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Hi, I know that it is common for us to question our future after infidelity and I know that it is common to even question our present but how common is it to completely dig threw your past trying to find something else that seemed off that could have been a different affair?

My H TT me for quite a while after Dday and now I just feel like there could be different cheatings (before we were married) or other APS.

I don't have any proof or anything other than knowing that the past ten years we have been together he has had shitty boundaries and was addicted to porn. He would be over friendly with women even in front of me but he swears that nothing ever happened.

I don't know if it is my lizard brain trying to keep me safe because lately we have had better days. I explained to him last night that the idea of starting to heal and then something new coming out would literally kill me. Some days in my brain it is better to stay hurt because if I stay hurt then if something else comes out I won't fall too far down.

He understood that and promised me that he wouldn't ever build our new marriage on a foundation of lies but at this point the TT literally destroyed a lot of me. He explained that the past 10 years he has fought the urge to act out on anything by using porn then it became an addiction, then after his AP took the bait and fed his ego his shitty boundaries just went away.

I question my past more than I question my future, it is like I am terrified to move forward so I stay in this crappy feeling.

I know as a BS we will never have all of the pieces of the A but this feeling is different, this is because he was able to lie about this he could lie about so much more.

Does the feeling pass over time?

I have this underlying fear in 10 years we will be reconciled and happy and then the other shoe will drop and I will find out he has a kid somewhere from in his 20s or I will get a message from a former AP.... I just don't get it.

I am questioning so many red flags I ignored over the years of his crappy boundaries and his complete selfishness and in my mind I painted a husband that was amazing and I never really truly saw him for his broken self. Now I am questioning who he really was. I went through his phone, his email but at this point if there is anything from that long ago it is gone now.

[This message edited by Groot1988 at 1:45 PM, Tuesday, July 16th]

So weird, I just posted something similar where I’m questioning something from our past!
I don’t have any advice to offer you, I’ve been doing the same.
My partner had a period of lying to me for years about a mental health addiction. He always denied cheating and I never found any proof, though that’s what I blamed it on before finding out what he had actually been lying about.
Now I’m questioning whether he used that as a front for cheating too. I look back at specific events and think, but what if he was cheating that night and just blamed it on the drugs?
I’ve been thinking about things from years ago that I had forgotten about and questioning everything.
I don’t know what to believe anymore.

Really good question, Groot.

Some days in my brain it is better to stay hurt because if I stay hurt then if something else comes out I won't fall too far down.

I love this self awareness. But now that you’ve said it, I hope you can step back and see how messed up that is. And that is not an insult, just an observation that it is no way to live. You need to heal and regrow. So many potential movie Groot references possible here

I have this underlying fear in 10 years we will be reconciled and happy and then the other shoe will drop and I will find out he has a kid somewhere from in his 20s or I will get a message from a former AP.

You are attempting to plan a life with a demonstrated liar and betrayer. It is risky as all fuck. Again, no critique, I did it too, we all have our reasons. But make no mistake, it is an enormous gamble. You rightly distrust him. And I think it’s very natural to now look back and see what the past says about him. I don’t think I’ve ever disclosed this on SI before, but I found in my searchings a passage in my wife’s journal from just before we were engaged that in her own words she cheated on me with her ex-boyfriend. Not PA, but very EA, with him asking to come over for sex. She also had a wild night one year post marriage at a bachelorette party. I used that information to help create a personality profile for her, it became part of my mental model, and it helped me to come to the conclusion that she is probably a serial cheater and I just can’t build a life with her.

You still need to let go of the outcome. This is incredibly risky and your outcome is nowhere close to determined. Your husband may well be a much worse man than you have understood to this point and you may come to understand that you have no interest in a life with him. Or he might become the next DaddyDom. I don’t know, but neither do you, and it benefits you to have as accurate of a picture of him in your mind’s eye as possible, and re-analyzing his past in light of his recent betrayals is a reasonable thing to do. With the totality of the evidence that you have on him, what do you truly think of him?

[This message edited by InkHulk at 2:10 PM, Tuesday, July 16th]

Hi,
I too silently question things from our past. Specifically, my husband travelled out of the country for business for weeks on end. Sometimes I joined him, most often not.

His work projects skyrocketed during his affair and he took his then AP on these trips out of town. I was not asked to come along as I recall.

So rarely, I wonder how faithful was he during those multiple other trips abroad. He did say he never cheated. But since he proved to be such a great liar and manipulator, I do not believe him. My daughter asked me the same question during our first year of R. I think she believes he did cheat while I have my doubts. Did he cheat on me, only he can answer truthfully.

We have over 40 years of past. That’s a lot of memories. At this point in our lives, I put my priority in the present and future.

There is a lot of talk out there once cheating is discovered about who is she/he, I do not recognize her/him anymore etc. But this I know, when a person is pushed to his limits of tolerance and has weak impulse control, that is a red flag for that person, not his spouse. it’s not up to me to detective his life. It’s up to him. It’s not up to me to imagine what he is like, it’s up to him to show me. So if he want me to believe him, he has to show me that I can trust him.
If he wants me to believe that he is not lying, then he has to show me that is is truthful.

Now for our future, he has scaled down work projects dramatically. He says he will work as long as customers want his services. And that’s ok with me.
And I remain vigilant when he travels alone. I do not look at his gadgets at all. What I look at, is his behaviour with me. The things he does.
When and if I feel threatened , I ask directly. He answers.

This vigilance will remain with me as long as he works or for the rest of my life. I think it’s just part of my life now. It’s not a great feeling, but it’s no longer creating angst in me. People can lie. Some are better at it than others.

It's entirely normal to question your past.

It's also possible that your WS is telling the truth ... or still lying. It takes thousands of trust-building actions for the WS to earn trust back, and it takes longer than a year. In fact, I believe it's impossible for the vast majority of WSes to earn trust back in 2 years (thinking of the SI 2-5 years to recover rule of thumb).

For me, I believe vmy W has not told a lie since before the moment she revealed her A. I got no TT, a-shifting, or minimization. I don't know the TT experience. How are you evaluating the TT you've gotten? How do you evaluate your WS's commitment to honesty?

I searched the web for ways to distinguish truth from lies and applied the techniques to my W's statements. If you haven't done that, it may help you.

You can't R with someone who isn't committed to no more lies. I totally believe that. But life unfolds over time, and it makes sense to me that some people get more truthful over time, so some lying a year after d-day could be enough to call off R - but not necessarily.

Have you given an ultimatum - truth or D? If not, are you ready to do so?

You've got to risk the M to save it.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:22 PM, Tuesday, July 16th]

Very normal.

It takes a long time to rebuild trust, and there will always be the known risk of being married to someone who is capable of this.

My h didn’t trickle truth me, it would have been harder for him to do that because of my relationship to the other obs. However, because I detected nothing, I felt that I may not know about other affairs too. That may sound weird but the reality is that when I had my affair there was no way he couldn’t see something was really wrong. Knowing it was my first and only affair, it made me think he was better at it because maybe he was practiced.

I was not a big believer in polygraphs because I felt like what are we going to do keep having them every time there was a doubt? But I decided that I wanted one, and that was my main question. He passed. And to be fair we both took one and that was a question we did in common.

However, now that we are further out, I am not sure that it was necessary. Hard to say if you removed it as a component if that would have made a difference. In the end I kind of feel like deciding to reconcile and both people working hard at it, it can be a fresh start. It might not have made a huge difference in the end. To me it feels like a new deal, a "from this day forward" sort of thing. But keep in mind we are years down the road in this now. I don’t think there is a way in hell anyone would be there as early in this as you.

Maybe the poly propelled things in a way that makes it hard to imagine what would have happened without it. I am not sure.

All I am sure of is this is all very normal ways to think and feel. The more you focus on what you need, and lean into your truth the more clarity will come. But it’s a slow process. I feel like the entire first year is nothing but recovery and we often put a lot of pressure on ourselves about feeling better and reconciling. Truth is it will be a long time before you feel better and reconciling is less important than nurturing yourself and holding space for yourself. Give yourself grace. The answers and peace will come, it’s too early to know the outcome of the relationship.

For me as the ws, this propelled me towards a lot of growth. And if your husband does that well, you may decide trusting him moving forward is a more solid investment too. But just like it takes time for the bs to heal, it takes time for the ws to heal from the conditions that made such a thing possible.

All this to say, you are right to question, you are right not being ready to give him your heart back yet. Your lizard brain is an okay thing to rely on for now, and you have been so proactive I have nothing but the upmost faith that you will overcome that in time. Whether or not at that point you decide that you can give him your heart again, or it heals you to be able to find the love of your life beyond this marriage remains to be seen.

The part that I can assure you of is that you will be okay. You will come out of this stronger (you already are). And if he does what he needs to you will no longer be married to the person with shitty boundaries, but a rock that you can truly rely on. Until that day is clear, you are right to hold yourself separate to a certain extent as you sift through all these thoughts and feelings - you are doing a fantastic job at that.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:26 PM, Tuesday, July 16th]

I just feel like I have to tell myself that it is very possible he could have did other things during our relationship or marriage , and consider the entire time that he was unfaithful. If I am being honest, flirting with women, constantly needing attention, jumping from hobby to hobby and not being present at home with us, that is unfaithful in a different but equally awful way.

If he would have told me of other things that he did that were horrible when I sat down and told him that he had one chance to come clean and we would work through them then I really do think we COULD have worked through them but IDK for sure.

He IS changing, he has made huge steps and I know that it will take a very long time for me to ever trust him, if ever again. Anytime I ask him how do I know that he isnt lying about other women, he keeps telling me to let him show me by building trust, I don't know how building trust in the future will change my mind about the past but from what you say H/O it can or it at least can change my mentality.

He called me just now from work since hes working in that area to see how I was doing (I slept on the couch last night) because of course I was upset. He assured me again that there is nothing that I can find that would bring me to my knees, nothing that I have to worry about and that he feels a lot better now that he has told me the truth and he feels like a different person.

It is very hard to not want to believe him because it sounds good but clearly I have no reason to believe him after all that he has done.

The picture I have painted in front of me of the man I married isn't a great one and looking back I see so many things that were so downright selfish and I sacrificed so much.

Yall are right when you say this is all truly a gamble.

[This message edited by Groot1988 at 4:11 PM, Tuesday, July 16th]

I didn't question his story, I didn't go looking--at least at first--but once one more AP became known and I went into detective mode, I eventually discovered the infidelity started on Day 1. Yes, Day 1. So through our first I-love-yous, moving in together, getting engaged, getting married, having kids--infidelity at every turn.

Looking back, there were signs I dismissed because I thought my H was prince charming. Like I once saw on social media he "liked" a photo of sexy professional cheerleaders on a beach, which I found odd because we were in the honeymoon period and I feel like only desperate, young weirdos publicly like photos like that. But I ignored it, never even brought it up. Definitely a missed red flag.

Unfortunately, the onus is on you to discover everything. Cheaters don't come clean. The landslide started for me because my H, in his moment of guilt perhaps, admitted to some inappropriate texting with a receptionist years earlier on DDay 1. I put it on the back burner at the time, but months later, when I reached out to her, she let me know what it had actually been.

I don't believe there are actually cheaters who just cheat once. I think they've cheated many, many times before they get to the point of being caught. It starts small: a flirty text here and there. Then when they get away with it, they get more confident and sloppier until it reaches the point of discovery. If a BS thinks their WS only had one A with one AP... there's probably a lot they don't know.

Out of curiosity, are polygraphs quite a common thing in the US? Just because I’ve never heard of it being used for anything in the UK and all I’ve heard is that they’re unreliable/easy to get away with lying?
Also, how do people go about playing detective and finding out things from the past? I wouldn’t know where to start, I’m always amazed when people say they’ve found all this stuff out about their partner. I know his laptop password and Instagram password. I know his phone code but his phone is always on him. I don’t understand how people gather any information, surely stuff from years ago would be long deleted?

So much of what we see is either what we want to see, or what we are culturally conditioned to see. None are so blind…

This applies to more than just your WS. It includes your parents, siblings, coworkers, friends, etc.

Don’t think of it as questioning your past. Think of it as being open to the truth, which was always there for us to see but we were blind to it, or at least not attuned to it.

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 4:36 PM, Tuesday, July 16th]

House of Plane that is a good way to look at it and you are not wrong. I see things a lot differently in almost all of my relationships, where I recognized something wasn't healthy and hell sometimes it was me, sometimes I look back and cringe on how I was, some relationships have died off because the other person I realized wasn't healthy for me. So I appreciate your response.

Revenger, I am with you here.
After my H was caught after denying it he told me that he doesn't think he would have stopped there he thinks he would have done it again in the future with someone else. I appreciated his honesty as much as I possibly could but dammmmmmn that one hurt. Self reflection is important and he got to his whys pretty fast, they were all pretty obvious in front of my face but like I said I painted a picture I wanted, not the one in front of me.

I don't think his answer will ever change that there was nothing else.

I brought up to him that I was going to write a book and it would be about his infidelity, my spiritual journey , my healing, and eventually get it published and he was all for it and has been supporting me when I want to go jot down notes. He asked if eventually I would want him to be a part of it , where maybe he can write what he experienced during our journey too and make it collaborative. I guess that helps a little? I would THINK if he did have more A he wouldn't want a book out there for people to contact me or whatever.- Side note I am nowhere close to ready to write a book it hurts too much, right now I am just jotting down ideas, book points, poetry, all that.

Out of curiosity, are polygraphs quite a common thing in the US?

I wouldn’t call them common, I certainly never considered the use of one before coming to SI. But they are apparently available in the States where as some posters from Europe have indicated they not available in some (or maybe all) countries there.

I personally chose not to utilize one for multiple reasons, with lack of faith in the results being a significant factor.

I agree with ink with this:

I personally chose not to utilize one for multiple reasons, with lack of faith in the results being a significant factor.

I will admit that I did make my H agree to take one if I wanted it, he did agree.

I don't believe there are actually cheaters who just cheat once. I think they've cheated many, many times before they get to the point of being caught.

I can attest that some do exist, because I exist.

I 100 percent never had any inappropriate exchanges or even temptations until the affair. What I know about my husband and also with backup from the poly he also exists. I didn’t have improper boundaries with other men, not ever. I can even say I hadn’t lied to my husband until then. I am not a big or good liar. I was a liar in my youth but had worked this out prior to marriage.

You have to consider that for some, they are caught or confess on the first offense. Some people would say the porn addiction is cheating and that can be true depending on what agreements you have in your marriage about porn.

I think if my H didn't gas light, deflect, and TT me to death then I think I could have thought he was one of the one and dones but here we are.

After my H was caught after denying it he told me that he doesn't think he would have stopped there he thinks he would have done it again in the future with someone else.

Now this I agree with. I can understand that an affair is addiction. And if that affair passes I can absolutely see how without a lot of work not to make that a pitfall for escapism in lieu of crating new ways of thinking and new coping mechanisms.

I wasn’t caught. But I absolutely missed the affair feelings. It does take work to overcome that aspect. Still, I think if the ws is gobsmacked by what they did, do not want to be this kind of person, it’s a pretty powerful motivator for not repeating. This has created the most pain I have ever experienced in my life so far and I would not ever want to be in that position again.

I think if my H didn't gas light, deflect, and TT me to death then I think I could have thought he was one of the one and dones but here we are.

100 percent understandable. I can’t attest to what your husband did or didn’t do.

I do think that the lying will make it so you can’t trust him and can’t trust yourself.

I also can say that I understand the inclination ws have towards lying about what they did. In the face of experiencing actual consequences, and how heinous they have been behaving, they want to cover it up, minimize. I get it. But I also think a first time cheater has this tendency as much as a multiple time cheater. I really had to fight it when I confessed. I did some minimizing for sure, because I minimized to myself.

Questioning is us making sense of the bomb that devastated our life. It wasn't until I discovered xWS's A with MOW in 2012 that I started questioning the past. Putting the puzzle pieces together started from today and working backwards helped me understand who I was really with, from questioning the A to the reveal of his character was eye opening for me. My whole life with xWS was a lie, it was very Truman Show for me and completely life altering. Puzzle pieces are still being put together as I just found another piece given to me by a good friend of mine of my xWS cheating on me while I was pregnant with my firstborn. While these pieces don't feel good they have made sense of the senseless M I shared with my xWS.

It does seem as though your WS is remorseful and working towards becoming a better person for himself and for you and I hope he continues. Of course R is always a gamble, but life is a gamble. All we can do is keep working on ourselves and live life to the fullest.

[This message edited by crazyblindsided at 5:31 PM, Tuesday, July 16th]

He has said horrible thing when he is mad one thing stick with me when i first found out and we were not doing well and we were toxic, we were talking about the A and he said

"I don't know how many times I cheated on you."

At that moment I cant tell you what happened next , I think he took his ring off and I let loose.
When I brought it up again not sure how long after he said that he meant "How many times he slept with her"

I told him that his wording was piss poor and he said he was hurting and wanted to hurt me back so he did.
I am wondering if he also didn't want to say "I can't tell you how many times I effed her" IDK
At the beginning he was someone I did not recongize, he was mean, cold, and so defensive.

Those words though that he said haven't left me, he keeps telling me what he meant by it but he can't unsay and he can't make me magically "unthink" anything.
How he acted after d day may just be too much for me to R from, his words were cold.

I would think it is incredibly common to dig through your past trying to find something else. I also got massive TT as well as some active deception when he tried to prove something (that was actually true) but he didn’t have the technical skills to produce the evidence. So he fabricated it and of course got himself caught. When that happened I did the deep dive through our technology and was able to prove he was telling the truth. Such an idiot. If he had just come to me and said, what I said was true but I just can’t prove it, can you help me? But of course he did not. After that even he had to accept that there was absolutely zero chance I would ever COMPLETELY trust him.

When it comes to his cheating episode 8 years ago he clearly panics and makes horrible decisions in an attempt to satisfy my questions (or at least he did that on that one occasion).

In other areas of his life — excepting the cheating episode — he has never been caught in a lie. He has never been caught in a lie about any other women. He has never engaged in what could be called cheating. Is he a people pleaser to men and women? Yes, and that is a problem he is working on.

For the last 8 years he was subject to massive scrutiny. I am so impressed when other people can take a hands off approach but for at least the first five years I could not (maybe b/c he had held back that his cheating had been physical and somehow I subconsciously knew). As a result he was subject to 3 point verification for everything (GPS shows location, you are on the phone with me and I can physically see your car in the parking lot). He does no social media (never did), has not been a porn watcher (based on my forensics), no access to any apps (forensics again) etc etc. No longer does anything social through work. As a result of all the scrutiny I can say he has been almost sickeningly clean of any possible misbehavior for a long long time.

For me that scrutiny was required to prove to me he was safe enough. Not 100% safe, but safe enough. Hopefully you don’t need to go through that. I did, maybe because my father and grandfather had both cheated at work. If my husband has managed to cheat in the last 8 years and not gotten caught he has truly super-human powers. That does not apply to the first 15 years of our marriage, because there is no way to really go back and uncover everything.

TT is a killer. It definitely killed off part of me. I do believe my H was TERRIFIED of losing his marriage and this contributed to the covering up. He knew our relationship would never be the same if I knew, and he was right about that. I am not totally convinced that I wouldn’t TT under the same circumstances. But, hopefully I’ll never know.

It sounds like you are ramped up given your recent stressors. If that is happening then that is sooo normal. I hope your fears settle down. I hope he keeps proving to you that he is a different person now - at least in the important ways.

On the question of whether you would be equally hurt if you remain distrustful. I would really question yourself on that. Something tells me you would be devastated either way. Maybe it would be marginally different but is the difference enough to justify remaining distrustful forever. My trust has definitely increased steadily with time. Enough time has passed I guess. It will never be 100% but it is getting to where it is high enough to keep me happy.