SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My WH answers any direct questions I ask. Sometimes before I ask, if he knows what I'm thinking (not sure how he does that, but he does.)

Anyway, I'm debating whether to ask for full disclosure/timeline or not. Seems like the more I find out the more triggers I have to deal with. I'm wondering if it would be easier to just put it behind me and try to move on.

We both understand he has issues he needs to work on, by himself or with a counselor, for our marriage to improve & last, dare I say forever?

I would like to hear the advantages & disadvantages of getting/not getting full disclosure/timeline.

You have to have full disclosure. You may not feel the need to have the tiny details of what he did..but you need to know the big things..who? How many? Names? How often? When? Why? Etc,etc.

I would suggest you insist on full disclosue NOW. Right now..while the pain is still very fresh. I know..that sounds like torture. BUT..it will help you down the road,as you try to R. There will be no TT(trickle truth), because you already know all there is to know. TT basically reopens all the wounds,and you have to start healing all over.

Also..how can you move forward..and know what it is you are dealing with..unless you know everything?

Some BS's don't want the sexual details..some do. Whatever you feel is right for you,is right for you. But you need full disclosure.

I don't see any advantages for not getting a timeline or full disclosure. You need to know what your WH has done..you need to know the truth about your marriage.

((((soconfusednow))))

I agree there are certain things that you have to know so your brain can make some sense of it, and you can heal in a healthy way. If you just try to ignore it, and essentially just move forward there are going to be a lot of unaswered questions that will come up later.

I agree that you don't need to know the details, but more the basics, and a timeline. I wanted to know things like how he felt when he decided to cross the line. Why did he feel the need to continue to have contact with her once he had decided to work on his M?

I guess what I am trying to say is without having some sort of rough idea on how things happened I would always have questions, and then never be sure he was truthful. I didn't need the sexual details, I did need to know if he used protection or not. It would have caused me a whole lot more triggers, and I would have most likely blown things way out of proportion in my imagination without getting the info I did.

I think the decision to know all the details is an intensely personal one. I know folks who have wanted to know every last minute detail, right down to what kind of toilet paper the OP had in their home. I, personally, didn’t care to know all the details. I honestly didn’t need to. I knew enough to know the two chuckle-heads were acting like selfish horse’s asses and that’s all I needed to know to get the hell out of Dodge. I guess I felt all I had to know was that it WAS happening – the hows, wheres, whys, whos weren’t important to me.

It has been 14 months since DD for me. I didn't get answers to my questions in the beginning from him or her. I called her and only asked a few and then asked her to not contact him any longer. I was mad at myself for not getting more info from her. As for my BF, he was annoyed by my questions and only recently realized that he did not do a good job in helping me to heal. All of the stress and pain of his A of 4 years did a number on me and affected my health recently and I think it scared him. Now that we are taking a seriously stab at R I want answers to all of my questions. I know it might make for more triggers but I'm almost ready to deal with that then the constant questions I have in my head. Sometimes we make it harder for ourselves by answering our own questions. I just found this site 1 week ago and so wish I would have found it within days of DD. I know it will be painful but you definitely want full disclosure. I believe it is necessary for healing.

The truth hurts--but not as much as the wall that secrets erects between partners.

Wow...so glad you posted this. I've been wondering the same thing!!!

I wish I knew. I wish I'd been told the truth.

Looking back over the years and wondering how much of the relationship you THOUGHT you were in is a lie, sucks arse.

I agree that I do not ever want to know very intimate details but a true timeline and the acknowledgement of the lies told to me would still help me today. Knowledge is power, otherwise you live with the feeling that everyone else knows more than you do. Like an 'in' joke that you were never 'in' on.

Clean slate, open book, full disclosure all sound like safer places to R from than secretville.

(((soconfusednow)))

You seek the level of disclosure that you want, and need, now.

That doesn't mean that it is over, that further disclosure may not be necessary or wanted later, just that it is what you want in the here and now.

Your WS needs to commit to giving you that disclosure, to the degree that you request it, when you request it. Understanding fully that your requests may change over time.

What they can do now is work on the timeline and details and fill that in, for themselves, and make sure they put the most excruciating details down in case they are asked for in the future. Keep this locked up, you don't want visitors or kids finding it.

The truth hurts--but not as much as the wall that secrets erects between partners.

No truer statement can be said.

The most important thing is that secrets die. You may not want to know what he did in a particular place or time, but he needs to be knowledgeable about and willing to let you know the unvarnished truth about what took place in the place and time if and when you ask for that, not keeping a secret about it, building that wall that impairs intimacy.

I think you need to sit down with a list and write the questions you need to ask with the answers you need answered.

Schedule a talk. An honest open talk.

Really think through these questions. Demand the answers you HAVE to have.

If you do not want the sordid details - make sure you don't ask.

I never wanted the details persay. I wanted to know specifics, and how he felt.

Sometimes I think I maybe not asked enough - but I think I'm better off not knowing some stuff.

It's a never ending battle with the mind. Knowing too much or not enough is what I struggle with these days.

I wanted details. I wanted to know what I wasn't doing.

But on the flip side, I didn't want to give details, I didn't want to hurt him.

All along I knew he wasn't telling me everything. My gut was screaming at me. I kept telling him there was more to his story than he was telling me. 30 days ago I had a meltdown before I left for work & told him I can't move forward because there's a roadblock - HIM! That day he sat down & wrote it all out. When I got home we went over each item he wrote out. There wasn't any new shocking info just details he glazed over to "protect" me. I called BS on that crap & told him he was protecting HIMSELF because he was afraid I'd kick his sorry ass out. Everyone is different but that night I found out the details he had been hiding I felt a weight lifted off me & felt I could truly move forward. Now if OW would go away I could have a little peace in my life.

I never got a full timeline. But even if he would have given me one I would still never know if it was the truth anyway.

We separated shortly after dday for 18 months. When we decided to R I asked if I knew everything, he assured me that I did. I DID NOT.

I never wanted details. I wanted WHO & WHEN.

I am still not sure I know who and when. I was lied to so many times that I will never believe him even if he is telling the truth.

It was important to me that my WW created a full timeline. It was not at all important to me that I read that timeline.

For me, the big blow was that it happened at all, not "how many times they had sex" or "where", or any of those other things. Those are the minor bads, under the big hurt of the affair.

That, and my WW only had so many free times during the month (ish) of the affair, I can pretty much figure out when and where if I put in 5 minutes' work.

It was important to me, though, that she write it down. The simple act of doing that, at least for her, helps prevent any rugsweeping, any dimnishing of what was done.

I don't want to punish her (well, not really), I just want her able to be honest with herself and with me.

Advantages: You are rebuilding trust - every truth you are given is the removal of a lie you did not know was there. Just because you didn't know something was happening, doesn't mean it wasn't affecting you. It devastated me to hear many things, but I took great comfort in knowing that my H was willing to give that to me. It felt like he was 'betraying' her, and that made me feel better somehow. The greatest pain of the A was the deception and the lies - the only way for me to get past that was for him to begin to give me the truth. I had a right to know who I was married to, and to make an informed decision about staying to work through it. I'm so glad I did stay - for me, it has been worth it because of the truthfulness we finally have.

It also helped for me to 'confess' some things to him as well. I confessed that I had creeped old boyfriends on facebook. I confessed that I had thought about having an affair with our daughter's soccer coach. We confessed all manner of things to each other, until we actually felt like we were known by the other person. To be KNOWN and loved? Amazing.

There's pretty much nothing that anyone can tell me about my H that I don't already know. There are no 'bombs' to be dropped on me by the OW. I know my H. That is a big advantage, and one that, for me, far, far outweighs any disadvantages.

Disadvantages: Once you know it, you can't un-know it. It might actually be more than you can handle, and you will wish you had stayed blissfully ignorant. (Except, I was never 'blissfully' ignorant; just ignorant and confused and frustrated and always wondering what I was doing wrong. Unless you married a sociopath, their lies will have affected their relationship with you, whether you knew it or not).

I wish I had never asked if they had 'a song'. It stabs every time I hear it on the radio, over the intercom in the grocery store, wherever. I wish I didn't have mind-movies to cope with. I'm hoping they go away with time. I was staggered at the depth of his cruelty to me, his absolute disrespect and disregard for my life and our life together - it went so over-the-top that I think it repulsed him when he began to confess it. It helped with his repentance, which helped with my healing. Advantage/disadvantage? Depends on what you need to heal, ultimately - with or without him. But if you're choosing 'with', I think you really do need to have full disclosure.

I got a prescription for AD's immediately upon finding out, so that has helped me to pace my grieving.

From what i understand the disclosure is a therapeutic value to both of you. Supposedly it's when the healing really begins.

My SAWH is just starting to work on his disclosure so we will see what happens with that. His CSAT has told me he may not be at the point of being empathetic enough to know the effects it has had on our relationship over the course of our marriage, so it may take awhile to write his disclosure. I have a hunch that there is much more.

What helped me deal with some of the anger was that at the suggestion of our MC, I created my own timeline of the A and described how I was feeling. Lonely, distant from him, like a roommate and head nanny/housekeeper. We were leading very separate lives. Anyway, I am ready to share this with him soon. It's my hope that it will start to show him the trail of devastation.

As for me, I want a timeline of what happened/when and I want to know about trips they took and plans to be together (my H is a horrible planner so I am pretty sure it was her doing all of the planning). I don't want to know about sex details. I'd like to know about strip clubs/porn usage because I think it is important to show him that this, too, hurts our relationship.

Advantages: you know what you need to heal from. You hit a true bottom and can only go up from there.

Disadvantages: it may be far worse than you originally thought. He may not reveal everything and if you find out something in the future it will make you mad that he did not disclose it.

I have an extremely good imagination and I was worrying all those details out the wazoo...I'd sit and ponder things all night and not sleep. Once I finally had everything down to the nails, I've finally started to not have it occupy every thought.

How did I know I had it all? My gut stopped screaming. Until then we had to go through probably 12 more minor reveals and 2 major.

I lived in a bed of TT for roughly 15 months. After the last disclosure I knew there was more as things never added up. I couldn't live the way he wanted me to (holding up the rug for him to sweep everything under).

Yes, the major points of fact are the most important to have in order to move forward in any direction. The details are questionable if they need to be known on an individual basis.

From my own personal experience:

4+ years of TT sucks big time. You are never given the opportunity to begin to work through it and heal.

I begged from the beginning to "lay it all out on the table". I knew it would hurt, but I just didn't want any more secrets or surprises.

SAWH liked his secrets and so I am a "poster child for hearing TT" and it kills me.

You have to know for yourself, but if it was me, I would want full disclosure.

For me there is no other option other than full disclosure at this time. It's the only way I can move forward and figure out what to do for myself. I know it Will cause more triggers for me however it will always also help me work through this figure out what's in my head and figure out what to do to move forward. I'm sure it would only cause more pain and heartbreak for some people, however not knowing for me is 1000 times worse.