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If I missed anything I still don't know about it. As soon as I saw her name pop on his friends list I knew something was up. Every time I saw text I knew there were more I hadn't seen. There were many small instances I knew he was lying. I knew he bought her lunch the day of my grandmother's funeral, I don't know how but when he said, "I bought me and the other supervisor lunch" something just screamed she was also included. What I've definitely learned through all this is my gut is generally right and I must always trust it.

There were sooo many signs I ignored, but to explain a bit OW, who was my best friend BTW, had recently lost her child to suicide. She was clinging to my H a lot, but I wrote a lot off as grief. I guess the biggest sign I ignored was the long 4wheeler rides they took alone. (She was married, to my H's best friend funny enough, and they also had a 4wheeler, in fact we rode together quite a bit, but my H liked to go faster and was more daring was her reasoning for preferring my H to her H) She said it helped her forget her grief since her child didn't enjoy riding when he was alive, so she didn't feel guilty enjoying it after his death. I kick myself in the ass every day for believing that line if BS. I have not posted my whole story here, but in truth I think she pushed her child to suicide and used his death and the ensueing sympathy to get attention. I just found out about all this crap. My D day was July 30, but I got the full story from OW and confirmed by WH August 20th. OW left her M to be with my WH, but he ended their A, pissing her off, so I got every detail from OW in probable hope I would kick him out so he would go to her. Their A ended July 22. I am in limbo. I haven't decided what I'm going to do. I've stayed mostly so far because of our children and WH has taken full responsibility for his actions and is begging me to stay.

[This message edited by doigoordoistay at 5:13 PM, October 24th (Monday)]

Here's how dumb I am. We were friends with AP and his wife, the OBS. The four of us were on an extended vacation together, and one night at the end of the evening my W tells me that during dinner AP reached over under the table and put his hand on her leg. We discussed it in detail, and agreed that it was a one-off thing, he'd never done that before and all of us had quite a bit to drink that night, so I wouldn't confront him about it (i.e., kick his ass the next day). So I let it go, we had a great time on the rest of our vacation, I thought everything was cool, and then fast forward 12 years when I catfished the douche bag AP and discover that very night was step one for him. About six weeks later he had another chance to hit on her, she fell for it and they started a 7 month PA.

Fuck, I wish I had kicked his ass the next day.

OK, then there's actually another thing I missed. Fast forward about six years from the time the A started. Something small happened and AP e-mailed my fWW completely freaking out. I told her it was weird that a friend of ours would react that way since he sounded like a jealous boyfriend. They traded a few unpleasant e-mails and then things calmed down that situation died down. At one point while they were trading e-mail about it I took a look at her computer and noticed that she had deleted everything in her sent items folder as well as everything in her deleted items folder. I actually thought then "why doesn't she want me or someone else to see". DUH.

I was deployed to the Med. She met AP#1 in Italy on the first day that I would be meeting her there. We had a good time in Italy. When I left to return to the ship, she met him for dinner and there was more. She returned to Italy to meet him again to get a modeling job. She is very beautiful, but I was in no position to say no to the return trip. The return trip was not for modeling.

When I returned from the deployment she asked me to get a syphilis test. I brushed it off, thinking that perhaps the Navy wives told her to have me checked.

With AP#2 and AP#3, I noticed sometimes she wouldn't take communion.

During AP#3, she had a severe "UTI" the day after she had sex with him. She rarely gets UTIs. The severity chased her away from him. That was the beginning of years of chronic pelvic pain.

With AP#2, she was angrily defensive of him when I was criticizing their strange conversation at a party.

Once she confessed, the clues snapped into my thoughts like a rubber band.

Everything!

Damn!!

I haven't posted on this thread yet but it's been on my mind. I missed, ignored, or rug-swept so much that it's embarrassing but one memory came to me last night that really bothers me as an I-should-have-known-moment.

We were only a week or so into R after finding out about him and the neighbor. R was me turning myself inside out trying to make things okay while he was enjoying the attention, likely from me as much as the neighbor even though he was supposed to be NC with her (yeah, right). At that time I blindingly believed it was only an EA, not a PA, but I know better now. Anyway, Asshat, DS, and I were playing soccer in the backyard and Asshat kept kicking the ball over the fence toward OB's (Old Bitch since she was over 50) rental house. Part of me knew even then he did it on purpose and I know it now. He enjoyed the look of anguish I knew was on my face every time he would insist on going over and getting the ball. He enjoyed it. That's what I realize now. He enjoyed my pain and knowing he could hurt me. And our son was right there and he didn't care. It wasn't the first or last time he purposely hurt me in front of our son. Looking back, I don't even know how that woman was who allowed her husband to hurt her like that. I should have kicked the damn ball over there myself and told him to stay over there.

I missed far too much, but it just hit me that it has been almost exactly 5 years ago since a major error on my part.

I was paying the cell phone bill and normally don't look at it in detail, but happened to see that my wife had 10,000 texts that month. The vast majority were to my BFF -- our neighbor, father of our kid's best friends, husband of my wife's BFF, etc. I brought it up and both of them explained it away as "A mistake", "Just innocent talk", etc. and that they would stop. I bought it.

That was 3 months prior to DDay.

[This message edited by Crushed7 at 11:03 AM, October 24th (Monday)]

- Putting password protection on her phone and her PC when she had never done that before

- Increased instances of working late and/or weekends.

- Getting dressed up for work on weekends because "there may be some higher-ups working there, too, and I want to look my best!" Uh huh...and what about the perfume? Are they going to sniff you too? (Turns out at least one of them was)

- Big decrease in physical intimacy

- Going by herself to "church" on Sunday afternoons...and taking about 3 hours to do so. "Oh, but the line for confession was soooo long." Really? It was never like that when I went.

In retrospect, I can't imagine how I could have possibly missed so many red flags. My IC suggested that, perhaps subconsciously, I didn't want to see them. I can't really disagree with that.

There weren’t any. The only ones I have been able to come up with are a hotel receipt (company expenses) which showed “occupancy – 2” He said it was a mistake, there was only him. There was nothing on the bill otherwise, just the room rate.

The other was an aftershave. He said he was in the duty-free with some spare time and had no aftershave with him, so the sales girl gave him a few of the most popular to try. It was Obsession. I reckon MOW had bought it and HE then bought HER a bottle of something in the duty free that was about the same price so that when I did the money (I looked after all the money) and PAID HIS CREDIT CARD, I wasn’t alerted to anything untoward. Duh! It was a shame because I quite liked the fragrance. It went into the bin after d-day. And I have not bought him aftershave since.

But really, those were only with hindsight. And I don’t think anyone should beat themselves up for not seeing red flags or for only seeing things which they can only appreciate from today’s view point. Trust is something you give with the expectation that it will not be abused. It is the fault and flaw in the WS for choosing to abuse your trust, not yours for giving it.

Well I have a lot of years of mistakes I can pick apart. The phone calls and texts are the major mistake. I too paid all the bills for the family. I know MOW changed her phone number after I confronted WH about the amount of calls with her. I am pretty sure he told me the new number that showed up on his bill was someone else (male friend) and I didn't follow up. I won't make that mistake again and around the time that the A went PA again, the phone company stopped sending detailed billing- coincident? Sounds like it since I spoke with them and they said they decided to do that to save paper and that you had to contact them to change it to detailed again...and of course there is a fee.

Keeping his phone on him all the time and freaking out if I picked it up.

Going out for no real reason- just to get out of the house because he was restless and wanted to "do his thing".

So many others but really the main red flag that I missed was the phone.

She was really good at hiding her tracks and lying. Its hard for me to lie, because I immediately feel guilt and look guilty, but not her, she is masterful at deceit. It was only after I caught her after several years of going behind my back that I started piecing it all together...the late nights at work, the extreme attachment to her phone, the flirtatious behavior I didn't notice, the complete falloff in sex.I was a damned fool.

I was so oblivious to so many things. I was down right dumb. I believed in him for so long and trusted him so much I guess I got comfortable. He worked out of town allot. I should have checked up on him even if I did trust him. Just to be safe. I was the one who liked sex more than him. So I thought that meant something. Occasionally I would get hang up phone calls. And got a few where a woman would ask for a man his name similar to my husbands. My husband was always out of town. So I thought , well if he's cheating why would she call when he was gone? Wouldn't he be with her? It went right over my dumb head. The big one was he stopped calling me on his way home from work. He had a two hour drive. Said he was just stressed about work. Which didn't make any sense. Because he always said talking to me made him feel better. Oh yea and there was the time I found the weird hair on him. And knew it didn't belong to anybody in our house but I just didn't think anything about it. I figured there was reasonable explanation. And I guess I just figured why would a man with ED who makes excuses not to try with his wife try with someone else. I still don't understand. And the phone thing. He was glued to his phone. He had it password protected. I never asked to look at his phone because I trusted him. But he was always private about his phone I kinda was too and had absolutely nothing to hide so I figured it didn't mean anything.

[This message edited by Witchywoman at 5:03 PM, October 24th (Monday)]

Reading these, my biggest one I missed was how

she would volunteer to go to the store after

she just commuted home from work.

She always hated having to do that before she

started talking to the OM. She did it so she

could talk to him.

Phone records proved that.

You know what,i knew immediately something had happened ,the next day after he apparently slept with 'it' was the day i went for our babies scan and I found out we were having a daughter, i rang him excitedly (as he was away with the army)to share the news and he was awful he just had no interest (which was a contrast from just how he had been feeling about our long awaited pregnancy) from there in out until he got home he was an awful person, not that i spoke to him much ...he pretty much ignored me and didn't take my calls....i found her phone number within a day of him being home....the rest is history.

#2 i knew we were in trouble the day she admitted her husband had a drug addiction and that she was leaving him....i warned my h to stay out of it but he saddled up his white horse and white knighted his marriage to smithereens and i never missed it .....i predicted it ....he was the one who failed to see the signs.....just grand.

The whole platonic friendship they had. OW could do no wrong. Anything she needed, my Fwh was there in a heartbeat. I played the not jealous wife and tried to be grown up and adult about it. I gave them the rope.

WBF came back from a "very stressful" work trip - stressful for him so not much communication. This was the trip where he had his A.

I was cooking and there was a comment I made about cheating - something to do with eating or a game, and his whole body froze up - didn't laugh at my joke.

Thought it was a bit odd.

A few hours later I found the text messages and all hell broke loose.

Signs I missed are almost embarrassing to tell because if it was someone else telling me these things, I would have known immediately their spouse was lying and cheating.

In my first M, a woman had been calling my house asking for him. This was in 1988 before cell phones and things were just different.

He made up some story about who she was and that somebody had told her that he could fix her dishwasher (he did that sort of thing sometimes). But another time he told me something totally different, forgetting what he told me previously. He was a chronic liar and I knew that. I figured this woman was "chasing" him but it seemed impossible he was actually involved with her. How could I have been so dumb? I still wonder that all these years later. I didn't have my light bulb moment until she actually called ME and told me they were involved and that he had told her that he was divorced. (I was 7 months pregnant with our 3rd child at the time, certainly not divorced).

At least that light bulb moment did wake me up to who I was really married to. It was a changing moment for my entire life, a turning point. At that time I was a SAHM for the ten years we'd been married. After that I started college, and now I have a Ph.D. I don't regret my 10 years as an SAHM; in fact I am glad I had those years with my kids. I am just saying that something changed for me personally, about the direction my life was to take, when I discovered that cheating during my pregnancy. Of course he was a serial cheater, most of which I only know about because he confessed it after that huge D-day. So yeah, my first H never pulled such a number on me again and I saw the signs quickly when he was involved with yet another OW in 1992. As soon as I even saw the sign, I told him I wanted a divorce. (He ended up marrying that final OW, not the one from when I was pregnant, or any of the many ONS and prostitutes...)

But, can you believe I was just as stupid in my second M? I did find out he had an EA going with a woman from his past in March of 2006 (I joined this forum in April that year). But I believed him that it was over and thought we were doing okay all through that summer, and into the fall that awful year when my step-DD died. One day one of my step-DDs called me, during that awful time of grief, and told me her father was cheating on me, and with whom (yes it was THAT OW). He had cheated on her mother with the same OW 25 years earlier and she was old enough at that time to remember bits and pieces of the details of that. But I did not believe her! I made excuses for him, and said she had been "chasing him" earlier that year but I was sure this was all a rumor and it was not possible they were involved at the time she called!

Well, yeah, I feel pretty stupid that I did not believe my step-DD when she actually TOLD Me. Of course later I learned it was true; my light bulb moment came when I caught him talking to her on a secret trac phone. It has been almost ten years since that awful D-day and there may not have been a big turning point in my life, like in my first M, but it was a time where I have tried harder to make myself more open to seeing signs that things are not as I want to believe they are.

[This message edited by Bobbi_sue at 6:36 AM, October 25th (Tuesday)]

Actually, now thinking back there were a few things early on I missed. Back in February we both got new phones. WS mentioned later that he didn't want to sign his new phone into iCloud or turn on find my iPhone because it took up storage space. At the end of March, his old iPhone went missing. We were letting the kids play on them and he insisted one of them lost it. In April I found it on a shelf under some clothes while cleaning his closet. I didn't tell him I found it but he immediately asked if I did after he realized I'd cleaned up his closet. I guess he realized some of his texts were showing up on his old phone still and didn't want to get caught. COW and him started texting at the end of March oddly enough. Hmmmm...

Dday #1: as soon as I took the pregnancy test he said, "let's not tell anyone. He flipped when I asked how we would rearrange the other kids' rooms

He was always concerned about COW and how she was uncomfortable with the other women not getting along in the office

He stayed up late on his phone. He worked late and went into the office early. He quit helping me with the kids and was never available if I needed him to help with pick ups.

He forgot to do anything I asked

Dday2: same woman- 6 months later-- False R. EA turned PA (one time). Miscarried last baby. 9 weeks pg with another baby. I noticed almost nothing. :(. I remember saying please get off your phone a lot. The day he met her in the hotel he texted me cheerily asking if we had plans that night as he needed to work longer. It is now weird that he actually came home early. I guess the afternoon in the hotel didn't take as long as he thought. I had picked a fight the night before because I was feeling insecure and took a few times he forgot things for me as a sign he was no longer trying. I guess subconsciously I was right. I asked him why her number was still in his phone and he said he just hadn't deleted it and she had a new number anyway. I asked, how do you know that? He didn't have an answer. We made up, made love, and the next morning he told me he loved me. He didn't come home that afternoon. I found the first set of emails the next evening and the most incriminating set of deleted emails I recovered two days after that.

I didn't miss anything. I just chose to believe her when she continuously denied everything.