SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I met my wife and from the first day I knew I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life. We have been married for just over 5 years Happily. Up until four months ago sex went out the door along with everything. We stopped talking. We turned into a glorified roommates. We both didnt want to talk about it so we kept it bottled up. About a month ago she left while I was out of town. Bought her own car, changed her mail address, deposit on a room to rent. We talked the night I got back into town. Heartbroken I learned that a girls night at the bar turned into her cheating on me with another woman. Other issues came up that I was treating her like a '50's housewife and not helping out around the house. I dont understand what or how that pushed her into that situation. I calmly took in all her concerns and we agreed that we want to be together. She moved back in the next day and I had changed. I started cooking, cleaning, doing all the laundry, everything. I have even massaged her feet and back every night. She on the other hand hasn't done anything except eat and go to work. She hasn't even acknowledged the fact that I am the one hurting. I am the one crying every night. I am the one now questioning our future relationship together. I love her more than anything and would do anything to fix this problem. I recently got the nerve to contact a councilor and booked an hour with them. When I told her this her response was that I should go first and figure out my issues. I question to my self why I would do this as she was the one that cheated and she is the one with issues. She feels that my change in behavior around the house is forced and will not last. Whats the point? I question everything she does in my mind and am now looking to find lies. I thank you as this is my first post. Thank you

The first thing I did when I found out about my husband cheating was book MYSELF an appointment with a counselor. I've been going to her ever since. I knew that I simply could not deal with infidelity on my own.

I think you absolutely should go to the counselor. It would be good for you.

Welcome Worntree,

The best club no one wants to join.

I just have a few minutes, so you are blessedly missing out on my usual welcome repsonse, which is lengthy.

Please know that you will get a ton of good support, and advice here.

Start off by reading in the healing library, it's up there on the left side of your screen. Tons of good info there.

Know that what she did, and why she did it, has ZERO to do with you. It is all on her. She made those choices all on her own. Until she starts to own that, and figure out why you really aren't working on reconciling.

Wishing you Hugs and strength.

Those issues your WW cited may have been reasons to be unhappy in the M, but they were not justifications to cheat.

Your WW is not remorseful and may very well still be in contact with her AP. Her attitude that your changes may not last smacks of emotional extortion. Basically that she won't even try to be faithful when she isn't convinced you've fixed your "issues". Is that how you want to live?

Your WW needs to go NC with AP immediately. This is not a negotiation.

Your WW needs to go to IC to figure out why she thought it was ok to have an A as opposed to simply moving out or insisting on MC/IC.

Is it possible your wife is a sex addict? I was just reading about how to start getting more sexual excitement, some people start having sex with same sex people and they aren't truly gay - they are just trying to get their "high."

It sounds like at minimum she is depressed.

Seeing a counselor on your own is a good place to start. You can't convince her to get help - she needs to realize that she needs to take action. And even then, it will likely take awhile for her to be honest with herself and a therapist. I remember my H coming home from his psychiatrist's office for the first month or so and him saying that the psychiatrist doesn't thing there is anything "wrong" with him or that he is "mentally ill." Oh...ok...yeah so it's perfectly NORMAL for someone to LIE for 2 1/2 years to their family about what is going on and where they are and who they are with and have a secret life. Yes..that sounds completely normal. The doctors/therapists can only work with what the patient shares with them. So her being honest with herself - and this is a confusing time for her bc here she is involved with having a same sex fling for probably the first time - is crucial for moving forward.

I'm so sorry you find yourself here, Worntree. Here you will find people who have experienced the kind of pain you are now feeling.

Have you found the Healing Library? It is in the upper left corner of your screen in the yellow box. You will get a lot of good insight there to help you begin the process of healing and taking your own life back.

I had changed. I started cooking, cleaning, doing all the laundry, everything. I have even massaged her feet and back every night. She on the other hand hasn't done anything except eat and go to work. She hasn't even acknowledged the fact that I am the one hurting.

Right now she is "cake eating." If you are going to continue to work on the marriage, she needs to go NC with the OW immediately. Do you know who the woman is? Is she in a relationship? You need to know for sure your WW and OW are not seeing each other, and a good way to get that started is by telling the OW's significant other ("SO"...I didn't want to write too many acronyms so as not to confuse you.)

You have a right to demand NC (no contact) if she wants to stay M to you. If she doesn't go NC, and you can't prove she is actually NC to your own satisfaction, then STOP doing anything for her. Wash your dishes and clothes, cook your dinner. Clean your area of the house. If this does not get her to go NC and come back to the M, file for D. You don't have to follow through with it if she changes, you can stop the process even on the last day.

Maybe she was not happy in her role at home, fine. But she should have talked with you about it, and tried to work it out. Committing adultery is not a solution for anything, it is a choice to be unfaithful, nothing less.

Welcome worn,

I did the exact same thing as you did in the beginning, trying to "NICE" my wife back to me. Basically became a servant. That ended pretty fucking quickly once I realized she wasn't gonna stop. Read up on the 180 bro it will help YOU detach and understand that you do not need her toxic attitude in your life, sometimes they snap out of their fog and see what they are losing sometimes they don't, either way it is for you.

Good luck and hold on buddy your in for one hell of a ride.

But always remember, you will survive and you will be a stronger person because of this!!!

Welcome from a fellow albertan

Your wife has assumed the victim status and you are letting her get away with it. She committed adultery and all your helping around the house, massaging etc are confirmation that you were the wrongdoer and that her adultery was almost justified.

You have to break this attitude quickly or further betrayal will take place. Arrange MC and if she refuses, file and initiate divorce proceedings to shock her into agreement.

Your marriage is on a knife edge and your attitude needs to change before she leaves/cheats again. Your WW has assumed a position of strength and is dominating your relationship. Change this now or things will soon get worse.

Are you positive that she cheated with another woman and it wasn't a man? Who told you it was a woman? Has she ever demonstrated lesbian tendencies before? Further investigation is required.

Ok so now I have a few minutes, and you have gotten some good advice, but I am going to pass on some other gems of wisdom.

1. Make sure you are taking care of YOU. That you are eating, staying hydrated, and sleeping at a minimum. If you are unable to get these things done, then you need to call your Dr. and see if a little pharmaceutical support is in order.

2. Your wife chose this, and obviously has not begun to own any of it. For R to be successful and for you to have a healthy marriage she has to start doing some hard work. By owning what she has done, and working to understand why she chose to cheat.

3. Establish NC with OW. This has to be done. If your wife gives you any other answer than OK when you present her with this you need to suspect she is still in contact, and probably continuing her A. Which leads me to numbers 4 & 5.

4. No intimacy with her until she gets STD tested. Same sex, different sex, whatever unprotected sex is unprotected sex, and you are at risk.

5. If she tells you it's over and NC is established, you need to be sure it is kept. This is done by her giving you complete transparency. You have all passwords, and access to all emails, phones, etc. Then you have to follow up, and check. This is just part of the ugly truth of infidelity. She lied, and proved herself untrustworthy, and it will take time to be able to trust again. If you accept her at her word, you are opening yourself up for more hurt. If (and she probably will) is angry or upset over this then she isn't understanding the pain and damage she has caused.

6. Last but not least go see an attorney, find out what your rights are, and how things would play out should you D. This helps to give you strength, and eliminates some of the unknowns that can cause us to make some not so great of choices when we are trying to R.

I agree with the others. She needs IC, You probably need to go 180 on her. You cannot nice her back.

((((and strength))))

I had almost the same situation as you after DDay#1. I tried to be extra nice and accommodating for her. She was more than happy to go along with playing the part of the princess being waited on 24/7. It was DDay#2 that straightened me out and made me realize that I was just being taken advantage of. She initially was upset about the loss of her personal servant but eventually came to the realization that she represents 50% of the marriage and should be responsible for 50% too.

My brother put it in a way that I think sums it up the best: WW is like a selfish little girl who invites a friend over for a make-believe tea party.....as long as the friend does exactly as she is told everything goes smoothly....once the friend has any idea of her own, all hell breaks loose and the devil princess emerges.

I agree with the previous posts in that you need to stop waiting on her hand-over-foot and insist on her participating in the reconciliation. But be prepared for her to throw a tantrum.

I have to agree with all the above. But yes go to counselling, it will be good to talk to a professional and get everything out in the open.

I'll be blunt. You're suddenly cooking and cleaning when you weren't doing it before, yes that does sounded forced..maybe you do believe it in your heart but you're desperately trying to save your marriage and will do anything to do it, but such a quick turn around will not garner the respect she lost for you..having said that..

It is absolutely not your fault she did what she did. She's turned it around on you so that even after cheating you're still doing all the heavy lifting.

It takes two people to work on the issues, only one currently is doing so. Has she stopped seeing this other woman? If not you stand no chance of saving this. Stop trying to nice her out of her fog. Start taking care of yourself and respecting yourself. You acknowledged you needed to change things within yourself and are doing so..but at the same time, don't be a doormat.

Good luck

YOU are NOT the one who should be changing their behavior. Your wife should be changing her behavior with you also. And it sounds like she isn't.

She needs counseling and you need to read up in the upper left corner under the Healing Library the 180. You need to take care of yourself first and foremost.

It remains undetermined if she is gay, bi or just bored and curious. It really doesn't matter because what she did was break her promise to you and THAT is inexcusable.

Please work on you and tell her to go work on her. You deserve more than being her glorified damn maid.

I learned a lot about human behavior working as a cop. One thing that was pointed out to me very early on was that no matter what the person we were dealing with would always have an excuse. The driver that caused the crash would always say the other driver swerved or drove badly, the burglar would always say he needed to feed his family; the rapist would say she was asking for it, the wife-abuser that she deserved it… It goes on and on. I remember one case where man drove his car right into a fast-food joint; he adamantly insisted that they must have moved the house. After all – he had been having lunch there on and off for over ten years and NEVER before driven into the place.

Wayward spouses are no different. Your WW had to have the affair because you made her do it. Shure she acknowledges that it wasn’t “correct” but she’s also implying that necessity forced her hand. She’s implying that since the marriage might improve then heck! Having the affair was good for you.

Look friend. You could be the Husband from Hell, but all that would allow her is to demand or make changes. She could leave you. She could set ultimatums; change or I file. But nothing nothing nothing justifies her decision to have an affair.

Don’t get me wrong: Maybe you could improve your communications; maybe you both need to be clear on expectations, roles, and boundaries and so on. Like all of us you probably could improve as a spouse. But we have seen it again and again here that infidelity takes place irrespective of how WE the BS behave. Why? Well simply because the cause – the power to DECIDE to cheat – is within the WS.

Can this be changed? Well definitely. This site is living proof. The founders were a BS and WS and successfully survived. So yes – your WW can definitely change. You can change how you behave in the marriage, she can change…. All in all things can become better than ever before. But never because of the affair. Things might improve because of the work you two both put into improving yourselves and the marriage.

It’s sort of like living a sedate unhealthy life might lead to a health scare that starts you off eating healthy and exercising. Your life will improve because of the changes, not because you originally got into the bad situation.

So… Stop with the changes and all this working on the marriage for now. You need to know some things before moving on. Get some things very clear with your wife:

As always with a spouse having a same-sex affair the first step is to get the WS to commit on sexual orientation. This is something that can’t be forced. If your wife is gay then she is gay; pressuring her to decide otherwise won’t work. If however she claims to be bisexual… then IMHO that’s more like me saying I prefer burnets despite having married my blond wife.

Maybe your wife is gay. Maybe not. Maybe she’s afraid to come out. Maybe it was just a phase… Whatever. You need to find out. You need her to commit. Commit as not to you, but rather commit as to commit to her sexuality. If she’s gay this marriage won’t last. You can’t ungay her. If she is gay allow her to be gay and end the marriage.

Let her know that she can be gay. That if she’s gay you can only accept that and that she has to live her life being what she is. That she can neither do it to herself or you to be a closet-lesbian. You can’t be her beard. Make it clear that if she’s honest you will be understanding.

If she can’t tell you that she’s straight or bisexual then IMHO this is already a lost battle. Experimentation is one thing – if she just tried it then OK. Maybe it cleared up some things for her. But if she can’t tell you that she has the emotions towards you a wife should have to her husband and/or she can’t have those emotions… well… none of the good advice offered above will work.

Hi Worntree

Your story is exactly like mine. You are not to blame for your WS's affair

Found my wife had be cheating on me with another woman. I had no hint of it. Came totally out of left field. She blamed me for the affair. So i did everything you did and found out several months latter she was still carrying on with the affair.

While your actions maybe nice they will not fix your situation.

You and your WS need an honest discussion with each other

1. is your WS still in contact with with the AP? (Don't be surprised if they are) Do you want to be in a marriage where there are 3 people?

3. do you both really want to be in this marriage? Marriages need both people to work at them. Not 1 or 1 1/2.

Keep posting here

Just had the same thing happen with me! I'm a mess! I know this post is old but what ever happened to you and your wife?? I filed the next day. Mine told me she had no desire to save the marriage. I still would like to. Any advice??

Hey betrayedbytheone,

Just wanted you to know that I checked the profile of worntree and saw that he posted only once and this appears to be the post.

'

So stay with your own thread and I'm sure others will be answering you soon. Plus there is probably a thread on ICR forum for others in similar situations. But, JFO is good anyway.

So sorry you have to be here.

[This message edited by Thinkingtoomuch at 7:58 PM, August 10th (Sunday)]

Hugs, I am sorry you are here!!

Other issues came up that I was treating her like a '50's housewife and not helping out around the house. I dont understand what or how that pushed her into that situation

Even if that is the case (and WS often skew things, so finding "reality" can be difficult in any which way), that didn't cause her to have an affair. It may have contributed to issues in the marriage pre-affair, but an affair is a set of choices that are totally outside of anything happening in the marriage. Sure, the wayward spouse may use things happening in the marriage to self-justify or excuse their actions, but in reality if they were unhappy in the marriage they could have addressed the issues and worked on fixing them - or they could have gotten a divorce. an affair is not an actual solution to anything.

It's like saying "oh, we're out of groceries" and then planting dynamite in the kitchen. Does the dynamite solve the issue? no, of course not.

There are lots of resources in the healing library - on the left. The truth, barebones, is that to healthily work towards fixing a marriage after even the simplest of affairs, a wayward spouse has to realize that their actions were wrong, work on figuring out why they made the choices, and want to fix themselves. Your wife doesn't sound like she has reached that point yet and is instead preening herself on her excuses of why she chose to step out of the marriage.

In an affair that involves someone of the same sex, a whole new set of questions comes up.