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I've talked about my feelings quite a bit, and she has talked about her feelings, towards OM and me. I told her that she can talk to me about anything and everything and I expect her to talk to me about everything.

I asked her whether she ever spent any time thinking what will happen when I found out. I also made it very clear that we are not "safe" yet. I know she understands what might still happen. But she knew what might happen while the affair was going full bore as she knows me well enough. Me spelling out lots of these things did rattle her quite a bit even when she was aware of potential risks. She did say that what I said was very hard to hear and I chose not to rub it in more by stating that having my wife confess her love and share her body with another man is quite something as well.

I also spent some time drafting a letter to the OM. This may never get sent, but I might have my wife read it at some point. Now that I have a better idea of the timeline of the events, I start to understand the duration of the affair better. It was not just September-May affair even when she may have been consciously invested in the affair for that time. Earliest indications of him making advances, that I have been able to find, date back to early 2016. Sure he was a friend, a friend who was abusing the trust to find ways to swim into her panties and convincing her to throw away her family, her life, our kids life and my life while setting up a nuclear bomb to blow everything up. Luckily I have not found any correspondence where my wife would agree with him on hurting our marriage and our family. His actions and what he said paint a very clear picture of a person he is.

but didnt her actions do precisely that?

Yes to some extent. She wasn't demanding him to dismantle his marriage and didn't agree to do that to our marriage when being pressured by him. She wasn't talking down on our marriage even when he was. She did not pressure him to start distancing himself from his wife.

She did cheat me with a married man though...

[This message edited by BusterMcBust at 12:09 PM, June 13th (Tuesday)]

It appears that the effort she put in to the affair and OM for months was greater than what I'm getting.

This line resonated with me. During the A, the cheaters need to think about, plan every move, be flexible with their time incase for example some family thing comes up and the planned tryst need to change.

They need to be creative and enthusiastic in making the thousands of decisions to cheat.

If a WS is not working at least as hard to get repair the damage as they did to create the damage, are they a good candidate for R?

My FWW said she never thought about what might happen if I found out. She never gave it much consideration, because it was out-of-town, I didn't know the OM, and if she didn't tell me, there was no way I would ever find out. Accept, of course, she never deleted their text messages. I suppose if someone is that desperate to have an affair, consequences be damned.

Which affair partner initiates might be someone important when it comes to understanding how and why it all happened, but I don't think there's any reason to lay any more or less blame on either AP. You're WW is just as guilty as the OM. He may have pursued her, just as my wife's OM (supposedly) pursued her. That doesn't change the fact that it was all consensual.

For me the bigger issue is the fact that he was trying to convince my wife to detach from me and start dismantling our marriage and family. That was because my wife didn't want to detach and she didn't want to leave me and OM didn't like that. He was directly saying that she should detach from me and then also indirectly hinting that their affair relationship was something more special and more pure than our marriage and as such, should be the primary relationship and the secondary should be abandoned.

My wife said that she knew getting caught was a matter of when, not a matter of if. She said to have known that I would eventually find out and that she was struggling with the fact that she was hurting me, but couldn't stop. She did confess that she was very afraid that I would take my own life and after D-day she was even more worried. I have yet to perfect my nice response to that...It's been more in line with "was it worth risking my life?"

She did confess that she was very afraid that I would take my own life and after D-day she was even more worried. I have yet to perfect my nice response to that.

Yeah, I was told that same thing by my WW. Granted I was very depressed and had suicidal thoughts even before Dday; no thanks to her checking out of the marriage for two years.

But those thoughts changed in an instant after I found out. My response to her was that she shouldn't have worried. I would never give that POSOM the satisfaction. And I truly meant it.

[This message edited by badmemory at 4:01 PM, June 13th (Tuesday)]

Have you told the OM's wife all of this? Is she fully aware of far he was willing to take this affair?

I'm not sure how much solace I would take in the fact that he did most of the pursuing. Your WW still kept the affair alive, despite her fears that you might take your own life.

Buster,

My wife said that she knew getting caught was a matter of when, not a matter of if. She said to have known that I would eventually find out and that she was struggling with the fact that she was hurting me, but couldn't stop. She did confess that she was very afraid that I would take my own life and after D-day she was even more worried. I have yet to perfect my nice response to that...It's been more in line with "was it worth risking my life?"

You are clearly an intelligent and caring man. You say there have been times when you have been unpleasant with your wife since D-Day, and you have also wrestled with not wanting to be a manipulative dick. For a person in your position to be so humane and caring about the impact of his actions on his WW, and how they fit with his core values, shows what a good person you are.

I don't think you need to 'nice' everything up, some rough edges do help emphasise the nature of what was done, and why it should not be done again. However, I think you are very wise and decent to restrain the urge to apply a 2x4 in some of the discussions you have. It would be easy to say some devastatingly soul-crushing things in response to a wayward who was prepared for her husband (and the father of her children) to kill himself just so she could have sex with another man. Off the top of my head, I can think of, "Would you have brought the OM to comfort our children at their Daddy's funeral? That would have been a lovely, thoughtful touch. What would you have said to the children when they looked you in the eye and asked why Daddy went away forever?"

That would have a certain impact, but it wouldn't really help anyone heal, would it? Your wife is not your enemy, so reining in the artillery barrages is the right thing to do.

Rather than totally nice-ing things up, I think you can try and get her to see the danger of ever getting involved in another affair, which would be a positive thing.

So you could say something like:

"The other day, you said that you thought I might kill myself because of the affair, but that thought did not stop you from letting it continue. I was really shocked and hurt by that. My wife was fine with me killing myself. That is a huge thing for me to try and get past. I had to do a lot of thinking about it. But from what I have read about affairs, they act like drugs on the human mind. They become like a craving, like an addiction. People lose their minds. That's the only reason I can see for you thinking I would kill myself, but still carrying it on. Can you see how messed up your thinking was? It was like you were possessed. It wasn't the 'real' you. But can you see why it is so important that you never, ever, ever let yourself get into a situation where you think my suicide is an acceptable price for you having sex with another man? Please, it is incredibly important for me that you see how dangerous, how utterly lethal, you getting into that mind-set is. That's what affairs do. It's what the affair did to you. Please tell me you have learnt from that."

I think something like that could turn a negative into a positive, by making the drug-like effect of affairs the 'bad guy', while giving your wife a bit of a 'get out' by acknowledging that she was not entirely rational when she thought that way. That is not excuse-making, or rug-sweeping, it is acknowledging what experts say about affairs, and using the effect it had on your wife's thinking to scare her straight and never want to lose rational control to such a crazy degree again. Making your wife affair-phobic would be no bad thing.

Just my take on it.

There is some consolation to be taken from the fact that even in her 'drugged' state, your wife was not willing to detach from you. Also, that schmuck of an OM destroyed his own marriage, but he could not not complete his mission to destroy yours, no matter how he tried. I'd say that makes him a double failure. And that's without using the language that would really express my feelings about him!

Take it a day at a time, Buster. It is great that you and your wife can discuss so much, with so much openness. That's very hard to do, but you guys are doing it. And the key to it is that you don't blow up at her when she says some unpleasant but honest things. Waywards do seem to enter a different mental state, and getting her to talk about it, particularly the worst of it, is a good way to get her out of it and back to reality.

You are doing better than you realise, Buster.

[This message edited by M1965 at 6:51 AM, June 14th (Wednesday)]

Buster,

Sorry you find yourself here. I am in a similar situation, my WW is (half the blame) but being manipulated by the AP. I've spoke with the OBS, and she told me everything is being manipulated by the AP right now, and my wife, being weak is just going along with it. Again, not an excuse for my WW, she is stupid enough to go along and fall for it, but there is always the engager and the follower. It sounds like your wife and my WW are both followers, but your WW seems stronger than mine, and mine has admitted as much.

On your R, I'll just say this. After having been on this forum now for about 1.5months, I see a lot of the stories being similar and the advice is also similar. I get that in many cases, certain things do make sense like exposure to OBS, family and asking for no contact. What you and everyone should know is that the WW's are different, and they are going to come out of the fog at different times and it will vary depending on how deep their connection was to the AP. So be graceful in your attempt to R. My buddy told me this, and I think it's worth mentioning here. Grace and Love are often extended to those who do not deserve it. The recipient of that love will always be indebted and will recognize that they cannot find any great love elsewhere. Jesus gave his love to us, and we all know that most do not deserve his grace, but yet he was willing to sacrifice his son for us. Think about that in your R with your wife.

Thanks badmemory, Unhinged, M1965, InterimRent and of course all the others. This forum and all the members have been very helpful.

The addiction comparison is appealing, but that looks like an "easy out" for my wife. I don't think that she had lost her mind, at least based on what she has told me about her thoughts when the affair was in full swing. Giving her an opportunity to just say she was out of her mind, which she may have been as well, would allow her to avoid lots of the work in my opinion. She has borderline screamed in her agony the questions why she did it, as she saw no future with OM, she knew she was hurting me and out family, and she knew I would find out. She will need to figure these things out and I want to be very careful not to offer her a short cut out of the mess. I don't have an option to take a short cut either. I'm not saying I will never offer the addiction-comparison-easy-out, but I don't think it's time for that yet.

I have not told the OBS about any details what is going on at our end. If she wants to know, she has means to easily ask. She is a very smart woman and while their family situation is very different from ours, she understands that the effects can be very severe.

Yeah, we talk, I talk and I'm not probably that stereotypical man. Me not being typical man in many ways is why my wife got attracted to me in the first place and I'm not planning on changing who I am.

Buster, given all of what your wife acknowledge about her A, but her continued participation I think her "why" answer is pretty simple and not very flattering: she selfishly prioritized her gratification (sexual or otherwise) above all else. That is not an easy truth to face for either of you, but for a detached third party it is a pretty easy conclusion to reach.

I don't expect that either of you will be able to immediately embrace that she is that selfish, but her behavior in light of what she knew or believed leaves little other explanation. Can she address why she was so selfish? Can you make peace with that and the fact that independently gauging her level of entitlement is very difficult (I presume she was not acting abnormally selfish during the A)? I think those are some of the key issues to resolve.

Normally she is pretty much the opposite of selfish or selfish wouldn't have been in my top-50 list of her characteristics prior to D-day. She has however stated herself that the affair was extremely selfish, so she does recognize that on some level.

I still don't think of her as selfish person, but her actions have definitely given proof that she is capable of being extremely selfish.

For me the bigger issue is the fact that he was trying to convince my wife to detach from me and start dismantling our marriage and family.

What this SCREAMS out at me... is that your WW NEVER had the proper boundaries to begin with.

She should have never allowed a friendship with another male to progress to this point. It all boils down to boundaries and the steps that need to be made to NEVER get to the point where you think having an affair is ok.

i meant that the most common immediate effect of an a is distance between the spouses. one is cheating, lying, and sneaking around. that creates a bond with ap. also most ws find all sorts of justifications on why its ok and do all sorts of mental hopping around to make bs the bad guy, you know ... it just cant be ws...

a secondary effect of an a is the nuking of the m - trust is gone, etc.

so om migt have talked it but your ww walked it. kwim?

Buster, you've hit on what I was getting at in the end of my post; you didn't see signs that she was that selfish before so how does she change to show you she can't be that selfish again?

I don't know myself, but that seems to be the catch-22 you find yourself in. Is better, more honest communication the answer? Maybe, but that rings a little hollow to me because she is probably unlikely to divulge to you that she feels a growing emotional or physical attraction to another man, right? Likewise she'd probably be unaware of those feelings until they were problematic in the first place... there are no good or easy answers.

We never discussed boundaries, we never set any boundaries. Maybe it was just the thinking that "do not have sex with anybody else" was thought to be good enough boundary. But obviously we need boundaries and have set basic boundaries that of course apply to both of us. I've had lunches alone with female co-workers as well and discussed family and other private topics with them and that is not OK for me either.

Buster,

The addiction comparison is appealing, but that looks like an "easy out" for my wife. I don't think that she had lost her mind, at least based on what she has told me about her thoughts when the affair was in full swing. Giving her an opportunity to just say she was out of her mind, which she may have been as well, would allow her to avoid lots of the work in my opinion. She has borderline screamed in her agony the questions why she did it, as she saw no future with OM, she knew she was hurting me and out family, and she knew I would find out. She will need to figure these things out and I want to be very careful not to offer her a short cut out of the mess. I don't have an option to take a short cut either. I'm not saying I will never offer the addiction-comparison-easy-out, but I don't think it's time for that yet.

Fair enough, I think you have a good take on the situation. I am just not wired up to cheat, to steal, or whatever. I would just be too uncomfortable with it. So the 'altered state of mind' thing is alien to me. However, loads of sources of information talk about it, so I thought it was worth bringing up. But you do point out the pitfalls of offering an easy way out, which is preventing your wife from 'owning' what she did and doing the work that relates to that.

To have knowingly done something that she says she recognised was bad, could have impacted you lethally, destroyed the family, etc, etc, and still not been able to stop is making my head spin. She really needs to be in counselling, or full-on analysis, to get to the root of that. That she can know something is so wrong or so bad, and yet still do it, is something that will take a fair bit of unravelling, and really needs a professional to do. I really admire your ability as a couple to communicate difficult, counter-logical things like this so well in their raw state (without trying to justify them or rationalise them), but some of the issues that are surfacing need more than just a deep conversation to resolve them. They really need to be gathered and then passed to a therapist to start unpicking.

Oh, and being non-stereotypical is great. Stay that way!

[This message edited by M1965 at 10:37 AM, June 14th (Wednesday)]

I've had lunches alone with female co-workers as well and discussed family and other private topics with them and that is not OK for me either.

Discussing family is one thing; but to allow yourself to be slowly maneuvered is quite the other. A man that wants to get into your wifes panties doesn't just blatently say, "Hey lets f**k". Its a slow process of manipulation with the eventual subtle hints. With good boundaries you never allow it to get to that point PERIOD. I've seen work place affairs take place. I have actually heard one gentleman over a period of days grooming a woman, and when she had finally had enough said VERY loudly for all to hear,"Look I'm NOT going to F**k you," with a redfaced OM quickly heading to the restroom to compose himself. That's a woman with PROPER boundaries.

I found this article https://blogs.psychcentral.com/relationships/2012/07/12-warning-signs-that-its-emotional-infidelity-and-not-just-friendship/

Seems to cover most bases on the building blocks of my wife's affair. I have to say we were not aware of these and if we were, something could have been done before things escalated. Also uses the addiction analogue.

What my wife has told me, he may have very well been working towards his goal long when they were still working together. Comments like "I can see why Mr. Buster did X for such a wonderful woman like you" would seem that way. Or I would never ever use that kind of language when talking with my co-workers as I find that inappropriate. Doesn't mean that proper boundaries weren't there. At the very latest, when she found out he had kept the emails and lunch meetings a secret from his wife, my wife should have put an end to it right there. Instead, she started omitting the same from me. She was well in the EA at that point.

[This message edited by BusterMcBust at 12:47 PM, June 14th (Wednesday)]