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Thank you for the outline. It makes things clearer. And numb&dumb gave you a very good perspective as well.

For me, I would say that the most important thing to get across to your wife right now is that her decision, her choice, to let another many inside her emotionally and physically, has ended your marriage as it was.

The loss of trust is a very difficult pillar of a relationship to rebuild.

And to me, fidelity is at the core of a monogamous relationship.

She has broken both of those things.

For a short time, she gave to another man what she vowed to give you (and receive back from you) in marriage.

So are far as ramifications go, that feeling that you need for her to see what she has lost from this, for me it would be by telling her that while you are still here and not yet divorcing her on paper, that she has ended the marriage you had. That is what she has lost. It’s gone.

And that what she does next, the next week, months and years, will decide for you if you are able and willing to TRY and build something by new with her or not.

TRY, not guarantee. That is the opportunity she has in front of her now. If she wants a life with you then she’ll take it without guarantee of anything.

And it starts with her heart. If this man is still in her heart, in any way, then there is no future for you and her. I’d communicate that to her.

And it’s not just her words. She needs to prove to you that she has eliminated him from her heart. And it’s not just from desperation to save her marriage. But through weeks of work and introspection hopefully with an IC she sees him for what he is, a piece of shit that helped her emotionally injure the man she supposedly loved.

You need to feel not just regret of what she did, but empathy for how she hurt you. That will take time for her to show you. There is no quick fix. You were right to tell her you consider this the same as full intercourse. I agree there’s no difference as she was on that path. To me it hurts the same.

Yes it’s good she admitted it, and if she truly did stop (which you should poly) then that can help in your recovery. But you are still in the emotional hospital recovering from a bullet wound, it’s just the degrees how close to the heart that defines how likely you (and your marriage) will survive. You’ll be changed for ever, but can you be happy someday again w her by your side. That’s something that time will tell.

And she needs to be completely open and honest and agreeable to what you need if she’s gonna have a chance to repair the hole she ripped open in you marriage.

Keep doing what you are doing, IC well before MC can start to see if you can build something new. You’re both too broken individuals right now.

I send you thoughts of strength in this difficult time.

[This message edited by Stevesn at 4:28 PM, Wednesday, August 31st]

You have a very real chance of R. Keep following the steps and 180 and keep insisting on the truth.

I followed up with his boss. He was fired (or quit) last week.

His girlfriend never responded to me. Going to try 1 more avenue of communication just in case she didn't get them.

Excellent news.

Sorry you are going through this PFB84. I have a question about perhaps an unimportant detail.

His girlfriend never responded to me. Going to try 1 more avenue of communication just in case she didn't get them.

How were you able to verify his GF's contact info/ avenues of communication? And how can you be sure he has a GF and is not married to someone?

How were you able to verify his GF's contact info/ avenues of communication? And how can you be sure he has a GF and is not married to someone?

I found his social media. Found her name that way and researched and she seems to be a long term GF who lives with him. Tried FB message and an email i found originally, then found LinkedIn and tried that.

PFB84- This journey sucks. It is easily one of the worst experiences of my life. I am not going to sugarcoat it. Anywhere you look there will be pain.

Hang on I am getting to the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

My IC asked me if I could go back and change things would I? Honestly I can't say I would. This experience taught me so much about myself and what really matters to me. The experience smoothed my rough edges and gave me a belief in my self and my abilities that I don't think I can have learned any other way.

Think of this time in your life as an opportunity to re-invent yourself. Pursue something you always wanted to do. Learn another language. Take up a new or old hobby. Keep investing in yourself.

You can't change the past. You can works towards whatever future you want.

This can and does get better that much I can promise you. You will wake up tomorrow and put one foot in front of the other and somehow it hurts just a little less.

Take some time to mourn your old life and marriage too. IC can help there too.

You might have guessed I am a big advocate for IC. I am because it works if you have a good counselor and put the honest effort into it.

PFB84- This journey sucks. It is easily one of the worst experiences of my life. I am not going to sugarcoat it. Anywhere you look there will be pain.

Hang on I am getting to the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

My IC asked me if I could go back and change things would I? Honestly I can't say I would. This experience taught me so much about myself and what really matters to me. The experience smoothed my rough edges and gave me a belief in my self and my abilities that I don't think I can have learned any other way.

Think of this time in your life as an opportunity to re-invent yourself. Pursue something you always wanted to do. Learn another language. Take up a new or old hobby. Keep investing in yourself.

You can't change the past. You can works towards whatever future you want.

This can and does get better that much I can promise you. You will wake up tomorrow and put one foot in front of the other and somehow it hurts just a little less.

Take some time to mourn your old life and marriage too. IC can help there too.

You might have guessed I am a big advocate for IC. grin I am because it works if you have a good counselor and put the honest effort into it.

Thank you. I can tell you, I would not have considered anything other than D if this was something that had carried on much longer than it did. I know i'm not telling people anything they don't know, but the deception is just as hard to deal with as the physical part, if not harder. And I recognize mine was nothing compared to what some others have been through. People who have found it in themselves to even try to forgive some of the stories i've read on here deserve a medal.

I am hoping I can get some energy and drive back before TOO long so I can think about taking some steps to make changes in myself. I have been in touch with specialist in infidelity trauma and am trying to match schedules. My wife is working with her MS doctor on referrals and trying very hard to get an appointment, waiting lists are brutal and many are not taking new patients. She is trying every avenue and keeping me updated every day though.

she is still describing it as a "fog" which I know is a very common description, and saying walls went up around every other part of her life except enjoying the attention she was getting and feeling attractive and excited when all she had felt for weeks beforehand was exhausted and useless.

Obviously this, in my mind, is NOT owning up to it. She is on the surface taking responsibility, but also trying to analyze herself, and make herself feel better for her conscious choices. But to me it just sounds like bullshit excuses. I know she legitimately believes this to be the case and is not lying with intent, but is there ANY validity to that? Or is she just in denial and protecting herself by not letting herself admit the extent of what she did?

I believe in the fog. I define it as 'losing touch with reality', and I view it as a choice made by the WS. It's not an excuse. Note that I don't take being drunk as an excuse, either.

If your W is describing her thoughts and feelings at the time, my reco is to accept it as such. If she's using the fog as an excuse, she IS dodging responsibility - but it's very soon after d-day, and as others have posted, it takes time for remorse to take hold.

You know better than any of us what is going on with your W. I can't know whether she's using fog as an excuse or a description. I'll go with what your gut tells you.

Again, it takes time for a WS, even a WS who's a great candidate for R, to come to terms with themself and their actions.

The best thing you can do WRT your W is watch her actions and your responses. Know what she does and how you feel about it. My guess is that you doubt your ability to make judgments about other people now, but it's still there, damaged but there. You have to rebuild your confidence. Asking questions helps - you have evaluate every answer, after all.

*****

Both Bigger and I have said, in essence, that you have to decide whether to believe you have the truth or not. Don't ignore the 'or not'. To R, you have to believe you have the truth, but you don't have to R. And you get to choose when you draw your conclusions. There's no rush.

But listen to your gut - it's probably right. Actually, I think in terms of head (evidence & logic), heart (desires), and gut (reality), and I didn't move until all 3 were aligned on the same course of action. You may have a different view - but I think we'd all say it's dangerous to ignore your gut.

*****

Yeah, the 180 is not for a BS who is considering R, IMO. The 180 minimizes communication. Deciding whether to R or D requires maximizing communications.

When you talk, you get evidence of the other person's mindset, and that's critical to decision-making.

The 180 came about because a client got fed up with her WS and just started acting on her own behalf, in her own best interests. She limited conversation to finances and kids. She was shocked to find out that her H responded by changing his behavior.

The therapist warned that it's very risky to use the technique to manipulate the WS back into the M. Besides, your W wants to R. I think the 180 would be counter-productive now.

I think 'The Simplified 180' is more coherent than the 180 doc, so I bumped it - it should now be on the 1st page of JFO.

*****

IMO, very few WSes can clear themselves of the wayward mindset without the help of a good IC. Therapy for my W was one of my requirements for R.

I also required that my W sign a release that allowed her therapist to talk to me and to call me if my W cancelled the release.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 8:01 PM, Wednesday, August 31st]

Look all of us have our own story. Other situations are worse some are better. The worst infidelity is the one that happens to you. KWIM?

All these years later for me the thing that impacted me the most were the lies.

What has your wife offered to do to help rebuild trust in your relarionship with her?

Her job is to increase your trust for her. Your job is to let her. You dig?

That takes time too. Sadly a lot of this crap takes time. If you find any shortcuts please share because none of us have found any yet.

Keep your head held high brother. You got nothing to be ashamed about.

The worst infidelity is the one that happens to you.

Word!

I keep having thoughts like "She cant just get away with it" and she cant just get to use a rewind button to go back to how things were. I dont want to punish her for punishment sake, but at the same time i do. If that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense. Injustice is one of the toughest experiences to accept in life. We rebel against the idea that there is no justice to be found, especially when it comes to infidelity. Some will say that divorce is a just response. I disagree, for it comes with its own additional consequences.

I lost a great deal of respect for my XWW. I no longer trusted her. I no longer believed anything she said. To me, my marriage was over. Infidelity is a deal-breaker. None of that had anything to do with "punishing" her. Those were some of the consequences of her actions. She was going to have to earn back that trust and respect, demonstrate and prove that she was stilling and able to own and fix her shit. None of that had anything to do with punishment, either. In some respects, I think the consequences are "punishments" in themselves. And if there is any justice to be found, here is where it lies.

The fog is about as real as the tooth fairy or the easter bunny.

All the fog is, is a way to minimize, justify and excuse an A. Your WW has obv read about it, and now she's using it to her advantage.

The best thing to ever happen to waywards is when betrayeds started believing in the fog.

[This message edited by GoldenR at 11:14 PM, Wednesday, August 31st]

I did read the 180, but wasn't sure if mine was the right scenario for it? I interpreted it as something to use if there was a question about your spouse's state after the affair, if they were not grasping what they were risking losing, not sure if they are committed, etc.

The 180 does more harm than help when you've got a WS who's eager to work and the will to consider R. If you were done, it could help you distance yourself emotionally and break you enmeshment. If she were still cheating or otherwise recalcitrant, same thing, it helps you step back. But I can't see the point AT ALL for 180 when the ball is in your court.

In terms of "fog".. that's pretty much a moniker for the games WS's play in their own heads in order to make doing something they know is wrong an okay thing to do. My fWH had wound his own brain up like a top and just exploded into a Craiglist binge. For so many cheaters it starts with self-pity and then turns into some weird mental gymnastic event. I think the good news for you is that your WW couldn't stand up against her own conscience and confessed with remarkable alacrity, and I do think her story is believable. A lot of people would have you believe that a new penis is some irresistible force of nature that a woman couldn't possibly resist, but in actuality, they can be a bit alarming (and even malodorous in close proximity). It's not out of the ballpark that your WW might have been emotionally ill-prepared for that particular, um.. confrontation. So yeah, yours are the boots on the ground. It all comes down to what YOU believe. She might be lying, but she did come pretty much straight to you with a confession, so there's that in her favor.

Friend – I think you can claim to have gotten to Level 2 of infidelity-recovery…
This post will meander around several issues I think you might need to deal with.

I have a feeling – based on what you share – that you have the truth. That whatever details are missing might be small and relatively irrelevant. Just keep in mind that there is a risk of something that might be irrelevant today becoming a larger issue if discovered some months from now. If that does happen – that a new "truth" is shared – you need to evaluate if it was an issue or relevant now at the initial stage.

An example: Some years ago we had a poster who was really angry because of a new truth. The poster had asked his wife if anything that was "his" had been used in the affair. At the time he was thinking his couch, his bed, his house. Wife told him no and was being truthful (in her mind). Some months later the husband discovered that his wife had given the OM a lift in the family-car from the hotel they had their tryst at to a nearby carpark. For the wife it wasn’t really part of the affair – it was just a short drive. For the husband it was the use of "his" car. Other than that, the wife had been very outright and truthful and wasn’t "hiding" this thing – it simply wasn’t important or relevant to the affair in her mind. Set them back though.
The fewer incidents like this you encounter the smoother the trip to reconciliation can be.

--
In numerous occasions I have experienced that how I remember an event doesn’t always fit in with how someone else remembers an event or even what took place. Some truths are relative – others are factual. There is a great tendency to alter the past to reflect better on you and/or to minimize your part in whatever was done wrong, as well as a tendency to merge memories. I think that you are probably closer to the truth as you have it now than you might had your wife shared this a year or two from now.
As a cop I remember the first time I went to court as a witness. The defense attorney questioned me on the clothing a man charged for a DUI was wearing, and I recalled he was wearing a brown jacket. The incident had taken place nearly a year earlier and for me was just one of dozens of DUI arrests, but I was 100% certain in my memory that I was correct. Turned out to be a green windbreaker. This discrepancy was used to undermine my report. After that incident I never went to court relying on my memory, but pulled out the reports and repeated near-verbatim what I had written in them. Factual memory versus relative if you like.
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Sometimes we can get into bad situations, even those we KNOW are bad beforehand, with no intention of doing anything bad.
Like your wife meeting the OM again. Earlier another poster made the comment that kissing wasn’t infidelity, a comment I don’t agree with. However, you share that they kissed, and then OM came back next Friday and that’s when things got further.
OK – MAYBE your wife too didn’t see "kissing" as "real" infidelity. Maybe she thought she could get away with being fawned over and "innocent" high-school make out sessions. Only it went further.
I can use a comparison: I’m into DIY and I have entered hardware stores with the intention of only looking at a table-saw with no intention of buying one. I can honestly 100% tell my wife that when I entered that store THAT was my intention – look but no purchase. Only to walk out with the top model. Many can maybe relate to going out with friends and only intending to have one beer and stay an hour, only to come crawling home six hours later reeking like a brewery.

Fact is we aren’t always as logical as we like to think we are. Sometimes we are led onwards by the situation. No excuse, at each and every step she had the ability to stop – just like I could have walked out of that store or better yet never entered. But I do believe that she might have let OM in that day with no intention of this going beyond the kiss, and I do believe that she could have stopped before it got further than it did. I just don’t necessarily see either as making this any less infidelity, but I don’t necessarily agree with those that say she invited him in that day with the intention of going all the way.
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The difference in remorse now and remorse eventually is immense. IMHO it goes hand-in-hand with the consequences issue.
There really are no consequences that make this "right". We are used to thinking that someone that steals our car pays his debt to society by spending a year in prison and after that they have a claim to be treated fairly. That just doesn’t apply here. You can’t make her do 1000 push-ups or go to bed without dinner and that’s "punishment".
The consequences are that now you are thinking if you want to be married to her or not. The consequences are that she has wiped out whatever base your marriage was built on. The consequence is that you might not want to go spend a romantic weekend with her because you aren’t really clear on your emotions.

The main consequence – the one that might ensure that this doesn’t repeat itself – is when she thinks how she let herself down and how she hurt the person she cares the most for and how she risked everything for something so insignificant and stupid. THAT is remorse.
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You will sometimes hear a much misunderstood statement where someone claims their marriage has become better after infidelity.
There is not a single marriage in history that has improved BECAUSE of infidelity that I know of.

However… if you two do the work of reconciling and adapt what you learn there into your lifestyle your future relationship can become better than your marriage was a year ago. Its not the infidelity that makes it better – it’s the work you do that makes it better.
Sadly all that work could have been done from day 1 in the marriage and really has nothing to do with the infidelity.

This is like getting a serious health-scare. Like maybe having to go to ER because of a cardiac arrest, only to be told that your sedative and unhealthy lifestyle needs changing if you want to live longer. Nothing remarkable about your lifestyle – maybe the typical average too little sleep, too little exercise and too many hamburgers lifestyle. However, it led you to a place where a guy wearing scrubs is telling you that if you don’t change your heart will probably stop for good next time.
So you go and order all these books on nutrition, buy the best running shoes and join a gym.

Only thing is that nothing has really changed. It’s not until you start changing your diet to the better, strapping on those shoes and jogging those miles and hitting that gym that your health might improve. You might even get a personal trainer (MC) but all he does is tell you what to do – he doesn’t do your bench-curls for you.
After a year you might think back and realize that you are feeling better and at your healthiest for over a decade. You wouldn’t attribute the improvement to the cardiac-arrest, but to the WORK you put in to get healthier.
Furthermore – you wouldn’t just quit because you reached some goal and then slip back into hamburgers and six hour nights. You might ease up on the Granola, but you would realize that your well-being is dependent on your new behaviors.
It’s comparable to how I see reconciliation in a marriage. It’s the adjustment of behaviors and interactions to make what you have the best it can be. The most precious commodity I have is time, and I don’t think spending most of my time with a partner I don’t want to be with makes sense. If you want to be married then make this the marriage you want it to be.

The 180 does more harm than help when you've got a WS who's eager to work and the will to consider R. If you were done, it could help you distance yourself emotionally and break you enmeshment. If she were still cheating or otherwise recalcitrant, same thing, it helps you step back. But I can't see the point AT ALL for 180 when the ball is in your court.

Thank you for the clarification. This is what I thought initially.

But I do believe that she might have let OM in that day with no intention of this going beyond the kiss, and I do believe that she could have stopped before it got further than it did. I just don’t necessarily see either as making this any less infidelity, but I don’t necessarily agree with those that say she invited him in that day with the intention of going all the way.

This is where I am now. I do think I have the full story, and that helps with my mental movies and obsessing over every little detail for the moment. But as for the reasons, the succession of compromises, etc I still have a lot of questions and it's definitely not any less of an infidelity.

But I'll find myself sitting on the couch with her laughing about something, or talking about some mundane household thing and then suddenly thinking NO. Stop pretending things are normal. Don't give her what she wants.

But I also do recognize how much she is suffering, how much she hates herself. I can tell some days she is having a bad health day, but she doesn't want to leave me to go lay down. And even when she's completely wipes out she feels like she needs to do things around the house I would have done previously because I might not be up to it. And when I wake up at 4am (something that never happened to me before, but has happened every day since Dday) she wants to wake up with me to keep me company. So I see what you all mean about her punishment being what she did to the marriage, etc. Especially with her infidelity experience in her previous marriage, she does understand what she did and what she risked. And I will try to remember that when I have thoughts about injustice.

She had a big scale in her mind - on one side was me, our relationship, and our family. On the other was a crush, a few minutes of excitement, and the high of feeling desired. She made her choice not once, but multiple times. I'm not blind to this or defending her.

I think you said it best yourself. She needs to figure out why she put her thumb on the cheating side of the scale.

[This message edited by Rocko at 3:23 PM, Thursday, September 1st]

Heard back from the GF finally who just said "I received your messages, please don't contact me further."

That time line is too clean. There had to be My husband doesn’t love me. My husband rather play golf then with me. He did X. He did Y.
She was looking for her Mr perfect. Affair are dirty. If she was that deep in the fog. It would be hard to stop. She knows that PIV intercourse is a game changer for you. You may forgive acB

That time line is too clean. There had to be My husband doesn’t love me. My husband rather play golf then with me. He did X. He did Y.
She was looking for her Mr perfect.
Affair are dirty. If she was that deep in the fog. It would be hard to stop. She knows that PIV intercourse is a game changer for you. You may forgive a BJ. But full bareback intercourse is a game changer.