SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Reconciling was worth it, but it was the hardest thing I've ever done. Kudos to you for having the strength to try. Just remember, like everyone else here has been saying, six months feels monumental. It's a personal victory, sure, but the ride won't be over for a long time. Both of you are going to have some rough days and nights. Your brain hasn't even fully processed what went down that night. Six more months from now you may have a thought or make a connection that until then wasn't even on your radar, and suddenly everything you thought you knew is suspect again.

Keep going, but be prepared.

I appreciate the acknowledgement, encouragement, and words born from experience. I'm buckled up and have my head on a swivel. Thanks man.

I sometimes imagine this scenario where I found out what had happened, and instead of driving there to confront her, I just went home and pretended everything was normal until I talked to lawyer, drew up divorce papers, and had her served at work in front of everyone.

Or instead of leaving her there I could have parked the car, got out, and said "okay, let's go have a talk with your new boyfriend" and refused to leave until she either led me there or got her stuff and came home. Bigger, maybe you could fill me in on what could have happened if she called the police and accused me of harassing her or something if I'd done that. I don't think she would have, but then I didn't think she'd cheat on me or threaten to jump out of a moving vehicle either...

Or that I let her walk a ways away, then got out and followed her to his place, kicked down the front door and beat the ever loving shit out of him. (You don't have to tell me what would have happened if the police got involved with that one...)

Or that when she did come home the next morning, and I greeted her with all of her stuff sloppily packed in garbage bags on the front lawn.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda... there's always so much more clarity in hindsight. The truth of the matter is, some of us are so unprepared for a situation like this, that we have no clue what we'd do without the advantage of forethought when actually confronted with it. That's why I say I wish I'd known about this place before I confronted her at all. It should have been, but initiating divorce wasn't the first thing I thought of. It wasn't even the 2nd or 3rd thing I thought of. I was so wracked with guilt and shame for the state of our relationship I blamed myself at first, and she did too. Hence the pick me routine.

It took me 2 weeks to find my balls again and put my foot down. It struck me that no matter what state our relationship was in, having an affair was still the worst thing that had ever happened to us, and far worse than anything I ever did. I was never abusive or mean. Distant and apathetic, yes, but I didn't deserve that. There were so many other ways she could have dealt with this. Up to and including... I don't know... talking to me?? That's when I got angry and started making phone calls. Then after a couple more weeks I found this place and was finally validated. I still haven't told anyone but one good online friend who doesn't know anyone in my family or personal circle of friends.

I know I didn't do everything right, rational, or "normal" in handling this. Somehow, miraculously(?), we're where we are right now and I have a very contrite wife who's a prime candidate for R. I really needed someone to talk to who understood and supported me tho. I found that here. I've learned so much, and for that I'll be forever grateful. Thank you all so much.

Pogre

I got a few more details

it was an epiphany to me when I realized that all the questions I was asking her, about feelings and logistics and times and dates and everything, all of the digging, were really at their heart questions about me.

People who are asking questions a year later, five years later, 20 years later, are really asking questions about themselves.

Think about it.

I think the hardest part of the initial reaction is knowing how to respond. I did my confrontation before I'd spent any time researching forums. I first found a different forum that involves "talking" about "marriage" and told my story, which I then spent about a week or so fielding dozens of people saying she was still cheating, or that things were worse than I thought. I, like you here, spent a lot of follow-up posts responding how I was sure she wasn't like that, and that we were working on things. But I also read about two hundred different threads and learned a lot about how to surveil your partner. And THAT'S how I found out it wasn't just the sloppy makeout session in a bar that a bunch of people witnessed, but there was also an emotional affair pushing the limits on Snapchat.

Remember how I said in six months you might suddenly make a connection that hadn't even occurred to you until that moment? I suddenly started thinking about how in the months prior, she spent a lot of time talking about two of the players (pro hockey) and how she would have conversations with them on Snapchat. So I started making a plan to look at her phone when she wasn't looking. The opportunity first came when she was taking a shower one night. I grabbed her phone, went to a different room, and opened it up.

Here's a sidebar: I knew her password at that time. She had changed it in the weeks before D-Day, and I had suspected something was up. I changed mine too and she noticed and asked why. I told her I noticed she had changed hers, so I decided to change mine too. She didn't like that, but it had me on edge at the time. I learned her new password by watching her a bunch of times until I figured all of the numbers out.

Back to the story.

So I opened the phone and went directly to Snapchat and found that while there was a conversation with one of the guys, there wasn't one for the other (they lived together). So I opened the conversation that was there. The first thing I saw were photos of them, half naked in their swimsuits. He's showing off his fucking ripped body and dark tan, and she's pulling her bathing suit top just a little bit aside to show her tan lines. Nothing graphic, but still enough to know it was flirty. I had allowed to her to go hang out with them at their house on the lake because I didn't suspect anything. But once I did suspect something and checked, it confirmed an emotional affair that was possibly on the cusp of going physical before they moved back overseas when the playoffs ended. He had saved the photos to chat, that was how I caught her. But I put the phone back because she was almost done and I didn't want to show my hand yet. The next day I waited for her shower again, and took her phone into a different room, opened the message up, and used my phone to film what I saw. Scrolling up there were messages saved to chat by him. Flirty stuff. Photos from her boudoir photoshoot I got her for a birthday gift the year before. Her calling him the "sexiest Swede," a boomerang video of her sucking a popsicle and the caption "popsicle before bed xoxo." My hands were shaking so much I could barely get a good video. Then later I took screenshots from that video. I compared the timestamps from their messages to what we were doing using Google timeline and timestamps on photos I'd taken. I mapped out exactly what was going on in our lives at the exact times she was having this emotional affair.

I spent almost a full month gathering data. Digging wherever I could. The forums were telling me so many different things to look for, and I always checked. What blew my cover was that she had gotten called into the offices and fired for "being a distraction" and they said I had contacted them to get info. She was pissed and called me, and that's when I had to tell her how much I had found. Everyone in my office was at the other end of the room watching my meltdown. And then I left to go meet her. It was a long argument and discussion. But like everyone here says, you can't know what you're forgiving until you know everything.

I was so broken. I thought I had already hit bottom after D-Day 1, but I was so wrong. The emotional affair hurt even more.

So that's why we keep telling you to take it day by day, and don't trust that just because she's showing she's the model wife now doesn't mean she isn't hiding more. Not trying to make you suspicious, just trying to show you that you may not have thought of everything yet. You're going to have more questions. You're going to learn new information. You're going to die a hundred deaths before this is over, even if reconciliation goes perfectly.

She killed you, you just don't know it yet.

I'm quite familiar with a forum that "talks" about "marriage." A few people there seem to get their kicks from attacking and blaming BS's after they've been destroyed by an affair... I strongly recommend caution for newly betrayed spouses or even avoiding some certain sites altogether, and I'll just leave it at that.

That said, I did a lot of reading also. I've read many, many, many d day stories on multiple sites. I scoured them and found stories from years ago. A couple were 50 plus page threads for the same story that got so long they required starting new threads to continue. I've read a bunch here, too. Even older ones (Spaceghost, anyone?). There's a true horror story of infidelity and deception on another site right now that recently received an update after a couple of years and made my hair curl. It's one of the worst instance of betrayal and deception I've ever read. I did a lot of homework over the last 5 months since I found this site. When something hits my radar, I obsessively search, read, and learn as much about it as I possibly can. I've always been like that. I've read about all manner of deception, betrayal, surveillance techniques, clues to look for, and tip of the iceberg-type shocking discoveries that seemingly come out of nowhere. I'm still asking her if there's anything else I should know. I told her that if something pops up that she hasn't told me 6 months, a year, or 5 years from now it's going to be a disaster.

Shortly after d day and before I had the whole story I snooped through her iPad. It's synced to her phone. She didn't know I knew her passcodes, and she was pretty protective of "her privacy." I found a lot. All of her messages with her AP and messages with her friends where she talked about the affair. Talked about me. Sometimes very unflatteringly. Some of it was true, some exaggerated, and some flat out untrue. All in service of justifying her choices and actions. It looked like she hadn't deleted anything. If she did, she really messed up bad because her messages with her AP were all there, plenty incriminating, and she had many other conversation threads that went back for years.

Long story short, I got what I think is a full confession (almost, I know from reading so many of these stories that there's almost ALWAYS some details, portions, or tidbits left out), which I could then confirm much of with her multiple message threads with friends and AP. She has since granted me full access to all of her devices. She hasn't changed her passcodes, and she leaves her iPad and phone out for me to look at anytime I want now. She often volunteers to show me her messages from the current day. I can view her live conversations on her phone while she's at work, in real time, if I want to.

I know there are apps and sites where messages auto delete. I know there are some with hidden or disguised icons for apps and messaging. I know about burner phones. I know a lot of the tricks WS's use to hide that stuff. If she's hiding something from me now, then she suddenly became brilliant at it. She's not tech savvy at all. I often have to help her navigate new sites, set up passwords, and navigate the internet in general. I'm not a guru or anything, but I'm no dummy either. I dug, and I dug deeply.

At this point I'm very convinced this was a one-off. I'm pretty sure I have the whole timeline and the major parts of the story from confession and cross referencing with her messages. The number of times they met up and got physical (3), for how long that part of it was going on (2 weeks), that they had been chit chatting which turned to flirting for almost 2 months before that, and had known each other as acquaintances/co workers for a couple of years before that. I know her schedule. I help her pick her shifts, and she hasn't been able to drive for a year now. I've been, and still am, her chauffeur. Since d day, we've been doing everything together. Outside of nail and hair appointments, which I drop her off and pick her up for, she's always with me, and hasn't been hanging out with any of her friends.

I know, I KNOW there's going to be a lot of doubt and questions as to whether or not this is just the tip of the iceberg for me, and understandably so. Like I said, I've done A LOT of reading on this and other boards. I've seen a lot of bad situations suddenly take a turn into really, really bad situations with slip-ups, trickle truths, or just flat out detective work on the parts of many BS's.

I appreciate the heads up. I really do, and I know it comes from a good place and combined years of personal and collective experience. I don't take it lightly, but I'm confident that I know enough of my situation now that I think it's pretty unlikely I'm going to be hit with another building falling from the sky. However, I've read enough to know not to completely rule it out either. I'm still vigilant. I'm still looking out for clues, and I'm not ready to let go and trust blindly. Probably never will. I'm not going to say "she's not like that," because I thought I knew before what she was like, and I was wrong. But I do know that when it comes to subterfuge and deception she's terrible at it. Not that she isn't capable of it, obviously, but she's terrible at it. If something's off again, I'm very confident I'll pick up on it.