SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

To summarize...

For those of us here who have been betrayed, and genuinely painful as this is to you (and it is because you are a good person) it is a gift. You see who she is. Car failed the test drive...don't buy it and be glad the motor blew on the test drive and not 2 days after the warranty expired (and this one is now used and without a warranty btw)

If she knew this guy before, met up with him for drinks, and had sex...there was a good chance she wanted it going in. Her boundaries suck to day the least. It would be far easier to get a new woman with the right boundaries than change this one's. To me boundaries are like values..they come from our core.

You want to give it a chance, then consider 10 years from now your kids saying that her affair partner is there other dad. You get to drop them off and pick them up every couple days. Oh and maybe you pay her child support for having cheated on you...

Fudge man...RUN.

In fact, get the ring back (if not on well move on) blow up the affair to everyone publicly and move on. She did it she owns it. You hold your head high. Your better than this trash and you find someone better sooner than you think. Don't sugar coat her life. She is n ok longer your problem.

Sorry you lost the dream. Sadly that's all it was because she is not the woman you thought she was.

Wocket,

I am sorry you find yourself in this situation.

IMO so far you have been doing great. It is still very fresh and raw!

Cancelling the wedding is the right move. No matter if you decide to R of break up, you must not married someone you don’t know (sorry but if you never suspected she would be able to cheated on you, you didn’t know her…you don’t know her).

Second, and very important as well. Do not make any decision yet. Remember that you have all the time you need to decide. Do not make any promises (do not say you forgive her, do not say you will be together, do not say you don’t want to see her ever again…you get the idea). Do not make any yells or call he names. (If you lose control, try to be calm and control your anger). Do not allow her to blame you, do not allow her to minimize what she has done (didt she planned the encounter? Or was something that happened because she was drunk (very big difference), is it her first indiscretion or have been others? Did she had an emotional connection with this guy before the meeting (sexiting, I love yous, etc.)

And for the next steps, you should consider:

Do 180. This is not to hurt her, this is for you to detach and be able to make the right call. Is very important to realize and feel, that you will be OK with or without her.

Get legal advice about the house ASAP.

Inform OM wife/girlfriend.

Supporters/Promoters /Enablers of the Affair, are not your friend, cut all contact with them. If your WGirlfriend wants a shot to try to fix things, this people need to be gone from her end too.

Take care of yourself! eat right, try to sleep, exercise.

If you try but fail trying any step (these or others), don’t worry! Try again until you make it. This is not sprint, this is a marathon.

There are many more things but IMO is a good to start.

Last thing, even if you don’t agree with the advice given, don’t leave this place. You don’t have to agree with all post. They are meant to make you consider different angles and give you advice based on people that have overcomer infidelity. Keep reading, keep sharing, keep learning!!! You are on the right place.

Good luck

Wocket, I am so very sorry you are here. You deserve better than this awful painful situation. As you can see, every one has an opinion of what you should do. I would agree with postponing the wedding first and foremost. If you decide to try and work on it, she needs counseling and then you do as a couple. I don't think you have enough time in as a couple to really know each other. Honestly, as someone who was blindsided after 30+ years together, you are young and have no children. She has shown you there are major issues. Take a time out. No one will fault you for doing so. You must decide what you can forgive, live with and if you can trust. And all that takes time. Sending prayers your way!!

To borrow from another SI poster, hope is a vice that causes people to stay in relationships long after their expiration date.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 8:10 AM, May 8th (Tuesday)]

Staying with her, at least from where I stand today, would be the comfortable thing to do. The problem is the best long term solution is often not the path of least resistance.

Honestly right now I’m not sure that is the easiest path. When I try to play out different options in my mind... I feel like packing up and leaving now would be incredibly difficult in the moment... but I think healing would happen faster because I would be moving on moving forward. (I have been cheated on in a previous relationship under very different circumstances and I can say that packing up my bags was hard but as soon as I was out and felt like I had a fresh start... I realized it was going to be better) this time I don’t feel that, I think is because I know In my heart that there is something here worth saving.. I think that’s the big question we have to figure out. I think in a time that is still so raw for you, big decisions are a bad idea, you need time to reflect, time to decide if it is work the at least trying to reconcile.

I actually staying together is going to be a lot harder and lot more work than cutting your losses and walking away

Thanks to everyone for the advice.

I'm not sure what I want to do. She knows the wedding is off indefinitely. I don't want the ring. We're both from considerable means and have good jobs so the money isn't an issue.

Her parents and family members do not know. Neither do mine.

Therapy was helpful. I made it clear that I'm not sure if I want to stay or not.

What I want more than anything else right now is to be able to talk to a real person who is not a contrived relationship (ie a therapist) who will ultimately not judge me for what I decide to do. Someone who has been in my position but stayed Believe it or not, the best person I can think of is her mom. I called told her that she is her father's daughter and apparently that one got my point across.

Wocket,

I think that's a good idea you have to reach out to someone who has stayed before. It's also a good idea to talk to someone who has stayed and regretted it as well as someone who has left and found happiness elsewhere.

I can tell you that the third category seems to be the one you'll encounter in the greatest abundance but that doesn't mean it necessarily is (we just tend to be very vocal here) and it doesn't mean it's necessarily right for you.

Talking to her mother is a good idea and I don't necessarily think she's going to give you bad advice. I just would want you to talk around a bit more.

GOOD NEWS! You happen to be in reading this in the premier location for wounded souls and sufferers of exactly what you are going through right now.

If you want you can pm me and I can even tell you a couple of other members I would suggest reaching out to if you want to do it that way. In fact, I think since your new you can't pm directly so I'll send you one and you can respond if you want.

With all due respect, the best advice you'll get is here. We are all anonymous, we have nothing to gain nor lose from your personal situation, and between us we have many decades of hard-won experience living with betrayal and its aftermath.

From several of your posts, it sounds like you're grasping for somebody to advise you that this isn't a big deal and you should stay. We don't know a lot of the details about your relationship, but from the facts that you have posted, the almost unanimous advice of everybody here is that the best thing for you is to move on. This is objective advice from people with no stake in your outcome. There is no way her heart is invested in a committed marriage with you. A heart invested in a committed marriage does not leave an evening with her fiancé, get together with an ex and fuck him, and then come home and expect the marriage to move forward.

I'm curious to know what she said to you that Sunday morning after she confessed the affair. Was it literally just two days ago? Did she cry? Apologize? Ask you to stay with her? Where did she sleep that night? Where did she sleep last night. Do you have any way of knowing whether she has hooked up with the other dude again since Saturday night?

^^^^^^^^

I agree with this man. I know it hurts but if you don't face the facts of the situation now they are going to come back and bite you.

Remember that we are here for YOU. I know how much I've had the people and advice of this board riding along with me in my own journey and I honestly think I might be in prison or the hospital if I did n't have it.

I think the best threads for him to read are by TheBlindsided.

I will PM and ask him to post here. It’s been a year since DD. His wife just stayed out all night with AP again.

Wocket ,

If you had a crystal ball and could see into the future and see her betraying you this way would you have asked her to marry you ? That is what you have now.. A very up close and personal view of the future with this woman ..

My XWW cheated on me during our engagement and I had two Discovery days post marriage .. She had shown me who she really was early in the relationship I just refused to believe her.. Now 3 kids later , 2 in college I was robbed of more than 20 years of life because I stayed the first time.

This is who she is!!! Plain and simple...

CDB

wocket,

Good for you for the 'like father, like daughter' statement to your fiancé. It's ok if you want insight into reconciliation from her mother. Keep in mind two things:

1. Her reconciliation journey will not be your reconciliation journey. Read in the Reconciliation forum on SI and you'll see the tough road of that journey. From lots of members with many perspectives and situations.

2. She will want what is best for her daughter. And that is you.

You are going to be struggling with this decision about whether to stay with her and reconcile, or leave. I want to expand your thought process a bit. Your primary goals should be to recover from her betrayal (with or without her), reconcile yourself to what she did (with or without her), and heal (with or without her). The "with or without her" is important because Reconciliation of your relationship with her may not be possible or ultimately successful. So the decision to stay with her or not has to be considered in the context of the primary goal, your healing.

I'm going to point out a scenario from the future if you chose to stay with her, reconcile yourself to what she has done, and marry her. That scenario, that image, is of you at the marriage ceremony. You must come to understand that her betrayal will come into your mind as you stand together with her. Should that scenario come to pass, I hope you are healed so the happiness of that day is not ruined.

Perhaps that snapshot from the future ought to be your measure of what you commit yourself to.

I think it is a great idea that you have reached out to somebody that has dealt with this personally, but I don’t think her mother is a good choice. There is obviously a huge conflict of interest.

Mom’s goal is solely what is in the best interest of our daughter!

Her goal is not what is in your best interest.

She may view what is in her daughter’s best interest as getting you to marry her.

I strongly suggest that you continue to reach out to other people and have those heart-to-heart conversations with them. I think you should have a conversation with somebody who stayed, another person who stayed and later left, and somebody who left shortly thereafter.

But please remember that this incident happened just last weekend! You still have to comprehend what happened.

She needs to comprehend what happened.

I strongly suggest that you widen your circle of people who know what happened! You need to tell her family, your family, all of your friends. This is especially the case in that you are going to need them to help you find people that you can talk to you.

Also, I’ve suggested that you grab that rain as quickly as possible, not necessarily for the monetary reasons, but at the huge symbol of what she has done and the consequences. She needs to see that that ring is no longer on her finger. And it is not their Soley because she wanted to go out and get laid. Sorry to be crass and brutal, but that’s what happened, she left you Saturday night, and she knew even before she left you, that she wanted to have sex with that other friend.

I also strongly suggest that you look into setting up a poly graph for her. Tell her that you plan on setting up the polygraph, and then ask her is there anything else that she wants to tell you

Good luck and stay strong

Don't even consider going thru with the wedding. This is just the beginning of your heartbreak. She will do it again after things calm down. Do you really want to live like that? Waiting for the other shoe to fall? Find yourself a GOOD woman.

What is the current living and sleeping situation?

Sorry you are here. The advice given by people on here is spot on. Get away from this toxic person. While your heart may be hurting now, your entire being (mind, body, and soul) will thank you in the long run. There is no need for you to torture yourself with the ever nagging possibility that this woman could cheat again in your future with her. Take care of priority number one and dont let her tear you down. Build yourself up, and begin anew.

So she has a "ONS" with an old friend while engaged, was this a last fling with an old flame before she puts on the wedding ring? Seems odd that she, drunk or not would just go bang an old friend for the first time now.

Do you think that she has been faithful up until now

She came home drunk and confessed, I am not sure what that means.

And unless she or he had condoms they went without protection. Some people always carry them, if you two use them maybe she has them with her just in case.

IMO this is not a good foundation to build a marriage upon. Maybe able to do a year or two of work to rebuild before marriage.

But is it worth it...waiting for the time in 5 years when she comes home from a country club party at 4:30 and admits to drunkenly shagging another dude....

Wocket, her Mother is going to advise you from a posture of what is good for her daughter. Please don't deceive yourself about this. You seem to be looking for a rationale which will give you comfort in staying with your cheating fiance. That is your prerogative, sir. However, don't deceive yourself about what you're signing up for if you marry her. You know her now in a way you didn't just several days ago, accept that as a guide for your actions, sir. Marry her and you're in for this again.

Sorry to hear about your situation wocket. I must say that I find it a little fishy that she went alone to meet with a guy that she had previously had relations with and didn't take you with her. I wonder if she would have approved if the roles were reversed and she knew the whole story before you went.

In any case, alcohol is no excuse, she knew who she was going to meet. She also knew that she was engaged and in a committed relationship. She too knew that this could jeopardize her future marriage. She chose to drop her pants for another guy. This looks an awful lot like a vision of things to come.

You may want to read in the Healing Library on this site to see what true remorse looks like. Many of us thought we were seeing remorse until we read about what it really is.

My inclination is to advise that you sell the house (at a loss if required), not marry this person, and cut all ties to her. She doesn't have boundaries and this will come back to bite you when you're most content. Usually it's the man who gets screwed when a divorce happens.

At minimum keep the wedding on hold and see a lawyer about an iron-clad prenuptial agreement that includes the disposition of future kids and belongings. Protect yourself now in order to minimize the headache if she does this again later.

And get your ring back. She broke the engagement. The ring is a symbol of your commitment to each other. She screwed another guy with your ring on her finger. You need to get that ring back and show her that commitment means something to you. Keep it until or if you decide to get re-engaged to her. For now though, she broke the commitment and the engagement. Make a statement that her behavior is not okay; get your ring back.

and...ditto what 'LtCdrLost' said about going to her mother. Find a neutral party if you want advice.

Take care of yourself.

[This message edited by Dismayed2012 at 11:41 AM, May 8th (Tuesday)]

Marry her and you're in for this again.

You don't know that, and so that's not the sure reason to not marry her. It may well be that like grabbing a pot off of a hot stove, she will only do it once. My life is full of stupid things done once. A few of them, twice.

But, you will not forget that she did this. That is a massive burden to drag around for the next 50 years, when there are literally a hundred million women out there who don't have that hanging over their head.