SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I'm not ignoring that aspect, I promise. It is clearly an overwhelming reaction despite disagreements on other elements.

I'm at that point where I might need to stay away for a couple of days again. I really appreciate the help so far but it does feel like a pile on now. Sounds like it's warranted but I've got a lot going on... it's hard to feel lumped in with the behaviour around me but I do get it

That was too abrupt. The reality is if I told, my relationship would be over and then my kids lives are blown up.

I totally agree that isn't what the situation should be and I've been naive on my part, but that is the reality.

Back to my squid game analogy my kids are my top priority. I'd like the rules to be different and I'd dearly like to do the best I can for everyone but sadly the rules are awful and I need to prioritise my children right now.

I know I never should have signed up to play the game in the first place but I can't undo that.

I know that isn't an excuse, but it's the reason

More like three adults playing Russian roulette with a blind and deaf woman with children of her own that she would like to protect, if given a chance.

Blow up her world to smithereens and watch the devastation from the safety of your home.

With all due respect Abalone, it’s my sense to let this settle for now. Try to listen, really listen. Ozzy is trying to listen and only sees Squid Game. He needs time to process. I’ve seen too good many BH, like another thread recently, chased off by hard line and triggered people. Not suggesting you fall into this category. But it’s delicate. Be at peace.

If your marriage stays intact,only as long as this other man stays married, you have no marriage.

His wife will eventually find out. Your wife will be exposed to her family and friends. After OBS finds out everyone else knew,and you approved it, this will cause her total humiliation. OBS might eventually find your then adult children on SM,and out the affair to them.(OW did this with ny oldest daughter)

OM may get caught in another affair. His wife may find out,and divorce him. He will come looking for your wife.

Honestly, and I don't mean this to sound snarky, but it's odd that you claim the kids are your top priority. It's clear they aren't your wife's top priority. She has risked their family for an "escape." But it's odd that you believe the kids are your top priority. If they were, allowing your wife to be with another man flies in the face of their happiness. There's an enormous risk that she would,if OM decided to leave his wife, destroy her family, along with the kids. Their security. Their happiness. And you know this to be true..because you claim if you are honest with the innocent spouse in all of this, your marriage is over. You believe your wife will destroy your kids because you failed to protect her boyfriend, from the consequences of his actions.

[This message edited by HellFire at 7:18 PM, Friday, March 31st]

The options available to me were:

1. Split up so she can pursue this
2. Give the open thing a go so she can pursue this

Chappy options but up till now our family is intact and my kids are none the wiser.

I don't know how many other ways I can put it. As it stands there's still a chance my kids will remain none the wiser for the rest of their lives. If I chose option 1 then their lives were blown up immediately.

I'm sorry I've been selfish but it is with that choice in mind that I've done it. For my kids.

Have a good weekend.

I hope things go well Ozzy.

I’m a Dad too. I would not have reconciled if I did not have kids. And at least right now, I am glad I did.

I also hope if your marriage stays together your wife has a good think about her conduct.

This post is not a pile on. It’s a gentle nudge.

There are some tough realities in life. Not to be exhaustive:

- Life and death.

- Reproduction and child-raising.

- Sickness.

- Aging and decline.

- Death of parents.

- Limited attention.

- Scarcity.

- The need to make a living.

- Different points of view.

- Judgment of others.

- Social norms in some shape and form.

If we really deal with these types of things it leaves us with more circumscribed choices than we may like to imagine in a fictive universe. So we tend to make the small choices available to us, and the happier amongst us learn to make those choices deliberately, whole heartedly and without resentment.

When I read you talking about being naive, I think you may be talking about ignoring the context and implications of some selfish and Ill thought through decisions and approaches to life.

I hope your wife gets to the point where she will not threaten to leave your marriage if you are authentic and whole-heated. That’s not being honest. It’s being manipulative and it serves none of your best interests.

Brene Brown’s audiobooks on authenticity, whole heartedness and vulnerability are quite good. I suggest the whole books / audiobooks in favor of all the interviews, Ted talks and things like that.

Honesty on too small a scale can be complicity or ‘honor amongst thieves’, like being in the mob.

Honesty on a proper scale, fitting a human life lived in company, seems like righteousness.

That can look like a hippie, a mother, a Buddhist monk or an accountant, but you tend to know it when you encounter it. You have it in you to find it and live it. It’s the best thing for you, and your kids. Life’s too short not to be on friendly terms with truth and honesty, on the proper scale.

[This message edited by straightup at 7:48 PM, Friday, March 31st]

Regarding telling the other BS, perhaps an opportunity will emerge but for now it's understandable not doing it.

The Three Marriage Enigmas book I mentioned describes this cycle that is common for marriages:

1) Wife's sex drive diminishes post marriage. Some pretty quickly, others years later after kids etc. It is common for this to happen, not all women will experience this but a huge % do. She doesn't understand that it is natural, tries to deal with it but sex life decreases nonetheless.

2) Husband, consciously or subconsciously, interprets this as not being loved as much as many men's love language is through physical, sexual means. The man thus starts to pay less attention to affection oriented actions which are commonly the wife's love language. All the things you did when you were dating, slowly get minimized. So now we have both partners love language being diminished. And intimacy is strained by this dynamic along with life pressures like kids, work. As this spiral continues lower and lower, both partners are susceptible to affairs. Really susceptible if their boundaries are poor.

3) In your case, posom comes along saying the right things, listening, praising, paying attention etc. That starts to fill the need of more attention for your wife, it slowly strokes her love language. The particularly cruel part is that it also may often reignite the sex drive of the wife. So now she is there thinking I no longer am attracted to my husband but I am to this guy. Does that mean I love him? Like, true love? And many women (and men) may fall for this dynamic. Thus the fog, limerance, doubts about the husband and true love etc etc.

I found this helpful and it may be the trap that your WW has fallen into. Naming traps is helpful in combatting them. Just as defining what real love is and is not. Knowing that passion rises and falls and work is required to maintain it. All that is natural. She is fretting that prince charming is going to slip away from her. The reality is that a common marital dynamic got a hold of her and almost anyone who listened, praised etc might well have been her 'prince charming' at that moment in time. We see that happen frequently here at SI, former WW saying their AP was not really that special in hindsight and that they can't believe they were so swept up in them. Your WW's posom may be handsome or he may not, with her poor boundaries she likely would have been swept up by anyone who paid close attention to her emotionally. And we know that a lot of guys are just out looking for sex. So they will say what needs to be said to get a woman in bed.

The options available to me were:

1. Split up so she can pursue this
2. Give the open thing a go so she can pursue this

Chappy options but up till now our family is intact and my kids are none the wiser.

I don't know how many other ways I can put it. As it stands there's still a chance my kids will remain none the wiser for the rest of their lives. If I chose option 1 then their lives were blown up immediately.

I'm sorry I've been selfish but it is with that choice in mind that I've done it. For my kids.

What you're describing, Ozzy, is clearly coercion. You've made a choice under duress and I do NOT think you are obligated to stand by it if you decide you want to walk it back. It's like telling your mugger that all your money is in your wallet, when in fact, you've kept the bulk of it hidden in your shoe. You're being MUGGED. You're not obligated to make that an easy action for your attacker, right? You're putting so much blame on yourself for something that you have been coerced into agreeing with for fear of losing your family dynamic. That kind of fear is absolutely NORMAL. We're all wired from birth to fear abandonment, and unbeknownst to most of us, we carry that reflex into adulthood.

There's a really cool book called, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson, and even though that book was written more towards people who have split up, it ended up being the single most important thing I read after my fWH's infidelity. In it, the author does a really good job of explaining why this kind of "abandonment" is so wounding to us and how the brain and body process this injury. It really helped me so much to understand that there's a kind of biological process to what was happening to me.

Anyway, take your time. I know you're probably feeling some pressure to white knight up and do the right thing for the OBS, but that's clearly not where you are yet in this process, and you don't have to apologize for that. It takes time to get a handle on this situation and none of us are ever really prepared for how devastating it is. Take the time you need. Read and learn about infidelity, educate yourself on your options, get a back-up plan together.

You're going to be okay. I know it doesn't seem like it right this moment, but we somehow muddle through. It hurts and it sucks, but we get there. You will too.

You said it better than I was trying to, CT, thank you.

Good luck, Ozzy… you’ll need it.

Ozzy... hope you are having a good day today.

You mentioned in your opening post about being married 15 years and said you had two children, but I did not see the ages of your children.

I believe I can speak for most of us that as children we saw, heard, and knew a lot more about the grownups around us, especially our parents, than we let on we knew. Even without overtly "blowing up" their lives as you said, they are going to know more about what is going on with your wife and you than you ever know. Especially as they get older.

With 50% or more of the marriages in the Western World ending in divorce, I am sure they know a lot of friends and peers whose parents are separated or divorced. You might discreetly one day inquire if they have any friends whose parents aren't together, and if those friends appear happy most of the time.

Of course, I am not saying that they wouldn't have a huge shock to their world if you and your wife went your separate ways. Long before that might happen, your children would probably sense something important about to happen anyway, because they sense the tension between you and your wife. They know and sense when things aren't right between parents. It is easy for me to imagine them running around with several antennae growing out of them picking up all the signals around them all day long.

Most children are a lot more resilient than we give them credit. I know that was my own personal experience. My closest friend's parents went their separate ways because of his father's adultery. He recovered very quickly and seemed his old self.

Also, that was the experience for my daughter. She was a teenager about 40 years ago. Her two closest friend's parents got divorced. One in particular was a very bubbly, perky youngster. I never noticed any outward changes to her during the transition. When she was about 13 or 14 I once asked her how she felt about all of it. She said that they never liked each other anymore and it was better they separate. Plus, she said in a laughing manner, that now she got extra attention from each of them. Plus, she got a lot more presents at Christmas. She was giggling as she said it. I replied it was bad to play one parent off the other, also in a joking manner. But that is what children do. They make the best they can off of bad situations.

I would suggest maybe some research into how children react to divorce.

I know you love your wife. But her actions have probably already created some resentment inside you, even if you don't recognize it yet. Your children will definitely pick up on that resentment... maybe before you do.

Take care of yourself.

[This message edited by lrpprl at 4:33 AM, Sunday, April 2nd]

I'm sorry that you're in this situation.

As for your kids "none the wiser", don't believe it. They know something is wrong, very wrong. They're more intuitive than you think. They see mommy going out all the time without you and all the friction between you. Better split home than one in turmoil.

As for an open marriage, it won't work unless you're both on board with it, and you're definitely not. You may have said that what your WW is doing was okay, but you can change your mind, women do it all the time. You've got nothing to loose.

[This message edited by WishidleftHer at 9:03 PM, Saturday, April 1st]

Having an affair.

Helping another man destroy his wife and children.

Knowing another woman is being exposed to stds.

Emotionally blackmails her husband into giving his permission to pursue a married man.

Knows her husband is in agony,but continues the affair.

You speak of her supposed honesty, as if it's a wonderful thing. I think its cruel.

Considering all you have said, she didn't tell you because she respects you. She told you because it was easier to blackmail you into allowing this, than it was to sneak around. She doesn't really want to be a single mother. She enjoys the comforts of home,the money,and having a husband she can manupulate. She told you because it was easier for her. Your feelings never mattered.

She tells you about her feelings for him,and what they did it bed,because she's getting off on your pain. She feels powerful.

Yet, you have her on a pedestal.

Ozzy, you are holding four aces but treating your hand as garbage. You really don't know the power you actually have here. I highly suggest you read some threads here. Some where the BS exposed, and some where the BS did not expose. I'll tell you a secret. Exposing the affair (though scary at the time) enabled those spouses to take back their power and to either repair or walk away from their marriage. The ones who didn't are often back here telling us it happened again.

We all want you to have the choice to stay or to go, in a truly open way.

I don't judge open relationships at all. But that's not what this is.

I hope you find your happiness.

I know I'm late to the party but Incase this hasn't been drilled through your head.
You don't want to tell friends and family? There's a reason for that. It's because you know it's wrong. This isn't the way to save your marriage. This will only make you lose the love you feel for her and she will lose respect for you. I don't know if you care for religion but in the bible it says that women need to respect their husbands. Interesting that it doesn't put a priority on loving but instead respecting. Maybe respecting one's husband is necessary for a wife in order to love their husband.

I would not expose with the goal of driving my WS back to me. My W was free to go. If we were going to R, she needed to choose that freely, not because I shamed her with publicizing her A.

If I had chosen D, I would not have hidden the reason.

I think one of the ways to heal is to think straight and act straight. Be direct about what you want and what you will do, and avoid manipulation. Being betrayed changes one's life. The old rules have probably changed, so it's best to be very conscious and straightforward about thinking and acting, until you get familiar with the new lay of the land.

"We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are."

You have had this terrible situation dumped on you and you have never encountered this before. Therefore, you are acting on your emotions trying to make sense of everything, not with your rational thought.

My suggestion is to give yourself 30 to 60 days (about two months) before you come to any sort of decision. Give yourself time for your emotions to calm down and time for the rational part of your brain to take over.

For instance, you have said that you will try to stay married for the sake of your children and I understand that thought. Now whenever that thought enters your mind tell yourself that you are going to table that thought for the time being. Tell yourself that you will revisit that thought in 30 to 60 days (about 2 months). At that time, you will see if it still makes sense.

In the meantime, I would suggest that you continue the soft 180 and just observe your wife as closely as possible. Right now, you are seeing someone who you never thought existed. The person you thought you married would never hurt you the way this person has hurt you. Just try to observe her as objectively as you can for the next 30 to 60 days (about 2 months). If you can do that, I can almost guarantee you that at the end of that period you will not regard her the same as you do at this moment. Certainly not how you viewed her before all this quagmire was introduced into your marriage.

As much as you humanly can, try to make rational decisions regarding your life and your children’s lives. Make those decisions with as little emotion as possible.

One other thing. I have read that each time someone has intimate sex they form a stronger bond with that person. Each time your wife has sex with him she is strengthening that bond. Unless something really shakes your wife out of her limerence soon she may feel so attached to him that she will never come back to you in the way you hope.

[This message edited by lrpprl at 7:29 PM, Sunday, April 2nd]

You are the one best to know how good your marriage has been. If it is good in all other aspects it is up to you to accept the current situation and hope it would end on it self.

On the other hand if the marriage is not so good in other areas why should you demean yourself by allowing this? Right now your WW has best of both worlds, the moment you said enough is enough she might get a shock (as they say cheating ends along with the marriage)

Also if you are unable to divorce for any social, economic , emotional or other reasons you need to bite the bullet and accept it and be content (like living with a chronic illness). In this case do not accept any leftovers from WW and stay away sexually from her And even while doing so (if you feel) you can wait of the correct time to exit while taking the best care of yourself

So you should keep your head up and do your other things like professional development and keeping healthy even better . It is sexy to be productive in the face of adversity. Even the cheaters notice it

Good luck . Attachment is not love and it destroys happiness - Buddha

But I alternate between feeling sick / panicky / completely messed up and being completely fine to the point where I can joke with her about it

If this continues you will be a lost cause at the expense of your WW success. And when the eventual ends come your kids will choose your WW over whatever it is left of you

I also feel you should inform POs's spouse. At least call the POS and jet him has it. I sure your loving WW has told him that there is no road blocks from you to her or to his marriage and the POS may not have very high opinion of you

[This message edited by goalong at 8:16 PM, Sunday, April 2nd]

Regarding telling the other BS, perhaps an opportunity will emerge but for now it's understandable not doing it.

The Three Marriage Enigmas book I mentioned describes this cycle that is common for marriages:

1) Wife's sex drive diminishes post marriage. Some pretty quickly, others years later after kids etc. It is common for this to happen, not all women will experience this but a huge % do. She doesn't understand that it is natural, tries to deal with it but sex life decreases nonetheless.

2) Husband, consciously or subconsciously, interprets this as not being loved as much as many men's love language is through physical, sexual means. The man thus starts to pay less attention to affection oriented actions which are commonly the wife's love language. All the things you did when you were dating, slowly get minimized. So now we have both partners love language being diminished. And intimacy is strained by this dynamic along with life pressures like kids, work. As this spiral continues lower and lower, both partners are susceptible to affairs. Really susceptible if their boundaries are poor.

3) In your case, posom comes along saying the right things, listening, praising, paying attention etc. That starts to fill the need of more attention for your wife, it slowly strokes her love language. The particularly cruel part is that it also may often reignite the sex drive of the wife. So now she is there thinking I no longer am attracted to my husband but I am to this guy. Does that mean I love him? Like, true love? And many women (and men) may fall for this dynamic. Thus the fog, limerance, doubts about the husband and true love etc etc.

I found this helpful and it may be the trap that your WW has fallen into. Naming traps is helpful in combatting them. Just as defining what real love is and is not. Knowing that passion rises and falls and work is required to maintain it. All that is natural. She is fretting that prince charming is going to slip away from her. The reality is that a common marital dynamic got a hold of her and almost anyone who listened, praised etc might well have been her 'prince charming' at that moment in time. We see that happen frequently here at SI, former WW saying their AP was not really that special in hindsight and that they can't believe they were so swept up in them. Your WW's posom may be handsome or he may not, with her poor boundaries she likely would have been swept up by anyone who paid close attention to her emotionally. And we know that a lot of guys are just out looking for sex. So they will say what needs to be said to get a woman in bed.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Thanks for the book recommendations, I have ordered some of them. This passage in particular I think is a very good summarisation of our situation. As I have said throughout there are things that I have definitely done wrong - I am not trying to say I am to blame for the current situation but I shoulder half of the blame for our relationship getting to here. I listened to a powerful podcast yesterday with Matthew Fray and have his book "This is how your marriage ends" arriving today which I will report back on. In the podcast when he said his marriage ending meant the 14 years of childhood he had left turned to 7 instantly it really hit me.

My wife and I have spoken a lot over the weekend. Neither of us want to lose the boys (or each other for that matter). The lack of attraction is obviously an issue and we are going to work on that. Though she is hurting about me pulling the pin, she gets it and was on her way to getting to that point anyway. She knows that our "agreement" was never going to work longer term. She wishes she had the chance to get to this point herself but knows how much it was hurting me.

I am under no illusions that her feelings for him may never go away and we will cross that bridge when we come to it, but I am hopeful that with that element out of the picture we can start mending (which we should have done in the first place without being so naive to think that this could have worked).

I am also under no illusions that having an "agreement" makes this all OK. There are clearly deep issues in our marriage for it to have gotten to this point.

"We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are."

You have had this terrible situation dumped on you and you have never encountered this before. Therefore, you are acting on your emotions trying to make sense of everything, not with your rational thought.

My suggestion is to give yourself 30 to 60 days (about two months) before you come to any sort of decision. Give yourself time for your emotions to calm down and time for the rational part of your brain to take over.

For instance, you have said that you will try to stay married for the sake of your children and I understand that thought. Now whenever that thought enters your mind tell yourself that you are going to table that thought for the time being. Tell yourself that you will revisit that thought in 30 to 60 days (about 2 months). At that time, you will see if it still makes sense.

In the meantime, I would suggest that you continue the soft 180 and just observe your wife as closely as possible. Right now, you are seeing someone who you never thought existed. The person you thought you married would never hurt you the way this person has hurt you. Just try to observe her as objectively as you can for the next 30 to 60 days (about 2 months). If you can do that, I can almost guarantee you that at the end of that period you will not regard her the same as you do at this moment. Certainly not how you viewed her before all this quagmire was introduced into your marriage.

As much as you humanly can, try to make rational decisions regarding your life and your children’s lives. Make those decisions with as little emotion as possible.

One other thing. I have read that each time someone has intimate sex they form a stronger bond with that person. Each time your wife has sex with him she is strengthening that bond. Unless something really shakes your wife out of her limerence soon she may feel so attached to him that she will never come back to you in the way you hope.

Thanks for this, this is kind of my current thinking. We will see what happens over the next period of time and whether we think we can reconcile for the sake of the boys. This is both ways, I have told her this last couple of months has made me question everything. She has also admitted that having sex with the other guy has strengthened their bond which was a mistake. She was naive in thinking it could just be on the side and not impact her feelings for me.

We are both much clearer than we were a week ago though which is a good thing. Just need some time to process now.