SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Four,

I'm sorry you are here.

When someone is undeniably cheating on you, their right to privacy goes out the window.

If she wants to keep this marriage, she has to be willing to give up all "secrecy".

Think about it. The only reason for secrecy is if she's doing something wrong.

You should read up on the 180 in the healing library.

This is not to bring her around to your thinking, but to help you detach. Sometimes it works for both.

I'm not sure why you are being so vague about your smoking gun though.

Best of luck.

[This message edited by Wool94 at 7:23 AM, March 20th (Tuesday)]

Hi FourPlusOne,

If your wife continues to deny something that you have proof of, you have a few options to consider:

1) Carry on with things as they are, say no more, and let her do as she pleases.

2) File for divorce based on what you know, never showing your wife the proof you have, and live with the fact that she will tell everyone that you are a conspiracy nut who divorced her because of a delusion.

3) File for divorce based on what you know, having shown your wife your evidence, and not giving a damn if she gets offended about a breach of her privacy, because she had not given a damn about breaching the marriage, your trust, or your feelings.

4) Engage a private detective to obtain independent proof of meetings, contacts, etc, to form the basis of a body of evidence that does not include the breach of your wife's 'privacy', but which does prove the reality of the affair.

5) Contact her affair partner's wife and blow the affair out of the water with the evidence that you have. Say nothing to your wife about it, and see what she says about the affair that she is not having. It will then be up to both of you to figure out if reconciliation is an option, or even desirable.

I am truly sorry that you are facing a set of choices like this. Many, many people in these forums have been put in similar positions by their cheating spouses, and it is sometimes hard to choose a 'good' way forward when none of them are 100% pleasant. Everyone will have their own take on it, and it is really up to you which of several options seems like the least worst for you. I hope that some of the feedback you receive here may help you in making that decision.

Our thoughts are with you, and we hope that you will find the best solution that suits you, even if none of them are ideal.

Hey 4+1

I know we come across pretty hard but I think this is what we all fear will happen:

You: “You are having an affair”

She: “No”

You: “Yes you are”

She: “No I’m not”

You: “Yes you are”

She: “if that's what you believe then we might as well give up”

You: silence

She: silence

You: pouty and go to the sofa.

She: phones her mom to tell her what a jerk you are

You: go makes a sandwich.

She: makes coffee but doesn’t offer you a cup.

Repeat above scenario every 3 days.

In-between you might even have a semblance of normality.

Four – You tell us you have a smoking gun. I assume that’s irrefutable proof of an ongoing or past physical affair. I guess you found it spying on her phone, or reading her diary or something you fear might be deemed “too personal” if you let her know how you know. You would be doing yourself a big favor in sharing more. Don’t need to know you picked the lock on her diary, but we would be better able to help if we knew what you have proof of. A physical affair? Emotional? Fantasy? One-time? Ongoing? In the past?

The scenario I would like to see is this:

You: “You are having an affair”

She: “No”

You: “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. I know and I have all the proof I need. You can go be with OM [place name here] because I have had an epiphany. I refuse to share you… [and so on]”

She: “if that's what you believe then we might as well give up”

You: “If you insist on remaining in infidelity then yes, inevitably we will complete the process of terminating our relationship. You hardly expect me to accept sharing you?”

She: “Ehhh…. Well… IF I was having an affair it would only be because you are bald/fat/not attentive/too busy [place your own lame excuse here]”

You: “I’m sorry you feel that way. If we were working on our marriage we could address that issue, but since you have chosen infidelity over us there isn’t a need to go there”

And then you go along and make a sandwich and do the 180.

I appreciate the hard line statements - they bring out the reality of the situation.

To answer your questions about a bit more detail @Bigger I have irrefutable proof of an ongoing physical affair.

So, do you have a plan?

Is infidelity a total deal breaker for you?

Do you want to end the marriage or have a shot at ending the affair?

Reconcile or divorce?

Honestly friend those are IMHO the only ways out: Kill the affair or terminate the marriage.

It’s not as drastic as it sounds. I’m not going to tell you to throw her stuff out and file today, but it is good to have a goal and a plan. The way I see it is that you have a destination and that destination isn’t divorce or reconciliation. The destination is simply to get out of infidelity.

You have two paths to that destination: R or D. Fortunately for you the paths run parallel for quite some time before they branch their separate ways.

However, while your wife is still having an affair… the path of R is blocked for you. If you want out of infidelity then the path of D is the only one open now. But experience has shown us repeatedly that once a BH has the courage to start walking out of infidelity the WW will often follow, thereby opening for R.