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You'd be surprised, it could always be worse. Details (or degrees of severity) of what she/they may have said about you during their physical activities are things often left out. Also it is not likely obs would be focused on this line of questioning for corroboration. Humiliation tends to go in one direction.

All I'm saying is that very often secrets are in fact kept if the chances of it getting out are low. There are not receipts or tracks of these kinds of things. However bad you may think, it is naive to think you know everything.

[This message edited by Never2late at 8:30 PM, April 21st (Thursday)]

Details (or degrees of severity) of what she/they may have said about you during their physical activities are things often left out.

That’s what I just wrote—I think that’s exactly the type of stuff I’m missing. Though she did admit to a variety of awful things she said: the worst of them was after having sex in the hotel the first session she fed his ego by saying how many orgasms she had, adding that she only gets off half the time with me.

My point though was that I feel confident I know the dates and events—I’ll never know all of the conversation.

the worst of them was after having sex in the hotel the first session she fed his ego by saying how many orgasms she had, adding that she only gets off half the time with me

My hat’s off to you Doctor. No way I could ever get past that.

My hat’s off to you Doctor. No way I could ever get past that.

Keep your hat on.

It’s been a bad week—since last Thursday (essentially, my return from Italy), the nightly conversations have not been good.

I look back a few weeks and think of how much more productive those talks were. We were going through dates and events and she sat there clear eyed and truthful. She gave me everything I asked for and more.

Now that we have to dig a bit deeper, I’m finding her more defensive and angry. And now with further context, I’m seeing her affair in a different light. We had convinced ourselves that the affair was this fantasy of sexual discovery for her and that I wasn’t a thought; that she never stopped loving me, only was annoyed by me at a heightened level during the affair.

But when I look at it all collectively—her actions and her badmouthing me to AP, her family and friends—it’s hard to see it as some joyous sexual empowerment. Nothing about it was joyful. There were no texts about how she loved me so much and was torn by the affair; there weren’t even texts about how happy she was in her time with AP.

Everything (quite literally) was about how awful I was.

To the point where I feel the affair may have been more about me than anything else. It was something she was doing to me because she had no other means to fight back at me. She can’t hurt me physically. She can’t beat me intellectually in arguments. She was already withholding sex in the bedroom. It’s like she had so much hatred and resentment for me that she began an affair to inflict pain on me.

Even how blatant she was on her phone with him; any other man would have caught her weeks earlier. She was flaunting the affair in front of my face as though she wanted to get caught. Perhaps subconsciously, it’s as though she knew whatever fun she was having in the affair was the cherry on top—the real goal was for me to find out so she could twist the knife. She wanted to finally win.

And then she saw how devastated I was and it slapped her back into the cruel reality. She now can’t believe she did it; she can’t believe she wanted to do that to me so she’s not letting that thought even germinate—she’s just dismissing it. But in my soul, I think that’s exactly what this was. Not 100%, but a big part of it.

I keep going through the motions of the affair, but the affair itself isn’t the hang up—it’s her words and actions throughout directed at me. If I was fucking another girl, I couldn’t imagine badmouthing my wife to everyone in my life while being sweet to her face. I just have way too much respect for her—we’ve been partners for 17 years and we’re married with children. She’s too important to me to shit all over her.

She felt none of that for me. She was done with me and this affair was her farewell to our relationship. And then in the eleventh hour, just before severing from me entirely, she was smashed with regret. Her perspective changed and now she loves and respects me again.

It’s a truth too horrible for her to admit to, so she can no longer navigate our conversations without losing all her self-respect. She needs to maintain the idea that the affair was just some fun on the side or else she won’t be able to look herself in the mirror. But I need her to see how monstrous she is for there to be any chance at forgiving her.

You guys all told me early on that I was trying to forgive her too quickly. It was the first thing the CT said to me as well, adding: "You don’t yet even know what you’re forgiving her for."

I took that to mean all the facts and events, but really it was reference to the depth of her cruelty to me—her vindictive anger and resentment that had built up over an entire relationship and unleashed at me through the only means she knew she could be successful. She sexually degraded herself to AP and flaunted it in front of me not to empower herself, but to hurt me. She lit her life on fire just to hurt me. That’s not something one does frivolously or impulsively like she wants me to believe. It’s machiavellian.

So now she’s lost everything—AP, friends, PTA, even her family somewhat. But I’m still here. I’m the only thing she can still save so that’s all she wants to do. She feels pathetic right now and she knows if she loses me too it would only be worse.

But that’s not a reason to rebuild a relationship—not even close. She still has so much deeper to go and I don’t know that I’ll withstand the ride.

I know myself well—I’m all in until I’m all out. And I’m still all in. But there’s this part of me that knows what being all out will feel like and it seems like a fair possibility.

You have 2 possible different reasons for her actions. One is that at the beginning of your relationship you took over, ran the marriage and made her opinions unimportant. On the other hand she might have brought a boatload of crap from her childhood and resented you from day one. Only you know about those issues.
Lastly, she is an adult and knew/ knows better and instead of playing mind games with you should have said something. We can let people off the hook for some things but resenting you and sabotaging your marriage is not excusable. And badmouthing you is cruel.
You are committed to R. I wish you the best.

Dr, yes, I think your WW was trying to hurt you with her A. Also, her AP was, and still is, in a position to hurt you by virtue of his position as a cop in your town. Maybe, your WW selected him so that she use him to further hurt by misusing the legal process against you. I think that you must be clear eyed about that possibility.

My now XWW was also having an A with a cop in my town. I was always looking over my shoulder. A lot of towns have rules prohibiting a cop from having an A with a married woman living in the jurisdiction, with the penalty being termination and loss of pension. According to my PI, a cop’s biggest fear is loss of his pension. Being fearful that OM was going to try to set me up, I filed a report with the local police department alerting them to the situation (a report is different from a complaint). I was told that in my town, a cop must report that he’s having an A if he’s involved in a situation involving the person he’s having an A with or the spouse. In my instance, the cop wrote a report on my car being vandalized at train station and visited my house regarding stepson. Internal Affairs said that cop satisfied disclosure requirement by advising his partner that he knew my XWW in kindergarten. I laughed and said that’s a far cry from disclosing an A. Nevertheless, by reporting, I felt that I was regaining some control over my life. I strongly suggest that you file a report with your local police department, and an added bonus will be seeing your WW’s response, especially if she’s protective of OM.

You have 2 possible different reasons for her actions. One is that at the beginning of your relationship you took over, ran the marriage and made her opinions unimportant. On the other hand she might have brought a boatload of crap from her childhood and resented you from day one. Only you know about those issues.

There’s truth to both of those.

Also, her AP was, and still is, in a position to hurt you by virtue of his position as a cop in your town. Maybe, your WW selected him so that she use him to further hurt by misusing the legal process against you. I think that you must be clear eyed about that possibility.

I don’t mean to be dismissive, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. Also of note, I may have miscommunicated earlier, but AP lives in our town and is a cop in a neighboring town.

Everything that she was saying about you during her affair … that was HER truth.

That was THE truth.

And now? After the eleventh hour, she was "smashed with regret. Her perspective changed"???

No.

Just no.

NOW she’s lying.

Something in her twisted little mind is leading her to play it this way.

Why? I dunno.

I seriously doubt that even she knows.

However I do know one thing for sure. You should never trust her again.

Don’t let your guard down.

If there's one thing I've learned at SI, anything is possible with infidelity.

However, most of the time a WW who is intentionally trying to hurt a BS is in an exit affair, loves the AP and does not change her mind about exiting. If they do change their mind, it is only after months of painful, open deliberation in an ongoing affair or she is finally rejected by the AP when he will not leave his own wife.

It's common to feel like she was deliberately trying to hurt you; after the double pain of infidelity and her badmouthing you to her family I would be surprised if you did not feel that way. But I think it is far more likely she was building you into the villain in her story so her actions looked necessary, justified and rational. This is actually very common in affairs. It helps justify the actions they know are not right to take. The fact that her family knew about it and were against it reinforces the idea that you had to become the bad guy, even more so for her to justify her actions not just to herself but to her Mom and sister as well. The messages to POSOM while you were in the room with her are actually very common. It is hurtful. But I do not think it means she was intentionally trying to hurt you. Like I said up front, anything is possible but I think it is more indicative of her being swept up in this completely, not realizing how badly you would be hurt. In fact, not even thinking about it.

I think it is most likely that her longer-term resentment and poor coping skills etc put her in a place where she was susceptible to an affair; rather than hatred was spurring her on to create a conscious or subconscious plan to destroy your soul. I could be wrong, but I believe that is a much more common explanation for infidelity.

Doc,

First, I'm so sorry for this latest info.

When you said:

"If I was fucking another girl, I couldn’t imagine badmouthing my wife to everyone in my life while being sweet to her face. I just have way too much respect for her—we’ve been partners for 17 years and we’re married with children. She’s too important to me to shit all over her.

She felt none of that for me. She was done with me and this affair was her farewell to our relationship. And then in the eleventh hour, just before severing from me entirely, she was smashed with regret. Her perspective changed and now she loves and respects me again.

It’s a truth too horrible for her to admit to, so she can no longer navigate our conversations without losing all her self-respect. She needs to maintain the idea that the affair was just some fun on the side or else she won’t be able to look herself in the mirror."

As you said, you respect her too much to have badmouthed her to others even if you were having an affair.

The sad cold truth is that she does not respect you enough to not do that as she DID that and she did it a lot to many different people. She wasn't just upset and popped off to someone. No, that's the way she was for a long time. It shows who and what she really is. As always, it's actions.

Now, with the latter part of your quote above, she is NOT staying or trying to reconcile for you for the right reason(s).

As you said in a part I didn't include, she's lost so much and she doesn't want to lose you too. She's trying to hold onto to something and that's you since she's lost friends, the AP, the PTA, her self-respect to many others.

In some way, she won't look as "bad" to others if you stay with her. Is that the only reason she wants to stay with you? No, I don't think so, but I think it factors into this, into what she's doing.

It's rarely just one thing. Things are made up of many different things, like a big stew with many ingredients, it isn't just one thing.

She's lost so much and she doesn't want to lose you too. Why? Many reasons, she knows you, she knows that you're a good man, she's counting on that, counting on you being there for her. I'd worry that she'd leave you like 4 years down the road when she's picked herself up off the ground and healed a lot more than she has now.

For a couple to reconcile, both partners have to be all in and she's not. I get it, she might become all in down the road.

Obviously I don't know you and you're an intelligent person but you really need to think in terms of how long you'll wait or give her to become all in.

I'm not saying to give her a few months and then go as that's not realistic, we all know that.

But, if you still think and feel this way about her and you still think and feel she's not owning up to what she really thought about you and your relationship a year from now or two years from now, you'll need to pull the plug.

Why? Time flies by and so many folks say things like "I wish I would have gotten out years ago" especially knowing what I know now.

I get you want to try and I applaud that. Don't just let time fly by and all of a sudden it's 2028 and things still aren't the way the should be between the two of you.

Don't let her be disingenuous about this reconciliation.

If she won't or can't admit this to herself and to you, it's not going to work.

There seems to be many things she "wants" from you and the relationship, like a safe landing spot for her cruel behavior, someone to help her, be by her side, make her look better to others, help her from being completely alone due to what her actions have done to her as they have consequences and she doesn't like them so she's grasping at what she can right now and that's you, your relationship.

This isn't what you want from the relationship of course, you want the right things, real love, a partner in every sense of the word, you want to be wanted the way you want her and she doesn't want you that way (not right now at least and she hasn't for quite awhile either).

I don't want to see you end up in a transactional relationship with her years from now.

When my dad divorced my mom, due to her cheating, she was so mad, she told him "you can't do that!" and yes she knew he could. She wasn't talking about that. What she was mad about was losing her lifestyle, her nice house in the nice subdivision, her staying at home, doing things with her girlfriends like playing Bunco, going to lunch and the spa with them. She loved the look of our little "happy" family. THAT meant something to her. She cared about the marriage for much different reasons than my father did.

No, I'm not saying this is exactly like your situation, I can't say that as I don't know. I'm just saying this about my parents as an example of one wanting to stay in the relationship for the right reasons and one not wanting to stay for the right reasons.

I'm sure the details and reasons are different for your wife and you compared to my dad, but there are similarities even though the details are different.

Your wife isn't all in and she wants different things from you and the marriage than you want from her and the marriage.

That bridge HAS to be crossed before the two of you have any chance of reconciling happily.

The worst choice folks can make is to straddle the fence and just bob along where the currents of life take them. It's OK to do that for a while, but please don't let that become the rest of your life OP. Now, I don't think you will, not from what you've written.

You want it to work out, as long as it's right and for the right reasons so hold onto that, stick to it and at some point put a time limit on it so you're not still just bobbing along in the raft without an oar. At some point you need to stick an oar into the water and guide yourself to where you need to be and want to be. You might want to head north, but if it's blocked (by say a spouse who isn't on the same page as you) then you might need to change your course and move along in a different direction.

Good luck to you, I wish you well. I want you to be happy, whether that's in your marriage or not.

Thank you Trdd and EmergingLady—those were incredibly insightful and helpful posts. I’m greatly appreciative to you both. It’s a lot to think through—and I will.

You guys all told me early on that I was trying to forgive her too quickly. It was the first thing the CT said to me as well, adding: "You don’t yet even know what you’re forgiving her for."

This exactly. I wish I could help newly betrayed BS by helping them see and feel this sooner so they know what we are trying to tell them. I am so sorry you are hurting. You are absolutely right that she did not and does not respect you and she is grasping at straws to not face and own that. From what you share, it is painfully obvious that she is drowning in regret for what she stands to lose.

As everyone keeps saying, it is her LONG TERM actions that will determine your best cause of action moving forward. So far, it sounds a lot she just wants to say oh poor naive me. eyeroll.

If she never moves past the defensiveness and the attempts at rug sweeping, there is not anything to work with even if you do everything in your power to heal yourself. What you have described so far is not very encouraging but only you get to decide if you want to give her any additional time to change. Even if she does change, you don't owe anyone a second chance to be in your life.

For now, focus on you and what you need day by day. Don't let her waste any of your time with fake reconciliation. She needs to admit and face that all of this was her and she did not respect you. None of this was sexual self discovery or repression. Holding her feet to the fire now and taking control now will save you from finding yourself in the same place 5 years from now. Be careful of talking yourself out of what you are actually seeing and experiencing vs what you are hoping to see or want to see.

I think you have found your anger and that is healthy for you. Her denigration of you is sign of a deeply troubled woman who was deeply unhappy in her relationship with you. As for her 180 after she is caught out, that is deeply suspect as you yourself recognize. You are also questioning her narrative, and holding her accountable. That is good for you but she is going to hate it.

What I will suggest is that you not go down the road of giving her too easy a pass on this. Her claim that she can't handle it is actually pretty insulting. If there is any hope for her it is that she owns her statements and behavior and deals with her issues both pre and post A. Letting her retreat into a defensive shell is not a way forward.

I don't know where this all goes, but her burning your good name into the ground to everyone is probably going to be more damaging in the long run than her freewheeling no holds barred sex with a near stranger. If she can't or won't own to it, and if you choose to stay, you are in for a very rough several years. With no guarantee she won't burn the M anyway down the road.

You are the man on the scene so you know when and if to pull the pin. Going only from what you have said, it looks like she was trying to sell you a bill of goods. Since you are not buying, prepare for anything from her, including claims of abuse to acting out with others. Good luck.

Dr.,

To the point where I feel the affair may have been more about me than anything else. It was something she was doing to me because she had no other means to fight back at me. She can’t hurt me physically. She can’t beat me intellectually in arguments. She was already withholding sex in the bedroom. It’s like she had so much hatred and resentment for me that she began an affair to inflict pain on me.

Even how blatant she was on her phone with him; any other man would have caught her weeks earlier. She was flaunting the affair in front of my face as though she wanted to get caught. Perhaps subconsciously, it’s as though she knew whatever fun she was having in the affair was the cherry on top—the real goal was for me to find out so she could twist the knife. She wanted to finally win.

One thing that always bothered me was how your WW so quickly supplied you with the most hurtful details - i.e., her being handcuffed to the bed while the AP took her anally and her giving the AP a blow job and then coming directly home and kissing you. I think most WW’s would hold back that as long as possible. It seems more like she wanted you to know and feel as much pain and humiliation as possible. I could be way off base here, but I think it’s something I would want to probe and dig into a little.

One thing that always bothered me was how your WW so quickly supplied you with the most hurtful details - i.e., her being handcuffed to the bed while the AP took her anally and her giving the AP a blow job and then coming directly home and kissing you. I think most WW’s would hold back that as long as possible. It seems more like she wanted you to know and feel as much pain and humiliation as possible. I could be way off base here, but I think it’s something I would want to probe and dig into a little.

I really can’t understate how relentless I was in that first week. There was no sleep. It was an interrogation 24/7. Then we read the book that enforced her being honest. When she mentally broke, she just told me everything. It was a deluge of truth after days of lies. I suspect in that moment she felt she had nothing to lose—I think she thought I was going to divorce her regardless and it was her Hail Mary to try to be 100% truthful.

It was a lot of pain, but I think it was for the best. Eliminating the trickle effect of surprises was very helpful.

Still, I actually pushed on your point today, asking why she volunteered so many hurtful details. I specifically called out her point about telling AP she has to fake some orgasms with her husband. She told me she only shared that because I asked her to tell me something she did that was hurtful and she hadn't shared (it’s true, but I had forgotten I asked her to do that).

My honest sense is she just broke and realized me catching her in lies was worse than the awful truth—and she’s just not a good enough liar to calculate what I will and won’t find out.

Since you are not buying, prepare for anything from her, including claims of abuse to acting out with others. Good luck.

Comments like this concern me because it means I’m not doing a very good job at describing her character. That scenario is wildly off base (probably my fault, not yours).

I can’t express how weak and passive my wife is. She’s not devious and aggressive enough to do something like that. She’s a shrinking violet who would go off into a corner and cry for a year should we separate—there’s no grand counter offense coming.

If she never moves past the defensiveness and the attempts at rug sweeping, there is not anything to work with even if you do everything in your power to heal yourself. What you have described so far is not very encouraging but only you get to decide if you want to give her any additional time to change. Even if she does change, you don't owe anyone a second chance to be in your life.

It’s frustrating. Every time I feel like I see progress, she says something that brings us back to zero. She’s overwhelmed, clearly, and needs more time. But I agree that I won’t let her of the hook. I’m going to keep the pressure on and call her bull shit when I see it.

Dr.

Is it possible your WW is just really into police officers, with some women this is a major turn on or fetish. I've seen quite a few of them.

Did she date cops before you were married what do you know of her sexual past?

You say your WW is a shrinking violet, but is that only the person you have access to and she is someone else for other men?

Did she get tested for STDs, she could get AIDs or HPV related anal cancer from her activities.

I would get going on the Polygraph.

I also see an issue in that OM, OMW, OM kids are all close by or in your life and will keep you triggered continually.

It was another rough night. I wanted to dive in on her badmouthing, broken down by what she was saying to family, friends and AP.

We had previously gone through the psychology behind badmouthing me to AP and I’m not very angry about that—I feel like I understand it. The other two bother me a lot though.

We discussed friends first and she was calmly defensive about it, citing nothing she said verbally was any worse than what other wives were saying about their husbands. It was just a group of wives complaining about their husbands and not a big deal to her.

I attempted to explain the difference between good natured jabs at someone she loves and mean-spirited anger—in her case, based on the texts I saw, it was definitely the latter. She painted me as a boring, wet blanket, who no one, especially her, would want to be around socially. She understood the distinction I was demonstrating and agreed she was wrong and would not disrespect me like that again.

Then we hit the big one: her family, who live in Canada. She acknowledged right away that her conversations about me to them were horrible and she embraced feedback from them that supported her anger toward me. Essentially, she poisoned the well in their minds about me until they became complicit and understanding about it.

It’s just an objectively stupid thing for her to do. I spend all my time talking my wife up to my family because it’s so obvious that my family feeling positive about my wife is a net benefit for me—creating animosity between them only serves to make my life harder.

Even worse, her framing of me was in many ways in direct contradiction to my intentions with her family. As an example, when her parents come and visit, I often give them space to play with the kids. So I’ll go into my office and leave them alone—I want them to have lots of alone time with the kids without me hogging the attention during their limited visit window.

My wife leveraged that to paint me as a detached father who left her to do everything—and it was something her parents saw firsthand and could agree with. And while I’m open to discussing our roles in parenting, her using my intentions of the kids spending more time with grandparents as a weapon with her parents is incredibly frustrating.

Separately, and my wife knows this, multiple times a month I’d push for us to connect the kids with her parents, either through visits one way or the other or through a shared vacation. We go to Disney World a lot and I’d always suggest they meet us (they did so once). Often my wife was the one resistant, if not her parents.

Ultimately, her parents see the kids about twice a year for a few days. Truthfully, it bothers me how accepting they are of the limited relationship they have with the kids. Family is really important to me and my childhood was defined by an incredible relationship with one of my grandfathers—I want my kids to have that opportunity as well.

But I largely keep quiet about it because it’s not my place to get too involved, so I just gently nudge when appropriate. But now to have her drop this bomb on the relationship I have with them is just really unfair to me.

And I told her all that, highlighting that I couldn’t care less if I ever see them again at this point and it’s on her to do a lot of work to repair this relationship—for her benefit.

She agreed and understood my position, but then she did what she has done every night these last 10 days, she pivoted to her anger. She jumped to how my sister made an obnoxious comment to her 10 years ago and how she doesn’t like her.

To be fair, my sister can say obnoxious things at times and my wife is very sensitive, so it’s a delicate issue for me to navigate. But my sister is also quite literally the kindest person I know.

Regardless, my wife’s anger escalated to her yelling about it (it might be the first time she’s ever yelled that intensely in our relationship)—it caught me off guard and I wanted to smile as it was nice to see she found her voice in a discussion with me. At the same time, it was obviously bull shit to start yelling about my sister during this specific conversation about her parents.

It felt as though she agreed she needed to do work to fix her mess with her parents, but didn’t want to let me off the hook—like: "Well ok, I’ll fix this, but you need to fix this!"

The conversation devolved from there as she broke down in tears as I pointed out her lack of empathy for how I’m feeling in this moment—and the false equivalency between what’s going on with me and her parents and her issues with my sister. She realized what she was doing an apologized profusely. She said she felt like she had no voice in our relationship for so long, so now she’s struggling to play the role of a healer while also finding her voice.

I told her she needs to do a better job of it as she’s is turning these conversations very hostile and negative. She recognized that and said she’d fix it—though it feels like we’ve been down this road every night this week, so we’ll see what changes.