SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am still reading, thank you all. If I could figure out personal messages, I would have sent some.

Is the other betrayed spouse aware of this lengthy affair your wife had with her husband?

The boss/ex-boss was single at the time of his PA with my wife. His marrying was subsequent, I understand. It was not a lengthy affair, 6 weeks, with possible 3 encounters, in 87, from November 15 to May 1st we travelled England and Europe together. Then two encounters in 88, one May, one June.

She claims that it was physical only. She felt, at the outset, that she could have "fun" with a friend and not harm her marriage. She claims that our sex life was never impacted or interrupted.

I of course have explained that I was clearly being used.

She feels that 88 encounters were part of a mental health crisis for herself. He was all too happy to have her, but she felt that her desire to go to him meant that either she was bad and no good for me OR there was something wrong with our relationship. I will never know how long that stage lasted, her memories are foggy.

She says that the end of the PA was her idea, that she never stopped loving me and gave her heart, body and soul back to our marriage.

I did not have much of a part in that, I was guilty of both pick me and rug sweeping. She had declared love for him one night when she was of the mind to provoke an end to the marriage. As I say, don't know how long that phase lasted. Complication, upon our return to home from overseas trip, we were living with her mother and stepfather. So I tread carefully, her outburst of love for other never shared with her family. I expected every day to be her last with me. Was so grateful that she came back to me every day. We moved into apartment together by July 1.....

My adult children have been shielded from my WS confession and we prefer to keep it that way. Why divide affection and add turmoil to no benefit?

We are trying to hold the marriage together, reconcile. We have the help of a psychologist that we have seen together twice and separately twice. We talk again today in the early evening.

Oldtruck wrote - Are any of those bridesmaids still in your life?

Slight T/J, but maybe useful for those in a similar situation. No, one of these women passed away a 6 years ago, and my WW had lost touch with her over the years. The other? She was my WW's roommate at the time, so I'm sure she knows the truth. WW and her went on to work at the same company for a time, had a falling out and parted ways. I gone so far as to track down her current address, employment, etc. She is the one other person who could provide some truth, but I'm hesitant to pull that trigger. Disrupting her life and dragging her into this shit-show doesn't seem fair, and how would I know whether what she had to say was the truth?

The point is that in all of our situations, there are often others that know some/all of the truth we seek. For mrplspls, that could include OBS, WW's coworkers & friends she had at the time, siblings, etc. Certainly something to consider if the WS is less than forthcoming, or there are further doubts. Reaching out to those people (aside from OBS) is something that will take some serious thought. I'd think demanding a timeline and polygraph would come first.

The DNA testing thing gets a lot of play here, for good reason. Whatever the % of women who are having other men's children may be, nearly 100% of them were cheating. They are a subset of our spouses, and some men here at SI have indeed found out the child(ren) they raised were the result of infidelity. I don't know how any marriage recovers from that.

One of the bonuses of the "years ago" infidelity is the endless questioning about the years before D-Day. The odds are overwhelming that I fathered my children, but the calculated conception date for our youngest would be a stretch from the last time we had sex. I know that because once we stopped trying to get pregnant, the sexual frequency dropped to nil.

Things that make you go hmmm...

I find these "found out years later" threads so difficult to respond to. The sunk cost fallacy is infused, big time. In this case, decades of rug-sweeping at some level by Mr++. What is real versus what is imagination?

Your posts reek of a desperation to find a path forward that keeps the marriage intact, without rocking the boat. Fair enough. I completely understand why a man of your age and position would desire that.

Yet here you are, on the JFO page of an infidelity forum, clearly in pain. What I can't tell is what you want from us. There is no magic wand that anybody here can wave that will make it all go away and guarantee your happily ever after. Me, personally, for whatever reason, I suspect she is minimizing the duration, nature, and extent of the affair as she talks to you about it, but, even more than that, I suspect you yourself are minimizing the degree to which you knew or had a "gut" it was going on at the time, and rug-swept it for the reasons you have outlined.

Mr++, the one thing we see here on SI, over and over, is that sort of approach eats away at you from the inside, like acid. It's insidious and gradual, but eventually you realize you're riddled with holes and the air is blowing right through you. The one thing I can promise you is that you have zero chance of healing if you stay the course. If you keep doing what you've been doing, you'll keep getting what you've been getting.

So, what will you change in terms of your approach, in order to then change what you're getting in terms of your outcome?

Keep going to the psychologist. Sometimes grief counseling is all you can do, and this looks like one of those times.

Since you had to wheedle it out of her with 100s of questions, do you feel you have the complete and final truth?

So odd that she would make snarky remarks to you. So odd that she was deliberately trying to destroy the marriage, then like someone flicked a switch changed her mind.

Something feels off here, because her story really isn't adding up. So sad for you to have to deal with this now. So sad that you had to carry the knowledge that "something" happened so long ago, and that it was never addressed. She really has some making up to do here. I hope she has it in her.

Thanks for the additional detail. Helps make sense of this much more. Once again, I’m sorry you are here and sorry you are dealing with a person who couldn’t be faithful to her new husband for 18 mere months.

She claims that it was physical only.

Yet she told you she loved him at the time it was going on.

She felt, at the outset, that she could have "fun" with a friend and not harm her marriage.

Well how did that work out for her? Marriage has been harmed irrevocably, and was harmed, grievously wounded, from the moment she shared herself with another man and then told you she loved another man during the affair itself.

This is a key observation from her you need to spend some time on. Typically, obviously, WS’s are carrying around some deeply flawed worldviews. It sound like she continued to tell herself this lie for three decades.

She claims that our sex life was never impacted or interrupted.

Gently, is probably not true.

This is a VERY stark example of minimization.

We find over and over again that WW’s tend to withhold themselves from their faithful husbands sexually, either with frequency or more starfish sex or something (maybe acts she would never do for you) as a form of “loyalty” to the AP.

For instance my WW provided starfish sex to me during her affair for the first time in our marriage. I had heard of starfish sex and had counted myself lucky that wasn’t my problem. Then it happened. I’ll never forget it obviously.

It happens far too often to be an anomaly.

Yes it is sick but it seems to happen more often than not

She feels that 88 encounters were part of a mental health crisis for herself.

Convenient. Does she have any history of mental illness before or after?

her memories are foggy.

This is likely untrue. Her memories are probably clearer than she is letting on. After all, she told you the “truth” three decades later.

She says that the end of the PA was her idea, that she never stopped loving me and gave her heart, body and soul back to our marriage.

Words are pretty meaningless in these situations. She can say anything she likes, now, three decades later. That’s why we’ve recommended other tools for you if you want the truth rather than just her spin.

It’s hard to credit “heart, body and soul” after she so easily gave her body away for “fun” (her words, after all). And then threatened to leave you.

Once someone has given themselves away they’ve ruined the innocence of the marriage, violated your trust, and severed the pair bond in an inalterable way.

I am really sorry that you did the pick me dance after she told you she loved another man, but many of us have (including me). Rugsweeping too.

We’re just trying to help you avoid another day, another moment, another second of any additional rug sweeping.

But it’s your life.

[This message edited by Thumos at 6:53 PM, October 19th (Monday)]

You're going to have to accept that you may never get the full truth. And that is usually the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.

She has become adept at lying for the past 30 years. And way more often than not, cheaters will continue to lie even when the evidence is looking them square in the face.

So, yeah, the Sunk-Cost Fallacy will keep you bound here for as long as you let it.

My adult children have been shielded from my WS confession and we prefer to keep it that way. Why divide affection and add turmoil to no benefit?

This is also rugsweeping. You see, she lied to them for the past 30 years too and put the sanctity of their safe, intact family at risk without any of your permission.

Sure, it's your call to not tell them. But like it or not, they were/are impacted. They may never know the truth of their family's life. But they deserve it.

I'm not saying that R is not possible. But there is a compromise, I think. And that usually is that you will have to live with a bit of uncertainty with the truth that has been presented to you.

It's not fair at all. She got to have to have her jollies long ago, and the exciting secret she got to withhold all these years. You got to be eviscerated as a prize. AND you get the added knowledge that this will forever be a part of your marital history.

Make no mistake, even if she comes clean with everything, there's no guarantee that you won't wake up one day and decide you can't live with it any more.

certainly hope the OP hasn't bailed on this thread once he saw Freud being debunked. Everyone has their own threshold.

😂👍🏼

I am still reading, thank you all. If I could figure out personal messages, I would have sent some.

See the big goofy smiley face on the top right of every post? Click that. It's the person who posted's profile page. On there is a hyperlink called "send user a message" Click that. That is a private message. Works pretty much like a forum post but private.

Mr.++ I have to ask. If my wife had sat bolt upright in bed 30 years ago and professed her undying love to another man... and then, miraculously stayed with me. What would the ensuing 30 years really have been like for the spouse who hears this statement? Did you NEVER speak of it again? Are you that risk-adverse (and I don't mean that as an insult, it's a strategy)?

All I can say in this situation is that proclamation would have had me full of mounting dread back in 88, and I'm not sure I could have fooled myself into accepting this was ever going to be okay unless and until we had done intense therapy-- both as couples and individuals.

How did you manage to stay married this long, knowing that she said that, years ago? That's not something a man every forgets. Did you force yourself to forget?

King of nothing

Nicely done :)

mrplspls - Be very careful with the situation with this psychologist.

1) Do you have any idea what this persons philosophy or approach to cheating is? In this person's opinion:

- Is it "no big deal"?

- Does is mean less or it is less hurtful "Because it was so long ago"?

- Or is it incredibly serious and damaging?

- Is it a horrible thing to do to the person you (supposedly) love to lie to them for 30+ years?

2) Does the psychologist value honesty?

- Is he/she encouraging your wife to tell you everything without minimizing?

- Is he/she telling you that it is wrong to want to know whatever you want or that you should not probe further until you are satisfied with what you need to know?

3) Is the psychologist telling both of you consistent things?

- Is it possible that the psychologist is withholding or telling your wife it is okay to withhold information that she has shared (or not shared) with the psychologist? Because if that is the case, then you are being put at an extreme disadvantage and further manipulated.

- Is it possible that the phycologist is telling you one thing and your wife another? (By the way, I have first-hand experience with this.)

***

Now my obligatory spiel about therapists, psychologists, etc.: The vast majority of them have no idea how to handle cheating and infidelity .

You don't know if their morals align with your morals, or more with a cheaters.

They are paid by the session so they don't tend to say or ask things that will lose them business.

They are not elite practitioners of life, sages of moral clarity - they are just average people. Just as many of them have been cheaters as everyone else.

****

So be very very careful about what you will accept from the psychologist. It is very common for them to promote rug-sweeping.

Having you and your wife meet with the psychologist separately is a very bad idea in my opinion, and it opens the doors for more secrets, division, allows your wife to cement lies, omissions, and mischaracterizations into the discussion.

Good luck.

[This message edited by faithfulman at 9:32 AM, October 20th (Tuesday)]

Plugging in my .02 after reading this thread. First off, I'm very sorry you're here. None of us wanted it, but I am very grateful as this site saved me 14 years ago.

Now for the hard part:

I will never know how long that stage lasted, her memories are foggy.

Unfortunately, I do not believe this. It was a significant moment in her life whether she chooses to admit to it, and I would bet the few dollars I have in my pocket that she remembers every detail of those times she was with him.

I'm glad you are in marital counseling, but I also strongly suggest individual counseling for yourself. And keep posting here; venting to those who have "been there" can be therapeutic.

I will add my 2 cents here...from the perspective of both finding out years later and also from having a WH who almost took his affair to the grave.

I found out by accident a few months before he passed...he confessed to only what I could prove and told me flat out he had no intentions of ever telling me before he passed away.

What it did was both good and bad...it obviously destroyed me and the reality that I thought I knew about my life. Each day he kept what he did to himself, helped to undermined our marriage and made it essentially built on lies.

As I already posted in the “I can relate” forum to you...this took away my agency. My right to chose the path of my life for myself and my children.

Had I found out at the time, I might have chosen to R or D...but I was never given that option. Finding out years later brings extra pain of all of my memories post affair have been tainted. I now know that our most cherished vacations and family time were not authentic or true.

I was only married 23 years but he lied to me for at least 10 of the last years. A choice he made every day of his life, and even on his deathbed.

When he answered my questions post Dday...there was a lot of “I can’t remember” and those answers did not cut it. He placed blame on me and did not hold himself accountable. Hopefully your wife will be different.

What he did take to his grave...his other affair. I know of one other AP for sure...were there others...I will never know as I lived with a man comfortable in his own lies and justifications for 10 years.

Would I have changed any of the events of the past year?

Would I have preferred to never have found out?

Flat out no...I am glad to have found out. I live my life with integrity and authenticity and will continue to do so. I know my truth....it’s not pretty but that’s my story. I have lots of healing to do...I am a work in progress. But what I have learned is that we, as BS have an inner strength we never knew before.

I am glad you have sought therapy...keep it up. There are reasons behind why you wife confessed now...and why she was comfortable with lying to you for 33 years. That alone speaks to her brokenness.

mrplspls,

Reading this...

She claims that it was physical only.

She felt, at the outset, that she could have "fun" with a friend and not harm her marriage. She claims that our sex life was never impacted or interrupted.

I of course have explained that I was clearly being used.

She feels that 88 encounters were part of a mental health crisis for herself. He was all too happy to have her, but she felt that her desire to go to him meant that either she was bad and no good for me OR there was something wrong with our relationship.

I will never know how long that stage lasted, her memories are foggy.

She says that the end of the PA was her idea, that she never stopped loving me and gave her heart, body and soul back to our marriage.

I did not have much of a part in that, I was guilty of both pick me and rug sweeping. She had declared love for him one night when she was of the mind to provoke an end to the marriage.

As I say, don't know how long that phase lasted.

...So I tread carefully, her outburst of love for other never shared with her family. I expected every day to be her last with me. Was so grateful that she came back to me every day. We moved into apartment together by July 1.

...makes me think that your wife thought that she was having what is known as an 'exit affair', and that she had a future with her boss.

It looks like he had no long-term interest in her, and that the PA ended, possibly at your wife's behest, once her boss told her that he was moving away without her.

Which suggests that for your wife, her motivations were not just physical, but that she had created an alternative future in her mind that made her tell you that she was minded to leave the marriage. Begging the question: where did she think she was going?

Answer: A future with the boss. Until he blew that plan out of the water by moving away. At which point the PA became pointless as a means to capture him.

Is it any wonder that this period, when the fantasy bubble was burst, is fuzzy and difficult for your wife to recall in any detail? What can she say that will not compromise her? She was ready to leave, and she got dumped. So she stayed.

How can she dress that up to make it look good?

She can say that she ended things (when the boss's move elsewhere without her did that), and she can say that she had an epiphany after telling you that she wanted out, and miraculously rediscovered her love for you and her desire to be back in the marriage.

Which is all quite harsh and bleak. However, even if your wife might have run off if she had not been dumped, that does not invalidate everything that happened afterwards.

The revelation that her fantasy alternative life was a ridiculous delusion with no basis in reality may well have made her look at what she had in life that was unquestionably real.

And that could have been a turning point for her. People do change, and it is possible that when your wife realized that her affair was nothing but fool's gold, and that her boss was simply an opportunist exploiting her, that her perception of you changed, to re-cast you as someone genuine in her life.

Sometimes we do not realize what we have until we come close to losing it.

So what should you make of it if thirty-two years ago your wife was ready to leave, but it never happened, and the two of your went on to have children and a happy life together?

I am both cynical and judgmental, but I will say this: thirty-two years is not fake. Kids are not fake. Everything that happened in that period is not invalidated by what preceded it. It could be seen as your wife coming back to her senses after deluding herself that she was going to run off with a guy she subsequently found was nothing but a snake-oil salesman.

That experience may well have educated her about the value of real love versus delusions, and the difference between people who feel something real for her as opposed to people who are simply using her.

kingofnothing,

WW lie all the time. minimize. trickle truth. lie by omission.

some WW lie so much and suppress the truth so much they

don't remember which things were lies and the truth. they

cannot differentiate between the two. so what they hold to be

the truth 30 years later is just their best guess.

some WW block things out an cannot recall.

30 years later normal memory loss and they cannot recall

exact dates.

so when a WW states 30 years later that she stop having sex

with her OM before she became pregnant leaves room for

doubt. Enough doubt for a DNA test.

[This message edited by oldtruck at 7:43 PM, October 19th (Monday)]

Answer: A future with the boss. Until he blew that plan out of the water by moving away. At which point the PA became pointless as a means to capture him.

Like I said, plan A/plan B branch swinging

There’s an old song that goes “the horse stood around with his foot on the ground, foot on the ground, foot on the ground...” and you keep repeating that with “Same song, second verse, could be better, but it’s gonna be worse...”

Plan A/plan B branch swinging by WW’s is as old as recorded history. So why is anyone surprised here?

See the big goofy smiley face on the top right of every post? Click that. It's the person who posted's profile page. On there is a hyperlink called "send user a message" Click that. That is a private message. Works pretty much like a forum post but private.

Save this info - you cannot do PMs until you have written 50 posts.

IMO your wife confessed because it made her feel good (after so many years this is a selfish act and not necessarily a moral act).

She misstakingly thought the passage of time would minimize the magnitude of her betrayal (remove divorce/exposure from the table).

IMO a major road block to your healing is that you do not believe you have all the facts. You can't process what you don't know.

The additional information and confirmation you seek may make your healing more difficult in the short run (and might lead to divorce) - but in the long run knowing all the facts encourages closure/healing.

IMO, your wife fears that the additional facts may result in divorce. Therefore, in order to protect herself from loosing her comfortable marriage as well as her reputation, she is reluctant to recall/provide you with more details you need.

She started this train with her feel good confession. Her stalling stops when she no longer can hide.

Insist on a written timeline subject to a polygraph.

Until then she will withhold information.

I have never understood how telling a BS that it was only for the sex in any ways make the affair less painful. It’s wrong. It’s a justification to explain why they did it rather than the true reason.

It’s like saying I tried coke for the first time because I enjoyed the high. If you have never tried cocaine, then how do you know what buzz it brings? You might use it again because you enjoyed the high, but the first time… you didn’t know. I have yet to see a BH share here on SI that his wife had sex 5 times with OM but he’s OK with the first time because doesn’t really count.

Imagine a series of lines where crossing each brings you closer to a border. Like if I was at a bar and a woman started talking to me. I would be fine within my personal boundaries if I made small talk but if she placed her hand on my arm, I would distance myself from that contact. For me that would be the line I wouldn’t cross. It’s still reasonably far from the fence and barbed wire of my marital border, but its close enough for me to avoid it.

That is the issue with spouses that cheat. They are either the person that places the hand on the arm, or the person that doesn’t remove the arm from the hand. They have another chance – another line – they could step away, but they don’t. They could stop after the first kiss and say this is wrong – they don’t. Despite a long time on SI I have yet to hear of the wife that was just walking along the corridor at work minding her own business when all of a sudden, she felt a penis in her.

I doubt that your WW boss sent her a memo out of the blue describing his sexual ability and suggesting they meet in conference room 2B for sex. There was a period of grooming – possibly on both sides. A period where one-by-one the lines towards the border was crossed. By the time the first zipper went down, or the first button undone they were past the border. We could say the infidelity was consummated with the first sexual act, but it was started before that. It started the split second your wife crossed the last line and the border.

Saying she loved him OR saying it was just for the sex… It’s justification and IMHO has no place whatsoever. It’s a retrospective justification rather than a true reason.

I hate making all-inclusive statements about human behavior, but I venture that in 99% of all cases of infidelity it boils down to inner issues with the WS. It’s a need for validation, a need to display power, a need to feel superior… MAYBE the tough conditions probably ALL early marriages experienced emphasized those needs for your wife BUT that never justifies the decision to cross those lines and that border.

I venture that the boss showed her interest at a time she had doubts. But then – maybe she was the instigator. But a “classic” infidelity story often repeated here on SI is the supervisor/boss that grooms his staff in search for the next fuckbuddy. Not that it matters – what matters is that one of them sent the signals and the other picked up and responded. One line crossed, then the other, then the next…

For a normal person sex isn’t like a sneeze that can’t really be avoided. This is what mainly differentiates us from animals: We have free will and the ability to control urges. There is nothing that made your wife HAVE to have sex with the boss. She didn’t go back because of the quality of sex or because she loved him, but because it fed her need to feel validated and empowered.

OK – this need for validation is a key issue IMHO. When the affair ended it’s not a given that her need for validation ended too. One of the main reasons many of us recommend IC for the WS after d-day is precisely to deal with the issues that made the WS decide to cheat.

I remember reading about a survey many years ago about repeats in infidelity. That survey indicated (from distant memory…) that the odds of someone that has already cheated once of cheating again were something like 6-8 times higher than the odds of someone cheating the first time. This is probably why so many of us feel a need for you to get assurance this was the one and only affair.

MAYBE your wife realized the errors of her ways. MAYBE your marriage improved, and she could heal herself within the marriage. MAYBE.

You mention having to accept that there are things she doesn’t remember. Some posters doubt her lack of memory. Without knowing the questions, we can’t really weigh in. Sometimes what matters to us the BS isn’t relevant for the WS. But I want to emphasize once again that to move on YOU need to feel assured that you have the truth up to the level you need. If you can accept that she doesn’t remember some issues and are OK with that then fine, move on. But NOW is the correct time to decide what you need and what she can give you.

MAYBE she truly doesn’t remember. Maybe she does but wants to protect you. Maybe protect herself. Go back to my post about offering her a chance for total truth. Remember you do have a tool to know the truth. You can let her know that you will and might demand a poly at the end of the grace period.

Like if she insists the affair was over in 88 but doesn’t remember if it was Oct or Nov then a poly-question might be “did you meet OM for sex after the first of Dec 1988”. This long in the past whether it was Oct 21 or Nov 3 isn’t the issue, but rather that she’s telling you the truth that it was over before December. The goal of the poly is not to find the truth, but rather to confirm she has been truthful.

If the OM had left his wife and invited OP's wife to go be with him, she would have left OP in a heartbeat and never looked back. And she would have found ways to justify it, just as she justified it with all the hollow reasons she gave him for why she stayed with him.

Memory is a very funny thing. This far from the event it is completely believable that she has no clear memory of all of this and especially in what she was FEELING at the time. Over the years the exact memory of all of this has most likely been replaced with a memory that she didn't love the OM, didn't ever intend to leave you, etc. Is it a lie? Who knows. She probably believes it now because the years have reinforced it. I think a polygraph with questions about how she felt is not going to tell you anything. Absent some direct evidence like a saved letter or a diary I don't think you'll ever get a contemporaneous account of what she was feeling.