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I am so incredibly sorry. I have been through something similar. I gave up on the idea of reconciliation, but still find myself unable to initiate a divorce. For now, I'm allowing myself some time to regain a bit of stability.

Please ignore any comment that puts blame on you. Nobody knows what they would do in this situation until they've lived it. I certainly have done plenty of things that I never would have imagined I would do. Also please don't feel stupid for having trusted her in your marriage; I think that, where a person has been very good at deception and not given you an actual reason to suspect them, being trusting is a sign of a person functioning well in a relationship.

If you want certainty about your children's biological paternity, it is good that you have arranged testing. It is one of those things that once you know, you can't unknow. However if I were in your position, I would want to know too. Do consult a lawyer about the implications of the results.

Whatever her words, her behaviour is telling you lots. I do know how hard it is, believe me, but you have everything that you need inside you to build a much better life than this, and a much better situation for you and for your children.

So sorry to read this latest revelation. I don't have much to add but to tell you that you are not screaming into the void. We are here, man, and we hear you.

Gemmy

See my tagline?
I truly believe it and I think it applies to you and your situation.
In saying that, I’m not allocating any blame on you.
But… if you decide to remain in an unchanged situation you shouldn’t be surprised if you remain in an unchanged situation.

Your options might not be great, might not be the ones you wished for, but they might be the options open for you. Here is how I evaluate your situation:

Is your marriage salvageable? Well… I don’t know, not more than anyone else. I guess it boils down to some key issues that you might have to ask yourself:

First and foremost: Do you WANT to remain married to her? Many of us might question why, but the simple fact you have been battling these windmills for over a year suggests you had some hope of reconciliation. If you no longer have any wish to reconcile (and despite your anger in your post you are ambiguous on this being the final straw – as in "I believe this was the proverbial straw to be honest" rather than a more direct "this was the final straw") then start the process of getting out.

If there is any "yes" to that question then I would guess there are some other requirements you have. Just remember - we might want something, but that doesn’t mean we get it.

Can you get the message across that the truth is needed, why that’s important and what will happen if it’s not offered? Seems like she hasn’t understood that message to-date so it clearly isn’t getting over to her.
Is it clear she understands the message? Like does she confirm that she understands that she has some short period to be totally accountable and acknowledges the cost of a) not understanding that message and b) not being accountable?
Is there any way for you to confirm or support whatever she might say? Is there any situation where you can tell yourself that you have the truth? I doubt you are willing to take her word at face value so can you corroborate her story with phone-records, financial statements, friend-statements, a poly… Is that something you are willing to do or want to do?
Keep in mind we have a lot of stories here on SI where a WS passed a poly, and then the BS has retrospective doubts about it’s reliability. If you were to use a poly/hypnosis or whatever method to get "truth" you need to be willing to believe the result.

I don’t think you have any option of picking and choosing these requirements, I think that no matter how much you might WANT to save this marriage you need to have a sense of knowing the truth. I honestly think her inability to understand the immense gift you gave her of time to be truthful has irrevocably damaged your ability to believe her. All this might mean that you have to evaluate your options, what you need, what is open for you, and then select what might seem like the "least bad" option. Even if that might be separation or divorce despite some deep wish to reconcile.

Gemmy – the worst outcome of where you are today would not be that you are in the process of divorce a year from now. Nor would it be that you two are battling the process of real reconciliation work.
The absolute worst outcome IMHO would be that a year from now you are STILL where you are now, maritally, personally and emotionally.

Remember – you have power. You have options. You can make things happen.

I don’t think she is a psychopath. I do think she is a sociopath. A sociopath is one who fully understands right from wrong but who is indifferent when they do wrong. These people cannot be cured. This is their personality. I can see no reason to knowingly remain in a partnership with a sociopath. You love the false face, not the real person. If this is the last straw, act.

Let me preface this first, I am not trained to diagnose anyone. However, I do read, and I studied a great deal of this in college and have worked with people who suffer from PDs for my entire job.

You need to become well acquainted with what the different personality disorders are. In the diagnostic manual that psychiatrist and psychologist use there is an area about personalities and their disorders. In Cluster B you need to become well acquainted with what are personality disorders. These are the ones where you have to accept the fact that the person you are involved with, in whatever capacity, does not have a healthy personality. They can be borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, sociopathic/psychopathic. In my job and oddly in my personal life, I have found that some of these bleed into each other. It’s my understanding that Europe just has everybody grouped under that PD heading. I’ll give you a short history of two people that I know have had it one was suffering from borderline personality disorder. These are the people that become barnacles in your life. They glom onto you and do not let go. Every time you make a move away from them, they go into total panic because their fear of an abandonment is what controls their lives. I finally had to disengage with a friend because she had gotten so possessive of me that I had difficulty just spending a day away from her. On the other side, I had one who was so passive that she did nothing on time. She was the most undependable person I have ever been around and I include looking after her own health. I became her full-time mother basically. Those two women wore out my friendships. Nothing ever changed even one iota, in how they processed life. In my job, I had to deal with people who were such raging adults that getting away from them and exhaling was a job. So in order to get you to look outside of what you know and look at what you don’t know might help you. One thing too is that they don’t change. You were born with a certain amount of genes and those are going to be with you from conception until death. The childhood you have will basically tell you what you will be like as an adult. There is a psychologist who says there is a difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. Sociopath is made by their childhood and a psychopath is born that way. I have no idea what’s going on with your wife, but the fact that she could sit there and completely disregard the agony you were in tells me that she is dealing with something unhealthy. I don’t have the right word to describe what it’s like to deal with someone who can see you in agony and feel nothing but people who lack empathy are dangerous.

This is the last thing, you cannot fix her and you cannot change her. Take that in. You cannot change her. If she has a personality disorder, and especially if it’s sociopathic, she has learned from very early childhood to put a mask on, and she could play up being normal when she is not at all, because behind that mask is a person who does not care. I don’t know and I’m never going to know how to diagnose someone because I have not had the formal training for it, but I was smart enough to know when I got pulled into it even though it took me a while.

My suggestion is for you to do a lot of research to see if she even resembles anyone on this cluster B because she might not. Your description of her makes it sound like she is but we are only getting who she is through your lens. They are damnable diagnoses because they cannot be fixed, they cannot be changed, I am reading where they’re doing some things in the brain that might or might not help but I promise you the ones I’ve dealt with nothing ever changed.

You can use the Internet for an overview, but you do need to do some deep diving to try to sort out just exactly who and what you’re dealing with. I want you to take yourself out of trying to manage someone who’s unmanageable. It sounds like it’s going to take a terrible toll on your health, mentally and physically, if you don’t get something squared away internally.

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 2:53 PM, Tuesday, November 10th]

I'm sorry for what you are going through. This is beyond brutal.

One thing that stands out in your writing is intuition. Among the definitions, intuition is a subconscious knowledge based on patterns and past experience. It is thought to be more or less accurate for certain people and certain situations. Given that, I would say:

1. Your intuition was nagging at you that you did not have the entire truth.
2. Your intuition was spot on in this situation.
3. Your intuition is continuing to tell you that she's still not telling the entire truth.

Now personally, I'd rather make decisions based on conscious knowledge; but this is strong evidence. Your WW's answer to why indicates that she continues to lie because it's in her best interest. If she had changed, I think it's likely that your intuition would have noticed the shift. You seem well attuned to people and their actions and feelings. Is there a reason to expect any change with a new timeline or a polygraph? I just don't see it. She continues to have the same attitude and thought processes.