SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Let's be honest. She took off her underwear for a man she was willing to lose you over for a year and a half.

You should be looking to upgrade from this garbage wife and she should be trying to convince you otherwise, or by bending steel to convince you that she's committed her life to not being garbage.

You deserve better. Way way way way better. This isn't about what's right for her or her career. It's about you deserving a base level of humanity that any of us would trade any thousand of careers for.

I only opened the first 3 and the last 2 pages of this ongoing post. Your posts don't change, just the way you show your perspective of the situation. I have to agree with all the posters here. If you count up all of the "sorry's" you would outweigh her 4 to 1. It's the pick me dance done to the n'th degree. Words of wisdom for you....."Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results ". There's a codependency here that overtakes everything else. Work on yourself. You can't control your WW. Good old Dr Phil nails it, it may have happened to you but you have total responsibility on how YOU conduct yourself. Honestly it would break your heart to watch one of your children go through and be treated like this wouldn't it? You are worth more than that.

No Soliciting

[This message edited by SI Staff at 8:03 PM, July 18th (Tuesday)]

20yrsin

I Was out tonight so just checked in. Will need to review your post again and the related advice from others.

From skimming it looks like many of the comments back to you are spot on but haven't had enough time to review it to develop my own thoughts.

But I did want to say this.

20yrsin in .... good job. I know it was totally out of your comfort zone to even bring this up with her. For that I commend you.

Now mind you, I'm totally grading you on a curve. You have been far too passive. But relative to where you were at your first post, you have taken a small step towards taking control. Mind you again, YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL YET, but you said something.

So maybe you went from an F- to a D today. But in your world that is significant. See how she responded to you when she thought she was losing you. She's still playing games, but at least she felt something finally.

Imagine what she might do if you told her you were having D papers drawn up and would be filed aug 15. Imagine if you told her you were looking at new places to live. Imagine if you told her you had written a letter to family members telling them that you needed their help thru this difficult period.

Imagine if you laid down 15-20 requirements for R and if she didn't meet them then you were going to leave and start a path to find someone that made you their one and only.

But that is not you yet. Maybe someday. Maybe someday soon.

But for this moment I'm going to be happy that you actually did something and think good thoughts for you.

Tomorrow it's back to work.

One small thing after I gave another quick read.

This:

Part of me thinks you are afraid to feel happy with me again

The answer to that is: "yes, it's your job to make me feel safe. When I feel safe with you as a spouse I can let myself start to feel happiness again. For the last 8 months, with you seeing him every day, you have not made me feel safe. Even the fact that you thought it wouldn't matter to me that you stayed working with him makes me feel unsafe. He needs to be out of our lives forever. Until that happens I cannot start to heal. If you Really want us to be a couple for the next 40+ years you need to care about my healing "

20yrsin

If she hasn't started reading "how to help your spouse heal after your affair" then she needs to.

[This message edited by Stevesn at 12:08 AM, July 19th (Wednesday)]

She is not playing you, you are playing yourself. If she loved you she would dread going to where OM is. It is pretty clear

In the text exchange, your WW wrote "I am putting a reminder in my calendar now." about changing her job.

If she needs to put a reminder on her calendar about something that has been dragging on for months and that you've made very clear is very important to you, it's time to face facts and realize that you are not even on the list of her priorities.

Everyone here keeps hanging with you and giving you the collective wisdom of their real life experiences and you just keep ignoring everyone and lapping up the attention. Do you post here for advice or for attention that you're not getting from her? Sorry to be blunt but that's how I see it.

It's time for you to man up and take it on the chin, she doesn't love you anymore and the marriage is toast. Get out while you still have a shred of life in you. You'll be fine. You're intelligent and kind and good but as long as you stay under her spell, you are not really living.

I am not sure if you are familiar with my story. My wife's affair was brief, and I wasn't as passive as you, but eventually my anger petered out and was replaced by just and dull ache and festering anger that lasted until 5 years later when I couldn't take it anymore.

Our situations are different but I venture to guess you are feeling the same gut wrenching pain I had. Trust me, over time this will eat you alive. For eight months you have watched your wife get dressed, put on make up, and go see the guy who was screwing her for a year and a half. That has to be so painful. I agree with the other posters who stated that someone who loves someone wouldn't do that to them. Then to tell you basically it could have worked out for her if you just weren't so sensitive is a kick to the nuts.

My advice is to fix this right now. I don't want you ending up like me where so much resentment has built up that you will never love her the same way again.

She is not playing you, you are playing yourself. If she loved you she would dread going to where OM is. It is pretty clear

I agree, you can't R until she HATES the OM and wants to get away from him at all cost.

You need to play hardball, tell her you are seeing a lawyer and its too little too late. You do that and you'll see a quick change in her attitude. She wants to do the bare minimum to keep you happy because she isn't really scared of you leaving (calling your bluff). You need to put the fear of god in her and drop the hammer.

I agree, you can't R until she HATES the OM and wants to get away from him at all cost.

She doesn't hate the OM. She's in love with him.

They are still fucking, only VERY carefully now. Otherwise she would have quit her job within a week of when you first asked her to.

Tell her she has two weeks (two weeks notice is conventional for quitting a job). If she doesn't leave, go nuclear. Visit HR and blow BOTH their worlds up.

If she gets angry, tell her that if she refuses your simple demands you will tell everyone you know about her sordid affair.

Tell her you want a poly. If she refuses, it is because she knows she would flunk it.

Tell her you have seen an attorney and will be filing if she balks at ANY of this.

[This message edited by montana79 at 7:01 PM, July 19th (Wednesday)]

It is not hating om. She could not talk about the affair while at work because it was too upsetting and she could not work. However, see OM everyday at work is not upsetting at all.

OP should not Ave to push her to leave nor should he. Actions speak and she has told OP all he needs to know.

Do not threaten just do

“I am not prioritizing my job over you, but we both know I need this job.”

Why “this” job in particular? She may need A job, but why THIS job? Seriously, 20yrs, if your wife has finagled her way into a job that is above her level, and which she could not get at another company, how is she ever going to be able to leave it? And the “not prioritizing” thing? She actually does that in the sentence above, where she tells you how important that particular job is to her, and she has been doing the same thing for eight months now. You suffer, she knows you suffer, but hey, her career is important to her.

“My intention is not to be abusive. I never want to cause you pain.”

An eighteen month affair and the subsequent eight months of ignoring your pleas to leave add up to more than two years of abuse. The affair abused your love and trust, and staying there is an abuse of your patience, tolerance, and self-respect. Your wife knows full well that she has caused you a huge amount of pain, with affair, and by staying so close to the OM for the eight months since discovery, and yet she continues to absolve herself of any responsibility for that. In her eyes, she’s a lovely, sweet, kind person, who only ever does good things. She must wonder why you cry yourself to sleep every night.

“I find these conversations very hard at work. It makes me feel sick.”

Early on in the thread, you mentioned that your wife said she enabled herself to cheat by ‘compartmentalising’ what she was doing. Essentially, she created a peculiar world in her head in which she had a home husband, and a work husband. And it was fine to have sex with both of them in the respective boxes that she had created for them. However, when home husband breaks the rules and intrudes into work husband’s territory, the fantasy wall that your wife built between her two simultaneous marriages is broken, and a little of the ugly, abusive reality of what she was really doing creeps into your wife’s consciousness and makes her feel nauseous.

The object lesson here, 20yrs, is that if you need your words to have an impact, communicate with your wife when she is at work, because it shatters the delusions she has built up about herself and the nature of what she has been doing. Break that wall that separates home husband and work husband, so that you both exist in the same box, at the same time. Two compartments become one.

“Part of me thinks you are afraid to feel happy with me again”.

What grounds does your wife think she has given you to be ‘happy’? She has just subjected you to an eighteen-month betrayal, followed by eight months of unhappiness about her working with the man she had the eighteen-month affair with. What part of that are you supposed to feel happy about? She is talking like someone who lives in la-la land.

Seriously, at times it seems like you are trying to reason with someone who is genuinely delusional and unable to cope with, or accept responsibility for, the reality she has created. I am not saying this frivolously, 20yrs. Your wife has made several statements that go beyond the standard self-justification or self-forgiveness that cheaters frequently do. Do you think that she may actually be frightened of counselling because she spends so much of her time in a fantasy version of the real world that would shatter if it was subjected to scrutiny? Throughout your entire thread, her flight from reality and responsibility has been a huge undercurrent to everything that has gone on.

I am not saying this in a derogatory way, quite the opposite, but I really think that your wife needs psychological analysis, not just counselling, because this thread is full of her inability and refusal to deal with reality and responsibility, and the deceit, secrets, lies, compartmentalising, minimising, and fantasy that are the by-products of that inability. It is eight months down the line from discovery of the affair, and your wife has not even begun to engage with the damage and consequences of what she did. Instead, she is talking about what a great team you are, and how you are in a ‘place’ of love. Does that sound like someone who understands the painful reality of your daily life as you try to recover from what she has done to you? Or does it sound like someone who is mentally skipping through a meadow gathering flowers, the sun high in the sky, birds twittering happily, and not a grey cloud in sight to spoil the view?

And your wife keeps trying to pull you into that fantasy, so you can skip through the meadow with her, not even thinking about the affair, while you want to repeatedly scream at the top of your voice, “How could you f*cking hurt me so badly!!!” In reality, you limit yourself to apology-laden, politely worded, heavily diluted, neutered requests that do not in any way express the soul-rending pain you have endured, and are still enduring, or the actions that you need your wife to take to make you feel like she understands just one hundredth of what she has done to you, and that she will be even vaguely ‘safe’ to trust again.

There are several less-than-great elements of your wife’s character revealed by her actions during and after the affair that you just do not want to engage with or accept. Rather than face them, and the implications of them, you enter your own fantasy world, remaining in a state of permanent puzzlement about questions that have already been answered several times over, because if you come out of your frozen state and accept those answers, you will have to take some action yourself, beginning with accepting that your wife may not be a ‘safe’ or honest person to spend the rest of your life with. So instead of that, you are still in, “I just can’t understand…” mode, and look set to remain there indefinitely.

Neither of you are dealing with the realities of the affair, and that is why I think there has been so little progress made over the last eight months.

Very good points here. She is fine at work. You are out of sight, out of mind just like the affair. If you suck it up and don't bring it up at home she would be fine.

How are you at work?

I think what M1965 is saying so eloquently is that you are even more bat-shit crazy than your wife for putting up with this for this long.

You have yet to even see a lawyer, so it will go on, and on, and on.....

Hi 20yrsin. I hope you've had a "good" weekend as far as that goes.

I know this is out of the blue, but I've recently read your entire thread and wanted to add my voice to the chorus that is imploring you to take some sort of action with regard to your WW.

I'm not a veteran, but my 2 year DDay anniversary is coming up in about a week or so. We are in R after my wife had a 5 month EA / 3 month PA. It's a very difficult road, and by all accounts, my wife is considered to be extremely remorseful by SI standards. Heck, she could be the poster girl for it. And it's still a shit show.

But I'm "lucky." Because she was all in and did everything she could to put herself and our marriage back together in the wake of her affair. NC, quit her volunteering, IC regularly, reading, workbooks, cut people out of her life, was proactive in accounting for her whereabouts and time. Made me feel safe. Not once did she try to rug sweep or hope to get past this and move. She gave me the time and space to heal at my pace, not hers.

And like many WS's, confronting what she's done and reconciling that with the woman she always believed herself to be, is still, a very difficult challenge.

So why am I posting here? Because unfortunately I don't see R happening in your case. Because nothing is happening. You're not doing anything. Sure, you're writing a letter or two, but other than that, there are no boundaries, no clear delineations about what needs to happen, and your wife is still in the affair. I'm not saying she's still having sex with him, although I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case, but she hasn't left the affair in her head or heart. So right now, you're continuing to share her with another man.

Look, when I got here, I was a basket case and I threw myself at the mercy of SI. I surrendered myself to it and followed the advice I got, as much as it went again my own personal style and comfort zone. Truth is, a lot of it pissed me off. But honestly, if I hadn't listened to it, we would not be in R today. But the way, feel free to read my story if you think it might be helpful - links are on my profile.

Want to know what the key was? I took action. Set boundaries and expectations and held her to them. NC, which she broke once and then no more. A Cease & Desist letter to OM from my attorney. I met with an attorney. She quit her volunteering immediately, all of it, not just at the place where she was with OM, but all of it. IC, regular appointments. I asked for details, wanted to know everything and sat her down one weekend and asked her over 100 detailed questions about her affair. Warned her that she would have to take a polygraph after and if she didn't pass it was D. She took the polygraph and passed. Meaning she was honest and transparent. I could go on.

I get why you've been cautious and not willing to rock anything. It's your wife and family. I have 5 kids. Together for nearly 30 years and married for 25. But unless you enforce boundaries, the affair is still going on.

Last thing, what's the absolute worst scenario for you? Divorce? Or being married, family "intact" (whatever that means), but you've rugswept this and you pretend everything is great, but in reality your wife is still having an affair? What's worse? Because both options are bad, but IMO, the latter is soul crushing and devastating.

If you want things to change, then your tactics have to change. If you keep doing what you've been doing then you'll still get what you've been getting, which are a few crumbs and nothing more. Listen to the wonderful advice you've been given on this thread, and then follow through! I wishe you the best of luck.

-W

Thanks for chiming in Walloped and trying to lend perspective.

I also PM'd your thread links to 20yrsin early on as a great example for him to follow.

We haven't heard from him for a while. I hope the thoughts from you and the other experienced members here on this thread have started to sink in for him, even a little bit.

A simple truth accepted by this and other infidelity boards is that affair partners cannot work together. There is no difference between a full blown affair and the lack of no contact. Your asking the same as a person asking a heroin addict to stop using yet you leave heroin lying around they can regularly see. Bottom line? Add eight months to the length of the affair. Could you live with your wife that you love for eight months and not be romantic and thinking about her? Its absurd to consider it. If she has stopped sex with him it will be a first on these and other boards. Workplace affairs are the hardest to catch. There is nothing you can do but trust her.

I would go to amazon and buy a pen VAR and put in her purse.

20yearsin - I know you'll eventually check back. Not going to give up on ya buddy.

20yrs,

Perhaps you are going to give your WW some more time to look for a "suitable" job that is in "the family's interest".

That's fine. That's OK. I put up with a hell of a lot more from my WW. I was a lot slower than you to act so I'm not one to criticize in that regard.

"You have the patience of a saint."

Why do people say that? My wife and others here told me I have the patience of a saint. Do saints have patience? They certainly do, I believe!

I believe that because it is one of the Fruits of the Holy Spirit.

To quote Wiki on an article from the Fruits of the Holy Spirit:

Patience (Greek: makrothumia, Latin: longanimitas)

Generally the Greek world applied this word to a man who could avenge himself but did not. This word is often used in the Greek Scriptures in reference to God and his attitude to man.[10] Exodus 34:6 describes the Lord as "slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity."

Patience includes the concepts of forbearance, long-suffering, and the willingness to bear wrongs patiently.[17]

Patience, which in some translations is "longsuffering" or "endurance", is defined in Strong's by two Greek words, makrothumia and hupomone.

The first, pronounced (mak-roth-oo-mee-ah) comes from makros, "long", and thumos, "temper". The word denotes lenience, forbearance, fortitude, patient endurance, longsuffering. Also included in makrothumia is the ability to endure persecution and ill-treatment. It describes a person who has the power to exercise revenge but instead exercises restraint. (Strong's #3115)

The latter, hupomone, (hoop-om-on-ay) is translated "endurance": Constancy, perseverance, continuance, bearing up, steadfastness, holding out, patient endurance. The word combines hupo, "under", and mone, "to remain". It describes the capacity to continue to bear up under difficult circumstances, not with a passive complacency, but with a hopeful fortitude that actively resists weariness and defeat, (Strong's #5281) with hupomone being further understood as that which would be "as opposed to cowardice or despondency"[18]

"With lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love".[19]

What I want to impress upon you here is that you can have the strength of will to endure ill-treatment. Your family CAN make it through this with a prolonged wait for her to find a new job.

What I want to ensure is that your patience has a strong edge to it. Ensure your wife knows that your strength is what is holding back revenge and that you damn sure will use it if she doesn't give 100% to extricate the family from this hell hole she put you all in.

What I want to underscore is that you must ACTIVELY RESIST WEARINESS AND DEFEAT. If you find yourself slipping into despondency, that you will step aside and bring down the hammer and end this trial of patience. Only you will know when you have had enough. Ensure that you are giving her time because you truly believe it is best for your family, not because of "cowardice or despondency".

You have some big tools in your tool box. You are in control of what happens. You can give her more time, or not. But whatever you do, do it for your family or you, not her. Because she has shown that she is or was an addict and addicts will do some astonishingly cruel and heartless things to those that they love. And the well-being of the family with an addict is dependent on the non-addict's ability to set and enforce boundaries.

[This message edited by notperfect5 at 8:51 AM, July 25th (Tuesday)]

Lots of feedback from the exchange with my F?WW. I needed to step back from things after that flurry of posts and I also got busy with life as well. I continue to read SI and come back to peek at this thread here and there. Thanks to those who continue to reach out with their insight and feedback.

M1965 – great feedback on the communication, I will be more conscious of my tone and be more assertive in asking for what I need.

All – will try to stop apologizing to my wife when it comes to reconciliation!

Bigger and others – I get the current situation is impacting R or persisting the A in many minds here. After 'no contact' I think we are starting R but it is more difficult obviously with the elephant in the room that he works down the hall.

Stevesn, walloped, np5 – thank you for the perspective and feedback, I have read portions of your threads and the 100 questions is something I am giving some thought to. I do have some details but obviously not everything and in the beginning after d-day could never get very far into the story without significant tears. I mean it was tough to watch the grief and I did not have any techniques at the time to get past it. Back then, in my frustration I often piled on and accused her of having tears of regret not remorse. And there seems to be some truth in that. The last time we discussed some details there were no tears and we are both just now getting into chapter 8 of NJF which is 'the story of the affair'. This is the perfect opportunity to dispel any remaining secrets and raise the idea of using a polygraph to confirm this. The threat of a poly alone may clear up the uncertainty around what's been happening at work since d-day. Is it as she says? Nothing to see here, or was the relationship continuing as many here are certain of.

I also didn't have a ton to update on in the last few days and don't expect to have much of anything further in the next few days. As I mentioned I have been busy with work, running around with kids etc. Not looking for sympathy here, I am sure many can relate with my Sunday which was just one thing after another from waking up until bed. Just not enough hours in the day! This followed by multiple fire drill assignments at work to kick the week off. Things seem to have settled down on that front for the moment.

NP5's latest post couldn't have come at a better time for me in that he has summed up my current approach which is to wait for the current job opportunity to play out. First interview is next week and she is preparing hard for it. She has also raised a number of small business opportunities that she is interested in but I am not sure that is something we want to take on. It would be a clean break from her office (a leave to get things going and test if we can make it work) but I am not sure with 3 young kids and my own demanding job if should entertain such a venture. I have always loved the idea of being a business owner but so far it has been side of the desk stuff. That tangent aside I don't want her to lose focus on this job she has the interview for and she is actively doing all the prep work and more for it. When I have seen her get selected for these jobs in the past, which happens often, every 18 months or so lately, she does an incredible job in preparing for the interview, tests and presentations and usually blows the other candidates away. If it doesn't pan out I will once again bring up the subject of the work location and establish a deadline. Until this plays out I am putting that on hold as I don't want to pile on pressure and f*ck it up or have that as an excuse.

Additionally we are going on 2 weeks family holiday starting after the august long weekend here – departing on the 5th. That will include a week with her immediate family so it should be interesting.

Thanks again to all for the challenging thoughts and recommendations – especially from veteran and active posters here it is appreciated. It has spurred some action on my part, neutered maybe, but better than nothing I believe. I am taking my time here to reread things and collect my thoughts. Sorry if that frustrates many but to borrow a cliché I look at this as a marathon and not a sprint. Call me a fucking turtle (or worse) if you will.

'Waitedwaytoolong' I know you have warned against this as well and I can relate to that feeling of festering anger. I really can. I read a great thread on mind movies and dark thoughts months ago on this board before I actually registered and it really helped me before all this shit happened. Its bumped again and is a great way to control bad thoughts. I haven't read your thread and will try and find it. Not suggesting this is the answer for your situation but just giving an example of really helpful advice that can be found in here and just popped up on the front page today.

Whether I actively post or not I do get value out of reading other threads and will go back to walloped, np5 and a few other recommended threads to see if I can gain further insight or input into my plan. I will document an R plan and it will have requirements and consequences. I do hear you guys and gals on that.

Cheers!

20YI