SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Apart from the obvious response (which is to run, and don't look back), there is something else:

That's what prompted me to ask for her conversation with him and she said she felt violated.

What this means is that she is still protecting her precious unicorn A. She wants to keep the rainbows going.

If you decide to (foolishly) stay with her, get married, and then 20yrs down the line, she will still be wistfully romanticizing her 'great lurve affair'. The one that got away. The unrequited lurve. Very childish.

A pro tip here: If a WS were truly remorseful, they would be moving mountains to even earn a chance at R. They would be putting in huge amount of effort to try and show you that they can be trusted.

So, what has your ex-fiancee done to show you that she is serious? Complete and unfettered access to any and all forms of communications would be a good start, but she has already failed on that.... so, not a good sign.

I have a feeling that if she does turn around and gives you full access, the conversations would probably have been deleted (she cannot sully her 'great romance' with other people looking at it).

So, all in all, I would give you the obvious response again.... Run, and don't look back. You will get over this in time.

Cheating while making wedding plans ?? Run as far as you can while you have no legal connection with this woman and no kids. And yes this action of hers will shadow your marriage the rest of your lives if you choose to marry this woman. What type of a person would deliberately and in a planned manner cheat on her fiancé? Imagine what she can do during your marriage so just run as fast as you can as far as you can. She is not marriage material, period. What a horrible way to start a honeymoon period would that be when you learned that she cheated !!

The cheating reasonings and the aftermath look very complicated at the beginning when you’re in the heat of the moment but when you get away from it with time, you see that it is so simple: The cheater had the chance not to cheat but they chose to cheat and that’s the end of the story. It’s better to know the bitter truth rather than living a happy lie. A few months or a year down the road and you will not regret your decision to detach from your fiancé.

You also need to believe people when they demonstrate to you what they are capable of rather than repositioning yourself in the new status or the relationship or trying to make sense of the situation when listening to their stories.

[This message edited by burcm at 10:40 AM, Wednesday, October 13th]

However all her actions seem very.... self defensive? When I asked to read through her messages with the OM she said she felt violated. She said things like she wants to do what it takes, but if I can't trust her then I can't trust her so what's the point. She made a mistake and she's wrong but she doesn't know if she can pay for it the rest of her life. Who is this person I'm talking to? Where is my loving and supportive Fiancee when I'm so clearly hurt and traumatized by her actions? Again reading threads here it seems she is more sorry vs. remorseful. If that's true then this is a very hard pill to swallow, as I truly still care so much for her. Maybe she's still in the affair fog? Last time I spoke with her she said while she did NC with the OM she still could not get over him yet.

Brother you really dodged a bullet here, and her refusal to show you her texts indicates she's probably still in contact with her AP and therefore STILL in an ACTIVE A, again like others have said, RUN !!! at 32 you're still young. Being cheated on while engaged should be a dealbreaker for everyeone, she's an unremorseful proven cheater and liar, she even admitted she still has feelings for OM and therefore you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to work with and did the logical and right thing to do by calling the wedding off and breaking up with her. Don't forget to get tested for STDs/STIs, of course they had sex, however some STDs/STIs could be transmitted via saliva (kissing), so yes, she was also playing russian roulette with your health and during a pandemic no less.

Detach, go NC and continue reading here and posting frequently, the collective wisdom of SI could help you go through this difficult situation, it will take time for you to get over her but as the weeks and months go by it will get better.

OP - you’re getting great advice here. You were right to call off the wedding. No one of course can predict the future, however, there is a 99.9 percent chance she will cheat on you again if you get back together and/or got married.

Cheaters are broken people. Her actions post D day are showing you that she is unsafe, and never will be. She wants you to trust her, won’t even show you their conversations, and is 100 percent lying about no sex.

Tell her you’ll consider R if you see all text conversations, get a complete and truthful timeline, snd sit for a poly.

Anything less than this, run for the hills.

When someone shows you who they are believe them.

My XWW cheated on me 7 weeks before our marriage. She had just quit her job. I lived 4 and a half hours away from her so she would be moving anyway. She said she wanted to celebrate so called up an old boyfriend (I found out she kept him on a leash all the while we were dating) to take her out for drinks. Twenty-five years later she started an LTA with a guy she supervized. Past behaviour is one of the best indicators of future behaviour.

Your gf/fiancé was carrying on with her AP and continuing communication with you at a distance. She was lying through her teeth then and she is now. I'm sure she was telling you how much she missed you, loved you, et., etc. All those years are sunk. They are gone. It's the concept of sunk costs. What matters now isn't the past you thought you had but the future you can have.

It's been said earlier in this thread that many who married someone who cheated on them before marriage got cheated on again while married. Again, when they show you who they are believe them. She showed you.

It's also been said above that it wasn't a mistake. It definitely wasn't. It was a series, multitudes really, of deliberate decisions/choices. She's also gaslighting you and, I expect, blameshifting.

Apparently about 70% of those so deeply betrayed will suffer from PTSD. You do need to get IC for yourself. I found an IC who treated trauma. It turned out she had PTSD herself. She was trained in EMDR and other treatments. If a counsellor isn't a good fit you can fire them and find another. She was my third.

As has been said above, you dodged a bullet. You don't want to turn out like a lot of us with a whole life invested and all kinds of entanglements and then have it happen again. It might not happen again but is it worth the risk. By the way, whoever informed you of her cheating did you a great service.

I'm so sorry you are here but it's a good, maybe the best place, to have found given the circumstances. Keep this ended. Get IC. It may be expensive but you're investing in yourself. Regroup. Get on with life. One step in front of another to start with. Start living again.

Run, no matter what she does or not. If you look at what she's doing, run faster, faster enough that you can no longer hear her lies and bullshit.

If you live together kick her out of the house (if you have the legal right). Block and unfollow her on social media accounts and phone.

By the way, can't thank your friend enough. You should have called off the wedding when you just learned you were cheated, not when she said she still had feelings for him.

Most likely, they never broke the contact, they've seen each other a lot more and had a lot of sex (if AP doesn't live too far). And since your friend knew about it, they didn't try very hard to hide it.

guvensiz brings up a good point.

IF it was only 3 times, that would be pretty hard to discover if she was being careful. The fact that other people knew means that it was either a lot more than 3 or that she was so brazen about it that she flaunted it in public without a care.

If you were able to get any of your deposits back from different services should go into a fund to buy or take your friend out for a big thank you.

Don't underestimate the favor your friend did for you.

Welcome to SI.

I agree with those who are recommending that you terminate this relationship post-haste. Thank god that you found out before the wedding.

The sobbing from her? Those tears are all for her - not because of remorse. Her "special all about her day" is not going to happen. She's also crying for the shame and embarrassment of being caught.

In the meantime, take care of YOU. She's not your problem anymore.

You've got several years invested in a relationship with this woman. I understand why you're not ready to let go, and I'm usually a big proponent of reconciliation, but I think it would be wise for you to move on.

Speaking of investments:

Imagine putting 50% of your current and future assets at risk for a cheater.

Boom. It's not just your heart that you're considering gambling with, it's everything. She's a bad risk.

At 32 with no divorces and no kids, you're a catch. Seriously. You will have absolutely no problem finding a partner who wants to be in a serious, healthy, committed relationship.

Whether she had sex with om or not is irrelevant. What stands out for me are 2 things:

1) She said she'd do anything, but balked at your reasonable request.

2) She thinks you should trust her now, just after finding out she broke your trust.

You're 3 weeks out. You're still in shock. Be kind to yourself. Cry. Rage. Feel your fear of being alone. Give yourself more time to get grounded again.

You have a free choice between ending the relationship and R. But don't offer R out of fear, and don't offer R until and unless she really is willing to do all that you require - and follows through with actually doing so.

Also, be very careful of rebound relationships. My reco is to go slow.

So glad you called off the wedding. That shows your strength. I am sure it was immensely difficult to change on such short notice, but you did it. You have good instincts. Follow them. It takes time to stop loving someone. But you need to give yourself the space to try. Because it really is the best thing for you. Who knows, maybe you will find each other at a future point when she is more mature and has grown. But right now she is still seeing the OM (not buying that she went NC if you only have her word) or at least still has feelings for him.

Give yourself space and time to heal and get a new perspective by cutting contact for a time with her. Even a month or two - you'll see, you will start to feel differently and new worlds will open up to you.

Grieving for your lost future and the part of you that was killed is entirely normal. Give yourself time to do that too.

I am so sorry to see you here, but you're in the right place.

I hate to pile on the heap, but you would really be saving yourself YEARS of grief if you cut this off completely right now.
There are quite a few of us here who are in various levels of R and regardless of how quickly or slowly you THINK you can repair your relationship, this is something that WILL haunt you as long as you are married. I am 3 years out from DDay , have full access to W's phone and email at all times and I STILL am unsure where I want to be at times. Is that what you want for yourself?

Think long and hard about cutting bait now and getting on with your VERY young life.

Your hopefully ex-partner is not thinking of you, your needs, the pain she caused you. Her tears were and are only for HERSELF. She was crying for the cake she lost in the security of the relationship she had for you not to mention the respectability of about to be a married woman. (This also involves you and she 'moving on' and you not bringing up her cheating on you too btw.) And if she can have her cake back, oh yeah, on top of that, can she please eat it too? She also misses her secret boyfriend. The pain YOU are feeling for being betrayed, well, it does not matter to her so much.

This is a woman who betrayed you for another man behind your back, who was going to try to sneak this by you and let you walk down the aisle anyway. Is this really someone you would want for your lifetime partner? Me neither!

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 7:54 PM, Wednesday, October 13th]

Six years?

Was that a typo?

Hi OMWM,

As many others have said, you are still very close to the discovery of the affair, and cancelling the wedding. The feelings at point are overwhelming for pretty much everyone. It can feel like a dozen alarms all going off simultaneously. That will change as time passes.

My advice to you is to not consider reconciliation, because of the original actions, and your fiance's actions after you were told about what she had done.

A year-long emotional and physical relationship is not a 'mistake'; it is a complete second relationship, conducted deliberately, and deliberately hidden from you day after day. It was not confessed to you; a friend had to tell you about it. If the friend had not told you, presumably the affair would have continued into the marriage, because your fiance would have walked down the aisle keeping the secret, and swearing to be faithful to you while harboring feelings for her affair partner (which she still does). If someone is capable of doing that to you, you do not need them in your life.

I find the timing of the affair questionable; did it really begin when you were suddenly apart and long-distance, or had something been going on before that? It seems amazingly co-incidental that the other man suddenly appeared as soon as you were not around. However, the details are not important. Your fiance has proved that she cannot be trusted, and that she is capable of deceiving you for a year. She is not ready to be married to anybody, and she possibly never will be.

It may not feel like this, but being single at the age of thirty-two would not be the end of the world. And there are plenty of good, trustworthy single women out there who might be a much better match for you. You are a decent guy, looking to get married if you meet the right woman, and there are a lot of women who would love a guy who is able to commit like that. You thought you had met 'Miss Right', but your fiance was not who you thought she was. Far from it. However, that means that your true 'Miss Right' is still out there, and you have the potential to find her.

All is not lost. As badly as this hurts, this is actually a lucky escape that saved you from hitching your wagon to the wrong star. And when you do meet a woman worthy of your love, you will look back and give thanks that you did not end up married to a selfish liar. The friend who told you about the cheating did you a huge favor.

You will get through this. We all did, as we lived through our own versions of the same storm you are weathering now. It gets better, and there is a world of potential awaiting you.

Whether she had sex with om or not is irrelevant.

If I dump her then I guess yeah it isn't relevant.

You're 3 weeks out. You're still in shock. Be kind to yourself. Cry. Rage. Feel your fear of being alone. Give yourself more time to get grounded again.

I know it's different for everyone but usually how long does it take to stop feeling like shit? I'm forcing myself to make changes to my life that I've wanted, work out more, got a counsellor that I'm gonna try out. Most positive thing I can say is that most every day so far is better than the previous day. Just don't know how deep this tunnel runs.

You have a free choice between ending the relationship and R. But don't offer R out of fear, and don't offer R until and unless she really is willing to do all that you require - and follows through with actually doing so.

I agree. I even told her this is about our future happiness. If we can't be happy together then there's no point in staying. Better ending after 6 years than 16 years.

Also, be very careful of rebound relationships. My reco is to go slow.

Thanks. Don't think I'm the type to do rebounds but will keep that in mind.

Six years?

Was that a typo?

No typo. We dated for 4 years, then got engaged, then did 1 year of long distance and 1 year of wedding planning (covid didn't help).

[This message edited by oldmewasmurdered at 11:11 PM, Wednesday, October 13th]

I hate to pile on the heap, but you would really be saving yourself YEARS of grief if you cut this off completely right now.
There are quite a few of us here who are in various levels of R and regardless of how quickly or slowly you THINK you can repair your relationship, this is something that WILL haunt you as long as you are married. I am 3 years out from DDay , have full access to W's phone and email at all times and I STILL am unsure where I want to be at times. Is that what you want for yourself?

Think long and hard about cutting bait now and getting on with your VERY young life.

Just wanted to add: Pay attention to this. There are a lot of folks here doing various things - R, D, and what I call "reconcilish."

That last is a nice way of saying limbo. I'm one of those folks in limbo. Because I feel deeply ambivalent. Knowing that this state is called "liminality" has helped me on my way through it. But do you really want to be like me? You're in shock, and the anger and flood of insights haven't really hit you yet. In a few months, you will understand better, and you will thank those here telling you to just walk away.

I'm five years out. If my WW had done this when we had no kids, newlyweds, few entanglements, I can say with some assurance I would have been done with the marriage in a lot less time than 5 years after the affair. Who knows? I might have tried to reconcile. But I would have learned quickly what I know now: once a wife has given herself willingly to another man, schemed to be penetrated by him, and then looked right in your eyes repeatedly stone-cold lying to you while she had another man's DNA inside her, you simply can never look at her the same way again. Do you want a marriage like that?

I also have full access to my WW"s phone and devices, I know her whereabouts. But I don't play marriage cop. And because my WW was not transparent after D-Day, because she destroyed texts, refused to give me a timeline and only wrote down a timeline 3 years later, and then failed a polygraph, I think about cutting bait every week, sometimes several times a week. I haven't done it, yet, because divorce is a bitch and I'm very fearful about the outcome for my daughter and son.

Divorce is HARD, but we do tend to see a lot of folks giving anecdotal reports of healing faster the more quickly they divorce.

Reconciliation is also extremely HARD, as one WW pointed out it is probably the most difficult thing most of us will do in our entire lives.

You my friend, don't have to make that choice. You were on the precipice of marriage. But now you can walk away without having to go through the pain of divorce (and the financial hit) knowing exactly what you were about to marry. Neither do you have have to go through the pain of reconciling with someone who has proven themselves to be a duplicitous Janus.

The entire package is very unattractive, given what you now know.

Walk away, head held high.

Dump her and go NC. She did you a favor by cheating and getting caught before the wedding. COunt your blessings that so many of us on this board didn't get the chance to recognize the person we really married.

Do you want to be here after having kids, bought a new house, alimony, pets and wasted another 20 yrs? She cheated on you before you even got married!!! There is no other choice.

And to put in plainly, she told you she still has feelings for the other dude.

Its simple. I would send an email to all her friends, her family and yours and blow this shit up so that it doesnt have a chance in hell to come back. The email should let everyone know that your cheating Finance and (insert boy toys name here) had an affair during your engagement. And that "YOU" are choosing to walk away from this shitty situation and that you wish your exFiance and BoyToy well and a happily ever after. I would do exact this!

By sending this email to all, it shows your strength and resolve to move on. It then puts the onus on your cheating Fiance to explain her shit boundaries. And it will also shed a negative light on the AP, should he now try to come in and take your place. YOu want her family and your friends to view this piece of shit as he is going forward. They cannot just make up a story about how they met after you called off the wedding. You will also put in your email that you are moving on, and the word will get out. You will have offers coming in soon enough. Whatever you do, do not take your ex back.

She definitely slept with this guy. She obviously isnt willing to do anything. Anything would mean showing you everything and not being defensive. Run dude, you don't know it now, but you got very lucky.

I found your OP on reddit and there was one BIG thing mentioned there that you did not have in here. You state that your ex-F and friend admitted to sleeping together (I assume they mean in the same bed) but were both adamant about not having sex.

You're not stupid.

We're not stupid.

They're stupid for thinking anyone would fall for that shit.

One thing I'm curious about, though. The friend that told you, how did they find out?