SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Again, we all know that you are still reeling and hoping beyond hope that your wife/marriage/family is different than the text book scenarios that we keep laying before you.

I get it. I was paralyzed by disbelief. How could my storybook marriage and perfect family of four – lovely house, great jobs, bright and beautiful son and daughter – not be all that it seemed?

The only consequences she is feeling from her despicable and destructive behavior is an even more devoted husband.

And your wanting to help her – are you not already? No consequences? Bottle of wine and favorite TV show? Suggesting the next wonderful vacation (that she dismisses)? I guess I’m wondering just what pain you are witnessing in her.

Sex or no sex – she has pulled another person into your marriage. Is this in any way acceptable to you?

You are deserving of being someone’s one and only. You are deserving of faithful and true love.

Take your power back.

"facts"

-says she didnt have sex with with

-says she didnt want to nor does she

-purely friendship, but knew i wouldnt approve hence the lies

-doesnt want to be with him at all

-cut off all communication, told him not to contact her again

-committed to me that if he did contact her she would tell me

-understands that if she does talk to him and i find out, all bets are off

-at one point, would talk about the affair

-at one point was remorseful and loving and promised to do everything to fix what she had done

-said she wants to go to IC

then i forced her to tell me more and she confessed about the weekend

since then, she wont talk about the affair nor will she commit to saying she wants to stay in marriage. just doesnt want to talk about it at all. its like coming clean made her angry and made her want to leave me. she says its because a lot of things were said and done. remember, i called her a whore and tore up the outfit she wore on her date.

purely friendship, but knew i wouldnt approve hence the lies

So why are you afraid of contacting the OBS if it was purely just a friendship?

She's basically just gas lighting and rug sweeping you. Nice. Good to know that atleast one of you is willing to do anything to save the marriage.

There is one thing you can do to see if they are having sex. Since she seems consequence free so far start the 180 and stick to it. It is for your health not hers. It is not to save the marriage it is to save your mental health.

Let this go on. Soon, one of two things will happen. She will see what she has done and begin to work on herself and come clean, or she will feel she is in the clear and soon go back to her old ways.

You in the meanwhile have hired a PI. I know it sounds old fashioned but one of the most successful posters here did just that to get confirmation.

If in a few days or weeks you get confirmation that they spent a couple of hours in a private place, you will have your answer.

In any case, you have no reason to continue your current course, which is to spiral between loving and then confrontive behaviors, none of which seems to have an effect.

Two things. 1. Yes, the advice would be the same if she didn't have sex with him. She took her time, attention, and love to someone outside the marriage. And she was comfortable lying to your face. 2. You need to stop thinking of the AP as a predator. 18 is NOT a child. A six year age gap is nothing. She CHOSE him. Maybe she told you some things about how terrible he is, as she no doubt told him how terrible your marriage was. She is a liar, not a victim.

Thanks for the summary. That makes the current status clearer.

However no change in recommendation. You both need IC. The sooner the better.

I still dont understand why should would want to risk a good marriage with a man she loves to be friends with a man who treated her badly.

Does your SIL confirm or deny that she was with her sister every moment?

Either way, whether physical or not, I agree with RedFury:

She took her time, attention, and love to someone outside the marriage

In hiding it she proved herself untrustworthy and had an EA.

rf

she was a 16 year old sophomore in high school and he was a college graduate. not splitting hairs, but that is against the law. today would have him labelled as a sex offender. you're correct tho, 6 year age gap is nothing, except when it is.

dont care about that tho, it was 200 years ago. just trying to paint a deeper picture of what a pos this guy is. she was a quest to him then and continues to be now.

im reading and trying to process the 180...

stevsn

i have not confirmed with the sil.

i am too busy rug sweeping. i have thought about asking her, believe me, but it will be damaging. one of the things that upset my wife the most was when i texted her sister and told her i knew.

i should add that to the list of when she turned. when i called her a whore, tore her clothes and told her sister i knew.

her sister and i are very close. she was put in a terrible spot and made all the wrong choices but this isnt her fault.

also, regarding why shed lie and risk our marriage...

she told me that she knew it was wrong. that i wouldnt approve but she wanted to talk to him and have him as a friend. she swore inside out that friendship was all she wanted. this guy looks a little too much like sloth from the goonies. i know she wasnt driven by sex because i knew about their sex life. our sex is really good. in fact, if she could go have better sex, id encourage it because it might kill her. im not propping myself up, i just know exactly what works for her and some things cant be faked.

anyway, she said she liked talking to him and enjoyed "catching up." ya know that pissed me off too. they literally have no common friends, so what the fuck did they "catch up" about? the first iphone? britney spears break down?

shit.

[This message edited by thepainisreal at 9:23 AM, July 18th (Tuesday)]

i am too busy rug sweeping.

I gotta hand it to you, if nothing else, I appreciate your honesty

Reading your last few posts it's clear she sees you as a nag and a scold. So when you ask if she wants to go somewhere on YOUR birthday, she accuses you of obsessing and clams up.

No more of this. No more wondering about what to do. No more self loathing.

Do the 180.

Schedule a poly

Hire a pi.

Do the 180

One more time, do the 180. Got it?

Oh yeah, one more thing..........do the 180 and take back your life.

In 1983, my XWH cheated on me. We'd been married 11 yrs. and had 2 young children. I was outraged; I went ballistic; I cried, I wailed, I begged, I pleaded, I threatened, I cajoled, I did everything. And through the sheer force of my personality and character and steadfastness and morals and personal strength, I overcame the whole thing and fixed us both and we waltzed into the rest of our life together.

Things were pretty good for the next 20 yrs. but then he lost his job at age 55 and was forced into early retirement. He thought he was a big shot and it knocked him down very badly. Then his mother died and he began to withdraw from me in little subtle ways. I see all this in hindsight. The other thing I can say but never realized until now, is he had the upper hand during those 20 years. Not overtly but, again in hindsight, he'd lost some level of respect for me.

Anyway, he's been depressed and grumpy for the last 10 years and I pretty much forced him to go his 50th H.S. class reunion last October. He came home a different person, cold and distant with me but full of life and enthusiasm for the first time in a long time. He now lives 1100 miles away with his old girlfriend from H.S.

Don't be like me; take control of it now or you will regret it. Badly.

And don't kid yourself because you are me. Totally, 100%. I've been following your thread and it's bringing everything into focus for me and helping to to understand what happened to me and how did I get here and now I know.

In order to placate him and keep him from being annoyed, I gave up all my hobbies, all my friends, all my everything. I hardly spent any money on myself but he always had the best of everything.

Don't be like me. You have a chance to learn from the wise old crone. Do it.

you guys are so helpful. each of your stories are terrible.

the fact that after whatever amount of time your experience occurred, it still affects you so much that you come here and try to help others.

it says a lot about ppl from both sides. there are many people that are pieces of shit and dont care who they hurt but on the other side, there are good and decent ppl that want to help others.

i want this to end well for me and my family. i suspect it may not end the way i want but all will be ok.

i want my wife and my marriage and my family to stay intact and the way it has been forever. i know that no matter what, life will go on, i will continue to love my kids and i will raise them to learn from others mistakes as well as there own. i will continue to teach them that honesty is paramount to everything.

still sucks...

its all about shame - she does not want to feel the shame or be shamed by anyone.

Its kind of like a transactional bribed relationship you are in now. You don't bring up the affair and we can continue the smooth drive into the unknown sunset. If you bring the affair up, then it is going to be a bumpy ride. As long as she controls that unknown hold factor on you - she knows you will behave...

Unfortunately she is in the drivers seat now, where you should be... She knows you are desperate not to loose her, so she turned things around to take the burden off her and it is all on you now...

It makes it harder when you don't have any hardcore evidence of the affair.

Have you or were you able to search through her cell phone records, credit card statements, deleted email history etc? Does she have an android phone - it could reveal a history of her past whereabouts...

[This message edited by downintx at 1:04 PM, July 18th (Tuesday)]

***TMI ALERT***

My and my fWH sex was was great, too! Unbelievable sex, hot, exciting any good adjective put in front of sex and that is how it was. In addition, the POS OW that my fWH had sex with was close top 300 pounds and fugly! Just to put this in perspective, I am NOT anywhere close to 300 pounds (about half that) and if I do say so myself (even though my self esteem is still trying to crawl back out), I am not unattractive at all.

Don't you see? It doesn't matter what the other person looks like, what the other person's character is...when a WS cheats, they don't really care who/what it is! BTW...she was married to this POS at one point, right? So why would you even offer his looks as a cop out to NOT having sex with him? She had sex with him when they were married, right?

To answer your question: yes, I would STILL give you the same advice even if (that is a small if) she hasn't had sex with him.

ive checked everything i can find to check. she deleted routinely everything from her phone. but i have the phone records. i dont know HER whereabouts necessarily but i know where my car has been. no idea about texts because there are none on her phone.

she really is never away from the house. i believe the affair was contained to work hours and when i she went out of town.

shes too smart to leave an email trail. i really have no context of the relationship which is either a good thing or a bad thing. i wish i did. sure would make things easier.

as odd as it sounds, i believe what she is saying. when confronted, she is not a good liar. hence my pressing. when i broke her and forced her into telling me about the weekend she was out of town, i could tell there is no more to tell. there was a switch that flipped. i believe it was non-sexual. doesnt make it any better at all, i just dont think she had sex with him.

its always funny to me how much weight people put on the sex. i always think about how little time you spend having sex and how much time we spend doing normal things. thats the part that bothers me. she went shopping with this guy. she had brunch and rode in an uber. she talked on the phone for hours on end. thats the part that hurts.

anyone can fuck someone for 10 minutes. is the hours and hours and hours of interaction that kills.

[This message edited by thepainisreal at 10:22 AM, July 18th (Tuesday)]

I think the reason people are telling you that you need to know if they had sex, isn't because the act is worse than the lies,and emotionally getting close to another man. It's because,if you don't get the full truth, then as barcher here says, you're trying to reconcile with a lying liar that lies. And a still lying WS is still wayward. Wayward behavior is more than the act of cheating. And reconciliation on a bed of lies will crumble. And you would probably eventually find out there was sex, and all if the healing you'd done would be erased.

Make the polygraph appointment.

Man,I am sorry you're having to go through this. She still doesn't get it. It appears as though her lies are easy for her to justify to herself and can't understand why you don't see the justification.

If she's still on the fence after what you've described as a huge effort on your part to make a nice weekend inspite of your suffering, she's not likely to get it without help.

I am thinking MC would be a good step for you two. She seems to think that as long as they didn't have sex, all is fine when the betrayal of lies and hanging out with the POS and then lying to you all along is okay....have you asked her if the shoe was on the other foot how she would feel?

Don't get too hopeful on this as she's clearly in denial and as another poster stated, she doesn't want to own her mistakes and take responsibility for them. I would bet the SIL is giving her a hard time as well...

My wife's PA was with the man who sexually abused her from the age of 12 until 16. He was seventeen at the time. At the time, she was so desperate for attention, she was willing to be loaned out to his friends and participate in threesomes and moresomes.

It took him three days after they reconnected on Facebook to talk her into sexting. It took him another three days to talk her into phone sex. It took him another week to talk her into driving to another state to have sex with him. CSA is a real thing. It really messes with a person's head.

I guess what I really want to tell you is, you don't have the whole story. Have you had an opportunity to check the sexual abuse survivors thread in I can relate? I highly recommend you do.

Yes my wife was pretty sharp about covering up stuff, like deleting emails etc, once she knew I was aware of the affair.

But I did manage to dig up stuff that she failed to properly delete when she knew I had no clue about the affair or other affair from years back.

I would search by his first and last name, email address, words like - hotel etc in the search bar of her email account, and it brought up a lot of emails from years back that she did not think to delete. If you have the time and access to do that you may want to give it a try...

Also, if she is an android user - Chrome & Gmail etc Google keeps a long history of search activity -

you will be amazed at what can be discovered in their searches during the affair - hotels, bars and much worse...

https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity

You would have to have access to her account though, but beware if you log on from a different device, other than the laptop or desktop that she regularly uses... it will send her a warning email to alert her that someone accessed her account from an unknown device...

Get a poly done