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I don't know if it is possible to love someone you spend only 5 hours per week with during lunch. I don't know how to make sense of this.

Affairs are fantasy based. Their time was pleasure only. No housework, bills to pay, etc. Just pure pleasure sexual and otherwise. I doubt anyone has a two year affair and not have in love feelings, etc. especially for a woman.

You are trying to rationalize the irrational. You'll never understand that. No one does. Sorry man but that is a waste of time and life you can't get back if you get yourself trapped in that endless circle.

Just know you will get through this. It's just hard for you to see at this time.

Put your concerns in writing and leave it on her pillow.

Marz

But she was a good wife in the way she treated me and our family.....I noticed no difference in her over her affair time period.

Look at it in this context. She was lying and betraying you on a daily basis for two years. You not knowing doesn't change that.

A good wife? Not so much

I don't know much about you, and I know nothing about your W, but I know something about recovery.

You need to be honest with yourself, and you need courage. Right now, you're honest about being afraid of the answers she might give you.

You also know you feel humiliated and emasculated. But that's just nasty self-talk. The humiliation is your W's - she lost her job after all. Think about that. You're not emasculated. Your plumbing works, maybe not with your W, but almost definitely with someone else. You may not want sex now, but that's a lot different from not being able to have sex.

I don't see how you're going to heal unless you ask the questions that scare you.

Right now, you have no idea what's going on in your W's mind. My guess is that something she's experiencing is fear. My bet is that she's shut down, with no idea of what you want from her.

It sounds to me like your choosing R out of fear, too. You're not even bringing up your fears over the retirement accounts.

The fear is natural - you've entered uncharted territory, and there's danger here. It's a good sign that you recognize it. The next step is recognizing that you can do scary things despite the fear, recognizing that you have all the necessary courage in you already; all you have to do is find it.

My recommendation is to start talking with your W. Ask a few of your questions.

If you really want D, take steps to protect yourself.

D isn't easy. When R isn't in the cards, it may be easier than staying in limbo, but you're kidding yourself if you think it's easy.

Welcome to SI. I hope your reading here and responses to your posts teach you that going to a good life is more likely to heal you than trying merely to avoid pain.

IOW, if you take your brother up on his offer, I hope you see it totally as an opportunity to live a wonderful life, not merely as an opportunity to hide from pain. The pain is in you wherever you go, unless you process it out of your body - easier said than doen, but eminently doable.

Zamboni

She already apologized but it didn't mean much.

I asked her which time she fucked him was she apologizing for ?

She met him almost every work day during lunch for two years. That is a lot of fucking.

Ambivalent is a good description of her attitude.

Time and thought will bring you to a conclusion.

It's not gonna happen quick. Right now you're on the roller coaster.

Take care

I get it SCP .... my WH’s AP worked with him ... sex nonstop. At her house ... work trips ... it’s gutwrenching to think about. ... came home and acted like nothing was going on .... lied to me nonstop .... lived a double life for three years. It’s mind-boggling.

You cannot undo what she has done or force her to feel a certain way .... right now you focus on you.

Dude, she wasn’t having sex with him every day. Don’t assume that. Perhaps there was a lot of sex initially (where would they do that during lunch time? Her car? His? They work as teachers). Then it tappers off. They’re not 20 year olds. Sometimes the truth is not as bad as you think. Sometimes, it’s worst. But in this instance you may be assuming it is much much worse. Nonetheless, given she had sex once it may have been 100 times. It doesn’t matter. She betrayed you and we all know what that feels like. BTW, I think she’s in shock.

Mene

My wife is in her mid 50s and her AP was in his mid 40s. I doubt they spent a lot of time having substantial conversations in one hour blocks at lunch time at his house.

Sisoon

That was a nice post.

Why do I need to ask questions to heal if I divorce her ?

First you really need to see a lawyer about your savings, IRAs, etc. The first visit is usually free.

From what you say I think that you would handle being divorced very well.

But she was a good wife in the way she treated me and our family.....I noticed no difference in her over her affair time period.

SweetCreamPie

It may seem strange but it sounds like you had a better marriage then may people.

She may have developed feelings for him but I would be surprised if she loved him if she did not communicate with him at night or the weekends

.

SweetCreamPie

I agree. I don’t think there were feelings.

She met him almost every work day during lunch for two years. I don't know if it is possible to love someone you spend only 5 hours per week with during lunch. I don't know how to make sense of this.

SweetCreamPie

You seemed to have had a good marriage but obviously your wife was getting something from the OM that she wasn’t getting from you.

Affairs are fantasy based. Their time was pleasure only. No housework, bills to pay, etc. Just pure pleasure sexual and otherwise. I doubt anyone has a two year affair and not have in love feelings, etc. especially for a woman.

Marz

Marz could very well be correct but there is another explanation. This is just a guess but putting it all together your wife might be submissive. The OM demanded that she service him at work and she liked it and/or felt compelled to do it. You didn’t order her around.

It became a habit. Now she’s numb and not reacting. If I’m correct the question is, now that they’re not forced together any longer, does she miss it (not him) or is she kind of relieved.

[This message edited by Michigan at 2:48 AM, September 24th (Monday)]

SweetCreamPie: From your questions, you are thrashing around a bit emotionally, like you are lost and wondering what your next step should be. Don’t worry, this is 100% normal. It is also 100% normal to be terrified of learning the truth, because in your heart you know that the truth is likely to be truly awful.

The best thing you can do right now is create some space around yourself so that you can take a few deep breaths, relax, and center yourself. The time at your brother’s will be helpful. If you go to The Healing Library (yellow box top left of this page), you can read about “The 180”. One of the main purposes of the 180 is to enable a BH like yourself to create that space that allows you to breath and focus.

It’s also important to take care of yourself. Eat as well as you can. Hydrate. Exercise.

What you are trying to come to grips with is the paradigm shift that your WW has forced upon you. Prior to discovering this A, you viewed yourself as part of a happily married insular couple. You had sex a few times a week. Your WW loved you. Both of you lived lives of good people committed to your wedding vows. It is a comfortable perspective from which to view the world.

Your perspective, as it turns out, was an illusion. It’s like one of those dreams where you are flying, but then something goes wrong and you can’t fly any more. The reality is that your WW is a woman who will lie to your face, daily, for years. She will have sex with another man every day for years. If you had sex with her on a weekday evening, chances are you got sloppy seconds and she did not bat an eye serving this to you. Did you perform oral on her any of those evenings?

Your heart is trying to reject this reality. It wants to return to the happy place it occupied prior to D-Day. Unfortunately, that happy place does not exist, and never did. This is part of what we call the “shit sandwich” you WW has served to you. She did a very wicked thing. The woman you thought you loved does not exist. The reality, the actual woman who exists in real life, is a woman who would serve you a shit sandwich whilst smiling and masquerading as your wife.

It can feel sort of like the film “The Truman Show”, where Truman realizes that he is a character in a reality television show and the woman he thought to be his wife is not. She is merely an actor, pretending to be his wife while with him, but returning to her real life while apart.

While at your brother’s, one of your initial threshold questions is whether you even have the capacity in your heart to attempt R with this woman, even if she wanted to. The depth, magnitude, and duration of her betrayal was profound. For some men, this would be a complete deal-killer. You need some time and space apart from her to find your heart’s truth. If this is your heart’s truth, then the inquiry is done.

I would suggest, however, that while you are doing this, you ask her to read two things: (a) In The Healing Library, find “Joseph’s Letter”. Print it and ask her to read it. (b) “How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair” by Linda MacDonald. It’s a book available on Amazon for a low price.

You should read these things too.

If you decide that R is something your heart would consider as even a remote possibility, you’re going to have to face the truth of her betrayal. You can’t heal from something if you don’t know what you’re healing from. Every BH has his own internal threshold in terms of how much “dirty detail” he wants to hear. You should decide this for yourself. Keep in mind this may change over time. My observation is that most BH’s attempting R end up wanting to know every dirty detail, because without this information the mind creates its own imagined details and this can be a vortex of horrors.

As to your WW’s withdrawn silence, there are many possible interpretations:

-She has no regret nor remorse other than having been found out and fired. She feels she was justified in having extracurricular sex and doesn’t think she has anything to answer to you about.

-She is deeply ashamed of herself, so much so that she cannot talk about it. She expects you will divorce her and she is simply waiting for the other shoe to drop.

-She is still having sex with the guy and doesn’t want to stop. She has taken the A deep underground so you can’t discover it.

Those are only a few of the myriad possibilities. You will never know the truth unless you ask her. Keep in mind, though, that if you do ask her, she could quite possibly lie. Lying to you has become her default. She has lied to you for years. She is in fact a skilled and experienced liar. My advice is to be upfront with her on this point. “WW, you have lied to me for years about this. Every day, for years. You are an experience, practiced liar, and lying to me has become your normal. How can I know if and when you are telling me the truth?”

Why do I need to ask questions to heal if I divorce her ?

Gently and IMO, because you're afraid to ask, and because I think your fear is playing a significant part in your decision to D.

My bet is that you're filled with some combo of anger, grief, shame, and fear. Healing requires you to process those feelings out of your body. One thing that helps the process is facing the feelings. The process goes best if you learn you have your feelings - they don't have you.

You - we all - can do difficult things even while we're inundated with shitty feelings. IMO, you'll heal faster if you ask the questions that scare you. That's the best way to learn you can hear the answers and survive.

The answers are going to be about your W. Even if what she says is very hurtful to you, it's about her and her issues, not about you, even if her answer is objectively true.

No matter what she says, the answers will hurt - but I believe just asking the questions will empower you.

IOW, showing courage at this point, conquering your fear, is something you can be proud of for the rest of your life. And now may be the only time it will have that effect. I couldn't let this opportunity go. If I didn't ask questions because I feared the answers, I'm afraid - that feeling again - I would never be able to live with myself for giving in.

So I think you should ask because of my own values and issues - fearing how bad I'd feel if I didn't ask. You have to make your own decision - and you'll get support from SI whatever you choose.

After all, if you don't ask, if you D out of fear, and if you feel like a coward in a few years, you can heal from that, too.... Really.

But facing your pain now, working to process it now, doing that awful work now - that's the quickest way to survive and thrive. IMO, and 'quickest' - it ain't quick, no matter how you go about your healing.

But never forget that you get to make your own decisions. SIers are here to support you.

*******************************

To help ask the difficult questions, I suggest you read https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/healing_library/reconciliation/what-every-wayward-spouse-needs-to-know.asp?

If it makes sense to you, I suggest printing it out and giving it to your W as 'something you found on the web.' Keep SI to yourself if you can.

Also, WRT asking questions, it's possible that you can avoid/minimize Trickle Truth ('TT') by saying something like, 'If you want to have even a little chance of staying together, you need to answer my questions honestly now. If you answer honestly now, I may leave. If I find out something in 6 months (or 'down the line', if you don;t want a time limit) that I ask about now, I will leave.'

Sisoon

Are you saying I am being cowardly because I don't want to ask my wife questions like the following:

How was sex with your AP compared to me ?

Was your APs penis bigger or smaller than mine?

What was it like to have orgasms with another man ? Did you orgasm more frequently with him or me ?

These questions are humiliating beyond belief. I would rather get divorced than have these kinds of conversations with my wife of 30plus years:

Wife, did your AP ejaculate in your mouth over the last two years ? If so how many times ?

I don't want to ask the questions because they are so humiliating and I don't want to hear the answers.

What if she actually said her AP ejaculated in her mouth many times over the last two years ? What the fuck do I do with that ?

On the upside I have gone fishing with my brother twice in the last twelve hours.

I do see the point Sisoon is making. I don't know if I'd use "coward", but there is a sense you would D from your WW because you wish to avoid the difficult confrontation with the truth. The decision to D is personal and subjective to each of us. For you, this might be the rational choice. But for us third party observers, we tend to think that making decisions in light of factual truth can be a better option.

As to the specific questions you mention, SI is filled with threads where BH's have asked exactly those questions of their WW's. Some have even asked those questions in the context of a polygraph.

I would not be divorcing her because I am avoiding the questions. I would be divorcing her because she had sex with another man for two years.

Also, I don't want to ask those questions because they are so humiliating.

Wife of 30plus years: did you have anal sex with your AP ?

Come on. What if she says yes ? What the fuck do I do with that information ?

Just file for D, have her served and EXPOSE the A with ALL family and friends, get the process out of infidelity going, she's still mourning the loss of her boyfriend, she may have even discussed leaving you for him, they laughed at you behind your back and she lied to you and your family with a straight face for 2 years, I understand a 30 year plus M is hard to let go of but she knew what she was doing and risked it all anyway, plus she's not even remotely showing signs of remorse, she just regrets getting caught and it would be still going on if they didn't get fired.

Your situation is this:

If you ask her for a timeline and all details of the A including the sexual stuff, it could be a dealbreaker for you anyway and this is OK, or you may still decide to give R a shot if she becomes remorseful at some point.

If you file for D you will get out of infidelity, you may still have a bunch of questions about the A and will never get them after the D, therefore I would ask her all this questions now and if you decide to D well that's a consequence of her A, you will recover after sometime and find someone who will be faithful and respect you, plus some people get back together even after D (a remote posibility).

Again EXPOSE the A to ALL family and close friends, this will help her HATE the A and OM as being the cause of her embarrassment and end of her M (wether R or D), if D papers and EXPOSURE with family don't shock her back to reality and remorse then nothing will, just D and move on.

Buster

You are just making shit up.

You have no idea if they laughed at me or ever talked about leaving me.

Her AP was ten years younger than her. He is married to a late thirties woman who is very attractive. They have three kids.

I seriously doubt he would leave his very attractive wife who is the mother of his three children for my mid-fifties wife. How many mid-forties men do you see with mid-fifties women ? How many men have you seen leave a very attractive late thirties woman for a mid-fifties woman ?

Also, they never talked outside of work so I doubt they were in love. If they were not in love they were not considering leaving their spouses to be together.

[This message edited by SweetCreamPie at 11:41 AM, September 24th (Monday)]

SCP —

The people on here are trying to help you and offer advice. Nothing is being said out of malice or to upset you. Many posters have been on here for years, and have read countless stories about infidelity, They offer their advice and insight because cheaters often follow the same pattern ... and the people who successfully R do so because very specific things are required.

I am sorry you are hurting and that your WW has betrayed you.

Let me start by emphasizing that by writing the following I’m not excusing your WW actions but rather trying to understand and explain what might be going on in her mind.

I think people are reading too much into your WW actions (or rather lack of action).

Keep in mind that she probably thought this would NEVER be discovered and then suddenly not only does she realize her boss knows, her job is gone, everyone at the office knows, her friends know, her sons know, her HUSBAND knows, her future is threatened, and I guess the OM dropped her like a hot potato.

She’s shell-shocked and doesn’t have the slightest clue where to start. She’s paralyzed with shock and pain.

Waywards tend to compartmentalize their actions. Your wife didn’t cheat with this man because you were lacking. Your marriage was probably on par to most others. She had the affair because of the validation the OM offered. The sex… well… she probably enjoyed it, but chances are it was quite shallow and mundane, but it was the fee she paid for his validation.

In her compartmentalization she possibly managed to ignore that the affair might be discovered. Or that it might impact the marriage. She probably could come home and be your wife, go to work and get the validation OM offered with looks, signals, signs, innuendo, messages and the sex. She never thought it would be discovered. She never thought it would impact her job. She never thought her sons would know. She never thought YOU would know.

Regarding the sex… I walked in on my then-fiancé having sex with OM. Sneaked into the apartment to not wake her and heard the noises. Walked into the room and stood there for an eternity or two (maybe it was only a couple of seconds) before flipping the light-switch. I have to say it was rather underwhelming… No fireworks, exotic Tantra positions, no OM with a phallus like a horse and the stamina of a lion. Just two people rutting. Whatever you imagine the sex then what you imagine is probably a lot worse than it was.

OK – So she was fired. I guess OM was fired too.

So why isn’t she with him?

Why aren’t they together?

Well… Again, the compartmentalization. Maybe they sat in the car having post-coitus talks about how they wished they could move to Alaska and spend all winter together in front of a log-fire making sweet love on a bearskin. But alas they were tied to obligations at home and didn’t have the freedom… Only now they do… and suddenly, they realize they don’t want that freedom…

It's a bit like when a kid threatens to leave home if he can’t play the x-box. Try packing his bag and telling him he can leave… Chances are he will sit down at the curb and wonder how he can get out of this mess. There was no intention with the threat. Same with your wife and OM. Any plan was fantasy and reality wrecked the fantasy.

I can tell you what her likely response will be when she starts reacting: Some remorse but mainly accusations explaining why you forced her to have an affair and/or how OM tricked her into an affair. This is plain human nature. You ALWAYS explain and justify your bad deeds. We all do. We all find reasons for why we do things that are wrong. When she does this then it’s important for you to refuse to accept ANY responsibility for her decision to cheat.

OK – So how would I proceed in your shoes?

First, irrespective of R or D I think you need to be unafraid of what lies ahead. If done properly they YOU will survive. Maybe your marriage, but more importantly YOU. So be brae and address the problems.

Then I would suggest you tell your wife that she needs to let you know what she wants.

You tell her that you don’t know what you want. Not clear on if you need to divorce or if you are willing to work on the marriage. But right now, that’s not the issue. What is important now is what SHE wants.

Why is that important? Well… If she tells you she isn’t sure, then YOU know you only have one option left. She’s not in the marriage. Same if she tells you she wants out of the marriage.

If she tells you she wants the marriage, then there isn’t any commitment from you. You still get to make up your mind but now you know your options. But you can tell her that for you to even consider reconciliation there is a list of things she needs to do:

A timeline, the total truth, assurances the affair is over, IC to get to why she did it…

Finally: It makes immense sense to talk to an attorney. It’s always better to know what your options are and you need to ask a range of questions. They range from issues regarding a divorce, your pension(s), division of assets, the life-insurances and so on to issues like the legality of WW being fired.