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I am curious to all of us folks who have been through this and made it out with our sanity...did you want to know everything about the affair(s)? Do you think you found out everything? Did it help or did it hurt you in the end? Do you see it differently now?

I was able to hack his computer so I learned a lot and wanted to know everything on DDay, but I'm not sure I found everything out. I did find out an awful lot though. I think I wanted to know everything because it helped me make a decision about my life based on reality and not lies. Now as I look back I don't it was that important because in the end the reason I divorced him was not because of the affairs.

Just curious?

did you want to know everything about the affair(s)?

Initially, yes.

Do you think you found out everything?

Not even close to scratching the surface. The more I did learn, the deeper the rabbit hole of lies and betrayal went. I didn't need, or want, anymore information. I knew enough. I stopped caring a long time ago, before I kicked him out. Prior to that, I was digging for hard evidence to hang him with, not because I *needed* the info for the sake of knowing.

Did it help or did it hurt you in the end?

Neither, really. I knew enough to know it went on for over 20 years, involved OCs, he was not the least bit remorseful, every word out of his mouth was/is a lie, and Dday 1 was truly a dealbreaker.

Do you see it differently now?

Nope. My feelings about infidelity being a dealbreaker have never waivered, and Xhole is still a psycho. Nothing has changed.

[This message edited by Phoenix1 at 12:23 PM, March 26th (Tuesday)]

The truth I learned is that my WH is a serial cheater and a liar.

He lied nonstop after D-Day, so I only know what I discovered in fragmented texts and emails and Uber receipts.

I wasn’t interested in knowing the dirty details. What I discovered ripped my heart out, and each additional discovery just turned the knife even more.

If you are attempting R, the truth is essential. But if you are moving on, I don’t see the point in trying to piece it together.

Initially and for a good period. yes, I wanted to know everything...

Which later it turned into pain shopping.. but it's part of the process as your mind is trying to make sense of what heck is going on.

Did it help in the end, no... With time you realize that you need to protect your sanity to where it no longer effects you.

Once you see the affair for what it is.. the lies, the betrayal, everything becomes numb in a sense.. and the affair itself no longer hurts you, as you don't care anymore.

In my case, ok.. I can see minor things I will do differently in my future relationship.. some that will make me a better partner in life.. others to protect myself from the pain I already endured from happening again... but my core ways and intentions wont change.. as I did not create or cause the affair itself.. that was my WW and her own conscious decisions to do so.

Also, keep in mind that the affair and the fall out of it is one piece.. You have to know your worth and you are worth more than your WS gave you credit for.. That rebuilding of yourself, for yourself.. is another hurdle that will need to be done.. but that is what will allow you to walk away with your head high and truly move forward.

did you want to know everything about the affair(s)?

At first, I did. That changed after STBXHole came clean about one of his A's continuing after D-day. WH then took and passed a lie detector test, but I had changed.

Do you think you found out everything?

Nope. Not even close. And I probably never will know the full extent of the crap that STBXHole pulled during our marriage. Nothing would surprise me when it comes to him.

Did it help or did it hurt you in the end?

After being manipulated with lies for so long, it helped to be the one calling the shots about what I did or did not need to know instead of having everyone else make those decisions for me.

Do you see it differently now?

Now I realize that looking to a liar to tell the truth was foolish of me. It doesn't matter how many lie detector tests he took. I would never have the full truth out of him. STBXHole's issue with repeatedly cheating and lying was just a small part of the overall abusiveness that he treats people with.

I also am not divorcing STBXHole due to cheating yet again, but I am divorcing him because he will not stop when it comes to lying, gaslighting, isolating, and abusing me. I am glad that I found out everything that I found out. Knowing as much as I did helped me catch him in lie after lie after lie after lie. It was constant with him.

My only regret is not doing all of this sooner. D-day and the years of ongoing abuse and lies helped me by showing me where I needed to work on my healing. It's debatable on whether or not I would have healed sooner rather than later had he not manipulated me with lies to keep me spinning my wheels in this marriage for so long. I did get hung up on the details instead of looking at the big picture of how much he didn't deserve me.

F1

No, I didn't want to know everything. I told him to delete the texts because I knew that seeing them wouldn't help me and would just further traumatize me. I'm sure I didn't find out everything, but it didn't really matter. Just knowing he lied and cheated was enough. After a few months of false reconciliation, we decided to stop trying (or rather I decided to stop trying - he never really tried).

I truly didn't know which planet I was on Dday.

Now a few days later, hell yes I wanted to know everything. I, of course, was getting trickle truth. But went into detective mode. I know I will never have all of the information.

I would still like text etc but I have also come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter...I know enough.

DDay night, after booting her out of the house, I dove into all of her online things. She had all her passwords in a text file which she knew was on my PC as a backup. I found out a lot about her secret double life and a handful of weird details that only made sense in retrospect, but didn't find any gritty details about the ins and outs of the affair.

Day after DDay when she came over to blame-shift, I asked maybe 10% of what I wanted to know. I didn't pry into the dirty details because frankly I didn't want to know. I didn't want to know if they had sex. I didn't want to know if they talked about me. I didn't want to know if her girlfriend who tried covering up the cheating on DDay knew the entire time. I could've asked a litany of Yes/No questions and somewhat accurately gauged her response.

I did ask a lot of questions which required detailed answers (e.g. How long was this going on? Why didn't you tell me you were unhappy?) but she wasn't giving me any answers. It was all bullshit. So even with the Yes/No questions, I would've had to solely rely on my read of her reaction. I did, however, ask if she had feelings for the guy, and there was a pregnant pause so big that you'd think it was carrying octuplets. That was so painful, I didn't bother digging any deeper.

yes. I'm very detailed orientated so I wanted to know details down to the nth degree.

Naturally he "couldn't remember"

I'm so detailed orientated that I can recall verbatim everything HE has remembered and told me.

I'm often tempted to call his AP and ask her for details....and I'm 12 years out!!!!!

No, I didn't want all the details.

Did you want to know everything about the affair(s)?

Yes, I did. I was completely blindsided. My ex completely minimized on D-Day so I thought if I knew everything I could make an informed decision. My ex put on a facade that he worked constantly and that he was doing all of this work for his family. Like Fox Moulder says, "I wanted to believe..."

Do you think you found out everything?

Not. Even. Close. I think of my discoveries as the tip of the iceberg. What I know does not even compare to what I don't know. My ex was one of those sick and twisted long-term serial cheaters. On the narcissistic scale he's close to a psychopath. I stopped when I found out he was cheating on his long term mistress with his secretary. And get this, his secretary was cheating on him with another one of his married friends! When I found that out, the anger finally came and that motivated me to leave. At that point, I had no desire to know more.

Did it help or did it hurt you in the end?

100% helped. On the surface, he's a charming "nice guy" so I had a lot of cognitive dissonance for the first couple of months after discovery. Digging helped me realize just how he wasn't capable of love. It was what I needed to make a new life for myself.

Do you see it differently now?

Time helps. I'm not going to lie, it hurt like hell when I was going through it. But, I journaled, felt all the feels and took pretty good care of myself despite the trauma I was enduring. I see things so much differently now. I see my ex as somebody who has a personality disorder and an emotional deficit. I detached from him completely and built a new life for myself where I surround myself with people who love me. He still tries to hurt me through my children, however, since I've diagnosed him, we find the tools we need to cope so I can be the best parent I can be.

[This message edited by CornflakeGirl at 11:40 AM, March 26th (Tuesday)]

Thanks for all the responses, it's so interesting to see the spectrum of our reactions. The truth hurts but I think can heal too. My WS had all kinds of dating profiles and I would read things about him that weren't even true (like the languages he said he spoke but didn't, claiming to have done triathlons, etc.). So bizarre

I gave him a real chance to get past this but he cheated again and again and I just couldn't stay. I had 3 kids under 5 years old on DDAY and he blamed me for not having time to dote on him. He's not wrong, I didn't, but it wasn't fair to put that on me, especially because he traveled much of the time and I worked full time.

I wish he had just been able to get through those rough/busy years with me instead of turning against me. That enemy/competitor mindset lasted through the remaining years of our marriage. I'm so sad looking back that those precious years with my young kids were defined by sadness, hurt and confusion. I didn't do a great job raising my kids, I had to find strength to get through every day. That is what I hate most about this. They are really from a broken home.

I think the information gave me strength to see him for what he was but it was incredibly painful for me to read. I'm over 13 years out and now it doesn't even make me feel anything except relief to have gotten out. So for that reason it serves as a good litmus test.

I was in the middle of this around the time that Lacy Peterson was murdered and I remember being really scared because of the things my ex put on his dating profiles. So many things were just lies that it scared me. Very traumatic because his behavior was just out of left field.

Thanks for sharing your experiences, more than anything I realize just how much infidelity is a paradigm shift in our lives which requires us to make significant change...regardless of whether we divorce or reconcile. Life can never be the same after this.

Wishing you all peace and love

[This message edited by ErinHa at 11:40 AM, March 26th (Tuesday)]

Nope. I didn't want to know anything. There was no chance of R, so nothing he could say would make any difference.

Additionally, I think there was a LOT more that I didn't know, and I didn't WANT to know.

did you want to know everything about the affair(s)?

Yes. I had to know how big the monster under the bed was. Of course, I got trickle truthed until I did deep sleuthing.

Do you think you found out everything?

I had to hack her phone and I think I got the basic gist. At least it was enough to blackmail her with immediate get-the-fuck-outta-my-house if she didn't spill all.

Did it help or did it hurt you in the end?

I can't say it helped, but it was necessary for me to make informed decisions.

Do you see it differently now?

Nah, I had to know the full extent of her betrayal, the treachery surrounding it and just how far she was willing to go to destroy our family.

Of course, the actual sex acts were just symptomatic of deeper issues - a willingness to throw away her loved ones for some fleeting validation.

Yes I wanted to know everything. At first it was because of anger at the OW having secrets with my husband and as the days passed and my H asked for reconciliation I had to know what I would eventually be forgiving him for.

I didn’t find out everything in the first weeks. Seven months lafter dday I met with OW and got a better version of the truth than he provided. It was still not everything. At some point i had to come to terms with the fact that despite his confessions, OWs account and a polygraph, I would never know everything. I struggled with that for a long while. I recovered some texts but not really the ones I was looking for. I didn’t knownhowngheir conversations went although I known they were not highly intellectual and likely focused on sex.

I have a friend who chose not to know the specifics when her husband cheated. She couldn’t understand why I did. I couldn’t believe she didn’t. The only advice I can offer is that once you know something, you can’t unknow it. Be sure it’s what you want. I have zero regrets.

Did I want to know everything at the time? Yes.

Did I find out everything? Definitely not.

Do I care? Nope. Time helped. Taking time to get to know myself as a person instead of just by the labels of wife and mother also helped the not knowing and the healing.

Asshat was a master at gas-lighting and trickle truth So there was no getting the truth out of him at the time. He could never tell the truth, even when the truth was easier and better than a lie. For one particular incident with the last OW, he told me it was a kiss on the cheek, then told someone else it was just a kiss, when in fact, the incident in question turned out to be a full BJ in her garage next door while DS and I were inside our home. And if you asked him today, he would still say he never cheated .

DS was with Asshat for spring break last week. I used that time for spring cleaning, which included getting rid of old paperwork I didn't need to hang onto anymore. While going through paperwork, I found an old forgotten envelope that included a timeline of events along with texts and emails from Asshat that I had printed for documentation. I only glanced through them but holy, hell, he was one sadistic son of a bitch. I can't believe I had forgotten some of the things he had said and done. Reading it now, even knowing I lived through it, it's still hard to fathom how people can treat others like that.

Even if I could somehow learn all the details about all the As during our relationship, I wouldn't want to know. He's not worth it. He never was.

I wanted every detail and I wish that he'd given it. Like most everyone else, I went into detective mode and found out a bunch more. It was harder to KEEP finding out stuff than to have had it all at once. It went from 2 to 8 and I know that is utter bullshit. I know it was more. 2 months after I left him I found out he was trying to hook up with the young adult child of one of his best friends before he was supposedly first sleeping with prostitutes. So yeah. Someone with that low a character was trying to get laid pretty consistently.

Do I want to know more now? Nah. I know who and what he was. I know enough. Now is time for healing and leaving him and all that bullshit in the past.

[This message edited by DevastatedDee at 4:58 PM, March 27th (Wednesday)]

The only answer I demanded of him was "Have you cheated?" He said yes.

I knew in that moment that we would D.

I did not need to, nor want to, know any more.

[This message edited by betsy62 at 6:26 PM, March 28th (Thursday)]

On the first Dday I got a lie and false R.

On the second Dday it was enough to know he had slept with her and lied about it. I did not want, or need, the gory details.

Of course he filed for D because he was in LURV!

I have no idea how it would have gone down if he had showed any kind of remorse and attempted a true R.

NL

At first, I was desperate to know everything but he totally blanked me, turned his back and said it was none of my business, that I was being intrusive. They’d been having sex in my house every day for 4 years and when I found out and demanded answers, I was being intrusive! Now I just see them for what they are - sleazy, amoral, narcissistic, pathetic individuals. And I really don’t give a damn about the details.