SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

"She told me she has no attraction to him and doesn't think he does for her either, that he just looks to her "for approval" because she's his superior at work and respects her advice."

I admit I didn't read your whole thread. But if your W said this, she is playing dumb. He can look to her for "approval" but that doesn't mean that if he sees the chance to bang her he won't give it a shot. Coffee dates one-on one are the first step, on dating sites and in real life.

And there's a big difference between bald and shaved head. Look at any police dept full of alpha dudes. 80% have shaved heads.

[This message edited by MickeyBill2016 at 4:20 PM, August 26th (Monday)]

And there's a big difference between bald and shaved head. Look at any police dept full of alpha dudes. 80% have shaved heads.

Yes, of course, totally agree. This is exactly the sort of thing she has repeatedly lied/gaslit me over, subtle dishonesty in her language that seeks to minimize instead of be genuine. I would say something to her just like you wrote, like "saying he's bald is a lie, it implies he's older and literally has no hair. Saying he shaves his head is totally different, even if he is balding a little bit. That guys has stubble on his head, he isn't bald." She would then tell me it's just a difference in how she speaks and they mean the same thing and I would feel like I'm losing my mind trying to show her how she's wrong and being dishonest. How do you prove to someone else they are being dishonest?? It will literally drive you mad.

In the end the definition of the word doesn't matter, it's the implication, and when you call someone "bald" in the same breath as telling me he's "unattractive", you are using the word dishonestly, end of story. Like I said, this guy looks like Jason Statham, who would not be described as "bald" but has often been described as "sexy", for fucks sake.

And I fucking hate how my wife's minimizing language has me on here talking about what a great looking guy this asshole is, just because she couldn't admit it herself. Let the emasculation continue...

Yul Brenner, famous unattractive Bald guy. Well it won't let post an image, but you get the idea

[This message edited by skerzoid at 5:08 PM, August 26th (Monday)]

CBM,

Do you feel your W is still attracted to you generally, and specifically have you felt her attraction to you dip at some time in the recent past? possibly from the gravitational pull of this OM.

No, I haven't felt her attraction dip. I don't believe this OM is really an "OM" either, more just that my wife is a weak person with poor boundaries who can't say no to people. Of course, I am also an idiot who let her have an affair right in front of my eyes and believed her lies about it for my whole life, so who knows? But we had a great "staycation" on Friday at a hotel with her parents in town to babysit and it was great and passionate and all of that.

I do feel she is attracted to me and that she is actually more attracted to me now than in years past. I feel more attractive too, but feeling fat and ugly are built-in to my psyche from my formative days and a hyper-critical dad. I don't think it matters how much I go to the gym or lose weight, I will always feel that way. That's my shit to work on. But it doesn't help when her latest "just a friend" happens to be yet another chiseled gym rat.

I can't see how she could try to minimize going to coffee with this guy then lying to you about his appearance. After all you guys have been through, that's not an "oops" moment. She had to know it was wrong.

Her answer is that when she said he was "unattractive", she meant unattractive to her, not just in an objective universal sense. Which is still a dishonest at worst/indirect at best way to make that statement. But to be fair to my wife, her emphasis was always on saying "I don't find him attractive", while trying to avoid having to make a statement on his attractiveness in general. I had to "beat" that out of her, by asking questions and basically forcing her to come to some kind of conclusion on that fact, where she begrudgingly said, "he is fit, I guess other people may find him attractive."

She acts almost as if she can't see attractiveness in men in a superficial sense, like she can only see attraction once she knows somebody. I get it, people are more attractive when they have a great personality, but it's asinine to pretend that you can't see superficial attractiveness with your eyes and be able to name it. I think it's a mechanism she created to cope with my jealousy over the years. I have been very jealous of the men around her in years past (for good reasons, it turns out), and her answer in more recent years has been to tell me that she finds literally every other man unattractive.

The result for me is that she is now an unreliable narrator and I don't believe her at all when she says it. She's the girl who cried "unattractive".

Hi CBM,

I am sorry that this whole thing has caused upset.

You make many good points in terms of minimizing language, but it is possible that your wife genuinely does not feel much for him, and because of that, she did not describe him as 'hot'.

However, what is more important is that he has asked for a second coffee 'date', and then he is Mr Considerate when your wife appears upset.

I think your wife is upset because she knows that what you have said about the guy is true. Whether or not he ought to respect your wife or admire her, the whole "Let's get together and talk about what is upsetting you" is the way lots of opportunistic men start affairs.

He might be an innocent boy-scout, but he needs to be treated as an opportunist who is probing to find a gap in your wife's boundaries. If there was a little group of them going for coffee, like three, four, five, etc, it would be different. But one on one? No, repeated one-on-one stuff is not good.

None of which is your wife's fault.

We have to be fair.

Whatever 'baldy' Statham's intentions are, your wife was simply at work, doing her job, when he decided to perform.

She did not ask for it, he just chose to do it.

She had no choice but to have to deal with it.

She wants to presume the best, but she needs to start presuming the worst, and only slacken off when some guy invites his wife or boyfriend along to have coffee too.

Repeated one-to-one discussions are a slippery slope, and if someone is pushing for them, it has to be watched.

Actually an OM is often an OM before the wife becomes an OW, a man often has his sights on a woman and can wait for years or decades with eyes and ears open. Hence why this OM in your case asked if your W was alright looking for a crack to slip a wedge in.

One of my Ws brothers friends ran into me and my W a year or two ago and he kissed my wife on the cheek. Now I have to believe this is something he wanted to do for long time, so while I don't think my W likes him he was nonetheless a one sided OM. My W didn't see why I had an issue, but I can't imagine kissing that guys 2nd wife on the cheek.

Did you ask your W if you could go out with females to coffee?

I think your wife is upset because she knows that what you have said about the guy is true. Whether or not he ought to respect your wife or admire her, the whole "Let's get together and talk about what is upsetting you" is the way lots of opportunistic men start affairs.

He might be an innocent boy-scout, but he needs to be treated as an opportunist who is probing to find a gap in your wife's boundaries. If there was a little group of them going for coffee, like three, four, five, etc, it would be different. But one on one? No, repeated one-on-one stuff is not good.

None of which is your wife's fault.

We have to be fair.

Whatever 'baldy' Statham's intentions are, your wife was simply at work, doing her job, when he decided to perform.

M1965, thanks as always for your thoughts and levity. I can appreciate that my wife was a "victim of circumstances" to an extent, but she is the one who OK'd the coffee trip and signaled to this guy that she is OK with one-on-one time, and he is acting accordingly. Not to mention, we have spent months now processing her affair and establishing boundaries that should preclude something exactly like this from happening. I don't find her quite so blameless.

Did you ask your W if you could go out with females to coffee?

To be fair, my wife is very trusting on her end and not a jealous person at all. I am self-employed and so I don't have a bunch of co-workers to worry about, but I do have a few employees and they are all female. Two are a generation apart from me but one is my age and is objectively very attractive. I had lunch with her last week, with my wife's permission beforehand - under our "new normal", lunch/coffee/whatever alone with someone of the opposite sex is not OK without spousal consent. My wife did give her consent and she trusts me to behave appropriately, which is pretty trusting given my own less-than-perfect history. Remember why I have to post in General?

Anyway, I know it makes my wife a bit nervous, but in different ways than how I feel - she is worried I will share too much about our situation or marital gripes. She fears an EA more than a PA, I think. I don't generally see women that I don't know very well - my employees are all pretty close with me because my office is so small and we work closely together.

It's a positive thing that your WW told you. A step in the right direction, albeit perhaps a baby step.

One-on-one lunch/coffee with co-workers is highly situational. In some workplaces it is common, especially where co-workers collaborate on projects, such as engineers.

However, in most office environments, this is not typical. People may do this in small groups, but not one-on-one. Based on what you describe, my gut tells me your WW's intentions were innocent; OM's were not. As another poster noted above, men will hover about like mosquitoes, sometimes for years, watching and waiting for their opportunity. She may have him firmly "friend-zoned" for now, and maybe forever, but he doesn't know that.

Thus it comes down to boundaries, as you note. A rule of thumb is that a person can't go wrong treating work colleagues on a "strictly business" level. However,there is a natural human tendency to want to be friendly with work colleagues, and I understand this. It makes the workday better in many cases if one is friendly with colleagues.

My wife works for a large company with a highly developed campus, including a food court and a coffee place, all inside the campus. There, coworkers often grab coffee together. It's different, I think, than leaving to workplace to go to, say, Starbucks. Still, male/female colleagues ought to be mindful of boundaries. I seem to recall you mentioning that things got personal and even slightly sexual between you and a female colleague at one point.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 6:16 AM, August 27th (Tuesday)]

This latest experience is a double edged sword. She screwed up, no doubt. But she realized she did and disclosed it, which is good. We can potentially learn more from our errors than when all goes well and this will probably be the case for her with this situation. It sucks that the good part is overwhelmed for you by the bad yet that is how the vast majority of BS would feel. At least you weren't as angry as you would have been months ago... another good part.

I do have to push back on one aspect of this though. The idea that she was minimizing his attractiveness might be accurate but I can make an argument against it. If she was intentionally trying to minimize the fact she found him attractive, then why would she have offered to introduce you to him when you were on the campus?

It seems to me that she would not have pointed him out at all if that was the case. Instead, as you told it, she brought up the fact that here was this guy and asked if you wanted to meet him. I do think it is an interesting piece of data showing that she doesn't understand what might trigger you. But her entire offer to introduce you seems to fly in the face of the idea that she thinks he's really attractive and was trying to hide it from you. Does that make sense?

Of course we can also argue that even if she had no attraction to him, she subconciously sees him as attractive. Who knows. At least she realized it was wrong and stopped him the second time. It does sound like he might be intentionally stepping over the line with her.

If it helps, I will say that my wife isn't really the type to visually look at guys and find them attractive. We have discussed this a number of times. Attraction doesn't really work that way for her. She can objectively admit, yes, that guy is handsome but she mostly doesn't think or react that way. I am not sure if that helps or not vis a vis affairs. I think most affairs with women seem to sneak up on them. It isn't the visual attractiveness of the guy that does it. But putting myself into your situation with the perspective my wife has shared with me, I think I can believe your wife and the fact that she didn't immediately or consciously see him as attractive.

Did you discuss with her the fact that he could be seen as attractive by many women as being an extra trigger for you? Would that be helpful for your wife to understand?

[This message edited by Trdd at 11:26 AM, August 27th (Tuesday)]

It's a positive thing that your WW told you. A step in the right direction, albeit perhaps a baby step.

One-on-one lunch/coffee with co-workers is highly situational. In some workplaces it is common, especially where co-workers collaborate on projects, such as engineers.

However, in most office environments, this is not typical. People may do this in small groups, but not one-on-one. Based on what you describe, my gut tells me your WW's intentions were innocent; OM's were not. As another poster noted above, men will hover about like mosquitoes, sometimes for years, watching and waiting for their opportunity. She may have him firmly "friend-zoned" for now, and maybe forever, but he doesn't know that.

Thus it comes down to boundaries, as you note. A rule of thumb is that a person can't go wrong treating work colleagues on a "strictly business" level. However,there is a natural human tendency to want to be friendly with work colleagues, and I understand this. It makes the workday better in many cases if one is friendly with colleagues.

My wife works for a large company with a highly developed campus, including a food court and a coffee place, all inside the campus. There, coworkers often grab coffee together. It's different, I think, than leaving to workplace to go to, say, Starbucks. Still, male/female colleagues ought to be mindful of boundaries. I seem to recall you mentioning that things got personal and even slightly sexual between you and a female colleague at one point.

I get all of that, and I was able to temper my original reaction because of thoughts I had along the same lines - this is normal, no big deal, I wouldn't be upset Pre-A, she told me about it which is a big positive. What nags at me are two thinigs - 1, the minimization in describing him really bothers me, it implies she knows I would have been more upset if I knew what he looked like and so choose to hide that, and 2, the fact that she didn't just see him in the cafe and sit down with him (more understandable) but instead said yes to a walk from their office to the cafe, which is at least a quarter mile walk, outdoors and on what I would describe as a borderline romantic pathway (tree-lined, landscaped, like a college campus). Having now seen the path and distance, I am more disappointed that she ever said yes, although I'm sure to her having done the walk a thousand times it's a lot less "romantic" than it looks to me as an outside observer.

This latest experience is a double edged sword. She screwed up, no doubt. But she realized she did and disclosed it, which is good. We can potentially learn more from our errors than when all goes well and this will probably be the case for her with this situation. It sucks that the good part is overwhelmed for you by the bad yet that is how the vast majority of BS would feel. At least you weren't as angry as you would have been months ago... another good part.

I do have to push back on one aspect of this though. The idea that she was minimizing his attractiveness might be accurate but I can make an argument against it. If she was intentionally trying to minimize the fact she found him attractive, then why would she have offered to introduce you to him when you were on the campus?

It seems to me that she would not have pointed him out at all if that was the case. Instead, as you told it, she brought up the fact that here was this guy and asked if you wanted to meet him. I do think it is an interesting piece of data showing that she doesn't understand what might trigger you. But her entire offer to introduce you seems to fly in the face of the idea that she thinks he's really attractive and was trying to hide it from you. Does that make sense?

Of course we can also argue that even if she had no attraction to him, she subconciously sees him as attractive. Who knows. At least she realized it was wrong and stopped him the second time. It does sound like he might be intentionally stepping over the line with her.

If it helps, I will say that my wife isn't really the type to visually look at guys and find them attractive. We have discussed this a number of times. Attraction doesn't really work that way for her. She can objectively admit, yes, that guy is handsome but she mostly doesn't think or react that way. I am not sure if that helps or not vis a vis affairs. I think most affairs with women seem to sneak up on them. It isn't the visual attractiveness of the guy that does it. But putting myself into your situation with the perspective my wife has shared with me, I think I can believe your wife and the fact that she didn't immediately or consciously see him as attractive.

Did you discuss with her the fact that he could be seen as attractive by many women as being an extra trigger for you? Would that be helpful for your wife to understand?

I can imagine my wife reading your post and nodding her head vigorously in agreement, hah. I think she would agree very much with what you wrote, especially with how your wife perceives attractiveness. And I am not saying that I don't get it or that it's dishonest, but what I do believe is that anyone should be able to do what your wife can do: "She can objectively admit, yes, that guy is handsome." That's what I'm asking for, objective and honest descriptions. It matters to me whether or not the guy at work who is asking you out for coffee is objectively handsome or not.

She did tell me almost word for word what you said, which was that she offered to introduce us because she thought once I met him, I would see why she has no attraction to him. Apparently, she thinks he has an ugly face and a less-than-winning personality. I was too upset at the time to have any interest in meeting him, so who knows if there would have been truth to that. My internal dialogue was, "yeah, let me meet him now when I'm in this terrible mood, he'll think "your husband is an asshole AND unattractive to boot", then even worse than just hitting on you for fun, he'll feel justified in saving you from a life with me." Did I mention I know I have my own shit to work on?

We had MC today and my wife expressed how she feels like her simply being alive makes me feel threatened and that she has to "put herself in a box" in order to appease me. My response is that I don't feel threatened but I do worry, I worry about her getting hit on and pursued by men, and I would worry about that no matter who I was married to. The reason it goes from a worry to threatening is that I don't feel confident in her ability to shut it down. And when she says she has to "put herself in a box" and lose her own self-identity to make herself safe or what I need her to be, I think that is just catastrophic thinking and an unfair response to what I am asking.

Finally, after MC today, our MC said something which brought something to light for me which I hadn't really been able to name. He had emailed us and listed some areas he wants to focus on and one way "Concerns about immediate felt-sense of safety about the relationship (i.e. boundaries and autonomy) for both of you". A light bulb went off for me when I read this.

I think a lot of what bothers me about her behavior around the coffee thing is how much it reminds me of the situation where she cheated so many years ago. Instead of going out for coffee it was going out for drinks, but the gist was the same - she wanted autonomy to "do her own thing" and not feel kept in a box by me, and back then I gave it to her and trusted her, and she crossed boundaries and cheated. She also lied to me and minimized her relationship with her AP back then, and lied to me about the extent of what happened when I discovered some texts. My life has been radically negatively affected because of my wife's breaching of a boundary at work and deceiving me about it, and it triggers the hell out of me to think of giving away any more years of my life to a similar event. I recognize this is not apples to apples, but it brings up similar feelings for me. I don't think she realizes that.

...which was that she offered to introduce us because she thought once I met him, I would see why she has no attraction to him.

Not to say this is your situation but my XW introduced me to her AP. When I still didn't have a clue. Maybe even before they got together.

If he has such a lousy personality why go to coffee with him more than once, bizness can be discussed in the office when there is suspicion.

Wow

We had MC today and my wife expressed how she feels like her simply being alive makes me feel threatened and that she has to "put herself in a box" in order to appease me.

She still doesn't get it.

Meeting someone at the break-room - OK - taking a walk to remove oneself from the eyes of those who would notice more than "business" communication.

Boundary violation!

One should always be aware of the character they present. I don't think she is aware that some people will notice and think to themselves - what do they have going with each other? Especially if they are attractive persons or at least one is people (some) will start wagging their tongue.

We had MC today and my wife expressed how she feels like her simply being alive makes me feel threatened and that she has to "put herself in a box" in order to appease me.

So not having close friendships with male coworkers counts as stifling her personality now? Does she not realize she's basically saying a lack of good boundaries with people of the opposite sex is just who she is with that statement?

You're making a very reasonable request of her during these early days of R. It's pretty out there that she can't see the obvious parallels between this situation and the one with OM. It's pretty hard to believe she's really that blind now that she's pushing back against the boundary both of you have agreed to by implying you're jealous and controlling.

Have you asked her more about what she means by feeling like she's boxing herself in for your sake or the fact that this is a huge trigger for you given how things started with OM?

Your WW claiming she feels she has to put herself in a box is bullcrap. She is making herself the victim. "I can't do anything right and I can't see friends or do normal things like have coffee with someone." NO YOU CAN'T BECAUSE YOU HAVE SHOWN THAT YOU DON'T MAKE GOOD DECISIONS! She is trying to blameshift. Shut that shit down immediately.

The issue here is trust. She hasn't earned it back yet and clearly she doesn't understand that. You are not yet healed. That is OK. You heal at your pace, not what someone else wants.

We had MC today and my wife expressed how she feels like her simply being alive makes me feel threatened and that she has to "put herself in a box" in order to appease me.

Yikes.

Not cool.

So, it's YOUR fault her bad boundaries don't make you feel safe?

Best line from my wife since dday was, "I broke it, I have to be the one who fixes it."

In that sense, YES, some of your concerns, requests, needs, etc., will seem and feel unreasonable at times. But, if your wife cares, she'll jump through that to make YOU feel.....better.

Now, she can't restore your esteem, that's a you thing (which I know you already know). But she can be the protector of your M. She can go the extra mile, she's totally allowed to do that without the sarcasm in MC.

It sounds like your wife had bad boundaries previously but that was a while ago.

She is getting help and hasn't come up really with her "why" ate the time.

Your wife is going to violate these boundaries in the future. You also are going to violate boundaries.

She is discussing when she violated the boundaries. So, the real question is, "How do you deal with broken boundaries?"

This is a real question your WW and BS need to answer. Maybe you two could come up with some consequences and an expected timeframe to report these possible issues.

My wife has some funny/fun ones. We both do. Just an option.

But figure out the, "Outcomes from breaking boundaries." conversation.