SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

"OM has moved from out of state since 8/4 and is now living down the street" Thats kinda like a "holy crap batman" statement.

Either get control of the situation or you are going to come home one day and she will have moved out into this guys place.

Because all your doing right now is threatning her with exposure and some meaningless bounderies that are ignored more than your onnoxious uncle and in your mind that seems to be doing the trick.

Unfortunatly WW spouses have a tendency to the unexpected kinda like having the affair in the first place.

Notanotherchance, you have a PM.

To ALL posters on this thread: If you cannot contain the rude and hurtful comments (ie "grow a pair" and "cuckold" etc) you will be removed from the forum and/or website. This is a final warning - Post with respect.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 2:05 PM, February 24th (Tuesday)]

N/m

[This message edited by Seriously??? at 11:32 PM, February 24th (Tuesday)]

I really abhor the anger on this thread. It is all so self-righteous. As if you all have the answers.

Not.

NP5,

My apologies if my earlier comment might have bordered on hurtful. I’m sure like just about everyone else on this thread, we’re (mostly) angry for you. I thought this time I’d share a story from my past and the lessons learned from it as they apply here.

So, I have PSVT, which is a form of heart arrhythmia. With proper diet and exercise, I now manage it without prescription meds. For years I’d notice, every so often, my heart would “flutter,” then quickly go back to normal. This happened occasionally until, all of the sudden, a mix of a prescription decongestant (had a sinus infection at the time) and an energy drink set it off big time. ER and hospital visits would follow, and I was put on medication to control it. Now, that ER experience was terrifying to say the least – I almost died. As such, I was so terrified of anything like that happening again that I would gladly take whatever the docs wanted to give me, anything to not have that fear again.

So, I go on these meds, and the side effects hit me hard. Yeah, I don’t have any more major heart episodes, but my life in general suffered. I had constant fatigue. I felt just “detached,” basically depressed. I ballooned up. Almost every part of my quality of life suffered as a result of fear, and when I finally realized that, let myself admit that fear was controlling me, I took steps (with my doctor) to get off the meds. Of course, my biggest question was what to do should I experience another arrhythmia without my meds. His answer – “hold your breath.”

For anyone out there who has experienced any arrhythmia or elevated heart rate, you see why this simple answer seems the antithesis of what we naturally want to do. It can be hard to get a full breath when your heart is racing, so in that scenario, you should intentionally try to NOT breathe? When you’re already having trouble doing just that – breathing? Well, it works for me (results may vary; I am not a doctor myself).

I learned 2 valuable lessons from that experience that helped me with my own Infidelity situation as well as other proverbial forks-in-the-road, and I’ve shared this story with a few folks IRL.

1.Living in fear is no way to live. When not facing one fear literally affects just about every aspect of your life negatively, it’s time for a change.

2.Sometimes the best thing to do, the best way to handle a situation, is to do exactly the opposite of what feels “natural.”

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Believe me, so many of us know what it's like to give well-meaning advice and have trouble following it ourselves. I can say, however, that those 2 points really have helped me immensely, along with the support of the folks of SI. Really just wanting the best for you and your children NP5. That’s what matters here.

Keep posting brother.

n/m

[This message edited by Seriously??? at 11:33 PM, February 24th (Tuesday)]

. It's called perspective.

No, in many cases it's called projection. And in the above case - condescension and sarcasm.

Glad to see you are getting some much-deserved and needed empathy now NP.

Thank you all for your advise. Just because I don't implement your recommendations doesn't mean I don't value them or learn from them.

Both my wife and I are in IC and we are working on it.

Madeofscars, I appreciate your life lesson. It is very true that sometimes we need to do differently than what our gut is telling us to do (or our fear response). I will always listen to it now but it does not tell me where to go or what to do.

I'm going to go dark for a while here, not because my feelings are hurt or anything, its just I have to do some things now that were discussed here. I read and reread your responses closely and now I need to focus on action. Thanks again for all the thoughts, lumber, and encouragement! NP5

n/m

[This message edited by Seriously??? at 11:33 PM, February 24th (Tuesday)]

It's hard to be soft and gentle when you've walked in the shoes of a child in this situation, manipulated by a mother who has no qualms about involving her daughters in covering up her deceit, who cries, threatens suicide (probably in front of the children too) who feel the full heat of this moral chaos...

I'll take my leave. The situation is far too personal for me to have anything but strong words for a submissive, passive father, and I just can't not .... bowing out...

Hang in there NP5. We will be here when you need us. I'm glad you are taking action.

Sending you peace and strength.

NP I have followed you from the beginning and I bet if you go back and read my responses I actually predicted some of this. As I sit here and shake my head I am really praying that you have decided to step up and be the sane safe parent for your kids.

I also hope that you quit worrying about Edith and start worrying about yourself and your kids. If you are I send you tons of strength.

Stay strong. Love your kids. Make your choices about them and their well being. When you do that you won't go wrong.

Seriously???...

You have a PM.

NP5

If you need us, just let us know. It may not seem like it, but most of us have your best interests at heart.

I will be praying for you, for your kids, and for Edith.

Strength to you in making the difficult decisions that you are going to face.

NP5 wow your wife must be crazy to risk losing a relationship with you! You are classy, intelligent, rationale, polite, and bright. you have handled yourself so well on this thread despite some classless and unsupportive responses. Good for you! We all have our own journey and need to take it as we should. Go on yours...as you displayed on here, you got this, you will be just fine. Your wife needs to wake up and not mess up this golden opportunity to stay in a relationship with you!

thanks for the response NP5.

I hope you are still reading. I think there are a couple of things wrong with your strategy based on your answer to me. You say that you want to know, but not now. I understand this, you really can't take anymore. You're hoping that she will finally start to behave. And then, after things calm down and she starts acting like your wife again, you probably won't need to know the truth. You'll choose to believe her. Keep the peace. This is called rug-sweeping. from what I've seen here, the problem with that is that it doesn't fix the core issue. Eventually she will realize that she got away with her indiscretion, and her bad behavior will return. not always. there are a few WWs here who haven't told their husbands and they seem to be intent on behaving. they're afraid to tell. However, I would wager to guess that in the large majority of cases here, rug-sweeping only pushes the problem aside for awhile.

there is something healing about having all the truth out in the open. it is very painful, but ultimately it's healing for the BS because they finally know all the details of the betrayal. they make a mature judgment about whether they should stay based on a complete picture of their WS. It's healing for the WS, because finally coming to grips with what they've done, and who they have become, by coming clean with their BS, is a very sobering thing to do. Maybe I'm naive, but I think most people want to think of themselves as "good." When faced with the destruction of your decisions, and being completely exposed, if only to your BS, you can't lie to yourself anymore. You either accept that you're really a bad person, or you decide that you have been a bad person, but don't want to be one anymore.

In my opinion, you're lying to yourself. You want to believe her. You want her to be telling you the truth, and you don't want to take the chance that there's a whole lot more deception and betrayal. So you don't pursue the polygraph. You're running from the truth. And you justify it by making excuses like, "i've heard it's not very reliable." And she is lying to herself, as well, by telling herself that she's really a pretty good person. That's she's not done anything seriously wrong. both instances are delusional. Hell, I've seen waywards convince themselves that they didn't really even have sex. And when it comes out that they did, they're almost surprised. It's hard to understand, but they project a nicer narrative in their mind, and they convince themselves that is what really happened.

to wrap it up, I think you need to schedule a polygraph. you need to get the truth. let the truth come out and give both of you a chance to heal your marriage.

good luck.

[This message edited by mike7 at 9:32 PM, February 24th (Tuesday)]

To add to mike7's comments, if you want to R, you can't really forgive someone until you know what it is you are forgiving. The foundation for R is honesty. Without honesty it's not going to happen.

I have not read everyone's comments only yours. I just want to address one aspect of your R plan. The making things easier for her and give her more time. As an FYI, many, many people post on here about how giving the WS more time resulted in the opposite. Instead of being the white in shining armor and the WS being thankful. The WS ended up having more time to hide/think about the AP. the The BS ended up double hurt because they were treated like a chump on top of everything else.

I can't tell you how many times a BS has agreed to let the WS cut to part-time or quit their job because they say "stress" was the issue... only to have an out of work cheating spouse on their hands.

The common thought is "My spouse will now be happy and end the A and will love me even more because I made this possible." It sounds reasonable but you can't nice them back.

You have your plan and that's fine but be aware it might do the opposite.

[This message edited by Freeme at 8:35 AM, February 25th (Wednesday)]

BS ONLY

[This message edited by SI Staff at 8:58 PM, April 6th (Monday)]

Update:

I have been working on my to do list...

First I needed to have resolution on the BestFriend of Edith's. She is a 30 year friend and the godmother of all 5 of my children. BF had 5 incidents related to WW's affair:

1) WW was out of the country when OM sent her an email to our family's computer. WW called BF to go to our house to pick up the laptop. She did and became a party to the hiding of the affair.

2) She told WW that she wasn't doing anything wrong. WW used these words to justify to me that OM and her were "just friends". WW continued her EA with BF blessing.

3) BF was to be the chaperone for my WW when WW went on a trip out of town to OM city to visit her cousins. MIL was supposed to go and at the last minute couldn't. BF went instead and let WW meet up with OM at a hotel at 11pm.

4) BF and WW were going to a party. They went to the party, but left shortly thereafter to go to OM's concert where he was playing a song dedicated to WW. This was an elaborate deception that was only found out when I got an anonymous tip that my WW was seeing the OM.

5) WW and BF went out to dinner with a common guy friend from high school. After dinner and guy friend went home, they went out to a dance club where WW ended up having a guy chase her into the bathroom. WW ended up staying out all night.

So, I decided that she is NOT a friend of the marriage. She might love my wife and children and she might even be my friend, but often when there is smoke and fire, and she's standing there.

I wanted to discuss this with her, so I sent her an email requesting that we talk about it together sometime. She responds "No thanks -- it's not appropriate to discuss your private life with me". With that response I thought, "Well, I don't think WW can have her as a friend any more and she needs to go NC with BF."

So I discussed it with my IC. IC recommended I handle it like this:

She said that regardless of what BF says or does, Edith has free will and she did not do anything she didn't want to do. So instead of insisting NC on her friend of 30 years, which she thinks would put Edith over the edge, that I do this:

"Edith, I am not comfortable with you and BF being alone. Due to the repeated deceptions, I don't trust you spending time with her alone."

If she gets upset I can say:

"I'm not making you do this, but I can't trust you with her."

"These are the consequences of your actions. This is the byproduct of your deception, with which BF was involved."

"I didn't make those decisions, you did. If you want to be upset with someone, you should be upset with yourself".

I am very comfortable with making those statements and telling her that I am not comfortable with her being with BF alone any more.

I will not be the one restricting her actions. I am establishing the boundary and she will have to decide if she respects it or not. If she choses to violate my boundary, then we will be right back to talks of separating...

Additionally, the IC recommended a polygraph tester in my area that she trusts for infidelity type questions. She said it was important to have experience in that type of questioning.

IC also recommended IC for the children at the appropriate time when we are ready, but that it might be good for Edith, I, and the children all do it together instead of always being in camps.

So, I'm moving on down the list... Thanks for all of your help and encouragement.