SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Do not let her know what youre up to. Don’t reveal your sources. If you find information, keep it hidden. Save it. Don’t flaunt it to prove you know shes lying. She will lie. She is trying to salvage some level of respect for herself, and she thinks lying will accomplish this. Unfortunately people like this don’t realize that taking complete ownership is the route to respect.

You don't need to show her your proof to convince her she's a liar.

She knows that.

[This message edited by Marz at 8:03 PM, July 25th (Thursday)]

Get Fonelab for phone data recovery. It has iOS and Android versions.

You need to install iTunes on your computer to access an iPhone through Fonelab.

Make sure you have her passcode. When you first access her phone using Fonelab, you'll need to tap a prompt on her phone to "trust this computer".

If you have her iCloud username and password, you can explore that using Fonelab as well. I don't know if it will send an alert email to her. Test on your phone first.

So she agreed to let me monitor her texting. Since I’m not savvy in the art of figuring that stuff out, I had my friend who’s really good with that stuff come over. My wife is really good friends with the wife of this friend who came over. So she went over there while he was at our house. I told him let’s try and retrieve these text messages. So we began to do it, downloading fonelab and another. We found that she deleted her text messages in the cloud. I was floored. Had no idea she was even capable of doing that. She covered her tracks.

So this friend has a camera with audio in his living room. I know this sounds sketchy but I don’t care at this point -I said let’s turn it on and see the bullshit my wife is feeding your wife. We listened to them for about an hour. The same song and dance. Basically “I had an affair, but this is why..” and then she went into the resentment of my drinking problem from a couple years ago, the friend with cancer, and the people living in our basement etc. “his outlet for when things get tough is drinking, mine is sex. It’s just sex”. She just doesn’t fucking get it. She is doing exactly what I thought she was going to do. Reach out to all of her close friends and give them her bullshit story to save face if/when this all boils over. This is why she was fighting me so hard I’m not monitoring her texts. Because she doesn’t want me to see the bullshit she’s feeding her friends.

So we kept listening in-

She then said “they are probably trying to retrieve old texts”, because we kept sending her ID codes that she had to send back to us, and she was getting pissed and annoyed. We could Hear and see it right there on the surveillance camera. If she is ok with full disclosure, then what the hell is she afraid we would find? Probably didn’t want to catch her lying yet again regarding how long it was going on AND how many times it happened. This is really telling me a lot and only further solidifies a divorce needs to happen. She’s two-facing me to have me back and save her reputation with her friends.

Have you contacted her AP? Or his wife if he has one?

Ask your friend what his wife thinks of your WW’s narrative...

I try imagining someone telling me this and my eyes would roll uncontrollably.

Edit:

It’s back to « I don’t make excuses but I make excuses »

Not R material

[This message edited by ShutterHappy at 11:44 AM, July 26th (Friday)]

Sorry man but looking at her actions you shouldn't be that surprised. It's best to know the full truth of what you're dealing with.

“his outlet for when things get tough is drinking, mine is sex. It’s just sex”

According to her, she experienced many tough times with you but some how only had sex 3 times which means it's actually many times and for much longer than she's letting you know. That's what she's afraid that you will find and why she's saying that to the friend so she can't be called out as a liar later about how many times it happened.

You're right that she doesn't get it at all and she's publicly setting you up to be the bad guy. At least your buddy can vouch for you when it all comes out.

JA1982, consider yourself lucky (really misleading word in this context by the way), that you have the insight of monitoring and that secret video that your friend was able to pull up from his house. Many BS don't get this information, so they flounder in Limbo for a long time.

They listen to the ongoing lies from the WS, and stay for longer than they should. Anyone can put on a fake facade, tell you what you want to hear. Its those moments when they know no one is watching, in this case you, is when they are being their true self. They show their real side, the scary side that they don't want to show the world b/c they know its hideous.

Again, I caution you about seeking more information and details. It won't help your recover if you are deciding to D. There are things you cannot unsee. Use the leverage you have, tell her you'll confront the Gym partner, or his wife, and find a way to get a good D settlement while she's still lost. She may be hoping to monkey branch off to the Gym guy, and you need to act quickly to secure the best future you can if you are going to D. Don't let the opportunity slip away, b/c at some point, shes going to turn nasty.

I think the sooner you start the process the better off you are. The only thing your going to gain by continuing to dig is more heartache. This probably wasn't the only time she has cheated on you by the way she is acting and talking about it.

File and fight for the best possible parental agreement you can.

“his outlet for when things get tough is drinking, mine is sex. It’s just sex”. She just doesn’t fucking get it.

If her statement was rewritten as, "His coping mechanism when things get tough is a bottle of vodka. Mine is unprotected anal sex with sexual predators I know nothing about", it would put the recklessness of her actions into a clearer perspective.

There is no equivalence between you getting wasted and her betraying you and exposing both of you to STDs. Leaving aside everything else, she needs to wise up about her own health.

Her admission that she uses sex as a coping mechanism for stress suggests that it is an established pattern of behaviour for her, which may have happened before.

Certainly this...

We found that she deleted her text messages in the cloud. I was floored. Had no idea she was even capable of doing that. She covered her tracks.

...indicates that she is not an ignorant newbie when it comes to hiding the evidence of her actions. That raises the question of whether the affair you discovered is her first, or just the first that was busted.

So she agreed to let me monitor her texting.

There are two problems with this:

1) How long do you want to be a policeman within the marriage?

2) Sadly, there are far too many ways for people to communicate secretly for effective monitoring to be possible. If she knows you are monitoring texts, you can guarantee that nothing 'bad' will be said via text. In fact, if she knows you are reading her texts, they can become a way to feed you misinformation.

If the marriage is to be saved, it will require a change in her attitudes and boundaries, and to her level of commitment.

The fact that she is not on the mortgage, because she wanted to be 'free' to go whenever she wanted to, with no 'ties' suggests a resistance to commitment, and a desire to operate independently.

She lost it when you suggested the most recent family day out might be the last, and yet she feels free to step in and out of the marriage whenever it suits her.

Effectively, your wife has been operating in a one-sided open marriage without discussing or agreeing that arrangement with you. In fact, she has done the opposite, using stealth and active concealment to keep you in the dark.

She needs to figure out whether she can provide the commitment and security that you require, and whether your ideas about what you both want the marriage to be are close, or far apart.

Which raises a potential alternative to divorce; could you handle an open marriage, in which you were also free to have 'adventures'? At least there would be some honesty and equilibrium in an arrangement like that.

The deeper issue is whether your wife is capable of mustering enough honesty with herself to be able to provide it to those around her, or if self-deception has become such a vital emotional defence mechanism for her that she will not be able to abandon it.

Change is only possible if people want to change.

[This message edited by M1965 at 5:25 AM, July 27th (Saturday)]

One of the most painful things and reason for our grief is we want the wayward to ‘get it’. Accept the fact this is not going to happen. Now listen... You need to ‘get it’. Listen to the advice youre getting here. There is nothing left to invest in. Your new life starts now. Start researching mens divorce and child custody.

There is a thorough post you should read from Anoldlion that I think may be helpful to you.

It is on page 31 of Needtotalk's active thread in this forum section. There are several people who have commented on it there as well, including me.

Among other things, it references how to interact with a WS to get the information you need to really make good decisions about the marriage.

There is really no way to move forward. She has done a nothing wrong. It is mostly your fault. She us a victim.

She resented you for your shortcomings even though you work on them and fixed them. She on the other hand expects forgiveness for her shortcomings.

She has no skin in the game. She will not change. She will not help you heal. She will continue to have some level of resentment to you.

Your drinking too much (her opinion) is not a justification for her to cheat.

Typical cheater mentality IMO.

How are things JA1982?

I hope you are doing okay.

Still pretty messed up. I had a friend approach me who knows what is going on and came forward with more information about shit she was doing in the past. Not that I wasn’t thinking something didn’t happen. There’s probably a few other guys and other times through out the 10 years Ive been with her.

Also-

I fell asleep on the couch the other day and she went through my phone and found an email from my lawyer with intake papers. That upset her a lot. She thought I was going to give this a try. I said I am, I’m still here. I said I was only meeting him to know my rights since I’ve never been through this before. And that I’ll continue to see the therapist yadda yadda yadda..

We had another therapy session today that went better than the first one. Yet nothing has really changed my feelings. I just want her to be on a path to get well for our daughter’s sake. They are going to work on her anxiety issues. They made me make a pact that I wouldn’t do anything drastic for another 90 days so that everyone has time to process and settle down.

I’ve been looking at the timeline she provided very hard and lining it up with notes I made from the messages I saw and she is definitely lying about some of that shit. I think I’m going to present that to her tonight..

They made me make a pact that I wouldn’t do anything drastic for another 90 days so that everyone has time to process and settle down.

This just seems weird. I hope you're not putting too much weight into this "pact." You have no idea what her actions are going to be over the next 90 days and no reason to honor that. Jut my opinion of course.

Ugh, it drives me crazy when they (WS) go through our (BS) phones. Yea, we are the untrustworthy ones.

Will you be confronting her about the prior As your friend revealed?