SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

In my view As require 3 things. 1. Opportunity 2. A Character deficit 3. Privacy/Secrecy.

Your W has free agency as an adult human being. She told herself something that allowed her to make a choice that was against her morals and character. This is what she needs to look at and work.

OM no doubt played a part. He provided the opportunity and some of the secrecy. She could have said no. She could have told you all about him. She could have told his wife.

How can you feel safe is she is this susceptible to a "maniipulator?" Really think about that. Why would you want to continue in a M where she is at the mercy of the next narcissistic smooth talker to come along.

Of course she learned her lesson and will never do it again. I call bullshit on that. It is almost always the first thing a WS says. Or that is was so unlike them. . .

How many WS got M'd thinking they would unfaithful one day ? I bet almost no expected to be a cheater. Because that is not like them.

Here is the kicker. It was them and they did something that they never expected to do.

OM is not your problem. Your W is. I would expose this asshole to your social circle before another one in your circle falls victim to his charms. Real friends will stick by you. Fair weather friends will not. Those people were never really friends to begin with.

I know the inclination is to find anything beside that our spouses choose to have an A is strong. We are trying to preserve our image of them because we still love them despite them hurting us so badly.

Your W needs to get into come IC and figure out how she was able to convince herself why she was so susceptible to his charms. Again, how can you feel safe in your M and build another one without her making changes. If she doesn't you may end up in the multiple A club.

I know I sound harsh and I do not intend it to be. I am happily R'd myself going on 7 years post dday. Right not your are buying into her justification's for doing this. The real reason she choose this remains buried underneath all of the things she told herself to make "ok" in her mind. She needs to dig deep and figure that out if you want to stay M'd to her. If she can't you have to determine you are willing to take a risk without her making changes. The risk will remain.

You can't rebuild a M in the exact same way the previous one was built. It robs your of the life, M and W that you deserve.

What is she willing to do to make changes and figure out why she gave herself permission to do this. It might be buried deep in her childhood or adolescence. I guarantee you it is there. This is not his first "attempt" at this. He has failed in the past, but why did he fail with another woman, but succeeded with your W. What is different ? There was a time where she was likely intoxicated by the "fake" admiration he gave her. Or she felt she would never get caught so felt she "deserved this."

You need to be very firm on your boundaries right now. Those include buying into her justifications (call them excuses if you want). I don't think IC is bad idea for you either. It can really help you organize your thoughts and see a way out of what your are currently living in.

That might mean you stay M'd and if you do, your M needs to be different. Not worse, just different. Or this means that your W choices are a deal breaker and you move on taking your kids best interests to heart.

I am sorry for being direct, but at the beginning the choices you make now set the tone for how your R, D or rugswept M looks like from here on out. You have to delay the pain sometimes and let your rational and logical self call the shots.

I am sorry you are here. Welcome to the last club you ever wanted to join. Keep reading and posting. There is a lot of wisdom here. It is up to you want you take in and what you ignore.

Narcissism is a terrible disordered personality to have. The narcissist causes untold harm to others and can get off scot free due to their ability to fool everyone. He already has his wife beaten down. Do I think he did a masterful job on your wife? Yes I do. He is a master at seduction. Look at your friends. They are all seduced. The only way he might be exposed is if your wife and the obs tell everyone in a group setting. What are the odds of that happening? There might be other wives in the friendship circle who have fallen for this.

Now! No I don’t believe he could talk her into cheating.

I know a woman who was charmed by a man much like this one. He was also married. He would call and text, slowly raising, or lowering, the conversation until it was full on sexual. She would ask him if his wife knew he did this. He would apologize and work it around until she felt guilty BUT she finally realized he was manipulating her and never spoke to nor texted him again. She said it is so hard for people to understand how good these narcissists are at seduction. She also never had any sexual relationship with him and was appalled at how easily he slipped past her guard. They never met alone but when she and his wife were together he would be his charming self to both. I asked why she never told his wife because she had his texts. She said once she realized what he was doing she deleted everything so then it was his word against hers.

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 8:56 AM, February 8th (Friday)]

I feel your pain. I know that pain. Everyone is telling you the truth about your wife. She is to blame for this affair. I will be blunt in this for a bit. I mean no harm by it. I can not wrap my head around why gross AP telling a married woman a bunch of crap about their marriage and their spouse will make that married woman agree to cheat? How does that even work?

She said she was manipulated, and that she thinks he’s a narcissist.

So? How does this make you agree to have sex with him?

Your wife reports to you,

...wow that was so awkward. He just all of a sudden opened up about how bad his marriage is, and how they act great in public but as soon as they go home, they go their separate ways, and he doesn’t think they’re going to last.”

Again, why does a WS believe this in the first place? And even if it is true, why would she feel that she will have to help him resolve this issue by sleeping with him?

What I am struggling with is the manipulation of her. Is it possible for someone to actually be manipulated into cheating, when they otherwise would not have been looking to cheat?

My short answer to this is no. A grown woman, who can tell you, the husband, no to sex, can surely tell this creep no. Every decision is a choice. And her choice was to have sex with this man; to be his wife's replacement because she was not treating her husband right so someone has to do it. No, she was not manipulated to have sex. She agreed to have sex.

My wife claimed the same thing . He was pushy, manipulative, yada yada. The answer is even though she came across a pushy manipulative person, it was her that let him ctoss the boundaries. She had no business talking to another man in such a personal way.

No, she was not manipulated to have sex. She agreed to have sex.

Yes, she (and my WW) did agree to have sex. But I'd say that they did that under false pretenses. The "I love yous", "My W and I don't sleep together", "I'm getting a D", and all the other craziness that AP's typically spout. Would she have agreed to it if he'd said "I love my wife and kids, no intention of leaving, we sleep together but not as much as I'd like, and I think you're hot and would like to sleep with you too"? I'm gonna go with "probably not". But that has a LOT more truth in it than what he said.

How do you define manipulation? My definition in this context is "lying with the intent to deceive with the objective of obtaining personal gain". If that's the criteria, yes, no doubt at all, my wife was manipulated.

Everyone who's manipulated "agrees" to do something. Otherwise it's not manipulation, it's obtained by force or threat. The fact that my W agreed to sex does not, in any way, say that she was not manipulated (or in turn that the OM in my W's A was not manipulated by my W either). And two people can manipulate one another, which is what I think happens most in A's. The man manipulates the woman for sex, the woman manipulates the man to get him to say nice words.

Sex in an A is almost never gotten without manipulation, typically through lies and empty promises. Yes, there are exceptions, emotionless infidelity, a ONS with a stranger (although, even then, that often happens when the WS lies about their married status).. Things like that can happen with nobody manipulating anyone. But your run of the mill "romantic A" (from another thread). That's typically full of manipulation, IMHO.

Manipuation is defined as the action of influencing or controlling someone or something to your advantage, often without anyone knowing it.

At the end of the day there is always a moment where the WS must DECIDE whether to cross the line or not.

You can be manipulated into a certain situation, but IMHO there are always chances to DECIDE to get out or carry on. If the OM had some magical power that made your WW have to follow him irrespective of what she wanted; progress from inappropriate talking to inappropriate actions to sex… well… that would definitely be a first for me. But “manipulation” all the way to having a post-coitus shared cigarette basically implies rape. It implies he controlled her all the way there and she didn’t have a chance to refuse.

Chances are he is a predator. Chances are he is constantly looking for opportunities. Chances are that when your WW sat in the car for so long and listened to him he managed to squeeze in some opening into her mind, and then took it from there. But at each and every step she could have pulled away. And she didn’t.

So I might accept that she landed in a shark-tank, but I also think she deliberately swam past the ladder out.

This wouldn’t lower your possibility of reconciliation. In fact if anything it increases them. You reconcile from the truth, the truth being your wife allowed herself to take a series (not one but many) of wrong decisions and allowed herself to be manipulated. And if you allow yourself to be manipulated the question becomes who is manipulating whom? But deal with this from a point of truth and reality and if your WW deals with her issues you two can work things out.

The AP laid siege to my WH for years before propositioning him openly (she admitted her manipulations to him once the A was in full force; somehow he was OK with that admission at the time). He said yes to that proposition. He has no excuse no matter how manipulative she was. He made his choice, and he has to deal with the consequences. After all, he wouldn't have even been propositioned if he had better boundaries. The choice to cheat on me sits squarely on him.

No advice to add. Just sending strength, brother.

Again, thank you for all the replies. Not going to lament on what I’m going to, because if you’re a member of this site, unfortunately you already have been through it.

Here is where I am at now:

- We are starting MC. First appointment is next week.

- she is going to get IC as well. I will determine if I need to also do that, but as of now, MC is all I’m focused on.

- I confronted him the other day. I let him know he is never allowed near my family again. My wife had already told him as well. He agreed, and he looked broken and remorseful. I don’t believe his sincerity; he is trying to garner sympathy from either me or his wife, who let me in so I could confront him with her there. I have no idea if he will honor these boundaries.

Clearly, your A-hole neighbor cannot be trusted. I'm sure you don't want everyone to know, but close friends of yours who know him should be made aware. According to his wife, he is just going to look for another AP.

Don't waste your time on MC right now. This is a huge mistake. YOU are not responsible for the A, your WW is. Starting MC right away is a mistake.

Don’t believe either one of them for a long time. Don’t stop at confronting him. His wife will most likely rugsweep it again to save her wonderful and now suddenly faithful husband’s reputation. Guess what, it was more than two times and it was still going on when you just found out. They are both equally at fault, since there was no power imbalance. I’m sure her AP is blaming the evil temptress for seducing him and attempting to ruin his life and marriage too. If her AP does not suffer any consequences, he will be looking for the next vulnerable married woman up for grabs. Out him to his work, his and your family, your friends, neighbors, etc. If not, you and the OBS are enabling another serial-cheater. Make sure there is no contact. Sell and move if needed.

Yes, she (and my WW) did agree to have sex. But I'd say that they did that under false pretenses. The "I love yous", "My W and I don't sleep together", "I'm getting a D", and all the other craziness that AP's typically spout. Would she have agreed to it if he'd said "I love my wife and kids, no intention of leaving, we sleep together but not as much as I'd like, and I think you're hot and would like to sleep with you too"? I'm gonna go with "probably not".

Agreed under false pretenses? The fact is your wife was a married woman. Regardless of how much he lied, sleeping with him should not have been an option in the first place.

My wife's AP was a liar and a player, and probably a narc, and there are rumors he slept with other married nurses that he worked with, but I blame my wife 100% for the affair. She was a grown woman at the time, not some naïve school girl with no life experience.

IMO the "it just happened" excuse is crap. There were conscious and deliberate choices made at every step along the way to going to his apartment and getting naked.

[This message edited by Limboaz at 11:02 AM, February 8th (Friday)]

Just about everything in 90% of all A's is a false pretense. He lied to her. She talked herself into her own self lies in order to take him up on it. The whole thing is a set of lies and manipulations of each other and within themselves.

To say he manipulated her into it is like saying someone was fraudulently conned into agreeing to participate in what they knew ahead of time was a fraud.

Manipulation is an integral part of cheating by both cheaters. The salient point is that she exercised free will and her own judgment that led to her betray...to be so unsafe. His "manipulations" are irrelevant. The point is the brokenness within herself that give herself permission to betray and invite another man inside her. That is the issue that she has to own and work through. His being a manipulator or not is irrelevant to the lack of boundaries that she had and the degree to which she is unsafe to you and your M.

But I'd say that they did that under false pretenses. The "I love yous", "My W and I don't sleep together", "I'm getting a D", and all the other craziness that AP's typically spout.

I hear you Rideitout, but for me it does not matter. I can understand why false pretenses will get a person to do something that would not normally do. But you still have to make that choice. What I have not been able to understand is how some jerk AP saying these things will cause a person to want to sleep with them.

I think that sometimes men (and probably women, too) want to believe that their spouse was tricked because it is an easier pill to swallow and causes the BS to feel rage towards the other person instead of so much at their spouse. It feels good to protect your wife and be angry on her behalf, or maybe not "good" but "better" than feeling like she cheated because she wanted to (which is exactly why she did). It may feel easier for a husband to believe his wife was taken advantage of at a vulnerable time. IMO this is utter bullshit. Everyone that has an affair feels like “that is not who I am” “I was acting like someone else”. I think that believing your wife was manipulated into having an affair is a waste of your time and energy and is letting your wife off of the hook far too easily.

Yeah I am sure it sucks being “the bad guy” and your wife doesn’t want to be that. So, now this dude is the bad guy. Except HE is not your problem and your wife is taking a wimpy and selfish way out IMO.

I mean, you can’t get too mad at her if she were a victim, right?

- We are starting MC. First appointment is next week.

The general consensus here is that MC servers a purpose, but much later in the process.

Mc is going to jump in M problems that facilitated the A, I'd heard a lot of horror stories (had one myself) about MC blaming the BS for the state of the M. While immediately saying that is not the case.

Honestly I would change the MC appointment to IC for you. You are going to hear a lot of the same stuff and a MC will likely agree with her some of the time. You might feel ganged up on. It will probably make your feelings worse and allow your wife to skirt even more responsibility that she is trying to do.

If you do go to MC keep this one thought in mind. " She is not the victim she is the perpetrator. If anything you and your children are the victims. None of you had a choice in this. She did." State that repeatedly if you need to.

Stand your ground with this with her. She really needs to let go of the victim mentality if you want a chance to move towards R. All that "victim" mindset does is help her avoid her taking responsibility for her choices.

I think you're doing well. You have a good grasp on what is going on, and I think the steps you're taking are (mostly) all on the right path..

MC is good if only to sort out what needs to be done, but the marriage isn't what needs fixing, your wife does. I wouldn't do regular MC at this point, maybe in 3-6 months after she's had some time in IC to figure her shit out.

Make no mistake, your wife was and is a willing participant in this affair. Whatever her justifications are, they are invalid. She put herself into a position to be manipulated, and that's one-hundred percent on her. I don't care if the guy is Machiavelli himself, she wanted to be manipulated.

Also, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this...

but I know her well enough to know it wasn’t an act.

You don't know her nearly as well as you think you do.

I agree, your WW is not a victim. Before you can move forward she needs to accept full accountability for her actions. It is irrelevant if the AP is a narcissist or not.

When she full accepts that the responsibility is hers, you can move to MC and R.

She could have said NO - she didn't.

I admire how much you love your wife, it shows through all of your words. If you want this to work, she needs to get to the point of accepting full accountability for the A and then start the hard work. You can't do this for her. Don't support her excuses. It will cause you problems down the road.

But I'd say that they did that under false pretenses. The "I love yous", "My W and I don't sleep together", "I'm getting a D", and all the other craziness that AP's typically spout.

I'm sorry, but some guy can come to me and tell me all of those things. Even if I'm attracted to him, I'm not screwing him. I'm married. Even if all of that was true, it would not make breaking my vows acceptable.