SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello Squink:

I did get a chuckle from the post above suggesting you print out copies of the messages your WW's Jezebel friend sent and then sidling up to the newly-minted groom during the reception and giving him the messages, warning him ("bro-to-bro") that it's super likely he'll be cheated on at some point. "Letting you know that kind of woman you've just married."

But really, the answer, as you see from the overwhelming responses here, is a "hard no". Consider if your WW had gotten involved with a charlatan who convinced her to secretly piss away a ton of your family money on hairbrained "investment" schemes that were really just ways to line his pockets. If you found that out, you'd insist, rightly, that she never have contact with him again. Period. No way would you attend his wedding. Exactly the same here. The so-called "friend" is an active enemy of your marriage. There is no universe in which your marriage can be functional so long as this Jezebel remains a presence in your WW's life.

Which leads me to one of the most fundamental points of affair recovery: you can only control you. You cannot control the outcome, and you certainly cannot control your WW. So the goal here is to create space, find mental clarity in terms of what you want, for you, in your individual life, and move toward that. I would hazard that what you want is a life without this Jezebel as a presence, even indirectly via your wife. Move toward that. This means, logically, that if your wife wants to retain the friendship, she is free to do so, but not as your wife, because you won't remain in a marriage where that sort of negative energy is being admitted to the marriage via your spouse.

Ultimately, that is always the dialectic of a betrayed spouse, as stated so poignantly by Hank Williams: "You're gonna change, or ah'm a-gonna leave."

To another of your questions, your thread combines the elements of "just found out" plus "found out years later". Each of those scenarios brings its own special blend of the betrayed spouse's "shit sandwich". Yours is a double-decker.

"Just found out" - nerves jangling at high alert. Nonstop surges of adrenaline. Etc.

"Found out years later" - it's as if a light were turned on and you can look backward to see that the land you have traversed is filled with steaming piles of shit, which is now all over your shoes. Your WW has been shoveling them there, just in front of you, for years, but you were walking in the dark upwind and couldn't detect it until now. So you look at her and ask her why she did that, why she put all that shit in your way so that your shoes would be covered in mounds of shit. And all she says is, "Sorry, that really didn't mean anything to me, I'll stop doing it now (that you know)."

Meanwhile, there is the friend who has been chortling and encouraging this all along: "Girl (giggle), that was an epic heap of shit you just threw at your husband, and he didn't even know! (laughing out loud). Keep throwing that shit, girl. It's hilarious. I wish you could come to my wedding single so you could gather up and even bigger steaming pile of shit to throw at your husband."

And your WW is putting her foot down in terms of maintaining that friendship, whilst also saying she wants to remain married to you? Seriously? I'm sorry, but your WW is some deep kind of messed up in terms of her values and morals.

I'm so sorry that you've had this happen to you.

Sounds like your WW has already started to blame you for her cheating. "I've stopped cheating (for now), so get over it and fix our marriage." She has not taken responsibility for her cheating and may never. You've done nothing wrong.

As for her "friend", she has to go. Period ! As long as she's around, you've got no hope of saving your marriage.

Of course there's no way that you'll ever know if she has cut ties with her.

You might be wise to contact a lawyer. I seriously doubt she'll change now that she's been caught. She'll just take the next affair underground.

Take care of yourself and your kids.

Like I told my fWW, I don't care how many guys you sleep with, but not as my wife.

I wish you luck friend.

[This message edited by WishidleftHer at 4:07 PM, Saturday, March 4th]

Forget for a moment whether it’s right or wrong for your WW to cut her enabler best friend out her life and your M.

To me, the bigger issue is that your WWs insistence on not doing so is a red herring for whether you will have a successful R and/or whether she will cheat again.

So, my prediction is that if you proceed with R, and you WW doesn’t cut this friend lose, R will fail, either because your WW fails to be truly remorseful and do the work, and/or because she cheats again.

First, welcome to SI. I'm sorry you have to go through this. I, too, think that everything you've described about what's going on inside you is normal. Being betrayed is awful, and it's traumatic to your self, and focusing on your healing - healing, not R, not D - is the quickest way back to a joyful life. And you most definitely can heal, survive, and thrive.

Like BFTG, I urge you to reframe your thinking about boundaries. You can't control her, not because she's irredeemable but because one person can't really control another person except through force, the threat of force, or the fear of force.

Boundaries are for you. They are very close to ultimatums - if someone does X, you'll do Y. If your W continues with this friend, you'll ????. But you have to be ready to impose the consequence you threaten. If your W doesn't dump her adultery co-conspirator (I hope the originator of that term agrees it applies here), you'll either have to fill in the '????' and act accordingly or lose credibility with your W.

You'll be OK either way your W goes. You'll be OK if she dumps her friend. You'll be OK if she doesn't. You have to risk your M to save it.

A good R will require a lot more than dumping her friend. It's best if you decide on your own requirements, but here are some things that have helped make some good Rs.

Your W doesn't look like a good candidate for R at this point, and she doesn't even look like she's likely to become a good candidate. Yours is a case in which immediate D may be your best bet, based on what you've written. D right now is certainly a good choice, but you don't need to act right this minute. If R holds some attractions for you, keep reading. Your W would not be the only serial cheater who redeemed herself, and she wouldn't be the only lousy candidate for R who became a good one.

Let's go back to basics:

I recommend thinking of R as 3 healings:

1) You heal you. Most BSes are inundated with immense amounts of one or more of grief, anger, fear, shame on d-day. The largest part of your work is to process those feelings out of your body. A good IC can help you do this.

2) Your WS heals themmself. They need to change from cheater to good partner. I think that requires IC for the WS, but others disagree.

3) Together you build a new M.

This means you can recover from being betrayed without your WS; that is, you can survive this crisis and thrive without your WS, but you need your WS to R. You can heal yourself because you control yourself. You don't control your WS. so you can't control her healing or R. I recommend making survive and thrive your primary goal and R your stretch goal.

Have you read the Healing Library here? If not, there's a lot of good stuff there. Click the link in the yellow box in the upper left of the SI pages.

I think there are a number of keys ingredients to R.

First, what do you want? Do you really want R? If not, don't lie to yourself - D is a moral response to being betrayed. R is hard work, and wanting it makes it less difficult. I'd go so far as to say that it's impossible to achieve unless you want it.

I recommend figuring out your requirements for R and seeing if your W will sign on. If they won't, perhaps they can come up with something else that will meet your requirements, but if you can't negotiate something truly acceptable to both of you, great - you can go directly to D. Otherwise, you can monitor them for 3-6 months and commit to R for yourself if they are (is?) consistent in meeting your requirements.

The requirements need to be observable and measurable. That way it's easy to monitor progress and make
adjustments as you go along.

Common requirements include:

NC - no contact with ap; if ap initiates contact, report to BS and together decide how to respond

Transparency - BS has passwords to e-mail, voice-mail, phones, etc.; WS keeps BS informed of whereabouts,
activities, and companions at virtually all times

Honesty - WS answers BS's questions when they're asked, although sometimes a break is necessary, sometimes an answer is best deferred to MC session, etc., no more lies.

IC for WS - to change the thoughts and feelings that supported the A, with signed release that enables C to talk with BS about WS's goals and progress (so the BS can make sure WS's IC isn't being lied to).

IC for BS - for support - and for resolving any internal issue that comes up

MC - to help communications between the partners

Some (Most?) people have individual requirements - my W had to arrange dates for us on a weekly basis and must initiate sex sometimes. What do you want from your W?

And R is a joint endeavor - if one of you hides objections to the other's requirements, you sabotage R. And you have to see your WS as a human being of worth equal to your own to make R work. You don't have to see your WS as a human being whose worth is equal to your own, but you sure can't R, except with an equal.

On my end, among other boundaries I am insisting on which are common things like cutting off contact with these guys etc, I am saying the friendship with this best friend needs to end. My WW is saying no to this. Like adamantly no. For me, I don't see how I can heal from any of this or continue our relationship with this toxic person still in her (and our) lives. My WW says I am fixating on this too much and should focus on fixing things with us more.

I am in pretty bad shape and might not be thinking as clearly as I would like to be. Am I wrong to be insisting on this? Or does she have a point?

I don't think you're wrong. You would be wise to recognize though that even as angry and frustrated as you are with the BFF, it's your WW who has cheated on you repeatedly for these past years. It can be really tempting to let our anger focus on other things and other people when we want R. Your WW's BFF hasn't done a thing that your WW, herself, has not approved when it comes to her influence in your marriage. In a way, the BFF is a canary in the coal mine. You can pretty much read where your WW's head is by her attitude toward her friend.

IME and after years of study, I really do believe that cheating is about character. It's not about whether our parents loved us enough, or drooping self-esteem, or "unmet needs", or any other book-selling pop-psy. We can have all sorts of excuses and rationalizations in our minds to allow us to say 'yes' to bad behavior, but underpinning it all is our values system. For me, character is about how we relate to that values system and whether we have the integrity to be a man (or woman) of our word. Your WW made vows to you and she lied to your face daily about the state of those vows. That's an acceptable state of being for her. There's nothing inside her which says a definitive "no way" to whatever perfidy springs to mind. Lying and cheating are legitimate choices in her decision tree.

What I've found in R is that this is the dynamic which needs to change in our WS. This is where we find the kind of change we can reinvest in, and until it's there, our continued emotional investments are not safe. If your WW had learned to hate this perfidy and lack of values in herself, she would hate it in her friend too. It would have become a detestable thing that she no longer understands or wants in her life. IOW, dropping the friend would be an organic response to her core values realigning. The fact that she's arguing to keep the BFF can be a strong indicator that she's not a safe investment yet.

Another strategy might be to keep your own counsel on the BFF and observe your WW through that lens. Water finds its own level.

You need to know how bad WWs can be...

Because WH's are a warm basketful of puppies.

Off topic a bit, but does anyone else who has been through this have a difficult time looking back on the period when they were cheated on and didn't know it was happening? My brain can't adjust to the reality of what was going on and what I thought was my reality at the time, if that makes sense. It's like 6 years of my life were radically altered in the split second time it took the reveal text to come through.

Read my story or anyone's for that matter. None of us could believe that it was even possible. I remember specific events right before or after a hook up. Shocking to find out that what you thought your life was wasnt reality.

Squink,

You have now discovered, through the trauma of infidelity, that you have a new clock/time system that is currently installed. EVERYTHING in your life, now has the 'infidelity timestamp' put on it. Anything that happened in the past, that you now have learned was during a time of infidelity, are currently linked.

"When was that one party we attended two years ago? Oh yeah....it was 3 years after she first cheated."
"Where did we have our kid's birthday last year? Right....it was near where OM met WW for lunch one day."

And the list will continue to grow. Personally, I was terrible with dates....until I was hit with infidelity. I am much more aware of what went on, and when, post discovery. Hopefully, your mind won't stay like this, but it is much more a common occurrence than you may have believed. Your past has literally been rewritten without your knowledge...until recently. Now, your mind is in overdrive to try to catch up.

Jb3199 - You are so right! You don’t show the gory details anymore in your bio but we share some similar timelines.

Squink - take care of yourself. The advice here is good but don’t set deal breakers that you are unable to follow through with. You will only end up turning inward and hamper your healing. The best buddy is a tricky situation but if you share the texts with her spouse you may find an ally to help with accountability (if that is important to you). Only you can decide. No one else can walk this painful journey no matter their experience.

Hi Squink,

Well done on the steps that you have already taken in dealing with this horrible situation.

It would appear that your WW is a serial cheater.
If she is to change (and I believe that people can), then there are significant steps that she will need to take including removing her from a toxic environment eg cheating at work and friends.

What input do you have.
Many people recommend IC and books that you read together such as helping your spouse heal... so that you don't rug sweep this adultery but truly deal with it in a heathy way by moving out of infidelity.

Personally, this issue with the wife's friend is a non-negotiable - she appears toxic.
Does she also need to resign from her job?
What other steps is your WW prepared to take in order to change?

We're here to support and encourage you,
FAWH.

"This means, logically, that if your wife wants to retain the friendship, she is free to do so, but not as your wife, because you won't remain in a marriage where that sort of negative energy is being admitted to the marriage via your spouse."

WH has a lot of enemies to the marriage he has called friends and they have been very dangerous and damaging to me. I leave it to people to do as they see fit in their lives. Me. I don't sleep with scorpions or handle snakes. It was the cheater cheerleaders or me...as it turns out wh chose to get a divorce over dropping the infidelity supporting "friends". Good luck to them all.

And for the people who said I was being controlling...nope...
He is free to hook up with anyone he wants. Just not while married to me.

Thanks for all your replies. It's a lot to take in, but I do really appreciate it.

She has said that I am being controlling by insisting on this. That's her stock answer to it. Also, things have quickly gone south over the weekend. I will list it out here:

1. Boundary broken: she contacted one of the APs. Called him. They work together still, but she said she had blocked him on her phone and clearly hasn't. Obviously I want her to leave the job if we are working toward R, but due to the nature if her work, which I probably shouldn't reveal here, she can't leave until summer at the earliest. She said the call was brief and about work. The point for me, though, is she did this without telling me about it, which is triggering/damaging and completely against what we agreed

2. Boundary broken: a lot of the second affair she had was done through WhatsApp, and she said she would delete it from her phone. I checked, it's not deleted. Maybe it was at some point, but it's there again now. Again, no communication with me on this, I had to figure out it was there on my own

3. Boundary broken: we had an agreement that we would only tell a few people we know, and it wouldn't be people who have kids who are friends with our kids, in case those kids found out and talk to our kids about it before we do. We also agreed we would tell each other who we were going to tell before we did it, just so we are clear on who knows what. Well, guess what, she went out Saturday night with a parent friend and told them everything and didn't tell me anything about. So there's two boundaries gone right there.

Lastly, to bring it back on topic, I found all this out by looking on her phone, and while I was there I took a look at the texts to see what's going on with her best friend. Nothing. No texts there at all.

Knowing the sheer volume of texts they usually send, I found this deeply suspicious, so I looked in the deleted items folder, and there they are, more than 500 texts between them, all deleted. I didn't look at them. What's the point at this stage? She is still acting shady, deceiving me, hiding things, lying to me, etc.

Chances of R seem beyond remote at this point. But thanks for listening to me. This is a great community.

Hard 180.
Now.

She has said that I am being controlling by insisting on this. That's her stock answer to it.

There's your answer in a nutshell. No WW who sincerely desires R would say this. This is the diametric opposite of R.

The other stuff is just an exclamation point on this. I concur that you should simply stop engaging with her. Time to move on. Get the best lawyer you can find and follow her/his advice.

Chances of R seem beyond remote at this point.

Chances are nonexistent at this point. The lying and deceit are wayward behaviors. She is going behind your back and reaching out to her APs and she is maintain contact with this friend and hiding it from you. The only thing your wife needs is an emergency visit to the proctologist to see if they can remove her head from her ass, but she doesn't even seem willing to do that.

It's time to work on detaching from her emotionally. For your own sake, if you have a spare/guest bedroom at home, I would migrate your stuff over there and start the process of getting her or your out of the home. Read up on the 180 and start treating her like a roommate.

Squink

Friend – whatever stage your marriage is in right now it’s definitely not reconciliation.

I’m going to make a suggestion.
Many of us here on SI state that infidelity can only "successfully" end in one of two ways: Reconciling or divorce. To reconcile both parties need to be on board, and both willing to do a lot of work and make a lot of concessions to make the marriage work. Divorce is simpler. To divorce it’s enough that one of you wants to divorce totally irrespective of what the other wants.

Keep in mind what it is you are trying to save. If it’s just the family-unit as in you and the woman you call wife stay together because financially that’s the best way to raise kids… Well… then maybe consider ignoring the affair and the disrespect and you two just live a happy life with that limitation. Plenty of people do that, in a loveless marriage. If however you are trying to save a MARRIAGE in the understanding most of us have for that union… well… read on.

Right now it’s a power struggle. She doesn’t necessarily see the damage she has done or that it was really so "bad" per se. So when you come along and dictate such ridiculous things like no contact with OM, delete apps, drop enemies of the marriage… she only sees surrender and submission.

Don’t ask her to change. Make her WANT to change…

Tell your wife something like this:
"Wife. I have come to the realization that even worse than not being married to you is the thought of sharing you with another man. I don’t share my wife, and the only way I can change things so I don’t share you is to not have you as my wife. I absolve you of any obligations and expectations a husband has to his wife. You are free to hang around with OM, your friends that encourage your cheating and all that you want to do. I would ask you for the decency to keep OM and your lovers away from our kids for now, and maybe be discreet, but that’s totally up to you.

I’m simply assuming you have prioritized your infidelities over our marriage. I am moving on out of infidelity. That takes time and is broadly a two-part process. I am starting the emotional attachment, and then there is the legal and formal divorce process. I will go into that process at the correct time, but I have already started emotionally detaching. I hope we can cohabit in some way for now, but if not then the separation is inevitable anyway.
If you want this marriage then you can tell me so very clearly, but at the same time realize that NOTHING is keeping you married to me other than your will. If you want this – you need to convince me. But the further I go along in detaching the less inclined I will be to turn back."

And then you go and do your laundry or whatever. No real need to talk anymore.

With this outline it becomes her task to convince you, rather than you setting out rules and regulations.

Look – right now she’s offering you one thing: She’s not sleeping with OM. That’s about it.

Squink, I think that if you told your wife, "Don't jump off the Verrazano Bridge," she would do it... just for the sheer rush of doing something that you don't want her to do and then getting away with it.

If you want your wife to respect you in the slightest, then you need to firmly establish what your boundaries are vs what your dealbreakers are. They're similar but not the same.

Boundaries are completely within your control; they don't need your wife's participation in order to be enforced. Boundaries can also be flexible and you have a lot of leeway with how you can respond if they are broken, depending on the circumstances.

Example: "If you start blaming me for your affair, then I'm ending the conversation."

Dealbreakers, on the other hand, are specific things that you simply won't tolerate. The consequences must be clear, immediate, and definitive.

Example: "If you break contact with AP, then I'm filing for divorce."

As for the latest infractions, I don't know what's stopping you from outing BFF as a cheater to her husband. The first reason is that it's the most compassionate thing to do for this guy; he probably feels like his brain is made of Swiss cheese after all the lying and gaslighting he's been subjected to. The second reason is that it will force your wife to admit that she's broken contact with her friend force her to pick which side she's on. The third reason,(though perhaps unlikely) is that the BFF decides to throw your wife under the bus or cut contact with her in order to fix things with her husband... which would be hilariously ironic.

Lastly, my situation was similar to yours. OW1 was a coworker; my ex's friends and fellow coworkers knew what was going on and frequently covered for him. OW2 was my ex's ex-girlfriend with whom he reconnected thanks to the machinations of my ex's sister, who reached out to the ex for the expressed purpose of sabotaging our marriage.

Long story short, I had no chance against this devious cast of cheerleaders and enablers. It was a helpless, harrowing experience and I'm sorry that you have to go through it.

As for the latest infractions, I don't know what's stopping you from outing BFF as a cheater to her husband. The first reason is that it's the most compassionate thing to do for this guy; he probably feels like his brain is made of Swiss cheese after all the lying and gaslighting he's been subjected to. The second reason is that it will force your wife to admit that she's broken contact with her friend force her to pick which side she's on. The third reason,(though perhaps unlikely) is that the BFF decides to throw your wife under the bus or cut contact with her in order to fix things with her husband... which would be hilariously ironic.

I agree with all of this but he's an off-the-grid type and if he does have a cell phone I don't have the number.

FWIW, I'm not a believer in "if/then" gambits. Virtually every time a BS says "if/then", he ends up moving the "if" line further and further, never invoking the "then", dying the death of a thousand cuts.

Rather than "if/then", try this: "I won't tolerate a marriage with a wife who maintains a friendship with an enemy of my marriage. You wish to maintain a friendship with an enemy of my marriage. I respect that this is your wish, and you are of course free to follow this wish. In the meantime, I am taking steps to end the marriage."

In other words: NEVER try to coerce nor manipulate a WW into changing her behavior. If she doesn't change her behavior voluntarily, without being asked, then it's not worth wasting your breath. In that case (a) define (for yourself) your dealbreaker; (b) determine whether your WW is engaging in or performing a dealbreaker; and (c) if so, take steps to leave the marriage. If she wants the marriage badly enough at that point, she will figure out what she needs to do to preserve it. If she doesn't prioritize this, then she never wanted the marriage.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 2:35 PM, Tuesday, March 7th]

If you can get his address (I assume he lives with BFF?) then you can send him a certified letter that only he can sign for. It’s worked for quite a few people here.