SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

The other night we were driving somewhere. W asked if she could use my phone to look up the directions. Sure, no problem, I have no secrets anyway. Well... maybe 1 secret.

She opens the safari browser, and there it was. My phone was open to SI. I’m usually pretty good about closing out of SI and clearing my history, but there it was, right there in bold purple letters. I forget what thread it was open to, but she read it for about 10 seconds before I realized what was happening.

Needless to say, she was pretty pissed off. Why am I still reading crap like that? The A was over 2 years ago, she thought we had moved on, etc. Somehow, I ended up apologizing to her! She manipulated the conversation to make me the bad guy. She said as long as I am reading this shit, I’m always going to consider her to be the bad guy, and we’ll never be on equal ground.

She asked me to promise to never visit this site again. I told her I wouldn’t, but clearly that was a lie. I need this place! Even though my story has run it’s course on SI, I still find comfort in reading the stories and trying to offer helpful advice if I can. Anybody else experience anything like this? She doesn’t know I post on here, and if she were to read some of my posts, she’d probably throw a huge fit.

Why are you still with her? This doesn't sound like your reconciling. The only way your going to heal whether you are on a site like this or not is to get her to really deal with what she did. It doesn't sound like she is really that remorseful.

Sorry man. That has to be rough.

Look FG - I’m still here and it’s been 6.5 years. My H was never thrilled with SI - can’t control the advice being given you know? And sure, I’d trigger and read of a BS that found a burner phone and I’d tear the house apart looking for one (he never knew I did this) but I still had fears and doubts and insecurities until probably year 4. This place calmed me down for those times - I’d share my fear, someone would ask what happened to make me fearful and I’d answer nothing. And I’d get like 3 replies and realize it’s because members knew I was just freaking because I was a BS!

But I also stayed to pay it forward. I did that for a long while. I was considering leaving SI when I was asked to be a guide. Seriously, I was about to challenge myself to stay off for a month to see if I even could when I got the pm from wifehad5! To me it was a sign. Stick around and help out others - like Tushnurse did for me - like gonnabe2016 did - like Bigger...without them I’d have been lost.

And I told my husband - without SI, I’d have left you. They calmed me. They helped me see that the trauma and PTID would fade - it wasn’t forever. And while I never lied about SI per se, I didn’t advertise to H that I was here, but he knew. He saw my screen - can’t miss the purple!

I’m concerned you agreed to stay off SI when you clearly don’t want to. Why can’t you tell her what you said here? Hey, SI helped me survive your affair and I need to pay it forward and help newbies find their way?

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:51 PM, January 18th (Friday)]

I am here after 8 years. I stay as it helps me pay it forward. It also gives me some weird sense of a back up plan. My FWH, knows about SI. I get slight triggers sometimes under stress. My triggers are more about my PTSD from other things.

My Husband is the only man I have ever fully trusted. I don’t even trust my Dad whom I adore.

I've been here for ten years.

My D-Day was 13+ years ago.

I check in almost every day and try to offer some advice or support.

My WH knew I was on this site, he was not too happy about it for awhile, well, too freaking bad.

Needless to say, she was pretty pissed off. Why am I still reading crap like that? The A was over 2 years ago, she thought we had moved on, etc. Somehow, I ended up apologizing to her! She manipulated the conversation to make me the bad guy. She said as long as I am reading this shit, I’m always going to consider her to be the bad guy, and we’ll never be on equal ground.

Wait. What? YOU were apologizing to HER? Oh hell no Fenderguy. Maybe she needs to be reminded that HER infidelity is why you are here. She doesn't like it? Too damn bad. She doesn't get to dictate to you whether or not you can be on this forum and you may want to inform her that 2 years out isn't much.

How dare she try and control your healing. After all you are healing from a blow SHE dealt. You stay put for as long as you need to be here. Period.

That she manipulated the conversation to make you the bad guy is insane. Blame shifting still part of her game? Because it seems that way.

No WS has ANY right to stamp a time limit on the recovery their BS must go through. A recovery from their worlds being blown apart by a selfish cheating spouse. She has some nerve.

Hey Fenderguy,

Yeah, been there too. My WW knew about SI, she joined and posted once. My WW is also apprehensive about SI and she feels that I can get "down" when I read here.

However, I told her I read and post mainly to try to pay it forward. I find it helpful and maybe cathartic. She has NEVER ask/requested that I dont visit here. I think she knows what my response would be.

I think it is a fair question for WS's to ask, and the reasons you are still here and post seem very reasonable to me.

I dont think WS's ever really get how destructive their A's are on BS's. Its comforting to know you are not alone.

My $0.02...

Wait. What? YOU were apologizing to HER? Oh hell no Fenderguy.

Yeah.. This. Fenderguy, I hate to say this like I'm about to, but WHAT THE F**K??

Let me draw you an analogy. You purposely take your car and run your wife over. You break her leg in a million places (like she did your heart) and, she decides to stay with you anyway because she loves you. She heals up OK, but she has a bad limp and can't run anymore, something she always enjoyed doing. So she goes online to support forums for those that were in terrible accidents to help them learn to work around their limitations and the hardships of trying to run when you've got a leg broken in 10 places.

That make it a little more understandable to her? I hope so. She ran your heart over. Intentionally, I might add. You have no idea if she'll do it again and no idea of how to get over it. And she then gets mad that your trying to learn to run (love) again even after what she did?

Holy s**t. There have been some threads in the last few days that have made me shake my head. This one takes the cake. How you ended up apologizing to her for trying to get help for the injury that she willfully inflicted on you?! I hate to use the analogy, but the closest thing I can draw is a pimp smacking around "his woman" and her apologizing to him for his busted knuckles (meanwhile, sitting there with a broken nose and a few teeth missing). March back in there and "unapologize"! Because this is just ridiculous, SI is a resource for people to try to heal and get better after a spouse emotionally abuses them.

<shaking head>

However, I told her I read and post mainly to try to pay it forward. I find it helpful and maybe cathartic. She has NEVER ask/requested that I dont visit here. I think she knows what my response would be.

And this.. I do the same. I feel like the only good thing that can come of my W's affair is that maybe, possibly, I can help someone else in that situation suffer a little less or try to find peace. And also, do my very best to get any "future WS's" to reconsider their actions and realize what an A really is and isn't (it's not a love story). I don't post about my own issues often anymore, but I feel its important to keep posting and talking to make sure that others have a voice to talk to and advice on what to do, just like the voices that were there for me in the beginning. SI isn't just a place to vent about your personal issues or your own A problems, in fact, for a lot of the really long time posters, they almost never talk about their own issues anymore except to relate to a new poster. It's not about healing me as much as it is putting a positive spin on what happened by giving me the experience that might, someday, help others.

[This message edited by Rideitout at 6:17 PM, January 18th (Friday)]

Has your story really run its course? Feeling you had to apologies for finding aids to help you heal from her cheating and lack of empathy makes me think it hasn't fully run its course, yet.

I know it is a lot of work and I know how sometimes it feels like giving in is just easier than standing up. But you might want to consider reclaiming your dignity and strength and tell her you have no intention of leaving the place that supports your healing until you decide you are ready...not when she says you are.

Apologizing reinforced everything you want to completely not reinforce.

Something similar happened to me on Talk About Marriage a few years ago. I, like you, was pretty good at logging out when finished my browsing there. The one time I didn't, she happened to use to PC afterwards and I'm pretty sure she saw my user name. She acted like she didn't notice (and maybe she didn't) but I paniced and contacted a mod who was able to remove a few threads I had started.

Wife had an EA about 10 years ago that didn't go physical. In fact, they never even met. She knew his name but he only knew her by her first initial. Classic EA treatment at the time. Cold towards me, very critical etc. Sex life had been pretty bad all through our marriage and we were almost 20 years in at that stage. She got a random, suggestive text from a guy who was probably just casting a line and it went from there, until I picked up her phone one day after hearing her text tone (innocently).

All hell broke loose then - So sorry now that I didn't play a more patient game.....

Got the classic TT etc. but eventually got the truth, even where he worked. I visited his workplace (public) a few times, (about 70 miles away) just to see what he looked like but was never able to identify him. He was about 15 years younger that her and was angling on something physical.

By the time she saw my open page on TAM, we had moved on from the whole episode. My wife is absolutely mortified about the what happened and used to get extremely upset when I drew it up. I didn't want to go back there and that's why I paniced and asked the mod to remove the threads I'd started.....

[This message edited by Sebulba at 6:29 PM, January 18th (Friday)]

Fender guy your last two paragraphs are a worry. You need to read them from an outside perspective and give your advice to yourself. You will see what we are all seeing.

Ws that have a problem with SI have problems still within themselves. My ws is one of them. But he knows to not try any demands about not coming in here! I don’t care what he thinks of it, I don’t care if he reads my posts, I will never stop being here unless it’s my choice,

Ws in my opinion who are so anti SI or feel they are WS bashed are not facing up to what they have done to us and how their actions continue to influence and redifine the relationship. They feel we are brought down by reading in here, in my case, I’m usually in here looking for something, someone who is going through the Same, anything that might ease my mind that I really am not nuts.

I think you need to revisit the conversation and tell her that you find comfort reading here and will do so when you want to and you are telling her this because you don’t want to hide anything or be caught lying to her if she finds you reading here again. And she will catch you, everyone doing something they shouldn’t be, or in this case just hiding because you’ve been manipulated, will get caught again some time.

A remorseful wife would support any reasonable tool that helps a BH's recovery, no?

Fenderguy

It sounds like she has moved on and ‘forgotten’ and is shocked that you haven’t.

This would be a good time to explain that you are still in recovery and will most likely always been in some type of recovery. And that comes from her actions.

Do not let her sweep and make you feel bad for taking care of YOU!

I’d say keep posting and keep leaving your browser open. If she don’t like it, too bad. I’d sit her down and redact the apology immediately.

I basically told my wife and kids to go pound sand when they questioned my membership here, and made it very clear that none of them are my counselors and that I don’t answer to any of them in anything.

I also made it very clear that I’m not hiding anything for, or from anyone, and if they want to read what I post I don’t care if their feelings get hurt.

[This message edited by OrdinaryDude at 7:40 PM, January 18th (Friday)]

Dday(not the first but last) for me was last April 2018. I'm divorcing since limerance and infatuation was full bore. I come here everyday to read over. To me I kind of want to stop, thinking it's slowing my healing. I realized the more I read the more I can wrap my head around the whole situation. I'm not in your situation because of D but you should be able to read and post as much as you want to in R.

Fenderguy,

LOL The A was over 2 years ago, she thought we had moved on, etc. If I recall your story it was pretty bad at least a 5 year recovery.

Ask her if she has the money for the IC and MC you would need to replace this site.

Perhaps your WW needs to read here to gain some empathy for you, but it sounds like she feels superior to any advice.

[This message edited by survrus at 7:44 PM, January 18th (Friday)]

Needless to say, she was pretty pissed off. Why am I still reading crap like that? The A was over 2 years ago, she thought we had moved on, etc. Somehow, I ended up apologizing to her! She manipulated the conversation to make me the bad guy. She said as long as I am reading this shit, I’m always going to consider her to be the bad guy, and we’ll never be on equal ground.

This is a woman that has no respect for you. She is testing you to see if you're still the type man she can walk all over. You need to shut this disrespectful behavior down now. Let her know, in no uncertain terms, that you plan on being on this site as long it takes to heal from her bullshit.

My wife still hates SI and wanted me to stop posting. I directly told her that was not happening. We're still reconciled, so she learned to deal with it.

I would recommend you read The Married Man Sex Life Primer by Athol Kay. I recently read this book and it gave me tremendous insight into my wife's affair as well as other aspects of her behavior I had not considered. It's a relationship book, but it does describes fairly accurately why "nice guys" tend get cheated on and why their marriages fail.

You have everything backwards right now. Your wife should be tiptoeing around you, not the other way around.

if she were to read some of my posts, she’d probably throw a huge fit.

My W knows I read and post here. She knows I do it to help others.

She claims to want to give me my space here. But there have still been times where I know she is secretly reading my posts.

I've had to delete more than a couple of posts that made her upset.

For those that don't know, I'll give the quick version of my story. WW had a 2 month A with a Dad from kids school. 1st month was EA, 2nd month was PA. AP was married, and had 2 other APs. One of the APs blew the whole thing up. WW confessed to me before somebody else was able to tell me. That was November of 2016.

Wife has done a lot of work on herself. IC and the like. She just doesn't seem to grasp the concept that what she has done has caused me significant pain. She just thinks of it as something awful that she and OM did, and that now she's a safe partner and a good wife. By dwelling on it, I am living in the past and not moving our marriage forward. She believes we have truly reconciled. She speaks of our future with optimism and whimsical wonder.

When I picture the future, she's not there. I imagine myself going to visit my kids at college by myself. I imagine what my life would be like as a single man. What would I do with all that extra time and space? Would my mind finally be clear without having her and her affair bogging me down constantly? Even though I'd end up being a weekend Dad, could I somehow get to a quality vs quantity type of situation, and end up being a better father than I am now? The only reason I stayed initially was for the kids. I can't say it's really much different now. I never fantasize about being with another woman... just alone. Although the idea of having sex with somebody who actually wants to have sex with me is an appealing thought, but that's another topic altogether.

I suppose MC is the next logical step to help her see the extent of my pain. I struggle to communicate what I'm feeling. But do I even want to fix the M? I have no clue right now. I have NO. FUCKING. CLUE.

And I am going to redact my apology and tell her I need this site. I was never going to not look at it, but there's no sense in having her think that she can control what I see and read.