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I wouldn't be so "understanding" with a cheater's need to have "closure", they should just swallow it and respect the pain of the WS,

Agreed 100%. That "closure" thing is complete bullshit. "Closure" is a cheater's code for "I want to stay in contact with my AP."

Can you take the card to a store and find out how minutes it was issued with, and how many are left?

Coordinate with the OBS to feed bad information and see if it turns up on the other side.

I agree with the others that if the exact thing that you said to your WH that you initially learned from the OBS's thread made it back to the OW, they are still in contact. I'm sure you've assumed the same thing. I'm so sorry. I know how awful it is to think/know that. I'm so mad for you that I can't even explain it.

LBM,

My heart goes out to you. It is clear that you love your WH, and that his hamfisted attempts to control the situation are actually making things worse.

One of the things that is often said to betrayed spouses is, "Stop trying to control the outcome", but that advice is equally relevant to wayward spouses, particularly if they use deceit and lying as tools of control. And that is what deceit and lies really are: tools of control.

So I think you should ask your husband a blunt question:

"What matters more to you? Honesty, or control?"

What he needs to understand - and truly absorb - is that lies and control are wayward behaviour. To continue them into the aftermath of infidelity, when the foundations of reconciliation may (or may not) be being laid is to bring another, interpersonal form of infidelity into the mix. It just won't work.

Further stinks that I've been asking every couple of days if there has been any contact, as I keep reading that it happens.....and he lied over and over again about that. He said he was trying to protect my feelings while he got ride of his.

I also asked him if he jumps to lies when other people confront him. (25 years together and this is a new one on me for him). He said that yes, he thinks he does. He said he paniced.

Another blunt question for him:

"You used lies to control me during the affair, and you are still using lies to try and control me now. How do you think that makes me feel, and what does it say about you?"

And follow with:

"I do not want you trying to control me. I want you to be honest with me. Control and lying is about disrespect; honesty is about respect. Can you understand the messages that your lies and controlling behaviour are sending me?"

What he has to do is stop trying to control you and the situation by using lying and concealment. He has to understand that a big part of his 'work', if reconciliation is to happen, is to rid himself of those coping mechanisms, because they are not healthy for him, you, or the relationship.

You are currently in MC, and I think these traits in his character need to be hauled front and center as soon as possible. If control is important to him, and he thought he lost it via the situation with your family, then regained it via an affair with a start-struck disciple, then his need for control is a character flaw that needs to be addressed. No ifs, no buts.

Make MC focus on this, because it is turning what could be the start of reconciliation into a series of discoveries of yet more wayward thinking and personal behaviour, regardless of whether the OW is involved or not.

There are a couple of things that occurred to me as I read your latest post:

He says he bought the phone 2 days after DD to say goodbye...He then had 3 conversations over the course of the first week of proper NC to say goodbye - he says.

H says he was trying to let go of feelings he had and needed it for closure.

He's said that if he wanted to continue the A, he could...

Can you see how the third statement totally contradicts the first two?

Your WH said it to try and prove that he obviously wanted to be with you rather than the OW, but he missed the significance of what he was really admitting: if he says the affair is still good to go, and easy to resuscitate, what kind of closure did his three phone conversations with OW achieve?

If what he accidentally admitted is true, then the OW is clearly amenable to a continuation. So where is her closure? I wonder if the OBS knows that she has expressed that to your WH. She clearly did not tell him that she was done with the A if he thinks he could re-start it whenever he wants.

He needs to explain this. Closure is closure; it is not an affair lying dormant, with the potential to be restarted.

I shared something with H about something OBS posted in his thread - couching it as though it was something OBS told me. I don't think OW has breached SI.....certainly not from me.

Speaking hypothetically: if the thing that you told your WH was something that the OBS had only revealed in his thread, not to you directly, or to his WW, and his WW suddenly told him about it, would it be reasonable for the OBS to assume his wife had discovered his SI thread, rather than hearing about it from your WH?

If she has not discovered his SI thread, it begs the question of how his WW came by the information, and who might have passed it on to her.

Further, he has since signed over everything financially to me...I took that as part of committing to fixing this...I have decided to committ to working on the marriage. D will have to come when we work and decide not to continue.

The financial sign-over was a gesture, and I think we all hope that it came from the right place. However, the true commitment from him will be when he commits to fixing himself. That will require him to exchange lies for honesty, and controlling people for respecting them.

I see potential in the fact the his biggest issues are fairly obvious:

1) A sense of emasculation and impotence in relation to your family, culminating in your brother kicking his behind.

2) A possible need to define himself by his successes, whether on the track, in business, or in life, and an inability to handle failure/not succeeding in a healthy way.

3) An attempt to rediscover his control and manhood via an affair with a praise-giving star-struck pupil/disciple, who was manipulative, and had her own agenda.

4) A failure/inability to communicate honestly with you, or possibly with himself. Lies may be a tool of control, but they stem from inadequacy.

His self-perception is probably at an all-time low. If he felt emasculated and impotent before, he may feel like the affair has now compounded that by adding 'lying scumbag' to his rap sheet.

There may be those who feel he deserves that, but that state of mind is no good to him, and no good to you. So, as counter-intuitive as this may sound, I think that another major area to work on is his perception of himself, and his perception of himself 'as a man' and as a person in your eyes. And that needs encouragement and some positive feedback from you (which is the last thing you must feel like giving him).

The point is, if he feels 'branded' forever, where is his road to redemption? Right now, you have every reason to feel angry/hurt by the way his inadequate coping mechanisms and attempts to control the situation are making him act. You could offer him the beginning of redemption by saying something like:

"I believe you can do better than this. The question is, do you?"

His subsequent actions will provide his answer. And yours.

[This message edited by M1965 at 7:28 PM, March 20th (Wednesday)]

What matters more to you? Honesty, or control?

This is pretty much the beginning and end of it.

He spent the first 50 years or so focused on control. Controlling the narrative. Building the story about himself to the rest of the world. Look where it got him.

Your job, assuming you want to R, is to make honesty the winning strategy for him, and anything else the losing choice.

He is going to fuck up. That's to be expected, as he is human, and you are asking him to change 50 years of programming. You just need to be unrelenting in your position. Honesty=step forward. Lying=ten steps back.

Sticks AND carrots.

Are you sure you want to take on this project?

Sending strength!

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 9:12 PM, March 20th (Wednesday)]

What stunk was that rather than saying these things calmly and rationally which I could've understood.....and do understand the need to close that chapter of his life and KNEW it was

Gently, please don’t think this way. If there is communication, the A continues. It is highly recommended on these boards that a NC letter be written that the BS reviews and approves. So that there is no mushy we were a true love meant to be BUT.... that is hard learned advice and ANY communication continues the A. In almost all cases, further contact is to take things underground. I believe that is why you are getting the response you are getting.

Ultimately, you know him and the situation. You’ve been right from the start and your WH has done a lot to help you. Trust your gut, right.

But I do agree that you should test him and tell him OBS is gonna do something then see if POSOW finds out. Consider it a verification of NC.

[This message edited by DeWittle at 10:23 PM, March 20th (Wednesday)]

Keeping the card associated with the phone has lots more to do with H's absolute lack of the ability to be tidy or organized.

Why keep the sim card at all? Why is it not at the bottom of the pond? You have to physically remove it so why did he do that before he dumped the phone and then not get rid of it too?

I'm not convinced that he accepted this as his last good bye if he kept the sim card. It doesn't make sense that he would remove it due to his lack of tidiness or organization. That makes no sense. If he was so disorganized, that sim card would still be in the phone at the bottom of the pond too. I think he kept it around in case he ever wanted to break NC again otherwise it would have gone out with the phone.

LBM, I'm betting your WH has had lots of positive feedback from you over the years. He seems like he might be quite full of himself. Successful, athletic, etc.

He should be falling all over himself proving to you that he is worth the gift of reconciliation. He should be attempting to prove to you that the only reasonable result for you is reconciliation.

Don't love him back. It doesn't work. Don't "build" him up. There's plenty of time for that after R is real and permanent. Don't rugsweep to get there.

Like most of the others responding here, I don't buy the story about needing a secret phone to make several calls to get "closure". This is more trauma and hurt. I, too, wonder about continued contact, going deep underground or going silent until the storm passes.

Your WH's world has definitely been shaken. (Your's moreso). He may be an excellent candidate for R. He may not be. Stay the course, LBM. Keep getting your ducks in a row and know your rights. He needs to win you back and not the other way around.

Why keep the sim card at all? Why is it not at the bottom of the pond? You have to physically remove it so why did he do that before he dumped the phone and then not get rid of it too?

t/j

Neko,

I think what she is talking about is not the sim card. I used trac fones for years because of bad credit. You can go to a retailer and buy a cardboard card for x number of minutes, scratch off the strip on the back and those minutes are loaded on your phone. It's in essence a gift card. My family used to buy them for me as gifts. When that's done you have a useless piece of cardboard to throw away but I sometimes kept it to make sure the minutes got credited.

end t/j

Nothisfriend

That’s exactly the type of card I’ve been referring to. Not a sim at all.

how are things going today LBM?

are you sleeping and taking care of yourself?

I also asked him if he jumps to lies when other people confront him. (25 years together and this is a new one on me for him). He said that yes, he thinks he does.

I had been married for more than 30 years, and even after the online cheating 10 years prior to the physical adultery, even with all the embellished stories he had always been in the habit of telling, I didn't truly understand the impulse to lie. I've discovered though that it most often stems from an inferior internal view, usually developed in the FOO. My WH was a classic middle child who had a pretty standard upper-middle class childhood. But he was lost in the shuffle of a large, busy family with working parents and a father who drank too much. There had also been some childhood sexual abuse outside the family dynamic which was never correctly dealt with and processed. Validation was sought externally through other people and through attention-seeking behavior.

I don't know what exactly makes your WH lie to people, but he needs to work that out in therapy and to truly understand the damage it's caused. If he's unwilling to do that, it tells you something about your true prospects for R.

The other thing which helped my WH commit to NC was that he had to finally SEE the OW as a bad person. People often think that cheaters are usually "good people who did a bad thing". But I don't see it that way and I honestly don't think it helps the cheater to see it that way. In order for the WS to really SEE the evil of the AP, they have to be willing to see it in themselves. They did all the same things, told the same lies, put their family dynamic and their BS's sexual health at risk, but if they recognize evil in the AP, they have to see it in themselves... and they REALLY don't want to.

There's kind of a tipping point where one goes from being a good person to being a bad person though. And if you picture TIME kind of like a slow-moving river and you as a leaf floating gently downstream, you get a sense of how scenes and background settings change as you float along. I don't know about you, but infidelity truly fucked with my sense of TIME. Triggers put you back into a past moment, almost as if you were actually there, and everything in your body, everything in your mind responds as if it were so. It helped me to get this mental image of TIME in my head.

The WS might have started as a "good leaf" floating along time's river, but at the point where the scenery changes and he acts dishonestly and abusively, he's turned over as a "bad leaf". That doesn't have to be the end of his journey though, he can change if he REALLY wants it, and be that good leaf again.

People typically want to avoid the right/wrong, black/white type of judgment, settling for "shades of grey". But you can't be a little bit of an adulterer any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. You either are or you aren't. Accepting that he was NOT a nice guy, seeing that evil in himself, allows him to see it in the AP. Once he has, the ridiculous notion of "closure" evaporates.

As tempting as it is to look at a cheater's wiring and see him as simply having gone astray, fixable, recoverable, he's got to do MORE than that. He has to accept the truth about himself that he really was a "bad person". He can't fix what he won't acknowledge, an he can't see evil in the AP until he sees it in himself.

You begin to see how long the road to healing is and the challenges it brings? Never forget that you are NOT obliged to R. For the sake of YOUR healing, you'll eventually be required to "own your choice". It's too hard to live with otherwise. So, it's still up to you whether you're willing to wait for him to do his work.

((big hugs))

The need for closure and 3 phone calls to do it doesn't really fit with his narrative that he wasn't emotionally involved with the OW and that he never intended to leave you. If he was just having a fling for the sex and excitement of it why does he need this "closure". It just doesn't fit. The A is continuing or they have mutually decided to lay low and pick back up when things have cooled down. I'm sorry.

I agree with Beenthereinco that the "need for closure" doesn't jive with his narrative that it was just for sex, if he needs "closure" then he was/is emotionally involved. Stay vigilant and stay in touch with OBS to compare notes and verify info.

Had a very productive MC this am. He’s been defaulting to the lie as a self preservation tactic. Mortified at who he became and all the lies he told himself first to get to this place. He is taking responsibility. We’re heading out of town for a break for a few days. Hoping for some peaceful times.

Glad the MC was positive this morning. Hoping that this weekend passes without triggers.

That's wonderful that he is taking responsibility for his continued lies and betrayal of you.

This would be the perfect time for you to tell him you need for him to take a polygraph.

I hope you can have a good weekend. Just breathe and try to relax. This has been an awful week for you. I am glad MC went well this morning. Take it all one day at a time. Just focus on getting through each day. I remember when I was in the beginning of this shit storm wishing I could go sleep and wake up in a year, because I didn't want to go through everything I knew I was going to have to go through. I wanted to be past it. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. As time goes by, as each day goes by you will get stronger, even if you don't realize it at the time.

When I first found out I joined a support group for betrayed spouses and the facilitator there told me as bad as everything is, try to find something positive to hold on to. As devastated as I was, I could not find anything positive. He said, there is something positive, You have a remorseful spouse. Not everyone gets that.

By the sounds of it, you have a remorseful spouse as well. That is something. We see lots of posts on here about husbands who are not remorseful, who are continuing the affair, who want time to figure out want they want, who will not go to counselling, will not ready any books, blames the BS. By the sound of your posts, your husband is not doing any of those things.

From what you have said, I believe he screwed up with the phone, but I don't believe he is still in the affair. You have something to work with here. You have hope. Sometimes a little hope is all we need to keep going.

Good luck.

H said that he felt like the physical act of chucking the phone away deep into the pond was physically and emotionally throwing away the A. He said he needed to do it in his own way. (If I'm to believe him, and I so want to believe)

Trigger and flash back city. I don't know why I thought doing a race with the family would be easier than this is. Everything sets me off.

H is getting triggered with just how very sad he's made me and our son with his choices.

MC has us listing things that we fell in love with each other over. Making lists of how we see US in the coming years after we're through this S&*T. I wish 1. I COULD SLEEP and 2. I could wake up and be done with feeling so awful.