SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My wife broke it to me over Thanksgiving that she has found another man and it's a co worker. It's been five months of me trying anything and everything to try to keep it together. My wife has just increased the lies and deceit as time has gone on.

There is so much to the story but I don't even know how to tell it. She packed a bag six days ago and hasn't come home since but I'll get random phone calls and texts but tons of gaps where she starts ignoring me. But when she does talk she makes it sound like there is still a chance but only the slightest.

No one I know understands what it's like to be married to someone who is doing this. I still love her and would do anything to keep the marriage together.

Use the sticky posts here in this forum and the library on this site to read up on the 180 process used to get out of infidelity. Read carefully and start working the 180. It is counterintuotive for some people but if you want to reconcile, you need to be strong, avoid playing the "pick me" dance and do the 180. Workmon your strength, fitness and well being as you do it.

The pick me dance never seems to work. The 180 process gets you out of infideilty as it's primary goal but a side effect is that it may also help snap your WW out of her fog and the affair.

Some people will come on here and be pretty to the point, blunt, and sometimes harsh sounding. There’s a reason for this. They’ve been where you are and they know the outcome. I wish I had positive thoughts about your situation but I’ve known too many women who’ve done this and they don’t go home. You will go through all the stages of grief and the strongest one is bargaining. You will give away your soul to have her come back to you. I am so very sorry this is happened to you. Being cheated on is mind blowing because it was not anything we ever plan on. It feels like a death and it is really because it’s the death of your marriage. It’s also the death of innocent you had about your wife.

I have practical suggestions. First you need to see a doctor to help you with anxiety. Don’t be too proud to ask for help but this will get you through the next few months or later. Next see an attorney. You need to be very aware that when people cheat and leave they are not being nice to you and will not be. You need to protect yourself financially. If there is another wife then you need to alert her.

First and foremost, take care of that your health. That means you do not drink or use drugs except from a doctor. Eat healthy food, stay hydrated and make sure you get plenty of sleep. This is very much as if you were in a bad car wreck. Your body is going to ache, you’re going to have chills, you’re gonna throw up. In other words your body is trying it’s darndest to get you out of danger. All it knows is that you are not safe. Pay attention to your health.

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 3:09 PM, Saturday, April 2nd]

How old are you?
How old is your WW?
How long have you been married?
Do you have children and, if so, what are their ages?
Is this the first time she has cheated?

I would suggest you spend some time reading through the Healing Library, and also reading some other threads, especially here on "Just Found Out".

Also, the basics: exercise as much as you can, eat well, stay hydrated, and stay away from the alcohol. Clear your head.

Let me suggest that the woman you think you are in love with is not your actual flesh-and-blood wife. The first response of a great many newly minted BH's is to yearn for the "before time", to feel a burning love for "my wife, a wonderful woman", to wish to restore normalcy and stasis to the marriage. But the reality of what you are longing for never existed. The wife you thought you had a stable, loving marriage with is merely a figment of your imagination. If your wife was entering into a relationship with a coworker that was so strong that she is now willing to pack a bag and leave to be with him, you were home being in love with an avatar, utterly clueless to the real person your wife actually was and is.

The quickest way to healing it to grasp your actual reality, and then move on. Right now, you're doing the "pick me dance", which never works, but in your case you don't even have an audience. You're dancing to an empty room, my friend. Why devote even an ounce more energy to that endeavor?

I'm in my late 20's my wife is my same age. Been married over 6 years and together even longer. No children and this is the first time anything close to this has happened.

I know I'm playing the pick me game but it feels instinctual. I know it isn't my wife doing this anymore but I know she is out there somewhere. Couples recover from this and I'm trying everything I can. Except of course the right things.

Start with the 180. Put yourself in focus and try to get better. Stop thinking you're still in love with your wife, you're not. You are still in shock and confuse love with being afraid of being alone. All your wife showed you was disrespect, If she cared for you and loved you, she would've tried to work it out with you, that she fell out of love and it was best to go seperate ways and divorce. She just left to fuck the other guy. You can't fight for her.

BlueJeans,
YOu are right that couples do recover from this. Some. Not a majority. And in the cases where they do recover, BOTH partners have to be 100% committed to recovering (and that is sometimes not even enough). Your WS is not committed. She’s left. I know it hurts — my WS did it to me after 25 years.

YOu cannot make her want to reconcile. You just can’t. And you can change yourself and how you were in your M all you want, but it won’t fix anything about her affair. Her affair is 100% on her. It has, as weird as this sounds, nothing to do with you. She chose to step outside her M and cheat. That is about her character, morals, integrity — not yours. So for her to be a safe partner SHE needs to be the one to do the work to fix those character flaws and understand why she did what she did. And it sounds like she is just not going to do that —her behavior is escalating and getting worse, not better.

Please look after yourself and your finances. See the lawyer to understand what D looks like. Having that knowledge helps quell some fears you may have. Read up on the 180 and use it to give your head space to think clearly and start to detach.

And trust us. You WILL get through this. It hurts like nothing else, but time and distance really really do work.
Keep posting, keep reading. (Check out the healing library as well as any posts with bullseyes in the Just Found Out forum).
Hang in there.

I am so sorry for you. All good advice from previous posters so I won’t repeat it.

In short order you need to do the following:

Get yourself a good counselor. Just for you. Your marriage is not the problem - your cheating wife is.

Get yourself a good attorney. She cannot spend your $ or joint $ on the new guy or rent for him etc. you now need to financially protect yourself.

Get all your financial documents together - tax returns, statements bank accounts etc. I suggest start putting your $ in an account she doesn’t have access to.

Change passwords for everything. Email, utilities, phones, credit cards etc. start locking things up.

You don’t want to be responsible for HER debt. And right now you are b/c you are married

Protect yourself. First and foremost.

Couples recover from this

Some do. Most don't. And of course the emphasis is on "couples" -- as in, both must want to recover.

One thing said here over and over is that, if you want a chance to save your marriage, you have to be willing and ready to lose it. This is because you can't control the outcome. You can only control you. The only way to know if your marriage has a chance is to take steps to leave it. Point a boat away from the infidelity and start rowing as fast and as hard as you can. If your WW wakes up and decides she wants to save the marriage, she'll figure out a way to get to your boat.

I was dumped by my WW for her AP. I did the same thing as you at first. I was a blubbering, pleading mess. But she was steadfast so I tucked my tail, packed up my clothes and guitar, and moved on. I was 29 at the time. Together about 8+ years. She had a son from an earlier relationship, but we had no kids together. I had not formally adopted the son but he was like a stepson to me.

I moved on. Lived the life of a single man for some years. I did swap custody of the son with my ex, on an informal basis. Mostly he was with me on weekends and when she traveled for work.

I eventually met a woman, got married, had kids. The son from the earlier relationship was then a senior in high school. He was the best man in my wedding.

In your late 20's, you have a ton of life ahead of you. Don't waste it chasing somebody who says she no longer wants you. Believe her. Move on.

Brother I'm sorry you had to find us but glad you did, listen your WW has already left you for POSOM, at this point you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to work with. No children, relatively short M, you're still young, please end this farce and file for D and protect yourself financially (she could be racking up debt while living with POSOM that you could be liable for), you deserve so much better than a proven cheater and liar, don't forget to get tested for STDs/STIs.

Some people don't move on. Some people stay stuck in the despair that is a natural accompaniment of being betrayed - despair, grief, anger, fear, shame all get dumped on the BS on d-day, sometimes before d-day, too.

But you're less than 6 months from d-day, and the rule of thumb is that it takes 2-5 years to recover from being betrayed. You look like you're about where many of us are when we're getting on to being 6 months out. It's way, way too early to be thinking that you're stuck.

My reco is first and foremost to take care of your health - water, rest when you can, physical activity, meds if you think they'll help, give up the pick-me dance - all the above advice.

My reco is to add processing your despair, grief, anger, shame, fear out of your body. Feeling the pain, which is different from thinking about the pain, lets it go. Walk, run, bike, swim - virtually any activity - and using the pain to move your body is a way of feeling it. Crying can work. Hitting a punching bag or pillow can help. Journaling can work. Talking to an understanding friend can work. Talking with a good IC should work; if it doesn't, get another IC.

I know life doesn't look or feel very good now, but you most definitely can find some ways to process your pain out of your body. You most definitely can survive this and thrive. Have faith in yourself to heal you.

Piggybacking on Cooley's advice to see your doctor for stress management... there's a book I'd like to recommend to you. It's called The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson. In it, the author does a really great job of explaining why this situation is so painful and how the body and the brain respond to it. This book helped me so much, even in R, because I felt so weak and so fragile, like it was somehow MY fault and like I was an aberration to feel so destroyed by what had happened. But when you study how trauma affects the brain/body, you begin to understand that your reaction is NORMAL.

We are all born with the reflex to fear abandonment, and unbeknownst to us, we carry that reflex forward into adulthood. But just like an imaginary vestigial tail... we don't need it anymore. This book can show you how to begin letting it go. Of all the things I read while I was going through this, and I read voraciously, this book had the most influence on my healing.

I know you're in your comfort zone right now, trying to coax your WW back, but I will also share this with you, as someone who did end up in R, the best actions feel very counter-intuitive. I came out swinging for the fence on divorce. It was my WH who panicked and wanted back in. Even now, if your WW feels like you are giving up on her, she'll either be relieved to hear it, or she'll freak out and want to get back together with you. So, you have nothing to lose by moving on which isn't already lost. You can't R with an unrepentant cheater. In the most successful R, the WS is falling all over themselves to get back into the relationship.

It hurts and it sucks... but you're going to be okay. We're all living proof that people can survive and thrive after infidelity. Believe it. You're going to be okay.

I came out swinging for the fence on divorce. It was my WH who panicked and wanted back in. Even now, if your WW feels like you are giving up on her, she'll either be relieved to hear it, or she'll freak out and want to get back together with you. So, you have nothing to lose by moving on which isn't already lost. You can't R with an unrepentant cheater. In the most successful R, the WS is falling all over themselves to get back into the relationship.

Blue, you've been given excellent advice. Believe. Re-read the above over and over again. These things said to you come from the aggregated experience shown to work. Notice that much of it is in the form of doing.

I rarely come over to the JFO side because I can barely bear it. The pain is so palpable. However, you are about my sons' age, and I want to reach thru the ether, grab you, and shake you. Start moving and doing as a start.

Lastly, I'll share that to improve my lot, I had to find my indignation and anger. My simple exercise was to inventory all of the reasons why she should have loved me. My list was long and with each addition I grew more indignant. "Seriously? Who the f*** are you to not love this? You are not worthy of the devotion I've shown you and brought to us as a couple."

That last line, "You are not worthy..." Convincing myself of this was my tipping point.

I hope this helps.

Strength to you young brother.

[This message edited by Repossessed at 8:58 PM, Saturday, April 2nd]

Bluejeans42

Sometimes it can help to imagine another more common trauma to help deal with infidelity. I think one main reason for the indecisiveness and inaction is simply we never expected this and therefore never prepared on how to react.

Imagine this was a fire. Your house is on fire. It might be semi-controllable where it’s only burning a part of your kitchen, but I’m still guessing you would call the FD and make sure the fire is out. You wouldn’t turn a blind eye and hope it goes out, try to negotiate that it only burns that one corner or leave for work hoping it will be out by the time you come home. Nor would you phone a contractor to fix the damage while the fire is still burning.

It's the same with your marriage and the affair IMHO.
There are some "facts" – as far as anything can be a fact in relationships.
One fact is that a marriage requires that participants participate in the marriage. You wife doesn’t…
It’s a fact you can’t have a good marriage if one is forced to remain. Your wife doesn’t want to be there…
What you want isn’t relevant per se. You need to deal with the cards you have been given.

My suggestion would be this. Tell your wife something along these lines:
"Wife – I love you and had always envisioned my life with you. However, I also realized there is something worse than losing you, and that is sharing you with another man. I don’t share my wife. I therefore set you free from all that is expected from a marriage but am claiming that same freedom. All that is left is the formal dissolution of our marriage and we can probably do that in a fast and efficient way. To help my recovery I don’t plan on remaining friends. This doesn’t mean we need to be enemies, but I really don’t see a need for us to have any relationship moving onwards.
If you still want this marriage, you have a short gap where you need to tell me, but I’m moving on with or without you."

Blue jeans, you’ve got some excellent responses coming in.

-No kids
-Your young
-Married six years

You still have a whole life in front of you, and want to empathize WHOLE enriching life.

So, I would geez on down the road in search of your WW’s replacement.

AND, if your WW’s replacement ends up being your ‘former’ WW, it’s going to be because she came back fighting hard for you and the marriage, like a selfless relentless crusader with a singular focus, initiative, endless loving patience and resiliency, empathy, absolute honesty and a sincere desire to definitively get down to the distilled underpinnings of the character flaws that lead her down this sadistic path. This is called True Remorse.

Now, ironically, the best way to determine if she is truly remorseful is…to walk away.

Just walk away. The 180. You’re doing a 180 degree turn away from her bullshit and watching to see what happens. It’s counterintuitive but it’s what you must do.

Walk away and then measure her efforts to come running back to you, back for you, and back to, and for, the marriage. Those efforts can only be measured in months to years. Her efforts must be sustained and consistent.

Blue, so sorry you find yourself here. As others have said above, the only way you can get out of infidelity with an active cheater is to 180 and start moving forward. Maybe she starts to follow, maybe not. But the only prize you’ll ever win with the pick me dance is an unremorseful cheater who’s all but guaranteed to repeat.

[This message edited by asc1226 at 8:33 PM, April 3rd (Sunday)]

As difficult as this seems, the decision to move on becomes much more challenging when you are older and/or there are minor children involved. Once they cheat, that 100% trust is gone and almost never comes back.

180 her and get tested for STDs. No more sex.

You are young. File for D. You have plenty of time to find someone who would be a good wife and mother. WW is not it.

I still love her and would do anything to keep the marriage together.

Your WW KNOWS this, and she will leverage it as long as you continue to think that way.

You are of the mindset that your WW is worth 'fighting' for. It is a sad truth, but no WS are worth 'fighting' for. They are only worth 'fighting' for, if they exhibit real remorse for an extended period of time, and their behaviour is consistent in showing you that you can trust them with your love again.

The more you do the 'fighting' (aka pick-me dance), they more they will hurt you, as you are enabling their behaviour. Showing them that you value them more than you do yourself. Giving them power over you, which is one of the worst things you can ever do to yourself.

Couples recover from this

You are partially right on this. Where you seem to have omitted is the correct second part of that sentence, which is 'as long as both parties are willing to work on recovering.'

When there is only one party that wants to recover a relationship, it is no longer a relations of equals, but of a abuser/victim.

In your case, if you continue on your current trajectory, that is the relationship you will end up with. She will continue to abuse you, and you will always be the victim hoping for hope.

Look up a thread by cheesecakebaker.

He was a guy your age in a very similar position. In his 20s, no kids and married about 5-6 years. Wife did the same thing to him. Just up and quit the marriage.

After a few months he realized it was over. He D her and moved away for a better job.

He said the first 6 months were challenging— trying to get over all of it — but he was glad he made the decisions he did b/c he knew his wife was not going to change.

The marriage was over. No turning back for him.

I’m not saying your marriage is over. It is possible that your wife can come to her senses and realize she’s made a mistake.

But she may decide that only after it’s just too late. You cannot live in limbo like you are now. Living in limbo is like living in hell.

At some point you will need to get out of limbo - either by D or reconciliation.

Many of us would give our right eye to be in your position.

No kids, in your 20s.

Move on.

Save yourself from all the pain of reconciliation with no guarantees.

You have your whole life in front of you.

Be with someone who want to be with you.

[This message edited by Mene at 2:30 AM, Tuesday, April 5th]