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Bahama, about that random sex act in February, and its possible origins, honestly, try not to overthink it.

I know, that's a huge ask at this moment! But...

... here's an insight from Husband and from our situation that helped me.

What happened with Husband was basically a "pornographic act." It was completely impersonal.

I realize that this doesn't translate directly into your situation. Your wife had a friendship, a personal relationship with her AP. But she has stepped up to tell you that the sex was impersonal- it was a thing she was essentially trading to get what she wanted/needed from the affair: validation, attention, whatever it was.

She wasn't there for the sex. She's said so. As a woman, I find that particularly believable. I find it infinitely believable that sex is better for her with you. As a woman, I know how it feels to have "expectation sex" and I know how it feels to have "mutually satisfying sex." The two are fundamentally different.

Anyway, would you be upset if your wife learned this new sex trick from a Penthouse magazine? From an adult video? From a trashy romance novel?

Some aspects of the affair may be "personal" in that your wife was trying to get some personal want or need met (inappropriately, outside of the marriage.) Sex doesn't appear to be one of those things. In fact, she stepped up to tell you so. Her description of the sex with the AP sounds impersonal and awkward and like something she felt like she needed to deliver.

So what if he introduced her to something new? She brought it home to you. The two of you enjoyed it.

He's the equivalent of a Penthouse letter. It's not real and we all know it. If that act ever becomes real, what makes it real is when two people who have a genuine connection make something mutually erotic and satisfying out of it. :)

If the excitement in that act was with HIM and about HIM I doubt she would have brought that act home to you- she would have kept it with HIM.

And that's assuming that she even got the knowledge or the idea about that act from HIM in the first place. Who knows? Maybe she did discover it during some "personal time." Hrmm... that happens.

Another comment she made recently that just really hit home with me and gave me some confidence is that she'd "Made the truly awful realization that I and how we use to be was what she was searching for during the A" and that she'd "destroyed the very thing she was really wanting to get back."

I think she sees the world she destroyed now. She sees that she's destroyed me. The latter is what she's most remorseful about. I can tell she is so distraught for what she has done to me. She is filled with self hate for her actions because of what she sees me dealing with.

Last night I had a nightmare and awoke crying. I didn't acknowledge it, but I know she heard me and I felt her touch my back gently. I can only imagine how she felt at that time.

Thanks for the insight and perspective marriageredux959. It made me feel better reading and thinking about it just now.

Bahama you wrote,

I can't help but wonder though, if she says she was satisfied at home with the sex, why did she have it with him? She's also said that the sex with her AP was nothing she felt good doing. She wasn't in love with him. Then why the hell did she do it!!!?

Someone here wrote that their WW told him the sex with OM was Lustful, somehow that term kind of explained how my W felt at the time of OM1 to me.

Outside of wanting to know specifically what she did with the POSOM or not, are you willing to deal with her lying to you?

She said she discovered enjoyment of this act via masturbation - that doesn't ring true to me.

Whatever you ask, I think she owes it to you to tell you the whole, unflinching truth.

I don't think lying to "spare your feelings" is acceptable anymore, especially with regard to anything that has to do with her affair.

But you have to make that determination for yourself.

Bahama, you are never going to get a good enough explanation. Ever. There is a book Men are from Mars etc. Well non cheaters are from Earth and cheaters are from Uranus. A feeble attempt at joking. Seriously, you operate from a much better defined boundary than she does. This is something you will have to live with if you R. No amount of apologies, no amount of foo, nothing is ever going to explain it to you so that you “get” it.

There was news some time ago about a couple of teenagers who beat an old man. They evidently got a thrill out of it. Cheaters get thrills out of cheating. People don’t keep doing something they get nothing out of. Again, you need to understand that they did this and lied to you and the obs for a long time.

I don’t say this to be cruel. I hope that you get the pain, anguish and anger over and done.

I just found a lost memory related to the sex act. It was something that she found she enjoyed for a long time, but never told me until now. I have been trying to recall the conversation where I asked her about it and that I never knew she enjoyed that sort of thing. She mentioned the masturbation discovery, but also told me her ex from before us enjoyed that type of sex play. She just said she never told me because her impression of me was that I wouldn't be into it. It's about 14-years too late but I've discovered I'm into it alright. I don't know if the A drew this out or not, but I guess this is one part of the aftermath that I'm at least enjoying. Wow. Did I actually just make a joke?

The roller coaster is heading up tonight. It was a rough morning, but now I'm feeling a bit better. I think a lot has to do with you all. Thanks again.

One day at a time, one moment at a time.

[This message edited by Bahama at 6:22 PM, March 9th (Saturday)]

Acceptance is a prerequisite of a successful reconciliation but you cannot accept what you do not know.

I think you have two choices:

1. To obfuscate the magnitude of both the emotional and physical affair and her enjoyment of it. This may lessen the pain in the short term but it will eventually lead to a lack of acceptance and resolution.

2. To be enlightened in terms of their sex acts, her motivations, gratifications and indeed her future goal to leave you. A much harder path in the short term but one likely to have more beneficial long term results.

To me the first path is rug sweeping. Do you really want that?

She had the affair because she wanted it; she enjoyed the illicit nature and thrill of the sex. She rationalised it not only for her own guilt but also to show her OM that she was not a slut, that she had good reason to be unfaithful (even though she knew in her heart of hearts that she didn't).

I think she would have left you if he had been willing either before or shortly after DDay. I do believe she now sincerely regrets what she did to you, your marriage and to her own self esteem and probably now shudders at the thought of spending the rest of her life with her POS boyfriend.

That honesty will be part of her remorse. If she is not honest, warts and all, then she is not truly remorseful.

I think you are both doing remarkably well but you just need to push that extra mile. You are in a great position to achieve a successful reconciliation, don't bottle it.

WW had a boyfriend within a marriage. Bahama - have you discussed with her in depth how she would feel/act if you had a girlfriend within your marriage?

We've talked about empathy. I've asked her if she has truly tried to imagine what I must be feeling. How she would feel if she found out that while she was off working I was talking bad about her behind her back to another woman and having sex with another woman. She said she has thought about it a lot and it's why she feels so horrible as a person. She hates herself for being selfish and what she has done to me and our family.

I'm going to do some thinking about acceptance. I'm obviously not there yet and still feel that we need to pull some shit out into the light before I can even begin to move beyond the A to us. I'm just not sure what I really want/need to know, to what depth of knowing, and if I can really live with not knowing some things and just move forward without dwelling in the past.

My W came home from work last night said her stomach wasn't feeling quite right. Because of that and due to the time change and the fact she had to be back at work this morning I chose not to get into any tearful deep discussions. We just held each other for a while and then went to sleep. In the little talk that did happen, I felt I had to make a little statement about the sex we'd been having. It was obvious to both of us it was well beyond any prior frequency and beyond our ordinary routine. It hit me that while I could tell she was into it and enjoying it that I was the one who was initiating. This is the norm for us as she rarely will be the one to initiate. It's not a lack of desire on her part and I always took it as a gender role/personality/customary mindset for her. She's not the aggressive type and was probably afraid of initiating with me while not knowing what state I was in. I wanted to make sure she was engaging me for the right reasons. I told her I didn't want her having sex with me out of guilt or out of a sense of obligation. I told her that if she didn't want to engage in it with me she could always say so and stop any advances I made. She told me that she has been enjoying it but acknowledged that it has been a little strange how we've bonded with this in the midst of everything else. It's been strange for both of us.

I also asked her how she was doing and what she was feeling as we stared at the ceiling. She said she just felt sad. She didn't elaborate on that term and I was too afraid to ask what she was sad about. At 4:00 this morning I awoke to her puking her guts out in our bathroom. She either has a stomach virus or possibly some mild food poisoning. I feel badly for her.

As for me, I'm feeling kind of blank this morning. I did give in to checking her phone and found nothing. I plan to do some reading today and get some exercise since the sun has finally returned. I will probably also do some more writing. I find that I can better organize my feelings and thoughts when I can put them on paper. I'm hoping this will also serve as a guide for discussions we need to still have.

One day at a time, one moment at a time.

BS ONLY

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:24 PM, October 14th (Monday)]

At 4:00 this morning I awoke to her puking her guts out in our bathroom. She either has a stomach virus or possibly some mild food poisoning. I feel badly for her.

Morning sickness ?

I keep thinking about the details I don't have in our history as being more than missing information that I may not want to hear. I can understand now how it feels like she still has secrets about the affair that she's keeping from me. I'd rather rip off the bandaid now than have this bubble up later on. I don't know.

I recommend you rip off the bandaid, she needs to face the ugly truth of what she did and the embarassment that comes with it, she hid this from you, stop being afraid of knowing, you already know she had lots of sex with OM, so just because you know that you are likely to have the mind movies anyway (which are often worse than her actual performance). I have never been in the camp of the "bury your head in the sand" approach. Not knowing all the details of her A will fester and possibly cause tremendous damage to R efforts in the long run.

She needs to remember the A as something ugly and the one thing that destroyed her life as she knew it, the one thing that caused her to lose her integrity and the stability of her family, as opposed to something beautiful and romantic, your WW and OM know what they did, it's often said here that "you need to know what you are forgiving in order to forgive".

On another note, her statement to you that she was looking in the A for what you used to have is another indication she had given up on you in that aspect as well, in other words, it indicates that for her, there was nothing special to go back to in her M, and another indication there was a good chance she would have left you for her AP if he had decided to D OBS, instead of trying to regain that special bond in her M, she gave up and decided to find it elsewhere, I would press her on that too.

At 4:00 this morning I awoke to her puking her guts out in our bathroom. She either has a stomach virus or possibly some mild food poisoning. I feel badly for her.

I don't know if she was on some type of birth control, if not, have her do a pregnancy test, and like I said before, you both need to get tested for STDs if you haven't done that yet.

Have you demanded she gets tested for STDs ? if not why not ?

R is a loooooooong process. Welcome to the roller coaster. She will need to demonstrate years of good actions before you can trust her again. Throwing up? So? I bet you did multiple times. If not, there are plenty of BS that did.

There's an old saying, men cheat for the sex, women cheat for the emotion. Which is why you'll see women falling for men's lies. Cheating men learn how to spin lies that women want to believe - love, admiration, desire, respect. Would be good to get further into how he made her feel about herself, which is almost surely why she went there in the first place.

Aside from that, maybe I missed it, but what is she doing to prove herself - no contact letter that she writes and you approve (it's a psychological thing), all passwords off of her electronics, GPS on her car, etc.?

I don't think the vomiting is due to pregnancy. Our youngest just had some sort of stomach issue a few days ago and she works in an ER so there's germs everywhere. She admitted to me that she didn't want to have his child and got on birth control to make sure. She said the b.c. also was to help with acne and mood swings related to PMS. She offered to stop it if I wanted her to. I haven't addressed it yet. The one thing that bothers me about her being on the pill is that I got a vasectomy ~2 years ago so she could get off birth control. I did this for her and at her request since we didn't want to have any more children. Now she's on bc again. That kind of bothers me.

I couldn't assume her being sad last night was just for me and that's exactly why I didn't clarify it. I do know that she is sad for me, but also sad for how she has damaged everything in her life. Understandable. She's also tossed back into loneliness now that the AP is gone. I'm obviously not a happy fun person to be around right now. I am just a reminder of what she's done. She feels isolated and alone. Even though the ones who know about the A don't seem to judge her and want to support us, she's embarrassed and shamed. This ruined more than our relationship. It's changed the relationships with our parents, her sister, etc. This is why I guess she's sad. And yes, I'm sure she's still feeling some loss for her AP although I don't want to hear about that.

Please tell us you knew about the bc. If not that is a huge red flag. Huge. Huge. Huge. Two years? Uh oh.

have you asked her who suggested she go on birth control? mutual decision or AP?

There maybe more twists and turns on your roller coaster ride.

You are still very early in this affair. From the things I have seen here you need to be ready for anything.

Maybe after a month or two she may tire of being the "bad guy" and not in control, she may slowly revert back to her initial reaction.

My XWW actually said she was tired of me thinking she was the "bad guy". But she was the one who had the affair...

She has long way to go to earn back your trust.

Like they say "Keep your hand upon the dollar, and your eye upon the scale"

[This message edited by MickeyBill2016 at 2:15 PM, March 10th (Sunday)]

BS ONLY

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:25 PM, October 14th (Monday)]