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We may be splitting hairs here, but my WW and I are splitting hairs over what what was said and what it means.

She says the affair partner text her and said "Love you" and she says, she text back and said "you too". She said it was only said once and has been taken out of context and wasn't meant like that.

Does love you and I love you mean the same thing? Could that be taken out of context?

I don't know if I believe it was only said once but then i think the affair only went on for two months.

The way I read read it, she was acknowledging that he loves her, and she loves him too.

"You too" is a sneaky way to hide outside the fence and pretend to not know what is going on. This is wayward thinking, and minimizing, call her on her bullshit.

@Tanner

I think you are right.

She keeps saying I have taken it out of context and he didn't mean it that way, I have asked her to explain in what context it means. All she keeps saying is she didn't love him and i need to listen.

She is lying to me. She says it was said once and never said again. Strangely she said the same thing about sex. But the sex i seem to believe. But not the I love you thing.

If he said love you he meant it and if she said you too she is stating she does too.

IMO, both are ways to appear to love but shading a bit without appearing to. In the context of an A, both locutions are crap. I'm not worried about these phrases, because, in essence, I believe everything said between aps is a betrayal of the BS.

Typical cheater move btw.

Love you and I love you mean the same damn thing!!

She’s just trying to minimize the fact that she said it to someone else. She acknowledged he said it and she agreed that she felt the same way.

Case closed.

Well, the tie doesn't exactly go to the runner if one is having an inappropriate relationship, does it? But to answer your question, "love you" and even "I love you" can have tons of different meanings. If I sign off an email to my best friend, "Love You!".. it doesn't mean I want to fuck her. If I tell my brother, "I love you", still not interested in fucking.

WS's say stupid shit while they're cheating. That's just par for the course. Sometimes they mean it, sometimes they don't, and sometimes they mean it for awhile and then don't mean it later. The bottom line is that the cheating happened and if we want R, we have to find a way to reach some form of acceptance on that. R isn't for everyone though. Maybe it's a deal-breaker for you.

What CT said.

Also, guys say "I love you" just to keep pussy coming all the time. Girls say "you too" in response when they’re not feeling the same but don’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings all the time, too. Just fyi.

And it's not like she's picking up her half-caff, no whip, oatmilk caramel frap and the barista says, Have a nice day!

You, too is shorthand for saying I agree and back at ya.

@p12241342

We are both 40.

I agree with @sisoon. She was in an inappropriate relationship so either meaning is damaging and points to her intentions. She needs to face herself because trying to parse the meaning in the difference between the two is only an attempt to skirt her abhorrent behavior and the damage it did to you.

Engaging in such discourse is likely futile unless she can face the fact that it is hurtful and damaging.

The old game of semantics. The energy spent on the splitting microscopic hairs of context sure deflects from the fact that anything at all was said to a person it shouldn't have been said to.

Straight from the Cheater's Handbook - Chapter "I didn't mean it like that"

[This message edited by Chaos at 3:28 PM, Friday, November 25th]

I have said to her many times that I need answers as I have feelings too.

I have said that if "love" was mentioned in an affair, it has some meaning and intention. She says that it wasn't meant in that way and there wasn't any love there, she didn't love him and he didn't love her.

So why was that said?? There is no answer apart from I don't know but I didn't love him.

She keeps saying I didn't say "I love you" she says she just said "you too" when he said "love you". She seems to think, because she didn't say "I love you" or "love you too" then she didn't say it back. But she said "you too" that is agreeing and saying she does too.

She keeps saying I need to listen to her, She didn't love him.

I have asked her to explain the context of what was said. When was it said? Why was it said? How was it said? All she says is, there was no love there. Please just listen to me.

She said that I cant expect her to remember everything that was said, its impossible.

I'm not getting answers that make any sense or add up. This just feel like back around discovery. I have known about the love thing for 18 months. But something seems to have triggered me and this time I want answers.

I know she is gaslighting me. I know she is avoiding giving me answers. But I continue to battle along.

To my knowledge, my WS did not exchange or say any "Love you’s" or "I love you’s". However, there were some heart emojis and XOXO’s. Usually, that’s not a big deal for me, I see it as an "I like this" reaction, nothing else. However, the very first heart emoji he sent to her I see as problematic. Yes, it was a reaction to what she wrote, but in the following messages they made a big deal out of that emoji. It was flirtatious. Plus, he told me later he was actually thinking whether it is appropriate to send it. Well, if you have to think about it, then it’s no longer just an "I like this" reaction…

Anyway, my point is: the context does matter. However, the context in your case is not what your wife is trying to sell you. The context is not we were just close friends, so it’s basically the same as "Take care", "You, too". The context is: she is having an affair with that guy. Within that context, "Love you" is as bad as "I love you", even if it was meant only as a simple expression of caring for someone.

EDIT after reading your reply: I’m familiar with your story. I don’t think she really loved him. However, there is a whole spectrum of feelings between “indifference” and “true love”. She had some feelings for the AP, that is undeniable. Was it a crush, infatuation, limerence…? I think you two might benefit from researching more about that and trying to identify what exactly she felt for him.

[This message edited by Hannah47 at 4:18 PM, Friday, November 25th]

The answer is that she said it. That's the bottom line. There is no explanation which is going to make it more palatable. Arguing back and forth over what it meant is just a distraction for BOTH of you. It seems to me like you're trying to find some explanation that would make her betrayal somehow more tolerable, like she only fucked him but didn't really love him, but even if you could establish that as The Unassailable Truth, it doesn't matter because she still risked everything you have built together for a cheap fuck.

We have tons of people here who are victims of the "it was just sex" affair. Believe me, the dearth of love does NOT make it better. The added mindfuck of affairs without feelings is that there wasn't even a good reason. It's not something to be sought after or admired as somehow a preferable state of affairs.

It's a hard thing to get to the point of Acceptance regarding a spouse's infidelity. The struggle is real on that, but you appear to be getting side-tracked by variations of this one thought zinging around in your head that your wife was happier, having more fun, more in love, etc. while she was cheating. Why not just ACCEPT that those things are true and then deal with how you feel about it? My WH was having the time of his life while he was cheating on me. In his mind, he was a SEX GOD, a gift to womankind, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. The fact that his head was so far up his rear didn't mean that R wasn't possible for us. What happened, happened then. What's happening today, is happening today.

@ChamomileTea

Thank you for taking the time to help me on this one.

Reading what you have said makes total sense. Im currently going through CBT as i have OCD and they believe that this has latched onto my OCD and I'm having problems getting stuck and recycling the same old questions.

But this one in particular has got me. Its cruel what she is doing. The affair was bad enough. But she said she wants to fix us and will do what ever it takes. She see's how this is affecting my mental health. All she has to do is stop lying.

Even if she said, ok i may have thought i loved him. Thats why I said it. but i was stupid and see that now. It would be better than gas lighting me. Its cruel and its wrong and for someone thats trying to fix their family they should see that. She is protecting herself.

How can anyone try and say that saying love you didn't mean love you. When i ask what it did mean all she has is i didn't love him.

She is still lying. But she wont admit it.

It's a hard thing to get to the point of Acceptance regarding a spouse's infidelity. The struggle is real on that, but you appear to be getting side-tracked by variations of this one thought zinging around in your head that your wife was happier, having more fun, more in love, etc. while she was cheating. Why not just ACCEPT that those things are true and then deal with how you feel about it?

I respectfully disagree, it’s a big deal, this is still being minimized, he is being lied to and R cannot move forward with this "one thought" until she is honest about it, that is when acceptance will begin on this issue. Anything else is rug sweeping and it’s not a great plan moving forward.

All the things you mention that she might have felt in your last post could well have been true. However, I do think it is possible she is telling the truth now. Meaning, she actually didn't love him in the way she loves you.

So now when she says I didn't love him it is not necessarily lying. She loved the attention. She loved feeling sexy. She loved the taboo. She loved the sex. Any or all of those could be true without her actually loving him the way she loves you now or when you were first married. A lot of people have affairs where they don't love the other person but they love the way they feel during the affair.

So if that happens to be accurate for your WW, then maybe she responded like she did very intentionally. Maybe she deliberately did not write "I love you" because she wanted to avoid saying that but she wanted to respond affectionately to keep the affair fueled. So she chose a middle ground statement. I find that very plausible. If she was desperately head over heels in love with him don't you think you might have discovered lots of love statements in their texts? I am not sure if you read all their correspondence or at least a lot of it but if you did and omly found this, then I think that supports her argument pretty strongly.

@Trdd

I have never seen any of the texts between them. Most was done on Snapchat. All I have is her words. That has changed over time.

If she meant that, I wish she would say it. I agree with you. May be she didn't want to be hurtful and said "you too" so it looked like she was responding positively. But if thats the case I have given her so many opportunities to say that. The fact that she hasn't said it shows that wasn't the case and she didn't think that.

All she is saying is, please listen I didn't love him. You have to believe me.

Its not even about what she said now. Its about the fact that I'm on on the floor. I just need the truth and she could help me mentally, but continues to not even give explanations to her answers. Like she says he never meant he loved me. He never loved me. She cant possibly know that. They were his words. He said them. But she is trying too tell me that he didn't mean it either.

Its lies. I can. see its lies.

I wish she would just admit, at the time she may have thought she loved him, but doesn't now. At least it would be half the truth.

She says she cant say she loved him just to please me.

But if you have read my post from 18 months ago at Dday. She told me she had feelings for him. then she didnt. then she did and then she didn't again

She thinks I'm stupid and she is playing me.

Even if she said, ok i may have thought i loved him. Thats why I said it. but i was stupid and see that now. It would be better than gas lighting me. Its cruel and its wrong and for someone thats trying to fix their family they should see that. She is protecting herself.

Whether she's protecting herself or thinks she's protecting you, the end result is that her credibility is damaged. It's far-fetched to think that she'd get into a two-month's long affair risking everything she had at home for no damned reason. In a perfect world, WS's would make The Truth their new religion and go from there. But it's not a perfect world and WS's demonstrably are not perfect people.

My fWH has never said to me, "oh yeah, I was totally in love" or "oh yeah, I haven't had that much fun and excitement in years", but I KNOW those things, as well as a whole host of others, are true. I don't need him to state the obvious for me or to deny what I know were his real motivations. That said, his actions don't negate our history together or make it any less real than it was, and it doesn't preclude our future.

You're very invested in getting your WW to admit that she was in love or that her affair was fun for her, but you don't need her words to confirm what your own common sense tells you to be true. Can you accept your own version of events as factual without her confirmation? What would that look like for you?

ETA: I'd also like to remind you that memory is a funny thing. My fWH doesn't remember his affairs as fun and exciting anymore. His remembrance is colored by the consequences and aftermath. If I asked him those questions today, he'd have different answers for me than he would have back then.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:53 PM, Friday, November 25th]

It's a mindf*** :(

However, both scenarios are possible. She loved him or she didn't. You seem to be dismissing the latter. She may have told you she had feelings for him but those feelings were actually confused. She was enjoying how she felt during the affair and thus a lot of feelings were happening but the actual feeling may not have been love as we typically define it.

I think this is often the case during an affair. The WS loves the rush and excitement and some of that must be transposed to the AP. But that doesn't mean it was love. I don't know if your FWW is lying or not but I believe this dynamic happens to a lot of WS and it is not the same as love.

[This message edited by Trdd at 5:53 PM, Friday, November 25th]