SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Oof, there is a lot to unpack here, but let me say first that I think it is a positive sign that you are genuinely willing to let go of this marriage. I am a firm believer that is a pivotal moment in getting out of infidelity, whether divorce or reconciliation is the next path. The marriage you currently have is unacceptable.

tell me how you’ve been able to recover from D-day 2, or from Trickle Truth atomic bombs. From where I stand right now, I just don’t see it.

I don’t want to give you any false hope because not every WS is built for the work that has to be done to get through this. The truth is that she has to begin some Herculean efforts to heal herself, dig down deep and discover some pretty ugly truths about herself and then genuinely own them in order to work on changing them. She has to fight like Hell for this marriage and demonstrate that it is her number one priority. She has to find remorse for her actions without you prompting her to do so. She needs to drop all of her defensiveness and learn to see her actions through your perspective. She needs to be able to question her motives and be honest with those answers. She needs to understand that her actions hurt people beyond your circle and can have lasting effects that take time and energy to heal.

What your wife does now will speak volumes.

As a WS myself, I believe that people have the ability to change and grow. I also understand from personal experience how messed up and illogical one can be during an affair. My POV is from a double betrayal so I can understand how you can entangle lives and how completely messed up it is.

Take care of yourself and your children InkHulk. Proceed with your current plan. You can’t make her change. She needs to want it herself.

BFTG -

The interaction by the AP toward your daughter was not innocent.

On this, I think we all agree.

What’s difficult is any case, be it the legal system or human behavior in general, is to prove intent.

I doubt Mrs. IH intended AP to text inappropriate things to her daughter. I imagine she used the same willful ignorance with AP across the board. That’s the suspension of logic, character and responsibility she used to start the A. Luckily, the boyfriend of IH’s daughter saw it for what it was and saved the day. Mrs. IH opened that door, regardless of intent.

And again, now Mrs. IH has to own that and all the other choices she made, or it will allow IH’s choices NOW to be very clear.

Lots of good posts in here. I align most with Oldwounds and WOES.

Infidelity in all it's various forms is a deal breaker.

The question some ask is can a new deal be struck?

The answer relies so much on the particulars of the two people involved. In some way there is no magic bullet: if two people want to remain married, they do so. If two people want to build a new marriage, they do so. It's not easy but it truly comes down to the will, commitment and work of only two people.

If healing happens in phases then step 2 (after discovery) is disclosure. It's brutal and usually takes way more time than a betrayed expects.

You've been in the disclosure phase for quite some time Ink. I've seen longer of course but the point is you are still at step 2. Every hit in this step brings pain and misery.

Your willingness to end the marriage is a good thing for you. She's too comfortable with the idea that you will be patient and kind to her, she's still too focused on her. You can't change that. You truly can't. Your thoughts on separation are good ones imo.

On dday 2 I asked my WH to leave. Nothing and I mean nothing moved him the way that did. Prior to that he gave me scraps as he inched his way toward remorse. I held each inch as some precious thing. Like a crow with a collection of shiny junk. When I asked him to leave it wasn't a bluff. I saw no way forward, at all. In that precise moment, he moved all in. Why? Who knows for sure but I think in part he was like your wife: he was comfortable with my patience and mistook it as his having all the time in the world to figure out what he wanted. Totally lost in his own self centeredness.

I guess I'm answering the how. Separation changed my WS, but my intention wasn't that. I intended to stay away from someone who could hurt me, release him of his "debt" to me (to stay married) and start living a better life.

Live with intention.

Ink, did your daughter tell your wife,at the time, that OM was messaging her in a creepy way,and was seeking her attention? If she didn't, I'm curious as to why not? He was her mom's friend. I would think that would be something to tell her mom. Unless she knew about the affair, and/or she didn't think her mom would take her side. It was a terrible position she was in.

Has your wife apologized to your daughter, for putting her in his path?

[This message edited by HellFire at 4:30 PM, Wednesday, May 17th]

I doubt Mrs. IH intended AP to text inappropriate things to her daughter. I imagine she used the same willful ignorance with AP across the board. That’s the suspension of logic, character and responsibility she used to start the A.

I'm in complete agreement.

There are watershed moments in everybody's life. Points in time where we look at ourselves and realize we are crossing (or have crossed) a moral line that ought not be crossed. We have to halt our forward motion because what we are doing is wrong.

I recall the first time this happened to me, when I was just a teenager in high school. Age 16 I blossomed into a fairly competitive athlete and found myself (a) in possession of a young, fit, very strong body, and (b) suddenly part of a popular crowd, with girls interested in me, etc. This led to me being part of a group that was bullying a nerdy kid. I went along with the crowd for a bit, but suddenly woke up. I left the group and stopped hanging out with them. I mention this because, in hindsight, it surprises me that I had that level of self-awareness at age 16, hungry for social acceptance and sex with girls.

I know a guy who was the getaway driver for some robberies. The robberies became more brazen with success. One of the robbers brought a gun and killed a security guard in the commission of the crime. My buddy saw the gun before the robbery, had a pang of conscience, but went through with it, telling himself "one last time and I'm done." Instead, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit felony murder and spent a great many years inside.

The point being that we make seemingly small decisions, often decisions of simply going along with things being done by somebody else. And yet those decisions can have monstrous consequences. The criminal laws of most states define degrees of crime based on degrees of intent, but also on degrees of damage caused regardless whether that level of damage was intended. Assault can be misdemeanor or felony in most states depending on how badly the victim was injured. Punch him in the nose and break his nose: misdemeanor. An inch to the side and break an orbital bone, causing blindness: felony. Same punch; same intent; an inch to the side.

So, yes, Mrs. Ink "went along" with this, but it's something no mother should ever go along with. And she did it because of her infatuation with a man who is objectively a bad man, something she failed (or refused) to acknowledge.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 4:30 PM, Wednesday, May 17th]

Ink, did your daughter tell your wife,at the time, that OM was messaging her in a creepy way,and was seeking her attention?

I believe she did not. My wife has said that she only found the contents of the messages post d-day. Again, my daughter has said my wife was aware, my wife is saying that she wasn’t. It’s been a year, I’m going to allow this to be a discrepancy in memory possibly. But she knew something was there to go after and delete, that she wasn’t monitoring this is fucked up.

Has your wife apologized to your daughter, for putting her in his path?

Not yet but has acknowledged her need to.

If she didn't, I'm curious as to why not?

Like all good grooming, I imagine it’s hard to see it for what it is. It was her boyfriend that called it creepy and maybe she just let it go after that. My wife and my daughter don’t have the closest relationship, both are amazing emotional stuffers.

He was her mom's friend. I would think that would be something to tell her mom. Unless she knew about the affair, and/or she didn't think her mom would take her side. It was a terrible position she was in.

I don’t believe she knew about the affair, but I haven’t asked that directly. I will.

I wish I could convey to you the absolute horror I feel about a man texting a teenager when he has no business doing it. Talk to someone in law-enforcement or child protective services and you will find out that this is a very common occurrence. I don’t care whether your wife knew it or not she put your daughter in a dangerous position the child should never have been in. Until your wife gets a handle on how utterly stupid that was she’s not R material. I understand that this is stark and brutal of me to write it this way, but this is such a bad situation because this is the way children get sucked in little by little. It happens over and over and over again. All over the country, all over the world.
Your children should be your first, and your last, and everything in between, concern and care. Nothing else matters, but that.

I need to work for a while. I’m just posting this more for myself to give myself permission to take my mind off this for a while. Thank you all.

my daughter has said my wife was aware, my wife is saying that she wasn’t.

So she read the messages before deleting them? And your child has been struggling. I'm sorry,but if she read those messages before deleting them..as a woman, as a mother..and as a CSA survivor..she knew the messages were,at the very least inappropriate. And she failed to inform you,or her therapist. Or even speak to your daughter about it. To protect herself. She allowed your daughter to deal with it,all alone. If we believe your daughter, and our perception is our reality, she believed her mom knew as it was happening. And her mom did nothing. Her mom didn't protect her as it was happening. Or afterwards.

This is a huge problem. This will affect her for the rest of her life.

I think you should believe your child. Your wife has an extensive history of lying to you,and lying to protect herself.

You may need to decide who to believe..whose side to be on. I hope you choose wisely.

We can probably argue for pages about whether what OM did constitutes as grooming, but the fact of the matter is that he never should’ve been in contact with your kids in ANY capacity.

The fact is that your wife put significant and long-term strain on both her relationship with her daughter and your daughter’s relationship with you. She expected her daughter to keep this secret. She’s now calling your daughter a lying by claiming she didn’t know about the inappropriate communication. She has put your daughter in the painful position of being caught in the middle of both her parents.

Going forward, the safety and well-being of your daughter needs to come first and foremost. Your wife has been stealing all the oxygen in the house at the expense of your kids.

You need to be the safe and stable parent because your wife has made it clear— both in words and deeds, past and present— that the only person she cares about and is willing to protect is HERSELF.

I hear some of you saying that you’ve come back from a place like this. How? Why?

Succinctly, it's about what's happening now. We have a tendency as human beings to try and define things in a sort of two dimensional way. This is good. That is bad. This is black. That is white. We try to reach understanding about a given thing in a final kind of way so we can file it and be done with it. But that doesn't account for TIME.

Everything my fWH did while he was cheating was bad. There aren't any shades of gray or nuance. Every bit of it made him undeserving of R. Every bit of it earned him a divorce. He was selfish, stupid, and emotionally lazy. He risked himself, me, his family dynamic, our financial security, everything we had built together for nothing but cheap flattery and self-delusion. He didn't deserve another chance, not when we are measuring by his actions of the past.

So, if we go by what a WS "deserves", none of them deserve R, none are worthy of a second look. They all know the score. They know that adultery is wrong. They know the outcome might be divorce. The problem is that at the time, they don't care. Then, when reality breaks through their fantasy, suddenly, it's a different story, the gauze is removed from their eyes and they can't even identify with what the hell they were thinking, but too bad... no WS is guaranteed a second chance.

For me, the difference is the application of TIME. What happened before is the past, and in the past, my WS was living with a particular mindset. In the fullness of time, that mindset was revealed to be delusional, stupid, and self-serving, but what is his truth now? What is his mindset today, after all that he had thought to be real has been revealed as fantasy? If we imagine time to be a winding stream and ourselves as leaves floating along past various landscapes, what is there one moment is replaced by something else in the next. It's all a matter of our perspective. Our entire reality is the perspective from which we view it. Who we were then is gone. Who we are today is what we believe today.

What I had to accept was that the past happened and NOTHING would change it, and it was NOT okay. But that doesn't mean that the past is what's happening now, even though our trauma response might have us feeling stuck there. It doesn't mean that people can't grow, change, redefine their values, or look at their lives from a new perspective.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think we're required to put ourselves out there or to give the WS the benefit of a second look if that's not what we're genuinely feeling. And I do think we ought to be VERY careful not to allow ourselves to be fooled into seeing more than what is, but for me, applying time opened up my options.

There’s the CT I have come to deeply appreciate. I gave her the benefit of time. I’ve given her lavishly extravagant amounts of time. And she’s wasted it. She got herself caught in a lie 11 months post d-day, a very material lie at that.
She acknowledges her trauma and people pleasing make lying a tool she uses to protect herself. She is coming to see that shame keeps her from being honest and vulnerable. But at some point I have to stop letting myself and my children get abused by her dysfunctions.
The last straw for my mother when she divorced my father was he had come out of alcohol treatment for the second or third time and he was obviously supposed to be sober and on the straight and narrow. And then he got a DUI. With 12 year old me in the car. This feels like that moment for me.
For those asking, I’m not waffling in the sense that we’re going to kiss and make up tonight. That isn’t going to happen. We need to separate. I’m leaving a crack in the door so that if she cares to figure her shit out and get her head out of her ass, she can follow.

About that work…

So she read the messages before deleting them?

Yes

This will affect her for the rest of her life.

God I hope not, but I hear you. I hope that the creeper got stopped before he could do any real damage and that I owe her boyfriend a world of gratitude for that.

I think you should believe your child. Your wife has an extensive history of lying to you,and lying to protect herself.

You may need to decide who to believe..whose side to be on. I hope you choose wisely.

There will be no choice, my daughter needs me.

She got herself caught in a lie 11 months post d-day, a very material lie at that.

Exactly. That's what's happening now. I suspect it feels like things are spinning out of control all of the sudden and that your emotions might be running away with you, but there in all the maelstrom, you've arrived at a significant breakthrough.

You've got this. Trust yourself. It might feel messy, but your gut is still there.

InkHulk,

If you do get back together get a polygraph in case your WW has more landmines your could step on.

if she read those messages before deleting them..as a woman, as a mother..and as a CSA survivor..she knew the messages were, at the very least inappropriate. And she failed to inform you, or her therapist. Or even speak to your daughter about it. To protect herself. She allowed your daughter to deal with it, all alone.

And this sadly is the dynamic that often occurs if a CSA survivor becomes a parent, since nobody ever intervened to defend the CSA victim as a girl, perhaps she doesn't have the protective instinct she should have? That is the mildest interpretation I can give you.

Agree with WOES and CT. This is a breakthrough moment for you. You have finally reached a point where you are truely willing to end this marriage. You were, recently for the first time, started to explore and recognize YOUR needs that need to be protected and fulfilled if you chose to reconcile. That was one significant development and now you have seen another significant development. You did tell many times before that you would end this relation if it didn't work out. But, I strongly believe you didn't mean it before. There were so many DDays and yet, you always gave her grace, many 'amnestys' and also forgiveness. This created certain dynamics between you and your wife that really worked in her favor. But now, that dynamics changed. She should know now that her time is ticking.

In another thread I said something about offering my perspective in cases where I have a similar outlook or feel my experience is informative. I tend to stay out of certain sorts of threads because they are outside my depth. I am so upset about your wife's behavior, and it's so far outside of anything I dealt with that I think you are going much deeper into betrayal debt than I'm comfortable giving the same sort of advice I have been giving you.

My wife broke NC once. We can consider that a DDay 2 if we must. It was one of the times I asked for a divorce verbally, but didn't follow through.

Something like this, no, I don't think there would be coming back. I have made it abundantly clear to my wife that if any additional details or significant events appear whether they are lies of commission or omission, I will not stand for it. I will not be deceived again and I will not forgive further deception as it relates to infidelity.

The more than three strikes in my new game of baseball weren't like this. She'd be out. She has proven she is unsafe beyond any reasonable continued understanding.

Hardline boilerplate advice may apply here since you never did get the full whack on DDay 1.

Complete written timeline of the affair. Written response to all your questions. Polygraph to confirm completeness and accuracy. That would be bare minimum to talk about anything other than how to split assets and custody.