SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It's not him it's her. She should not be in a social setting with him. She breaks NC every day at work. Now she's breaking it on the weekend. She has no boundaries.

Said anything more than 'hi' was very wrong and it won't happen again.

Sigh. She doesn't get it. NC means NO Contact. Period. She is playing you. You know how she found out he was in the race? He told her. If she was really in NC and "happened to hear about it from a mutual friend", she would have come home and told you then said. "What are WE going to do about this?" You know - handle it as a team.

As long as they are working together there is most likely contact going on. I'm sorry.

[This message edited by Ginny at 10:36 AM, June 17th (Saturday)]

Ginny makes a great point. You are not working this infidelity as a team. You are working it alone.

A remorseful spouse would want you to keep you safe from situations like this and work a plan once it was discovered.

A remorseful wife would feel sick about the possibility of you being put into a bad position.

She is only thinking about how this affects her, not you.

20yrsin I have sent you a Private Message. Check it out.

My first boss used to use a term 'running in mud' for those problems where the harder you tried the more you sunk.

You're running in mud

There may be 5000 people at the race, but she will be looking for him while pretending to pay all her attention to him and he will be looking for her, a very good chance they will meet, maybe just by sight. But he may even be bold enough to approach the two of you together..maybe you should take the initiative.. in any event her mind will be occupied on him.

Since she puts her job and the OM before the marriage and you, if you asked her not go to the race I'd bet she would put that in front of the marriage too.

She's playing a very dangerous game and on their Anniversary no less. On a day she should be focused on you she found a way to bring him into it.

[This message edited by Stevesn at 12:39 PM, June 17th (Saturday)]

Hell, I'd go and have her find him and point him out to me. It would be confrontation time in front of God and 5000 people. Or maybe see how fast he can run.

Yeah, I might be a redneck....

[This message edited by twisted at 12:42 PM, June 17th (Saturday)]

OP I have a few questions..

1) I think you are approaching this issue passive aggressively.. Why can't you draw the line on day one...?

2) Why didn't you demand no contact, transparency,leave the job as a condition on day 1.. Because of she is the breadwinner or your codependency or you are afraid of starting your own?

3) An average women prefers stronger men whereas your actions shows as you are weak in certain areas.. I can recognise that from your post.. Can't your wife recognise them? After all she lives with you? May be it is the reason she is attracted to AP.. What should you do with that?

4) Do you honestly believe she will run back at you and will love you head over heels if the above point is correct? Why are you doing the heavy lifting and why can't she do it on her own..

5)Do you think if your marriage will be good as long as she obey your desperate attempts or as long as she remain faithful because of your new boundaries?

6) They are in love for one year.. They didn't give a shit about their family or anything in that time..after DDay they have to magically suppress their feelings because you found out..Are they robots?

7)Do you believe two adults who gave each other everything will give up suddenly that too without a single change in their environment?

8) I think you are in a position that she has a good earning job and her affair partner is in same Offic. You are like 'I found out.. I requested her to do this and that read this and that..She will magically understand my request and do all the things requested. As long as the money matters no problem.. That's like hey babe you broke my trust this time as long as you don't repeat again all good..'

9) You should willing to lose your marriage in order to save them.. I don't see remorse in your wife in all your posts.. It's like I am doing this and that so that she can be remorseful.. In this case she is not in unicorn land.. You are..

10) I kindly request you to read all the Waywards post from past 6 months.. Analysis how the Waywards do their work without any external initialisation and with self realisation.. And how their BS responds their work.. You may get an idea or answer to your desperation...

Most of the above are pretty harsh but I believe some of them are essential..

Said anything more than 'hi' was very wrong and it won't happen again.

This hit me like a ton of bricks. "Hi" isn't okay either!!! She really doesn't get it. She needs to not only avoid him like the plague but to take it upon herself to set that type of NC, and not put you in the position of having to explain this all to her! She's making no effort here and you are doing all of the work.

I t will be very interesting to hear how today went. My thoughts are with you my troubled friend.

"Said anything more than 'hi' was very wrong and it won't happen again."

The prolonged and deliberate misunderstanding of what "No contact" means by your wife must be getting tiring for you, 20yrs. She is an intelligent woman who works on projects, understands the English language, and ought to be able to figure out that "No contact" means what it says. It isn't hard to work out what "No contact" means. And yet she does. Over and over and over again. Which, as I said in an earlier post, indicates that she is still very much in the 'fog' of the affair, and still emotionally attached to the OM. She has a good knowledge of his plans, like she's his social secretary.

Frankly, 20yrs, I am starting to think that you ought to just send your evidence to their HR department, get the pair of them kicked out, and go from there. And expose what they are doing to both sets of your parents, and to your friends.

You have tried to be 'nice', I wrote a long post trying to be nice, but you have to ask yourself if being nice is actually improving anything here. Your wife is clearly still in regular contact with the OM, and yet when you don't respond immediately to her message, she has a panic attack about you divorcing her. The situation is becoming ridiculous.

You have it in your power to get the pair of them kicked out of that office, and to begin the real process of "no contact" and consequences. Why don't you go for it? Seriously, what harm is it going to do? You keep being nice and kind and calm and patient and thoughtful and restrained and where has that got you? You have ended up in a position where your wife knows all about what the OM is doing, while she tells you glaringly obvious lies about having been told about him by "a mutual friend".

Why not change the power dynamic, report them to HR, and collapse their selfish 'affair world' in the same way as they have collapsed yours?

[This message edited by M1965 at 4:19 AM, June 18th (Sunday)]

Just saying hi, while passing in a hallway or across a room can be pretty powerful. The eyes lingering, a quiet "hi" a slight head tilt...says a lot.

Ignore would be better but that's probably not in the cards.

Wow you come off so weak your WW and boyfriend are laughing at you.!!! Yes they're still see each other every day and I communicate everyday almost every book on infidelity tells you first things you must do is to separate the affair people and have no communication whatsoever.! But I guess you know better right.? Everybody here has walked through or is walking through the same hell that you are so be the advise that they are giving you that you were just hell-bent on not applying to your situation. I guess OP they'll all be here when you it blows up in your face like it's going to.

[This message edited by trojan007 at 9:52 PM, June 17th (Saturday)]

Thanks to all, drafted a bunch of response on my phone. Should get to it this evening on laptop.

Appreciate the support, observations and advice.

It's father's day and kids birthday party. So busy day but will get to these and will be incorporating a lot of the feedback and giving some other points some thought.

Thanks again

Happy Father's Day man. Even by continuing dialogue here you are fighting harder than most people who never even find a site like SI in the first place.

she ... Said anything more than 'hi' was very wrong and it won't happen again.

Does that mean she admits to continuing contact with him? Talking about personal things, like races and vacations?

Also, "hi" is OK? I kind of understand this. They work on the same floor. They work in the same building. Everyone knows they worked very closely together. If he says, "Hi!!!" and she ignores it completely, tongues will wag.

Background:

7 months since d-day. There was a nearly 12 month long physical affair, after some lengthy emotional affair. Worked together for couple years on same project and landed in same office after and fireworks ensued. They work together on same floor to this day :-0

I must assume that they both are not professional actors, and even professional actors cannot be "in role" 24/7 - therefore, some other coworkers, probably many other coworkers, know that your wife and other man have been making "fireworks" with each other.

She is pretty transparent about activities outside of working hours since d-day. No 'signs' of cheating since d-day.

She is transparent outside working hours, she rarely tells you what is going on inside that building during working hours. I assume you wouldn't know if she had lunch with him at the same table in the company cafeteria. Which it seems that she does.

There was one admission of contact over Christmas, so almost 2 months after d-day. Nothing since. (I) Had a feeling at times, since that incident that 'no contact' wasn't being fully respected.

Your "feeling" that "no contact" wasn't being fully respected, I think that you have more than just a feeling about that now. I think you can see your wife knows all about other man's personal life.

Right from the get go it was stated there would be 'hi' – 'bye' interaction in lunch room etc. This is never mentioned when it happens.

Everyone knows your wife and other man are either (former) lovers or at least very close chums. I wonder if other man has found another paramour yet at work. Or if your wife is jealous of his interactions with other women, who he must also flirt with.

Do you work in an office? Do you understand the environment in a larger office like your wife's? The little flirting and romances, the personality "types" that populate any large workplace - the gossips, the flirts, etc.?

Consider this: Your wife sits down at the table in the cafeteria, puts her food all spread out, two other female coworkers sit down with her, and they are talking about the latest company news - "did you see the new employee in the accounting department who parked in the CFO's reserved parking spot?" Right in the middle of that, here comes other man, and plops right down with all of them, "HI ALL!!! How are you all today? You are looking very involved in some good juicy news, what is it? Mrs. 20yrsin, how are you? I didn't see you at the product development meeting, were you sick?"

I must assume that your wife will not pick up all her food and move to an empty table somewhere else in the cafeteria as a matter of social suicide and possible professional detriment to act oddly amongst coworkers, some of whom are superiors, some subordinates.

I really don't see how a reconciliation works when the two lovers see each other at work 8 hours a day, five days a week.

I'll bet $100 to the charity of his choice that she doesn't have a new job offer in three weeks.

Everyone likes to think their affairs are unique but the way that this one is playing out could be taken word for word from 'The Most Typical Workplace Affair'.

Also, it shouldn't even be called an affair. She was actually in a real, consumated relationship with this guy. She skipped family holidays and kid milestones because of where his importance ranked in her life.

20yrs,

I know this weekend has not been as good for you as it should have been. You do not deserve that.

I just want to step outside this post for a moment to tell you that there are a bunch of people here who care about you, and whose posts, even when they are impassioned or raw, are motivated by the underlying feeling that you deserve better, and the desire to improve things for you.

We all deal with our pain and heartache in different ways, but we are all brothers and sisters here, and we have all been dealt a bum hand by the people we most trusted. That is why we are here, and that is why we have to be good to each other, and to support every single person who comes to this forum as best we can. None of us deserves to be here, but we're here all the same.

No human being knows exactly what to do when they have infidelity sprung on them. It is like opening a picnic basket and finding a dog turd. Every single one of us here has flailed and floundered, raged and despaired, hoped and abandoned hope, planned carefully and reacted on the spur of the moment, spoken in a numbed state of shock and screamed our pain into the face of the person who caused it, so hard that our throats hurt three days later (me!).

20yrs, you are handling it your way, I handled it my way (not the best, far from it), everyone here handled it in their way. There is no definitive 'right' way to do it. I hope that, between us, we can come up with some ideas that will improve your situation.

Thinking of you, and wishing you the best,

M

m1965

10.) Ask your wife if she can build a new compartment in her mind that contains her, you, and the children, and which does not have room for any other men. You could try and think of a snappy title for it…Something like…Oh, I don’t know…”A family”. Yes, how about she builds herself a new mental compartment called “A family”, and she keeps the most important people in her life in it, and keeps out any bad guys, burglars, intruders, or other scumbags?

11.) How about she builds another compartment called “A marriage”, which just has room for the two of you, and not the two of you and whichever guys from her office feel like joining the party?

I’ll shut up now, I have written way too much!

I think you may have a hard time making headway, but for your sake, and for the sake of the kids, you need to stick to it and demand that she does the things that you need her to do. So far, she has had absolutely no negative consequences for cheating for a year and a half, so the absolute least she can do is listen to you and accommodate the perfectly reasonable things you want her to do. She caused this train wreck, she cannot just tell you she's 'moving forwards' and leave you floundering with a ton of unresolved issues.

I just wanted to go back to this one as your compartmentalization rif was pretty comical. Thanks for the laugh m1965. It was a great post and this frustrated rant was great to read at the end!

Cheers!

'the vacation info'

theaterguy

No, I wouldn't go. I also wonder how she knows he is going on vacation and where...hmmmmm. It appears you have so many more questions. I do not think you are being humiliated but I wonder if she is playing you. Just letting you in on a bit of TT.

Why did she wait so late to tell you the OM was in the race?? If she had told you upfront you would've had time to deal with it. There appears to be a lot more she is holding back.....me thinks it might be poly time.

How do you think she would respond? IDK man.....this has to be painful; waiting for the other shoe to drop. IMHO, even 'hi' is too much.

wk55hn

When my wife was having "no contact" with other man, she didn't know if the guy was in a 10K race, taking vacation, or anything else about him for that matter.

For having no contact, your wife sure does get a lot of info about other man.

She knew for a week that other man was going to be in the race. She managed the right time to tell you.

Where is other man going on his vacation? Somewhere fun? When did he leave? What hotel will he be staying in? Your wife knows he is going on vacation, so I guess she must also know about some of his plans. Did you ask her where he's going?

stevesn

sweet Jesus. Go find another activity to do tomorrow. She should NOT be in a social setting with the OM.

Again she shouldn't even be working with him.

And she shouldn't know his Vacation plans!

Her "proving it" should mean quitting on Monday.

C'mon man.

The vacation knowledge is an issue. I believe it has been dealt with with the 'no contact'. In that letter she said not even 'hello' is acceptable, just a professional nod, nothing else.

Regarding my earlier comments she acknowledges anything more then 'hi' was wrong. She doesn't see that as continuing the affair but I pointed out that that is indeed the case and it was not acceptable.

An overseas trip is not planned a week before. They could have talked about this a while back. Not defending it, it is totally unacceptable and concerning.

She could also be completely bullshitting me about everything to do with 'no contact'. That is not what my gut is telling me on this.

I understand the no contact is a serious issue that needs monitoring and obviously the physical location needs to change asap.

As mentioned the OMs vacation does buy some time when it comes to that.

Hope that clarifies.