SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It is said here, and is true I think, that how the WS behaves after D-Day is as important to the BS as the actual cheating is.

For me, her actions afterwards, in trying to portray you as an emotionally abusive partner to save her own reputation from the damage she brought on herself, would be as disgusting (of not actually more so) than the actual cheating.

I think you should do whatever you need to do to move forward, be it reading her letter, meeting her father and mother. Talking to your own friends and family etc. When she, or anyone else, tries to convince you to give her another shot just remember that as well as utterly betraying you, she then tried to falsely accuse you of abuse and had no qualms in seriously ruining your reputation to try and save hers.

You are doing SO WELL.

Her father is a piece of work. He gave you a compelling speech and then tried to bribe you into staying with his daughter. I don't even know what to say to that. It's almost too "powerful man" stereotypical.

How could my WF reveal the details of her infidelity to her mother but hasn’t had the integrity to do so yet with me?

Do you have reason to believe she was honest with her mother? Unless you know for a fact that she shared true details with her mom, I would be more inclined to believe she minimized, and maybe lied.

He suggested that I hold tremendous power here and that I have a ‘God-like’ opportunity to grant his daughter forgiveness and salvation. That my ability to forgive her and reforge the relationship will not only be the mark of a ‘Great Man’, but that it will also secure her lifelong loyalty to me from her.

You hold “God-like” opportunity because you’re absolutely in the right-righteous, relative to her position.

It is up to HER to “reforge the relationship”. It baffles me how people continually place the burden of reforging, rebuilding on the BS! All while the entitled Daddy’s Girl kicks back and waits for her Daddys to provide, fix her shit and clean up her messes.

I know of an ExWW’s Daddy who did EXACTLY the same thing. He too was a serial unrepentant cheater. His beat down submissive BS continued on in a loveless shallow inaffectionate marriage hell just for “the sake of” the kids, some of which have become cheaters themselves. He too talked of forgiveness, the nobility of forgiveness, with a spin implying a Christian obligation to forgive-just to add a bit of a guilt-trip if forgiveness was not granted. Daddy’s girl was forgiven, and then subsequently divorced. She is now free and continues to live her life of poor boundaries and entitlement. The truest form of forgiveness is forgiveness without obligation or condition.

Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation. Forgiveness is a unilateral promise, but reconciliation involves bilateral promises, promises she doesn’t seem capable of keeping.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 3:19 PM, April 12th (Monday)]

Absolon, there is no need to read the letter from your WF now. You've made the right decision, there is no more clarity than the light that was shown to you by the PI. Even after she asked for forgiveness, she went back to have what? a final fuck?

Now you know her father is a serial cheater too. I hope that your feelings for him, and how great of a man you thought he was prior to the meeting has changed. He is not who you thought he was, and neither was his daughter. Her mother, after having been cheated on at least twice is locked into this family b/c of what? MOney? Her children are no longer in need of her care.

You seem to be able to take advice here, while still holding true to yourself. Just know that there is not one word in the that letter that changes the behavior and consistent abhorrent self entitlement of that family you're about to discard. I don't think you're going to regret your decision to stay out of that family. You now know the good looking and high status family that you were about to marry into is filled with shit, lies and deceit. What looks good from the outside, smells of rotten corpse from within. Looks and money don't mean shit when you have zero integrity.

Your WF's family is circling the wagon behind her. We've seen this many times around here. At first, they will acknowledge her misgivings and faults, but don't be fooled. This will settle in a matter of weeks. If you don't comply, you will be the bad guy. NO matter what her father or mother have said to you in confidence this past week. YOU, if you continue to reject their daughter will become the enemy. Your best bet is to continue down the track of the 180, keep NC and give yourself time to heal. The letter, keep it for awhile and read it when you're in better spirits, or don't read it at all. There is just really no need since you've decided to move on.

Absolon,

Take care of yourself and congratulations for thinking clearly throughout your ordeal.

Your fiancee isn't exactly kind. Her AP, who provides her with emotional support, only provided his wife with a deep sadness.

Her asset of beauty was not used beautifully. Gladly, it seems you want to move forward without her.

I am at the 5 year mark of reconciliation, (the oft quoted 3-5 years of recovery), cut your losses and move on.

Best of luck.

Thank you so sincerely for the continued insight, support and care.

I returned home yesterday evening, and my WF had indeed left a handwritten letter in my mailbox. At first, I resisted the urge to open it and in fact went to sleep undecided about whether I would open it at all. But I couldn’t sleep, eventually gave up and opened the letter.

I wanted to sleep (what little I could cobble together) on it, reflect, then post a summary of the letter here.

So here I am today:

• She started with a simple apology, saying that she would never forgive herself for the hurt she has caused me.

• She then said that her and her AP are ‘completely done … forever’.

• She then went into deeply explicit, almost forensic, detail about the degree to which I was her best lover, etc etc, ever. While a) I don’t care and b) it no longer matters, I will give her credit for the level of detail she provided about what I did for her in that regard—and, as compared against AP and all previous lovers. It was both weird and touching.

• She then provided a timeline of how things unfolded. Just a few weeks before the September dinner party (where I thought I saw them holding hands under the table), AP phoned her and asked whether she could meet because he and his wife (OBS) were having marital difficulties and, given my WF and OBS were friends, apparently my WF would provide the requisite insight he sought.

• They met for coffee one workday morning, about 7-8 days before the dinner party, which lead to him texting her throughout the next week. On the morning of our dinner party, under the pretext of an over-lengthy shopping trip, she met with him in a park and there he confessed his deep infatuation for her. She said she was ashamed for how she fell for his lines, but his primary ‘argument’ was that if she felt even 25% of what he did for her, that she should ‘scratch that itch’ before committing to marriage.

• She said she told him a firm ‘NO’ to that, but that throughout the dinner party later that night that he was playing footsies with her under the table. She says it was ‘pretty much the unluckiest thing in the world’ that I happened to turn back at the very moment he put his hand through hers. She says he initiated that too.

• They had their first kiss in late October, amazingly when she was over for drinks and dinner at AP and OBS’s place on a weekend where I was away. OBS had gone to put the kids to bed after dinner, and he had kissed my WF passionately while his wife was out of the room. She knew it was wrong but also called it ‘thrilling’.

• He had apparently put a lot of pressure on her throughout November to get me to agree to having he and OBS on our January vacation; a lot of their texting throughout Nov and Dec was based around scenario after scenario he conjured to say how they would manage to have illicit sex right under our noses.

• She was vague about sexual details but said it began in early February. AP insisted it be in my house as often as they could manage. She said that his ‘ultimate thrill’ was to humiliate me.

• Remarkably, her Big Argument was as follows: that she acknowledges that infidelity is ‘in her blood’ (not sure whether a reference to ‘bloodline’ or ‘DNA’—perhaps both are true), yet … yet … that she was 100% excited and prepared to put all of that behind her because I am ‘the perfect man’. Her twisted logic was that by having this affair, it would ‘purge’ her of all the ‘demons’ and would ‘cleanse’ her in preparation for a fully committed life with me. She said that the hugest appeal to this affair was her quiet loathing of this man (the one who apparently makes her feel ‘safe and secure’?!) and that, combined with his sick desire to humiliate me, the self-disgust generated from her choice to be with him would finally purge her of her 'last itch’ to cheat.

• Other than that (!), she said that she is now going to live at her parents’ indefinitely. She said she is going to undergo therapy for the first time in her life. She said she is going to write me a letter at the end of every month to update me on her progress. She said that she is going to win me back, but only on my (Absolon’s) terms. She said that my cutting her off, in the way I have, has made her realize how much she truly loves and wants me, and is devastated by her actions.

• Oh, and: she apologized .. sort of .. for her ‘emotional abuse’ crap comments – definitely for the public nature of them, but also for their inaccuracy. But she didn’t retract things entirely: she recalibrated her remarks to mean that I operate by too high a moral standard and that it is consequently ‘suffocating’. She admires me for my integrity, etc, but says it is impossible to live up to the perfectionist ideals I hold for myself and others. I need to reflect on that last comment.

Overall, I am simply too emotionally exhausted to share how I feel after reading all of this. Honestly: I don’t have a clue what emotions are left, or available, to me.

I will never be able to see her the same way again. Perhaps I am too exacting in my standards, and perhaps I need to soften a little in terms of how much tolerance I have for my flaws and others’. But there is a lot in there that pulls me back to her.

I will remain NC with her; don’t worry.

And OBS has reached out to me, asking for another coffee this Thursday – because our coffee last week apparently ‘helped’.

That’s it.

Honestly - I'm extremely unimpressed with her letter. I knew her letter would be bad but I thought that maybe she could do better than this. The only thing I can even describe as maybe taking some accountability is when she apologized. But even then, it was all about her and how she'd never forgive herself. Very little focus and understanding of what you're going through.

Key Points:

- If she said no to him, why didn't she tell you?

- If he grabbed her hand when she didn't want it, why didn't she swat him away or get up from the table?

- Why the hell did she spend any time outside of work with him at all if she didn't want his advances?

EVEN IF what she says is true - and in my years of experience here I find that highly doubtful - she's still 100% responsible for cheating. It's not 50% her, 50% OM. It's not 50% her, 50% her no good cheating genes from her family. It's 100% her and IF her story is true, she had a ridiculous number of opportunities and easy avenues available to have stopped this dead in its tracks and not even gotten to a position where that first kiss happened. She didn't take them. Why? Because she wanted it. She wanted the security of you at home and the thrill of the OM on the side so she decided to keep putting herself in situations that could lead to something and even better if he initiated because then she could point the finger back him just like she did over and over again in this letter.

PLEASE for your own sake get a message to her right now that you DO NOT want any more letters from her. Doesn't matter if you barely give a shit and will toss them without reading. It will save YOU a massive headache down the road when she escalates to attempted further contact. Harassing friends, meeting up at your house or work, etc. And if you move on and start dating during this time - there is no way in hell do you want to see what she can do to you or your future GF because she won't give up on you. This ends now. The door must be closed for good.

Absolon,

There is a lot to unpack in that letter. The one element that jumped out was

Her twisted logic was that by having this affair, it would ‘purge’ her of all the ‘demons’ and would ‘cleanse’ her in preparation for a fully committed life with me. She said that the hugest appeal to this affair was her quiet loathing of this man (the one who apparently makes her feel ‘safe and secure’?!) and that, combined with his sick desire to humiliate me, the self-disgust generated from her choice to be with him would finally purge her of her 'last itch’ to cheat.

That is a particularly twisted statement from a very broken person. Someone with high moral standards and self esteem would never need to purge themselves of demons prior to committing to someone. She is trying to tell you all the things she thinks you need to hear so she can win you back. Continue to go NC. If she really wants to work on herself, that's great. She can go to IC and fix herself, but you shouldn't hold any hope that she will sustain it or even be successful. Go live your life.

One last thing. I would share the letter with the OBS. It gives some good insights into the twisted and duplicitous nature of the OM...

he had kissed my WF passionately while his wife was out of the room. She knew it was wrong but also called it ‘thrilling’.

I think 'disgusting' would be more accurate.

Shame on your WF, add homewrecker to the list of adjectives to describe her.

That letter sounds like something a crazy person would write. Stay away from her, she can rationalize any damn thing she does with the kind of twisted logic in that letter.

She 'helps you' by 'hurting you', don't you understand?

[This message edited by SnowToArmPits at 3:50 PM, April 13th (Tuesday)]

Thanks for the update.

Try not to worry about being emotionally exhausted. You should be. We've all been there.

Please be sure to take care of yourself. I know you've probably heard it too many times here, but please remember to eat, drink, and sleep well. Exercise if you can.

You have mentioned a few times in this thread that you have trouble sleeping. Talk to your doctor about this.

She said that his ‘ultimate thrill’ was to humiliate me.

AP phoned her and asked whether she could meet because he and his wife (OBS) were having marital difficulties

Helping with marital difficulties. I've heard this way to many times as the excuse for cheating (or the lead up to cheating) and I've only been here a short time. This must be in the cheater handbook and taught in that secret school they all go to.

All the best to you absolon.

by having this affair, it would ‘purge’ her of all the ‘demons’

Ya, and now you're now purging yourself from this demon.

• She said she told him a firm ‘NO’ to that, but that throughout the dinner party later that night that he was playing footsies with her under the table. She says it was ‘pretty much the unluckiest thing in the world’ that I happened to turn back at the very moment he put his hand through hers. She says he initiated that too.

Funny she doesn’t mention that she made the odd seating plan that ensured they would be seated together.

AP insisted it be in my house as often as they could manage. She said that his ‘ultimate thrill’ was to humiliate me.

Of course she found this utterly loathsome. Why, I bet she could barely continue the affair!

But she didn’t retract things entirely: she recalibrated her remarks to mean that I operate by too high a moral standard and that it is consequently ‘suffocating’. She admires me for my integrity, etc, but says it is impossible to live up to the perfectionist ideals I hold for myself and others

Yes, I can see how that would be a lot of pressure, what with you expecting her not to screw her friends husband. You think she would have learned her lesson with her last fiancé and chosen someone with more realistic standards.

One last thing. I would share the letter with the OBS. It gives some good insights into the twisted and duplicitous nature of the OM...

Absolutely show her the letter but also be prepared for her to learn that your STBX was not a helpless victim powerless to stop OM's advances.

As a rule of thumb, if someone tells you a story in which their involvement was left out, it is always a minimization of the truth aimed at manipulating you. Look at what your STBX said happened. At no point does she say what SHE thought and felt aside from the one time she supposedly upheld the fidelity of your relationship. She doesn't even take ownership for passively participating. In her own narrative, she simply existed and agreed as OM ran rough shod all over her.

The reason she doesn't take accountability is because she was an active participant who kissed him back and gleefully agreed and planned him coming over to show you the ultimate amount of disrespect. She knows if she is truthful about it, you would not soften and would never entertain speaking to her again. She knows the depths of how wrong and messed up what she did is so she hides it. She serves you a story that's more palatable to a future R and hopes you buy it. I can guarantee she told her mother the same story and if you had asked me before today what story I think she told, I would have bet money on it being one that points the finger at him and leaves out her involvement as much as possible as a way of minimizing, blameshifting, and lying by omission. Of course her mother ate it up and called you begging you to reconsider not showing her poor, victim, naivete daughter any consequences of her actions at your expense. She is her mom after all and she has spent your STBX's whole life shielding her from the consequences of her behavior. Can't blame her but certainly does not lend an ounce of credibility to your STBX's fairytale.

So she fucks him in your house (in your bed?) to humiliate you and you're thinking about taking her back?

I. Dont. Get. It.

One thing is true, I don’t doubt that you are the best person she has ever known or had a relationship with.

There is some good there. And some not so good.

But it doesn’t really matter because right now, she is not a safe person for anyone to marry, let alone be a partner to or in a relationship with.

My advice to you would be to simply tell her it sounds like she has months if not years of work ahead of her and that you hope she is serious about it and because you do care about her that you wish her well in that journey because you’d like to see her become someone better than she has shown everyone, but especially herself, to be.

Then I would tell her that you consider her actions as to having broken the engagement and that if she’s serious about changing her life and becoming a better person that she will start by returning the ring that was a symbol of the love and devotion which she completely through out the window.

Then I would state that while you cannot make any promises, that you do wish her well on her journey because you do care about what happens to her.

Simple and direct.

Finally to you my friend I would say that it’s always good to do self analysis about yourself and how you interact with those people closest to you and who you love. Perhaps you also can learn something about yourself.

But don’t ever, EVER, think that your personality and attitude had anything to do with her betrayal. If those things bothered her she had a hundred different ways to approach that issue and beyond murdering you, she chose the absolute worst path she could in addressing them. She has a lot of work to do around that fact.

Keep posting, you have a long way to go but have taken some very effective first steps to get yourself pointed in the direction of finding happiness again.

If she’s to have any chance to be a part of your journey again, she has to go do a lot of work to change her emotional make up and DNA. That’s gonna be very hard for her to do.

Take care.

[This message edited by Stevesn at 3:55 PM, April 13th (Tuesday)]

Of course those of us that are faithful are operating on "too high of a moral standard" for those that cheat. Just like those of us that don't steal or murder are operating at "too high of a moral standard" for those that steal and murder.

"She admires me for my integrity, etc, but says it is impossible to live up to the perfectionist ideals I hold for myself and others. I need to reflect on that last comment."

Just utter bullshit. Being basically decent, kind, having honesty and integrity is not impossible. It's the bare minimum. Sure we all fail sometimes. I'm sure you can think of mistakes you made and didn't correct. Times you failed to uphold a promise, and all you could do was apologize for it. But there is a monumental difference between being late when you promised not to be, and having sex with someone else when you promised not to. Unless you were grinding her into the dirt for small, easily forgivable errors and mistakes, it is unlikely that your "high morals" were in any way "suffocating". It strikes me as relationship history rewriting.

she recalibrated her remarks to mean that I operate by too high a moral standard and that it is consequently ‘suffocating’. She admires me for my integrity, etc, but says it is impossible to live up to the perfectionist ideals I hold for myself and others. I need to reflect on that last comment.

When dating somebody casually for fun and sex, this might be an odd, offhand thing to say. When contemplating the lifelong commitment of marriage, it is legitimate to "vet" the potential marriage partner to determine whether he/she is truly marriage caliber. Do you operate on substantially the same wavelength on matters of integrity, morality, etc.

She essentially told you that you do not. It is clear that, even if there were no infidelity at all, you should not marry this woman. If she feels this way now, even before marriage, how is she going to feel in 10 years, or 20? After the pressure of kids?

Just utter bullshit. Being basically decent, kind, having honesty and integrity is not impossible. It's the bare minimum. Sure we all fail sometimes. I'm sure you can think of mistakes you made and didn't correct. Times you failed to uphold a promise, and all you could do was apologize for it. But there is a monumental difference between being late when you promised not to be, and having sex with someone else when you promised not to. Unless you were grinding her into the dirt for small, easily forgivable errors and mistakes, it is unlikely that your "high morals" were in any way "suffocating". It strikes me as relationship history rewriting.

I would like to point out too that every single one of us has something like this to fixate on after DDay. It didn't matter how amazing of a partner we were or how terrible. It didn't even matter if our WS had complaints after DDay about it or not. Even the most perfect and ideal of us looked back and regretted something that had absolutely nothing to do with the A and thought we could improve. There's a myriad of reasons for that but typically it's the idea that something, somehow, our behavior influenced the lead up to the A because if we had some form of control over it, maybe we could prevent it from happening again. That comfort outweighs the guilt we feel over the perceived wrong.

But where this gets tricky is that often these complaints our WS has aren't even true. I too had a small list of complaints from my XWBF from the days leading up to our break up and after DDay to fixate on. I was too much this, not enough that. I didn't do enough this. I did too much of that. Want to know what happened when I got into a new serious relationship a year later? Those issues were no where to be found because they WERE NOT TRUE! They weren't even true of my relationships before him either according to exes.

Lie: We didn't go out enough. I didn't plan enough. I didn't put enough effort into us doing fun things.

Truth: Multiple partners have complemented me on my ability to plan and execute fun dates before and after XWBF. My husband genuinely looks forward to me planning fun things for us to do. XWBF frequently turned down or canceled on me last minute on these fun dates because he "didn't feel like it" and therefore created his own problem.

Lie: I didn't participate in our hobbies correctly and was looked down upon by our peers for it.

Truth: Mutual friends said I was great at said hobbies and even better than XWBF because I had years of experience in them before we dated. Still involved in those hobbies and still considered awesome by new friends in those hobbies. Old friend group was destroyed when my XWBF decided it was cool to be the OM to a nearly decade long relationship.

Lie: We had nothing in common.

Reality: We had nearly everything in common down to ethnic background, uncommon lifestyle, uncommon religion, same political leanings, highly overlapping taste in music, etc. But because we disagreed on one or two shows or bands, suddenly none of it matters. Luckily husband has all that and more for me.

I too did not see it this way in the aftermath of DDay and break up. I spent years thinking and reflecting on all the awful no good things I did in my relationship with XWBF and how I could have been better only to realize I didn't really change anything in new relationship (now marriage) and yet somehow everything that was a problem with XWBF was something I was applauded for with husband. I was already a great partner. My XWBF just decided to stop seeing that because he also started cheating so it was better for him if I contributed to the relationship issues instead of the relationship failing because he was a dishonest asshole.

Think of it this way - you were such a good partner that the ONLY thing your STBX found "wrong" with you is that you had a high moral aptitude and standards. And you having that was difficult and smothering given how she was secretly acting like a lowlife and cheating on you. Wow. What a monster you are for being like all the other decent, faithful people out there. I guess OM was more her speed.

So the betrayer in her apology letter basically states that your ethical standards are too high for her to meet. This is in her apology/I will never give up and you will take me back after I fix myself letter. Wow, what utter gall. She is in no position to comment on your ethical standards. How stupid of her. How revealing. She is a spoiled brat with major issues. Stay the hell away from her for your own good. Pitty her next victim.

Boy. Let me see if I have this straight. She fucks a guy in your house, supposedly despising him, knowing that he wants to humiliate you, and that's supposed to be a good thing since she now knows she will never do it again ever, like in forever. That about it?

Then how about her weekend tryst after she got caught? Or was that one last try to make sure she would never ever do it again for sure ever?

I confess I'm not seeing anything in your description of the letter that would lead me to think you would consider being pulled back into her orbit. Repelled yes. So maybe I'm missing something.

Do you want to take odds that she said something similar to her first fiancé?