SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Strength brother, I wish you well.

Are you still with us?, what is the current status?

I agree with the insights you already have been given, including exposure and inflicting other consequences to hinder/end the affair (i.e., makes it less fun), and the line of events sketched by manfromlamancha but also the posters who said that likely more is going on that you want/need to find out.

Your question was how you can get her back on your side again. The exposure and consequences regularly help to get her back on your side.

Yet, it also sounds as she has been brainwashed by a cult/OM, and yes bad cults also involve sex and "enlightment".

My wayward ex-gf came home from a festival and said that she had a " transformation" during her time away from me, and that we were incompatible as a result. Sensing something was very wrong/odd, I simply responded by saying that during her time away I also had a "transformation" and asked her about hers and I said (i.e., LIED) that we were on the same page about it. She felt relieved and that helped me to understand her mindset and from there on I could work to get her back on my side again.The reason for the breakup later is another story. Point is, evenif the spiritual thing is just a cover story, you might want to dig deeper there to untangle and neutralize it, for instance by saying that you are genuinly interested in her and the spiritual thing and also want to undergo/"find" it. It may be that it is just a makeup story and cover story, but you will find out then and find its weak spots. This may also relieve her a bit of her shame and guilt towards you, if ahe has any, and make her more open to talk to you. This just as a suggestion, see for yourself whether it is an option to "play along" to find out what is going on in her head, okay?

I wish you well, strength.

How are you doing, equallycorrect?

Since when do “spiritual awakenings” include adultery? I’m no biblical scholar but I don’t think adultery is supposed to be part of a “spiritual awakening”.

THIS.

I am so sick of seeing waywards who hide behind the curtain of religion.

Hell is full of those people.

How long should I accept his in-between ambivalent state?

Zero minutes.

Your mistake, as we see routinely from BS's, is trying to nice her back; playing the "pick me" card. All that does is make her loose respect for you and with that, diminish her attraction for you - compared to the OM.

You should have given her immediate consequences (that prior posters have detailed) and she would have to accept them all for you to even "consider" R. She'd also have to demonstrate genuine, unconditional remorse.

In the worst way, she needed to know what it feels like to not know if she would lose her husband for cheating. And she's the one that would have to spend weeks or months with that ambivalence while you made your decision.

The good news is that you can still do exactly that; if you're willing to end your marriage to have the best chance of saving it.

[This message edited by badmemory at 1:14 PM, January 9th (Tuesday)]

Hi equallycorrect and welcome to SI

I see you have put a lot of effort into your post and hope that you are reading or have read the replies. The advice is mostly spot on. Take note of the joining dates of the members and I think you will find the older ones are giving the most sage and wise opinions.

Step back and try to see the true picture. If this was your best and oldest friend, what would you say?

Sisson's post - read it again. As usual, thoughtful and responds to the pertinent points in your post.

UKg

As a 45 year old man who would be divorced twice, can I expect to find someone just as good or better than my wife? It seems like the gender ratios are in my favor and there are a decent number of good single women in my age range. (I know this is a silly question, but I can’t help but put a lot of energy in this space).

The question is not being divorced twice, the question is why the hell would you settle for less than crumbs, settle for disrespect.

The question is would you rather be tied to someone who's cheating on you and yanking your chain rather than being alone?

If you saw a woman or man being emotionally abused would you advice them to stick with their partner and hope for the best because hey, you broke up with past partners?

The question is not jumping from this relationship into the arms of another. That's rug sweeping. Your wife has had an exit affair and she's pretty much gone save for dragging your through the embers of limbo and stringing you along with hope.

Cheating is not exclusive. No one has a unique story. It's all the same nonsense, the same lines being fed with varying slants. Everyone has felt cr*p. Everyone has thought of ways and means to win the partner who repeatedly f*cked them over back.

Not unique at all.

If you have a 1% chance to win her back then the work has got to be on her. She has to want it. She has to win you back, but that can't happen if the consequence of her cheating = 0.

What is your worth? If you don't respect yourself then how can she? Pack her bags and tell her happy trails I'll be fine without you. Expose. File for divorce. Buy a nice car if you can. Rearrange the house to the way you like it and move on and leave her in the dust.

Stop negotiating.

Thanks to everyone for responding to my dilemma. It has been quite a long time since I first posted.

Quite a few people gave the suggestion to expose my wife. I’ve read this suggestion here on this site in the healing library. This is one suggestion that I don’t feel comfortable implementing. Basically, I’ve been a good husband and I’ve handled everyone involved with respect. I want to maintain this, not to protect my wife, but for myself. I’m not the kind of person who bashes other people and I feel like this would lower me down into the place where my wife has gone. I also don’t see this strategy as productive for bringing the wife I want back to my marriage. If I have to force her to come back through making her life miserable, would this be sustainable?

Another suggestion (a good one) was to consult a lawyer and I did that a couple months ago along with some research on my own. Basically, my wife is stuck in Connecticut and can’t move out of state because she lacks the residency requirements required to move the kids to Texas.

A third general suggestion was to work on doing the 180 and I’m doing that.

Updates:

When I posted this original message, I thought the affair was over, but it wasn’t . She was still talking to him. This whole thing was just not going anywhere and I didn’t know why at the time. We played ping-pong in counseling and I didn’t understand what was going on. Eventually, I found out that the other man had given up and was trying to break things off. My wife and I seperated briefly and took some time apart.

We are now back together full time and things are getting better, I guess. I have doubts about it all. Our lives are different together and my wife has had a difficult time reconnecting with me. Since the affair, my wife has a hard time touching me. I don’t feel cool anymore, she just doesn’t seem that interested. I’ve broke into her computer and I am pretty sure she is not talking to the OM anymore. She’s wounded, she lost someone she thinks she loved and a special connection. . She’s trying to reconnect to me, but she doesn't seem quite able.

I don’t believe that her relationship with this other man was real, it was a fantasy. I’ve talked to her about the affair fantasy relationship, but I’m not sure this hits home with her. I think she still wants to be with him, even if they are not talking.

This affair came out of nowhere and poisoned a good relationship. My wife never told me that ‘we have a problem’. Some people say that affairs only happen when there was a problem. I don’t think that was the case, our relationship was not perfect, but it was good.

We have the kids together and that is something we can connect on. It’s hard to raise small children and keep a relationship going after an affair. It’s hard to find the time to be together and it is hard to ask my wife about her day when a four year old is also fighting for our attention.

On the positive side of things, as time moves on, her feelings about everything seem to be changing and things do seem to be getting better. Progress is slow, but at least it feels like things are changing over time.

On the negative side, We don’t seem to be connecting. She doesn’t seem to want to touch me and “I love you” only comes when I say it first. We have sex, but it is not the same as it was before, she doesn’t seem to enjoy it as much; I’ve asked her if there is anything I can do but she says ‘this is just where she is at right now’.

I’m not satisfied, this relationship now is worse than what we had before in every way. I’m getting tired. I’m tired of this relationship and waiting for my wife to ‘snap out of it’ and realize that she had something real and good with me. I somethings secretly hope that she will cross the line again so that I can leave.

I’m waiting right now for things to improve. I feel an obligation to stay in this, for the marriage but more for the kids we have. For now I’ll wait and see what happens over time.

Thanks for reading,

Equallycorrect

You're waiting on things to change but what are you doing to make it happen?

I read your initial post, all of the advice that followed, and your most recent post.

The posters here have combined decades of experience with infidelity. All of us have personally been victims of infidelity, and via the various threads on this board we have seen a huge range of infidelity situations.

I would remind you also that this board is about surviving infidelity. It is intended to help you, the BH, survive your WW's infidelity. We are not about saving marriages, nor breaking them. In our view, it is irrelevant whether the marriage lives or dies if the BH has not found his way out of infidelity and back to a place of peace and truth.

You, my friend, are not out of infidelity. Worse, you are not even on a path out of infidelity. We tend to give our advice bluntly, without any effort to avoid hurting the feelings of a BH. This is because we are all supporting you. Sometimes we call hard advice a "2x4" because it's like figuratively hitting you in the forehead with a 2x4. We do this because we perceive that you need a hard knock to get out of your zombie-like paralysis and into reality.

In my opinion, you need a 2x4. Or perhaps many 2x4's. You cannot "nice" her back to the marriage. You are doing diametrically the wrong thing. Reading your thread is like being a spectator on the side of a basketball game where one of the members of your favorite team gets confused and starts shooting at the wrong basket.

We often say here that to save your marriage, you have to be prepared to lose it. The truth about infidelity, especially long-term emotional infidelity like that of you WW, where she starts spewing treacle about "spiritual awakening", is that the marriage you used to have is gone, and it will never come back. One of the most common beginner mistakes made by WH's is to continue to hope that they can "restore" the marriage. There is nothing to restore. The corpse is dead and it won't fart if you kick it.

You might re-build a new, different marriage with your WW. In the minority of instances where that works, the results can be magical, a complete "re-set" of the relationship that creates a new, better relationship in the place of the old dead one. However, that requires two things: (a) you walk away from the corpse of your old, dead marriage, and (b) your WW is 100% invested in rebuilding a new marriage with you.

You only have control over (a). This is one of the hardest things for a BH to acknowledge. Your WW is an autonomous human being who makes her own choices. You cannot control them nor manipulate them. This includes being "nice" or a "good husband" to her. Nothing you do -- nothing -- will control her decisions. She controls her decisions.

What I see from your posts, and what every other poster here sees, is you burying your head in the sand. You are refusing to exercise your control over the thing you can control (getting out of infidelity by stepping away from a relationship with an unfaithful spouse), and you insist on castrating yourself in a lunatic effort to manipulate the thing you cannot control.

Man, we love you. We love you in a way that is truer than your WW's "love", if she has any, which I doubt.

I suggest you read about the 180 in The Healing Library, then re-read it. Also, read "How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Infidelity" by Linda MacDonald.

Among other things, you will see that a broken marriage can only be reconciled if the wayward spouse has remorse for the harm that she has caused, and is willing to do the work to reconcile the marriage. You cannot "nice" her nor "force" her to feel/do these things. She has to want it of her own free will.

We can only offer advice based on the information you provide in your posts. From your posts, your WW has zero remorse, and, further, she has no desire to do any work to reconcile with you. You are living in purgatory.

Man, get out of purgatory! Implement the 180. Start a divorce proceeding. They take a long time to complete, and you can dismiss at any time. But you have to give your WW an opportunity to know that you are prepared to walk away so that she can make her choice. You have to be prepared that she will choose the OM, or perhaps she will choose to be single. She may have fallen out of love with you. If that is her reality, then you need to accept it.

But if she does truly desire you, and she sees clearly that you are unwilling to remain in purgatory, then she may find her remorse and start doing the work. This A is 100% on her. She killed your marriage. You need to be very clear with her that this is the reality, that you are angry and hurt, and that you will not tolerate her indifference and indecision.

Among other things, your kids will be affected by this if you don't take action. Do you want them to grow up with this kind of marriage as their paradigm for what an adult relationship looks like? No matter how hard you try to hide it from them, kids perceive way more than parents think they do.

A few additional points:

Quite a few people gave the suggestion to expose my wife. I’ve read this suggestion here on this site in the healing library. This is one suggestion that I don’t feel comfortable implementing. Basically, I’ve been a good husband and I’ve handled everyone involved with respect. I want to maintain this, not to protect my wife, but for myself. I’m not the kind of person who bashes other people and I feel like this would lower me down into the place where my wife has gone. I also don’t see this strategy as productive for bringing the wife I want back to my marriage. If I have to force her to come back through making her life miserable, would this be sustainable?

Exposing the A has nothing to do with respect, and in what universe is speaking the truth about a situation “bashing” somebody or “lowering” one’s self? Your strategy should not be “bringing the wife I want back to my marriage.” That will fail. The wife you had is gone. You need to accept that. Exposing her and speaking the truth is not forcing her to come back, it is merely clearing the air and creating an environment of truth in which, if she decides she wishes to reconcile with you, it will be from a basis of honesty.

When I posted this original message, I thought the affair was over, but it wasn’t . She was still talking to him.

Gee, what a surprise. Exactly what many posters here told you. There are many ways in which it could still be ongoing.

I’m waiting right now for things to improve. I feel an obligation to stay in this, for the marriage but more for the kids we have. For now I’ll wait and see what happens over time.

I guarantee you that, 10 years from now, you will regret having done this. Rug-sweeping always makes the problem worse. You will regret it more than you have regretted anything in your life. You need to find truth. Don't waste your years languishing in purgatory.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 10:49 AM, June 29th (Friday)]

Be careful, they may have taken the A underground. Happens all the time.

Good luck brother.

Rugsweeping never works. Expect it to get worse.

Friend, you are in a false R because you ignored the good advise you were given. You ignored it because you're terrified of divorce. It's as simple as that.

You misery will be extended and your wife will likely cheat again. In large part because she knows she won't have to face consequences and she's lost all respect for you.

I feel bad for you. It didn't have to be this way.

[This message edited by badmemory at 9:30 AM, June 29th (Friday)]

One of the most concise and cogent explanations above from ButfortheGrace. Well said.

It is true that one of the hardest lessons to be learned in reconciliation is that the old marriage has, indeed, died. No matter how well you might reconcile - the marriage you will have moving forward must be new.

I talk about this when I speak about the difference between reconciliation and TRUE reconciliation. It's easy to reconcile a marriage - just move ahead like nothing ever happened. You're still married and the kids still see you together. Your neighbors and friends will still speak of you as a model couple and, hey, every so often you might even get laid.

If you want to live like that - go for it.

TRUE reconciliation occurs when a big, fat baseball bat smacks your wife in the head (figuratively speaking, of course) and she suddenly says, "Holy shit! What the hell was I doing???" And, from that moment on, she recognizes that SHE caused the problems and takes immediate action to do anything necessary to right her wrong. YOU and the MARRIAGE become paramount - even more than your kids, her job, her parents, herself. THAT is what TRUE reconciliation looks like.

And, oh by the way, TRUE reconciliation can be an amazing thing. It can result in your personal healing, yes - but more importantly, it can launch your marriage to a whole new plane. It CAN happen.

But you are not on that path, my friend. You are in a marriage that is together in name only. It is imperative that you put your fear aside and lay down your requirements. If your wife agrees and acts - great! If she doesn't, then you owe it to yourself and your children to move out of infidelity. She needs to see this with total clarity.

Best of luck.

Equally, I am sorry you are having to deal with this. Your situation sounds very similar to mine. I can't speak for your exact situation, but please keep in mind that those giving advice hear have an understanding of what you are dealing with.

The A is still going on in your WW's head. She is still pining for her "soulmate", even if he stopped talking to her temporarily. The A is not over. Your WW is a liar and YOU need to remember that.

Part of the problem is that you have shown your WW that she can cheat, lie, etc. and you are not willing to do anything about it. She believes she can carry on with what she is doing and you will not leave her.

It is good that you did stand up for yourself regarding her visit to the city. You need to have the divorce papers ready to sign if she does go through with that trip. Let her know she will not be welcome back in the house if that happens. Let her see that she has something to lose. Right now, you are plan B. If she can't work things out with her "soulmate", she still around with you until she finds something better. This is why she shows you no affection. She is just placating you, telling you about all of the things you ever did wrong in the marriage and how YOU have to improve/change so that she will feel better about the M.

YOU are not the problem. She is. Sure, you are not perfect, no one is. YOU did not cause her to cheat, and no part of you "improving" is going to win her back.

My XWW went from one "soulmate" to the next, until i had enough and couldn't put up with the lies and cheating. The soulmate she settled on and had another set of twins with is now delivering newspapers and (according to my kids) they fight constantly. The point is, she is searching for something that no one else can provide, but she doesn't know that. Similarly, your WW is broken, and until she recognizes that, she will always think that someone else will make her happy. It won't work, but she isn't going to stop looking.

Your M is in limbo. She’s not committing 💯% as a wife.

Only you can end this cycle of living in limbo. You are waiting for her to “make a decision”.

She’s not going to make a decision.

And honestly I watched my H go into unhappiness when the OW briefly ended the A. It sickens me to know I was not his priority for a year. She was.

If I had to do it all over again I would force him to have left. I did tell him he was not obligated to stay M and if hat is what he wanted he just needed to man up and say so.

Instead he was a coward and lied. Pretended the M was a priority. But it was not.

Don’t live another second in limbo. It will not change anything.

Eventually, I found out that the other man had given up and was trying to break things off.

It seems very likely to me that the OM was not actually "going through a divorce" as you were told and you said in your original message. He was either playing your wife or she was lying to you. Same thing happened to me. My xWW told me that the OM and his W had a "rotten" marriage and that he was going to leave her, she was going to leave me and they were going to be together. She told me that they were already separated. You know who didn't know about any of that? The OBS. She was clueless and thought she had a regular, happy little marriage.

In my xWW's case the OM was telling her what she wanted to hear and as soon as I exposed to the OBS he ran, dropped my wife immediately and disappeared from our lives (for a few years any way). This is a very likely scenario in your case. For all you know your WW is really just waiting for the OM to finally leave his wife. He may be telling her that he needs another year until a child gets to a certain age or his wife finishes school or any of 10,000 reasons. What do you know about the OM?

I think, with no evidence I know, that he is still married. I think your WW is still waiting for him and still in contact with him. I think that if he ever says "Now" she will walk away. You are keeping her secure and safe while she waits for her true love. I'm sorry. You shouldn't accept this. Find out if he is truly married. Tell his wife when you find out he is because I can almost guarantee that he is. Don't tell your wife you are doing it. Then when she gets angry at you for it you'll know they are still in communication. Knock your wife off of that fence she is sitting on. Tell her you are not an option any longer. Implement the 180 fully and start moving on a divorce. You might wake her up. You might not. But doing something would improve your life from this limbo you live in right now.

EC, just out of curiosity, was she your affair partner in your original M?

Sorry to read about your situation. Your wife is pining over a fantasy. No one can compete with that. Your wife doesn't want to touch or say words she knows to be a lie, "I love you". She left the marriage when she met her "soul mate" and she's not returning. You continue to feel miserable and continue to do the 'pick me' dance. You're in your 40's and have options in finding a better woman. You've put up with way too much. She's not worth your efforts. She doesn't respect you, she's not remorseful, and You can't fix her. You should divorce her asap and get on with a happier life.

You guys suffer from inertia. The direction of your marriage is not going to magically change for the positive. There has to be a catalyst. A push to the right direction. The same as there was a catalyst that was a push in the wrong direction. That catalyst was you two living apart for a year (very ill-advised) and this scumbag douche fake religious predator that got his hooks into your wife under the guise of a "spiritual awakening." Your wife is not a leader. I can tell. She wants to be led. This other man (disgusting douche bag), led her when you were absent, and he led her to himself and dug his hooks in deep. You now have to lead her back. You can't be sheepish. You can't be weak. You can't beg or plead. You have to lead even when it's very uncomfortable for you to do so.