SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I still want to know specifics.. Like:

When was your first private encounter?

What happened?

What did you discuss in your time together?

I know some of the sex stuff.. Don't really care about that.. But what were questions I should ask... And I know the didn't use a condom... So not that..

Advice? Suggestions?

Thank you!

I drove myself crazy in the first 30-60 days wanting to know every freaking detail. I got nada. Nothing. Zilch. And he could care less because it's about HIM being able to hide from his shame and who cares if those answers would heal me.

I beat him up verbally and emotionally with my pathetic tears and questions. He wouldn't budge.

Sounds like you know some details so when will you feel satisfied you've asked everything there is? Is this part of your healing process? If so, I really hope your spouse will answer any and all for you.

That is something I'll never get and my counselor reminded me that all through my marriage, he was never one I could count on. It's just worse now that he's mentally broken.

I drive myself crazy asking the questions you posted in my own head!! I wonder if the truth would be slightly less painful? Doubt it. I'd like the chance to find out though!

My suggestion would be to take a deep breath and make a list. Write it out. And then try to treat it like an interview. No emotion. Just the facts.

Then if he is answering your questions. Ask him to make a timeline out.

You will keep asking questions. I am a few months out from my second antiversary and I still ask questions.

Some of my very first questions would be "when did you cross the line? Was it you or her that leaned in for the kiss? Who initiated the sex the first time? Where did you go to have sex?"

My entire thought process now is based on "pre" and "post" affair and I truly don't know those dates.

.. "WHAT THE FUCK COULD YOU HAVE POSSIBLY BEEN THINKING !!! ???????

SMY

What you should ask is what you want to know. Moreover, this should not feel like a one-time event never to be revisited. Questions will pop up due to triggers or whatever, and if you have a remorseful spouse, it should be completely okay to ask those questions. I sort of went with what I thought of as a scorched earth policy. Watching out for his feelings and avoiding conflicts from time to time as I had done all those years obviously wasn't a successful strategy. Didn't do diddly, in fact. So why should I be left wondering? The good news is that eventually you'll (for most intents & purposes) kind of run out of questions.

I wanted to know everything, I wanted there to be absolutely no secrets kept with any OW. A lot of years of ONS's etc. led to a lot of questions to be answered.

I wanted to know different things based on the situation. For example, the questions I had about a ONS he had in a downtown hotel in Philadelphia (that the kids & I joined him at the very night after!!! ) These were less about the OW and more about him or the place. Like which bed, how did it go down, etc. Let's just say you want to take those bedspreads OFF hotel beds. And yes, the two lustbirds did choose the end of the bed I wound up sleeping in.

The long-term booty call when I was pregnant and our DS was a baby, that one I wanted to know more about. When/where they met, confirming things that suddenly stood out in my memory, etc. etc. I wanted to know how he dogged me and our marriage out to this tramp (b/c really...MM is bad enough, but MM with a pregnant wife AND toddler that you know about? Hello? Morals?) I told him with a couple of the OW I wanted them stripped naked in front of me. I wanted to know all their particulars as he did. May sound weird, but so be it.

Ugh, this walk down memory lane make it hard not to t/j and go off on tears about these various OW.

I wanted to know excuses he used to get away to meet them. I wanted to know how he contacted them. I wanted to know how he concealed it from me. I mean, this is a man I always used to tease and say "you'd better not ever commit a murder, because the police wouldn't even need Luminol!" (...and then the killer fixed himself a sandwich....looks like it was toasted, there's crumbs on the counter...peanut butter...and he poured himself a glass of milk....) The guy has left a conspicuous trail through life in every other thing, but not this.

I wanted to know who was the pursuer, who moved first, that kind of stuff. My FWH's cheating went on for years and years and years so there was a lot of ground to cover. For the big revelation, aka DDay 3, he wrote out 17 pages.

To boil all this down, my primary advice is to ask anything you want or need to know, however small; suggest he write out replies if he says he doesn't remember, in particular; make it clear to him that this isn't a 'once-and-you're-done' deal, there may very well be more questions as time goes on.

Best wishes.

We all want to know the whys? my first question was why her? One thing you need to take into consideration is this person just lied to you about infidelity, is this person going to give you the right answer or just what they think you want to hear? I wrote down all my questions and for two days went over the list and crossed off ones I decided I didn't want to ask and only asked the most important 10 questions. You have time to ask the others if you really want the answers in the future, but make sure you use this time to find the answers to the important questions!

I wanted details. Since it was an LTA, there were a LOT of them.

I wrote them down, there were so many. :(

Here is a link to a related article titled, 10 Questions to Ask Your Unfaithful Spouse by Shirley Glass:

http://www.ivillage.com/10-questions-ask-your-unfaithful-spouse-0/4-a-283611

The author, Shirley Glass, also wrote the book Not "Just Friends". In my opinion, this was hands down the best book for dealing with the aftermath of infidelity. I highly recommend it.

Here's the problem (or at least it was for me)--I asked lots of questions after d-day. Then, months later, I asked some of the same questions again. Got completely different answers. I don't know which were the real answers. The true answers. I don't think my FWH knows either. Maybe the fog lifted and he was able to see things more clearly after some time. Maybe as the guilt and shame worked on him, he had to justify what happened to be able to live with himself and he changed the story in his mind after some time.

He loved her, it was a serious relationship. He never stopped loving me, didn't really want to be with her. He never really loved her. He was confused, he didn't know what he wanted. The sex was good. The sex was robotic and sordid, not intimate. He didn't want to hurt her feelings. He wanted to get away from her. He was afraid of her, she was crazy. Take your choice. Oh, and thrown in there, lots of "I don't remember", even about stuff he told me early on. Later, his memory is a total blank.

Just be prepared for the story to change over time. I think I will never know "the truth". I don't think my FWH knows.

Yes.

The answers will most likely change to a lot of questions, and this has been one of the hardest parts of R.

He gets frustrated now when I ask the same questions...but it's force of habit. If the answers stopped changing, I'd stop asking.

A little ways down the road (after I thought he was really going to tell the truth) I asked my fWH if they had set up a future place/time to meet. Another wayward had done this with his AP. That way there was "no contact" but they met 2 years after the A ended to "check" on each other.

Good Luck

My H did not want to talk about it at first and when I would bring the A up he would make a motion for me to stop or he'd walk away. I HAD to talk. It was imperative to me.

Finally I wrote a 12-page letter to him telling him how I felt and things related to the A and the bimbo. I also forwarded 2 articles to him about EAs to read. I left the home and allowed him to read everything when I was away. I returned and sat down so we can talk. In my letter I had told him once he read my letter, we'd have to talk. So the question I asked was: why????????? he said it was his ego. Then he went down my letter and pointed out a few things, never giving me any details.

So, a month later or so, when he started repeating his behavior of not wanting to talk, I wrote down 20 or so questions, and I told him that I will NOT accept answers like " I don't know' and " I don't remember". He had to elaborate. He was not happy but he sat down and he answered all my questions.

I knew he was telling me the truth because I had read the emails and knew the timeline and how things had progressed.I also know the bimbo.

Then, about another month later, I wrote a few more questions and repeated the whole process. I have not learned everything, but I know enough. There are some questions still needed to be answered but I don't think this will happen any time soon. The only way I will find out is to get to his secret files ( I suspect there is one with letters from her)

If there is a secret file and I find the deepest secrets, then I will repeat the process and will press for the rest of the questions. If he does not tell me the truth I will most likely throw his ass out....

The key thing here is to make him think you know more than you do and he better not lie to you.

OH....

and I didn't get the whole truth until I started digging. I hacked his phone and found info on my own. Only after I confronted him with that did he finally answer the questions with the ACTUAL answers.

You may have to turn into a spy to get the truth.

I want to ask my WH a lot of questions... but I am afraid if I ask, he will start thinking about her... and I don't want that.

My questions were

How deep are the feelings

Who made the first move, sincce we all knew each other...

When did it start

Was it PA

What did he tell her about our M and me

Do you want to be with her/planning to leave

How did he meet up with her since I never caught them even when I was watching him

Were the BJs she gave you worth the pain you have caused your family....I was alittle spun out when I asked this one

Are you done with her and can you stay away FOREVER with zero contact

Who all knows about this

Only got a few answers and a shitload of denial....still waiting over two yrs later. If I had a do over...I would make him leave until he was truthful and a little bit more willing to show remorse. He got away with it..my fault for allowing him to. You hold the cards, don't let him control the situation like I did

Good question. I am just 6 weeks out from discovery myself, and am still asking lots of questions. The first week or two, I had to ask whatever came to mind. I had to ask a lot of questions. In our situation, I knew exactly when they had seen each other. All visits involved logistics on *my* end, as I thought they were gatherings of friends and suspected nothing.

I needed to figure out the relationship escalation. And I did not get complete answers on this initially. I have much experience with lawyers, and I kept getting accurate but misleading and incomplete answers from WH. I investigated everything I could and figured out a timeline. I then figured out what I needed to know. Many times the answers were easier to digest than the fictions in my head. Not to say husband told me things I wanted to hear, but my mind had gone to even darker places in the absence of knowledge.

I wanted to know about the physicality. Who else knew? What did married OW know about me? How much did you talk about us with her?What the f*ck he was thinking? How could he do this to me? How crazy is she? (is she going to come after me and the kids? How will she handle no contact?)

I have tried not to ask too much about their sex life to avoid creating triggers. I found out via a sext describing what she wished to do to him right then (it was Christmas night). And I found painful to look at emails and photos sent by my WH. And those seem to be rough enough triggers and plenty of information for now.

Good luck. Keep asking. I never wrote out questions, but would get one stewing in my head that I had to ask. Writing them out and reviewing them for a few days might be a really good path. Then you can really think about what you want to know and what you need to know and what might interfere with your healing. Take care.

[This message edited by OnAnIsland at 12:35 AM, February 6th (Monday)]

I asked for all the details. Then I asked more once I processed the answers. It became a rinse/repeat process. After 6 months or so I quit asking. To her credit, my wife was homest and open in her answers. Brutally honest in fact. She never TT'd or gaslighted me.

My advice is to ask everything you need to. For some knowing everything is important. Others require less. I am an analyst by profession so I needed to hear everything.

I asked a ton of questions and wanted to know everything. I discovered WH's affair by reading his emails, so I already had a lot of details and wanted to recreate the timeline. Some of the questions I asked were:

Are you in love with her?

Did you plan to leave me?

Did she ask about me and our M?

Did you think about me and the baby when you were with her?

Who knows about this?

When and where did you meet up?

Did she ever come to our apt?

Did she spend time with his friends or family?

The timeline: I asked him to take me through month by month to know how things escalated.

I got a lot of "I don't remember" answers from him, so I would return to questions later on.

I asked about everything and I am still asking almost 3 months since d-day.

H has never refused to answer questions, but had wisely asked if it was really helpful to know all the answers. It was, because knowing is better than imagining. Once you know, it is easier to file it away.

I still get "I can't remember" but "I'll think about it and let you know". Still waiting for the answer to "who made the first move" 'the first kiss'? Those are still foggy in his mind, but almost everything else he has answered including the sex questions. It wasn't as wild and passionate as I had imagined, but maybe he toned it down for my comfort. Who knows.

Still asking questions though. I can't imagine trying to get through this without those answers.