SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi everyone,

Earlier this year in February, my W and I went on a ski trip with some friends of ours. I thought it would be a good idea to have the man I believed to be my best friend (best man from our wedding) come to our home and drive my W as I thought that it would be nice for the two of them to get to catch up with each other. I thought that I was being a good husband for giving her that. I brought our DD to my parent's home which was out of the way to babysit while we were away. During the time I was driving I texted her to check in (I know big no-no texting while driving). There was about an hour of radio silence from her which I found to be odd as she is usually pretty responsive with replying. She later replied saying that they had been watching a movie and were getting ready to head out themselves. On the trip itself, she and I were both sick, but she seemed oddly distant from me. Something just felt off. When we got back from vacation, I went through all of the garbage cans looking to see if I could find a condom, as my gut was telling me something had happened. I did not find anything, but I later discovered some text messages between the two of them that, while not explicitly sexual in nature, were inappropriate discussions to be having (more on this later).

Before I get into the A itself, I want to give some back story.

My W and I have been together for 10 years - married for 4 with a ~3 year old DD. We started dating in 2010, and were long distance through early 2014. The AP had been in my life since childhood, and he met my W fairly early on in our dating relationship.

The 3 of us spent a lot of time together hanging out when I was home, but they also spent time together just the two of them when I was away at college. At my current stage in life now, I recognize that the two of them spending time together without me was not appropriate or healthy for our relationship. At the time however, I didn't see anything wrong with it and was just glad that my best friend and girlfriend were on good terms and friendly.

I don't remember all of the dates in my head anymore, but at some point during our long distance relationship, AP started to develop feelings for her. She made me aware of his feelings, and I told her I was glad that she told me and she agreed she would no longer see him alone. What I did not know however, was that she was conflicted at the time and was struggling with her feelings for him. She has said recently she didn't really know what she herself was feeling at that point. We continued to hang out the 3 of us, and thinking back this was just a terrible mistake on my part. I never should have allowed the two of them to have contact at all without risking fostering their feelings.

She promises nothing ever happened between the two of them back then, and I believe her. Not blind trust mind you. It's mainly because of how events transpired recently and just logically makes sense - which I will get into in a little bit.

During our relationship, I have said/done some very stupid things. The one that stands out the most is while I was at college, I texted her "you love me too much." To this day I do not know what prompted me to ever say that to the woman I could see myself spending my life with. The only thing I can attribute it to was my naivety, addiction to video games, and not wanting to be bothered by her during my free time at college. And the fact that she stayed with me after receiving those words tells me how much she really did love me. We had a discussion about this recently and I broke down crying telling her how it's one of the biggest regrets of my life. She has told me that thinking back on that day, it probably should have been the end of our relationship, because no one should have to compromise on how they love or show affection.

I truly believe that my saying those words made her compromise the way she showed me affection and what drove her to the entrance of the road she ultimately ended up taking. I know that it was her decision to do what she did. And I am not taking responsibility for her actions. She made a terrible, life altering decision. But I am trying to own up to my mistakes as well. I have had to carry the weight of the words I said to her back then, and now she will have to carry the weight of what she did to me and us for the rest of her life.

Fast forwarding to college graduation, I received a job offer which was not close to our home town (~2.5-3hrs away). I accepted the offer without really considering other options or putting in much effort to see if I could find a job closer to our families. I know now that she carried some resentment towards me for this, and I acknowledge it was selfish of me. I've told her that back then I carried this fear in me when I graduated that I didn't know if I was good enough or would find another job. I didn't want to end up like some of my friends from college who graduated and could not find a position for several months.

She ultimately moved in with me in 2014 and upon doing so, was having a tough time with adjusting to a life where her friends and family were not nearby. Things were not helped by the fact that after a long day at work, we would get home, spend some time with together in the evening, and then more often than not I would hop on video games when she would be going to bed. Thinking back now, I realize I had an addiction to video games for a very long time. During our more recent discussions, she's said to me that when she moved in, she felt like she was living in my man cave and I wasn't giving her the attention she so desperately needed during that transition in her life.

During my more recent discussions with her, she has said she considered leaving and going back home due to how unhappy she was being away from family. At this time, the AP was still in our lives and we would hang out the three of us. But not long after we started living together, the AP started seeing his first girlfriend. My W did not get along with this new girl and it ultimately soured the relationship with him. She ended up burning bridges with him, and he was no longer in the picture for the next 5 years aside from our wedding, and our DD's 1st birthday party celebration.

Fast forwarding to last year, my W and I purchased our first home together. The AP, along with several of my college friends came up and helped us to move furniture into the house. AP and my W began talking again at this point and working through what happened 5 years ago and her apologizing for how she acted. Sometime in June/July, my W was in our hometown visiting family with DD alone. AP reached out asking when she was heading back home and stopped by her parents house. My W explained that he wanted to know if he was crazy or if there were feelings from her all that time ago, because he had been in love with her but could just never admit it. Going back to my recent comments above and how I believe that nothing happened between them back then, logically it just makes sense based on how things proceed from here. She explained to me that he said he couldn't do this half baked friendship and it had to either be all in or nothing. Suffice to say, she left that day and came back home to me. But she has said, that she was a wreck after doing so because she still was carrying those feelings of resentment for being away from family when he was back in our hometown and those feelings she had bottled up all that time ago came rushing back. She said she ended up reaching back out to him through text and wasn't happy with how things ended and that she wanted to try and be friends again.

I think it is also important to mention that I had started masturbating when she was pregnant with our DD due to needing sexual release and her not being interested. This masturbation continued sporadically after our daughter was born and started to affect our sex lives. It led to frustration on her end when she did want to have sex and I didn't, or when I would try to, and I could not perform. I own the fact that while I don't think masturbating on occasion is inherently bad, that you shouldn't be doing it if it is going to affect your ability to be intimate with your partner. I realized this and stopped, but the damage was already done. I psychologically had issues performing due to knowing she was sexually frustrated and it resulted in me going to my urologist to get medication which I am still taking to this day. Having this medication has actually been a savings grace for me as it has helped with performing recently given what has been going on and my issues with self image and not feeling good enough at times.

But alas, that about wraps up the history leading up to the A itself. I'm sure I missed something or another, but to be honest, it probably isn't relevant information anyway.

Going back to February, and the text messages I read, I was convinced by my W that it was just an EA and inappropriate words being shared between them. I've forgotten some of what I read, but a few have stuck with me and I don't think I'll ever truly be able to forget them. The first from my W to the AP saying "she sometimes pictured him across the table at dinner with her family" instead of me. The second from my W to the AP saying "She's thought about leaving me." And the last from the AP to my W saying something along the lines of "He wanted her on top of him again." My initial reaction to reading these text messages was that the two of them had been physical and she was picturing what her life would be like with him instead of me.

When initially confronted, she lied and explained that his text message was in reference to a dream he had about her and she apologized profusely and said that they had crossed a line. When I confronted him a few weeks later we kind of beat around the bush because it was uncomfortable to talk about, but ultimately came to him apologizing for his words and that his relationship hadn't been great with is GF, she had let herself go and that my W hadn't and she was attractive.

At this point in time, I had reservations, but was choosing to believe my W and best friend that they wouldn't, no couldn't betray my trust in them and do something so horrid and then lie about it. I told her that she was under no circumstances to see him alone ever again and that for the time being I was okay with seeing him in a group setting.

The first few months after finding out about what I was tentatively convinced was just emotional, I was doing relatively okay. We were being intimate together and I was working towards being more patient and less angry in day to day life. Again, I'm not perfect. Who is? But then after the three of us hung out again, the feelings just rushed back and I started a slow descent into madness. Mind you, this is now occurring during covid when we are stuck at home and can't go out to do anything. I was literally following my wife around the house like a nutcase trying to catch her texting him. In hindsight, it must have been so obvious what I was doing and how I was acting.

I would check her phone when I had an opportunity to see if I would find anything more. She started deleting her text messages with him and only on occasion would I see a conversation with him. It wasn't until I stumbled upon the fact that her email inbox stored drafts of text messages she had been sending prior to the affair. It did not have any replies, but I did have insight into what she was saying and based on wording was able to derive context into who it was with. It has also proved to me that she was being honest with me in her answers to

questions I did ask about the A.

These drafts are where I found out about how she felt about him on an emotional level. It felt like she was stuck in this state of only thinking about how great her times with him have been in the past, and not remembering all of the times we have had together. She even went so far as to say to me one time that a lot of the good times we had together in our relationship, he was there. And while yes we did all hang out the 3 of us together quite often, this simply just wasn't true at all. I couldn't understand how her recollection was so different from mine.

I spent the next 6 months, after initially confronting my W, experiencing anxiety, depression, and paranoia. I didn't know what to believe. To be totally honest, I think that this time frame of being lied to hurt me more than the physical act itself. It's the part of the A that is going to take the longest for me to recover from. She watched me have 3 mental breakdowns in front of her because of something I had read that she didn't know I had read, or because of a song that came on that triggered me. There is something about affairs and the way that it alters your state of mind that I don't think I'll ever fully comprehend. I don't know how someone can let another person that they are supposed to love suffer and go through that. Eventually I caved and texted the AP, and blatantly asked him if the two of them had sex. He initially denied it, but a few days later texted me saying he wanted to talk with me in person and when would be a good time.

I knew that this meant that he and she had lied, and so I confronted my W because I did not want to hear anything else unless it was from her. I told her this was her last chance to come clean or that we were done and I was leaving. She broke down and told me yes. She has said to me that she thought that if she didn't say anything and continued to lie, that things would get better with time. She said she didn't want to hurt me more because she had already lied back when first confronted - that she planned on taking it to the grave and carrying the weight alone.

In our discussions since then she has told me the whole story about what happened leading up to that day before our ski strip.

My W's birthday last year marks the beginning of the A. We were visiting and celebrating with her family and during the birthday celebration before singing Happy birthday, I apparently thought it would be a good idea to hop in the shower quick. She was so upset by my apparent indifference that while home that weekend, went to see AP and kissed him.

Due to the distance between us, after that kiss they did not have any physical contact for a few weeks. After which, she was home with DD for her friend's baby shower. During this time she was home, she has told me that she saw him twice and that things got physical. I do not know the details specifically on what happened. She has told me they did not have sex then. I don't particularly want to know more details than that to be honest. She has said that he did things to her, but that she did not do anything to him and that he was frustrated that she "left him hanging."

After this, they decided to cut things off as she threw the baby card out there as she and I had been having discussions about having another child. I still can't fully wrap my head around how she could have been feeling these emotions for him while also wanting to have another child with me. The only thing I can think of is compartmentalizing and affair fog. Even though things were not great between the two of us and we had gotten complacent in our marriage, we did still want to grow our family.

After New Years heading into 2020, my W and I had a pretty stupid argument when our DD was sick with pneumonia and she needed me to do something. I was on my own mission trying to do something for myself first. It resulted in my blowing up and screaming at her, slamming the door, and leaving the house for a few minutes to cool off. As I've said before, I am not perfect and own my fair share of mistakes in our relationship. But she has said that when this happened, given what had been going on and how she had been feeling, she considered packing up and leaving that day. She has said that this is about the time that she decided she wanted to have sex with AP. She rationalized that she has had feelings for him for such a long time and wanted to share that with him.

That about summarizes the A itself.

Two days after D-Day, the AP and his GF came to our home and we put a firm end to everything. My W and AP are no longer in contact with each other. She has deleted his contact information from her phone as that was the only method of contact. I do not know if he has done the same, but can only imagine so. She has made it clear to me that she does not want to ever see or talk to him again.

The main things I've been struggling with since finding out are:

- Knowing our wedding day video is ruined for me. Something we would share together on our anniversary is no longer possible for me to watch without being triggered by seeing him.

- It makes me sick to think about how she and I were our first and only before all of this. She is still my first and only, but that isn't true for her anymore. It's one of the things that on my bad days makes me sad.

- Having images of her on top of him due to the text message I read. I'm doing my best to work past this and not picture it because I refuse to let it affect my ability to be intimate with my W.

- I get angry to know that they both took advantage of my selflessness to let them spend time together unsupervised. I don't think I will ever be able to fully trust her in that way again.

- I'm angry that she didn't consider me or our DD in her decision-making, and was living in this fantasy world of what may have been.

- I'm upset that she lied for so long and made me question my own intuition. It's caused a lot of harm and is going to take me a long time to repair it.

I'm sure there will be more hurdles to get over, but I plan to keep on running and jumping over them.

It's been about 1 month since D-Day, but I as mentioned before, I had 6 months do a lot of soul searching prior. It's given me time to figure out where things went so wrong. I had time to come to terms with the 'what if' before actually finding out it was actually reality. I know we have a long road ahead of us and don't consider us out of the "maze" by any means. But for the first time in the past 6 months, I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like I have my W back, even though I know it's not going to be the same as it was. I'm choosing to look at this as an opportunity to do things better than we did the first time. I've enjoyed spending more time with her and spending less time playing video games. A lot of the things she resented in our relationship that she never opened up to me about in the past, we've spent a lot of time talking about and working through. I recently put in some effort (before D-Day) to talk with my boss at work to determine if working from home full time was an option and talked with my W about the possibility of us moving back closer to family. She has said to me that she was so appreciative that I was putting in the effort to at least try where as in the past I would just shut it down. She really thought about it from a logical standpoint instead of emotional, and came to the same realization that I had that we just wouldn't have the same quality of life there due to cost of living.

We have established boundaries and guidelines to help me feel better on a day to day basis and work through my insecurities. She has enabled location sharing on her phone so I am able to make sure she is where she says she is. She keeps her phone ringer on so I am aware when she is texting / receiving messages and shows me who she is talking with. We are in agreement she will not be visiting family without me present and while home I will be driving her or she will be calling me when she arrives and when she is leaving. She is open with me asking questions and has answered every one I have asked.

My W is seeing an IC to work through her issues, and we are also in MC together. We are working at being better communicators, reading books for recovery and healing, and journaling each day. We have been sharing a compliment and something that we appreciated each day that the other did. We are also writing something that one or the other did to bring us together or push us apart. So far, I feel journaling has helped a lot and talking together has helped to affirm the good things we are each doing on a daily basis. It also is promoting discussion on a weekly basis for the things that are bothering us or preventing us from moving forward.

I'm trying to find a silver lining, and knowing despite this despicable thing that has happened and tainted our relationship forever, that I will be a better person after all of this. I know that my W is remorseful and shamed for what she did. She has expressed that she always thought about people who cheat and judged them. And now she is realizing that she is one of those people and hates herself for allowing herself to fall so far. She is angry at the AP for pursuing her knowing that she was emotionally vulnerable. And she is angry at herself for falling into it and allowing herself let things happen and go along with it.

I'm trying my best to have a positive outlook and feel like our relationship can grow from this point. I've seen a few posts on this site talking about how previous to the A, that maybe the relationship was a 70/100, but after it'll never really be the same and the best you can do is an 80. That after the A, it's like having an infected limb.

I've thought a great deal about D and whether it would be better to just chop the limb off. These thoughts transpired even before I knew for a fact that the A had happened. It was running through my mind during the 6 months leading up to it when I was thinking about the 'what if.' I've always had a very strong opinion that people should never cheat on a significant other. That if you really aren't happy, you should communicate it and leave before acting impulsively. I still do have this opinion. I never thought this was something I would have to worry about with my W. But if I'm being honest, who does invest their time thinking about it until it actually happens to them?

I also never thought that I would stick around if I was cheated on. In a past relationship when I was dating a girl prior to my W, I caught her talking poorly about me to another guy. This was not acceptable and I didn't love her in the way I love my wife. So I ended it. But what I've come to realize is that the decision to stay or go is infinitely more complex than just a Yes or No. For example, in my current situation I had my DD to think about. She is my entire world and the thought of waking up in the morning and her not pattering into our room early in the morning and climbing into bed to cuddle breaks my heart. Don't get me wrong, I am NOT staying with my W strictly because of my DD. But I would be lying to myself and my W if I was not upfront about the fact that our DD is a part of the equation.

Even though our relationship at the best of times was an 80 or 90 out of 100, due to our lack of communication and letting negative emotions build, things slowly descended to probably a 50/100. It's hard to quantify something like this for obvious reasons. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, if our relationship was at 50% before all of this, I feel a little bit of solace knowing that even if the best we can ever do is an 80 now, I can be happy with the ability or us to be a 70 out of 80. This is just how I am choosing to look at things.

Take this all with a grain of salt as I know everyone's situation is unique. You can't compare apples to oranges. But for any of you other BS, I thought that my story might help you in some way to look on the bright side of things.

Bumping this up

I’m so sorry you are officially here! It sucks so much. I only have a minute but I’ll keep checking in.

We have a couple things in common...Double betrayal. My whole story is in my bio, summary in signature. My H’s affair phase was brief, not emotional despite the existing friendships. But double betrayal is extra awful.

Also I put my first post here in this subforum, ever the optimist (and R is going well). But you could request it be moved to Just Found Out. That is more active and full of good advice for those who are new to the shit show.

I’ll be keeping tabs and have more to say later!

Hey puzzledrecovery, thanks for writing all this. Lots to unpack here and talk about.

When I got to the end, it wasn't clear to me if you're looking for any kind of help, support, guidance, etc. Do you have any questions? Do you need anything? Or are you simply just sharing your story for now?

If you haven't figured it out by now, there is so much support to be found here no matter what path away from infidelity you take.

There were just a couple things that stood out to me that I wanted to make sure to address:

She was so upset by my apparent indifference that while home that weekend, went to see AP and kissed him.

But she has said that when this happened, given what had been going on and how she had been feeling, she considered packing up and leaving that day. She has said that this is about the time that she decided she wanted to have sex with AP.

These little passages push really close to the edge of blaming *you* for your wife's choices in her affair. Maybe they don't quite get there, but you're hanging around the ballpark.

I just hope that both you and your wife are careful not to let statements like these become the "truth." Many people fall into this trap, BS and WS alike.

But it doesn't track. I don't think this is something you and your wife need to fight about or anything, but it will do you good to recognize it and maybe talk about. There is no such thing as "puzzledrecovery took an inopportune shower, so Mrs. puzzledrecovery kissed his best friend." Things don't work like that. The groundwork was laid for that kiss long before your shower and of course would have happened whenever it was able to happen completely independent of anything you did or didn't do.

There are many reasons, many "whys" for infidelities, and I've been around long enough to know that figuring them out is an important part of the healing process. But "bad marriage" or "husband did annoying thing" are never the whys. They are factors in a marital dynamic, yes, but they never "push" someone into the arms of another person, if that makes sense. There is no such thing as that.

Just want you to be careful, that's all, because if you and your wife are truly going to reconcile, and if *you* are going to heal properly, there can be no story of you pushing her into an affair with your best friend. It's important.

~

Again, there's so much more to process if you want to. I'm worried most of all about your personal recovery from this. You absolutely can do it, but there is also risk of avoiding real recovery, hurting yourself to save your family. It really is awful what happened to you. I hope you're really mustering the strength to bravely walk the walk and put the work into ensuring *you* are ok in the end, not just your marriage (it is absolutely possible to have both).

Because guess what? That little girl needs her dad to be safe and healthy and ok more than she needs him to act a part.

Hi GTeamReboot,

Thanks for your kind words of compassion.

Also I put my first post here in this subforum, ever the optimist (and R is going well). But you could request it be moved to Just Found Out. That is more active and full of good advice for those who are new to the shit show.

I actually intentionally put my post here as I felt my post was more applicable to the R process. Even though this is definitely still fresh, I do feel very strongly about working through things and R and being optimistic similar to yourself!

--

Hi Okokok,

Thank you for the kind reply. Yeah, I got a little carried away and kind of just wrote down everything that was on my mind and it helped to establish a timeline for myself written down rather than all jumbled up in my head.

I'm not totally sure what I was looking for when posting here. I think maybe a little bit of perspective and support from others, but also trying to share my story with others who are going through this. Whether it be fresh, or at R for a long time now. I wanted others to feel a little bit of optimism in their own situations if they can relate at all to mine.

Regarding the two comments I made that you wanted to address and in response to:

These little passages push really close to the edge of blaming *you* for your wife's choices in her affair. Maybe they don't quite get there, but you're hanging around the ballpark.

I just hope that both you and your wife are careful not to let statements like these become the "truth." Many people fall into this trap, BS and WS alike.

These actually weren't direct quotes from her, apologies if I misconstrued that. It was honestly just the negativity shining through in my own mind while writing my post. We actually discussed this tonight and she said that going to see him that day wasn't with the express intention to kiss him, but to just see him. Alas, things progressed from there which laid the groundwork for what ultimately transpired in February.

As you said yourself:

The groundwork was laid for that kiss long before and of course would have happened whenever it was able to happen completely independent of anything you did or didn't do.

I ultimately know that at the end of the day, our marital dynamics weren't always the best they could have, or should have been. We've had our moments where we have been truly great together and can't think of any complaints. But we've had our low-lows too. A lot of what happened I truly attribute to her built up resentment towards me for not realizing that moving in with me and away from family was a permanent thing (in terms of us not moving back near to family together). And upon that realization, she did not know how to process or handle it. She did not talk with me and make it clear that she was not happy being away from family. I knew she missed them and her friends, but it was not clear how truly unhappy she was.

It also did not help that during our relationship, the AP took every opportunity when I would do something or say something stupid to shine through, make her feel better and look better than I did in her eyes.

It was a slow and gradual build of manipulation on his part, and she ultimately fell for it and let herself be swept away by it.

Don't confuse what I am saying above with shifting the blame off of her and onto him. They are both to blame for their decisions. But he very clearly fell back into his old ways, and was continuing from where he left off before they ceased contact 5 years ago.

Again, there's so much more to process if you want to. I'm worried most of all about your personal recovery from this. You absolutely can do it, but there is also risk of avoiding real recovery, hurting yourself to save your family. It really is awful what happened to you. I hope you're really mustering the strength to bravely walk the walk and put the work into ensuring *you* are ok in the end, not just your marriage (it is absolutely possible to have both).

Because guess what? That little girl needs her dad to be safe and healthy and ok more than she needs him to act a part.

I know I am not only staying because of my daughter. I am staying because the woman I married is the person I want to be with as my partner in this life. She lost herself during our journey together. She needs to find and rediscover who she is and I want to be there to help her come to terms with her choice and how it affected us. I want us to find our way through this together.

But again, I am trying to be realistic about the fact that during the initial stages of grief and trying to decide what I wanted to do, if it weren't for the fact we have a child together, I may not have come to the immediate conclusion that all of this was worth my time, energy and effort. One thing I do know for a certainty at this point is; thinking about the 'what-ifs' of our reality and how things might have played out differently is a dangerous game to be playing and should be avoided. It does nothing but harm in the healing process.

[This message edited by puzzledrecovery at 11:14 PM, September 3rd (Thursday)]

I’m sorry you are here puzzledrecovery. It is a tough place to be in but you will get all the support you need.

I only have two things to highlight in your post:

you are still in shock and a huge amount of pain and you are using every little detail you can think of from your past to justify her affair and take on some responsibility for it. This is natural, we all want to find a reason for which this happened to us, taking responsibility for it means that we feel in control, we know what went wrong and we can fix it which will enable us to prevent another betrayal. Don’t. If you can please repeat this to yourself daily: “nothing, nothing I have done in the past made my wife cheat on me, betray me, lie to me when the divorce is a real option”.

Listen, we don’t live in the 18th century anymore. Women are emancipated, they can divorce in no time, there is little or no judgement whatsoever these days for divorcing and coming out from an unhappy relationship. You know this. Think logically: how many times did your wife sit you down and said “puzzledrecovery, if you don’t do x y and z I will have to come out of this relationship as it makes me unhappy and resentful?” Needless to say that even if these conversations did happen, her next steps should have been divorce, not having sex to your best friend.

Secondly and I’m really really sorry to say this. I’m sure your gut is screaming also. The only time your wife did not cheat on you with this guy is when he disappeared out of your life for the 5 years you mentioned. I’m pretty certain of that. I’m telling you this as a woman. Think logically: they spend all this time together, the three of you and the two of them in your absence. They are oh such good friends. And then he gets a girlfriend and your wife (then girlfriend) has a strop and you never see him again for 5 years. He doesn’t keep in touch with you without your wife either. The only reason I’ve ever seen these dynamics in a friendship is when the feelings are stronger than they should be.

As a woman I am telling you this, the only reason for which you dislike someone so completely before even getting to know them and are willing to lose a friendship over it, is if you are jealous of that person and cannot stand seeing them around. Your wife strong dislike of his girlfriend is your clue. Otherwise, and you know that, you two could have seen him briefly on his own without his girlfriend, or you could have met just the two of you (you and your best friend), or just put up with whatever wrong his girlfriend had against her for the sake of your friendship. But... neither your wife or him could maintain the appearance once the girlfriend appeared. That says a lot.

I hope your healing journey is gentle on you and you find all your answers. It isn’t easy but it’s not impossible.

Hello PR:

I have to admit that I'm suspicious of newly minted betrayed spouses who post here first. There is a forum here on SI called "Just Found Out" and it exists for a reason. If I'm reading your timeline correctly, you just confirmed in August that your WW had PIV sex with a man who masqueraded as your friend and was the best man at your freaking wedding.

One of the core tenets of this site is the theme of helping a betrayed spouse get out of infidelity. To that end, a saying here that is almost a mantra is: "To save the marriage, you have to be willing to let it go/walk away."

Newly minted BH's who post first in the R forum are ignoring this core tenet out of the box. It is a component of what we here call the "pick me dance". It never successfully results in R.

I'm moved to post because two things in your OP jumped out at me as odd. However, there are a few tidbits I'll address first:

She was sad because you were a young couple who followed a job to a distant place far from family and childhood friends. Boo fucking hoo. Millions of young couples migrate to distant places for work, far from family and childhood friends, and live long married lives in which the wife does not screw the husband's old friend. Your wife has a character flaw. She is not able to weather a normal stress that most people get through without issue. It's even worse here because when you initially moved, you weren't married and didn't have kids. She could have left and returned home at any time without any legal entanglement. It is bullshit if she now blames you for her choice.

She was sad because you said something stupid about "loving too much" as an immature college-aged young man in his first ever sexual relationship. Dude. Virtually every college-aged young man in his first sexual relationship puts his foot in his mouth, repeatedly. Young males are quite likely the stupidest creatures walking the earth. It's a burden all young women carry. She chose to marry you and have your kid. That stuff from college no longer counts. Period.

She was sad because you were stressed over lack of sex after the baby, leading you to spend time on video games and engage in a little too much Whack-A-Mole. Boo fucking hoo. Every young couple with a young child has stress over sex. Millions of young fathers quietly rub one out a few times a weeks during the baby years. In the vast majority of cases, a new mother barely 1-1/2 years married doesn't screw the husband's friend because of this.

In other words, as much as you try to twist yourself into a pretzel to convince yourself that you drove your wife onto your friend's Johnson, the reality is that the stressors you describe are utterly ordinary and commonplace, faced by millions of couples without infidelity.

It also did not help that during our relationship, the AP took every opportunity when I would do something or say something stupid to shine through, make her feel better and look better than I did in her eyes.

It was a slow and gradual build of manipulation on his part, and she ultimately fell for it and let herself be swept away by it.

No. Just No. Please stop with this. She chose to fuck him. Women who are at least reasonably attractive are beleaguered, every day, by men who want to have sex with them. It's like background noise. A woman who has sex with a man outside of marriage chooses to do so.

She lost herself during our journey together. She needs to find and rediscover who she is

She invested quite a bit of considered energy, thought, and imagination to lie to you, sneak around, and have sex with your friend. Getting you to agree to take care of junior so she could get her freak on was a masterful bit of engineering. You ought to consider that she in fact found herself during her private, solo journey. Who did she lie to? Who did she engage with sexually, enabled by her lies? Who currently knows the full truth of that segment of her intimacy, and who is the outsider? Here on SI, we say that actions speak louder than words.

If you love her, you want her to be happy. If her happiness lies with your friend, then that is where she should be. Further, if you love yourself, you wouldn't want to be in a marriage with a wife who only stays with you out of guilt.

Which leads me to the two points that leapt out at me from your OP. First, the second and third sentences from your post:

I thought it would be a good idea to have the man I believed to be my best friend (best man from our wedding) come to our home and drive my W as I thought that it would be nice for the two of them to get to catch up with each other. I thought that I was being a good husband for giving her that.

I don't believe you are telling us, a bunch of internet strangers, the truth about this. I think you're lying to yourself, and you're repeating your lie to us, out loud, as part of your pick-me-dance effort to convince yourself it's true. I think she manipulated the process on purpose to create the opportunity to be alone with him, for sex. She may have been good enough to make you feel it was your idea -- most women can manipulate their husbands very easily this way. But there should be no mistake about the reality that the moment she waived goodbye to you and Junior and got into the AP's car, the next destination was penetration station.

Second:

I don't particularly want to know more details than that to be honest.

That about summarizes the A itself

You didn't provide any actual details about the sex, at all. In fact you say you don't want to know. My observation here on SI is that details matter. Your WW created an intimacy cocoon with your best friend. She lied to you, gaslighted, you, and planned to take it to her grave. If I'm reading your timeline correctly, you just confirmed in August that there was PIV sex, but you're gut has warned you for a long time that something was happening between them.

Half your marriage, or more, tainted by infidelity. And yet you already know that this woman, who pouts over all of the ordinary stressors that most young couples face without issue, who sneaks and lies and manipulates you so she can fuck your buddy as you care for the baby, is the kind of woman you want to spend your life with?

You're brand new in this process. At some point, you're going to start having mind movies. Envisioning them having sex. Imagining their pillow talk. Wondering how his dick compares to yours. Wondering how it would feel to be with another woman. The mind movies will probably never go away completely as long as you remain in the marriage. However, at the very least, most betrayed spouses find that the best way to minimize the mind movies is to learn every dirty detail, as if you were a fly on the window of the car or the Motel 6 they stopped at, watching them go at it.

There are other benefits to this level of detailed discussion. As mentioned, she create an intimacy cocoon with your friend. As painful as it is to hear the details, most married people find the raw intimacy of exploring the inside of that cocoon to be strangely salutary, the reclaimed intimacy better than the feeling of being the outsider, the brunt of their private joke. Further, it is the opposite of the ugly dishonesty your WW was perpetrating. If she is to figure out what is broken in her moral compass and fix it (the only way to become a safe spouse), the first step is to look you in the eye and come clean about exactly what she did, state the ugly truth out loud for you and herself to hear. Most feel that it is helpful if she first writes out a detailed written timeline, from the first furtive glance and touch to the last time she saw or spoke to him.

Also, exposure. Don't walk this walk alone. Expose it to your close family. The reality of who you are as a couple is a truth.

Finally, a word about the "first-and-only" thing. I had a lot of sexual experience before being married. I honestly cannot imagine what it would be like to be married to my first-and-only (and I was her first-and-only), and have her cheat. The feeling of sex with somebody new is thrilling and strangely completing. I can vividly remember the second woman I had sex with, almost moreso than the first. It was like driving on a closed practice course (the first), and then on actual public streets (the second). Are you prepared to live your life not knowing this feeling, even where your WW has stolen this by feeling it herself? I guarantee you that when you're in your 40's, this will still be eating at you.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 2:12 PM, September 6th (Sunday)]

You just got a big ol' dose of reality and incisive observations from BFTG. I can't do any better.

Hopefully you came to SI hoping to get just that. The posters here have decades of experience and they typically can cut through the bullshit pretty fast.

I hope you're listening.

Better wise up fast -- because your wife isn't the person you thought she was.

I'm the subject of a double betrayal also. In my case, the AP was a friend, definitely more than an acquaintance. But he wasn't my best man at my fucking wedding. I think your level of shock is very deep and you haven't yet felt the deep, abiding cold anger that is going to come -- and hoo boy, I can't imagine the level of anger you are going to feel with this one.

Know that the real anger, when it comes, isn't a "cover" for other emotions. It isn't a secondary emotion. It is a PRIMARY emotion of righteousness.

You don't have to be a man of faith to get my point when I say that the Bible speaks of God's righteous anger over injustice. Jesus wasn't as nice as modern portrayals make him out to be either. He was kind, but not nice. He kicked the asses of a bunch of corrupt assholes, whipping them and driving them out of the public square.

Your anger will be justified and true. Get ready for it.

Right now your post screams Mr. Nice Guy. Have you read the book "No More Mr. Nice Guy"? You should. You should also read the book "How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair" by Linda McDonald to see just how far your wife is from being remorseful, and how much you are bullshitting yourself.

[This message edited by Thumos at 12:17 AM, September 5th (Saturday)]

Bfg nailed it. I was coming out of my skin reading your repeated excuses for your wife's cheating. I cannot believe anyone co UK ld delude himself to such an extent.

And, I am sorry. I know you are traumatized and this is harsh. But, you have a seriously distorted view of what causes someone to cheat. You described some of the most innocuous " deficiencies " one could imagine in a relationship, things that would never cause a person with a decent set of morals and integrity to cheat.

You need to get real. You are married to someone with a propensity for cheatin and it is dd's ue to a big time character flaw within her, not because of outward stimuli

I'm more positive about R than most people here, so ... what's your W been doing to heal?

For you, doing the pick-me dance doesn't help you heal. Hiding from the truth doesn't help you heal - IMO you particularly need to confront the really scary questions, the ones for which one or more of the answers might be deal killers.

What are your thoughts about staying in a bad M vs. D? Do you see yourself ever choosing D? Under what circumstances?

Is the relocation really a major issue for your W? If so, how will you resolve it? (I have a cousin who ended and engagement because of a relo, so I understand it can be important. In fact, my W & I have moved around a LOT, and there's one place she refused to move to. It was the same city that my cousin refused to move to, now that I come to think about it.)

puzzledrecovery, I hope you continue to post. I also hope you can recognize that while you may getting some bleak feedback on what you've written so far, there isn't a person on this thread who thinks you can't reconcile.

It's really just that we've walked an incredibly similar walk to the one you're walking now, and we've also interacted with a *ton* of other posters who have done the same. We've truly seen it all, and we can generally sense with a pretty high degree of accuracy what's happening with a BS when he's posting.

Personally, I believe very strongly that reconciliation is a viable path after infidelity for a truly committed couple. It's something I wanted very badly when I was going through my first infidelity situation, but unfortunately one person can't do it alone.

But I also know from my experience here that there is a method to that reconciliation process, and there is a specific kind of work that the BS must do and other things the BS must work very hard against.

In the end, you've got to follow your heart and walk your own path, of course. I think the low-humming concern here from those of us who have read through your post is that you're running a risk of not effectively dealing with everything in the right way and ending up back here in a couple months, maybe a year, maybe five years, broken and unhappy and scooped out from the inside. Search around here long enough, and you can find people who have found themselves posting after multiple decades of a supposed "reconciliation."

In your posts, I can sense a strong, intelligent, and determined man who has some integrity and an incredible commitment to his wife and family. That's awesome. That's important and it will help.

Just don't *only* be strong here. Use your intelligence. Be curious and think long and hard about the things people are posting here even if they seem harsh or counterintuitive to the healing process. Open yourself up to the idea that there may be some very important angles you need to look at this from, some very important things you need to recognize, and maybe some very important steps you may need to take that don't necessarily feel right to you at first.

More than anything, bring your stuff here, process it, get feedback, ask questions, etc.

I wish I could tell you that your story is unique and that the usual advice doesn't apply. I'm sorry, but it's not very unique, and the usual advice does apply.

My concluding sentiment from my first post on this thread still stands. There is nothing more important than you being ok in the end. You can be ok and stay married and that can be really, really good, but *only* staying married while not truly taking care of yourself and your needs--that is, having a real and healthy reconciliation--is a recipe for a slow suicide and a truly unhealthy situation for everyone involved. Even if you can't see why it's so important for you, I hope you can at least somewhat see how important that is for your kid. She will not be 3 forever, I promise you.

Please keep posting. There is a lot of potential in you and your story.

She lost herself during our journey together. She needs to find and rediscover who she is

Of course this is predicated on this all being a "mistake". Terms like "she lost herself"..did she really?

Betrayal always takes a lot of consideration, let alone from your wife and your best friend.

They obviously weighed up the pros, cons and potential costs. These are life altering decisions, and still they went ahead with it!

Surely this is the opposite of losing yourself and actually discovering who you truly are!

Losing yourself would be entertaining the notion, then dismissing it and working on why you are feeling that way. And yet the planning, finding the opportunity, using any opportunities to engineer excuses and thus meetings to have sex.. this is revealing oneself, the naughty side that represses itself and now has an excuse to be let out on free reign.

Unfortunately now is working to get the genie back in the bottle.

Puzzled,

I am on the other side of the double-betrayal. My WH had an A with one of his best friends wives. My WH was in their wedding, AND all 3 of them work together. It sounds to me you've got some similar issues to deal with, and unfortunately you most likely don't belong in the R forum any more than I did (although I too was here for awhile).

This is long because I think a lot what happened in your world mirriors my own situation.

Here's a timeline:

WH and OBS meet at work about 15 years ago (2005) - they start this job together (complicated super-weird very specialized job). They work together 40+ hours per week and then hang out together all the time after work. Their job is like high school in a way - everyone is close, they can't leave the facility when they are there, a lot of classified stuff, etc.

I meet WH in 2008 and we start dating, very casually at first as we were long distance.

Future wife of OBS/AP starts working with them (but not directly) about 5 years after they start (2010), and she and OBS start dating (frowned upon heavily by management, but I'd say 25% of the whole place is married/dating each other) around 2012. After her 2 years of training is done she is placed on their "team" so now she works with future OBS and WH regularly.

AP is a flirt, very outgoing, and fairly young for the career at the time she starts. It is a very male dominated field and she talks like "one of the guys" - but this place is like high school and I swear most of them seem to have stunted emotional growth - a lot of the jokes and stuff are very (IMO) lame, high school nonsense. It's like very highly paid high schoolers. AP fits in perfectly (although she seems to try to hard sometimes) and in late 2013, she and future OBS get engaged. Leading up to this they would all party a bit after work and she was known to my WH to be a little "too" flirty, not just with him, when she was drinking. You know, touching an arm and leaving her hand there just a little too long, to the point you think something is off but you're not totally sure. Getting a little too close generally, patting an ass or making comments about how someone looks... WH told me "that's just how she is" and blew it off as nothing.

My WH was in the wedding and organized the bachelor party (they took him on a surprise trip) so he was in contact with AP quite a bit during that time, and again, more drunken flirting from her to WH, and at the time WH was pretty clueless/wrote it off as someone with bad boundaries (which he himself has so he really didn't think anything of it). I have seen the text messages from her at that time and while he didn't reciprocate, and just ignored her overt flirting, it was really pretty bad. (Asking if he found her sexy, if he ever thought about her in "that way" blah blah blah, which he just laughed about and made a joke and changed the topic).

AP and WH marry, and she continues before and after the wedding to message my WH, making excuses to talk to him, flirting, and then going radio silence for a few months. Again, my WH was really clueless (I've seen all the phone records) as it was so clear from reading her comments that she was trying to start something and he would just bumble along, responding in very neutral ways. She called him very drunk a few times and told him how into him she was and he just wrote it all off as drunken ramblings. All of this when they had been married less than 6 months.

AP and OBS have a party at their house in 2015 about 8 months after the wedding, and WH goes there, with about 15 other people, drinks, and passes out of their couch downstairs. AP finds him down there, while her H and several other people are upstairs and awake and (in her words I saw in text the next day) "throws herself at WH" and he kisses her, and then pushes her off (again, I've seen the messages) and he is so upset about it that he throws up in their driveway the next morning, comes home, tells me about it (over the phone - I was out of town) AND insists on telling OBS. AP tells OBS and then my WH contacts him and apologizes. They talk and OBS and WH work it out - we actually go on a trip with OBS and some other work friends later that next (w/out AP beause she is pregnant).

And all is quiet with her for 2 years, until 2017 when she starts messaging WH, lonely, just had a baby (first child), feeling unattractive, feeling like OBS isn't giving her the attention she needs, won't talk to her about what she needs, she needs a friend, blah blah blah...and fast forward 2 WEEKS and they are in full blown affair mode.

D-day1 10/2017 - caught by me, claims to end it (I don't tell OBS). Begs me not to leave, we try to R.

D-day2 10/2018 - caught by me again (underground the whole time), I tell OBS. Begs me not to leave. I stay due to my job, say I am not going to R but he claims he is going to prove to me that he can be the man I married, blah blah.

D-day3 4/2019 - caught by me again (sort of - I wanted to prove he was a liar more than I wanted to R at that point). A had ended for 3 months and then started back again. I forced WH to tell OBS.

Some time at the end of last year, WH had some kind of moment of clarity and appears to be done with her and really wants to R with me, and seems to be changing, on his own. Before that, he sounded like your WW (althought your WW is a lot more open than my WH, so a lot of it I had to read on his phone). Like a totally different person than he was 3 years ago when all of this first came to light. That being said, the AP still reaches out to him - still searches for him and I told him long ago that either he cut her out of his life completely, meaning move, change jobs, change your number, block her number anyway, and never speak to her again, or that we were done. Well, we are done, but now he seems willing to do that....and he will have to at some point even when he is with someone else otherwise the AP will never stop. She will be that broken person who 15 years from now, will show up out of the blue and message him. She just will.

You my friend, sound like you are in the same boat. I think in your situation, the AP in your world sounds like the AP in mine, and your WW sounds a lot like my WH...not sure what to do...thinks she has feelings for someone else, etc but won't fully admit what is going on in her head otherwise she might lose you. All this bullshit is just a ploy to keep the game going - to keep eating the cake - even if the cake doesn't taste all that good to them anymore. Even if the cake is actually making them miserable half the time.

So my advice to you is this:

Let the AP go from your world, forever. Done. Over. I can't believe that you (or the OBS in my world) haven't killed this person who was supposed to be their best friend. They are not a friend and never will be worth trying to work it out.

Let her go. I don't mean walk away forever (you can always change your mind). I mean let her know you are done with this and that if she wants the AP in her life that she does not get you, period. At all. Ever. And mean it - because you HAVE TO mean that. I've tried the tightrope and all it got me was crushed.

I wish I had taken some form of my own advice a long time ago as I would be a lot happier. That being said, had I left a long time ago, do I think my WH would have followed: Nope. Not a chance. But I would be better off...and that is where you are my friend - the point where you have to look out for you now. If she wants to become a better person that is on her to do so.

I'm sorry you are here - your story scares me as I could have typed 20 more pages of similarities. If she's not all in (and she's likely not right now despite what she says or doesn't say) you can't be in at all.

At the very least, the emotional component of your wife’s affair with your friend started way before you married, moved away, or had kids... so all the things you listed as stressors that contributed to the affair are irrelevant.

Also, you clearly want to believe that the AP was the aggressor here, which is understandable. But the little you’ve shared here indicates the opposite. She was the one going out of her way to interact with him and creating opportunities to be alone with him. She was sharing fantasies of a life with him.

I’m not telling you this to demonize your wife. If you’re serious about a sincere reconciliation than she needs to be accountable for her actions and their consequences. The more you make excuses for her, the more she will make excuses for herself, and nothing will change.

Hi all,

There's a lot of information from you all to digest since I last posted. I apologize if I don't hit on all of the points brought up.

I'm not going to directly quote a ton of individual people, but I will for a few points I would like to touch on.

Before getting into those though, there was a general consensus in the replies that I was making excuses for my WW's behavior. And you are all right. Upon re-reading my post, I was doing that. Thank you for opening my eyes, because in therapy sessions the counselor has made this clear to me and I nodded my head thinking I understood, but I clearly wasn't grasping it.

I took this weekend to reflect on what you were all saying, how I was feeling, and wrote down all of my thoughts. I sat down and spoke with my WW today about all of the things I wrote down.

I know that I did not drive her to the decisions she made. My immediate reaction in February when she admitted to an EA was to assume the blame for it and try to be a better version of myself. And even after finding out that it was more than that, I continued to blame myself for my past actions. As if by doing that would make her think less of him and more of me. But I know now that is not the case. Like some of you said, me taking responsibility helped me feel in control and was a natural response. I continued this charade even when making this post.

I explained to my WW that I've realized I couldn't have done anything differently to prevent what happened.

I also made a direct point of stating that she has been in denial with herself 1that even though she has said she was initially uncomfortable with some of the things in the beginning when it started getting physical, that she continued to go back and put herself in that situation and that on some level she was okay with it. I've told her that she needs to reflect on that and come to her own conclusions because as of now she is very much in the anger phase at AP, and shame phase in herself. She knows what she did was wrong, but I also think she hasn't gotten to the phase yet of accepting that she did want what happened.

I made it very clear to her that I am not interested in staying in a marriage if she isn't going to take the recovery process seriously. I explained to her the need for transparency in all things on a day to day basis and that she needs to figure out how her moral compass got so turned around and to ensure it never gets turned around again.

I don't remember if I said it in my initial post and don't want to re-read the entire thing right now - but I'll say it here just incase I didn't already. We have set several boundary conditions moving forward that I require from her in order to feel safe in the relationship. She has accepted and is abiding by all of them, and it has been helping. To be clear, the AP is not in our lives anymore. He has been blocked and deleted from her phone and email. She has removed him from social media and I have access to those accounts to verify.

I would now like to address a few points from individual posters:

@BFTG:

me:

I thought it would be a good idea to have the man I believed to be my best friend (best man from our wedding) come to our home and drive my W as I thought that it would be nice for the two of them to get to catch up with each other. I thought that I was being a good husband for giving her that.

bftg:

I don't believe you are telling us, a bunch of internet strangers, the truth about this. I think you're lying to yourself, and you're repeating your lie to us, out loud, as part of your pick-me-dance effort to convince yourself it's true. I think she manipulated the process on purpose to create the opportunity to be alone with him, for sex. She may have been good enough to make you feel it was your idea -- most women can manipulate their husbands very easily this way. But there should be no mistake about the reality that the moment she waived goodbye to you and Junior and got into the AP's car, the next destination was penetration station.

You are right. This weekend upon reflecting and looking back at dates, I realized something and spoke with my WW about it. I now remember that we were visiting my in-laws the weekend before the vacation and the original plan was for my WW to stay with them leading up to the trip and to drive up with the AP as that was easier than her driving to them the following week to drop our DD off, and then having to drive out of the way back up for the ski trip. This was not entirely uncommon or out of the ordinary for her to be visiting her parents without me so I was totally on board with it. But then her sister came down with the flu and came back up with me instead. So that is why we needed to change plans and bring our DD to my parents instead. I don't know if my WW convinced me or if I came up with the idea on my own, but at the time I really did believe I was trying to give my wife some time with AP thinking it would be nice to let them catch up with each other.

me:

She lost herself during our journey together. She needs to find and rediscover who she is

bftg:

She invested quite a bit of considered energy, thought, and imagination to lie to you, sneak around, and have sex with your friend. Getting you to agree to take care of junior so she could get her freak on was a masterful bit of engineering. You ought to consider that she in fact found herself during her private, solo journey. Who did she lie to? Who did she engage with sexually, enabled by her lies? Who currently knows the full truth of that segment of her intimacy, and who is the outsider? Here on SI, we say that actions speak louder than words.

None of her friends are aware of the affair or enabled her in anyway. It was strictly between her and AP. She lied to me and her parents on her location and who she was with when seeing him instead. She saw him alone a grand total of 5 times. Once in August, 3 times in September and last in February.

You didn't provide any actual details about the sex, at all. In fact you say you don't want to know. My observation here on SI is that details matter. Your WW created an intimacy cocoon with your best friend. She lied to you, gaslighted, you, and planned to take it to her grave. If I'm reading your timeline correctly, you just confirmed in August that there was PIV sex, but you're gut has warned you for a long time that something was happening between them.

You're right I did not provide any details in my initial post. It was something I really did not want to know about at first at the start of this process. I didn't think I could handle that information. But we spoke about it all this weekend and I asked for all of it.

To clarify for you the details, she saw him once in August last year and it was strictly kissing.

She saw him in September twice. The first time he fingered her, the second time he went down on her. As already mentioned, she did not reciprocate and he was frustrated by this. She has said to me that during those two instances she was not entirely comfortable with what was happening, but on some level she was okay with it because she didn't say no or stop him from doing so.

The third time, they met to call things off and nothing happened.

Lastly, in February they did have sex.

You're brand new in this process. At some point, you're going to start having mind movies. Envisioning them having sex. Imagining their pillow talk. Wondering how his dick compares to yours. Wondering how it would feel to be with another woman. The mind movies will probably never go away completely as long as you remain in the marriage. However, at the very least, most betrayed spouses find that the best way to minimize the mind movies is to learn every dirty detail, as if you were a fly on the window of the car or the Motel 6 they stopped at, watching them go at it.

I have already been having these issues because I did not know the details of what did happen or did not happen and was just imagining all of the worst case scenarios I could in my mind. Your comment here is part of what gave me the courage to ask her for the details this weekend. So thank you.

I now know what room they had sex in. I'm not sure if relief is the right word for it, but knowing it was not our bedroom somehow made me feel better about the whole situation.

She forced him to wear a condom even though he did not want to wear one. Apparently he has never worn a condom before and was flustered by having to do so and had difficulties performing. They had sex for a few minutes with her on top before he pushed her off of him and left the room to go finish himself off in the bathroom. The condom that I found while going through the garbage when I got home from our trip was in fact his. There was nothing in the condom, so I thought it was mine because I knew that I had been having problems performing.

After giving me the details, my W told me she had been planning on talking with her therapist this week about wanting to tell me this information even before I confronted her asking for it. She said she could see how much I have been struggling, but knew it would be going against my not wanting to know those intimate details.

Finally, a word about the "first-and-only" thing. I had a lot of sexual experience before being married. I honestly cannot imagine what it would be like to be married to my first-and-only (and I was her first-and-only), and have her cheat. The feeling of sex with somebody new is thrilling and strangely completing. I can vividly remember the second woman I had sex with, almost moreso than the first. It was like driving on a closed practice course (the first), and then on actual public streets (the second). Are you prepared to live your life not knowing this feeling, even where your WW has stolen this by feeling it herself? I guarantee you that when you're in your 40's, this will still be eating at you.

I shared how what she did has hurt me regarding the first-and-only. I know that this is something that is going to eat at me for the rest of my life. Maybe not as an every day thing, but there will be moments that I will look at her and for a fleeting moment it will cross my mind like it does today. She has expressed to me how sorry she is. But there isn't much else that she or I can do about at this point. What is done is done. It's a personal battle of mine that I am going to need to deal with.

@Thumos:

Right now your post screams Mr. Nice Guy. Have you read the book "No More Mr. Nice Guy"? You should. You should also read the book "How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair" by Linda McDonald to see just how far your wife is from being remorseful, and how much you are bullshitting yourself.

I have not read those books, no. I am currently reading Healing from Infidelity: The Divorce Busting Guide to Rebuilding Your Marriage After an Affair. My W is reading Getting Past the Affair: A Program to Help You Cope, Heal, and Move On -- Together or Apart. We are reading separately a chapter and then discussing it together. I will add the books you suggested to me watch list and consider picking them up.

That being said, I don't know if my post did not convey it properly, but my wife is definitely remorseful and I am not bullshitting myself. She is taking the appropriate steps and working through this process with me. She has apologized more times than I can count at this point and has given me the answers to every single question I have asked of her. She definitely has not come full circle yet in terms of fully acknowledging and accepting her complicity in this. Like I said above, she has blamed him for a lot of what happened between the two of them. But like I also said above, I have made sure to make it very clear to her that she has been in denial and she needs to reflect on her decisions and moral compass.

@sisoon:

Is the relocation really a major issue for your W? If so, how will you resolve it? (I have a cousin who ended and engagement because of a relo, so I understand it can be important. In fact, my W & I have moved around a LOT, and there's one place she refused to move to. It was the same city that my cousin refused to move to, now that I come to think about it.)

Already mentioned in my initial post, quoted below:

A lot of the things she resented in our relationship that she never opened up to me about in the past, we've spent a lot of time talking about and working through. I recently put in some effort (before D-Day) to talk with my boss at work to determine if working from home full time was an option and talked with my W about the possibility of us moving back closer to family. She has said to me that she was so appreciative that I was putting in the effort to at least try where as in the past I would just shut it down. She really thought about it from a logical standpoint instead of emotional, and came to the same realization that I had that we just wouldn't have the same quality of life there due to cost of living.

Adding on to that though, we have talked about it again post D-Day and are still on the same page. It is an open line of communication now, where-as in the past it was not. And that is the important part.

@ThisIsSoLonely:

First and foremost, I am so sorry that you have had to go through this not once, but 3 times with your WH. You are stronger than I am.

Let the AP go from your world, forever. Done. Over. I can't believe that you (or the OBS in my world) haven't killed this person who was supposed to be their best friend. They are not a friend and never will be worth trying to work it out.

Let her go. I don't mean walk away forever (you can always change your mind). I mean let her know you are done with this and that if she wants the AP in her life that she does not get you, period. At all. Ever. And mean it - because you HAVE TO mean that. I've tried the tightrope and all it got me was crushed.

As mentioned before in this specific post, the AP is gone. Out of our lives. We have ceased contact and I have made it explicitly clear that if he ever reaches back out to contact her, that she is to tell me and not engage.

I have told her that I will walk away if she is ever in contact with him again in any capacity. There is no middle ground.

@BluerThanBlue:

Also, you clearly want to believe that the AP was the aggressor here, which is understandable. But the little you’ve shared here indicates the opposite. She was the one going out of her way to interact with him and creating opportunities to be alone with him. She was sharing fantasies of a life with him.

I’m not telling you this to demonize your wife. If you’re serious about a sincere reconciliation than she needs to be accountable for her actions and their consequences. The more you make excuses for her, the more she will make excuses for herself, and nothing will change.

The AP was definitely the aggressor in terms of initiating physical acts. But yes, my W was also definitely the aggressor in terms of creating opportunities to spend time alone with him. You aren't wrong about that, and I am not arguing that fact. My discussion with her today made it very clear that even if she is in denial about it, that I know for myself that she was just as complicit in how things went as he was. And she knows that I am done making excuses for her actions or accepting the blame for any of it. This is solely on her shoulders.

Well, I appreciate your thoughtful update. Thoughtful/reflective = good.

A common hindrance to forward motion for both BS and WS (or both) is an underlying *need* to turn the affair into an "affliction" (i.e., something that "happened" to the WS) vs. a "choice" (i.e., something that the WS *did*).

I've seen it a million times and experienced it myself. Most often it takes the form of any/all of the following:

- WS was struck with a midlife crisis

- WS has a psychological problem

- WS had issues with family of origin or childhood sexual abuse

- WS is "in the fog"

- WS is a sex addict

- WS was duped/tricked

- AP is a predator/player/aggressor

- BS was bad (not enough sex, not supportive enough, too mean, played too many video games, etc.) and left the WS with no choice (or "pushed" WS to have an affair)

~

I think the reasoning behind these "excuses" is pretty simple: it is so much easier to accept and deal with something so horrible if you can easily point to how it was *anything* that makes it not a conscious act but instead "thing that happened" to a person/couple. Yep, that's a problem that's much easier to take on hand-in-hand.

But these things are never the reasons. I just hope you're both going into your recovery fully understanding that.

She saw him in September twice. The first time he fingered her, the second time he went down on her. As already mentioned, she did not reciprocate and he was frustrated by this. She has said to me that during those two instances she was not entirely comfortable with what was happening, but on some level she was okay with it because she didn't say no or stop him from doing so.

The third time, they met to call things off and nothing happened.

Lastly, in February they did have sex.

I now know what room they had sex in. I'm not sure if relief is the right word for it, but knowing it was not our bedroom somehow made me feel better about the whole situation.

She forced him to wear a condom even though he did not want to wear one. Apparently he has never worn a condom before and was flustered by having to do so and had difficulties performing. They had sex for a few minutes with her on top before he pushed her off of him and left the room to go finish himself off in the bathroom. The condom that I found while going through the garbage when I got home from our trip was in fact his. There was nothing in the condom, so I thought it was mine because I knew that I had been having problems performing.

Please just keep your eyes open and be realistic. I am still reading minimizing here, a sanitized version of the story, and I'll honestly report to you that I don't believe all of this, and it is SO EASY to fall into this trap. The psyche naturally wants to do this. The BS wants to believe a sanitized/minimized version of the story, and the WS very much wants to tell that version. Both parties *want* that to be the truth.

The problem: if it's not really the truth, it will only take one little hiccup -- a single little detail to come out later down the road -- to derail absolutely all of your progress and healing. NOT because of the sex acts. Because it will be further evidence that you continue to be lied to and have your reality altered. That you cannot trust your partner.

You already know what I mean by this, and it will become clearer over time. I know you know this because in your first post you said:

To be totally honest, I think that this time frame of being lied to hurt me more than the physical act itself.

Because I've seen it so much here (including during my own short-lived false reconciliation), I just really want you to be careful and aware that you could *currently* be in one of those time frames where you're being lied to. History and experience here on SI would indicate that the chances are extremely high that she's still minimizing and not being fully open and honest. Most WSes trickle-truth for a long, long time before finally getting it (if they ever get there).

If she's really doing the work, then she should be aware of this too and fighting very hard against it.

In fact, if she's *really* doing the work, at some point you may want to consider having her post on the Wayward forum here. I would bet that there are some former Waywards here who can see through some of her story and giver her some perspective/guidance/support.

~

Anyway, the story you're describing is as old as time itself around here. It goes something like this:

Almost every encounter was just kissing. WS was very, very, very reluctant to go further and didn't even perform oral on the AP. AP really, really, really wanted it though, and as a true predator pushed very hard for it, but WS held her ground and only did the bare minimum, super reluctantly. AP demanded no condom but WS had enough dignity to require condom. Eventually they had sex but it was incredibly bad and AP couldn't even make his penis work right and ended up doing something stupid/shameful (like jerking off in the bathroom, which if I'm being honest sounds completely made up; no one having a sexual experience for the first time would leave the room and go jerk off alone in the bathroom. They wouldn't. They would chill out and hug, maybe take care of themselves later when they get home. I do not believe this story at all.). The sex only lasted "a couple minutes" and was very unsatisfying.

I'm not saying any of this because the actual details of the sex matter much. They don't matter. They had sex. Done.

What matters soooooo much more to your ability to reconcile is that honesty and authenticity reign supreme moving forward.

Neither of you may see this now, but I promise you that if she is holding back details, telling half-truths or white lies, minimizing, etc...you are likely to come back here at some point in the future with DDay #2.

I hope I'm wrong about all of this. Again, I believe you and your wife can absolutely reconcile and work through this if you're both willing to do the hard work.

Please just keep your eyes open and be realistic. I am still reading minimizing here, a sanitized version of the story, and I'll honestly report to you that I don't believe all of this, and it is SO EASY to fall into this trap. The psyche naturally wants to do this. The BS wants to believe a sanitized/minimized version of the story, and the WS very much wants to tell that version. Both parties *want* that to be the truth.

The problem: if it's not really the truth, it will only take one little hiccup -- a single little detail to come out later down the road -- to derail absolutely all of your progress and healing. NOT because of the sex acts. Because it will be further evidence that you continue to be lied to and have your reality altered. That you cannot trust your partner.

I fully understand why you are hesitant to believe what she is saying. I’ve also probably still not adequately gone through our discussion from this weekend in full detail. It’s still a lot of information for me to process let alone try and write down in a coherent manner for a bunch of strangers who only have this small window of perception into my world. She gave me all of the graphic details in terms of how things started and progressed.

The day they had sex, they were watching a movie on the couch and he sidled up close to her with his arm around her. They started making out and then he pulled her pants and underwear off in one go. He picked her up and carried her into the other room. She had only her bra on at this point. She took off his shirt and he took off his pants. She was laying on the bed and he proceeded to enter her without a condom and she stopped him asking if he had a condom on. She said she can tell the difference in feeling and there was no way he could have had time to put one on. He said he did not and she told him that he needed to wear one. This led to a brief discussion on how he has never worn a condom before with his girlfriend and him not wanting to wear one. She was totally caught off guard by this as she knew his girlfriend was not on birth control, and couldn't wrap her head around how they weren't being safe. My W is not on birth control either due to side effects, and has always been very insistent on wearing a condom in the past when we were dating and when married and not trying to have a child. I believe her when she says she would not have unprotected sex with him. She left the room and grabbed a condom from my bedroom nightstand and brought it back into the other room while he was sitting on the edge of the bed. She has said to me she thinks this interruption very much interrupted / ruined what was originally a spontaneous in the moment thing for him. He put the condom on and she climbed on top of him. She said she does not know how long they were having sex like that, but at some point he was clearly frustrated as the condom kept sliding and he was having issues with it. He flipped her over after she was on top for a while and he said he needed a minute and left the room and went into the bathroom. Shortly after he came back and the condom was in his hand and she asked him if he had just finished himself in the bathroom to which he he said yes. She told me that he wasn't having issues performing in terms of staying hard, at least as far as she could tell. But that the condom very clearly was a source of frustration for him.

One thing I think I forgot to mention in my update for BFTG is I did ask my W for a timeline for events that transpired in the past when we were dating prior to her burning bridges, as well as a timeline for the affair that resurfaced over the past year. She has obliged and provided me with both of these and we have talked at length about it all.

I have made it abundantly clear to her at this point that I am not sticking around if she isn’t taking this process seriously. That I’m not wasting my time trying to put the pieces back together and if she lies to me or holds back information which I find out later to not be the truth I will be gone. I lived for 6 months in denial with her lying to me and I refuse to go through that ever again. I refuse to do the pick me dance with her and that is where I draw the line. If she wants me, then it is up to her to be totally transparent with me from here forward.

I am choosing to trust that she cares for this relationship and wants to fight for it. But my eyes are open to the fact I can not trust her without verifying. I will be checking up on her to make sure she is doing what she says she is doing. She is where she says she is. She is with who she says she is. That she has ceased any and all contact with AP.

The only reason I did not have the sexual information earlier is not because of trickle truth but because I explicitly told her I did not want the details at the very beginning after D-Day. BFTG changed my mind about this which is why I had the discussion with her.

We talked again this afternoon on our drive home after visiting the in laws for a long weekend and I rehashed all of the events after her asking me if there were any more questions I needed answered. Ultimately I know that the details themselves aren’t the important part and that at the end of the day sex is sex, no matter how good or bad it was. But what is important is the fact that she is giving me the true details and not a minimized version of them. I am taking this very seriously and I appreciate you being there to help guide me in the right direction and ensure that I am not falling into a trap. Thank you.

I will be back with an update at some future point in time, and I can only hope it will be good news. Any subsequent posts from you guys I will monitor and reply to when I can.

[This message edited by puzzledrecovery at 6:57 AM, September 8th (Tuesday)]

puzzledrecovery, it truly does sound like you're following a strong path and have a solid understanding of how R really works.

Good luck, and do post that update eventually!

Hello puzzledrecovery. Welcome to SI, the greatest club that no one ever wanted to join.

Take some time to check out "The Healing Library." (you'll find a link in the yellow shaded area at the top-left of the page). Inside the "Articles" tab is a wealth of excellent essays written by SI members to help you get started on your journey towards recovery, healing, and, if possible, reconciliation.

In the "I Can Relate" Forum, there is a thread specifically dedicated towards helping those betrayed spouses who are also enduring a double betrayal.

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=512858

It’s still a lot of information for me to process let alone try and write down in a coherent manner for a bunch of strangers who only have this small window of perception into my world.

It is, in deed, a lot of information for anyone to take in, let alone share. Take your time. There's no rush. Most likely, it's going to take you a long, long time to wrap your head around all that's happened and to grasp the full extent of the impact it will have on your life.

While you're providing us with "a small window of perception into [your] world," we're seeing SSDD (same shit, different day). We all have our own unique lives, situations, exigencies and what-not. Our stories are no less unique. Human behavior, on the other hand, can be very predictable.

It seems to me that the vast majority of betrayed spouses go through a period of deep introspection and self-blame. Why did this trauma happen to me? What could I have done to avoid this trauma? What can I do to prevent another such trauma?

It took me a while to finally understand and accept that my FWW's infidelity wasn't about me. Nothing I ever did or didn't do, nothing I ever said or didn't say, would have changed the underlying issues--her issues--that lead her down Infidelity Lane.

Don't blame yourself. Your WW's choice to have an affair is 100% on her and her alone.

Newly minted BH's who post first in the R forum are ignoring this core tenet out of the box. It is a component of what we here call the "pick me dance". It never successfully results in R.

Nonsense. I never started a thread in the JFO Forum. I came to SI to find out if reconciliation was truly possible and, if so, how to go about it. If you're predisposed to offering the gift of reconciliation, then this is the best place to be.

Reconciliation is an extremely long and arduous journey. Generally speaking, it takes 2-5 years for most couples to reconcile. Few couples make it. You should know that from the outset. If it's what you both want, then I wish you the best. I thoroughly believe you'll find great support and guidance here.

In the meantime, I strongly suggest that you prepare yourself for the possibility that your WW may not be willing or able to do the work that reconciliation requires, that divorce may ultimately be your only viable option.

Keep on reading and posting. I think you'll find that you've come to the right place.

I’ve continued to read along, and it does seem like you’ve heard the advice and started to internalize it about as well as anyone in this new pair of awful shoes can. Keep it up!

One thing I will say... Maybe this won’t apply to you, but don’t be surprised if it does. The extra awful thing about double betrayal is facing the fact that two people who supposedly cared about you hurt you. Two relationships were lost (your

marriage as you knew it ended, you have to build a new one). It’s easy especially at first to write off that person forever in an angry huff- and that is exactly what you have to do! But I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I also grieved the loss of that friendship (the ONS AP, that is... the other was a barely-friend who I never jived with much anyway). For many years we were incredibly close, like family. She supported me genuinely at some very trying times. What a damn shame it was lost for one drunken night (though IC has helped reveal other ways it was unhealthy). It’s OK to have mixed feelings about that loss as well.