SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’m apologizing now for the length of this.

First a little history. My wife and I have known each other for 7 years now. We've had our ups and downs like any couple but it has been a great rollercoaster ride. In 2010 both of us 23, I graduated from college, got a great job, we got married and we even bought a house. The next year we had our first child our daughter. She brought so much joy and happiness into our lives and we were never better. That is until we had our second child, our boy just last year (he'll be turning 1 in about a month). Our life, our family felt complete and we were so happy.

Flashback to mid April when I start noticing my wife acting strange. Seemingly on her phone a lot more than usual, being semi secretive about it, staying up way later than normal. For a couple weeks I don't really think too much of it, until I notice that while on her phone she is typing. Typing A LOT. Start of May and it’s still going on. I've repeatedly ask her what she's doing, she shrugs me off says nothing but is even more protective of her phone. Fearing the worst, I look through her email and in the deleted messages find something in regards to an account my wife has on ashleymadison.com

My heart sinks. I can't believe this is happening. I try and log into her account (we have also been open about passwords and she really only ever uses like 3 different ones) so before long I am logged in. At first I'm furious. I see a couple dozen messages between her and other guys. I see that in her profile it says she is looking for someone to make up for her lack of fun in the bedroom. As I look more at the messages, I see that she really isn't talking much to any of these people. Maybe one or two messages back and forth and that's it. I figure I'm early enough into this that instead of confronting her about this I'm just going to ramp it up in the bedroom. (I should note it was also 2 days before mother's day that I found her account and we had a lot of family stuff planned so I didn't want to impact that).

Our sex life have had dwindled after we had our second child. From the pure exhaustion to the lack of intimacy we had grown apart in this last year emotionally and physically. We had talked about it before, how we kind of felt like roommates more than partners, but neither of us really saw it for the problem it was and neither of us did really anything about it. We were having sex once every few weeks when things lined up but we weren't really making all that much of an effort.

She had a REALLY hard time talking with me and telling me how she feels and what she needs, and all other aspects of our life were great so I didn't really think of it anymore. But in her mind we had talked about it (even though we barely had) nothing came of it, so she took matters into her own hands and went on there.

(Side note: since all this has happened her ability to talk to me has improved amazingly. I feel like she has been more open and discussive with me about her emotions and feelings in the past week than she has been in the past 7 years)

So over the next couple of weeks our sex life was great. We both seemed to be making a more conscious effort and things were starting to look up. But all during this time she is still talking with someone on her phone I can just tell, but every effort to get her to talk to me about it gets denied and shrugged off.

Come to May 23rd. I have the day off work (she's a stay at home mom), a week or so earlier she mentioned that she was going to have lunch with a friend of hers that I know through her but am not close with at all. As the morning goes on and she's getting ready to go (at like 11:30 in the morning) my brain starts to put some things together. Just a few days before she bought a new bra (which she's needed) and panties. That morning when I tried to initiate sex she didn't want to for the first time in a while, and during my advance I notice she has cleaned herself up down there (which isn't unheard of for her just kind of rare).

Come time for her to leave and I don't say a word. I don't know if I was just so afraid of what could be happening that I made myself think everything was fine and let her go, I dunno. Around noon as I'm feeding the kids and I take a look at our bank account and I realize she still hasn't bought any lunch even though she definitely should have by now. At this point I know something is up because unless it was like a family member she wouldn't accept lunch on a friend like that, just how she is.

I text her telling her how the kids are and asking how she is and don't get a response. So I log back onto her ashleymadison account just to see if there is anything new. Still really nothing in weeks from anyone. Then I realize the email address listed on her account isn't the same one anymore it's one I've never seen. I attempt to log into it and after about an hour or so I get in, and there are emails galore between her and a few guys but mainly with just one. I then see a blinking chat thing in the corner and click on it and it says "Hotel such and such room blah blah blah, let me know when you are here."

I freeze up with a mix between anger and sadness. I flip back a little bit and see that they have been regular chatting every day for a month and a half and even have been have multiple hour long phone conversations once I've gone to bed. By now it is almost 2pm so I assume the worst and that everything I have feared has happened already. I text her with "I f-ing knew it!" and wait for her to get home. I pack a bag and call a friend who will let me stay with him for the night. She gets home and denies, denies, denies before finally giving in to what I already knew. She tells me that if it means anything that nothing happened, that when she got there she couldn't go through with it and all they was talk. I'm in such a furious rage that I don't believe a word she is saying. I tell her that I am leaving for a bit because I just can't stand to be around her. She ends up convincing me to stay at least until the kids are in bed, so I don't leave in front of them. I reluctantly agree and end up not leaving that night.

This brings us to the current day. Over the past month we have talked a lot in actually a fairly calm and collective adult manner. She's explained that when she first got on the website it was due to our lack of intimacy, she was seeing what was out there but didn't even know if she could/would act on it. Then she met him and they had a connection that she was never expecting. It was never her intention to get so emotionally involved with someone like she is now; she just ended up meeting someone and having that kind of connection. By the time I found out she had that account and tried to sex things up in the bedroom, she was already emotionally attached to him so me doing that didn't really make much of a difference.

He is also a married man (I should also note 7 years older than us, she has always kind of had a "thing" for older men. Early on in our relationship she continued to talk with her previous partner who was an older man for a little while before I found out, but we worked through it) unhappy in his own relationship. An almost complete lack of sex or intimacy, but a love for his wife and family and two kids drove him to what he was doing. Neither of them was expecting to find what they did but they are now in the position that they really like each other, borderline love. In fact he has even said to her at least on one occasion that he is falling in love with her and my wife responded that she like liked him. My wife’s basic argument over the past month or so is that she wants both of us in her life and can't really see it any other way.

One thing she repeatedly says is that in her mind this whole thing is temporary. I've related it to like an itch you need to scratch. In her mind since she still wants only me in her future life, to raise our kids with and grow old with and that this is just a minuscule slice of our life, what’s the big deal? And I've told her that I understand her thinking that way, but its not like I can just skip over the next few months or year and not feel like I feel every single day that its going on. I don't know if I can handle the day to day pain and suffering it would cause me even knowing that it was temporary. Plus I don't know what kind of person it could make me into. I honestly feel like if she is with another man I may not ever be able to touch her again.

She has said her views on marriage have evolved over the past few months and she see's nothing wrong with liking more than one person at a time.

I do not hate her for feeling like this. And while I can understand how this could have happened I just don't feel the same way as her. I'm not a religious person but I feel like the sanctity of marriage is a sacred thing. Neither of us wants a divorce and we still love each other very much. But she is set in her ways and what she wants and me in mine. Over the past few weeks I have talked about compromise. Like talking to him when I'm not around and coming up with some ground rules to this situation. I've tried to be ok with them talking these past few weeks, but it’s like pouring salt in a wound. How can I be ok with and almost encourage her to be with another man that she cheated on me with? Part of me feels like me being ok with it would be negating the fact the she cheated and that she's basically getting away with it.

After a few weeks of talking we've both just gotten frustrated. We keep going in circles and getting no where. One thing that is really affecting me is that I have no one to really talk to about it. She obviously has him and has been forward with me and told me that they have talked about everything that me and her have talked about. All my closest friends are also hers so neither of us wants me to get them involved. During this time I hacked back into her email account and wrote him a message stating that I now had control of it and that unless he called my wife and broke things off with her, I would contact his wife and tell her everything. He agreed to do it and later that night did. But eventually that night my wife got it out of him that I put him up to it and if nothing else it made them feel closer together because they thought they were going to lose each other. Talk about a complete backfire. Not only that, but my wife threatened me that if I ever did tell his wife that she would leave me because "she is just an innocent bystander and doesn't deserve to feel what I'm feeling".

I finally told her that I wanted to go to couple counseling or I wanted a divorce and she reluctantly agreed. We did two sessions together, I did one session myself but they didn't really help because she was only expecting the therapy to help me see her way and nothing else. The one thing I talked with my therapist about in my individual session was the guilt I was feeling for not telling his spouse what he had done. (I had found a flickr account of his online with tons of pictures of him, her and their two kids, seemingly a perfectly happy family, and the images of his wife and children haunted me.)

Other than me and one other mutual friend neither of us really have anyone else. One of the biggest things that she said was going to affect her not talking to him was that she would be losing a friend too. So we agreed that she would only talk to him as a friend and stop the sexy naughty talk that had been going on and still was.

Since then, this past week we have been sleeping separately because she says that with being a stay at home mom she has no her time, so I agreed that after the kids went to bed we would separate to have personal time. We also talked about that there is no way that I am going to be able to move on from the fact that she cheated on me because she is still doing it by still talking to him every day so in my mind the affair and cheating have never stopped. So she agreed that after this week she would stop talking to him temporarily until I have time to recover.

Yesterday was a really big day for me though. The guilt of his spouse not knowing finally got to me and I wrote a letter explaining as much as I could and listed my number and mailed it to her. Unfortunately I can't find her phone number and all I have is their address and her facebook account which I believe he is monitoring since my facebook account is blocked to both of theirs. I do have a message that I was going to send to her anyways tomorrow which should be the morning of the day the letter arrives. I only hope that he doesn't get to them before she does because short of driving an hour to their house, I have no other way of telling her.

Last night around 2am I came downstairs to get some water and hear her talking to him on the phone moaning and having phone sex. I flip out and get in the car and just drive away to cool down. When I get back about 20 minutes later I tell her, that I am done being lied to and done being hurt by you. Either you call him right now in front of me and tell him that it is over because it is damaging your family and that neither of you are to contact each other ever again or I am calling a lawyer and filling for a divorce tomorrow. She didn't want to do it at first but finally gave in because I stood my ground. I heard their conversation and so finally at least a part of a NC is in place.

After they got off the phone I told her that I really appreciated it, that it showed me that she was willing to reconcile and that she cared about me and our family more than him. She was visible distraught with what I had made her do and didn't want to be around me. Even through this morning she is very upset and me and very distant. I'm afraid that now her resent for me will grow to a point of no return. I'm also worried that she will break the NC and don't know how exactly to go about telling her that I want access to not only her call logs but her entire phone. I know she's going to see it as a complete violation of her privacy and refuse to agree to it.

Whew - sorry for the length, but it's a long story and feels really good to get it all off my chest.

You need to out the OM any way you can immediately, even if that means getting in your car and driving there and ringing the door bell. You need to show your wife that she is not in total control here .

The next thing you need to do is contact an attorney and give her the initial D papers. The divorce will not happen immediately and you can stop it at any time.

Third, assuming you do not want to accept sitting at home while she goes off to bang him you need to make it clear that while you cannot control everything she does you are NOT living in a marriage with three people in it nor are you wasting money on MC while she is in an active affair that she will not stop . You should have confronted her before she left the house that day.

Lastly, you should use every snooping tactic you can, VAR , GPS etc because she will surely take this underground to try to fool you.

If you are not willing to take control and do the above , look up or google the word cuckold and unfortunately that is what you will become at the sacrifice of your pride and self esteem,

And tell your friends if you file. You did nothing wrong . It is her that is the cheater and not you

I can respect open relationships. But you know what they need? Trust and communication. Each partner has to be willing to put the needs of their primary partner first and to respect their boundaries.

By not doing any of those things, your WW has pretty much ruled herself out as a candiadte for an open relationship. She could have discussed this with you directly before attempting to act on it, like a mature and considerate adult; instead she chose the coward's way out and now she is justifying it by making this about he 'changing view of marriage'.

It's fine for someone's view of marriage to change. But YOU have a view of marriage too. And she just changed the terms without consulting you.

If she wants to make your marriage work and if she loves you then she has to fix what she has done now, instead of just trying to use the situation to force you to come to her terms. She doesn't accept that she has been duplicitous and put everything at risk; she totally has her head in the sand.

Also, as you know, the OM's wife deserves to know and should be told.

Thank you for the responses so far =)

I guess my biggest question right now is how do I handle the next little bit while she is suppose to be abiding by the NC and is visibly distraught over it?

I feel like if I just ignore it she's going to feel like I don't care about her feelings which I do but it's just difficult to have sympathy because of the reason she is upset.

I think I should post this piece in the reconciliation forum also.

Yes, like Norabird said.

There is a big difference between an open marriage and an affair. And being lied to is one big difference. Lies, sneaking around and disrespect are not part of an open marriage.

Basically, your wife is actually asking for permission to have an affair and stay in your home while she has this affair.

Your wife is telling you, that she is going to have an affair, you can't touch her and she wants the comfort life of being married in your home.

You have to decide if you can live like that.

We did two sessions together, I did one session myself but they didn't really help because she was only expecting the therapy to help me see her way and nothing else.

What was the therapist's advice regarding her relationship with the other man?

Yes, like Norabird said.

There is a big difference between an open marriage and an affair. And being lied to is one big difference. Lies, sneaking around and disrespect are not part of an open marriage.

Basically, your wife is actually asking for permission to have an affair and stay in your home while she has this affair.

Your wife is telling you, that she is going to have an affair, you can't touch her and she wants the comfort life of being married in your home.

You have to decide if you can live like that.

Like I said here

Last night around 2am I came downstairs to get some water and hear her talking to him on the phone moaning and having phone sex. I flip out and get in the car and just drive away to cool down. When I get back about 20 minutes later I tell her, that I am done being lied to and done being hurt by you. Either you call him right now in front of me and tell him that it is over because it is damaging your family and that neither of you are to contact each other ever again or I am calling a lawyer and filling for a divorce tomorrow. She didn't want to do it at first but finally gave in because I stood my ground. I heard their conversation and so finally at least a part of a NC is in place.

I believe I have finally made it clear exactly what I want to my SO.

I guess really now I need advice on the reconciliation front and I have started a topic on there pointing back to this one addressing some of my concerns.

Thanks for the response! =)

She has said her views on marriage have evolved over the past few months and she see's nothing wrong with liking more than one person at a time.

I bet.

Listen xabbu, your wife is just a garden-variety cheater, using all the same lines all cheaters use. Have you gotten, "I love you, but I am not in love with you" yet?

One thing I notice is you are taking WAY too much responsibility for her behavior. She did not cheat because sex dwindled. She did not cheat because you got busy. She cheated because she has issues.

You are really walking on eggshells here. You're afraid of your needs scaring her away, maybe, and are trying to be there for her and to make sure she feels safe and loved. That is a normal reaction but it is backwards. You did not cause her to cheat and to lie to you. You cannot cater to he and fall over yourself to reassure her. She should be reassuring YOU.

There is something we call the 180 on here--read it and try to live it. It will get your strength back and may possibly make your WW realize that things are not going to be on her terms.

http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=232785

I went through the same thing and almost agreed to it.

I even emailed OM and told him I was considering letting them communicate on a platonic level. FWW was very convincing that she felt like she had lost a dear friend and would never be happy with me if I didn't let her continue with their friendship.

I woke up rather quikly and said, hell no. Two people in this marriage...me and you. Those are the terms. Take 'em or leave 'em. You have 12 hours to think it over. She's been NC for 9 months.

You've got a Loooong way to go if you are to reconcile but the first step is get rid of OM and inform his W. She'll help monitor on his end. Take a stand now. YOU decide what's acceptable.

She cheated because she has issues

And IC for her would be helpful before MC.

Remember, there can be no R until the affair has stopped completely and the WS realizes that they were in the wrong in the first place. There has to be remorse before R.

You have to make sure there is no more contact. And from her actions, I dont really think NC will be maintained.

Many many times after a reluctant NC phone call, the WS tells their OM/OW the very next day it didnt mean anything.

I would be in the car sooo fast and headed to their house to tell the wife! She deserves to know and the fact is without her your wife can easily take the A underground... do not protect the OM's marriage- you have no loyalty to him and it could damage yours even more if you just let this go.

You can't reconcile until her view of your marriage and yours are the same. For you that means TWO people and for her that means she can have affairs when she wants to.

If you accept that, she will replace this OM with another one.

I know others differ, but I have no respect for an open relationship. To me that defeats the whole purpose of being married and having a family. If you want to be single and act accordingly, then be single. If you want to be married, then act like a married person.

But the question is whether you can tolerate such an arrangement.

If the answer is no (as it seems to be), then tell her in no uncertain terms that this is unacceptable and that she needs to pull her head out of her ass and meet your demands before you'll even consider staying married to her. YMMV, but the usual demands are immediate no contact with OM, STD testing, complete transparency (she gives you all accounts, passwords, phone #'s, etc.), change phone #'s / block calls, complete truth/timeline, MC, IC, and anything else that makes you feel safe and secure.

You deserve better than this. This behavior is really demeaning and insulting.

Oh yeah, tell the other betrayed spouse all about her hubbie's shenanigans. Things need to get real for him. And nothing says real like a raging, triggering BS. But beyond that, she deserves to know who she is married to so she can begin to heal and make decisions for herself.

Please expose as soon as you can preferably in person.

There needs to be consequences for her and you need to show you are not going to put up with this.

xabbu, with all due respect, you are in danger of having one of those very long threads here where absolutely nothing seems to be getting accomplished.

Don't believe her NC phone call. She can call now and tell OM you are a horrible person and made her do it.

Watch what she does, not listen to what she says.

NC

Open access to electronic devices including histories with caveat that deletions are conclusively presumed to be infidelity chat.

Answer your questions when asked

Truth

Remorse, not regret (which are very different things).

Accountablility of whereabouts.

Firm consequences for violations--you tell her in advance what will happen if she violates the above AND DO IT IF SHE DOES. Don't draw a line in the sand and erase it when she violates it.

Maybe you'll R or maybe you won't. She is so far in the Fog right now there is no way to know.

It seems like you want to control this process, which is natural, and decide when to enter reconciliation.

One of the hardest pieces related to getting through infidelity is the fact that most of it is out of your control. Your relationship is forever changed and your partner may well not be able to do what it takes to enter reconciliation.

So far, while lying is ongoing and there's still a strong interest in the OM, reconciliation is impossible. There's still a lot she needs to work out for herself.

Assume for now that she has another secret email account (one that she hasn't compromised by using it in a place where you can snoop). Continue to try and contact the OM's wife. She's innocent, as your wife says, but she deserves to know.

Welcome.

Know that your wife is having a pretty typical affair. The things she is saying the actions she is committing, the attitude she is spouting. It's all very typical WS (wayward spouse) behavior.

You want to save your M (marriage)?

You need to play hard ball and you need to play it now.

You need to go see an attorney, and find out your rights, and her responsibilities, and how this is going to play out should she not remove her head from her arse.

You Need to NOT believe one single word out of her mouth. She is in deep right now, and everything she says and does is going to be to protect herself. She hasn't been forced to make a choice yet, as you have allowed her to have continued contact, and now that you finally have forced NC, you can bet she went straight to Wallyworld, and got herself a burner phone, and she set up a new fake email with a password you won't be able to guess.

You need to lay down your demands/rules/expectations for how this is going to play out, and the clear consequences for not going along with it. And do NOT feel bad that you are asking your wife to do what she as your wife should have been doing all along. Being honest, transparent, respectful and faithful.

Eat/Hydrate/Sleep if you are struggling with these things contact your Dr. This is quite possibly the most emotionally trying thing you will ever go through. It's ok to need some help and support. I would also blow this thing out of the dark and into the bright light of day. Tell his wife, tell friends, tell family. Get it out there. A's are like vampires, they don't like daylight.

Keep reading, keep posting.

(((and strength))))

Tush nurse has told you exactly what you should be doing and how the only way you will stop it will be. You made a big mistake letting her have her cake and eat it too. And yes, you are being naive if you think she is not underground with it.

After you put a stop to it , if you decide an open marriage is not for you, and that's a big if if you continue to worry about her and be intimidated by her threats, then you still have a big problem because unless a MC can make her or help her accept that her husband is not interested in sharing her with other men, now or in the future, when you incur bumps in your marriage again, she has see how easy it is online to meet men for sex for a woman.

Like another poster said, if you don't step up to the plate and defend yourself this will be a long drawn out thread of agony for you. And it won't stop on its own.. Last suggestion. Is you do not waste your time or R board now unless you accept open marriage

[This message edited by Badhurt at 12:59 PM, June 19th (Thursday)]

Here is the thing about an open marriage...if you agree simply to save what you have with her, the doubts will continue. I know, I was there. I agreed in my previous marriage to an open marriage b/c I didn't want a divorce. But to me, it wasn't a marriage. I felt horrible every time I was in the room with my then H because I knew that he wanted someone else, even though he still wanted me. The deal breaker was when he told me he wanted me to find a BF so he didn't have to "deal with my emotional crap." If you are not on board with this now, think long about whether it is something you really think you'll be ready to live with 10 years from now...would you be ok with your kids doing something like this? Think about whether your values will be ok with this.

Good luck.