SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

InkHulk,

I hope you don't mind a comment from a former WH. I have been following your story for quite a while, and I am truly sorry it has come to this. I have been praying and rooting for you both, hoping your WW would finally "get it" and start to do the hard, frightening work that every WS needs to do. It is the least that you and your kids deserve, when the reality is you all deserve so much more.

You and your family remain in my thoughts and prayers.

I hope you don't mind a comment from a former WH.

I fully welcome it. I have great admiration for all fWS’s who use SI as a tool in their healing and work.

You and your family remain in my thoughts and prayers.

I appreciate that greatly.

Ink Hulk I have been a lurker on this site for some time and have done my recovery on another recovery sponsored site. My story is very similar to yours and with the same all to common outcome with an UW. My story - Our marriage seemed like solid granite. We met near the end of college and began a life of love and happiness. On the surface we had a wonderful life – great careers, great friends, two healthy children, a big home with an inground swimming pool, a ski boat, vacations – all the stuff people dream about. The American dream if you will. I have always looked at our marriage and relationship as being – one of the lucky ones.

Our marriage seemed great – we rarely fought and hardly disagreed about anything, especially big picture things – money, religious values, political ideology, parenting, and future dreams. We are great friends, and to this day she says I am still her best friend. Our sex life was fairly solid (even though I was never fully happy with it) we were having sex about 3-4 times a month.

After 19 years of marriage, I found out that my wife was having an affair with a co-worker 10 years older than me. According to his wife a serial cheater. Initially I wanted to file for divorce but reconsidered and put in the hard work to save my marriage and family. I fought hard for it with all that I had. She ended the affair and we started counselling. We paid lots of money for an affair recovery program that we completed, attended marriage counselling weekly to the tune of around $600 per month, and both were in individual counselling – she has been in IC for years (WTF good is it doing if you’re a chronic liar and manipulator). Often things in recovery seemed too good to be true, if I am being honest. At about the 6-7 month mark my wife really began to change but it wasn't real change I think I was just love bombing. Through a lot of thought and study I decided to ask her to take a polygraph at about the one-year post DDay mark! I knew if she passed it would help give me a new baseline of trust to work with. A year’s worth of honesty. I was trepidatious about asking her about the poly because I knew if she said no, it would kill all of my trust and I would have to ask for a divorce and mean it. When I asked her about taking a poly she refused with a series of bullshit excuses.

I told her that was fine, but it was a deal breaker for me. She eventually confessed to 4 total affairs and continued the current affair all the way through our affair recovery program – at least 8 months post D-day. I thanked her for being honest and I have had a real sense of calm and peace about divorce. I was and I am still terribly worried about the impact and heartbreak it is going to have on my children.

That is devastating when I think about it. I moved out in September of 2023 and I am successfully divorced for 2 months now. Divorce will not be worse than DDay in my opinion – for one you’re not blindsided and for a second – no one is stealing your agency or manipulating you. Don’t be surprised if your UW behavior gets worse and she becomes the victim in the whole ordeal. My ex UW narcissism flew to new depths, I was warned of this by my IC and damn sure she was right. I think it’s the last line in the sand they have to try to draw you in or keep their hooks in you.

Stand strong and be proud of yourself for fighting. In the end you will leave a legacy of offering forgiveness and grace and working hard to do so, and your ex UW has her legacy. Hold strong for your kids – divorce sucks but your UW divorced you a long time ago, infidelity divorced you, selfishness divorced you – don’t blame yourself for the divorce. All you have done is take your agency back. Infidelity, manipulation, lies, and gaslighting are all forms of abuse. Good for you for getting away from it. Continue to grieve the marriage and what was lost. In the end you’re the prize brother. Good spend and damn good on you for putting in the work to save your family, as the Rolling Stones famously put it – you cant always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get just what you need!

Good luck with informing the kids, InkHulk.

Children aren't stupid nor are they blind. I'm sure since the separation and return they've been watching and measuring both you and your wife. Unless you've been a complete, unemotional robot since returning, the kids have at least a sense of your frustration of the overall situation and of your wife's... "avoidance" (?? near enough term??) of issues (although I'm sure not her latest antics with contacting the new guy)

Stay strong.

Hell of an introduction there. Thanks for sharing, sorry to hear about the utter disaster of a shit show. I agree that pursuing D just can’t be worse than D-day and the purgatory of false (or just shitty) R. I worry that she will get worse before it all ends. For a number of reasons I’d like to share the house until we can sell it, but we’ll see if she makes that remotely possible.

Anyway, you sound like you have a lot to share, I hope you stick around.

Fit43,

I'm not a gallows humor guy but brother you entered this forum like The Undertaker off the top rope. Your xWW sounds like a remorseless woman. I'm still glad that you extracted yourself from her infidelity but wish you strength with co-parenting your children with her. She's a lawyer huh? I hope you have good legal representation just in case she makes things hard going forward just to f with your head.

Please be kind to yourself man. You trusted this woman and thought of her as your soulmate for 20+ years only to learn that she checked out a long time ago, assuming she was in it in the first place. Praying for you and your kiddos!

PS: If willing, please start your own thread and share your learnings with those that are still in the early stages of dealing with spousal betrayal

[This message edited by Ragn3rK1n at 9:41 PM, Wednesday, March 27th]

Would you all please weigh in on the wisdom of sharing the house until we figure things out. I am torn on what to do there. If we can share the house, separate rooms, I get to stay with the kids full time for a while longer (it’s so fucking hard to even imagine life where that isn’t true) and the financial benefits are significant. And on the other side of the scale is she might go bat shit crazy on me. What did you do? In hind site, what would you recommend?

Ink, have you seen my post in D/S about ending an interminable IHS?

Edited to add a summary note but then I accidentally hit Cancel.

Just wanted to say that my WH was only too willing for me to sacrifice my version of married life so he could stay in the same place and look married to the world. I've felt 95% of the pain of the loss of this M during an IHS that has now lasted 22 years!! From D-Day 1, he was fine with me moving to the sofa cushions laid out on the dining room floor. I spent 5 years making my bed there every night while he went to sleep like a contented baby in our king size platform bed that I couldn't stand to share with him after that fateful day. I actually think he preferred the distance. Today, he has a small room in my house that we moved to later during False R, but he still is happy to act like he belongs here with access to the entire place. And because he wasn't inconvenienced by what I thought were severe boundaries around intimacy, he had little motivation to dig in to doing any work on himself. I see that clearer in hindsight than at the time.

It remains hard to set all the boundaries I still need to, and it's been really hard to toggle from shared, "married-like" activities - such as sitting down to a meal - to toddling off to separate sleeping areas on different floors. I wake up every morning wondering "Why?"

But my situation doesn't translate to yours, as we have no children. Just trying to say, IHS isn't a low stress solution and can drag on way too long. Plus my attorney did warn about setting a date of Separation being complicated by staying under the same roof, especially if we would be seen going places like church together.

[This message edited by Superesse at 4:17 AM, Thursday, March 28th]

Check with your lawyer before you leave the house. It can be seen as abandonment and not go well for you.

For me, IHS kinda sucked. XWH was still trying to have sex with me to "rekindle" the M. But, he was also messaging other women, sooo....

FWIW, I have a much closer relationship with my children, and that is a great benefit.

During my short trial S we did nesting. I liked it.

Just want to be clear: when I say "figure it out", I do not mean get back into R. I mean get the D moving and done and the house ready to sell. Sorry if that was confusing.

#championwafflefucker

And that is the message your WW needs to wake up to, every day. I wasn't clear with my story but based on what I've learned from living through it, what a WS takes away from sharing the (former) marital residence while going through the D process may be that "things cannot have been that bad"...and that "the BS can be influenced to reconsider the basis of our M" as leafields' XWH was trying to do.

Get legal advice. Buy a VAR and keep it on you if you think she might go "batshitcrazy".

Inhulk

I'm glad to help how I can. It's one of my goals in recovery is to help other brothers going through this mess. Check into all of your local laws and everything before making a decision on leaving the home and I don't know your or your wife's financial situation which can complicate things but I am happy to share my thoughts on things.

First I would recommend reading Stephen Stonseys book - Living and loving after infidelity. It's the best text I read to date. It's all about not becoming a victim and living through your core values which ultimately define your worth. Through it you will craft a mission statement and you should keep that at the forefront of your life daily. I will share mine....Despite 20 years of a loving marriage, a beautiful family, and many dreams achieved my wife cheated on me, damaging my trust and our family. I will probably never fully know why or understand why she chose to do this. I am a kind and loving man who treats others with dignity and respect. Through my interpersonal strength and support from the lord I will heal from infidelity with or without my wife by my side and I will not let it ruin my positive outlook on life or gratitude which I have always had. I will utilize this opportunity to learn to become a better listener and strengthen my relationship with God to become a better man.

As you can see my mission statement is a mixture of accepting the things you can't control, core values, and post traumatic growth. The book is not flashy but rooted in practical application of personal accountability.

In regards to divorce and staying in the home my philosophy is about taking control of your agency and moving foward. I opted to move out and simplify my overhead to begin rebuilding my life. I loved my home and still do but it was tied to an object I had to let go of - my wife, my marriage, and my former life. I did alot of personal healing in reconciliation and understand during that time that I had to prepare myself to let go. It prepared me mentally and physically to move foward if I had to which ultimately I did.

I also was never too afraid to openly talk about what was going on and that I was cheated on with those I trust and love. I think I am a bit rare for BH in that sense. Not to say that it wasn't embarrassing, but I never held myself responsible for her choices. I think it's certainly healthy to reflect on your faults in a marriage.

For me moving out was a final nail in reclaiming my own agency. I had documented marriage counseling sessions where my wife admitted to what she had done and it was documented that she continued the affair throughout all of our recovery efforts. I went to one last MC session to make sure that was documented as well which could be pulled into court proceedings if necessary. I was confident no one could make a legal argument for abandonment giving the evidence. Any attempt to do so would only hurt my ex in court if she tried.

I would recommend getting out and paying the fee to file first. These are open records and people now a days are hip to looking at this information. Any future women you will date will most likely vet you and i would recommend you do the same. Having this documentation can help far more than it will ever hurt you.

If anything moving out and removing the thought that you will always be there to take care of all of the things you take care of will help bring a reality bullet to your UW she has not experienced.

My UW has continued to pull a bunch of bullshit and at times I get pulled back into her toxicity, but step by step I am fully beginning to see her most true colors which sucks but reinforces what was inevitable. She is still at hot mess. Has exposed my kids to some of her dates, pictures of being on dates, passed them onto me so she can go on dates, and is stuck in some teeny bopper game like mindset. You can't make sense of it and you will try its futile. It's the last bastion of holding on to who you thought she was. Moving out and being away from her daily manipulation will bring this front and center or atleast it did so for me. My wife at one point tried to tell me that she really tried in reconciliation How can someone so educated be so dumb 🤦

It's time to start grabbing your agency back and grab it by the balls brother. Many successful men often point to one single catalyst for their success, overcoming some pain point in their life where they came out on the other side of hell. This is your springboard amigo and you are the life boat for yourself and children. You got this.

I think staying in the same house is not a good idea.

I think you need distance. I think you need to detach. I think your wife is very manipulative. She knows what buttons to push, to get the response she wants. She installed those buttons. I know you've decided on divorce. I also know you still love her. And so does she. She's going to throw everything at the wall, to see if it sticks. Love bombing. Trying to have sex. When that doesn't work, she's going to start getting dressed up,and going out at night..either to try to make you jealous, or because she's actually dating. It will be Hell for you.

I think a separate apartment would be a good idea. Some people work out an arrangement, in which one parent stays in the marital home, with the kids, for a week, then they switch.

She's going to use the two of you living together, to try and manipulate you into staying. She's going to tell you how terrible it will be for the kids. She knows that's your weakness.

For your mental health, you need a true separation. A happy,healing, peaceful daddy is what the kids need the most.

[This message edited by HellFire at 2:00 PM, Thursday, March 28th]

I agree with HellFire. IHS sounds like a horrible idea. I have read posts where the betrayed spouse has had to listen to their wayward have sex with AP in during IHS. Please follow your attorney's advice regarding IHS.

I think one of you should move out. I can't imagine the past few months being fun for your kids, but now with your STBXWW likely alternating between crazy, frosty, and lovebombing, its gonna be a whole nother level worse. Even if all that doesn't come quite to be...What if STBXWW starts dating during this time--do you really need to see it? And don't YOU want to move on with YOUR life? (It will be much better than you think! I know you are having a tough time believing but it will be.)

Cut jerself free from the ball-n-chain!

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 3:49 PM, Thursday, March 28th]

Fit43 gave some good insight.

I don’t have an opinion per se. Is it a problem right now? How long would you be trying to have this situation? If we are talking a month or two, the financials can’t change in that amount of time. And the amount of time that might take could prolong the pain for all involved.

I think that if the kids know it might be better for them to feel their life change now rather than making them live in the tension and them having to anticipate this big change for months with no real vision of what it’s going to be like. Kids need security, and don’t do well with limbo.

I tend to think the scenario where there is an apartment that you guys rotate using might work well. I do understand that maybe there isn’t money for that. However, I know that your wife went back to work so for years you all were able to survive on your salary. Could her money be enough to support a small one bedroom apartment and you transition that way?

I know it’s a lot of change at once but I think rip off the bandaid and let the dust settle on that a bit.

Ditto what HellFire said.

I agreed to IHS for a nanosecond before I realized that there was NO WAY I wanted him in what's supposed to be my safe space while he was still wayward. If it was a case where she was working hard on herself, but understood why you wanted out anyway, it'd be different. But she's still pretty wayward with little reason to believe that there will be much improvement.

Also, I think as long as the two of you live together, she has hope. You too. I know your brain knows divorce is the only option. Bit that pesky heart is still catching up.