SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

so i spent some of yesterday looking through my wifes email account.

i find a guy's name i dont know but no emails. i text her asking who he is. she says a friend. i ask if there is anything else. she says at one point they made a joke about meeting in another city and having sex but it was a bad joke, nothing more to it. she doesnt know why she didnt tell me. she couldnt remember it.

i check into the guy (an ex bf) that she had "forgotten" to tell me about sending 2 risque photos too. i see where she had asked if he still had the pics he had taken of her and them from when they were together, if he ever looked at them, and if he could send them to her. i text her asking what pics - nude ones. i ask why she didnt include this in our discussion. she doesnt know. she couldnt remember it.

i find where she is talking to another ex bf. she tells him how terrible her marriage was, how she thinks back to her days with him fondly, how she wonders if he does too, and wants to know if she could meet him in franfurt germany. he says .. no, but what about cologne. then he talks about his family and wife, kids, etc. she cools the talk down, it becomes more "friends" type stuff. i ask why she didnt tell me this. she doesnt know. she couldnt remember it.

i finally, last night, blew up at her. first time. i told her that i felt that i now had reason to leave, she violated the full and complete disclosure agreement. she cried, told me how terrible she was, how she had told me worse stuff, hadnt meant to hide anything, etc. i told her that i had given her a week to give me EVERYTHING even slightly inappropriate with everyone. she said she thought she had but she couldnt remember some things. i told her that was bullsh1t and that if it was a court of law she would be jailed for contempt if she signed a form saying full and complete and it wasnt. she says im being mean. i told her that she just killed all trust shes built up - again. now at zero again. i told her that "not remembering" is okay for not remembering if 8th or 15th of october something happened but not okay for people. i told her that i felt like she had decided that our marriage and me wasnt worth sitting down with a F'ing piece of paper, writing everyones name she knows, and then THINKING about "had i done anything inappropriate with them" ... one by one. that her failure to do so showed me that she didnt take this seriously or us. she cried but agreed.

ive given her 1 week to compile this list. also 1 week to present me with a picture of each person she behaved inappropriately with, their email addresses, their phone numbers, their addresses, etc. she has 1 month to present me with a detailed time line of EVERYTHING with EVERYONE.

i feel so about to walk about the F'ing door right now.

I really hope she can do this with the attention to detail you deserve.

Will be sending good thoughts your way as you wait. Limbo is no fun--neither is the fear of being let down and disappointed.

If she fails to meet your condition of no more secrets and you need to walk out the door, you'll do it with your head high I know.

I don't like how much she's taken. There has to be reciprocity. Demand. Don't settle for less. Make it stick. Payment should be an honor for the cheat. If I wrong my neighbor by breaking his window, we'll agree I'd pay to fix that. You've taken damage with too few demands.

You can let these animals loose. I filed for divorce, which was to be final in November. I didn't call it off until a few days before final. But he's clear that I'll go there. He's clear on a whole lot more than that, too. Clearly, I'll go a lot of places. Clearly. Clarity is a gift. Clarity is light in the fog. You need to sanitize for your sanity.

[This message edited by mezmer at 11:08 AM, February 12th (Wednesday)]

If she fails to meet your condition of no more secrets and you need to walk out the door, you'll do it with your head high I know.

enough said

Also, passwords mean nothing. I can set up a new email account in about 2 minutes that my spouse doesn't know about. I actually have dozens. I found his secret email in a matter of seconds by going into his browser history and I promptly hacked it. There I found the entire story. Day by day. Blow by nasty blow. And there were some blows. Hack and keylog. You can trust when they don't even know you can see it. I haven't asked for a password because I can get in anyway. He knows that.

is it "normal" to forget some of the more minor things when there are so many more major ones? is idk or i cant remember normal from a ws and if so ... is it genuine or just crap so they can hide behind it?

william, I suggest you put that last question in the Wayward forum. Start a new thread on that topic. I have seem other threads like it and have read many WS stories where I think the answer to your question is yes. But better to get the answer from them.

ETA - And when I say yes, I mean it can be both genuine and crap.

[This message edited by yearsofpain25 at 11:54 AM, February 12th (Wednesday)]

William. It could be either. My husband has told me so much stuff that I have to believe that when he says he doesn't exactly remember, he really doesn't. Also, his thing was a very discreet period of time. Not multiples and ongoings. Distinct beginning and end and pretty short. You're wife seems to have done lots in various ways with various persons. I imagine that *is* hard to keep straight. When you've told millions of lies it's just hard to sort things out. So, yeah, she may not remember some details. That comes with different implications depending on the situation, doesn't it?

William - I actually doesn't Think this lates revelation have to be that bad. If your wife is remorsefull she is quite upset, stressed and struggeling a lot, trying to navigate the mess she made. Was these lates things a long time ago? Did the Contact with these 2 continue for a long time?

I find it quite forgivable if she would forget some minor thing her and there if those things happened a while ago and didn't continue.

The bad thing about what you wrote is that she didn't dig Deep in to list all these things. How did you ask her to tell all? Could she have missunderstood you? Where you not clear in what you wanted her to list?

Wow look at me, being the more mellow person for once...

[This message edited by TOMTEFAR at 5:17 PM, February 12th (Wednesday)]

is it "normal" to forget some of the more minor things when there are so many more major ones?

Only if they truly *forgot*.

William, you are getting great advice here. I definitely suggest yearsofpain25's about asking the former waywards. In the I Can Relate forum, there is a specific thread that you can ask questions directly to waywards/former waywards.

is it "normal" to forget some of the more minor things when there are so many more major ones? is idk or i cant remember normal from a ws and if so ... is it genuine or just crap so they can hide behind it?

I don't know if forget is an appropriate term in some cases. My FWW learned to compartmentalize things early on. She was abused emotionally and sexually as a child. As a result, things related to sex are put into a box and quickly "forgotten". She cannot, to this day give me a detailed accounting of what she said/did during her A. That being said, she also cannot recount what type/forms of sex we have had. She cannot remember vast swatches of her childhood either.

Just a thought.

Strength

i mistakenly posted the question in the WS forum and got reprimanded (gently) for it. big mistake. then i finally got it right and posted the question in the BS for WS thread in the R forum.

i had asked her (a month ago and gave her a week to compile it) for a full and complete list of everyone that she had behaved even slightly inappropriately with. everyone and everything that she did then that violated the boundaries we have agreed to now. she agreed to provide the full list. i told her that it was a deal breaker and that the future of our marriage and reconciliation depended upon the honesty and completeness of the list. i felt i was pretty F'ing clear.

obviously the list was neither full nor complete.

i can honestly see how one cant remember if something were this week or that week or if they had sex this time or just oral or whatever. as long as the story is more or less accurate im okay with that. i dont expect perfect recall. my memory is terrible as it is so i couldnt do it.

i can even honestly say that i might understand how she could forget making a "joke" about meeting up for sex in a more or less impossible place with someone. id not have made the "joke" in the first place, id not have crossed so many boundaries, and id certainly remember it if i did. however, i can see that for at least 2 years she had practically no self imposed boundaries. i can see how in her mind, compared to the other stuff, this was almost un-noteworthy.

but i really dont see how she can forget asking an ex bf is he still looks at their nude photos together, if he can send them to her, how terrible her marriage was, and then sending him 2 more pics on top of that. how is forgetting that even "possible"?

my wife is a nervous wreck. she claims that she cant remember alot of stuff. she says she is terrified that she forgets something, i find out 2/6/10 years later and walk out. she says that cant i see that she gave me as much as she remembers before and that it was stuff that id never have found out on my own and doesnt this provethat shes trying to be 100% honest and transparent.

ive tried to make it clear that im not asking so i can look and find a reason to leave in a few years. im asking so i have a reason to STAY right now. its a not so subtle different in my mind and she says she sees the different but im not 100% sure that she does.

i told her last night that the closest i have come to walking out of the door was immediately after finding these three things out. they were deal breakers. yet, here i am. but still here. i think it finally set into her head how important this is.

it really scares me that im sitting here on top of ANOTHER false R. just like 6 months ago when she fed me a whole sack of lies (i know we have to be honest to save our marriage, it was just one guy, just an EA, just a few kisses, nothing else, i promise) ... and i know im not prepared to go through a REAL R. period. a false R is NOT worth the pain, the struggle, and the suffering i am going through. point blank. a REAL R IS WORTH IT.

i asked her for a list of everyone that she has behaved even slightly inappropriately with during our marriage. ive clarified - anything that is even midly inappropriate (dirty jokes with a friend, talking about sex, overly familiar language, etc) to the worst of the worst (sex with people) and everything in between had better be on that list. from the time that list is complete i will consider the failure of anything inappropriate to be on that list as a deliberate lie by her. i dont expect exact dates or anything like that but i do expect the general gist. she has roughly 6 days left to finish it.

in true passive aggressive style (or so i feel) she has decided to compile a list of everyone that she has ever known in her life and her interactions with them and then present it with me. ive told her that i couldnt care a less about before we were married but only her actions after. shes made the point that if someone and her had a "past" then it might influence how i see her actions while i was married and that she doesnt want that "ah ha" moment to come years down the road. i smh and said "okay".

if she set up a new secret email ... thats a deal breaker. period. even with a key logger i couldnt really "stop" her if thats what she wanted to do. i cant key log every computer that she might ever have access to ... forever. so i guess i have to have "some" trust. i do monitor her phone and email some but not much. she decided last night, on her own, to enable google history locations on her phone and to stay logged into google. in theory it should report her locations to the google dashboard where i can view them if i want. it doesnt seem to be working.

find my iphone is pretty good for knowing where someone is real time but now i need to find an app for her that tracks the iphones location history and can show it on a PC. anyone know of one?

Sorry about posting in the wrong forum william. That's my fault. I didn't know. I'll take the heat for that one. I'm glad there was another place for you to go.

they were really nice about it. just a PM to let me know they had blocked the post, a suggestion where to move it, and a smiley.

it was my fault for not reading the rules. ive avoided the WS forum pretty religiously so far. fear i guess.

william))) go to the IT forum for the 'tracking' question.

In ICR forums, there are a couple of ongoing threads I think will help you tremendously:

@ sexual abuse:

http://survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=440930

@ sexual addiction:

http://survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=511677

My sense of things is that your wife was "medicating" the pain from her FOO (Family of Origin) damage.

It doesn't sound like she's a Narcissist to me, since she's willing to poly, and, well, it doesn't sound like purposeful cruelty...it's more like she can't control her medicating urges. Yes, it is self-destructive, but it's important to understand that the 'sexually acting out' response is fairly common.

It is also not uncommon that it wasn't about the sex per se, but about the attempt to control or escape the pain...and it wasn't enjoyable (the way you and I think of it).

Interestingly, it is often thought that hypersexuality/nymphomania arises from enjoyment of sex, when in fact it is not - hence no "O".

In a lot of cases, it is about re-enacting degradation (spitting, etc.)

It is also not uncommon to have blank spaces in memory - and it sounds like her abusive childhood was horrific enough for that.

I think that's what you're dealing with.

It is incredibly difficult for the abuse victim to get to the bottom of issues and fix them, to release the shackles of compulsive behavior, but it can be done!

I also have the sense that your wife can do that work.

IC (a specialist in abuse) for her to begin her journey is - I'm sorry Italy! - a must.

I'm pulling for you for the "win" william))) I really am.

shes given me some conflicting stuff...

"i never touched myself while i was having sex with these guys". (i enjoy when she does that while we are having sex TMI, i know). "i couldnt orgasm with ONS 2 even though i was touching myself".

"i never orgasmed having sex with them. i was disgusted the entire time". "i orgasmed while having sex with LTA PA guy but not because of anything he was doing, but in spite of it"

"i was never attracted to LTA guy". "at first i was attracted to LTA guy".

"i never really planned any of the stuff". "i suggested we get in the back seat to ONS 1". "i sent an email to ONS 2 telling him i wanted him". "i told LTA that i wanted to use him for sex, i took my friends home from bar, drove back, kissed him in car, gave him ride to his house, sat on his bed, asked him if he wanted me".

"i never told LTA i loved him". "i told him i cared about him." "i broke it off when he began to want what i had wanted in beginning - a relationship (after saying to him she only wanted him for sex??)" "i wrote myself that i loved him but didnt tell him". "i might have told him but i was lying to myself, icr"

argh

mixed in with this stuff is idk, icr.

Is your wife in IC? Just a thought... Is she lying to herself over the severity of it and by extension unable to take ownership of her actions?

not yet. hard to get anything done in italy fast.

but she doesnt even seem to get the disconnect between these statements.

it leaves me reeling, unable to know whats true, whats fantasy, what is solid, and what isnt.

Your wife also probably hardly knows what is real at this point, she is such a mess. I know that's cold comfort. You already know this, but just to say it again: these are very, very bad behaviors that come from a huge empty place inside of her. Only she can fill in that emptiness with meaning and a sense of self-confidence that doesn't flail around looking for external sources to try and plug the gap in herself.

More cold comfort, but at least you know you are a whole person, secure in himself and able top love truly. That doesn't protect you from this pain but it means you are a happier, better, more fulfilled person than she is. I hope she wants to get to the bottom of this and fix yourself, but it really will be her journey. While you unfortunately are collateral damage of the fact that she had so many issues.

I don't know if any of that is helpful (probably not!), but it's just what occurs to me reading about her TT and minimizing vs. what her actual behavior was. Her life is a sad one; even though I know right now you are sad, there's a big difference. You are struggling for external reasons but all her struggles and demons are inside her. Keeping that in mind helped me to be able to be grateful for not being like that myself.

thanks nora.

im on this roller coaster of emotions.

the last few days ive been through an angry phase and full of bitterness. today im more "normal" and "rational".

i think, in all honesty, that ive been kind of unfair to her in this time. i feel that she has been trying to tell me how she feels and felt then but that ive been kind of unreceptive to it. i think that in some ways ive been twisting what she told me, unconsiously, to fit the mood of anger ive been in.