SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My wife of 42 years had a 15 year affair. We are two and half years post Dday.She is still keeping secrets about her affair from me. I have known the truth about some things for quite some time but I wanted to see if she would come clean with me. Generally we are doing well but this dishonesty really bothers me and I don't feel respected at all. I just don't want to repeat past mistakes. How do I approach her about this?

I’m going to pretend I am your wife.

I am a stew of emotions and feelings about the affair, maybe some lingering feelings for the 15 year partner, absolutely shame for being revealed as a cheat, wishing I could stuff the genie back in the bottle, glue humpty-dumpty back together. Short of reversing time, I’ll just avoid looking in the mirror, hope to bury the body not too shallow, and wait you out. Will willingly suffer otherwise to hide the truth. Minimization, admit only to what is known, is the winning play.

You need to make total honesty her winning play. Think about what it takes to do that. But make no promises of forgiveness in advance, that would likely be a lie.

So these are things that you definitely know and you have asked her and she has not admitted to it?
My WH hid a lot with lies of omission and also blatant lies. I know it was because of fear and shame but at the end of the day the reasons do not matter.
At 18 months from d day my gut was just generally unsettled. I did not know any information but I just felt like there is no way he only had the one affair. I had no hard evidence though at all. I asked for a polygraph. He was defensive and angry. At that moment I knew there was more. He told me everything the following morning. Not sure if she would agree to a polygraph or if you even want to suggest it but that was the only way I would have known the truth. He would have taken it all to his grave.
Do you have any hard evidence that you could just sit down and discuss it? Just say I know xyz for certain and it would help me heal if you would acknowledge this and help in this process?

So she had a 2nd husband for over 1/3 of your marriage and she wants to keep secrets and not tell you what lead to this behavior? She disrespected you for over 1/3 of your marriage. I understand that you might still love her but think about it. There are other people who probably knew about this and were laughing at you behind your back and you didn't know. I had a co-worker who did this to her husband. He never knew why everyone would avoid eye contact with him, but she knew. I would give her a deadline to write out a timeline with all the information.

Welcome to SI and sorry that you're here. The Healing Library is at the top of the page and has a lot of great information, including the list of acronyms we use. In the ICR (I Can Relate) forum, there is a thread for people whose WS (wayward spouse) had a LTA.

The only person you can control is you. You can't change her - she needs to want to be honest with you. Have you established any boundaries or consequences over this or discussed how you feel? Fifteen years is a long time, so I'm sure she can't remember every single detail but should be able to help you with what you need to know.

We tried a 48-hour journal for a while. I’d write questions or comments and my WS would return it in about 48 hours. She could ask questions of her own or just answer mine. It was (I thought) a low pressure way to keep a dialogue going, exchange information & get explanations.
A lot depends on her personality & psyche though. If she’s one to immediately throw up walls in defence then it may still be hard to get decent responses.
My WS didn’t care for this method (or any others really - different story altogether though.)
The method worked well for a friend of mine on a different topic w her daughter though.

I'd suggest approaching her exactly as you did us.