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would hold off on the attorney because I think you might want to ascertain your feelings without knowing the ramifications first that could influence your thinking. Consulting the attorney can be done in a New York second should you want to do that.

I am holding off and haven’t met with one. As you say, it’s a trigger I can pull very quickly if I need to and want to. I know a lot of attorneys. Moving that process forward will be easy, maybe too easy, even if divorce itself isn’t.

There is a good chance the out of the 17 pages, 10 will be 'I neve meant to leave you', 'I am sorry I hurt you', 'It was just one time', yada yada yada. Skip all that, and get straight into the 'meat' of the timeline.

The prefaces are superflous to the whole session, and will serve only to waste time. Make your time with the ICs as productive as possible.

Great advice. I’m bringing this up with my IC. I’ve heard all this before ad nauseam so it would be insulting to have to hear it again.

Double post

[This message edited by Thumos at 1:44 PM, December 7th (Saturday)]

I am holding off and haven’t met with one.

I would strongly advise to the contrary. I do not think you should file a D at this point, nor even draft D papers. However, knowledge is power. An hour with a lawyer now, and another hour follow-up a week or so later after you've had a chance to digest the info from the first hour, will arm you with information about what life post-D might/could look like. Right now, it's a vague, foggy unknown.

If you're down to making choices of lesser evils, it is best to learn as much as you can about both choices before choosing.

One more concrete "action plan" suggestion: prepare yourself for the possibility that you may simply not believe something (or multiple somethings) in her timeline. Listen to your gut and make it a point to see if things add up. It's perfectly okay for you to say: "I don't believe you. I think you're lying (or minimizing)."

As always, excellent advice. Thanks all.

Thumos:

As to concrete suggestions, I would remind you to listen to episode 2 of the Podcast "Criminal" by Phoebe Judge. It contains a very insightful description of ways to question a person to determine if they are being truthful.

I would also remind you of a quote, from you, earlier in this thread:

Regardless, she can love me and she can be disordered and she can lack the courage needed to help me heal - all at once. And I don’t have to live with that person.

Another BFTG concrete suggestion: consider copying all, or excerpted portions, of this thread (and your threads on General) into a single document, printing it, and letting her read it.

Thanks everyone for your contribution to this thread. I'm stepping away for a bit as I approach the disclosure session, polygraph after that, holiday season, decisions.

I want to calm my mind and carve out some space as much as possible. I'll be back later for an update.

I sincerely hope your wife handles the disclosure properly. Best of luck Thumos.

Update: I am still absorbing what I learned yesterday during our disclosure session. There were no profound revelations, and frankly I didn't expect any. If she's still lying, I really wouldn't have expected her to suddenly come clean in a disclosure document three years later.

I will be pressing forward with the poly next week.

As far as revelations, there was new information, but nothing I would consider profoundly revealing. This is raw so I'd prefer not to go into everything here, but I'll provide a little bit.

She documented for me in detail the spring and summer months to assure me that the affair had not started until September 2016 with a beginning emotional connection that built through October.

She also provided a significant detail on something she'd alluded to in the past but never given context for: That her AP had tried to set up as a love nest an empty condo he manages for his father's properties. She detailed for me the specific circumstance of this for the first time, and it helped fill in the blanks on a puzzling evening in November.

And she gave more detail about Halloween night 2016, when it went physical (insofar as what she's told me in the past).

She gave me more detail about their conversations and meet ups. She provided more detail about the day they had sex in our home. She gave me more detail about the ongoing physical affair through November 2016 and early December 2016.

She read all of this aloud.

I believe all of this was forthcoming on her part. Then I asked a series of detailed point blank questions from four pages of single spaced questions I had. We got through them all.

This largely seemed to have what they call "the ring of truth" in court cases. It added up.

The session lasted two hours. We were both exhausted by the end of it.

I talked to my IC afterwards. I shared with him point blank that I believed her for the most part, but that there are details I believe she is still eliding.

I told him that it's very difficult for me to believe that either they only had sex once in a six-week physical affair ... or that no other sexual acts occurred in that entire time other than the "one time" sex. She admitted to a lot of deep kissing and touching and embracing over the course of the affair, but insisted that no foreplay-type activity or fondling or oral occurred (other than, of course, him patting her ass on Halloween and during the single instance of sex in our home, which she's already admitted to). I asked many specific questions about potential acts and was told no to every single one.

This part is difficult to believe, as I say.

But, while I still have doubts, I'm not exactly right back to where I started. In many ways I feel better. I don't feel as if big unanswered questions are lingering out there anymore. I realized that I woke up this morning without the huge question looming in my mind "what is my wife hiding from me?"

While the poly may shake something loose (such as that she provided oral or something like that) the outlines and dates of the affair, I believe, are accurate.

I do feel I need the polygraph to close this phase out, and my IC is very supportive of that. If she passes the poly, then I will feel more secure that her detailed narrative is the truth. If she doesn't pass or I get a parking lot confession, I'll have to make a series of different decisions. It's impossible for me to predict how I'll react until I reach that Y in the crossroads.

That doesn't guarantee I will want to reconcile (EDIT: if she passes the poly). Hearing it all again yesterday laid out in so much detail was quite a sordid experience and it's still so deeply shocking that anyone you considered a loving, faithful spouse could ever do something like this to fellow human being, let alone someone they had pledged their lives to.

Anyway that's what I'm thinking today.

Incidentally, today is exactly the three-year anniversary of D-Day 2016. My Facebook feed popped up with a photograph reminder from Dec. 11, 2016 in which I shared a photo of myself and my wife happily gazing into the camera in front of a Christmas tree, wishing everyone Happy Holidays and telling the world what a great wife I had. By posting this photo, I was obviously in a state of panic and engaging in a kind of magical thinking. One day after I posted that, I found out with certainty that the opposite was true.

[This message edited by Thumos at 1:35 PM, December 12th (Thursday)]

Take your time processing this even after the poly if she passes, Thumos. She has a lot to account for in her behavior after DDay and some times that's the real deal breaker.

That doesn't guarantee I will want to reconcile (EDIT: if she passes the poly). Hearing it all again yesterday laid out in so much detail was quite a sordid experience and it's still so deeply shocking that anyone you considered a loving, faithful spouse could ever do something like this to fellow human being, let alone someone they had pledged their lives to.

R is a process, not a point in time. It is good that you two got through last night, but I think you should view it as the start of a conversation. Going forward, if R is to proceed, she needs to "do the work", which includes patiently discussing the A with you, and answering your questions (many of which will be asked over and over), for months or even years, and it should be done on a regular basis, outside of the context of the counselor. Therefore, my one suggestion for now is that you ask her if she is ready to do this.

I don't know if this will help or not, but here is some food for thought when it comes to processing the details...

So, my A was approximately 2 months long as well (and really there are ways in which it was more like 6 weeks). Now, there was distance involved in mine, but the physical encounters happened during the course of one business trip. I can't say what transpired through text still wasn't shocking on it's own. But, I am building up to this...

The physical part was pretty vanilla - and here is the thing that I may have in common with your wife. I have been married 20+ years and in so many ways the physical that occurred was awkward to me on some levels. Being with someone you are not used to after that length of time created a bit of chaste/restraint in me that you would not expect to see in an affair. I was far less adventurous or uninhibited than what most people would see as the affair stereotype. A lot of the other stuff I can't say didn't cause a lot of anticipation or build up to it, and again is enough to process on it's own. And, it should not have happened at all. My only point for posting is to explain why what you are saying is believable to me, it resonates with my experience as well.

I know that is really of little consolation. I wish you the best on the poly. With her knowing it's coming I would be surprised if you don't have everything. I know people get the parking lot confessions, I am just not feeling that will be the case here. Good luck, and I hope that the outcome will give you enough peace to enjoy Christmas with your family.

hikingout,

That's helpful thank you.

The affair was more like 3 months, because the emotional component and talking to each other every day began in September, heated up through October, with the first alleged physical act on Halloween. Basically the entire holiday season, my two kids' birthdays, my birthday and my wife's own birthday are now wrapped up in affair season. I really take very little joy in the holidays now.

In any case, I do understand the vanilla/awkward aspect of the sex and I'm willing to believe it. I was never of the mind that the sex was all that great, although for a time my mind movies were more vivid.

But I would be a real putz if I believed that nothing else sexual (like oral) at all happened in those many weeks between them, when they were in much closer proximity than with your affair. They lived in the same neighborhood, with kids at the same school, and he was over at our house for wine and playdates and as it turns out (I learned yesterday) dinners when I was out of town (of course the kids were there, so the likelihood of sex happening at these times is fairly low).

During the Q&A portion yesterday I made an imaginary box around my head (Uma Thurman style) and said "you really are telling me the physical contact was limited to this space until the two of you had sex?" And aside from intimate hugging, that is really what she wants me to believe and that is really what she shared in the timeline yesterday. Now keep in mind this is with two people that were meeting for twice weekly get togethers in the mornings - breakfasts on Wednesday and in the back of a strip mall in the mornings on Monday, in his truck and in her SUV.

She really wants me to believe they did nothing sexual for six weeks other than have awkward vanilla sex in our home one time.

So that's what I'm struggling with. And do bear in mind that she had a full blown panic attack a couple of weeks ago when it became obvious I was simply not going to budge on the polygraph, but that I would agree to wait until after yesterday's disclosure session.

So we will see.

During the Q&A portion yesterday I made an imaginary box around my head (Uma Thurman style) and said "you really are telling me the physical contact was limited to this space until the two of you had sex?" And aside from intimate hugging, that is really what she wants me to believe and that is really what she shared in the timeline yesterday. Now keep in mind this is with two people that were meeting for twice weekly get togethers in the mornings - breakfasts on Wednesday and in the back of a strip mall in the mornings on Monday, in his truck and in her SUV.

She really wants me to believe they did nothing sexual for six weeks other than have awkward vanilla sex in our home one time.

I would have a hard time believing this also. You're not being unreasonable at all. You have the patience of a saint Thumos.

Hopefully what she's saying is the truth, a person would have to be pretty damn delusional to think they could beat a polygraph. That is one helluva risk.

(((Thumos)))

Ugh, infidelity just fucking sucks all the way around.

I'm just sending you good vibes and keeping my fingers crossed that you get to a place of peace, no matter what that looks like.

I do see where your concern is and and I do wish you the best.

I hope it doesn’t come down to a parking lot confession because I will be honest in that I am not convinced you are prepared to divorce her. I think you should definitely have the truth, and if she didn’t take full advantage of the disclosure session I know how damaging that will be.

I knew that as I left for the business trip that I was planning to go through with the physical. But I kept putting it off at first because I couldn’t take the leap. I was far more interested in having my ego stroked. If we had been in vicinity of each other it would have taken me longer, I went through with it because it was an opportunity that had a time table with it.

I hope it doesn’t come down to a parking lot confession because I will be honest in that I am not convinced you are prepared to divorce her.

That’s pretty insightful on your part You’re absolutely right - I don’t want to divorce her. I do love her. I have a beautiful family I don’t want to rip apart.

I would prefer to skip over to an alternate time stream in the multiverse where this never happened.

But if she was lying to me this long like that, I will divorce her.

[This message edited by Thumos at 8:45 PM, December 12th (Thursday)]

Thumos

I will preface my question with this; I am not casting aspersions your way for how you’ve handled the fallout thus far. I’m truly interested to hear your thoughts on this.

After what your wife has done to you and for how awful she treated you, why would you even contemplate R with her? How could you get to an emotional state where you would consider opening yourself up to her once again?