SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

The only reason I am on this forum is because my WW directed me to it about a week after DDay. Initially a read a ton of posts and had planned to write this big long detailed account of our relationship, but that seemed fairly pointless.

At this point I really have one question. What do you do when your WS is doing everything "right," but it just doesn't seem like enough? She broke off the 4-6 month EA/PA 9 months before she told me about it and had NC for 6 months of that. She directed me here to help me cope, she changed all her passwords and gave them to me, she has done more to help around the house in the last month than the last 2 years combined, she has been very understanding of my somewhat irrational behavior. Honestly, after reading many of the stories in this forum, she sounds like one of the best WS out there. But she just isn't the person I thought she was.

For some background:

We met in HS and were each others first. We foolishly thought it would be a good idea to go to college half the country apart and "stay together." During the first semester apart she had a ONS and we broke up. A few months later we went out and conceived our oldest son. We had a rocky relationship for the next few years and then I had a ONS with her best friend. A year and a half later we got married in 2003.

I almost immediately start traveling a ton (e.g. over 20 weeks a year for 3 years in a row) for work and she is pretty much a stay at home mom until it is obviously a problem and I change my role at work to more management and pretty much stop traveling starting in 2009. Things were good for about a year, then we definitely started having issues. In Spring 2012 she obviously started to pull away, at the time I though it was just that the kids were finally all in school and she was trying to relive her 20s. Whenever I thought something was off she would say something like "your such a great husband that you let me have some space" and I continued to give it to her. She is a marathon runner and started training hard. She is fast enough that most of her training partners were guys. Her primary training partner turned out to be the OM.

The first real sign of the EA came Oct 2012. I recognized some of my behaviors that probably helped get us to that point and made a major effort to change (recently my WW said that me trying so hard at that point made her more angry with me). Although I didn't know for sure at the time, PA started in Nov 2012 and ended in Mar 2013. I honestly knew something was going on the whole time and was pretty bat shit crazy throughout. Oct 2012 - Jan 2013 was the worst time in my life (horribly depressed at times) but I kept doing everything I could think of to make up for what I thought were my shortcomings earlier in our marriage. Our relationship continued to deteriorate until around Sept 2013. Sept 2013 - Jan 10, 2014 (DDay) was probably the best period in our marriage.

Dday was unprovoked, she pretty much out of the blue said she wanted to talk about our relationship and fessed up to everything. Said she knew our relationship was doomed if she kept the secret. She was very concerned that I would have a RA or file for D at any time, so I promised to do neither for 6 months. So now I'm sitting here wondering what to do now.

Guess I ended up with that long post after all. Sorry it is long an likely confusing.

Your only a month out so your pretty much still in shock. And that's very normal when dealing with infidelity. First off I'm sorry that you find yourself here. When your able to make an informed decision you really need to sit your ass down and ask yourself is this something you can forgive. You gotta remember that this never goes away. You may be able to learn to live with it and move on, but that 800lb Gorilla is always going to be in the room. I'm no expert on R, but from what you have posted your WW is doing what needs to be done. Although I am a little concerned about her insinuating that your behaviors contributed to the A. That's just bullshit as having an A is a personal choice. She had choices and she rolled the dice and cheated on you. And before entering into an adulterous relationship with the OM the thought of possibly losing her M had to have crossed her mind. And she took that chance anyway. That's a big bomb to drop on a person and not everyone can simply crawl out of the rubble and rebuild. While I applaud her for confessing it does not absolve her from responsibility and repercussions. You also need to take a good look at why she suddenly confessed. Is it possible that OM had a BS that was threatening to expose ? Was OM pressuring her to restart the A by means of extortion ? Was there another possible scenario for exposure ? These are questions that you need answers to. Because if there is truth to any of them she had a very selfish reason to confess thus not that noble of a admission.

Its also been my experience that a WS tends to minimize what had transpired. From the length of the A to the number of sexual encounters etc. I guess what I'm trying to say is do you really have all the truth ? They are also skilled liars and you have to ask yourself can I trust what she says to be fact ? Can she back up her claims with verifiable proof, is she willing to allow you access to her personal methods of communication, has she destroyed all evidence that could verify her claims ? These are the type of things a truly remorseful will have NP with. If she balks or starts the usual nonsense of "Its my right to privacy" bullshit then she is just blowing smoke up your ass. What actions has she undertaken to fix herself ? Does she see a therapist, can she do what's needed to fix this or does she simply want to sweep it all under a rug and forget about it ? These are just some of the tangible actions that will indicate her desire to change. And on your part can you really do that hard work of rebuilding a M ? R takes 2 people totally committed to rebuilding a M. Its not easy my man. My advice would be to get as much of the verifiable truth as possible, take time to absorb all of it, sit down and think about all that happened then ask yourself can you forgive and move on. Or if you cant move on there is nothing wrong with that decision either. I feel that a BS owes nothing to the WS. The WS took the risk with full knowledge that an A could be a deal breaker. R is a gift offered from the BS to the WS. You have to be careful that you offer that gift to someone who deserves it. Good luck my brother. Please keep posting and reading.

Thank you for the response. Since Dday she has tried to completely separate the issues before A and the A. She always says it was her decision and she had better options, but that just seems to be the party line on the WS forums, so again she is doing what is "right". She has said many times that she thought we were on the way to D and figured the A didn't matter (after all she was planning to D any way, so what difference did jumping the gun a little matter).

I highly doubt the OM threatened to expose, he was a short 24 year old single douche bag that lives in his parents basement and appears to have no real future. He moved a couple hundred miles away in the middle of the A, so their contact was limited towards the end to when they traveled back and forth. She went to see him once (and I got to pay for the hotel room for that) and he drove back the other handful of times. WW has said his only redeeming quality is that he was confident. I'm actually wondering if that bothers me. If he was successful, better looking, or something else I could at least see why, as it stands, the only thing that makes sense is she was trying to kill our M with the A (which I read is fairly common when it is the woman that cheats).

As to the why she confessed, she was in IC May 2012 - Dday and came to the conclusion that things would never get better between us if she kept the secret. She figured confessing might end the M, but not confessing definitely would. We did go see her therapist a week and a half after Dday and it didn't go well (a lot of anger surfaced for me). She had been planning to tell me for a few months leading up to it and had planned it with her therapist.

I do find it interesting that you question if she minimized things. She did get rid of evidence (only real evidence was texts that she deleted once they broke it off). I have thought that maybe she did minimize over the last month, but in reality it doesn't matter. She admits that they did everything but actual have sex a dozen times and then intercourse and oral once each. If it was all one night I could see a difference, but this was dozens of times over six months. She has portrayed it as the worst sexual experience she has had, but I don't expect her to say anything else (she couldn't actually say he was amazing in bed compared to me and expect me to take that well). However, looking back I think that is likely true that it wasn't good for her (on two of the three occasions we were intimate during the PA it was right after she had been with him and on both occasions I could feel he had been very rough with some of her very delicate parts (and I was obviously in major denial).

At this point I am really wondering if I can get past it. My greatest fear is staying in it and not being able to let go, this is definitely no way to live life. I'm not the depressed mess I was during the A, but I honestly don't have an attraction to her beyond physical (I guess we have some HB now).

Only time will tell if you get that emotional/spiritual attraction back for your WW..By the time I had noticed something was off/different about my WH my emotional and physical attraction to him had been waning..

I felt like he was losing the qualities that I liked about him...

He used to be fun, humorous, active and a good provider..

In the last years of our marriage before D day he lost all of those qualities or hid them well...By the time D day rolled around, I realized I was the sole provider financially more often than not..

What I am trying to say is that in addition to having actions that show remorse, your WW has to regain some of the qualities or adopt new ones that will make you LIKE her again as well as love her ..

IMHO rebuilding is impossible without that emotion of LIKING your WW..Few things are worse than living with somebody you don't like..

Preserving your self respect will have to factor in those important choices that you make, self respect can keep depression at bay...

[This message edited by doggiediva at 10:15 AM, February 9th (Sunday)]

JstCantBelieveIt

Glad you came here.

And you are right. Don't make any long term decisions for a while.

I think the 1st thing you both need to consider is if you both love each other.

Is that love strong enough to fix the marriage and have a deep, committed relationship.

Your wife obviously has issues she needs to fix. And yes she was definitely considering leaving the marriage via her exit affair.

Her choice of OM had no long term benefits for her at all,.

It takes time for all the emotions to subside.

One thing you have to give your wife credit for is she told you the truth.

You deserved it. But give her a little credit for wanting to tell you.

Many BS's never get the truth.

HM