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AH, none of us are where you are at this very moment, so whatever you decide is what you think is right for you. From my perspective your love is so great for her, I feel you are defending her in your previous comments. That is your right. But until you go total no contact and she starts to feel some repercussion for what she has done, this will not get better. Based strictly on your comments on her answers to the timeline, I feel your wife is still just trying to save face only because she was busted. I do not see real remorse and I think you love her so much that you are incapable of being grey rock with her. Understandably your still trying to process the whole situation. Take your time, but I still believe that you should enforce no contact for a couple of months. Best wishes brother and take care of "YOURSELF".

Be careful to avoid any tendencies to white-knight for her.

I agree with this. The family having a go at her is part of the consequences of her actions.

It’s not just your relationship she has damaged, she has damaged the lives and relationships she had with the kids, family etc - and their arguments with her part of their own emotional response and healing journey and it’s their right to have that with her.

Certainly understand you wanting to stick up for her but I also understand her getting an ear full from family because this is just a consequence of HER actions.

AH maybe it might behoove you to get away from everyone for awhile (WW, family, pastor, SI etc). You have a lot of voices in your ear and even though everyone is well meaning it can certainly be overwhelming.

Follow through on the poly and once you have the results get away and figure out what it is YOU want to do.

As for the issue of trust. Given all of the countless lies she's committed over the past 2+ yrs (or longer) there is NO way you can trust her now or for the foreseeable future.

The only way to get trust back is a little bit at a time. So a big question for you is are you even wanting to go down this path to see if you could eventually trust her again?

Trust is NOT given away it's EARNED!!

Are you up for playing detective with her making sure she is where she says she is and all of the other aspects of wondering about her every action(s)?

Can you ultimately live with all of the lies and betrayal and willing to even open the door to attempt reconciliation?

So many questions that have to be answered by you and it doesn't need to be figured out all at once.

Hopefully you can get away from it all (and soon) to take a break from this clusterfuck and from the gift that keeps on giving (infidelity).

AH

I'm glad you are feeling not so pressured. I heard you say you are defending your wife and I so understand why you are doing that. I too felt like I needed to be the knight in shining armor and protect my wife. That's how we've gotten past 31 years. If you do talk to the pastor again or should I say when you talk to the pastor again please let him know that you need him to be honest about what a crappy deal he is promoting. Not that you didn't want him to be a supporter of R, but that he needs to stop trying to manipulate you with talk about her being a good wife to someone else and making promises that he can't keep. As CT has said, there comes a time when you have to just write off the debt that the WS has made to you. There is just no way they can ever return what they stole. Now that doesn't mean you have to R. It just means that you stop focusing on the unchangable for your health even if you D. It sound like you have the same flaw,if it is a flaw, you still love your wife but you can't get your head around what she has done. The thing I ended up doing was I sat my wife down and told her she could never make it right. She could never make it up to me what she had done... Then I told her she has broken me for the rest of my life. I said I will forever feel like I got a bad deal. That what I gave her was pure and full. That she may love me but her love will forever be holding my shattered hart with pieces missing, full trust, the "special" and pieces I don't even know yet. I told her I didn't even know if my hart could ever open up enough to let me feel physical love for her again. I said being a young man I will no dout want sex but I don't know if the physical love I had for her those 4 weeks from between when we consummated our marriage (two weeks after the wedding)and D-Day would ever return.I told her for so long I dreamed of our life together and how we would live so passionately, making love all the time and truly being 1. Then I said now all I have are nightmares of being with her or loosing her. Then I said I already lost you didn't I? She cried even harder... It was in that moment the knight in shining armor welled up in me and felt strong and held her. One of the things that has made me feel better is when she remembers how as the knight in shining armor I came to her rescue and she lets me know. She doesn't always think about it and she shouldn't but when I get triggered I still feel better when we share that it was my soft side she hurt but it was also my soft side that compelled my to stay with her. I don't know what you should do. You do have the right to D or R. I said at the start of my reaching out to you that I think D is the fastest way out of infidelity and pain but I don't know if it is really the fastest way out of pain. Your situation is different than mine as your WW had a life with you and she threw it away. She did more and enjoyed more than my wife did. I believe my wife when she told me that she never had an orgasm with him, he didn't do oral on her and she barley did oral for him and he never finished in her mouth. It was thirteen months, but then with the time she kept up the lie, It was two and a half years. They had maybe sixty times together. I think you're not so much into God, church, stuff, and God knows you have been fed a truck load of st** by your WW, the pastor and the church people, but let me say that if I didn't have a relationship with God I would not have made it with or without my wife. I'm still praying for you and that you have wisdom to do what is best for you. Let some time pass and try to focus on something that will calm you. Stay strong. I'm for you. You are going to better than fine.

paragraphs are everybody's friend for it makes

reading easier.

Hope you have a restful weekend as possible, AHGuy.

Sorry oldtrucker. Like AH have difficulty with written comunication and am using my phone to try to help. You are right I should use paragraphs. Typing in-between jobs is just not my forte either.

Oops oldtruck

I have been thinking about that damn tatoo.

She advises that it was not done as a part of the infidelity, but the AP took claim to it.

And in fact, if considered further, he was laying claim to her whole body, in various ways.

And at various times in that relationship, she was allowing him to.

If you do consider R, various BS have, as a matter of position, 'restaked' their claim so to speak. Whether it be their WS, Hotels, restaurants, significant dates..

Thoughts about that tatoo.. Erasing it would leave scarring. Probably not the best idea.

Altering it maybe better. Maybe ask her how she could alter it to show her commitment to you. Restake your claim to that part of her anatomy.

May be the best of a bad situation.

A while back there was a BH (Swat70) who’s WW(SoSorry17) had a tattoo tied to her cheating type of issue.

She got it changed. But they ended up divorced anyway.

If you decide to stay with her it will need to be addressed in some way.

If you leave then she can just keep it as is or do whatever she wants with it.

There will always be some type of permanent marking no matter what she does. And because of how she let her lover worship it, a permanent reminder as well.

if it was me i would want a plastic surgeon to remove that

tattoo. adding more ink to that area of skin would not remove

that tattoo.

just makes that tattoo harder to see. though it will always be there.

When a loaf of bread has signs of mold, I always throw the whole loaf out though. Heck the loaf didnt even hurt my feelings.

I was more thinking of adding something into the tatoo. Not changing it totally. As is, it depicts WW and the three children..

I could come up with my own ideas, but who am I. A stranger on the net.

[This message edited by paboy at 9:29 PM, September 11th (Friday)]

Alone in the darkness. No one is going to be there when the lights go out and you stare at the ceiling. It can feel like you are drowning in big waves. Everytime you scratch to the surface another wave comes and pushes you down. Twisting you in a pretzel. Holding you down as you scream for air. Drowning.

No one can help you. You have to make a decision. It makes no difference what your wife says, they are nothing but words of a wayward a few weeks into the reality of consequences.

No one knows if she future faked the AP or if she is future faking YOU.

The only question is if you can love your wife, but still leave her. If you feel this will tear you apart, fight the battle to get to land and walk on your own.

Be careful to avoid any tendencies to white-knight for her.

I wasn’t a white-knight saver, what happened was that they all assumed that she volunteered the details of her affair including sex on her own and they scolded her for that. And since she lost all credibility she didn’t even bother defending herself, at first I just wanted to make sure my daughter isn’t out for her mom’s blood, so I had to explain to all of them that it was me who asked for the timeline.

Robert you asked

1 - do you trust her going forward?

We can provide lessons learned, or suggest what evidence you should look for or call your attention to certain things. However, you know her better and it's your life (weighing the reward vs risk) so the decision is ultimately yours.

2 - and even if you conclude that you do trust her, will you be happier long term if you divorce or stay married to her?

Do you mean if I trust she wouldn’t cheat again? If I was in outside looking in, and watched all the conversations I would believe she is remorseful. Unless she is an Oscar winning type of actress the regret she is shot is real, I believe she would rather commit a suicide before cheating again. But I’m not in outside looking in and I’m disgusted by what I saw.

Your second question is really hard, I don’t know what to believe . Logic says I should take any more risks with her but who knows.

Are you getting better sleep?

I was more thinking of adding something into the tatoo. Not changing it totally. As is, it depicts WW and the three children..

I could come up with my own ideas, but who am I. A stranger on the net.

strange, normal, abnormal

the tattoo that the OM kissed every time the started sex would

still be there. too much of a trigger. also a lesser trigger but

still a trigger is this WW got this tattoo when she started her

MLC, GNO, hanging with her toxic friends.

the first step on the slippery road to her cheating.

what did this do during this time, what thoughts were in her

mind back then we will never know.

Thats the thing. He probably kissed a few things. It just trying to help him process what to do with it.

Of course, that is if he decides to reconcile.

HA

Does her tattoo trigger you?

She can get rid of gifts OM gave him, clothes she usted with him, lingeri, her car if she did thing with OM, etc phisical things that you may dont know, and doesnt trigger you, but triggers her. These thing triggered fonding memories but later mar trigger her with pain. Thing that remainds her OM and the A.

In other hand, there are thing she can not get rid of, like places, songs, sex acts anything that remaind her OM., Milestone dates of the A, events date that took place during A, etc.

And then you have the tattoo, that now is tainted, that even not tainted may be the prove of teh start of her freedom. It si not something you get rid easy, if changed or cover, you now why, if remove a scar may remain.

And what to do with It, and the others things, is not just Up yo you, as she would get trigger as well for different reazons over the same things. A hard part is that in the tattoo she included her kids, and she is realising that she betrayed them as well!

I think you should have a Talk about the tattoo and what does It thinks about It. And also find an IC for you and her to real with triggers.

She of course never intended for this to happen.....but by having/letting her lover start their escapades with kissing the tattoo....

she turned what was in her mind, a symbolic representation of her family/children ......into a self inflicted scarlet letter.

No matter what she does with it going forward, there will now always be a physical reminder of her infidelity.