20yrs,
“She could just leave, I asked her as much and said she didn't want to.”
Infidelity creates an atmosphere where we feel like we have to verify that the sky is still blue – I have been there, and I hated it – but when you think about it, you have offered your wife the option to go and be with the other man, and she does not want that. When offered that choice, she picked you and the kids over him. And that decision was made even though he had discussed ‘being there’ for her. Your wife making that decision puts the affair into context; it was not an exit affair, and when offered the stark choice between you or the OM, she chose you. Trust is still an issue, but there were no lies involved in that choice; she could have gone, but she didn’t. There’s a truth in that action that does not need verification, it is there in black and white.
“She is asking for another chance and wants to prove herself as a better mother and wife. Of course its possible she is lying. Especially given previous history but if that is my conclusion then I should just end this. At the moment my gut tells me she is not lying.”
Having chosen to stay with you and the kids, in preference to leaving, your wife will know she has to try and redeem herself. And unless she is totally callous and self-centered, she is bright enough to realise what she has done and how much pain she has caused you. So, in the act of opting to stay, she knows she has to up her game and try and make up the ground she has lost because of the affair. As she has chosen to stay, I cannot see why she would lie about wanting to be a better wife and mother, because if she had no commitment to doing that, what is she staying for? She is not stupid, quite the opposite, and when offered the choice of staying or going, she will have considered how much she would be throwing away if she left. So she does place value in you, the marriage, and the kids. Even at the height of the affair, she will not have been without love for you and the kids, she just got caught up in the ‘drug’ of the affair, which was a separate thing to the marriage and family, not a replacement for them. And her decision to stay confirms that.
Affairs can happen for a multitude of reasons, and they can have different ‘characters’. In your situation, it appears that your wife established a second relationship, outside the marriage and family, but with no desire to end/destroy the marriage and family. That sometimes gets called ‘cake eating’, where a person mistakenly thinks they can conduct two relationships simultaneously, side by side, without either one impacting on the other. As countless threads in the forum show, that never works. But just because a person starts a second relationship does not automatically mean they stop loving the people in their first, and main, relationship. Is that selfish? Yes. Is it disloyal? Yes. Is it deluded and potentially destructive? Yes. But at the start, affairs can have the same ‘taboo’ attractions of getting into drugs. And the more I read up on affairs, the more sources I find that say affairs really can have a drug-like effect on peoples’ minds and personalities. Call it a ‘fog’, call it a ‘high’, but the one thing it does not seem to be is something that is done entirely rationally, or with what we would think of as ‘normal’ thinking. And as a result, it can take people a period of time to get out of the ‘drugged’ affair state of mind and back to reality. It sounds like your wife is coming out of the cake-eating, two-relationships-at-once period, and faced with the choice of one or the other, she has made her choice, and she knows she has to make an effort to make that choice work. Which brings me back to my reasoning about why lying through her teeth at this point would make no sense, and it could backfire badly on her if it makes you decide you want to call time on things.
So although there are no cast-iron guarantees of what your wife’s thoughts and intentions are, she would really have to be an idiot to have chosen you and the family over the OM and then endanger the rebuilding of that relationship by lying and continuing the affair. I know she is guilty of lying and betraying, but look at the position she is in. You have the power to end the marriage if you choose to, which leaves her where? Either on her own, or with the OM, who she may have felt was fine as an affair partner, but as her choice shows, she clearly does not think he is someone she wants to spend the rest of her life with. And she would then have to face her relatives and friends and explain why she is in that situation, which is something many waywards dread having to do.
Which is a very long-winded way of trying to say why I think it is very much I her interests to re-establish herself in the marriage and family, which is what she says she wants to do. And you feel, in your gut, that she means it. What I have tried to do is see whether there could be reasons to back that up. So for the time being, as you would like reconciliation to happen (even though you struggle with some elements of it), I think you are best to proceed as you are, trusting that she means what she says in relation to the marriage and family, and doing positive things like working through books with her, perhaps going to counselling together, etc.
There are all kinds of issues with me trying to get over this that may lead to a seperate end. But I am trying to reconcile and find a way to move past that. That is my real struggle. I am glad something came out of the email and it has reaffirmed the need to do something and not continue rug sweeping.
I found it very hard to get past some of the basic, black-and-white ‘facts’ of infidelity. I also had a horrible thing where instead of mind movies, I had a kind of Jiminy Cricket voice in my head that would describe certain aspects in the most unpleasant, emotive way, as if it was deliberately trying to stir me up into a rage. It was a terrible period. However, you have resources available to you that I didn’t. For a start, you have this forum, but beyond that, you have the option of Individual Counselling. I really think you should give that a try, find one who specialises in infidelity if you can, because you will be able to talk through the elements that you are struggling with face-to-face, with another human being.
Without going into each individual issue that I had, there was one angle that I did not consider, but which I think is an important element for any betrayed person thinking of reconciliation to mull over. It is this:
Does what happened in the past mean there is no chance of a ‘happy’ future?
The problem with infidelity is that it can become a fixed point in time that we keep going back to, and that focus on the past means we barely think about post-affair future, and whether or not it could be good, bad, or indifferent. We kind of stop, and even though time is passing, we have our own personal courtroom drama playing out in our head, day after day, week after week. Our waywards are in the dock, and on some days we are the prosecuting attorney, on others we may be the defence, and on yet others we feel numb and just sit in the jury, thinking, “I really don’t know what to make of this”.
Perhaps what we need to do to enter the reconciliation process properly is to reach a judgement, close the case, and mentally agree with ourselves that the details of the case do not need any more thinking through or dwelling on. That is very hard to do, which is why people say the reconciliation process takes time.
If we are able to close the case, we can then focus on what we need, and what it will take, to have a ‘happy’ future. And that should be the target for both parties; ‘happy’, not just scraping by.
Although there are bound to be elements of the affair that hurt, and with which you struggle, you should also ‘listen’ to your own inner voice. The fact is, you did not throw your wife out with a couple of suitcases when the affair was discovered. You have not filed for divorce. You are hoping for a reconciliation, if you can get past the issues that bother you, and if your wife is genuine in her stated aims of rehabilitating herself in the marriage. So I think that as you ponder the elements that hurt you, and make you feel like calling time on things, you should do so acknowledging that what you as a person actually want is reconciliation and a restoration of the marriage. What you ‘want’ is very important in these matters, even if you or other people can make arguments that go in the opposite direction. What everyone here would say, of course, is that you must not rug-sweep in an attempt to bury the facts and make achieving your ‘wanted’ goal that much easier to reach. I agree with that completely.
So here’s a suggestion, which you can take or leave. You say there are aspects that you are struggling with. Why don’t you keep a notebook (or whatever), and write them down as they occur to you, put them into some semblance of order, and then talk them through with your wife, and/or with a counsellor? I really think that working through those things – the most troublesome and contentious things - with your wife could be a way for getting her to understand what you are struggling with as you try to save the marriage. That way, she will get a much better understanding of what you are going through, and based on that, she can try and do whatever she can to help neutralise those issues, and provide reassurance for you. She says she wants to be a better wife and mother, and what you tell her about the issues that could break the likelihood of reconciliation can really give her something to focus her energies on. Show her the wounds she has given you, those that really hurt, and give her the opportunity to try and heal them.
“The letter was pretty emphatic that there would be no contact, nothing more then a nod of acknowledgment. No speaking, not even 'hello' and this was her making a good choice to help the recovery. She stated she was committed and loved me and her family. She expected this distance would be respected. I take it with a grain of salt but also see it as a small, positive step. For me the counselling and reading 'not just friends' will accomplish more towards the reconciliation. That will be my focus now.”
I think that is a good way forward. Of course you won’t feel absolute confidence or trust, that is a given, and those things will only return with time, after hard evidence that they should return. But as your gut tells you that your wife is sincere in what she says, giving your wife as many ways to ‘heal’ the marriage and prove her sincerity would be a good thing. The letter is one. Working through the book, and the counselling are others. If you choose to run with my suggestion of working through the toughest elements that you are struggling with by explaining them to your wife, that is another ‘healing’ thing that she can put her energies into. Quite often, people complain that their wayward spouse isn’t doing much, but I think it can sometimes be hard for them to know what they should be doing beyond saying, “Sorry” every ten minutes. The more things you can think of that your wife can do, the better, for both of you.
Take care, 20yrs. I think that you have a good plan for making progress.