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My WW and I have been in reconciliation for almost a year.

Haven’t had sex in over 6 months.

Lost intimacy well before that.

It’s been almost a year since I found explicit text messages with someone at her work. She lied about it to my face.

Here we are, a week before she’s going to start a new job. She’s finally leaving that place. And she told me it was "because she chose our marriage over the toxic environment."

The new job is better in nearly every way. Close to home, no more watching people pee, no more working with felons, no more long hours or weekend interruptions. I started sleeping in the same room with her again.

I really thought we had turned the corner.

Then this weekend she sends me a video of some deer in the woods. She’s out on a nature walk. It’s become common for her to "clear her head" by going out to parks for 3-4 hours at a time on the weekends. She sends me photos of animals and plants, to both share with me, her husband, and as evidence that she’s just out in the woods by herself, relaxing, decompressing, recharging.

The video of the deer has audio. And a man’s voice can be heard whispering, "This is so cool. They know we’re here but they don’t care." The voice is clear and it sounds close. There’s no muffle despite there being wind and small bird sounds in the background.

It’s as if my wife is directly next to this man and he’s whispering in her ear. I can’t get the sound out of my brain.

I confronted my wife when she got home. But within a few minutes of casually asking her about her time in the woods, I couldn’t hold back my anger. I yelled. I told her I was divorcing her. She shut down, I didn’t get a good answer about who the guy was. She told me something about there being "other people" at the park talking in the background. It sounds like bullshit to me.

After some more yelling and long periods of silence, she cooked dinner (her one night a week) and we never talked about it again. I went to bed early and woke up at 3:30 am, unable to stop watching and listening to the video.

In the morning, we purposely avoided each other as she got ready and left for work.

Hours later, I texted her, "I can’t listen to this video without thinking this guy is so close to you he may be on top of you.

Whoever that is, he’s too close, and he’s talking directly to you. And I deserve the truth."

I’m now waiting for a reply. It’s been an hour.

No, I don’t know how divorce could be avoided at this point, regardless of her reply. But I do deserve the truth. I’ve been working my ass off for the last year trying to fix our marriage.

All I want is for her to tell me the truth, whatever that is.

Her reply:

" You have the truth. I don’t even know which person it was, as there was a group. I did not hear the person in real time, and I did not watch the video beforehand. There is no response from me on the video. I have no way to prove any of this, and I absolutely understand how it looks.

I’m sorry you are now having to second guess everything because of my carelessness. Truly, I am so sorry about so many things. You deserve better than to be here, in this position. I know that."

Me:

" If there’s anything worth saving, you should set up a meeting with the marriage counselor for a time you’re available. My availability will vary, I’m free every day this week and next from 1 to 2 pm."

Her: "Ok."

Me:

" Also, I think we need to spend some time talking about the next steps towards divorce. I want a plan.

As you know, I’ve been concerned about the finances and how best to take care of the kids. I’m prepared to make sacrifices."

Her: "Ok."

Me: " Lastly, I want you to understand that my heart wants to let this go, to make excuses, and to put my head down and carry on. I love you.

But my head is yelling at me full blast saying that I can’t be dumb enough to keep going.

I told you before that "any affair activity" would change things for me, and this qualifies.

Again, if there’s anything left to save, my heart will have me fully engaged with a marriage counselor. But please don’t schedule an appointment if you think it’s a lost cause."

How the hell am I going to get through work today and take care of the kids?

Being an adult is stupid.

I mean… devils advocate is it not possible multiple people were stood watching the deer?

It isn’t wholly insane multiple strangers stood in close proximity to watch deer. Really depends on the circumstance.

By all means investigate more and I’m not saying she’s 100% innocent but there’s a reasonable explanation why a man’s voice appeared on your wife’s video recording of a deer taken in a public place.

I'm so sorry you find yourself in this spot. For as much as you don't know how you're going to make it to a better place, you sound like you are approaching this in a smart and mature way.

You've been clear about your boundaries and what you see as a requirement for continuing with the marriage, and you're holding firm.

You laid out your expectation to get the truth, and she....took more than an hour to give you an answer? Was she legitimately tied up during that time, or did she use that time to come up with a weak non-answer?

You're working on what the D path looks like, which is smart. More important than making a plan with her is for you to know what your options are. Have you met with an attorney? If not, consider taking that step as soon as you can.

You've put the ball in her court to set up a marriage counseling session. What she does will be telling. What about IC? Has she (or you) been working with an individual counselor since D-Day? I might consider putting MC on hold and telling her that if she wants to continue with R, she needs to start IC immediately. The marriage isn't the issue, her behavior and choices are the issue.

And...does this situation give you time to step back and reflect on the past year? Is R for nearly a year with no sex for months and no intimacy for much longer the relationship you want or deserve? You didn't share whether things have been improving during R, or whether the relationship has been stuck. Maybe your work right now is to think about whether - if what you have right now is as good as it'll ever be - your heart really wants this to go on.

You may be back in a spot where you have to take things day by day or even hour by hour, but you will get through this. Sending strength.

Frankly... Her story is plausible.
I find it extremely careless if she’s recording to send you and if her lover was talking that clearly to her. I would imagine that if the goal of the recording is to sooth you, she would have started again, asking him to be quiet.

But... It could also be that she’s meeting OM there.

However... you don’t really describe a marriage that is trying to reconcile...
If she’s taking 3-4 hours to hike on weekends, then that’s time you could be spending as a family. Has she asked you along on these hikes?

@kindern

Yep. Totally possible that she’s telling the truth. She went to the park (I use this term loosely here, as it’s more wilderness than anything), people were there, deer showed up, all of them watched the deer, some guy my wife didn’t even notice said something in the background in a whisper but the phone recorded it as if he was close enough to feel up my wife. Completely plausible, and logically I would like to believe that’s what happened- nothing.

The problem is that even though I’m not following her around, not snooping on her phone, not telling her she can’t go places or do things, not interrogating her or making her take a lie detector test, this kind of shit just keeps happening.

There’s always something going on that strains my patience. And my wife doesn’t do a good job making me feel very safe. In fact she usually just makes me feel worse the more she explains anything.

The whole reason she’s going to the park/woods is to be by herself. So why is she with a group of people? Probably just because she’s friendly. But my PTSD’d ass doesn’t know that. So here we are…

@arnold01

It’s been about a year. We’re both in IC. We were both in MC, but that ended in a horrible train wreck. Our MC was not good.

I found a new one that I think should be good. Well educated, well spoken. Talked to her over the phone last month and was impressed. But because my wife was switching jobs, she didn’t have a lot of flexibility to make MC appointments during the day. She just texted me back that she’s going to make an appointment with the new MC for us.

Yes, I had talked with an attorney several months ago because things were going so poorly and I felt ignorant of my options. Now I know I have basically no options, in the words of the lawyer "you’re screwed (financially)".

@bigger

I think we have been in reconciliation, it just was far from optimal and it’s been failing.

She’s shown some improvement, it’s been obvious that she’s been trying, especially more recently.

But the foundation of our marriage is completely fucked because she continues to say that it was a mistake to ever marry me in the first place. So I see all her actions through that lens. I see all her words filtered by that narrative. So when anything happens that is challenging to my sense of safety in the relationship, it’s an incredible amount of weight for me to carry. It has been, it continues to be, and it’s not sustainable for me to keep holding the weight of being in a marriage that was "a mistake ".

Last night when I confronted her, I told her all this (again). Her response was "I stand by what I said ".

The MC might be able to help here, but if not I’m gone. I don’t have it in me to stay in this anymore. That simply can’t be the narrative of my marriage. She asked me to marry her, btw, knowing exactly who I was and wasn’t. If it was a mistake, ok she’s entitled to her own opinion, but my opinion also matters, and I don’t think it was a mistake, I think we just made mistakes and if we want to stay together we need to learn from them. There’s an important difference between wanting to go back in time and never marry in the first place, and having regrets that you (we) didn’t do things differently.

To be clear, you haven't been in Reconciliation for almost a year; you've remained married. There is a difference. Reconciliation means that your wife takes accountability for her actions and actively works on rebuilding the marriage; she has done neither (other than humor you with some disastrous and/or unproductive MC sessions).

Instead, she says she regrets marrying you, she's withdrawn all intimacy from you, and has made it clear through her actions that she's only staying because she doesn't want to deal with the financial and logistical challenges of divorce.

It's entirely possible that she's telling the truth and that there were other people in the park observing the deer. But if that was the case, then the proper response is to show you empathy and compassion for the trauma that you've suffered and acknowledge her own wrongdoing. Simply put, her reaction was not indicative of a person who is anywhere close to remorseful for her past actions.

Lastly, don't tell your wife that you want to divorce if you don't mean it. I don't think that you're serious about getting divorced and I think your wife is calling your bluff on it, too. Of the many mistakes a BS can make in the wake of infidelity is to threaten a consequence but not follow through with it because the message you're sending is that you're all talk and no action.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 6:55 PM, Tuesday, September 2nd]

@biggerthanblue

Thanks again for your analysis. I feel alone, and weighed down by the realities of my situation. Four kids, finances, and a heart that doesn’t want to regret a divorce years later.

My WW is still a human being, flawed yes, but someone that I will always care about. She’s always going to be the mother of our children. And despite her feelings of being miserable, I was very happy in the marriage for years and still believe she was (past tense) a great wife and mother.

If I won the lottery I would file for divorce the same day. Because I could ensure that everyone involved could be taken care of as they deserve to be. It’s not about showing strength, it’s about being strong and continuing to do what is best for my family in spite of how difficult it may be in the short term. I’m 52 years old, 1-3 more years sorting out the financial situation isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things.

If I need sex, I can jerk off. If I need intimacy, I’ll read a book. If I need friendship, I’ll wait til my cats get playful or want to curl up and take a nap. But what I won’t do is be a force of chaos to my kids and turn this thing into a shit show because an online bully told me I wasn’t cool or whatever the fuck.

I don’t expect you to understand, only for you to think you understand. Thank you for meeting my expectations again.