flying my whole life and it has been the one constant in my life. I fear that if she realizes this and wants to hurt me in addition to taking our son from me, then she knows how to truly do it.
So for some reason I continue to look at her call records, hide the recorder, and wait for opportunities to grab her phone to check her texts, not sure what I am looking for to show up. Part of me is numb to all this, treating it like a game and part of me resents her for it. The weird thing is that I am not sure if I would be devastated if it led to a divorce, I am not sure why these EA's aren't hurting me like they should be, like a PA would. Am I just waiting for the inevitable, or should I just take the leap so I don't have to go through this next time if she stops this time and I find out again in a month? a year?

friend, I'm sorry you're here. Yes, it's wildly inappropriate what your wife is doing. Yes, you have a right to tell her to stop.

My question to you is: when are you going to grow a pair?

I'm sorry that may sound harsh. but you need to act like a man. Don't let her play ANY of these games. She doesn't get to do this. Don't let her bad mouth you to other men. don't let her tell you that you can't talk about this with your sister.

but the only way you will stop it is if you do. You need to tell her this stuff stops or we divorce because you won't live this way anymore. Yes, you have to go that far. There's a saying here, "you have to be willing to lose the marriage to save it." It's the truth. Believe it. You can't "nice" her back.

If you continue to allow this nonsense to occur, you will be doomed. Since I have been here, every single case of a man trying to pussy-foot his way around his cheating wife has resulted in divorce. Every one.

Eventually she will take her EA and make it a PA. I believe it's inevitable, with someone. Maybe not the ex-fiance, but with someone. You have to draw a line in the sand and stop it.

I hope I haven't been too hard on you. I'm trying to help. I think what I've told you will offer you the best chance of saving your marriage.

Best of luck.

[This message edited by mike7 at 2:07 AM, January 23rd (Thursday)]

Mike,
You haven't been harsh, just said what Iv'e been thinking for a long time. This is so much different from my last divorce, I found out my last ex had had an PA with 3 guys and before the end of the next day she was out of the house and we had been at the notary to sign a property settlement agreement. From the beginning I had told her an affair was a deal breaker, that divorce was so quick everyone's head spun - no kids thank goodness. I had a lot of misplaced rage after that one. As for this marriage this wave is about to crest and come crashing down soon with an ultimatum, I want irrefutable proof in front of her as she tries to twist everything.

but the only way you will stop it is if you do. You need to tell her this stuff stops or we divorce because you won't live this way anymore. Yes, you have to go that far. There's a saying here, "you have to be willing to lose the marriage to save it." It's the truth. Believe it. You can't "nice" her back.

This I know, I have been living the 180 pretty much since the first time I found out, she now says I am detached from the marriage and family and uses it for justification to her actions, so this only further leads me to believe she isn't willing to put forth the effort.

Truth is I am not sure I want to save it, it has recurred so many times that I don't believe it will get better. She has in the past been unwilling to go to MC or IC saying that because she is a therapist, she knows just what plans the therapist will follow and that she doesn't want to go.

This would have been cut and dry if it wasn't for having kids. But I do realize that I shouldn't stick it out just for their sake.

See an attorney, file for D, kick her ass to the curb, heal yourself.

The shit stops when you say it does !!!!

[This message edited by stronger08 at 2:47 AM, January 23rd (Thursday)]

Her 4th marriage, if she hasn't learned by now its not going to happen.

Sounds like she started off looking for a reason to do the things she is doing. Its almost like your her "for now guy". Remove yourself from her mess.

Exposure is your trump card!!! Get your ducks in a row and expose your WW. Start with the OM's wife or girlfriends. Then her parents and closest friends. Do not let her know your doing this.

Mate, she has THREE ex-husbands?? My heart broke to read your story. You sound like a stand up guy getting absolutely shat on from a great height.

To put it bluntly, this is a learned behaviour that she refuses to give up. If she was open to seeing a clinical psychologist, I'd say you might have a chance. But I'd wager each of her divorces stem from infidelity.

Stay strong my friend.

She is a therapist because it takes crazy to understand crazy.

File for divorce.

Take action.

You will be #4.

And the only decent ex she will ever have.

Mate, she has THREE ex-husbands?? My heart broke to read your story. You sound like a stand up guy getting absolutely shat on from a great height.

To put it bluntly, this is a learned behaviour that she refuses to give up. If she was open to seeing a clinical psychologist, I'd say you might have a chance. But I'd wager each of her divorces stem from infidelity.

Stay strong my friend.

Unfortunately, intellect, morality, and loyalty do not always go hand in hand.

Your wife is a wayward. For all you know, she has been a wayward since husband #1. But all that really matters is that she is a wayward with husband #4.

DO NOT SIT IDLE DUE TO FEAR. Your wife threatens to take your child away because she knows the system? Fuck that, with a capital "F". Sorry to sound blunt, but if you believe that your wife is vindictive enough to attempt to remove your child from your life, then this is not someone that you should spend another minute of effort on.

Contact a lawyer, ASAP. Spend the retainer, and get the ball rolling. Even if, by some miracle, your wife comes around to be a model spouse, that 5 grand that you spent will have been one of the best investments in your life.

Your wife is acting crazy. Do not get caught up in it. Do not engage her. Simply continue to gather evidence, as you work toward ending this insanity. It will be up to you to end this marriage. It will be up to her to attempt to save it....if you both desire.

Good luck.

2yrsblind, hurthalo - yeah 3X, it was initially a red flag but after talking with her and her friends and family confirming them, I believe 2 were justified, the 2nd ex put her in the hospital,(she is still partially blind in one eye from it), the 3rd cheated on her the first week they were married so it was A - BTW, this is the one she says was the love of her life and ended his life in what is now our other home. Her first - from the few details I have gathered outside of her story which she hasn't been completly honest about was that they separated and they both found OM/OW after she says he was "emontionally detached" which sound's remarkably familiar...

toby,
I am gathering evidence. I feel like a PI now. Unfortunately, the OM's divorce just became final a couple of weeks ago so spilling the beans there wont cause any backlash. I don't believe her family gives a crap about what she's doing to me other than her step father who likes me. Supposedly her mother has offered to pay her house off if she would leave me to return closer to her family, of course this could have been a tactic in the argument to take a jab at me, so I didn't give it any merit.

happyman64,jb3199,
funny you should say that, I had a really good friend back in college that dropped out of engineering to go into psycology. When I asked him why he said it was because he had some lingering issues from childhood and wanted to find out how to handle them, he said all of his classmates that he had befriended were there for the same reason. The more I go through this the more I believe you guys and my friend are correct. I have paid a visit to an attorney only to discuss the divorce process so far. I have another meeting next week.

So I confronted her yesterday and it has continued into today. Of course after supplying all the evidence she immediately turns it around as to I have been detached from the marriage and our family for the last month or so. I tell her to look back at her timeline with her ex, that the time I began to detach was about the time she falsely accused me of physical violence. It didn't really work. I told her that I admit to detaching because I saw a bleak future and that that was my fault but it didn't justify the actions she was taking. She of course minimized everything including when I told her I wanted her to stop all contact with her ex. She took it to mean all inappropriate contact. She is still messaging him in from of me now and showing and telling me, she thinks that if I know and she keeps it "g" rated that all is OK! I told her no, absolutely not. So she sent a message to him that they shouldn't talk anymore because I was asking for the communication to stop. I told her if she does she needs to begin to make arrangements to go back to her house and family. She cried and told me a sob story about how her and her ex were 5 months pregnant and she lost the baby and her depression is what drove him away, and she feels a certain connection with him. I told her that not only could I not believe anything she said because I have been lied to so many times, that this was even more reason she shouldn't continue contact. I told her I knew about the lies regarding the trip to see him and the whole story of her friend standing her up. She insisted that it was a last minute thing and that she was teaching him how to set up bins for his children's items so they would learn to organize and keep their rooms clean. I didn't believe it of course.
She said she is willing to work on the marriage, I told her I will need a lot of commitment on her part and even then I am not sure. She said she understood and wanted to work on it. So I am wondering if I even want her to try.
Meanwhile, I am contemplating blocking his number from our cell service. The only bad thing about this is that after the initial fecal storm blows over she will just contact him on her work phone which I cannot monitor.
I will meet with the lawyer this week to discuss options and get a plan in place should she not follow trough on her part so I can get everything rolling quickly. Thanks for everyone support and I'll let you know which way things go from here.

Hey buddy keep updating your situation, Hang in there buddy

Here is what I would do.. Continue to gather evidence, store it in a safe place, VAR any discussions you guys have about M or D..

Make it a condition that if WW wants to be living with you and sharing finances( irregardless of whether she wants to work on the marriage ) she must agree to and sign a post nup protecting you and your interests..

So what if she claims that she knows the system..She has been married and divorced several times..The reason for this current M being in trouble is also cheating...This history of hers is not gonna look good in front of a judge if case goes to court..

Call her on her bluff..

If she doesn't sign post nup you will nail her to the wall financially / legally..

[This message edited by doggiediva at 8:44 AM, January 28th (Tuesday)]

So, I have finally caught VAR recordings of my WW in car with her ex-fiance. Wow! not for the faint of heart. Needless to say there were multiple jaw dropping moments. What I didn't expect came from a call to her mother, she bad mouthed me for over 5 minutes. Twisting untruths to make me look bad, this continues sporadically to her friends, her father, and of course her ex. In fact I am beginning to think she is incapable of saying anything nice about me, then she comes home acting like everything is ok and that she loves me. She even jokes with him about changing her ex's name on her phone to "her cute marine" just to piss me off when I read her texts. I am done, I don't deserve this blatant disrespect. When I am beat up still to this day about talking with my family about her past behavior, she's going to pull this crap! I have a meeting tomorrow with the DA (scheduled over a week ago) but unfortunately it looks like the weather is going to prevent my trip as well. So the new question I ask is how much evidence do I need? It wears you down hearing someone talk this way about you. I have extremely thick skin, and am finding distractions to keep it from really getting to me, but I am not sure I want to hear it much longer.

Sorry about your new discoveries. But I have a feeling that you are not surprised to learn about the continued contact.

As hard as it is to emotionally detach, I strongly recommend that you do so, as quickly as possible, for your own sanity. I also believe that you need to get into self-preservation mode----like yesterday.

Do not confront. Do not reveal your sources. Keep a VAR on your person anytime you are near her. With her past threats of DV, and the threats of keeping your child from you, this is an absolute must. And while I know that being a private investigator can be extremely tiring and time-consuming, it really is important to continue to gather evidence. Who knows what level of treachery she is capable of stooping to.

I am sorry. The only thing worse that watching your life crumble in front of you, is to see the one person that you thought had your back, swing the wrecking ball. Betrayal at the worst.

Protect yourself. That lawyer appointment can't come fast enough. After you learn your rights, THEN you can take some further steps.

Good luck.

So I am still getting VAR from my wife's vehicle, and while all my suspicions have been just that and her flirting even on text messages and phone call to this point have been semi-innocent if you can even call it that, today was it, today is the day I realize it's over. Basically, the flirting continued and after a joke about her sending him naked pictures of herself in the mail but she would be afraid his kids would open the mail and see them, the conversation tone changed, it was was clear, free of any joking and full of seriousness. During this they discussed what went wrong in their relationship and the the bomb dropped when I heard,

"I'm gonna tell you this, you know that I will love your boys like I love my son, you know that, and you know that given the past , um, I probably gave up I little to easily, so I don't think I'm gonna give up so easily this time. Well, I think you know that what I am saying is that I love you to much to give up to easily ,this time , last time I just did, I was like whatever, there was a lot of stuff going on , but, I don't care what happens and in the time that it happens, I mean I'm not going anywhere".

The conversation then turns to her discussing what I might do during the divorce and what salary she can bring home and what she can do to make thier relationship a success...
So there it is, there is the feeling I had hoped I'd never experience again. I had to calm back down and writing this has helped. I am feeling so many emotions right now, and I want it to just subside. I'm going to make an appt with a counselor to talk about it tomorrow. Luckily the meeting I went through with my legal cousel went well last friday. I chose at that time not to move forward but I will go back tomorrow and pay the retainer - ouch! Figures as well, I did find out that the stupid state just passed a new very harsh alimony law that went into effect 3 days ago. It's almost like she planned it..... I am hoping she goes amicably and we can settle on everything to avoid a long legal process.