Original Post: https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/topics/647213/busted-wife-in-an-affair/
Checking in. Those unfamiliar or willing to refresh, click the above link. I was in a different state of mind when I wrote that... its very harsh.
Mods, if this should go in another subforum, move as you see fit. I don't know that I'd call this reconciliation but there's some good info for the newly betrayed's in here.
tl;dr
After the wife’s emotional affair, she and I have moved forward together. I don't view it as reconciliation because I'm don’t know that I’ve forgiven. Letting the anger ease away has been the best thing. There is no desire to divorce, but I stay on alert. I don’t trust as much. Every time she leaves the house, I think about the betrayal. I regret every day that I didn't gather better evidence on the DL when I had the chance. I still google search OM. I look for evidence that I ruined his long term relationship. However, almost paradoxically, we are generally very happy; the affair is an undercurrent maybe more for me than her, I’m not sure. Wife and I went to counseling. It helped our communication. We do a lot together now. I like that. She seems to as well.
What happened
For transparency, I changed some key details last year in my posts because I think she knew I was on the site. But now I don't care; I'll add them. It affected some of the advice I got, but the spirit was all valid. And all appreciated. Much, much appreciated.
Basically, I found facebook messages on her phone just as I was about to take her to the airport so she could fly to her parents’ house for a weekend visit. This is where I made my big mistake: I didn’t scroll back to see how much else was said. I immediate went to her and asked what this was about, handing her the phone. I thought she would clarify it was a joke with a friend. Then the hand started shaking, scrambling to delete the conversation before I could grab the phone back. She lied about the length of the affair. She claimed 9 months. It was actually a year and a half. I confirmed that through phone records. When I found out she lied, I almost left her that 2nd weekend. It took a while to come around.
I called the guy in front of my wife. He tried to pretend he didn’t know what I was talking about. So when I forced his hand with her admitting it, he insulted my intellect first thing. Observing his lack of contrition and his poor communication skills, I knew I was up against a 40 year old with a teenagers maturity so I hung up on him. He pulled some serious white knight attitude. This rattled my wife, as she “didn’t think he was like that” and frankly it made her look even worse. Why? I’m a good, state provider. I’m not a pushover. I’m told that I am good looking, thin for my age, I have my hair (for now lol) and I’m very tall. I suppose this was a classic “what does this guy have that i dont” moment. This dude was kinda fat, long stringy hair, immature mindset - the works.
So, the reveal of the guy aside, it was pretty clear this was her filling a need I wasn’t giving her emotionally. The real issue was the length of the betrayal: a year and a half. It was entirely on Facebook and phone… lots of phone calls.
The affair was an emotional, not physical. The guy was located 18 hours away, an unemployed loser in his mid-40s who mooched off his long-term girlfriend. He had no money of his own. He drove his GF to work every day. After some digging, it seemed most of this guys life he lived this way. He never could have flown to see my wife. Nor driven. He was always around his GF. Likewise, my wife never had the opportunity to fly there or be near him.
In fact, OM has gone dark online - at least, I cant find him - yet. I paid for his girlfriends current phone number and email address. I sent her a shit load of evidence, including phone records, then I sent her a text telling her to check her email ASAP. turns out, she’s a bit dramatic so she lost it on me (the messenger) and kicked him out of her house with the quickness. His facebook account went missing over that weekend. I set up an additional account to find him as he immediately blocked my main one. A year later, he’s still gone. Dude was probably couch surfing.
Please, for anyone that wants to come in and tell me they could have had sex or met up when i didn’t know etc etc… I confirmed as much of what didn’t happened through forensic financial digging. The only things I cant prove are 1) sexting/were nudes sent, 2) amount of facetime calls and any nudity there, 3) how much was I disparaged, 4) did they ever want to make plans to see each other.
In the end, I chose not to polygraph, despite everyone’s recommendations. The answers would not truly be there because I wouldn’t have the evidence in my hands. I would always suspect she passed it even if she was lying. The good news is: she’s done everything right since I found out what happened.
What to take from my story:
Confront and confront HARD but be patient enough to gather your evidence first. I did a great job blowing the affair up, but I bombed gathering sufficient evidence to keep me sane long term. So, because I trusted my wife enough to ask her what suspicious facebook message as about, I couldn’t ever retrieve that info when she deleted it and I have a knowledge gap that eats at me. I should have taken the phone, ran down the street, scrolled backward and screen capped, screen capped, screen capped and texted it all to myself. I wouldn’t have come back until I had gotten everything I needed.
