SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

naive is as naive does. i believe that she did not have sex with him.

even if she did, the OM certainly didnt contract an STD from my wife and anything he has, his wife certainly has been exposed to.

Sure there is a piece of me that wants to blow up his world, but i do not want to hurt my wife. blowing up the affair would certainly do that.

i hope that every one of you aren't right. i suppose ill find out...

but i do not want to hurt my wife. blowing up the affair would certainly do that.

Can you elaborate on this a bit please? How Would that hurt your WW exactly?

yop

Thepainisreal - we have done everything that we can do to help you. Best of luck.

I hope we are all wrong too, but there's a saying about hope (or wishful thinking in general); hope in one hand, shit in the other and see which one fills up quicker.

Other posters refer to it as hopium as it keeps you detached from your reality and in denial.

Seriously, I wish you an extraordinary amount of good luck with this situation working out like you hope. I just thinking you are setting yourself up for additional pain. I wish you wouldn't, but at the end of the day it's not my nuts your WW is stepping on.

[This message edited by Sanibelredfish at 5:54 PM, July 25th (Tuesday)]

TPIR -

I get the feeling that you're just using this place as your journal. A place to write your thoughts. Is that right?

Fear of blowing up HIS world?

The man has been screwing your wife, and you fear blowing up his world?

You're kidding, right?

Say you're kidding, please.

Your wife knows exactly what she's doing; apparently, she also believes you're a push over, and rightly so.

Man up, and dispense with the sap.

[This message edited by MidnightRun at 6:13 PM, July 25th (Tuesday)]

You don't want to blow up AP's world because it might hurt your wife??? DUDE. Did she care about hurting you???

If you don't tell AP's wife, she will be living in a lie, and as one poster mentioned a few posts back, possibly endangering her health (STD).

What consequences has your wife encountered due to this affair? How are you going to verify that she is being 100% honest and transparent? Because she says she will??

Look at ACTIONS. Words mean nothing. What tangible actions has she taken so far?

This is a long thread. Did your wife get tested for stds?

You tell the other man's wife, because she deserves the truth. He's a cheater,and will move on to the next easy woman who glances his way. You can give this woman the respect your wife didn't.

Naive is as niave does. Indeed

It's great to hear that you met with an IC. Keep it up!

You have a long way to go but I am hopeful you will get there in time.

As I alluded to in my first post here, odds are high that you will rugsweep this, fall off the radar here, and have another DDay. It's not the end of the world, worse things have happened.

Please keep working on you. Make yourself the strongest you that you can be. For yourself and your kids, and for your WW too.

i hope that every one of you aren't right. i suppose ill find out...

I hope you are the one in a million but if you're not come on back. You might catch a little "I Told You So" but you'll get some help as well. I suspect we'll see you again. Good luck

im not coming here to journal.

im a lost man who wants nothing more than to go back to where i was before this.

i do not know what that path is or if its possible. i do know that im willing to try.

i really do appreciate everyone's comments and advice. some are certainly tough, but i get where you are coming from. we are all hurt and have all been betrayed. im not past this by any means. i sure as shit want to be and we'll see where it goes.

and if it goes badly, i will be back to eat my shit sandwich. that is a promise.

(not that im going anywhere...)

good luck to you TP. You're on a long and painful journey no matter what path you take.

If you have any questions, we'll be here.

TPIR

I read your first post and most of the posts following it. Then I read your last post…

Look friend – the ONLY way to deal with major problems is through reality.

In your first post you state you don’t want to hurt her, don’t want a divorce, don’t want her embarrassed, want her to love you… In your last post you state you want to go back to before this happened.

It’s not going to happen…

What has taken place has taken place. Your wife can’t be un-infidelitized or un-sexed by OM. She can’t be un-cheated. It can’t un-happen.

Your marriage is like a china-vase that fell off the shelf and broke into a million pieces. What you can do is try to gather all the pieces and do your best to glue it together again. Maybe a piece or two might be missing. Maybe you can fill the gaps with glue. On the positive then structurally a heavily and well glued vase might be stronger than the original vase. But then… MAYBE… just maybe… you need to realize that too much is missing, too much damage has been done and your only option would be to dispose of the wreckage and move on.

What you are doing is looking at the rubble of the smashed vase trying to place flowers in it and acting like it’s OK.

I am NOT telling you to give up!

But wishing nothing had happened and being too afraid to really confront and deal with the real issues… that won’t get you or your marriage anywhere positive.

You need to deal with your problems with reality.

That reality is that IF your biggest fear is that she doesn’t love you.

If your biggest fear is hurting her. If you don’t want divorce at any cost…

Then accept that she has lovers.

After all – if she can slip away and have “not sex” (as she seems to have convinced you she has had plenty of) with another man – then you won’t have to divorce her. Who knows, maybe you two can create a code so when she tells you Friday evening is “bridge with the girls” you can pretend to believe her despite knowing she’s having not-sex with another man.

If that doesn’t sound good…

Then really consider what it is you want.

AND BE REALISTIC!!!!

REMEMBER – the vase is broken. The marriage is in infidelity. One option you can’t wish for is that this hasn’t happened. It has. It can’t un-happen.

Once again: I am NOT telling you to divorce.

Divorce or reconciliation… It’s not really the true issue. The real issue is that you want out of infidelity. IMHO what you can do is set off on that path. You can create situations and pressure that might entice her to want out of infidelity too. BUT… YOU have to be willing to keep on marching out of infidelity even if she decides to go have not-sex with other men.

You seen many responses and the advice is fairly uniform. The problem is your response is not logical. You told her you needed her to leave. When things got real she says she wants to stay married. Did she say she loved you? You didn't mention it. It's a glaring omission. Then, when you were specifically told not to tell her your plans, you told her you would contact the Posom's wife . She literally told you to rot in hell. She literally told you him and his wife and their marriage,or at least his marriage was worth far more to her than your's or your kid's family. Being torn as only a cheated on spouse can be torn, you poked at the upside and swallowed the downside. The problem is you haven't let it sink in what she actually told you in an effort to see the bright side.

I did more or less the same thing. The problem is by the time my fiancé was fully back on board, for me, the special relationship we had was no longer special. You can swallow a lot, like I did but that doesn't mean you can keep it down.

You will have to eventually have to tell the Posom's wife because you have to know if you really mean that little to you wife. Wait a while. See if this doesn't boil over. Your wife basically told you she loves you enough to stay with you for now but not that die for you love like you have for her.

I have to say it bothers me how negative and critical some people are on here. Do all of you forget what it's like in the beginning. Your world is turned upside down. You are in do much pain. You spiral back and forth through various emotions. You try and find your strength, you think you've found it and then it's gone just as fast. You try to hold on to the life that you thought you had with every thread of your being. Your hard on yourself for not being stronger. I still remember thise feelings very vividly.

OP, people will give you all kinds of advice. Some good, others not so good. Here's the thing. What you decide to do is your choice and your choice only. You don't have to offer explanations to anyone because, even though our situations are all similar, no one but you walks in your shoes. There is no rush to make any decisions. Take your time. Do it at your own pace. You are the one who is going to have to live with your decision whatever it is.

Also, I'm sure I'm not going to be popular saying this, although, I personally would not want to tell the AP spouse or partner. I would not want to be the source of someone else's pain. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Cheaters eventually get caught. I'm certain she will find out in do time, if she already doesn't suspect something. Their marriage is there business, your marriage is yours. Sometimes I think people do it to be vendictive to the AP. It's not your responsibility to out him.

That's just my two cents.

he tried to start a relationship with my wife 2 years after we were married and then now

T-pain, I noticed this in one of your posts. So this was about 13 years ago. And he has been married the last ten years. There wasn't any subsequent discussion of this on your thread. No further details were given.

Look at parallels (and differences) between the two episodes. Look at each one through the lens of the other based on what you know about each one.

Something like this: did you discover the first instance or did she reveal it to you? Did she show a strong boundary in the first instance? Was the second instance an escalation over what happened the first time? In what ways? Duration? In-person? How was the first instance handled between the two of you? Was her sister involved?

See what looking at both instances as a whole tells you. Tells you what she needs to work on. Tells you what you need to work on.

To begin to even THINK about reconciliation, there must be honesty and mutual respect.

No soap here.

You're living in fantasy land.

[This message edited by MidnightRun at 12:27 AM, July 26th (Wednesday)]

crushednheartbroken,

I have to say it bothers me how negative and critical some people are on here. Do all of you forget what it's like in the beginning.

No, we DIDN'T forget. Thats why everybody is screaming their heads off - "LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES! DON'T DO WHAT I DID"

Cheaters eventually get caught. I'm certain she will find out in do time, if she already doesn't suspect something.

Not true. Statistically, most of the cheaters go undetected.

[This message edited by DarkHoleHeart at 2:23 AM, July 26th (Wednesday)]

Cheaters eventually get caught. I'm certain she will find out in do time, if she already doesn't suspect something.

If you read through all the threads here you will see that a statistically significant amount of cheaters are exposed by the other betrayed spouses for this very ethical reason.

Telling the Other Spouse may make you feel better, but you don’t have the right to do it.   As Katie Lercsh wrote (someone who is very knowledgeable on the subject and has written extensively),

Think for a second about how dreadful and betrayed that you feel right now. Do you want to take the responsibility for bestowing this on someone else? Doesn’t it make more sense to concentrate on the fall out of your own marriage rather than taking on someone else’s issues. And, if you can think logically about it, what good outcome can come of this? It’s highly likely that her husband is not going to great you with a warm reaction. And, it’s also highly unlikely that inserting yourself into someone else’s life is going to help your situation. At this point, your number one priority should be yourself. How is inserting yourself into someone else’s life going to help you?  Because what is going to help you the most, and what you really need right now, is reassurance, time, remorse and accountability from your husband, and for both of you to work together to pick up the pieces and fix what was broken. The other woman (and her husband) do not fit into this equation. In fact, it’s entirely best if you cease any contact with them immediately and definitively.

What she’s saying is not only is it a bad idea to focus your attention in this way if you are truly wanting to reconcile your marriage, but also that you have no right, and it’s unethical, to interfere in someone else’s marriage, even if this person interfered in yours.  Your hurt is not license to purposely hurt someone else.  Ethically, you need to stay out of their lives.   Two wrongs don’t make a right.  You aren’t God.  You don’t know all the particulars of their lives and how disclosure might affect the other spouse, their children. Anyone.  What if domestic violence results from disclosure?  What if the spouse commits suicide after ingesting this news?  Are you really prepared to accept that responsibility? An ethical person would not.   Telling may horribly backfire in some cases.