SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Thank you everyone for sending your advice and stories. It has been truly helpful for navigating this incredibly hard and complex trauma.

Similar to to the previous discussion, the devil is in the details. Or the opposite god is in the details? What I am trying to say is that details matter allot for the victim of betrayal to understand the severity of their spouses actions. It also matters allot to understand how much pain you are truly in and even how to recover. What I am trying to say here is that its not fair for me to solicit advice from you all when I don't know what happened exactly.

Without my entire story ready; my wife is working on this today with a therapist. It is hard to move forward at all in terms of healing. I don't know how much detail I want honestly and that is the hard part. I don't know if it is a good idea to keep reading forums and posting on here for advice when I don't have a good picture of what happens. I may take a break from this form because I am not sure if it is good for me at this point or not.

I want everyone to know here that I appreciate you. I love you, I feel a bond with each and every one of you because this situation in life is not something most people have to experience and I can say it is impossible to put in words. Although people have done an amazing job and many resources have done a great job at explaining the experience from a betrayed spouse perspective.

My next steps:

1. Prioritize healing myself, I need to be able to function in my life without blowing the whole thing up. Being a father, being a family member, supporting my family through work etc..

2. Get the story from her, the full story. Written in chronological order.

3. Decide how much I want to know. Honestly it's the hardest part. I'm a Christian and I know this isn't a religious place necessarily. But that matters allot for me. I am even considering having her go through the whole development of a timeline experience and not even reading it and forgiving her and starting new. What does it help if I know the extent of her actions? I know she slept with the guy what does it matter after that? Is learning the extent of her actions going to help anyone? I think the answer is no if I am going to forgive and move forward.

4. Confide in someone close to me. I do not think its fair or a good idea for this to be our little secret between me and my wife. But it is also not everyone's business. If it is that will almost surely ruin out marriage. I am thinking I will ask my sister for discretion and have her help as someone to support me.

5. This one isn't in chronological order but we both need to continue individual therapy and move into couples counseling once we are in a good spot. I don't know what that looks like but I need to be sure we are both healed.

6. Telling APs spouse, in the same vain as is this really going to help anyone? Yes and no. She will have to experience this pain the worst pain in the world. Her children will be victims as well. Im just not sure what I'm going to do here. But it will be my decision to make, inaction is an action in itself.

I know those steps and some of the ideas sound really stupid to the people who took the time to help me through this on this website. And I understand this post has quite a few contradictions. I really want you all to understand that I appreciate the help so much and I hope to be in a space one day to help others with their healing.

[This message edited by Eragorn at 12:25 PM, Monday, July 13th]

I think it's a bad idea for you and her to use the same IC. A person has to be 100% comfortable with their IC in order to be totally honest and knowing that your spouse is talking with the same IC could cause reservations. Our MC refused to see either of us separately because it's a conflict of interest and she is correct

When I asked on this forum how I can go about finding the other BS someone recommended an online search service but I cannot remember the name. I think it was 20 bucks and within a few minutes I had addresses phone numbers email so I took a gamble with the email

My email said if your husband is a police officer and he works at a high school there's something you need to know about him and my wife. It was vague enough but plenty of information if her husband is. Within an hour or so I had a response saying yes he is and what do I need to know? If you want to call me here is my phone number

So I emailed everything I knew. I apologize for waiting 5 months to tell her, I said I had no right to withhold this from her and she responded with no need to apologize I greatly appreciate you reaching out to me. She told me this isn't his first time doing this. We communicated a few times via email and then switched to texting

I didn't tell my wife I was going to do this because given how unstable I knew there was a good chance she would somehow talk me out of it and when I told her she had the balls to be livid with me. She had the audacity to say what if she comes into my work and creates a scene? What if I lose my job? Did you even consider me before you did this?

I replied with what if she had found your sext messages with her husband on his phone and came into your work and caused the scene? What if you got fired and our family lost its health insurance? Where was all of this concern while you were doing it? Did you even consider me? Or your family?

That took the wind out of her sails. She said I wish you had at least forewarned me in case she did come into my work and I said no because I couldn't take a chance on you talking me out of it. And she would have been able to manipulate me back then into not reaching out

So my advice is to reach out via email and if you don't get a response then try a phone call. As far as him saying his wife is suicidal, is it possible yes, is it probable, no. I can easily see him using that as leverage to keep your wife from ever telling his wife but her mental status is not your concern. She has a right to know. He has motivation to keep his Affairs quiet because a divorce could cost him financially and it could cause him to lose standing in his community, in his family, with his friends, but none of that is your concern nor should that affect your decision

Like others have said, you dictate how the repair will happen, how she wants it to happen doesn't matter. If she is truly committed to trying to fix the damage she has caused she will go along with your plan. If that means talking with therapists then so be it. Others on this forum had posting up agreements drawn up to protect them financially which is something I never considered but in hindsight a damn good idea especially when the Betrayed is a husband and the cheating wife has a lesser paying job or doesn't work because family court is anything but neutral

Your thoughts will change, sometimes by the day by the hour by the minute and this is all normal. Something that sounds like the absolute best idea right now may sound ridiculous or unattainable an hour from now and again this is all normal. It takes a very long time for the roller coaster of emotions to stop or at least slow down enough that you feel like you are making rational decisions so post often and you will find some great advice on this board from people who understand exactly where you are day by day

The absolute worst thing you can do is put blind Trust and faith into your wife right now that she could never do anything like this ever again, it's just an impossibility, because it isn't. All you know right now for sure is that your wife had an affair, kept it quiet until after you were married and had a child. Everything else you believed about her is suspect. It takes a very very long time to re-establish Trust

For your own sanity and safety don't be in a rush to move past this

Eragorn,

Take a break if you need to, this forum isn’t going anywhere. Not even sure you’re going to see this response, but I’ll make it anyway.

Almost no one comes to JFO with the whole story. In fact, I think almost no one posts here with the complete truth. A huge part of dealing with infidelity is coming to terms with the fact that you can’t really know everything anyway. So it’s more than fair to ask for advice when your story’s still unfolding. This forum is here for that purpose, especially when it’s so hard to think clearly in the beginning.

Quite a lot of posters here are Christians (I was raised Catholic myself). We understand the importance of forgiveness, and not just from a religious perspective. But I believe that you can’t forgive what you don’t know. And you can forgive and divorce, as many have.

In my view, you need to know the main details of the A. For one, if you find them out later by choice or by accident, you might find something that resets your healing back to zero. You may find out a detail that might have changed your decision. If you learn what there is to know now, she can’t change her story down the road. That might matter one day. But most of all, I think it will come back up. There are all kinds of stories of people who swept it all under the rug because they wanted to stay together, had the young kids, all the things you have and then years later it bubbles back to the surface. Deal with it now.

Don’t be scared of the truth. Confront it head on. It’s going to hurt. But you will survive it.

I’m so glad to hear you’re confiding in your sister.

Tell the OBS. Yes, it will hurt her, and yes it could affect her children. Her husband (and your WW) did that to them, not you. Earlier in the thread you said you’d never have married if you knew the truth. You were robbed of the ability to make a fully-informed decision with your life. Don’t do that to the OBS.

Just so you know....I needed to know EVERY SINGLE DETAIL. And that got down to time, motives, thoughts, intentions, etc., etc.

I think it was good for me to know exactly what was stolen and what was not, as well as for her....to truly see the dark place she was in. It helped her to see the damage, and motivated change.

The more you know of damage, the more completely you can repair. This is my opinion.ofncourse. it is different for everyone.

Responding to WoodThrush2's post above, there's a potential negative with knowing every tiny little detail about the sexual act or acts. Knowing exactly what they did with each other May only increase your pain. You know something happened and you know it was physical but you really want to know every tiny little detail about what they did with each other? Remember, once you know something or see something you can never forget it

Now, not knowing exactly what happened may lead your brain to come up with a million different scenarios about what they did with each other which can be worse.

When I suggested telling her to write out a complete timeline I should have been specific about not stating every tiny little physical detail

Something to keep in mind,
Success here doesn’t necessarily mean to stay together. It also doesn’t necessarily mean to get divorced. Your personal success on the other side of all this is in retaining your self-respect and dignity.
How you go about that is very personal in nature. You’ll find plenty of stories here of a BS who stayed, and 5/10/15 years later are nothing but of shell of themselves, because they gave up too much in order to stay with their WS for whatever reasons they had. Not as often, but there have been some cases of people regretting the divorce. VERY rare, but it does happen. Just take your time man. Watch what she does, and not so much what she says.

WB1340, I complete respect what each individual decides on this topic. I was just expressing what I myself personally needed.

Some folks are very able to mentally avoid things they don't know or don't want to know. I am just not one of those people. Besides, I don't think I would decide that even if I did have that ability. Sure the pain may have been deeper depending on what was done in theory but at least I had the truth and depending on the depths of betrayal and disrespect, it may have pushed me over edge to start fresh with someone else. Hard to say???

But thank God in my circumstance, the betrayal encounter was much more limited than many.