Agree. Your marriage is not going to make it unless you do grow a pair.

Read these:

Can't We Just Forgive and Forget?


How to Survive Infidelity

Nicole, yours is not a unique situation by any means. What you describe is a textbook affair. (Remember, I know, 'cuz I got myself into one.) I'm gonna react to several things you've said in your post, insofar as the perspective might be useful to you.

First, if I were you, I'd put keyloggers on your husband's PC & cellphone if you haven't done so already. With the trickle-truth that's gone on in your case, and with how long the improper relationship went on, and with your knowledge that it was beyond talking (kissing ain't talking), and the fact that he didn't change his contact info, I'm guessing that two of the things that are bothering you, even though you're reluctant to confront them or even admit them here on an anonymous website, are the possibility that this relationship ain't 100% over, and that it might've gone farther than you've been told -- and all you've got to go on has been told to you by the affairees.

Well, he needs to change his contact info, plain & simple. Cell, e-mail, and if at all possible, work phone & work e-mail. That's textbook, week #1 advice for ending an affair. You need to insist upon this. Ask nicely, but insist. (BTW, your textbook here ought to be "Surviving An Affair". My wife & I would both tell you -- and we don't get a single penny for saying so -- that SAA may well have saved our marriage. Our counselor put us onto it after my affair. Please check it out asap.)

Look, Nicole: I was the official "Last Man in the World Whom You'd Ever Have Thought Would Have an Affair." I was the clean-cut, family-man, good dad, model employee, church volunteer, and basically happily married for 16+ years to a woman with whom I got along well. People -- including quite possibly your family members -- often don't believe what they don't want to believe, especially if it doesn't square with what they've seen in the past. Add to that, that once a person has allowed someone of the opposite sex (other than his/her spouse) to start meeting top emotional needs -- in your husband's case, I'll bet my last dollar that admiration & attention are very high on his list -- then it doesn't take much for the addiction to set in; and once a person is addicted, they will do what any addict will do: they'll flat-out look you in the eye & lie to your face if they think they need to do so in order to keep open a clear path to getting their 'fix.'

Please read that again & let it sink in.

Affairs are addictions. The brain-chemistry impact is the same as that of crack cocaine -- you can look it up. The first time my wife voiced apprehensions about the other woman's intentions, I looked her in the eye -- my wife, my best friend -- and assured her she had nothing to worry about. I may even have believed it myself for that moment. But I failed to institute 'no contact', and because, dammit, I was hooked on the cheap admiration, a few weeks later, I found myself paying cash for hotel room so that it wouldn't show up on my credit card statement.

Partly that, perhaps, but also what I said above regarding addictions: To him, ending the relationship meant the end of his cheap 'fix.'

Careful with your interpretation re: what MarriageBuilders advises re: details. You may not need to know every gory detail. But you sure do need to know the extent of the affair. Are you sure that you know? Let me be very blunt (because I'd be doing you a disservice if I sugarcoated any of this): Your husband's affair went on for a long time to have remained emotional-only. Now, I'll grant you that from a marital-recovery standpoint, it may or actually may not matter so much to you whether they slept together, if he is truly committed to be a good husband going forward, and if you are likewise both committed to learning & meeting one another's top emotional needs & avoiding lovebusters. But from a recovery-standpoint, truth & transparency on his part -- retrospectively as well as going forward -- are essential, and are a bellwhether of his commitment. (I take it that at this point, openness & honesty is a top need of yours, right?) It's up to you, but consider whether you need him to take a polygraph.

Well, you gotta love the irony, I guess: Imagine, he feels 'used' because his married affair-partner wasn't faithful to him! Actually, it's not uncommon for unhappily-married OWs to troll for more than one affair partner. I wasn't my OW's first affair-partner; she admitted to me that she'd kept in touch with an ex-BF from out-of-state, and actually met up with him more than once (for all I know, maybe lots) on his business layovers -- a long-distance affair. Setting aside the self-centeredness of the sentiment, the feeling of having been used (or at least the feeling that he might not have been his affair-partner's "one-&-only") might nevertheless actually be beneficial in helping him see his affair for what it actually was, rather than for the idealized fantasy that some guys will construct in their minds.

Whoa, there, cowgirl, hold on a sec: You need to take a minute & recenter your perspective on "hurt." There's little hurt, and then there's BIG HURT. Think about it. If your child (or, heck, your husband) was walking backwards and was about to fall over a cliff behind him, wouldn't you knock him to the ground if you had to in order to keep him from going over the cliff? Knocking him down might hurt, but falling over a cliff would hurt a lot worse. Asking a man who's had an affair to start living transparently isn't "hurting" him -- it's keeping him from hurting himself much more grievously. It's giving him the gift of accountability. He has been an addict, Nicole. Accountability is the best thing you can do for him. Conversely, denying him accountability is one of the very worst things you could do for the wayward spouse in a marriage that's recovering from an affair. Denying accountability risks allowing him to hurt himself badly & hurt you in the process. (Think BIG HURT.)

More to the point, it's a mistake to blindly trust before the trust is earned. Never mind that it's wrong. Worry that it's dumb. Worry that it's bad for the future of your marriage.

Glove oil hit on something real important and that is knowing all the facts about the affair. Has he answered all of your questions to your COMPLETE satisfaction?

Yes, I do worry sometimes that I haven't gotten the whole truth and that the relationship could still be going on.

After having been lied to for so long, even after we committed to working out our problems, I don't know how I could NOT worry that he's lying to me still. I have some evidence that supports his claims that it didn't get beyond the kiss and that he's not still in touch with her, but not anything that proves it beyond a doubt. I'm sure that keyloggers and other snooping methods would provide more proof, but how can I ever know definitively? If he really wants to hide it, he can.

That said, I believe I know all there is to know about the affair. I didn't ask for a ton of detail, but I asked for enough to know how serious it was. I also read their e-mails and texts, so I saw what their conversations were like. Nothing in any of them gave me cause to believe that there was more than he's told me.

Regarding exposure as accountability: one of my concerns is that family members will not agree that an EA is truly an affair, and they won't support me. I fear that they will still take his side and tell me that I am unreasonable and insecure. I have a couple of family members that feel that there is no such thing as an EA. Others believe that if sex did not occur, there's nothing to worry about. Anyone else encounter this?

Yeah, he feels used. But I don't think it's because she was "unfaithful" to him in the way I think you mean. It's more that he thought the feelings were mutual, but it turns out she is just a user looking for as many people as possible to fill her ENs. She's a phony. He thought she was genuine. On this side of things, he does see it for what it was. He has told me that he doesn't know what he saw in her. He's also been adament that he wants nothing more to do with her.

Regarding ENs: Yup, admiration is a huge one of his. And I have been terrible about fulfilling it for far too long. OW, though, is fantastic at manipulation. She was right there to fill in where I was lacking. Attention is lower on his list. We've not had trouble there. I also suspect that SF for him had a lot to do with it, even if they never actually had sex. OW is well-endowed and super slender, and about five years younger than me. I'm not ugly or overweight (I'm actually in damn good shape and have been since before this whole thing started) but I don't compete with OW. I don't know how else to describe it other than she dresses and behaves VERY sexily. Men are drawn to her. I've watched it happen over and over. I don't know why they can't see how loose and fake she is. She'll say anything to get a guy to compliment her and be her "friend". My point about the SF is that he probably got a lot of satisfaction from having someone like her give him so much attention and admiration, and express an interest in him sexually.

Regarding my ENs, openness and honesty are at the top, followed closely by affection. His honesty has been a problem in other areas of our marriage prior to all this. Due to all of my LBs, affection was also a problem. Hard to be affectionate and want to spend time with someone who you don't feel admired by.

ETA: ENs were one of the things we started working on early into all this, before D-Day. I believe that is the reason he and I have been able to start working forward, and why he's been able to cut it off. He's told me that he feels that all of his needs are being met, and feels no desire to look elsewhere.

As to contacting OWH: I do not have, and never have had, his contact information. I have never thought it appropriate to have phone numbers and such for other men that aren't family, even as "friends". It's a personal boundary of mine. Even before reading up on EAs, I felt intuitively that it was wrong. Along with a whole host of other things that my husband has never thought were wrong. He thought I was overly concerned about things that didn't warrant it. Live and learn, I guess.

Is SAA more than what's included at the end of HNHN and on this website?

Again, thank you all. The insight about it being an addiction helps tremendously -- not only in terms of how to handle it, but also in terms of coping with it. It helps me to understand how he could do something so damaging to us. ENs are incredibly powerful.

What do you mean "his side"? Does your husband acknowledge that he was in an affair, or does he not? There should be no "his side" & "your side." There should be only one side; "your side" (plural; meaning, the both of you together as a couple). He's already told his brother, right? So expose the affair together. (Your husband can easily silence any doubters by politely asking them "I had another woman in my arms & I was kissing her; if that's not an affair, WTF do you think it is?" )

Good news, this is fixable! Get better at it. You took his ring on your finger for a reason. There must be something there to admire.

In emergency circumstances, you can cross boundaries. You'd put your lips on another man's if he'd had a heart attack and you were the only one there trained to give CPR. And it is entirely appropriate for a betrayed spouse to contact his/her spouse's affair-partner to make sure the facts check out. In the internet age, you can easily get his contact info -- no lame-o excuses allowed on that.

Have him take a poly?
Polygraph Testing

Yes, he acknowledges it was an affair. "His side" was a bad choice of words. What I meant was that they would defend his actions, regardless of whether or not HE AND I feel it is a problem.

Also to clarify, she was not in his arms and he wasn't kissing her. She planted one on him while everyone was out of the room, and he pulled away. That's the story he's given me, her messages to him confirm it, and I have no evidence to the contrary.

My husband has MANY admirable qualities, and I have always seen them. I've just been learning to express my admiration for him. On this side of things it seems so obvious that it should ALWAYS have been this way. Before we started working things out I constantly passed disrespectful judgments and had angry outbursts. I've been very selfish and immature, and I carry a lot of guilt about that. In the same way that I can't believe he did those things to me, I'm ashamed that I've treated my best friend the way I have. I'm disgusted with myself for leaving him with an emptiness that he had to find another woman to fill because his wife didn't do it. That shame and guilt is my burden to bear. He's forgiven me for it, but I don't forgive myself. I've promised him that I will work every day for the rest of my life to make sure he is never sorry that he chose me for his wife, and that he always knows and feels how much I love, admire, respect, and need him.

How did you all approach the polygraph test and other EPs with your WS? I know he wants to move past this, but I'm afraid he might see some of it (the poly in particular) as re-opening the wound. I don't want to keep dragging him through this muck.

Did you read the polygraph thread?

You tell him you need it as a step for recovery.

Just did. Thank you for the link.

You're welcome.

Nicole. What is his response to taking a poly? His response will be telling.

My story is very similiar to yours. I found out the truth in pieces over time. It was painful and almost destroyed our recovery.

Now is the time to get the whole truth.

Nicole, it may seem like we're throwing a lot of stuff at you really fast. Please know that your recovery has to happen at its own pace, as you are able to feel emotionally safe. We are just sharing from our collective experiences, and there are lot of us. You're new to this. Please feel that it's OK to take some time to re-read & digest it all.

I am in your husband's corner as much as yours; I have already walked some in his shoes. I can feel for a wayward husband who's honestly sorry about how he messed up & who wants to make things better. However, I don't trust him. That's because I also know firsthand some of their hangups & some of the trickle-truthing that goes on, and some of the reluctance to take full precautions -- because even when a wayward spouse starts with the best of intentions to make right their wrongs, lots of them haven't thought through the implications of their actions, or the motives behind their actions. And so they fail to do all they could be doing to help their betrayed spouses feel safe & to build better marriages. (And that needs to be your goal. Going back to the way things were pre- D-Day won't work, because the marriage you had back then wasn't affair-proof. It's great that you realize this, as I sense you do, but your H needs to realize it also.) So it's OK for you not to trust him fully -- that's not a shortcoming on your part. Trust is won back in installments, in increments, over much time, and should never be blind or unverified.

And you're right, there's this general cultural supposition, or conventional "wisdom" which holds that an emotional affair really isn't cheating. It's completely wrong, because the emotional connection -- the division of loyalties that occurs with the emotional connection -- is what allows all the rest to happen, in an affair. (People don't go boffing random strangers whom they meet in a grocery-store checkout line. They first share compliments, recreational companionship, confidences -- intimate conversation, in MarriageBuilders' parlance -- and thus they form a bond that constitutes & sustains an affair.) You're certainly competing against the commonly-held misunderstanding that the emotions don't matter & that affairs are all & only about sex. People who have this misunderstanding will want to minimize what you're going through, and will want to downplay its seriousness & will expect you to downplay it as well. You'll do well to simply ignore those people. They may mean well, or not, but on the matter of affairs, they are simply too ignorant to be listened to.

Can't speak to the polygraph. Re: EPs, I think that reading SAA together, section-by-section, and discussing each section afterwards, would be a good idea for the two of you. It'll help you both. And it should help him empathize with you & help him appreciate why EPs are so crucial. (And also why "radical honesty" -- about the present, future and past -- is so crucial, and so beneficial, to the kind of marriage that you say you want to have.)

And re: "re-opening the wound": It's your wound that he needs to be worried about. If EPs -- and perhaps even a polygraph -- are a positive step toward helping heal your wound, why wouldn't he jump at the chance? That's not you "dragging him through the muck" -- that's you offering him a shortcut to pulling himself out of the muck that he himself willingly waded into when he chose, over the course of a year, to engage in an inappropriate relationship, and chose to lie to you about aspects of it after he got busted.

Girl! You've gotta quit blaming yourself for crummy choices that he made, and you've gotta quit acting & talking in ways that give him excuses not to fully own those choices of his. Listen: People don't cheat on their spouses because of unmet needs. People cheat because they have poor boundaries. Unmet emotional needs can certainly weaken a marriage relationship & make it more vulnerable to an affair, but the decision to engage in an affair is entirely the choice of the person who engages in the affair.

I am sure he does want to sweep it all under the rug, but that is not how marriages recover. The way to close *YOUR* wound is to get the full truth. I would not drag him through the mud at all. Just hold him accountable for doing the necessary things to give you just compensation. You act like he is the victim when you hold him accountable, but he is anything BUT. You are the victim and it is up to you to hold him accountable.

And once again, this affair should be exposed to your family and friends. If some want to believe you are "insecure" your husband can explain that you are not insecure, but that he had an affair. Even so, the point is not to get the approval of crapwits, but to tell your circle of family and friends so they can hold your husband accountable and keep the skank out.

I asked WH if he would take a poly to prove his innocence (i.e. just "friends" not physical.)


I know that would be something I would jump at the chance to do...prove my innocence to my spouse...if my story was honest.

I asked WH if he would take a poly to prove his innocence

The problem with this is that "asking" leaves open the door for "declining". Great if he says "Yes", but a source of irritation if he says "No" and you have to come back saying (in essence), "Wrong answer, Bozo! You will do it!"

Better to make the statement that until you have incontrovertible proof of the extent of his betrayals, you do not feel confident in moving forward. (And, btw, you have heard that a poly provides just such assurance.)

Gloveoil - this was a wonderful post and has a lot of good points. It was even good to read for ME, a BS who is 13 months past Dday- thank you.

Nicole - I would strongly urge you to push for the poly as I suspect your WH is lying to you about the extent of the affair. I had my WH take a poly 9 months into our recovery because there were things that didn't....sit well with me. I found out that he had been lying to me about when his affair had started and that caused major issues in my healing for me. I wish I had pushed for it from the get-go but Kiss refused and I let it go. If your WH refuses, do not let it go! It means that he is hiding the truth from you and you are entitled to the truth.

~RQ

And that is exactly what WH did. He refused using the lame excuse of "ethical reasons." I then knew without a doubt that he was lying.

Nicole there is nothing wrong with making a poly a condition to keep you interested in the marriage...but you do not have to be an jerk about it. That's probably not a good Plan A.

You really don't know this for sure. Someone who sends naked pictures and then meets privately isn't just hugging and kissing. Make your DH take a poly. We went through Marriage Builders counseling and one of the things they stressed was radical honest. You may not feel you can live through the total truth but believe me, you will drive yourself insane later if you don't have 100% truth about the A. I know you love your DH and even though they sucker punched us by having an A, we still want them to be OK but now is the time that you make him accountable for what he did by making sure you are safe in the M. That includes being totally transparent and radical honesty. I highly recommend counseling with MB.