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After reading my story, most people think I'm foolish to think that R is possible, but I'm just not ready to give up on the family that we've created. Although, I'm starting to feel it is hopeless.

This weekend, we took some big steps back. My wife's AP and his wife live in the neighborhood and our oldest daughters go to school together, so we run into each other from time to time and we have many mutual friends and acquaintances. Following DDay, the AP's wife told many of our common friends about the affair and posted about it like crazy on her FB and Insta... so lots of people know about it.

A few weeks ago, my WW started confiding about the A with one of their common girlfriends. Primarily to find out what the AP's wife had been saying and to try to smooth things over with their family because our sons are on the same baseball and basketball teams and spend a lot of time together.

This past weekend, the girlfriend’s husband and I were together at a birthday party and he told me that "I’m very sorry for what you are going through." This guy is/was buddies with the AP and the AP confided in him about the affair several months before DDay, but he never said anything to me. He basically stopped calling me to hang out and our conversations were limited to our kids. That’s OK, we weren’t that great of friends anyway.

At first, I told him I didn’t want to talk about it, but he told me how bad he felt knowing about it and that he wanted to stay out of it. He said that after a while, he cut ties with the AP and just wanted to stay out of it. I told him how hard this has been for me and described some of the physical struggles I’ve gone through such as weight gain, anxiety, and that I’ve started smoking. I told him briefly how I thought I busted them twice, long before DDay, but that my WW simple lied to me about it and I trusted her because she would never do anything like that to me. We talked for a no more than 10 minutes and aside from the 2 instances of lying, I provided no additional details about the A.

After I told my WW about the conversation when I got home, she was super hurt. She felt that the message I sent to him was that she was a tremendous liar and that I bashed her in front of him. She spent most of the day alone in our bedroom beating herself up. Later, she sent me the following text:

"You bashing me in front of people is disrespectful towards me and is not conducive to repairing a marriage. Is this is how you feel, why are we wasting our money on MC? You obviously can’t stand my guts or you wouldn’t instinctively want to bash me to people. Just admit the reality."

We spent some time yesterday contemplating divorce and we are close to realizing that this marriage is beyond repair. OMG, I can’t wait until the holidays are over. We have 3 kids and this may very well be our last Christmas together as a family.
Was I out of line about this? The only details I shared was that I confronted her twice during the A and she lied her way out of it. Nothing else.

Oh… and to make matters worse, her mom lives with us and was drinking and scolded me about it. She told me that I should have defended her and told him that I was a horrible husband and that the affair was my fault because I wasn’t meeting her needs. But that right there is another thread in and of itself.

WW here.

Is your WW in therapy? It sounds like she's dealing with a lot of shame. Unless she wants to break through that on her own, there's little you can do. It's something I've struggled with and has taken me quite a while to make progress in.

You did nothing wrong stating the facts of the affair. From the sounds of your social circle, there's a lot of rumor circulating anyway and you weren't sharing anything that's new to the group. It's not disloyal of you to state facts and share feelings. If anything, you need to reach out and get the support you need. I wouldn't go into the gory details or volunteer info not asked for, but it's not out of line to answer questions simply and honestly.

It's not disloyal of you to share. Remember, she was the disloyal one and having to face the consequences of her actions. If she's not ready to do that, that's her work and her problem to solve. Again, as long as the gory details aren't being shared, it's not disloyal and not smearing her name in your social circle. These stories are "juicy" and people love to judge and gossip. If she wished to avoid being a target of that, she could have avoided the whole affair by shutting it down before it started.

Unmet needs in the marriage, yeah, needs to be addressed. One lesson I learned (and am still learning) is that until the A is dealt with, there's no M that can really be salvaged. She needs to work on herself to get through her shame and become a trustworthy partner. THEN you can address the M. If you're still opening to salvaging it.

It's the holidays and they can be hell. Just hold on through them, take it day by day. My BH has such a hard time. It's only now (2yrs later) that I'm being able to comfort him and support him through it. Don't try to make any life changing decisions right now, there's time for that when the stress of holidays are over and your mind is more free to think through it.

I'm sorry you're here and wish you the best.

What’s clear to me is that you are not in recovery or reconciliation.
You are – at best – in dormant infidelity.

This was the first thing I shared with you to your first post and I think your post above just proves I was right. Your WW is more interested in getting out of this affair with limited damage than she is in reconciling the marriage.

You have questioned exposure, yet it seems OM and OMW have already been telling anyone and everyone about the affair. It’s not about being perceived as the bad guy or the one that did it – if all your social group consider OM a victim and your wife a harlot then it’s time to find less judgemental and more ethical friends. In fact the one you talked to sounds fine – to his advantage he wasn’t comfortable knowing of the affair and he cut off ties with OM.
[Since he knew you can give yourself the affair was common knowledge in the rumor-mill]

I think you need to take your wife’s comments and suggestions seriously, as well as your MIL evaluation of why she had the affair and your accountability for having your wife forced into the arms of another man.

I think you should start the process of divorce. Think of it this way: It’s like calling the fire department because of a raging fire in your house despite you maybe thinking you might be able to put it out. It’s safer to hear the blaring of the sirens approaching rather than realizing your hose is too short.
Remember: Divorce isn’t instantaneous, nor do you do it yourself. You start by researching the process in your area and then getting a professional to help you do the process. You don’t have to ask your wife for a divorce or negotiate with her how it will go. What you can do is tell her that since she’s more committed to saving her face than the marriage then you are starting the D process. Then ask what arrangements you two can make to cohabit or arrange separate residencies while the process is going on.
As a condition for pausing the divorce and/or retrying infidelity I would demand your MIL climbs on her broom and flies back to the East.

"She felt that the message I sent to him was that she was a tremendous liar and that I bashed her in front of him."

This is pretty ridiculous. Of course she is a liar. She had an affair. The person she should be angry with is herself.

I'm sorry you had the added stress of dealing with her mother as well.

This time of year can certainly magnify our troubles. Be kind to yourself and focus on your children.

I agree w MIgander.

Your wife is not in a reconciliation frame of mind.

And the part I most agree with is that you can’t fix what was wrong in the marriage until the cheater does several years of work on what was broken inside her to make her choose cheating over working on the marriage.

I’m a firm believer of being honest and simple when talking to a WS after DDay.

"If you were unhappy in the marriage it was thru marriage counseling or thru filing for divorce that you should have directed your efforts to try and make things better.

Instead your choice was to drop an atom bomb on our lives. You broke my heart and chose lying and cheating. You shot an emotional bullet through my heart and expect me to simply recover instantly. That’s not going to happen.

Now the only path that keeps us together is for you to focus on helping me heal and fixing what was broken in you to make that destructive choice. Any pain you feel over this process is only a fraction of the pain your cheating caused me.

So, if you are not all in with me. If you’re still mourning the loss of your ONE TRUE LOVE boyfriend. If you think that me talking to someone about the pain I am In is an affront to you, then I think it’s best we go our separate ways after the holiday. I do t need a partner who sees me as 2nd best and pines away for a lost lover.

I truly remorseful cheating wife would want me to talk to whomever I could to make myself feel better. You are clearly not such a person to let go of how this affects her and care more about my healing. So with that in mind, it’s best we move to separate and find our own paths back to happiness. "

Then only talk about the kids and finances. Dont even engage w her mom. There’s no benefit.

Until your WW changes her tune you have very little to work with here. You are not on a path back to happiness.

I want to finally tell you that truly reconciled couples find love again thru one very important thing, and that is when the betrayed spouse finds pride in the work that their wayward spouse does over the years to rebuild. And that includes months and months of selfless actions to show their commitment, love and desire they have for their partner.

From what you have written, your wife is not on that path right now. And until she is, it’s best you detach from her and move on as best you can. Whether or not she follows is up to her and you have no control over that so stop trying. You can’t make her do that work.

She needs to solely be in IC right now. So if it were me, I’d put MC on permanent hold and tell her until she fully commits to the process of healing after infidelity, there is not working on the marriage because her cheating ended the marriage the moment she chose to cheat.

I wish you good luck.

There is no defense for choosing to cheat.

Not a bad marriage, not unmet needs, nothing.

Infidelity is indefensible. Always.

There are a myriad of ways to work on a marriage or the myth of unmet needs without having a physical relationship with someone outside of the M.

I know R is possible, that’s the path I’m on and for me, it’s going well.

But none of us can R by ourselves.

You don’t even have someone who is taking responsibility for destroying you and is somehow more concerned for themselves than you, despite their shitty choices.

Infidelity is a tragedy and I hate to see the tragedy double in scope and scale with a WS incapable (thus far) of showing you any kind of care or remorse.

It certainly doesn’t help that her mother is in house, validating her daughter’s horrific behavior. It certainly doesn’t help to have so many people in the community leaning toward one side or the other.

However, none of that matters unless and until your wife owns the damage SHE CHOSE to cause, for whatever selfish, bull$#1% justification being played right now. And she may have a point about MC, if MC is not holding your wife accountable for her actions.

Maybe she shouldn't have lied and cheated if she didn't want people to think she was a liar and a cheater.

You aren't talking shit. You are just saying what happened. The truth is never wrong.

If she can't face the truth of what she has done, she isn't ready for R. Basically all of our close friends know of her A, of the year if limbo, that we are in R and how she earned that chance.

You'll get more rugsweeping and blame shifting if you don't stand up for yourself. Do stop wasting money on MC though. Most MCs will participate in helping the WS minimize, blameshift, and rugsweep because they treat it like a run of the mill shared marital issue. Not of a major personal issue for the WS.

[This message edited by This0is0Fine at 4:28 PM, Monday, December 13th]

You are not foolish for thinking R is possible - you are a caring human who wants the best for his family despite some really horrendous actions on the part of your partner. It always amazes me how we find ourselves in a position of feeling badly that we hold a hard line with someone who has decimated us. It happens to everyone. But you are worth more than being dismissed and made to feel badly for being honest - something with which your WW had great difficulty. She has no empathy for you right now - she only has empathy for herself. Until she is truly remorseful rather than regretful, you don't have R material. That doesn't mean she cannot be R material eventually; she just is not right now.

But for the fact that SHE had an affair in a town where others know, she wouldn't be embarrassed. Her anger is a deflection directed at you so she won't have to feel more shame than is already self-inflicted. Gently, don't allow her to do this to you. It's hard I know. It's hard not to try and be a partner to someone we once relied on for support. I just don't believe WS's fresh off their infidelity are in any place to partner. You don't have to own her embarrassment. Nor do you have to own her shame. It's hard enough for you right now to function and figure out what end is up.

Best thing you can do is get into trauma therapy for yourself so you can better manage her unsatisfactory behavior by putting up strong boundaries. It isn't on you to make her feel okay for what she did. It is on you to be honest and allow her to realize there are consequences to her actions. She took a vow with you and she broke it. How does she plan on repairing the M and changing so she can be trustworthy to you?

Was I out of line about this?

No you were not. As others stated, YOU did not bring up the A nor tell this person of the A. Your WW created the situation by having the A in the first place.

the message I sent to him was that she was a tremendous liar

That was HER interpretation. You are not responsible for how she interprets things or how she feels about it. You had no malicious intent.

Also, as others have said, her ACTIONS have SHOWN that she WAS a tremendous liar. How many times did she lie to you about the A, about where she was, etc.?

You should stop MC immediately, as your WW is showing you that she is not in the right place. You can give her the OPTION to try again when she stops blaming you for her problems. My hunch is that is what started things in the first place.

She told me that I should have defended her and told him that I was a horrible husband and that the affair was my fault because I wasn’t meeting her needs.

Congratulations for keeping yourself under control. I don't think I would have handled myself very well if I were in that situation. I'm angry for you, wishing I could tell of your MIL right now!

I can understand her Shame and embarrassment over the affair.

I can understand WHY she would not want you to talk about it with anyone.

But the sad part is the CHEATER NEVER thinks about the consequences. The cheater never thinks they will get caught. The cheater never expects there to be any repercussions.

But your cheating wife (and her mother) are both living in a delusional situation as they are blaming YOU for the affair.

That is not a good sign in my opinion.

You were never in reconciliation to begin with.

Your wife is stalking the OM. She is extremely jealous and angry at the OBS. She spends her time running to mutual friends, to insult the OBS,and tell them the OBS is lying,and minimising her affair.

I don't think she feels shame. At all. She's pissed because the OM didn't want her,and the entire town knows what she did. Pouting in her room all day had nothing to do with what you said to your friend. It was all about her embarrassment that mutual friends all know she was used by OM,and she looks like a fool

You really need to require that she do the work to reconcile. What you have now is an unremorseful serial cheater(since she left her last boyfriend for you,and cheated on him, this is a pattern for her.). If you rugsweep,and allow her to continue this behavior, you will end up with another dday.

The first thing you should require is absolutely NC. This includes stalking him on social media.

The second thing you should require, is going with her, to the mutuals friends, and insisting she tell them the truth, and stop trying to drag the other man's wife down. She owes that woman an apology for the lies she's been telling about OBS, to cover her own ass. It's deplorable behavior.

If she can't be honest with the people she calls her friends, why would you ever think she's been honest with you.

As a condition for pausing the divorce and/or retrying infidelity I would demand your MIL climbs on her broom and flies back to the East.

Congratulations for keeping yourself under control. I don't think I would have handled myself very well if I were in that situation. I'm angry for you, wishing I could tell of your MIL right now!

This is hard because my MIL has been tremendously helpful with taking care of our kids while we have been working through this the past 6 months. She is, however, sick and tired of all the drama that continually inflicts our household. She has been telling me for months to "man up" and "make a choice and stick with it." Ether "get divorced and move on" or "forget about the whole thing and move on".

She's obviously much older and from Eastern Europe and while I can speak her language fairly well, we do often misunderstand each other. Her husband, my WW's dad, cheated on her throughout her entire marriage and even had a baby outside her marriage. She has told me that she knows how painful this is but that for the sake of the family, she sucked it up and continued to play the happy wife. Although she was obviously very far from being happy.

Image is VERY VERY important to my MIL. She blames the AP almost entirely for tricking my wife. Up until now, she's been somewhat supportive of me, too... but I don't know if last night's comments were made out of frustration and vodka, or if she finally had the nerve to tell me how she really feels. She's been super nice to me today, though... but I've had to do a bunch of stuff to help her for her trip as she's leaving tomorrow for Sweden to go visit her other daughter for the holidays. I'm really glad I don't have to deal with her for a few weeks. I am secretly hopeful that she'll decide not to return for a while, but my kids have grown very close to her over the years and they would miss her tremendously.

Is your WW in therapy? It sounds like she's dealing with a lot of shame. Unless she wants to break through that on her own, there's little you can do. It's something I've struggled with and has taken me quite a while to make progress in.

She was offended when I suggested that she go to IC, because she thinks this is a sign of weakness and she thinks she can handle everything herself. He has been very willing to go to MC, though. We spoke about it at length during our last session and the MC seems to have concluded that if she's not going to go for herself, that me forcing her will make things worse.

"If you were unhappy in the marriage it was thru marriage counseling or thru filing for divorce that you should have directed your efforts to try and make things better.

Instead your choice was to drop an atom bomb on our lives. You broke my heart and chose lying and cheating. You shot an emotional bullet through my heart and expect me to simply recover instantly. That’s not going to happen.

Now the only path that keeps us together is for you to focus on helping me heal and fixing what was broken in you to make that destructive choice. Any pain you feel over this process is only a fraction of the pain your cheating caused me.

So, if you are not all in with me. If you’re still mourning the loss of your ONE TRUE LOVE boyfriend. If you think that me talking to someone about the pain I am In is an affront to you, then I think it’s best we go our separate ways after the holiday. I do t need a partner who sees me as 2nd best and pines away for a lost lover.

I truly remorseful cheating wife would want me to talk to whomever I could to make myself feel better. You are clearly not such a person to let go of how this affects her and care more about my healing. So with that in mind, it’s best we move to separate and find our own paths back to happiness. "

Thank you for this, SteveSn. I really hope it doesn't come down to this, but you captured my thoughts almost perfectly. If I do end up going down this path, you just saved me about an hour of writing! :-)

She was offended when I suggested that she go to IC, because she thinks this is a sign of weakness and she thinks she can handle everything herself. He has been very willing to go to MC, though.

MC only helps if something is wrong with the marriage and both spouses want to work on making it better. Now your Marriage is dead. Under the circumstances of A, something is wrong with WS, and it is her responsibility to figure it out and fix it if she wants to remain in this union. You can't make this choice for her, she should feel and understand the incredible need for it, desire to become a better version of herself. She already exhibited her weakness by starting an A. In order to have a healthy marriage , both partners should be healthy.

[This message edited by TruthIsPower at 7:44 PM, Monday, December 13th]

Wow Lefonquey1

Everyone here has posted in one facet or another - you are NOT out of line!

I would read the posts above again and next day again.

Bigger posted that it is time to DO something - so far you seem to be in a rut and not really moving in any direction.

Starting the legal proceedings may not get an immediate reaction you would like to see but doing something certain to resolve the shreds of what was your marriage will get everyone moving in some direction. And get you moving OUT of infidelity.

A post above mentions your "friends" - I have something I will PM when I find it regarding friends.

- get through the Holidays and then "get to work."

Your wife divorced you morally (marriage vows deceased now) - all you will be doing is wrapping up the legal side.

Look up "the fallacy of unmet needs."

Unmet needs is bottomless pit. No marriage, and no marital partner, can fulfill the unmet needs of another partner. Ever.

I bet your wife can't even articulate her "unmet needs" anyway -- and your sloshed MIL certainly can't.

Hi LFG,

If your wife thinks it's a sign of weakness to do IC, then there's little you can work with. She's going to have to hit rock bottom before she will realize that there's no way SHE can pull herself out of her pit without guidance. It's like she's bike riding cross country without a map. She may be able to get herself as far as the state line, but will be hopelessly lost if she wants to venture further on her own.

We can't navigate to good mental health and stable sense of self alone if we've never been there before. A good IC is a guide, not a fixer of something broken.

I've had a lot of talks with a Filipino gal (immigrated to US) I'm friends with about counseling (her H is REALLY ADHD and she struggles dealing with it). Her culture doesn't really have a lot of experience/interest in mental health services since they're overloaded dealing with more immediate concerns. It was hard for her to accept that her kids (also VERY ADHD) likely needed counseling and how to support them in that and not feel like a failure herself as a mother.

If your wife is raised by immigrants from another culture, she may have some background prejudice to overcome about getting help. Of course, could be plain old pride getting in her way too?

Anyway, you can't fix her. She can only fix herself, but she's going to need some help. If you decide you're not going to wait around for her to fix herself, then start looking around at your options now. You don't have to pull the trigger yet, and like others have said, you can always postpone/cancel a divorce if things turn around.

Lefonquey

Unfortunately, because of circumstances where not only your sociakl circle and kids are all intertwined with the OM and OBS as well as you living in such close proximity, it seems to me that while your MIL may seem like shes being an idiot to you, what choice do you have other than to divorce OR suck it up like she did.

How do you extricate yor self from having to stare this in the face constantly at every social event, sporting event or just going to the store and running into this OM.???

Lets forget about all the bull shit verbage your wife has dumped on you. The others have correctly pointed this out. What work can she do that stops you from having almost everyone other than work that you interact with knowing something or some version of this affair.

Can you R??? Sure but I just do not see how unless you can put the blinders on and fight the mental anguish staring you in the face constantly. Some people probably have moved from their locations to get away from the situation you are in.

I agree with BIGGER. You should file for D, which gives you time where reality has punched her in the nose to see how she reacts while YOU get to make the decision and she is not calling any shots. You can stop the process any time you want but my guess is your wife will agree with you MIL and do nothing.

And if you think you have not learned all the truth, I would tell her she is taking a polygraph. Notice I said TELL HER, NOT ASK HER>

Good luck to you.

Lefonquey,

Ask your WW who is she kidding, news of this kind spreads faster than covid, is she in a state of delusion. Nothing you do can damage your WWs reputation more then her actions.

You are not obligated to lie to anyone about what happened to you, you are not in a street gang where you took a vow of silence.

I see why atomic exposure to everyone is so useful.

I don't see how you can stay in this boiling pot of water where you see the OM and OMW regularly.

Do your kids know what went on, sometimes kids observe sketchy things but are too fearful to unburden themselves by telling you and carry guilt as a result.

Are you sure your MIL has not had an affair herself?

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:23 PM, Tuesday, December 14th]