SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

There is very likely some degree of truth that she was seeking validation. The correct question is "Why?" (probably multiple "Why?"'s) and the correct answer will be some sort of character gap inside of her that was formed a long time ago. The conclusion that you didn't provide it is an excuse and blameshifting. The conclusion that she needed it from somewhere else is also an excuse. In short, don't accept this from her.

However, to step back for a second -- I agree with Butforthegrace and point back to my "You've just figuratively been run over by a semi-truck, yet you are the one running around making sure that everyone else is OK. You need to stop and go get help for yourself." comment. You are spending a lot of cycles trying to help and fix others. Your wife needs to carry her own issues and do her own work.

Yes, I want to be clear--she has now genuinely accepted full responsibility for this, but the justification she was using largely had to do with needing more validation.

And yes, I'm the one doing most of the work, but that's just the way it has to be right now. I have a family and I can't let the kids start cooking and putting themselves to bed because I'm hurt and their mother is wallowing in shame and remorse. I need to step the fuck up and deal with it while I'm limping around.

When do you plan to tell the other betrayed partner? With the level of selfishness and insecurity of your wife, I would not be so sure their affair is over or won't start again unless the other partner knows. You are really charging in the wrong direction by taking so much ownership of what is completely your wife's fault and problem. She doesn't need you to protect her. She chose this.

I understand the views of so many of you, but I still do not have plans to tell the other wife. I agree that it is the objectively right thing to do, but I do not agree it is best for me, personally, right now. That may change.

I am confident that the affair is over. And I do feel terrible knowing it's almost certain the guy will do it again with another women.

Do not feel sorry for her. She is mourning the loss of her boyfriend. Don't allow her to do that in your presence. It's so incredibly disrespectful.

Something you said has me wondering if you've shared this site,and this thread,with your wife?

Something you need to understand..she was not sorry,or shamed, until you caught her. So all of this crap about how she feels like a whore,and she's so filled with shame..nope. She knew what she was doing this whole time. She knew she was having an affair,and betraying you,and her children, and she was just fine with it. But,now,suddenly because you know,now she feels bad about it?

No. She is mourning her boyfriend, as she admitted,and you are attributing her feelings to shame. She is not ashamed. She was fine with it just a few weeks ago.

You need to find your anger. She's manipulating you.

I have not shared this thread with my wife. I do agree that there is some manipulation from my wife--either by previous habit or deliberate, and I am calling her out for it when I see it. I do not think her remorse for what she did to me or her shame for how she disrespected herself is manipulation though.

Your wife needs to be getting off her ass, DrStrangelove, and be doing more housework. She does not get to wallow in anything right now. Simple as that.

Duplicate post, sorry

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 9:15 PM, Thursday, March 24th]

your wife's feelings for you (humiliate) cannot be ignored, you should discuss this situation without excuses, offer a polygraph if necessary.

There are general patterns of cheaters.

Abdomen applied all the general patterns. lie, denial, belittlement, change crime, change history, defend ap, obs don't hear it, she humiliated you to justify your relationship

s.. bomb after being caught, sharing what the relationship has done to her.

They are focused on protecting their (wife/ap) image, they are afraid of being heard in obs and social circles.

You are thinking about your own image.

choose me, stay with me, don't let me know that I've been cheated on, I have children, my family, I love my wife, I don't want to leave, I can't tell obs I'm saving my marriage. (I'll cover it up)

Your wife is manipulating you with your fears. she is looking at you, waiting, she doesn't need to do anything, you do everything.

You make excuses, you have to let her do things for you. no matter what she did for fear of divorce, she deleted everything and the timeline, . something where she wrote her own feelings, apology etc.

Did they meet with AP after Dday?
did she meet with AP on the evening he went to the hotel?
did they develop common ideas about the future?

ap
does your wife respond if she wants to continue the relationship ?..

does the relationship continue?

she knows that she is tracking her phone, she will not use it, they can produce a solution when they know the problem

you should take advice considering the possibility of recurrence in the future. you have to do it right without covering it up. if you both want it!!

therapy is the trust and sharing of two people. therapy won't help if your wife lies, there are relationships going on even during therapy.

I don't think anyone is suggesting you stop functioning. Of course you continue to care for the kids.

What you need to do is stop trying to fix this. She needs to lead reconciliation. She needs to be on the internet,looking for ways to heal the damage. She needs to figure out what she should be doing. Not you.

You need to work on a list of requirements.

We can help you with the requirements. They should at the very least be..

Full transparency. You get full access to all accounts, including passwords .

She remains NC with OM,and if he attempts contact,she doesn't respond,and tells you immediately.

She answers all of your questions without blame,anger,or defensiveness.

She drops all friends who knew of the affair.

She throws away all clothing she wore when with OM.

She apologizes to her family for lying about you,in order to justify the affair.

If she used social media to speak to him,she deletes these apps.

She takes the reigns,and does the heavy lifting and leads reconciliation.

And anything else you need to feel safe.

But..no...no one is suggesting you stop caring for your kids.

Remorse takes awhile. She has no idea how much damage she has caused. Neither do you. That takes time. What you see now is regret. Remorse is about you, and helping you heal.

It's unfortunate that you won't tell the OBS. Eventually she will find out,and when she does, you will have no right to ask her to please not tell everyone so each family can heal. Betrayed wives tend to become very angry when they realize everyone knew but them. It's humiliating. He's certainly told a few of his buddies. Your wife's family knows. You know. And no one thinks she deserves to know as well. You've decided to keep the secret,rather than tell her,and do damage control now. You will always be waiting for her to find out.

Ask her why she is "ashamed" now. She wasn't when you didn't know. So why now?

“Your post reflects what I'm seeing. The shame is still there, but I can see it's now mostly abject horror for what she did to me. I went to get a STD test--and it pissed me off. I didn't deserve to be sitting there explaining to a doctor that the woman I'm in a committed relationship with has been having unprotected sex with another man.

I feel like I now understand what some of you have noted about remorse--her body is consumed by it.

I also suspect you might be right about the affair--it's Occam's razor at this point. I think the guy was just a penis in a fantasy she was playing out.”

It’s a pretty common occurrence around here for an A like this unfortunately. It doesn’t help your pain to know that it is rather common. But know that you are not alone.

Moving forward you will need to figure out what you want. What are your boundaries going to be if you decide she is a worthy candidate for beginning R. If you are like me, you never want to be a marital warden. Constantly checking. But your WW will need to pick herself out of her shame spiral and morph those feelings into action. No trickle truth or lies. Honesty a must. She needs to invest in IC to work on her brokenness. Be there for you to help you deal with your pain, and be willing to answer all of your questions, over and over again if necessary, without defensiveness. No rugsweeping (Just get over it!). She needs to take the extra steps to reassure you when she is out. This is a marathon and not a race. You also will be on an emotional rollercoaster vacillating between anger, bitterness, and a desire to R. Give yourself time. If you decide that her infidelity is a dealbreaker, you can file for D at anytime. These are ACTIONS you can reasonably expect from a remorseful spouse. Watch her ACTIONS not her words.

Best of luck.

Dr SL, I will ask if you are confident in your earlier assertions concerning your WW's unforgiveable acts? If indeed, those acts are unforgivable you have two choices: Divorce immediately, OR create a co-parenting plan (perhaps with benefits) until the children are of age. If you choose the latter, your anger will grow immensely over the months and years. The purpose of forgiveness is to help put those betrayals in the rear view mirror. If forgiveness in untenable, you will have a very long and hard road while co-parenting. I took this path and I observe pieces (confidence, self-esteem, vulnerability) of myself cast in wake of this decision. I wish you well Sir...

but the justification she was using largely had to do with needing more validation.

Lots of married people crave more validation. When kids enter the mix, if both parents work outside the home, the stress is high. I'd hazard most married people at this stage crave more validation. But only some decide that the appropriate response is to arrogate the right to choose a secret, one-sided open marriage involving unprotected sex with a person whose STD status is completely unknown.

A counselor once explained it thus: Most people who cheat are getting about 85% of what they feel they need/want via the marriage. They cheat to get that other 15%.

Make no mistake, though. Your WW did the calculus and decided that, at the time, the humiliation you will certainly feel from knowing that she kissed you after oral with him was worth the 15% that she got. She may profess to feel differently about it now. What has changed besides the shame of getting caught and the fear of losing her marriage and being outed in the community as a woman who gives parking lot blowjobs to men who aren't her husband?

And yes, I'm the one doing most of the work, but that's just the way it has to be right now. I have a family and I can't let the kids start cooking and putting themselves to bed because I'm hurt and their mother is wallowing in shame and remorse. I need to step the fuck up and deal with it while I'm limping around.

I think you must realize this response is a deflection. Nobody on this thread is referring to quotidian domestic tasks when we say "the work". We are talking about injecting emotional energy into healing the trauma of the affair and its aftermath. Your wife needs to step the fuck up and deal with it. She needs to figure out why she decided, without telling you, to subject you to the disgusting acts that she did so she could get that 15%. The arrogance, contempt, and dishonesty embedded in that decision chain is staggering.

I agree that it is the objectively right thing to do, but I do not agree it is best for me, personally, right now. That may change.

I am confident that the affair is over. And I do feel terrible knowing it's almost certain the guy will do it again with another women.

Do you recognize the oxymoron in the juxtaposition of these two statements? Telling the OBS increases the level of factual truth within the system of people that are involved, some knowingly (i.e. MIL and SIL) and some unwittingly (i.e. OBS), in your current situation. More truth is always better...unless you are attempting to forge a synthetic reality based on fiction and hopium (the drug most commonly abused by BH's).

Further, if you actually felt "terrible" knowing the guy will cheat again, you have within your reach the means to do something about it: tell the OBS, so she can confront him and deal with it; tell his commanding officer so the workplace can address him. Create more truth. Ostriching has pretty much never been a viable strategy for long-term BH happiness.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 11:30 PM, Thursday, March 24th]

… unless you are attempting to forge a synthetic reality based on fiction and hopium (the drug most commonly abused by BH's).

That appears to be exactly where this is heading. This has " rug sweeping" written all over it.

Dr. You’ve received a lot of feedback and I’m sure you’re feeling overwhelmed by it and your current situation. I’d like to try to help with that.

You’ve indicated you want to reconcile. However, the collective experience of this website is that you cannot reconcile until you recover or at least begin to recover. That takes time, weeks to months of time.

Furthermore, you cannot recover until you received the truth and begun to deal with it. Based on my experience reading BH stories here, I doubt you have the truth currently.

Take your time recovering and reconciling to give your M the best shot for a healthy future. Although it may not feel like it to your WW, focusing on yourself right now to begin your recovery is a huge gift to your WW. It seems paradoxical to the newly minted BS, but it really isn’t because successful reconciliation is not possible without recovery.

This is exactly what the CT told me today, but I'm unsure how to respond. Let's say you're both right and I don't have the "full truth"--whatever that may be--how am I supposed to acquire it? I have asked her repeatedly for it and she insists i now know everything.

So if I can't move forward/forgive until I know what I'm forgiving her for in total, how will I know when I have the full story? I might have it; I might not, but it's up to her to.

I mean, I could call the guy and tell him he has five minutes to list off every sexual thing he did with my wife or I'll tell his wife, but that's not really my style...

- Blowing him, swallowing and then coming home and kissing me hello before dinner (she did not travel with mouthwash).

Of all of the pain and disrespect your wife has dumped on you, this is the peak for me. The absolute disrespect to put his dna in your mouth without a second thought is just mind bending. No way could I avoid nuclear anger knowing this.

And until you do what you already know is the right thing and tell the scumbags wife, the affair continues imo.

I mean, I could call the guy and tell him he has five minutes to list off every sexual thing he did with my wife or I'll tell his wife, but that's not really my style...

Tell his wife, not him. She will probably get the info for you. Two pairs of eyes are better than one.
All you have to do is compare your versions and see where there are holes.
By not telling OBS you close the door to a usefull source of information.
And not telling OBS will also have another consequence: everything you're dealing with will be happening to others men, because this one will not stop (except maybe if he risks losing his own wife).

Dr. S

This is exactly what the CT told me today, but I'm unsure how to respond. Let's say you're both right and I don't have the "full truth"--whatever that may be--how am I supposed to acquire it? I have asked her repeatedly for it and she insists i now know everything.

So if I can't move forward/forgive until I know what I'm forgiving her for in total, how will I know when I have the full story? I might have it; I might not, but it's up to her to.

I mean, I could call the guy and tell him he has five minutes to list off every sexual thing he did with my wife or I'll tell his wife, but that's not really my style...

Of course the full truth is a relative thing. There are very few people who get the 100% accurate and complete truth, even with a cooperative, remorseful spouse. So, let’s rephrase as "enough of the truth" to accurately understand the scope and scale of what you’re dealing with and need to potentially forgive (side note, you don’t necessarily have to forgive to reconcile, there are plenty of threads addressing that on here).

There are investigative techniques that you can employ (phone records, VARs, etc.), you can tell the OBS and see what she knows/learns, or your WW may divulge more of her own accord as the dreaded trickle truth (TT). Give yourself time to let these things play out. There is no quick fix that will be successful. Unless you’re confident you can figure out a way the other 60,000+ members here have somehow missed (please, don’t be that guy).

Once you given things some time to shake out, you tell her she will be taking a polygraph to verify her story and you follow through. Parking lot confessions occur more often than not. It’s a nasty, shitty business getting there, but it is necessary.

What you need to do is stop trying to fix this. She needs to lead reconciliation. She needs to be on the internet, looking for ways to heal the damage. She needs to figure out what she should be doing. Not you.

I told her exactly that earlier today. I said up until now, I've been leading these conversations--now I have no more questions to ask, so it's on you to help me get through this. We agreed to spend the night apart tonight to process and for her to start really looking for answers. I will wait to see how that goes.

You need to work on a list of requirements.

That's exactly what MC told me.

Full transparency. You get full access to all accounts, including passwords.

She remains NC with OM,and if he attempts contact,she doesn't respond,and tells you immediately.

She answers all of your questions without blame, anger, or defensiveness.

She apologizes to her family for lying about you,in order to justify the affair.

That's already done.

She drops all friends who knew of the affair.

The only people that know of the affair, besides the guy, are her mother, father and sister; and my mother. I just had her apologize to my mom tonight--they spoke for an hour, so I'll see how that went.

She takes the reigns,and does the heavy lifting and leads reconciliation.

This is the big one I need from her that hasn't happened yet to my satisfaction. We'll see if she can do it.

Let's say you're both right and I don't have the "full truth"--whatever that may be--how am I supposed to acquire it? I have asked her repeatedly for it and she insists i now know everything.

Written timeline, and often recommended here, but I think it's a personal choice, polygraph to confirm the written timeline is complete and accurate.

Just having it availble in written format will prevent gaslighting or "you misunderstood me" conversations in the future.

I 100% guarantee you that you will both actually misunderstand your wife and probably also be told you misunderstood her when you didn't in meaningful ways some time between now and one month from now. Written record makes it easier to figure out which of the two it is.

You will have more questions. You're still in shock. Once that wears off, things will occur to you,and you will have more questions. And that's normal.

You will also ask the same questions, over and over. That's normal. Your brain is trying to process what's happened. It's a traumatic response. There are people here who are years out,like myself, when suddenly we will think of something that hadn't even occurred to us, FOR YEARS, and we will ask that question.

Attempting reconciliation is not linear. It will be one step forward,and 10 steps back, for a long time. There is no rushing through.

I am worried that, once the shock wears off, the sexual component to this affair will hit you in the face. The BH here have been very clear about how hard this is to move through. That she did things with him,that she wouldn't do with you,is huge. And coming home, and kissing you after giving him oral..these things are so horribly painful. You might find you just can not stay with a woman who has so thoroughly disrespected you. AND THAT'S OK.

Many of us wanted what you want. To deal with this properly,and eventually move forward. You will need to understand this will take years. And, sometimes what is best, is to divorce. She may not be a good candidate for reconciliation. That remains to be seen.

Dr SL, I will ask if you are confident in your earlier assertions concerning your WW's unforgiveable acts? If indeed, those acts are unforgivable you have two choices: Divorce immediately, OR create a co-parenting plan (perhaps with benefits) until the children are of age. If you choose the latter, your anger will grow immensely over the months and years. The purpose of forgiveness is to help put those betrayals in the rear view mirror. If forgiveness in untenable, you will have a very long and hard road while co-parenting. I took this path and I observe pieces (confidence, self-esteem, vulnerability) of myself cast in wake of this decision. I wish you well Sir...

That was a lists of things I have not forgiven her for. I do not yet know if they're unforgivable.

I also want to again reaffirm, the presumption many of you have that I've been some doormat for my wife during this experience is not accurate--perhaps that's my fault in my posts, but quite frankly, talking about my anger and pushback on her bull shit isn't largely helpful to me. I appreciate the feedback because I can find important parts that I can choose to reinforce if I wish.

You're all very focused on what she has to do--and I agree with you on much of it. But there's very little about what I should do while I wait around for her to fix her fucked up head.

We ordered two copies of "how to help your spouse heal from your affair"--my plan is for us to read them separately and then make notes for joint-discussion. So that's next on the horizon--in the meantime I plan to get back into my workout routine and start watching films again (two of my passions).

Of all of the pain and disrespect your wife has dumped on you, this is the peak for me. The absolute disrespect to put his dna in your mouth without a second thought is just mind bending. No way could I avoid nuclear anger knowing this.

And until you do what you already know is the right thing and tell the scumbags wife, the affair continues imo.

My recollection is they were kisses on the cheek, but yes, it's something heinous either way. Honestly, I find each of the ones on that list entirely insane.

I think the hot photo she sent of her, naked in their hotel room before he arrived, is the one I spend the most time thinking about though. I dug into it with her and she panicked when I asked her to sext--she didn't want to risk it going on too long with him on his way. But she also felt too guilty to say no, so she sent the pic thinking it was a win-win. The disrespect in that thought-process has me struggling to comprehend this whole fucking planet.