SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi everyone,

I’m new here and never imagined I’d be posting on a forum like this.

My wife and I have been married for several years and have two young children. About six weeks ago, she told me she was unhappy in our marriage and wasn’t sure if she wanted to stay. She talked about feeling like she had lost herself and didn’t know what she wanted anymore.

The next day I immediately started individual therapy. I didn’t become defensive. I didn’t blame her. I took what she said seriously and started working on myself. I’ve spent the last six weeks trying to become a better husband, father, and partner. My therapist, my wife, and even people close to us have acknowledged that the changes have been real.

Then, two weeks ago, everything changed.

I discovered she had been having an emotional affair for roughly eight or nine months with the husband of one of her close friends.

There were months of secret communication, deleted messages, private conversations, and in-person meetings. She insists it never became physical. I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore, but the emotional betrayal alone has devastated me.

The affair ended because it was exposed. She sent a no-contact message and deleted the messaging app they had been using. As far as I know, there has been no contact since. I have been very clear that any future direct or indirect contact would end our marriage.

We are both in individual therapy, and we are also already in couples therapy. Our couples therapist has encouraged us not to rush decisions and has emphasized that my wife has to determine whether she genuinely wants to turn back toward the marriage. I’ve been trying to respect that process, but it’s incredibly difficult because it often feels like I’m carrying almost all of the emotional work.

My wife still says she doesn’t know if she wants to rebuild our marriage.

That is honestly what is breaking me.

I understand our marriage had problems before the affair. I absolutely own my part in that. I could be controlling at times, I wasn’t always emotionally available, and I know there were patterns that made her feel unseen. I am not trying to pretend I was a perfect husband.

But what hurts so much is feeling like I never got a fair opportunity to respond to those problems before another relationship entered the picture. While I believed we were simply struggling as a married couple, she was slowly investing emotionally in another man while withdrawing from me. I didn’t even know I was competing with an affair.

Since discovery I’ve been trying to walk a very difficult line.

I’m trying not to pressure her.

I’m trying to give her space.

I’m trying to break the anxious/avoidant cycle my therapist identified between us instead of chasing reassurance every day.

I’m taking care of our children.

I’m continuing therapy.

I’m trying to become a healthier person regardless of the outcome.

At the same time, I feel incredibly alone.

She is currently away helping her mother for a few days. We communicate about the kids, there have even been some genuinely funny exchanges and moments where we laugh together, but almost none of the communication is initiated by her personally. Most of the time I only learn what she’s been doing after I happen to text her. She rarely reaches out simply because she wants to talk to me.

That contrast is brutal.

I love this woman.

I don’t want my old marriage back because I know parts of it weren’t healthy for either of us.

I want to know whether we can build an entirely new marriage together—one built on honesty, equality, communication, and genuine choice.

But I also know I can’t build it by myself.

Right now I feel like I’m waiting while the person who betrayed me decides whether she even wants me anymore, and that’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced.

For those of you who have been through this:

* How long is it reasonable to live in this uncertainty?
* What did genuine effort from an unfaithful spouse actually look like while they were "unsure"?
* How do you distinguish giving someone healthy space from simply accepting emotional abandonment?
* How did you stop analyzing every text message, every silence, and every interaction looking for clues?

I’m not looking for people to automatically tell me to divorce her, and I’m not looking for false hope either.

I would really appreciate honest perspectives from people who have actually lived through something like this.

Thank you for reading.

I will give you a frustrating answer - none of those questions you have will have an answer.

But to keep things simple, whatever the outcome you need to know where things stand. Have you spoke to her affair partner’s wife?

I’d also strongly recommend that your read the library here. Particularly around how to talk to your wayward wife. ‘Grey rocking’ is about to become one of the best tools on your toolbelt

[This message edited by Sharkman at 1:52 AM, Wednesday, July 22nd]

I’m very sorry you find yourself here. Please read in the healing library and pinned posts. Your reactions to your WW’s infidelity are entirely normal. Congratulations, your M sounds very normal. Two imperfect people trying to make a partnership work. If you take nothing away from my post, at least understand this: nothing you did or didn’t do in your M caused your WW to cheat. She didn’t cheat because you were a bad partner. She cheated because she is broken. You were not a perfect partner. Neither is your WW. If she was unhappy in your M she had legitimate options to work with you or move on to D. There is never a valid excuse to cheat. If you want to work on yourself to be a better partner, do it for yourself. You can’t control her or nice her back. It never works. I would layout your boundaries, and if she wants the precious gift of R she has a ton of work to do on herself to try and rebuild trust. Have her read: How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair, by McDonald. Take care of you. Always value yourself. Good luck.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 9:14 AM, Wednesday, July 22nd]

I’m sorry that your marriage has been impacted by infidelity and lying and the pain that comes with betrayal.

As far as your wife feeling conflicted about your marriage and what she wants, she will remain in the fence as long as you allow her to remain there.

I was in your shoes unfortunately and my H wanted me to give him 90 days to decide. Stupidly I agreed.

It then became obvious I was "auditioning" to keep my marriage. I could tell he was comparing me to the OW. And I wasn’t feeling confident he was invested in our marriage as he should have been. He was more interested in the OW.

If I had to do it again I would walk out the door the first second he showed me the OW was more important.

I did the pick me dance and it was a huge mistake.

Please don’t allow your wife time to "decide" because that allows her to remain in the affair fog and put the affair ahead of your marriage.

Hey Bengalsfan23,

I’m really sorry this is happening to you. What misery.

Nobody here is going to "automatically" tell you to divorce. But you’ve handed out a bit of a difficult assignment, because you’re asking for advice on how to execute a strategy that doesn’t work. Since you’re a Bengals fan, I’ll compare it to someone coming to you and saying, "We’re down by 12 with the ball on our own 20 with 1:47 left in the game. I really want to win, but I’m not interested in throwing the ball downfield. What kind of runblocking should I be considering? When do I use the QB sneak? If they show a 4 man front, should I audible to a draw?" You see what I mean?

It’s not uncommon for waywards to remain in the "fog" for some period of time. 8-9 months is a pretty long A, and she was probably experiencing limerence. If you’re not familiar with that term, you should look it up, but it operates like addiction and is hard to break. You say you don’t want to D but you also say if she has any further contact with him it’s over. If you mean what you say, that puts your odds of a D pretty high, since breaking no-contact in these situations is frequent.

So the problem is what do you do while she’s still in the "fog"? As the others have pointed out, doing nothing - or rather, giving her "space" - isn’t going to get you any results. It’s a running play when you need to be throwing the ball down the field and to the sideline. The most likely outcome of giving her space is that some period of time goes by and nothing much has changed. You’ll be doing what you’re doing now: sifting through her mixed messages and trying to figure out why her actions don’t really match her words; knowing that she’s almost certainly lying to you about it not being physical; your nervous system frying on hyper-vigilance. Your misery is just prolonged this way.

I think no one, regardless of infidelity, should be in a marriage with someone who isn’t sure that they’re their first choice. I know this advice is easy to give and really hard to implement, but I don’t know how you could believe anything other than she’s still invested in her AP. And when that’s the case, you give Bigger’s Sandwich Speech.

Take a look at this thread https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/topics/667020/trying-to-keep-calm-understanding-and-be-kind-but-im-so-hurt/?ap=201, page 11. There’s a good explanation of what the Sandwich Speech is.

What it is is your assertion that you’re getting out of infidelity, with or without her. It’s sort of a dual-track approach, but make no mistake, it’s you proceeding towards divorce until she can convince you that she is going to do everything in her power to rebuild your M. It might not work, she might be already gone. But whether it knocks her off the fence or not, you will be getting out of infidelity.

She is currently away helping her mother for a few days. We communicate about the kids, there have even been some genuinely funny exchanges and moments where we laugh together, but almost none of the communication is initiated by her personally. Most of the time I only learn what she’s been doing after I happen to text her. She rarely reaches out simply because she wants to talk to me.

That's not a great sign.

That contrast is brutal.

Yes, it is. I feel for you. I really do.

I love this woman.

I feel you here, too man.

I don’t want my old marriage back because I know parts of it weren’t healthy for either of us.

BTDT. Fortunately my wife agreed, and we've been working on marriage 2.0. Successfully, so far.

I want to know whether we can build an entirely new marriage together—one built on honesty, equality, communication, and genuine choice.

Yes, it's possible. Very possible, but you both have to want it. She has to want it as much as you do. Anything short of 100% commitment from both of you and it won't work.

But I also know I can’t build it by myself.

As I aluded to above this is absolutely true.

Right now I feel like I’m waiting while the person who betrayed me decides whether she even wants me anymore, and that’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced.

Yes, this is awful. It's agonizing. You're in a state of limbo with a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of uncertainty. This is a terrible spot to be in, and, imo, it may require some action on your part. I started calling divorce lawyers in front of my wife, and when the finality of the situation hit her it snapped her out of the fog she was in.

We also had a rough marriage. I own my part in that, but it takes 2 to tango. In either case there's never an excuse for an affair. Never. That's like having a house in need of repair, and burning it to the ground instead of just fixing the roof. My wife had a short lived emotional and physical affair with a co worker. It did get physical for 2 weeks. I was devastated. I've been where you are man. It sucks.

I'm not necessarily advising you to do the same thing I did. But it's an example of someone, me, who did something to break the cycle we were in. I had decided that I wasn't going to live in that limbo anymore and had resigned myself to the fact that our marriage might be over. I was getting out of that state one way or the other. I didn't want a divorce, but what I wanted less was to continue to live in infidelity or limbo any longer. That was the path I chose and I don't regret it. 15 months later and we're living a marriage 2.0. I'm still having some rough days, but the entire dynamic of our marriage was changed for the better. My wife is 100% on board with making this work. Calling those lawyers was the best thing I could have done.

For those of you who have been through this:

* How long is it reasonable to live in this uncertainty?

Only you can decide that. I made it a month before I broke and couldn't take it anymore. I forced some action and let the chips fall where they may. My wife just so happened to still be very much in love with me and did not want a divorce. At all. I wasn't sure of that until I pulled the trigger tho. It was a gamble. Her attitude up until then was pretty bad. She wanted to maintain a "just friends" relationship with her affair partner and it was killing me. She dropped him like a hot rock when I made those phone calls. The change was startling and fast.

I have no clue what your wife might do so think long and hard about it. If you follow my tack, be prepared for a divorce. You don't want to talk divorce then not follow through with it if she calls it. That will just blow up in your face. You have to really mean it. So think it through carefully.

* What did genuine effort from an unfaithful spouse actually look like while they were "unsure"?

My wife completely redevoted herself to me. Lots of phone calls and texts saying she misses me and is thinking about me when she's not home. A lot of physical touch, kisses, hugs, and "I love you's." Initiating contact. Complete and total transparency and honesty. We do everything together now. She includes me in all of her decisions. I can feel it. She doesn't leave me wondering or 2nd guessing at all. You'll know it when you see it. I also have all of her passcodes and unfettered access to all of her devices. I hardly ever check them tho. It's been several months since I've looked. Just knowing I have that access is pretty much enough for me.

And this is a big one - true remorse for her actions and not blaming me for her awful choices. She takes full accountability formher actions and expresses a lot of remorse and empathy for my pain. Even still over a year later.

* How do you distinguish giving someone healthy space from simply accepting emotional abandonment?

I don't have a great answer for this. I would say that's up to you as far as what you're willing to tolerate.

* How did you stop analyzing every text message, every silence, and every interaction looking for clues?

That went away when I had a full confession, full transparency, her passcodes and access to her devices, and A LOT of reassurance, which continues still to this day. I checked her phone and tablet for a little while but when I started seeing a lot of consistency with her open attitude it relaxed me quite a bit. I started seeing messages to her friends talking about how badly she screwed up, had exaggerated things, how horrible she feels, and how much she really loved me. She set the record straight on a lot of things and it went a long way toward repair. She admitted she was less than honest sometimes and that I didn't deserve it.

I’m not looking for people to automatically tell me to divorce her, and I’m not looking for false hope either.

I would really appreciate honest perspectives from people who have actually lived through something like this.

Thank you for reading.

I tried to share my experience with you, but not necessarily as advice. Everyone is different. Every situation is different. I can only tell you what appears to be working for me. My wife is pretty unique tho. Some might call her a proverbial unicorn because she reacted much more quickly than most, and there are reasons for it. She suffered a tbi as an infant that left her with epilepsy. She's not handicapped or anything, but she isn't a neurotypical person. She has very rigid black and white thinking so her transformation was actually pretty typical for someone like her. When she chooses a track, she's welded to it. I don't think she ever lost feelings for me, but she was hurting and did the worst thing she could have done for our relationship. She realizes that now, but it was an agonizing first month or so for me until she snapped out of it. Once she did tho, she's been solid as a rock. She hasn't backslid or reverted to wayward behavior once. That's not very common.

I do know that doing a pick me dance almost never works. It generally takes a bucket of cold water to snap a wayward spouse back to reality.

There is one more thing that you're going to find very uncomfortable and not want to hear, but you need to be aware of. Most times when an affair is uncovered it's the tip of the iceberg. There's often a lot more to it than they admit to. Your wife carried on an emotional affair for 8 or 9 months with some in person contact involved. It's entirely possible the relationship got physical at some point. It would be very unusual for it not to have if there was opportunity, and it sounds like there was opportunity. Cheaters lie. They have to. It comes with the territory. Trickle truth is very common. You think you know everything, then you get hit with new devastating info in drips and drops over a period of weeks, months, or even years.

You need a full confession with a full timeline of everything they did. You can't forgive what you don't know. I even see polygraphs suggested often here, but have mixed feelings about it myself. I was able to verify most of my wife's story because she was very sloppy and hadn't deleted any of her texts with friends and she blabbed a lot about it while she was carrying on with a couple of them. Her story and timeline matched up with what she was saying at the time. A lot of it was quite painful to read, too. She held a lot back when she initially told me her version.

Also, couples counseling this early on isn't always a great idea. Many couples counselors aren't very well versed in betrayal trauma and can have a sneaky way of blaming the betrayed spouse for the betrayers decisions. That can do a lot more damage than good. We usually recommend individual counseling first. You for betrayal trauma, and her to figure out whats broken inside her that made her think an affair was a good idea. THERE IS NEVER A JUSTIFICATION TO HAVE AN AFFAIR. Never. It doesn't matter what state your marriage was in. It can never be fixed or made right by bringing a third party into it.

Marriage counselors tend to focus on making a brand new sparkly wonderful marriage at any cost. Even if it means laying some blame at the feet of the betrayed spouse. That is a bad approach. She needs to take 100% accountability for her choices. Whatever problems you had before need to take a back seat until the most serious wound, the betrayal trauma, has stopped bleeding. That doesn't mean you can't address your issues or contributions to the problems, but you are not to blame for her choices. Don't accept that. Once the 2 of you get yourselves into a better place, then you can consider couples counseling.

I'm so sorry you've found yourself here. Just know that this is not your fault. It's just not. Make sure you're taking care of yourself. Try to get sleep and make sure you're eating something. I know thats easier said than done, but you need your strength. It generally takes 2 to 5 years to recover from infidelity. You're going to be on an emotional roller coaster for quite a while. Just know that's normal. You're not crazy. Betrayal trauma is real trauma. PTSD symptoms are common. Your hypervigilance is normal. So don't beat yourself up. You've just had your whole world flipped upside down. Most people say it's the worst thing they've ever experienced. Worse than the death of a loved on, topped only by the loss of a child.

Bengalsfan23,

I'm sorry you're here too.
Pogre and Letmebefrank provided some solid advice.

I'm only 8 months out and my discovery followed a similar path - I busted her in a late night phone call and she convinced me that it was an emotional affair because her AP lived out of state but I was completely wrong. I found an email and a saved note that revealed it had turned physical and they'd been together numerous times, including a hotel just a few miles from my home.

The first couple of months, she acted just like your wife, we did all the same things, and then I found out the affair just went underground. You have to disconnect from your emotional self and start seeing things objectively.

If you felt like you were really in love with someone and connected with them like you've never felt before, and then all of a sudden someone told you to never talk to them again and cut it off, what's the likelihood you would actually do it? VERY VERY SLIM.

If that hurts to hear, I get it. Just know it's not your fault - none of us were perfect in our marriages, including our cheating spouses. It's NOT YOUR FAULT she chose to cheat. It's also very likely that she doesn't actually love this person, she is just in a limerent state that quite honestly is more addictive than cocaine. She's in love with how that person makes her feel inside so to make herself feel better about what she's doing, she has to make her marriage out to be less than what it is.

She'll probably say things that will make you question your entire marriage history and gaslight you into believing lies. Don't fall for any of it. Hold your ground and set firm boundaries.

There is no quick fix for this and even after 8 months of working on reconciling our marriage, it's still hard for me to concentrate on anything else during most days. She's stopped contact, but I know she still thinks of him all the time. It makes me want to vomit.

Ask for a complete written disclosure, complete access to her phone, all her passwords, and location tracking. If she doesn't want to provide it, separate immediately for a set period of time to let her know you're serious. Once you have the written disclosure, if you still feel she's hiding things, tell her you're scheduling a polygraph to see if she changes anything.

attend individual counseling with a therapist specializing in betrayal trauma.

So sorry youre here. The state you describe is intolerable, and, unfortunately, I know this all too well.

You said:

I want to know whether we can build an entirely new marriage together—one built on honesty, equality, communication, and genuine choice.

But I also know I can’t build it by myself.

Right now I feel like I’m waiting while the person who betrayed me decides whether she even wants me anymore, and that’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced.

I want to preface my remarks by saying that when I was going through the fallout of my wifes betrayal as a young husband and father, I did many if the things discouraged here (back then SI didnt exist). I waited. I did the "pick me" dance". I sulked. I got depressed. I raged. I continued to wait.....far far too long before it all ended. It was a fruitless and massively frustrating endeavor.

Its a hard thing to hear when your "spouse" says they are no longer sure about "the marriage" (read "no longer sure about YOU"). So very painful.

But heres the thing. You cannot wait. You have to take the stearing wheel and throttle of your own life and contiue to move forward, for youself and for your kids. Reject limbo. Let her stew there. If this means beginning a formal separation, then do so. Assemble the resources needed to continue on, with or without her. You dont need to tell her. Let your actions speak.

Shes going to do what shes going to do, but it neednt determine your life direction.

Imagine being in a business with a partner declaring what she has said...Im not sure I want to be a part of the business any longer. Would you wait around, or would you take steps to unentangle yourself from them?

Do not give her the wheel. You musttake control.

We can have a deeper exchange about how this fleshes out, but wanted to introduce the concept from someone who learned the hard way that your current state is a road to nowhere...or more accurately, nowhere good.

I wish you well.

Sorry you are experiencing this. Please pay close attention to the pick me dance theme in the comments above. Doing that dance feels right but has a consistently negative effect on both her dopamine addiction as well as your self esteem.

A stronger set of behaviors, you seizing the initiative, will instead act like cold water on her dopamine habit and enhance your self esteem, confidence. She will see that her actions are destroying the marriage, that you are a strong spouse who may love her but will not be a doormat, not be a backup plan. You can still love her and also do the 180 process here rather than the pick me dance. The 180.may turn her around or may not (we don't know how far gone she is) but I have never seen the pick me dance be effective with anyone here, ever.

Be strong. Learn the 180. Avoid being her backup plan. Shine the light on the affair with her family and friends if needed. Take care of yourself.