SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Her selfish alienation of all possible people who would support you, deliberately making you out to be insanely jealous and crazy for staying mad at her, and considering divorce over her little mistake... that's just mind-blowing.

She has patently demonstrated she cares nothing for you and your peace of mind and happiness. I would tell her too late on the passwords. Her behavior is not demonstrative of someone you can forgive or reconcile with. When she can apologize to everyone for involving them and lying to them, while depriving you of vital truths, you'll consider an arms-length relationship for the sake of the kids. But I think she's blown this marriage beyond repair, by her reaction to getting caught, more than her adulterous behavior.

There must be something on the phone and laptop that she cannot delete online. Hence the big stall.

If you find really bad stuff: PA, I Love You's, or horrible comments/lies about you, pictures......you realize she has forced your hand.

Does your wife understand that since she decided to involve your daughters and neighbors, that you will have no choice but to reveal what you find (if it's bad enough) to clear your name?

Is she delusional enough to think she can beat a polygraph?

As long as you keep the phone and laptop from going online they'll still have whatever she deleted from another computer. It has to go online to get the update to remove the email.

I also wanted to add:

Your WW agreeing to a polygraph and actually going through with it are two different things.

She already got a nod of approval from your daughters for "insisting" on doing one, but I'd be willing to bet good money that when it is down to the wire and she has to actually do it, she'll try to back out in some way.

WOW! DoneGone, I have been away only a couple of days and so much has happened. It is so sad that she has involved your 3 daughters and given them incomplete/false information about what happened in your marriage. The daughters are now on her side and all four have ganged up on you. The daughters now believe that you are the guilty party in this event and WW is a poor victim.

"discussing what she described as her mom’s ‘mistake.’ She was disturbed with my position. According to her, sure, mom made a bad decision, and of course, she had suffered a lapse of good judgement but then she summed it all up by saying nobody’s perfect and I needed to just get over it. She seems to think I have everything; there is nothing else to find out and that my WW’s infidelity was limited to some crazy text messages. Who doesn’t do something crazy every once in a while, right? Her words not mine."

The girls don't have a clue.

"then that love will overcome." "

Yea, sure!(It almost sounds like your girls have been reading too much Danielle Steele crap. )

"that WW does not deserve to be ostracized, cut-off and punished the rest of her life for one mistake. Besides, her indiscretion was minor compared to the full scope of our marriage."

Totally clueless!!!

"Their consensus is that there are many women out there who are unfaithful to their husbands and what their mom (WW) did could have been a lot worse."

What has Western culture been teaching our young women, that being unfaithful is normal for a woman???

"She's confused but said she would start explaining some of it in emails. I don't even know what she means by 'some of it'."

It either means there a lot of emails or she had a Freudian slip and it meant "A lot of it has been erased, but I will explain to you what is left on laptop and cell phone." In my opinion, you should race to the best IT person you can find and have the laptop and cell phone cracked ASAP and have him attempt to retrieve anything that has been erased as far back as possible. At this stage, I wouldn't put anything past your wife. She has had plenty of time. She could have gone to an IT person and have him erase forever any compromising texts, photos or videos. I'm not tech savvy, but I imagine it is possible to go on another computer and enter the email account and erase emails or totally cancel the account. She could have done the same with her phone, declare it lost or stolen, have it canceled and bought a new one with a new number.

Your wife has been lying, gaslighting and TTing you for over 6 months and she has now enrolled the whole cavalry to march against you.

I think WW’s thinking has been, if she can get enough people to tell me that it was just a harmless mistake, then perhaps I will start believing it was just a harmless mistake. I am not just guessing here. I have been contacted by her brothers, family and friends; and even some of my family and friends and advised to lighten up on her. “She has gone through enough.” “No need punishing her anymore.” “She has learned her lesson.”

She has lied to everybody and made you to appear like a stubborn delusional husband to relatives and friends. It is time you inform all those people about the naked pictures of herself she was sending OM and about the motel rendez-vous.

She despises OM

Beware of WW belittling OM. My wife said these same words about OM's in 2 different affairs and yet was sleeping with them. It is just a smoke screen to make you think you're not threatened by OM.

"Just last night, my former next door neighbor told me that he had a gut feeling that I have it all, my wife has been forthright and honest in her admissions and although what she did certainly wasn’t good, at the same time, I should admit that it wasn’t all that bad."

While you were procrastinating about the idea of entering her laptop and cell phone, she has been very active in enlisting hordes of people and lying to them about what your marital problems were. She has turned all these people against you and you are now the villain, refusing to give poor little wifey the love she deserves as the perfect wife she is.

DG

Regarding the Laptop and phone:

When IT guy make a search for the information on her Laptop and phone, make sure to tajke a good look at the internet history search, you may find that she has a hidden email account created for the Affair and so many illustrating search as “how to hide your affair”, “divorce consultations” “new sex partners matters “, etc.

Also ask her for her emails PS, even if she already deleted everything there is a chance that all emails are now in the trash files, most people don’t clean it, and so you may be able to get them back.

About the phone, there are a lot of programs to recovery text and much more, also ask the IT guy about the apps your WW used to communicated, as some of them delete the messages as soon as are sent or read. If it is an iphone, you will find the back up at her laptop, and there is a folder where you can find all the deleted text, including pics and videos.

Regarding MC,

At the first MC meeting make clear what you expect and why you are doing it, don’t allow the MC counselor decides when or if you are going to get the information you want. The deal is with you WW not the counselor, so make it crystal clear.

You should not allow MC asking you to do things you don’t want as to move back home with your WW, or date her, etc. Until you don’t get what you want, PS and a full confession with timeline, etc. because if after discovering everything is far worse than you are expecting you will feel like a fool.

Other thing,

You may consider asking OM for the emails and a time line, or from his wife. This will give you a story to match. Anyhow as you WW has behaved about protecting herself and OM the already matches their versions of what happened. You should also ask if your WW is still in contact with OM and when was last time they talk, text, meet, etc.

Last thing,

As your wife decided to involve a lot of people, if anything new are revealed you should demand her to let all the people she already involved the truth, at least the missing part as the Hotel meeting while texting you.

Good luck

Thanks for the reply. Stay strong.

Best wishes

I agree with Marbou above

Done Gone

I am just astonished . At one point I was confident you would get to the bottom of this but you have let your wife turn this into a "blame DoneGone" fiasco while as Bigger has said senate debating our legal opinions .

For heavens sake, take the fucking laptop to an expert , find out what is on it , and file for divorce . After what your wife has done on top of the cheating , how on earth could you even consider not divorcing her .

You are no closer to finding out anything than when you first posted and she is going to drag this out forever and has probably already it likely that after three sessions you'll have to start searching for experts anyway

A married woman does not go to a hotel while lying to her hisband with another man. She fucked him and probably a lot.

Just find out and do something

Here's the ONLY thing that's going to help: T I M E.

that's it. It's the reality of the hell you're in. It sounds like you've given it 6 months. That's the magic number before making any major decisions.

You're right, there's no amount of advice right now that can relieve the bone numbing pain you're feeling from your wife's betrayal. Just keep this in mind, no matter what you choose it's completely normal and understandable, you're not crazy, and you will eventually find the answers you need to move through this.

It is never going to be the same. All you can do is learn to adapt and find a new avenue to live out your life.

Nononsense is correct, OP.

You have to do something at this point and the first thing is to tell your daughters to chill out and bud out. They've been heard, now it's up to you and only you and they will have to deal with it.

Get into the computer or phone or have someone else do it, don't reveal that you did and file for divorce.

Move on with your life.

Justme makes a few good points as well

DG,

At this very moment, IMHO, the real problem you are facing is that at everybody is asking you to forgive your wife even you, and they, don’t know what you are going to forgive her for!!!!

Your wife is full steam on damage control and self preservation. I belive she already has a plan that inlcudes buring as much as she can the Affair and just realising bits af what happened, and you can prove it, to get her life back. She nees to givo up on this and come clean to ask for a chance, maybe not now but in the future.

IMHO she needs to get to a point where she gives you the control of the situation and answer all you need with out hesitation / justification / TT. If she really loves you she shouldn’t try to manipulate you by your Kids.

If you had all the information from DDay, your anger would have been much higher but in a few days would have diminished leaving you heal. she has taken away that and continues to do.

The bottom line of all this is that you also should make clear to her on MC that as much as she keeps lying and hidding information the anger will prevale.

The must she trys to keep the A away from you the further she pushes you away. Make it clear to her on MC. Big part of the Affair was lying and she is still doing it. Not telling is lying as well.

This woman's self preservation mode is at its highest level.

So much so that she is mind f-ing your daughters right along with you.

This needs to end for the sake of your sanity.

Break open those devices, get your info.

File for divorce.

Gradually work on your relationship with your daughters. Go to counseling with them if need be, but you have endured enough at hands of this SELFISH woman.

“She has learned her lesson.”

This is not about learning a lesson. She doesnt even think she did anything wrong. And when someone has an affair and thinks it was just a little mistake, it will happen again.

This is all about your wife being honest, and taking full responsibility for her actions and choices.

Tell those around you that this is not about teach a lesson. It is all about being lied to, gas lighted, deceived and your wife not being totally honest and not taking responsibility.

The next time some tells you to lighten up, ask them how they would be reacting today, if their wife had sex with some other guy.

And tell them to picture it, imagine it. Because few people can answer the what would you do question, unless the have been through this.

Your wife is stalling and stalling is never good.

Polygraph should be done now, why is your wife dictating the time frame. She insists on the polygraph, so why wait.

Snoop some more. Because there most likely is more.

This is not about teaching a lesson as in punishment, it is all about getting the entire truth. It is all about your wife earning your trust again. It is all about she totally understands why she did this......so it never happens again.

Done,

A Web based account can be accessed from anywhere you can log on the Internet. So if it's a yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, she can log on at the library or anywhere. I would think most email accounts are Web based now. That's why I don't understand why she hasn't deleted the emails yet.

Which is why I said make sure to look in her files and,folders and other documents including the pictures on phone and laptop.

FWH was in graduate school while committing adultery. This dictating much writing of papers and finally his thesis. We had a backup to the computer. While he did delete his emails from the HD, he didn't from the back up...I found them!!!

[This message edited by onedayatatime321 at 9:55 AM, April 27th (Monday)]

Done, any relationship between two people must be based on trust. Without trust there is nothing...nothing. The fact that after two decades of marriage your WW does not understand this is absolutely mind boggling.

You need to sit your daughters down, one by one, and tell them something like this:

Even if their mother's EA had not devolved into a PA...

Even if the e-mails on her computer are not that scandalous...

Even if she agrees to a polygraph...

The basic fundamental issue here is that their mother is not making you feel safe within the marital relationship. Her behavior and attitude have served to destroy the trust that a healthy marriage is based on. Their mother has shaken the marriage to its foundations, and because of this you are finding it hard to ever trust your WW again.

You have to sit down and make them understand this, or they may go on and do the same to their husbands.

agreed Beerparty

DG,

First step, while opening the laptop or phone make sure it is not connected to any internet connection so it will not sync with the latest cloud and you can loose a lot of info. From the laptop, you will retrieve more likely naked photos of her/him. I don't know if she is using an outlook or anything like that, than you might have the whole history of her emails. If not, you need to check the history of her browser, you can get the dates of all the emails sent or received with no content as probably if her email was a web based everything would be deleted by now.

On the other hand, the phone will be the killer gun. You can retrieve all her messages even if they were deleted. There will be voice messages and maybe short MMS as well. Whatever, she was trying to hide, you can come close enough to know the dates, their schedules, when they were meeting if there was any other motels scheduled or any parking lot sessions from the messages.

One more question I have, have you got your land line and her phone bill details. Can you do that. It will be another helpful item to verify.

You need to get all these prepared before the polygraph. I know at this moment you only want the truth and you can not move an inch without it.

Whatever information gathered after she gave her passwords, take your time, prepare all the information, than you had retrieved and confront her in front of all the family that are backing her now and let her explains everything in front all of them especially your daughters.

The polygraph should be after that. As she will be lying in front of them as I figure. Once your break her walls and see her transparently, it is up to you to decide if you can allow her to R or D. It will be your decision not your daughters, not the family, it will be yours.

As I have seen now, she has dragged you into her plan. Well it is an opportunity that you can take it to your advantage, but not the way you are acting. You have to draw the boundaries and time line. She and all the remaining of the family have to follow it. Just be calm, decisive, and let everyone knows that you are in control (don't lose that). Prepare the topics for the MC, should be about her infidelity and not your marriage. Preferable, if you can chose the MC and gave him brief alone before you attend together. NOT her rules....YOURS. She can manipulate both of you. Obviously, she has her story ready by now and she is convincing everybody around. (could be true) She is well prepared, you need to keep it in your mind and act accordingly.

She has not helped you at all till now, she was manipulative. You need to break her walls by the truth of her reality it is than when you have the chance to R in the future if this what you decide to go with. Don't forget if she had cared for you a little bit, she would have come clean by now, and not drag you with her bullshits and make you

suffer more and more without knowing the truth.

I know by heart that nothing can be hidden for ever, as I have seen on multiple threads that secrets were revealed after 30 - 40 years. However, is your life worthy to live the lie for the rest of it.

Good Luck, and God be with you.

DoneGone, during the discovery phase of litigation a few years ago, we had the hard disk of the defendant's work PC imaged forensically by a local firm that specialized in this. The net result were long spreadsheets that contained all kinds of historical info that wasn't reflected in the Windows operating system or Windows applications: deleted files not in the Recycle bin, info on dates/times files opened, created, modified, websites accessed, text entered on websites (think: webmail), etc.

My point is, if there was widespread deletion of data, you likely can find some things that are left as fragments on the drive. This process was enough for us to continue our litigation and, ironically enough, showed that the employee in question had been visiting various dating and hookup sites on his work laptop. He was married with a new baby, of course. We made sure that info got dumped in open court as part of the results of our discovery.

Wasn't cheap ($1000?) but, man, there was a ton of previously unknown info there. It completed the picture we were looking for, maybe it can do the same for you. Western et al can comment on the legality, but I'm assuming you'd get her permission to "look" at her PC.

I'd wish you luck but you don't need it. You strike me as a very good man, and a smart guy. And you're getting unbelievably good advice here. I only wish all the pros I've paid over the years were this smart, caring and well-written! Invaluable, this SI.