Hi everyone, I’m brand-new here. It’s very gratifying to me to know that a forum like this even exists. I hope you’ll permit me to vent to all of you what I’ve been going through. I feel a bit clumsy with the way. I’m trying to describe all of this and I appreciate your patience.
I’m struggling to try to understand aspects of my wife’s affair, recently disclosed to me, only two weeks ago as of today, and would love it if folks want to share similar stories with which to commiserate or corroborate certain details of my own, as I try to work through gaining more of an understanding what happened here. And of course any general observation or comment is welcome if constructive or helpful.
It has been just two weeks since disclosure, my wife of 18 years suddenly came forward of her own accord one night, and said to me "I need to talk to you….I’ve been hiding something from you, and I need to tell you" and the whole story, or at least what’s claimed to be the whole story, then came tumbling out, amongst much tears.
My wife confessed to having a two-month affair with a man that she had never known before, who randomly met her at a grocery store, he was the cashier in a checkout transaction, and is 20 years younger than her. She said she had been feeling horrible about keeping everything from me and our children, and couldn’t bear it any longer. If you read on below, you will find out that that is not the whole story, and the reason she actually decided to disclose to me is a bit more complex.
I was completely blindsided by this entire thing, I had literally no idea that anything was going on, I never would’ve dreamed that it could have, and was shocked to my core and became so upset that I left our family home and spent the next four days in a hotel, trying to get my head straight, but mostly just suffering in agonizing pain, feeling nauseated, disgusted, etc. I was a complete wreck, and was not being very good at my job, but had to try to find the strength to soldier on, because in this economy, having a decent job is such a precious thing. Honestly, that first week was probably the hardest week of my life.
About us: we’ve been together 21 years, married for 18 years, 12 year-old and 10-year-old daughter, and we also run a family business in food service that is public-facing. I work remotely as a computer specialist. I’m 48 and my wife is 44.
In order to run our food service business, my wife has to do a couple supply grocery runs each week since we insist on offering fresh healthy organic options that are not available through the usual corporate food delivery vendors, such as Sysco, etc.
The way the story goes is like this. At the local grocery store, my wife and two daughters were picking up a weekly supply run, the cashier, a young man, only 24 years old, started aggressively propositioning her, asking for her number, paying her aggressive compliments, etc. The way my wife explained it is that apparently her little small talk that she started off with was perhaps too friendly, and gave him the wrong idea. He then wrote down his phone number on the receipt and handed it to her and was begging her to give him a call later that day. My wife actually reported to me that my daughters were confused by his behavior asking "mom, why did that man give you his phone number? and also "mom he looks really young is he a teenager or something?" I shudder with disgust to think of the fact that this man aggressively pursued my wife, despite the fact she had a ring on her finger, and my two daughters were standing right there. But this is who we are dealing with.
Based on other things I’ve learned about him, I believe he is basically a sexual predator type who uses his position in a public grocery store as a way of pursuing random women. Of course, this does not excuse my wife’s behavior and choices in the slightest.
Here’s where things get a little bit hairy, apparently this young man went through the grocery store’s customer records in order to find the vendor contact phone number for our business. He then started texting our business phone with flirtatious messages, asking my wife to contact him back, begging for a date, etc. My wife claims that at first she wrote "I’m sorry but I’m happily married"… But after he persisted for a couple weeks, apparently this was enough to get her interested in texting him back. I never saw any of these messages, and my wife mentioned that she had been deleting them.
After a couple of weeks of this fellow persistently messaging our business, my wife then got interested in him, and started texting him from her personal phone.
The two of them texted for some weeks until she decided to meet him and picked him up at his apartment to take him to a café so that they could chat. Apparently this culminated in a kissing session in the parking lot, but not inside our vehicle, she said that they actually were just kissing outside the car. After this point, she claims that she simply dropped him off at his apartment…
My wife tells me that they continued texting every day thereafter. All of these texts were being hidden from me and deleted as they came in.
He then started sending her his weekly work schedules so that she could see whenever he was working so that she could plan her supply runs in order to meet him at the grocery store.
On one occasion, she came to him while he was working at the grocery store, and he suggested going out to our family vehicle, and my wife cooperated with by moving the vehicle around the side of the store where it’s more private. He then met her outside and was "making out" with her on his lunchbreak at work….so she claims, and again, kissing was all they did…?
My wife claims that the only physical contact between them was just kissing, no, touching private parts, no oral sex, and no genital sex. I have confronted her several times on this, and she has firmly insisted every time that no sexual contact occurred other than the kissing. My instinct tells me this is probably not correct and all kinds of sexual contact likely happened between the two of them, especially given this man’s juvenile behavior, and his aggressive pursuit, however, I have no way to actually prove this.
The affair went on for two months, from mid-January through mid-March of this year. The reason the affair ended is that the AP didn’t answer my wife’s calls for a few days and when she finally got ahold of him, he stated that he had ‘found Jesus’ (his words) and therefore he now believes that affairs are wrong and he cannot continue with her. My wife had told me that he previously mentioned to her that there is no need to inform me of the affair, and if they just keep it secret, it will be the same thing as though the affair never happened and that way I don’t need to know about anything.
My instinct is that the real reason the AP did not call my wife back for a few days is that he was probably aggressively flirting with some other customer at the checkout line and found a new plaything for his desires. Especially given his young age, and the extremely aggressive way in which he pursued my wife. I know that his style is indeed aggressive because I did find (only) one undeleted text message in our business phone that my wife failed to delete, and it was extremely aggressive, saying things like "I WILL prove to you I’m not like other young guys, I WILL convince you of this, you are so gorgeous, you stop me in my tracks whenever I see you in the store", things like this. So this creates a level of heartache for me when I realize that it’s quite possible that my wife would be continuing the affair if her partner had not abruptly broken it off with her.
During the first days while I was stricken with grief and left our family home to stay at the hotel, I visited the grocery store and confronted the AP. Right off the bat he lied to me and said "I never knew she was married", I told him I know you are lying to me, then I asked him about the physical contact, and he claimed there was none, again I told him I know you are lying that you guys have kissed. He lied a third time saying there was only one kiss. I let him know My wife had already informed me there were at least two kissing sessions.
I needled him for information on any other physical contact and although he seemed very nervous, he insisted the only thing that happened was kissing.
Of course there’s no way I can trust this individual, but I just needed to confront him. He was probably concerned I would make a scene if he told me the full extent of what happened. Then again, my wife may be telling the truth, I may never know. I then let him know looking him straight in the eye that it’s absolutely disgusting and immoral the way he acted like that, and told him someday, if he has his own family, he should think about what it may mean to him to have some strange man going after his wife like that, I told him this kind of behavior is extremely harmful to families, and he should be ashamed of himself. I turned him left.
After a week in the hotel, I decided to come back to our family home. To my wife’s credit, she has been extremely remorseful, begging for forgiveness, telling me that she wants our marriage to be better than it ever was and that she is so sorry for breaking my trust. She is saying all the right things, and I do feel from her a different attitude than I have felt from her in years. she’s being much more agreeable, loving, and attentive than she’s been with me in a long time. She has given me passwords to her computer, phone, etc., and I have reviewed everything. Unfortunately, all evidence has been permanently deleted, but I do have the ability for ongoing access, and I have checked up on her a few times over the past couple of weeks, and everything has been clean and clear so far. I do plan to continue checking up.
I sense from her that she really does want to ‘turn over a new leaf’ in our relationship. She has taken radical accountability for the entire thing, and has been apologizing for profusely to me every day. She is also told me she is so grateful to me for staying with her. She is also said that she wants our life to be better than it ever was in the past, and has made a list of ways that she wants to improve as a wife to me. While it is great to have this positive behavior from her, it was so incredibly painful to go through the revelation of the affair, I wish she could’ve just worked on some of these items without having to go cheat first. But that is what she ultimately chose to do…
I’m thoroughly disgusted with the fact that this man is 20 years younger than my wife, young enough to be her son, and in his immature way, he love-bombed her extremely hard, and yet she fell for this, she claimed that she liked the attention, and the excitement of having someone new pursuing her. Yes, there had been some fighting and emotional disagreements in our marriage, but to my mind, nothing even remotely severe enough to warrant something like this.
In discussing this matter with a counselor, the counselor made the comment that it sounds as though there may be some histrionic or borderline personality traits present with my wife, especially in terms of not being able to reserve proper boundaries with strangers. This kind of resonates with me, because I have been uncomfortable at times with the way she interacts with customers in our public-facing foodservice business, sometimes being just too familiar, too friendly, something feels off about it, especially with certain men. The irony is, I had actually planned to talk to her about my discomfort on this issue the night she disclosed her affair to me.
Thanks for giving me a chance to just get this off my chest here, I would love it if anyone might have observations of a similar situation or thoughts about why my wife might’ve responded to such a juvenile and aggressive pursuit by such a young man who is obviously very immature.
I feel sheepish saying this, but I also must note that I felt like he is a very ugly and odd-looking person, and my wife actually stated she does not even find him attractive. There are so many questions about this entire affair. Nothing really makes sense to me and I’m just trying to figure it out.
We do hope to try to reconcile, the last two weeks have been hell, but I have been doing a little bit better each day. That being said, I still feel very disgusted about everything, and I have moments that are still very challenging and difficult, even though at times I’m also starting to feel a bit better about how I’m handling and processing everything.
If you’ve made it this far, I truly appreciate your patience, thanks for any insight or advice you may feel comfortable sharing.
