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close to a month from D-day catching my wife in EA. I initially forgave her as it was just few messages and tried to move forward .(Please read previous posts)

But i couldnt stop thinking of it and whenever i asked,she wasnt answering well and was trying to stonewall as she felt that I was trying to poke at her mistakes again and again instead of moving ahead. She also got pissed when i asked about a resort trip where she went with another woman,3 men one of them is AP but she insists nothing physical happened.

This led to even more issues and fights and intervention. She is in her mom's house with kids for a week so that both of us can cool down and we had already had one session of MC and had our profiles mapped.

She called me and said that she wants to change but she cant do anything if everything she does and says looks as wrong in my eyes for some reason. I told her that she had ripped my entire trust on her so its tough for me to bring it back

So I need to know what can i need to know taht she is taking efforts, and how long should I give her? We are going to MC but not sure how much they can handle

What my W did to regain my trust was: she answered all my questions honestly for 3.5 years, and that includes answering lot of questions lots of times. She retains my trust because I don't think she's lied since before d-day.

About 4 years out she said she felt awful every time I asked. I told her I was asking to get information. I said that we were in R, and I had no intention or desire to bring on shame. Note that she answered honestly even though she felt deep shame.

There's no good way to make your W answer truthfully. You may be able to get honesty from her if you tell her that you'll dump her unless she gets honest and that your intuition is telling you that she's still lying.

Trust your gut. If it keeps telling you she's lying, she's probably lying.

She also got pissed when i asked about a resort trip where she went with another woman,3 men one of them is AP but she insists nothing physical happened.

I also find it hard to believe nothing happened. This is the struggle - once trust is lost, it is very hard to regain. I have it in writing from my WH that a trip with a coworker was innocent (I asked for a disclosure document). 4 months later, he confessed that it wasn't innocent after all.

WS will often minimize or outright lie in order to protect themselves. Sometimes they are scared of losing you and the married life. Sometimes they don't want to damage their self-image and accept the extent of their terrible behavior. Don't be surprised if, as time passes and your WW starts to feel safer, more truth comes out (we call this "trickle truth").

How much time should you give her? There is no guidance here - it's up to you. The rule of thumb is that R often takes 2-5 years, so you can expect something in that range if there are no further ddays and your WW becomes truly remorseful. Right now, it sounds like she is still trapped in shame and self-pity ("she wants to change but she cant do anything if everything she does and says looks as wrong in my eyes").

Repairing a marriage after infidelity can be a long, painful process. Are you prepared for that? Is she also prepared for that?

[This message edited by NoThanksForTheMemories at 12:21 AM, Friday, May 24th]

Shiv,

You don’t have to give any timeline. It can be right now, or even tomorrow. She cheated on you, and as I said before she’s doing DARVO. This is not your problem, it’s hers. I strongly recommend you start acting like it. Stop letting her have the pity party of "I can’t if I’m always wrong" or whatever crap she’s claiming. She cheated, so yeah she is wrong. Oh she can’t prove she didn’t sleep with him? So what? First she never should have put her self in a situation where she would have to prove it one way or the other.

I think you strongly need to stop demanding evidence. Go with your gut, go with the worst case. She slept with him and has been for a long time. Trust me, won’t be surprised at all if that comes out if she ever gets her head out of her ass. But let’s go the other route as well. Even if she didn’t sleep with him, so what? She still chose to cheat on you, and you don’t need anything else. She’s going to keep stringing you along, she isn’t accountable, and I’d wager she’s still having an affair.

You need to do what’s best for you. I often say this, I never celebrate the end of a marriage, but with infidelity, ending the marriage is the best decision. Sometimes it will wake up cheating spouse, sometimes it won’t, doesn’t matter. What matters is that you escape the situation. Trust me i know it’s hard and scary. It took me 6 months, but once i decided to hell with it, a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I’m in R because I chose to, and I have as much of the full truth as I will ever get. But while i certainly don’t want to, I was and still am fully prepared for D and I’ll be ok.

Have to agree with the above poster

STOP with the light weight, pretty please did you two hold hands and sing love songs to each other?

Also stop being a victim and trying to guilt appeal to her better conscience.

She's a married woman who fucked up. Period. The minute she sees it's not being taken as seriously as she did when she first allowed her heart to wonder, its the time she'll play the long game, throwing things back in your face and stonewalling.

Even if she didnt have sex, you best believe there was something intimate enough to set this all off.

But you cant nice the truth out.

In essence she is telling you that she cannot try to make amends unless you stop bringing up her affair snd her behavior and lies and choices.

Don’t give in to that manipulative behavior. She’s possibly going to cheat again and blame it on you for asking questions and being "mean" to her b/c she cheated.

My H pulled that routine. He was basically having me audition to remain his wife. Stupidly I agreed. So he practically flaunted his affair in front of me b/c he knew he could get away with it.

Stand your ground. That’s the best advice I can give you. If she blames you the only response is "nothing I ever said or did have you a reason or permission to cheat".

Once you stop engaging in her narrative she loses power.

I remember one month from dday. It felt like a long time. Like things had shifted. Nothing had moved. Not really not for another three months at least. Not really for a year. Your wife is catastrophizing and trying to rugsweep.

She called me and said that she wants to change but she cant do anything if everything she does and says looks as wrong in my eyes for some reason. I told her that she had ripped my entire trust on her so its tough for me to bring it back

Ugh - my WH did this crap - eventually telling me a month after finding out the A had been rekindled and going on behind my back for the THIRD time that he wanted me to leave as "he wanted to be happy and I seemed like I didn't want to be happy anymore" because I was "stuck" on his cheating. While it does not appear your WS did the same thing as far as a timeline goes, the thought process is the same: "I can't do anything to make you happy in 4 weeks time after I lied to you and fundamentally destroyed your trust so you must be stuck - poor me."

Do NOT accept this. I wish my response had been something like "If you cannot grasp that it is going to take a long time for YOU to rebuild the trust that YOU demolished AND that I am not sure how long that will take or what exactly has to occur for that to happen AND if you are really unwilling to stand by me and HELP me process all of this then there is no room for you in my life. I need a PARTNER not a fair weather friend." Until your WS gets to the point of acceptance and realizes the problem here is them, you are going to be stuck in his cycle. They can come out a better person in some cases, but the work is mostly theirs on that front (see my post in general about my healing timeline and how MUCH time it took for my WH to come to figure his own shit out as an example). It takes time - 4 weeks is NOTHING.

She called me and said that she wants to change but she cant do anything if everything she does and says looks as wrong in my eyes for some reason. I told her that she had ripped my entire trust on her so its tough for me to bring it back

For every "can’t" substitute "won’t". I don’t like her conditional ‘if’.

But, at this point so early after betrayal, the WS rarely gets it, the bomb in the relationship and to trust, well enough to understand what reparation looks like. So she is hardly alone in her lack of empathy and imagination. It takes time. It’s a kind of spiral learning, both BS and WS have to keep re- encountering things in order to grasp the complexity. Again and again as more layers are unearthed and rebuilt. There used to be a post in Wayward "what every WS needs to know". It’s a good place to start for her. There isn’t any instant fix to this situation, a bomb has been dropped and there’s shrapnel everywhere, you keep finding it for years. It has to be painstakingly extracted or gangrene sets in.

For every "can’t" substitute "won’t".

That’s good. Just state it back to her. "I can’t do this…"

"You won’t do this…"

I’ve done the same with mistake. "I’ve made a mistake."

"You’ve revealed your character."

I read your earlier posts...
I think a major issue holding you back is that you still don’t think you have the truth.
They had every opportunity to cross their affair from emotional to physical, and all you have is her word that it didn’t happen...

Either you have to believe her, or you need to find a tool to make your believe her.

IMHO the best tool to do that is a plain, old simple polygraph test.

Basically, the operator will define what "sex" is. Like "by "sex" I am referring to touching of genitals, mutual stimulation, oral copulation and/or physical intercourse". He will then ask – as one of 3-5 questions something like "From the (day of your marriage) have you had sex with anyone other than Shivsuroor as we previously defined sex"

You can have other questions, such as did they kiss and so on. But the key here isn’t really to find out if they had sex or not. The key is to find out if she’s telling the truth.

Friend – If your wife were to tell you NOW that yes, she and the guy had sex – that she manually stimulated him, that they had mutual phone-sex or whatever... IF she tells you NOW on her own accord... your marriage has a chance. You can reconcile from the truth.
Disocvering maybe a year from now that they kissed... that could kill your marriage.

It’s a bit like climbing a tough cliff. Every step is an energy-drain and you might have the energy for 1-2 attempts. But even if you have made it so you only have one foot left to the top... if you lose your grip there and fall down... you are just as far down as if you had fallen a third of the way, and you have less energy left to try again.

If you tell her that not believing her is preventing you from moving onwards and that if shes telling the truth a poly will only help your marriage... plus that if she confesses NOW you are still willing to work on things... THIS can give you the base you need.

Without it... I think your are in for a miserable life.