SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Welp,

Yesterday was great. Today is awful. Today my H wants to read the texts my AP and I sent each other during our affair. While I deleted the texts themselves, I took screenshots of the several text threads and emailed them to myself. My H knows I still have them saved. Until today he hasn't wanted to know any details because it was too painful. Now he wants to read all our texts. I've told him how they are intimate and sexual at times and that I was afraid it would send him over the edge. I said I would not keep him from reading them, but I asked him to consider WHY he wanted to read them. He said "because I don't KNOW everything." I'm struggling with this one. He does know everything, as far as the fact that we did have sex, how many times, that I told AP I loved him, how many days it lasted, what music we listened to, etc. I just don't see how reading the words we wrote to each other is going to add any more information or help my H. In fact as my H has been suffering from PTSD since D-Day, I can only see this new information serving as additional gasoline for his obsessive and intrusive thoughts and images in his mind.

I know I am about to get an earful about how I have no right to decide what's best for my H to do. Please save those comments, because I already know that. I have offered to show him all the texts that I saved when I get home from work. But I need some experiential wisdom here. Isn't there a point where a BS can have almost a voyeuristic desire to know EVERY LITTLE THING? Someone posted a couple of days ago that she, a BS, caught herself getting caught up in the morbid fascination of the details and her husband would calmly ask her why she's asking about "x" and would it help her in her healing to know it, and many times she realized that no, it wouldn't help, and she would let it go.

I have so far answered "yes" to H's question whether I sent sexual photos to AP. I said, yes, I sent suggestive (but not naked / x-rated) photos one morning. That alone has made him fall apart. He wants to go to AP's house and beat him up, said he's going to do it tonight. I know if I show him all these texts there will be MUCH badness, and I'm not just worried about myself. I'm more worried about my H's mental state and my kids' well-being. (I know, I should have been more concerned about those things when I decided to have an affair. I know.)

I need some help. So does my H. Please anyone?

As the BS I had to know all the details. All of us are different in this, but for me my imagination can be a lot worse than the truth.

In my case, I gave my WS the final ultimatum after several d-days to complete honesty about everything. I needed to know positions, oral sex, frequency, orgasm, etc. The look of shame on her face as she was telling me was my first indication of remorse.

Shit, just realized that my d-day antiversary is today, nine years ago. We are still married if that helps.

I am/was a BS and while I might have known all the details I couldn't take my XWS's word for it...

That might be what your H is currently struggling with - he doesn't KNOW if he knows, and even then he might know all of the ins and outs of what happened but he doesn't KNOW exactly what was said between the two of you. For me, that was part of my hangup. I wanted to know everything, but I specifically wanted to know EXACTLY what they said to each other. and I wanted to find out in a way where I KNEW that I KNEW.

Knowing because you told him and knowing what he can see and read and re-read with his own eyes, no matter how damaging to him, might make him believe that he is getting the true full picture. That trusting what you told him wasn't a mistake. That you aren't lying again.

If you're in MC together, can you do it there?

I learned it's called pain-shopping. As a BW, I did that for a long time and sometimes (but far less often) have this slightly urgent need to know the most thorough details.

It's part of the PTSD or actually PISD (Post Infidelity Stress Disorder, which I just learned about recently).

There's a need to gather up all the mess into one pile and then sort it out in order to organize within our thoughts. It's almost like doing a clean-up in our own section of the mess. That gathering and organizing within our minds gives us a sense of some type of control. Why? I still can't figure that out.

But here's what your bh is facing: What happened between you and the AP was something that is extremely private business shared between the two of you. You and your h are the only ones who are supposed to have private business to that extent. Since marriage, you've shared very very private moments with another man. And because he's outside that business (like being told in the unspoken statement of the affair:"This is none of your business. What happened between us is OUR business, not yours.") your bh feels so violated that coping with what he knows is a traumatic challenge to say the least.

The way I feel even 1 year 4 months after d-day - and maybe your husband might share my experience in a way - is that my marital sacredness became a corpse. I feel like, after years of feeling like something was wrong, on d-day my wh presented me with a corpse that I thought at least was alive. That corpse was the sacredness that I cherished with feelings I can never adequately express. And so discovering this damage that had been done behind my back, I'm standing over this cherished, bloodied corpse helplessly - knowing that I couldn't just place my hand anywhere on it in order to revive it during the near aftermath. It's gone.

The sacredness is not spoken of a lot on the subject of infidelity. But that's the missing piece for me. That was a lifeline of our marriage. All I am left to do now is rely on a combination of various efforts from him and from me in order to put a fraction of functioning life into it that's needed to last.

I would suggest show him what he asks for. There will be opportunity to complain about it. But don't complain. Walk through it with him. If you've said you were sorry 100 times, prepare to reach the 200th time over the next few weeks or so. Be there. With IC, self-examination, self-correction, and that whole cycle of fixing yourself as a wife, be willing to ride this rollercoaster alongside him - even if he rejects you. If you're willing to hang in there with him.

[This message edited by NowGuarded at 3:44 PM, April 14th (Friday)]

He may really need to see them, but I can only speak for me. I don't want to see them from my WH. Even though I'm told there were no ILY, he told me the gist of the texts. My mind movies, etc. are bad enough.

As far as I'm concerned, if I have the correct facts, (number of times, where, etc) and that it's over, what does the exact verbiage matter? It's only going to hurt like hell. I know I can probably recover them, but what will that do? I'm either going to try to make this work or not. Hopefully he's told me the truth finally.

Sometimes I think living in the information age is not necessarily the best thing.

God, I sound old.

***As a member***

Maybe I can help you understand his motivation/desire/need to know. In the healing library is a section called articles. Contained within that section is an article titled *Joseph's letter*. I highly recommend it.

I also had to have the details. Truly, it was horrendous, devastating. I sobbed like a baby. Ya know what though? It wasn't nearly as bad as what I was picturing in my mind. The imagination of events was far worse than the reality.

Strength to do what's right

My husband erased everything.

I will always have lingering doubt as to what was said and sent between them because I was not able to see it. I have to go on his word, which he as shown was not very trustworthy. Seeing with my own eyes would have shown me if he was telling me the truth for once or still lying to protect his ass.

swinters, it feels to you as if your BS knows everything, but as a BS myself, we know we can never know everything -- ever! WSs have the advantage -- you were there! Your thoughts and feeling accompanied your actions, and we will never be privy to them completely. The sooner we hear the gory details, if indeed that is what we are asking for, the sooner we can begin the process of healing from them. My WS deleted her Facebook chat with her ex-gf,the AP, right after I read it, and I will never be able to go back to check the "facts" vs the stories I have been given over the long months of TT.

Withholding those texts at this point will only cause the questions your H has to fester. Be prepared for another round of anger, disbelief, and grief . . . but please, do not prolong his suffering because you are afraid of the fallout.

Perhaps now is not the right time to show him your texts. If there is anyone's safety at risk then I would hold back from showing him now. He will probably get angrier if he reads them.

I am certain you are right and he is probably suffering from PTSD. If so he is not thinking clearly, his emotions are all over the place. It is a huge shock to most BSs.

I think as BS's we need to see what kind of people our WS's were or became during the A. Is it a morbid curiosity? No I dont think it is. It's just a desire to really know the people we thought we knew.

I hope that things calm down for you and your family particularly over Easter.

My husband erased everything.

I will always have lingering doubt as to what was said and sent between them because I was not able to see it. I have to go on his word, which he as shown was not very trustworthy. Seeing with my own eyes would have shown me if he was telling me the truth for once or still lying to protect his ass.

this is the case for me, too. I saw a few texts. One interaction between him and OW was sent to me by her to show what a liar he was. It was a lovey dovey text that plagues my mind to this day. He's shown me their break-up texts which was explosive - especially from her end bc she was so angry.

He deleted the rest of his history. He knew what he was doing. And it makes him even more of a scallawag for doing so. My hope is that he really is the different man he professes to be.

I wanted to read them, I only managed to get about two weeks' worth in the end but I wish I had them all. I wanted to cross check the facts I had been given, and see what kind of things they'd really been saying to each other, perhaps to come to a view about who was really chasing who etc.

I agree with the others that it is horrendous to read, but some of what was in my imagination was even worse. I also needed to get it out of the way so things were then as bad as they could be and then build back up from there - there is no way i could have carried on knowing there were messages I could read and NOT read them. I didn't want that hanging over me.

Another thing is that I read the texts over and over for months. When you are presented with something like a DDay, it is like your mind won't function normally, and a lot of things just didn't sink in for me. So the messages gave me something 'concrete' to keep going over and checking and processing. It took a long time.

I think you need to give them to him if he is asking. I don't think it's your place to decide what's good for him, I'm afraid.

He said "because I don't KNOW everything." I'm struggling with this one. He does know everything, as far as the fact that we did have sex, how many times, that I told AP I loved him, how many days it lasted, what music we listened to, etc. I just don't see how reading the words we wrote to each other is going to add any more information or help my H

He doesn't KNOW everything. He knows what you have told him - which may or may not be true. He wants to see if you have been honest with him. He wants to know exactly what you shared with your AP.

It will help him try to put the pieces of the puzzle of the A together a bit more in his mind. It will hurt him but it will help him heal in the end.

He is a grown man and he gets to decide what information he wants and feels he can handle.

If you are genuinely remorseful and want to help him heal put your shame aside and let him see the truth of what you were capable of. Right now you are letting that shame take over and are acting/thinking selfishly as a result.

(((swinters)))

I know it's hard. For me, I wanted to know everything, everything. Did it hurt?

Oh hell ya, but the secrets and not knowing was worse. TT was the end of us.

My STBXNPDWH wouldn't tell me everything. Refused to my face. It felt like he was holding and protecting *her*, which he was. My needs didn't matter, it was all about him, and *her*, and "their" needs, wants and secret intimate moments.

If your H says he wants to, says he knows it will hurt, then please let him read whatever you can. It shows you are willing to do whatever it takes to get through this, that HIS requests will be honored and valued. He really does have the right to know what you were willing to give to someone else. And he might get angry, say hurtful things and Friday night is the last time that I would want to face it after working the week and being tired.

IMHO, it's not for you to decide what he gets to see, read or know. As soon as you started down the path of recovery/reconciliation. It was you AND your H. Side by side. AP is out, done and SHOULD be thrown under the bus.

It's hard, oh so very hard. Deep breaths and come forward with love, which you are. You don't want to cause your H more pain, that's wonderful. I applaud you for being so open and honest thus far. It's the only way to fix this.

Wish my STBX would have done even a tiny bit of what you are doing.

I am very concerned with the statement about him planning to beat up the OM. So much trouble there. Legal trouble if nothing else! Neither the judge nor the cops are going to care that he's upset because of the affair. Assault is assault, and if he thinks he's pissed now, wait until he has to pay for the OM's hospital bills, lawyer fees, and maybe even spend time in jail for the assault. I hope others jump in with advice, but I have to tell you I think this will only serve to make things exponentially worse, and bring the OM back into your lives when he should be gone.

I am not a BS and so cannot offer advice about the long term merits of reading or not reading the texts. But I am concerned about it in relation to the timing of his plans to start a fight. It sounds like adding fuel to a fire.

Does he believe he's capable of beating your AP up?

I understand you concern for your husband, but how much of you doesn't want to share this with because of your own shame and embarrassment?

This would be a good exercise in letting go of the outcome.

I wanted to know everything - I wanted to be privy to every aspect in order to remove any "specialness" of the affair. Every memory he had - I wanted to be apart of. Remember - this happened to him. This was his life and he was oblivious...and I assure you - he's already imagining the worst. Once he know the truth of the texts - he can stop wrestling with imagining. And yes - this will suck for him and for you. Cheating sucks all around.

Curious - but when and why did you take pictures of the texts before deleting them?

BS here... I saw the photos of the ow nude. It was sickening but it made it real. It changed the way I look at my spouse. I will never understand how he did that. But he did. Own what you did. Once I saw the photos, I have no need to see anything else. I realize how broken he is.

Heart,

So are you glad you saw that photo? Are you glad that you see him so differently? Or does that make it harder? Do you obsess or did you over that photo? Like keep seeing it over and over in your mind? Do you feel like it has helped you recover?

I just feel like if he sees how into it I was too that he'll leave me. I have told him over and over that I was just as responsible as the OM was but I don't think he really has believed that deep down. It's easier for him to think I was seduced. Reading those texts again this afternoon has me sick to my stomach. I was pursuing him as much as he was pursuing me. That's what I fear most for BH, that he will realize that he can't just aim all his rage at AP like I was some innocent victim. There's going to be a lot of anger coming my way.

There's going to be a lot of anger coming my way.

Like TurnOtherCheek pointed out, can bh wait until you're in the presence of a MC to go through the texts?