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Atg100,

Your posts are impressive. It is obvious that you have done a lot of work on yourself. But sadly, you are not entirely in control of the outcome; you are only half.

Things must have been right at some point. It is that what I am striving to get back, but I am wondering if I’m kidding myself.

This ^^^ suggests that you really want to save your marriage--most do. But one thing that I have noticed is that cheaters are typically, even if it is only subconsciously, aware of this fact. Your W most likely knows she has the power in the marriage because she knows you want it to work, and that fact can keep the wayward from finding true remorse--value of the spouse and M--in the reconciliation.

It is my impression that when you push your W for more effort, commitment, and remorse so that you can calm your gut (which is screaming "This does not feel good or right!" and explains why you are here), you will encounter a side of your W that you will not like. There will be a battle for control of this marriage. If you stand your ground and demand your needs be met, your W will have to show you she truly values you and is willing to do what is necessary or let you go. That's when you will face the painful truth that we say here, "You have to be willing to lose the marriage to truly save the marriage." It's going to be on her.

How do you know your WW has gone NC with the OM beside her telling you?

Atg,

My reading of your posts is that you do NOT have a clear idea of what is happening. Worse, you seem to fear knowing exactly what happened. Do I read your posts right?

You cannot R if you let fear rule. To recover, you MUST embrace honesty for yourself. To R, your W must also embrace honesty. I know that can be scary - but you can do it even if you're scared.

You keep talking about mistakes. I guess an A falls within the definition of 'mistake', but an A does too much damage to be called a 'mistake,' because the word in essence minimizes the magnitude of the A.

I urge you not to minimize the A. I urge you to use a different word - 'betrayal,' for example. Not calling it a mistake will help you heal.

And I urge you to get the info that scares you. You really have to risk your M and yourself to save it.

[This message edited by sisoon at 12:27 PM, September 9th (Sunday)]

If you permit her to keep secrets and allow her to avoid giving you the full truth of what she has done, she will sub-consciously learn that she has a free pass (i.e., because you are so desperate to stay in the marriage that you are willing to believe anything she tells you).

Do not allow her to avoid confessing to the physical part of this affair because it will enable her to treasure her affair as a romantic fling/fantasy between star crossed lovers (where nobody was hurt).

Instead, she needs to examine the ugly truth of what she has done under the harsh light of exposure.

Why? Because when exposed her secret will change from a magical romantic fling/fantasy to the ugly hurtful act of betrayal that it is – and then and only then will she be motivated to fix herself.

I just wanted to share what happened after I contacted the OBS.

She was shocked, as you may imagine.

One thing I knew about the affair partner was that he told everyone at the workplace that he is divorced - whilst he wasn't.

But not just my wife, all female members of staff were of that opinion.

His reaction to his wife was telling - denied everything, blamed my wife and assassinated my character.

And even more revealing - he rang the day after and maintained the lie about his marital status to my wife. He stated that they had only remained together for their daughter's sake and that my actions made the daughter aware - and very sad.

I told the OBS about this phone call, who confirmed that this was just another lie.

AP - he is a pathological liar. He fooled his wife, my wife,all female work colleagues and seemingly showed no remorse.

My wife was embarrassed, withdrew for a few days but also apologized and confirms that she wants to work on our relationship.

She needed to know that the AP lied, that there were a wife and a daughter, who suffered.

Overall I think of it as

' short term pain for long term gain'

- the chance of this affair re-occurring is very low. But my mental health suffered, I had many sleepless nights and needed to take a day off work. I am very grateful for everyone's advice regarding this matter. But this is such a stressful time, I don't think anyone should call the OBS in a rushed decision or without having taken appropriate steps to make sure that we remain ok.

[This message edited by Atg100 at 5:15 PM, September 14th (Friday)]

I understand your desire to move past the Facebook messages but that is a huge mistake in my opinion. What if she was plotting to leave you, take you to the cleaners, disclosed other previous or ongoing affairs, making arrangements to hide further communications with the other man? My point is you don’t know what you don’t know and you can’t let fear hold you back.

Still one of them needs to quit the job, if they remain working together NC is impossible and the A will resume at some point, your WW develped feelings for this guy, As are like an addiction, and yes it got physical, did you confront the POSOM on the PA issue ? if so what did he say, talk to OBS to get his side of the story, press your WW on that, adults in close proximity don't have As for that long without kissing and/or having sex, ask her for a complete time line of the A, full access to her phone and all electronic devices, download Dr Fone or Enigma for to recover the deleted texts, in order for you to forgive adn recover you need to know what you're forgiving and recovering from.

Contact an A a DEMAND she signs a Postnup with an infidelity clause in your favor, if she cheats again, you file for D and she leaves the M broke. Keep posting frequently, this is a crucial time, EXPOSE the A to ALL your/her close family and friends, if any of her friends knew and/or enabled the A they have to go too, they're not friends of the M.

Thank you for your response.

I’m not as experienced as you are with the likely chance to re-offend , but I am pretty sure about one thing :

I can demand as you suggested , but it will still not be a guarantee that it will not happen again.

It would show that I am in a strong position and that my defences are well prepared.

But right now, my wife is also subconsciously looking for reasons to leave the marriage and overbearing and controlling behaviour would give her just such reason.

My overall plan however is to save our marriage - so demanding to see all the Facebook messages would not help.

I know they are full of betrayal anyway - and she knows that.

Se knows that she got away lightly and I think the confrontation with reality and seeing my anger was good .

Right now , she is full of remorse.

Our marriage counsellor also agreed that we need full disclosure. We will go again next week and that topic will be on the table of course . But it will be better to explore this under the guidance of a counsellor, rather than me demanding things, potentially in anger .

My wife and I had a good weekend, without the kids .

After all the upheaval of last week - she was very ashamed after it turned out that her AP lied about his own marital status - I called the APs wife and she confronted him.

My wife became withdrawn , quite and very sad .

She said that “ she had been taken for a ride by a liar “.

I felt sorry for her to a degree - it hurts me to see her upset in principle ,but if I think logically about the reason of her shame and sadness, I actually distance myself from her emotional response.

I had doubts if calling the APs wife was a good idea or not. In hindsight, it has achieved a lot for me.

My wife doesn’t see him anymore as this romantic love interest but as the liar he is.

I found last week incredibly challenging for me, so when my wife asked me to defer the next marriage counselling for a couple of weeks, I agreed.

I think a little bit of distance to the events will be ok, I pointed out that we must go in October and she agreed to that.

This Saturday we will fly to Tasmania ( I’m in Australia ) and be in a very remote place with our kids. No phone, internet or TV.

But plenty to do and we have a full to do list, with kayaking and bush walking . This has the potential to be helpful, if we are both willing to put our work in.

I will certainly give it my best shot. To follow it up then with counselling will hopefully be more productive than dragging her there tonight, whilst she is so full of shame. She won’t open up anyway. It’s immature but that’s how she is.

I read in another thread the words “ I’m dancing the pick-me-dance “

I certainly don’t want to do this , so it’s a fine line between being friendly and aiming for a long term goal versus being the only one who puts an effort in.

My senses are certainly sharpened and I have to say that time has been helpful in viewing her responses more objectively.

This is a good start......keep moving forward.

I’m glad you reflected on the advice here and informed the OBS.....

This is EXACTLY why it is highly recommended by almost every poster here....

NOTHING kills an A faster.....

I remember you also posted you were not sure if you needed any more info on EA or PA.....

I understand the view that any transgression is enough to destroy the M....so in a way it is irrelevant.

And as far as that goes....I agree.

But I do want to encourage you to demand the full details though....

Not to humiliate your WW or increase your own hurt and anger....

But because I believe it is IMPERATIVE for a BS to know if their WS still believes it is OK to lie to and gaslight the BS.

The details of the A are of less importance IMO than finding out this VITAL piece of information.

Liars just do not make good candidates for R as far as I am concerned.

Good luck.....keep it going!

I'm glad you Found the wherewithal to expose. It put you in a much better position and destroyed the fantasy your wife had of him.

All very good things.

Thanks for your advice.

Our counsellor called me - she asked why we deferred the appointment .- she was genuinely worried .

I told her what happened and why we need some time to approach the subject again with a bit of time after last weeks turmoil.

She suggested to have individual counselling with each of us, before having another group session.

My wife agreed , which I think is a good sign.

The counsellor has been very good, so I’m putting some hope into that .

[This message edited by Atg100 at 12:00 AM, September 18th (Tuesday)]

So we went to a social function with her work colleagues yesterday.

The AP was not there, and her friends and colleagues treated me genuinely nice .

I was wondering of course of how much they may have been aware.

But it all seemed ok, my wife seemed happy and there were even public displays of affection.

However - all her close friends are single and talked pretty much all evening about all the dates they have lined up for the weekend.

I can’t help but thinking that this may have played a role when she made her choices - but that would be so incredibly shallow.

I had to focus on not over interpreting, instead just judging her by what she does, on not based on what is going on in my suspicious mind.

[This message edited by Atg100 at 6:13 PM, September 18th (Tuesday)]

Thanks for sharing your experience here. Your posts are very well written and you have great self awareness. Have you checked out any of the suggested reading yet? “Not just friends” is a fantastic resource. There’s also a great q and a with the author Shirley glass in the healing library.

Thank you.

I just got a kindle copy of “ not just friends “ and have read through some pages. It seems very good and it is re-assuring to see that many of my reactions are well described - as well as hers.

I only speed-read so far , but one interesting statement about her current frame of mind is, that she has to deal with the loss of a love interest. And whilst she tells me “ Mitch is gone and in the past” - it’s surely not as easy as a little carpet sweeping maneuver .

So she will need time. Again, my sympathy for this particular predicament is rather low, but knowing that this is happening also allows me to give her some time. Because she is in some unpleasant emotional turmoil, which she can’t really discuss with me and hope for a friendly response .

[This message edited by Atg100 at 1:42 AM, September 19th (Wednesday)]

It looks like you are adopting a very soft approach - you are afraid that your actions will drive her away from you, you try to be understanding of her feelings, etc.

Yes, this is dangerously close to pick-me dance. You should be very cautious about this. In my experience (and many others), "soft" approach doesn't work. Cheaters are usually too self-absorbed to understand what is really needed to heal you and your marriage if you just explain it to them. If you explain your pain. To get it through to them requires much more than talking.

I suspect that in current phase your main emotion is sadness. Most likely you will come to the anger phase, you will need to vent, to rage, to express all disgust of her actions to her. If you won't be able to do it (because you are "understanding", etc., because "she has feelings too"), it will eat you up alive. That's when her true capacity to R with you will show up. She must see your hurting and damaged side and still want to be with you, want to repair that damage.

I think that until she gets out of the fog (mourning her lost love shit) completely, you need to detach from her. Don't try to be supporting. I'm afraid that if you allow her to lament about how "I was so in love with him and he was just a liar, poor me", your rage will be much much worse later.

Thank you.

No , I didn’t really mean to invest too much time and energy into her recovery from the loss of her lover .

I meant that I have no expectations with regards to a rapid progress.

I don’t get too angry in life - I go to the gym and practice a lot of yoga at the moment . That allowed me to stay level headed : for my own sake and I don’t think that I will erupt like a volcano.

What I am struggling with is a loss of respect for her.

Her motivation to have the affair and how she is dealing with now seem so immature. I’m not perfect by any means, but when I had my own crisis in the distance past, I was at least looking for help.

Atg: Everybody has their own style of healing from an A. However, as other posters have noted, I sense an undercurrent of "rush to rug-sweep" in your posts. I would caution you about this.

There is a thread on "Just Found Out" called something like "Venting....". It is probably on page 2, 3, or 4 by the time I post this. I would commend it to your reading.

There are plenty of other threads on SI from betrayed spouses who rug-swept and then, years later, sometimes decades, it comes back to bite them in the arse. There is one thread where this reared its ugly head fully 40 years after the A. The BH had been stewing on the issue for the full 40 years, kind of fermenting in the background, until one day it exploded.

In most cases, the ferment has to do with not knowing the details of the A. Most people feel that, to heal, you need to know what you're healing from. Further, the details of the A represent a private alternate reality, a wrinkle in the time/space fabric of your marriage, one that is secret from you. It's as if your marriage has a secret, private narrative that you are not part of, yet it involves your most intimate life's partner. In a very real sense, another man owns a chunk of the intimacy that should be part of your marriage. Finally, requiring a WS to describe the minute intimate details of the A is likely the first and most honest act the WS will perform for the BH with respect to the A.

I think that not reviewing the messages, plumbing the depth of your trauma, and working through it, all of that will come back to bite you in the arse if you don't do it now.

Thanks .

I read the post you suggested - and discussed it’s contents with my wife. I suggested that she tells me more details- a few things she had told me didn’t add up anyway, which I pointed out to her.

Only when confronted with that , did she admit that they had seen each other much more often than what she admitted before.

She also admitted finally for the first time that he was more than “ just a friend “.

She then admitted that her current sadness comes from missing him.

Great, so this is out in the open.

However - we are flying on vacations in 2 days. Which are now bound to be awful .

Should I even go?

[This message edited by Atg100 at 4:29 AM, September 20th (Thursday)]

Whether to go on the vacation, or not, depends on your heart.

We have seen countless stories of cheating on SI. One thing that is consistent amongst most cheaters is that they lie, minimize, deny, and lie more. Keep in mind that, until you found out, her default status was to lie to you about the A. As she said, "people can't change overnight". Assume every issuance from her rictus is a lie.

I would strongly suggest you make her create a written, detailed timeline of the A, and in the meantime you recover the deleted messages and texts and use them to corroborate the dates and events. I would suggest you then arrange to swap this info with the BOW to verify/correct.

The trip might be a good time to start work on this.

I want to address another point:

But right now, my wife is also subconsciously looking for reasons to leave the marriage and overbearing and controlling behaviour would give her just such reason.

Dude, she has you so backed into a corner that you are willing to let her fuck another man, and rug-sweep it, because you're afraid she will leave? What kind of marriage do you have? If it's really that bad, why on earth would you twist yourself into an emotional pretzel to stay in it?

We say here on SI that in order to save a marriage, you have to be ready to lose it. The marriage you are struggling to save, it doesn't exist, my friend, if she is at the "fuck another man" stage. Married people who are committed to a marriage, when faced with problems, try to work them out with their spouse. They do not see another penis in their vagina as a functioning solution to their issues with their spouse. They see that as an escape from the marriage, or possibly an exit.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 5:26 AM, September 20th (Thursday)]