SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

If you cheat on your wife, you’ll be branded as a cheater husband (wife stayed at home with kids while you go sleep around). People won’t care abour your “whataboutism”....

She may divorce you ,or at at minimum, you will hurt your wife (who, you said, you loved in your original post). She’ll be just as resentful as you and good luck with your marriage.

She could follow your logic and say your cheating is worst (because you’re married) and go for a quick ONS to even thing out.

Even if she agrees, there will be a minimum dead bedroom period while you get tested for STD. And when you get intimate, she might be crying during the act, wouldn’t that be fun?

One way or the other, Your kids will suffer (I can’t remember their age)

Life is not fair. You deal with infidelity through R or D. If you don’t want to R, then D.

Michigan’s solution is not a bad one. You can divorce her. Then stay with her as GF/BF if she still wants you. You can even date for a while as a single then see if you XWW wants you back.

My point remains. For example you thought you could trust her with a top secret security clearance. Then you found out that you couldn’t.

Actually, the only way you really can find out if you can trust someone with a clearance is to trust them with a clearance and see what happens. The world is full of examples of people who passed the entry test and then failed in practice. Vice versa too.

What makes a great wife doesn't always make a great girlfriend. If this was ever about being tested, I would take 20 years of meeting the standard over any kind of pre-test.

In many ways it makes it a bigger mind-@#$ then if she had turned out to live down to her pre-marital behavior.

Edit: to be clear, I’m not saying D or R, or leaning either way. Michigan, if your approach gives them peace, then rock on.

Most A discussions center around the past being a predictor of the future, do it once they’ll do it again, etc. These late discovery ones with a “great” spouse strip away all of those arguments that I think act as a shield in some ways to hide what is really going on, and just leaves nothing but an attack on the BS’s self, ego, Who They Are.

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 4:55 PM, January 28th (Monday)]

HouseOfPlane - "Speaking of two's, I bet there are two people in your marriage who hate who your wife was."

Yes, definitely. I have no doubt my wife hates who she was back then and wishes she could take it back. This isn't about wanting to punish her. And you are right, she has been a great wife and was a terrible girlfriend (in secret). Michigan is also right, in that I thought she was a great girlfriend, and now I question her as a wife. It's funny that way.

xhz700 - Yes, I do want to have sex with someone else. That's really the crux of this. Maybe it would hurt my wife more if I didn't, but I do. Either way, my goal isn't to hurt her, I just want to feel like I balance the unfairness, and stop feeling the urge to experience it, and hope that it makes me resent what she did less.

DeeDee - thanks for your empathetic post. It hits home in a lot of ways.

ShutterHappy - On the other hand, your post bothers me in a lot of ways, and speaks to the double standard that BS are frequently held to on this board. My thoughts:

If you cheat on your wife, you’ll be branded as a cheater husband (wife stayed at home with kids while you go sleep around). People won’t care abour your “whataboutism”....

Branded by whom? Why would this information leave our marriage? The only reason would be if we D, and then who cares. My wife has not been "branded" anything by the people who know what she did. Also, who in my life "wouldn't care" about the context? I think most people in my life would care and consider it in context, actually.

She may divorce you ,or at at minimum, you will hurt your wife (who, you said, you loved in your original post). She’ll be just as resentful as you and good luck with your marriage.

OK, so she'll feel how I feel. That's a positive in many ways. And if she divorces me, then that says a lot about her behavior and what she expects of me (R), yet wouldn't do herself.

She could follow your logic and say your cheating is worst (because you’re married) and go for a quick ONS to even thing out.

She could, and then I could D and be done with it. I'm also sure that no one in the right mind would consider what I am proposing worse, so get out of here with that.

Even if she agrees, there will be a minimum dead bedroom period while you get tested for STD. And when you get intimate, she might be crying during the act, wouldn’t that be fun?

Maybe, or maybe we have HB like we had after her affair confession. Or maybe she does cry during sex, and I get to sense real pain from her and feel like my own pain is finally really understood. Or maybe we do have a dead bedroom, and we analyze our marriage without sex as a crutch. Or maybe she decides she can't live with someone who "cheated" on her (as hilariously hypocritical as that would be, especially given I am only proposing this with her knowledge of it happening), and then we can D and both find someone new who can be faithful and true to one another.

One way or the other, Your kids will suffer (I can’t remember their age)

Don't try to guilt me with my kids. This has nothing to do with them. If we D (for this or any reason), I can co-parent just fine. This is a really petty thing to say.

Life is not fair. You deal with infidelity through R or D. If you don’t want to R, then D.

Why can't this be part of R? Because you don't approve of it?

CBM123, I don’t think sex with someone else is the right answer either, but my opinion is not terribly relevant. However, I do think you are considering it because you think your W does not understand your pain. I happen to agree that she doesn’t get it, yet.

That said, it often takes the WS awhile to come to grips with the true nature of what they’ve done. It is a journey with no certain time table. Look at hikingout’s early posts and then her more recent posts to see the progression of her thinking. It’s pretty remarkable. She gets it now, but she damn sure didn’t when she showed up here. Give your W awhile to “do the work” and see if she doesn’t begin to understand the impact of her actions better.

Waiting on your decision until April or June or even the end of 2019 is a good idea. As you already know, it can’t be undone. So take your time and make sure you’re doing it for the “right” reasons.

I don't have any answers but like everyone else I have an opinion.

You sound jealous that your wife had more sexual partners than you. However, maybe multiple partners wasn’t the positive life experience for her (as you think it will be for you). Is she proud of her sexual experiences? Does she brag about it?

She’s beautiful so finding a sex partner was easy/effortless (unlike for most men). You know her better than us - but perhaps she was a ‘lonely’ directionless young woman with low self-esteem that permitted herself to be used in exchange for feeling like someone cared for her.

She cheated on you (maybe not a surprise considering her past peer group and boyfriends). Maybe she thought you’d dump her once you got to know her.

Perhaps it took a while for her to realize that you were the real deal and that she could mirror you - and be the woman/wife/mother she always wanted to be. A guy that not only genuinely loved and ‘respected’ her – but also someone she could trust and who served as an inspiration to her!

Maybe you personally played a bigger role in her transition to a perfect wife and mother than you realize. It sounds like she may look up to you and admire you as a very special man. Different than anyone she ever met.

Think twice before destroying her rock. Her determination to be the perfect wife and mother may depend on you staying up on that pedestal.

Finally, is it possible that your wife still has low self-esteem and survives day to day by identifying with you. If so, I suspect that your wife desperately needs your unconditional approval of her as a wife and mother.

I don’t think she confessed because of guilt or that you were trapped. I think she needs your approval so much that she risked losing your respect in order to get your honest assessment of her.

You are basically rationalising the reason you want to cheat on your wife.

Rationalisation means mentally taking something you know is wrong or off base, and re-characterizing it in a way that makes it seem much more acceptable, or even virtuous.

You think this will make you feel better, think again. By the time you realise that it will be too late and you will have lost your integrity.

You say you see both sides of the argument. One side of this very experienced forum is heavily stacked against this, so don't rationalise that it isn't.

I don’t think she confessed because of guilt or that you were trapped. I think she needs your approval so much that she risked losing your respect in order to get your honest assessment of her.

In her own words, she confessed for two reasons, one of which was contingent upon the other. It was because she was motivated by guilt, and also because she thought their marriage had reached a point where it was strong enough that he wouldn't leave her if she confessed. It was very much a selfishly motivated confession that hinged on a selfish condition.

CantBeMe123,

I was under the impression that your goal is R. As such, my post is designed to shock you into thinking about what your plan will bring. Will it bring the intended result?

Why do you think people reply to posts here? Because we’ve all been through this and we find this so shitty, that we hope to help others have it a bit easier. I don’t really care much about your WW or any waywards, but I read your posts, and based on my experience I (and others) my goal is to try to help you achieve your goal with less pain.

You can ignore my posts if you feel like it, I don’t get paid either way

I don’t approve anything. My comment will be based on your goal. Of course you can do anything you want. From what I read in your last reply, you want to R, to cheat on your wife and keep it between her and you, you don’t want to hurt her but you want her to feel what you feel, it may result in D but that’s ok too.

It may work, but the chances of achieving your goal is not optimal in my opinion.

[This message edited by ShutterHappy at 6:59 PM, January 28th (Monday)]

ShutterHappy - If you made your intentions more clear, I wouldn't have been so harsh. Sorry. You can charge me double for your next post

Robert - Your post might be the most persuasive yet. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. As Firenze pointed out, my wife's reasons for confessing were selfish, but I think there is something to what you're thinking. Yes, my wife wanted to relieve guilt and felt confident enough in our marriage to confess. She also hadn't had me bring up the "kiss" in years. I think it broke her heart to see me still in pain over it, and I think she had became someone who wasn't comfortable still lying to me about it in the years that had passed since I last brought it up.

I have no doubt that my wife admires me greatly and even looks up to me in a way. This feeling actually drives my insecurities sometimes - I feel like a father figure, instead of an object of desire. I feel like as she has matured, she has fallen even more in love with me because the qualities in me that she loves are much more meaningful to a 35 year old mom than a 23 year old party girl. I have issues accepting her love for me now, and I obsess about how her affair disclosure makes me feel so insecure about what she thought of me back then.

CBM,

You wrote, I have issues accepting her love for me now, and I obsess about how her affair disclosure makes me feel so insecure about what she thought of me back then.

Your post brought up a couple things for me, as my Ws affair with OM1 was also before we got married. Perhaps you are feeling something similar.

WHY DID SHE MARRY ME WITHOUT CONFESSING, why pay all that money, invite all those people when she knew I was not the object of her desire and romance.

Looking at my wedding photos it's almost like she is viewing me with contempt.

You have that exactly backwards. She's proven to be a great wife but was in fact a shitty girlfriend.

No, she was bad at both. What she did was the equivalent of cheating on her Ph.D. thesis. He just didn't find out until years later.

What she did was "kill" the special part of their relationship. It's something he keeps coming back to. She killed the exclusivity, she killed what was special about their relationship. The damage done here hasn't stopped yet, the poison is still going.

People here already talk about R, about how grand a person she is and how she's a good R candidate. I wholly disagree.

She could follow your logic and say your cheating is worst (because you’re married) and go for a quick ONS to even thing out.

This makes zero sense. You're holding him and his wife to different standards here. That's insanely unfair and unhelpful. His wife had an affair, she lied about it for years, even lured him into marriage. She has no grounds to stand on for absolutely anything.

Saying she would "even things out" is absurd. This is the equivalent of having made debt years ago. Which is now coming home to roost with all the interest added on top. If these were bank accounts, she'd be massively in the minus and OP currently has to foot the bill.

Why can't this be part of R? Because you don't approve of it?

That's the gist of what I'm getting from this CBM. A lot of these people are setting different standards for you and your wife. Hell one of them even says it would entitle her to cheat to "even the score".

It was very much a selfishly motivated confession that hinged on a selfish condition.

His wife is incredibly selfish and pretty much everyone here is defending her. I'm honestly aghast about that. A bunch of people is holding CBM to completely different standards than they do his wife.

Looking at my wedding photos it's almost like she is viewing me with contempt.

This might sound harsh. You were convenient, you were reliable, you were secure and safe. Basically, you were useful and "good" for her in the same way healthy food is. It's not what she wanted to eat mind you, it's what she knew she should get.

And every now and then she'd indulge herself with a cheat day. Some cake, a nice bar of chocolate or maybe some candy.

Hey CBM,

I'm sorry that your wife has put you in this place emotionally. We have all been there, and empathize with the emotional shitstorm that you are going through.

I understand your desire to have sex with someone else so your wife will feel the pain you are experiencing, and to experience something you feel you missed out on. I think that this is pretty normal for BSs. I personally think that doing that would ultimately be adding more layers of damage to your situation, but I'm not going to counsel you to not do so. I, a stranger on the internet, am going to make a request of you on this issue, however. Feel free to disregard it.

Wait until December 1, 2019 before making the decision to go through with it. If you still want to have sex with another woman on December 1, go ahead and do so.

My concern for you is that you are so emotionally all over the place right now, that you will do something that you will regret. I think you will agree with me that making the decision to have sex with another woman is a big deal. I think it would be wise to not make "big deal" decisions right now. I would hate for you to someday find yourself in the position of looking back regretfully at a decision made in the heat of emotion.

Let yourself settle a bit emotionally. Let the emotional ride even out somewhat. You have been faithful for over a decade, you can do it for another ten months.

Brother, I am pulling for you in this mess. Being betrayed is the most difficult experience I have ever dealt with. I understand.

I wish you the best, whatever path you choose.

[This message edited by Gettingoveritall at 9:14 PM, January 28th (Monday)]

His wife is incredibly selfish and pretty much everyone here is defending her. I'm honestly aghast about that. A bunch of people is holding CBM to completely different standards than they do his wife.

I agree with you that she's an incredibly selfish person. That's one of the things I've reiterated to her several times in her thread. I also think that she's done a fair bit of growing over the years since her affair and that since DDay she's finally begun the work of digging deep into her selfishness and other issues and has made clear progress. I'm also incredibly disappointed at how some of the other posters here have responded of late, particularly the one about how if CBM were to spend the night with an escort with his wife's knowledge, it would somehow be worse than an affair followed by twelve years of lies and all the insults that came with it, many of which have been detailed in Flawed's thread.

Personally, I'm unaware of any cases where doing what CBM has proposed has worked out and my instinct is that it's a bad move. I completely understand the impulse to want to hurt her back, and I think that indulging that impulse in certain ways is probably a necessity to avoid going crazy. There's just too much rage there and the WS needs to feel it. For most of us that takes the form of insults and snide remarks. I cut my exWW down every single time we spoke for months post-DDay because I just needed to pour some of that anger out on her. I called her bitch, whore, c***, slut, filth, streetwalking trash, and pretty much whatever else came to mind. Even if she had been remorseful and wanted R, I still would've used her as a verbal punching bag for quite a while probably.

The idea of creating a situation where his wife knows that he's spending the night fucking another woman as a means to hurt her back is a more extreme indulgence of that same impulse. My worry is not the harm it will do to her, but rather that CBM may in time regret that he stained his own honor by reneging, even with permission, the vow he made to forsake all others. Personally I can say that the satisfaction I carry from knowing that I honored every goddamn promise I made on my wedding day is much greater than the satisfaction I got from being able to make my exWW cry by comparing her to a diseased $2 hooker or calling her affair baby a misbegotten bastard. And make no mistake, there was satisfaction in it. Indulging your vindictive streak can feel fantastic in the moment, but it doesn't really last.

Can somebody give the link where I can read his wife's posts? Thank you.

Wait until December 1, 2019

The general advice is 3 months or 90 days. You're telling him to wait 14 months instead. Why?

@firenze, you said she has a thread/post here and honestly that might be the root cause. People read there, get attached to her and do exactly what CBM said has happened with friends and family. They defend her actions, make excuses and go for him instead. It's absolutely unfair and not a situation that's maintainable in the long run. It's putting her, her wants, needs, and well being above him.

but rather that CBM may in time regret that he stained his own honor by reneging, even with permission, the vow he made to forsake all others.

Here's the thing. In my opinion, that vow doesn't exist. It came about through deception, subterfuge, and lies. It was fraudulent from the get-go and thus holds no merit. It's the equivalent of going in front of the altar, lifting the veil and found the bride was switched out for someone else.

Most people here are assuming R is inevitable, they're acting as if CBM would wrong his wife in some way. That's far from a given. If anything as time goes on, CBM seems to grow more resentful and vengeful and in my opinion, he's completely justified.

People talk about poisoning the marriage as if that hasn't been done already quite some time ago. That poison is still in full effect and it seems to slowly kill his infatuation, the wife that only existed in his head and the marriage between the two of them. And there's no "life preserver" as some people claim there is he needs, which they show by refusing to be helpful and tell him and others here what that would be. Because the damage is already done, it isn't going to go away and it won't be reversed.

CBM himself talks how what made the relationship "special" is dead. Which some people have the audacity to chide him for. That can't be regained, ever. Even if they reconcile, I personally see years of animosity, resentment and more in CBM's future, with things only getting worse as time goes on.

CBM123, you were so kind to me on my thread, I feel compelled to pop in here and add to your discussion. I hope I'm as positive and as helpful as you were with me.

Respectfully, it sounds like you have a couple of different things smashed up into one big storm.

1. You feel insecure because by your assessment, your wife has had more sexual experience than you.

a. I agree with others who have pointed out that it is far easier for women to accumulate sexual partners than it is for men. Women also tend to under report their number of sexual partners. Men have a tendency to inflate their numbers. :) (Who didn't see that one coming? LOL.) (There are actually studies/stats out there that confirm this under reporting/inflating bias by sex.) Couples in which the woman has had more sexual partners/experience than the man could, in fact, be much more common than not.

b. I can confirm, as a woman, that sexual opportunity is and always has been incredibly easy and ample. In fact, one of the things I said to my husband over and over and over again, for months, said it, screamed it, cried it, was, "Do you have *any* idea how many times I've said no?" OMG my husband has/had NO CLUE.

He had no clue for years because I didn't tell him. I defended boundaries and protected our marriage, sometimes on nearly a daily basis. He didn't hear about it unless the propositioning rose to a harassment situation which had to be addressed- and that happened a couple of times. I didn't tell him because it wasn't important, those guys were not a threat to him or to us, their attention/intention was of no consequence, it would have caused him stress and anxiety and perhaps even insecurity for no good reason.

So yeah, on one hand I get that you are feeling that there is a "power" imbalance in your marriage. And there is- but it probably isn't all because your wife has more experience than you, or because she cheated on you during your dating/engagement period. This particular power dynamic is, in fact, baked into most heterosexual couples. Men are statistically more likely to cheat (although women are rapidly catching up) but women have more and easier opportunity.

There's a age old adage that rings true here: women regret the sex they've had, men regret the sex they didn't have.

You are feeling an age old imbalance in which opportunity favors the woman, and you are shoving it through the filter of your wife's long ago infidelity.

c. "Long ago" doesn't make her infidelity any less of an infidelity, nor does it make your pain any less painful. And it does change the way you see the entirety of your relationship, and the way you see her. I know this phenomenon first hand. "That was then, this is now" does mean *something* though, as well. What happened back then happened in the context of back then.

Imagine what it's like to be an attractive young woman who is navigating a sea of male attention. "No" should be easy and most times it is. If a particularly adept player can get inside your woman's head and work on some perceived weakness... if she's young and immature and perhaps not ready to settle down just yet... she loves her man but she's not ready for commitment... he punches some insecurity button she has just so... you can see how very, very easy it would be to slide over that line. Easier than you can imagine. I'm not saying this to excuse her decision, but simply to help you gain some perspective with context. It probably wasn't about you at all, and even less about the other guy. It was probably about her and where she was in life at that particular moment.

You and Butforthegrace and OldWounds helped me with this particular dynamic as well. The whole "got inside her head" thing is worth examining. The essence of the story might be how that guy got inside her head, more than how he got into her pants. If she can help you understand that, then it could help you get this incident into a context that is easier for you to live with.

d. Define "experience." Are you limiting the definition of "experience" to actual intercourse? Penetrative sex? Does it include any physical, sexual contact? How about romantic relationships that weren't consummated in intercourse? If you look at the sum total of *all* of your relationships, you might find that, in many ways, you are more "experienced" than your wife.

2. You want to have sex with somebody else.

a. Period. Own this. Own it and be honest with yourself about what's going on here, and why. You'll never resolve this feeling (even if you actually have sex with somebody else) until you figure out what's causing it. It's not your wife's fault that you want to have sex with somebody else. That's all you, man.

b. Sooo... I will admit that I've not read every post on this thread, but are you saying that you will feel like "the score" is evened if you have sex with one other woman? With a "professional?" Will that even the score, really? Is it a numbers game? Does your wife owe you an accounting of every person with whom she's ever had sexual contact of any type, even before you were in a committed relationship? How will you *ever* know if your "number" is really higher than hers? Or even equal to hers? Does it matter? Would it actually even the score if you pay a woman to have sex with you? Or will you feel like you need to seduce another woman- with all of the emotional and psychological baggage that includes?

c. Do you feel like you are "owed" an illicit, extra-curricular experience because she had one? What happens if you follow through on this premise, and your experience sucks? Maybe your "pro" isn't all that hot. Maybe there's not enough of a connection there. Maybe the whole thing squicks you out. Maybe you can't get out of your own head and your own hurt enough to enjoy it. Do you keep trying until you get it right? Until you have the same experience that you *think* your wife had, years ago? How will you ever know if your experience equals hers? How will a one time encounter with a professional even the score against a 2-3 month affair with a friend?

Also, about that "professional," unless you've got airfare to Nevada or Europe and brothel level cash, you have to consider the idea that you might get busted and end up with your picture in the paper and on your local news broadcast. Will your "score" be even then? Or will you be in negative numbers?

What if you contract a flaming case of what the hell ever, despite using protection? It happens. You could give it to your wife before you even realize that you are infected. How will she even that score with you?

While I understand the "It's not fair! You broke the rules! I did not!" sentiment (see: "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY TIMES I'VE SAID NO?" above) this particular situation gets really, really messy when couples start keeping score.

Marriage isn't 50/50. It's both people giving 120% all the time and even that's not enough when life is challenging.

I hope you find some resolution to these feelings. Personally, and this is just me, I hope this "go to a pro" fantasy remains a fantasy and just burns itself out over time.

[This message edited by marriageredux959 at 4:07 AM, January 29th (Tuesday)]