My lovely wife and I started dating early in our senior year of high school, November of 1968. She had previously been dating a guy that was in my circle of friends, and I guess I knew that they had a close relationship. She was a very sweet girl, super nice and friendly, and good looking. I can remember watching her in a bikini at the beach with him thinking "Boy, if I could just have a girl like that I'd be the happiest person in the world!" Well, they had broken up by October of our senior year and I screwed up enough courage to ask her out and she happily accepted. I walked around on cloud 9 for days after anticipating our date that Friday night.

We dated pretty much exclusively through graduation, and she went to a college about a 6 hour drive from my university. That summer, one Sunday afternoon before I headed back to school, she tearfully told me she had lost her virginity to her previous boyfriend (a friend of mine), it was a one time deal, and he had not called her bacl after that, breaking off the relationship. She wanted to make sure I knew, if it would make any difference to our relationship, she wanted to know then. By this time I was hopelessly in love with this gal, and I tearfully told her no, that I really, really loved her. We went on to get married between my junior and senior year of college, spending a very happy senior year together after marriage. After graduation, coming back home, and beginning in the family business. Have had 42+ years of bliss, and 3 beautiful (and grown now) kids, who have given us a number of lovely grandkids.

I'm sorry, this is going to be a long story, and I really need some advice how to handle it. I never thought in my life I'd be in this situation.
She has never given me any reason to doubt her love or loyalty to me all this time.

It started with our high school 45th reunion in early June of this year.

Her old boyfriend from years ago showed up with his now girlfriend. He has been divorced from his wife for about 12 years.

Is your wife having an affair?

Welcome to Marriage Builders. Are you going to describe the problem? We don't need a long history. If you can describe the basic problem in 3-4 short paragraphs, we will be able to understand.

At the Friday night informal cocktail party he came over to me like a long lost friend. The wife was featured in some of the pics from that night talking with him. I may mention, my lovely wife has aged very well for a 60+ year old woman, and stands out, especially with most of the gals from our class, as an elegant, striking beauty! A woman you are proud to be married to.
The next night, at the formal dinner at a country club, old boyfriend and his girl (who quite frankly, was not, to me, very attractive) came in and my wife insisted they sit with us at our table. He sat next to my wife, and they seemed to have a good time conversing. They had not seen each other in 35 years, since our 10th reunion. The wife had a number of champagne's, which really loosens her up. After dinner, everyone was dancing, his girl asked me to dance, which I reluctantly did, and after that her old boyfriend asked my wife to dance. It was a slow dance, and you could tell they both were enjoying it, and talking to each other. So much so I had to retire to the men's room to keep from watching. We then said our goodby's and left.

OK, sorry. new to here

Try to make this long story short.
Later the next week she was on my Ipad and left her Facebook page open. Out of curiosity I went through her page. Old boyfriend is not a member of Facebook, however she searched and found his son's site for his business, "liked" it and sent him a private message back in July of 2009 asking if "John so and so" was his father, that we had gone to high school with him. He responded back yes. Since 2009 she has messaged the son every time (about 3 times) we've had a reunion or get together. After the reunion, old boyfriend messaged my wife through his son's page giving her his cell #, saying it was great to see her. (she had not told me about any of this correspondence).

I went on her cell phone and found she had added him as a contact (with his girlfriends name), had sent him a message (that she had deleted, and they had talked for 44 minutes after messaging. I brought this up to my wife, telling her that she had left her Facebook page open and I had found the correspondence, and saw on her phone the call. She stated that she had sent him some photos of the reunion, and he had called her(which he did) to talk more about their family's and to see who to send a check for the reunion party, as he had showed up at the last minute, without pre-paying. Wife also told me that he said he still loved her and regretted what he had done to her in high school. I checked her phone log (her phone is on our company's account) and confirmed the texts and call. Two days later she had deleted him as a contact and the call, along wth the message she had deleted. Checked the phone log from mid-June until early August and no more contact between them.

Early August I was going on a 6 day fishing trip with a buddy to Canada. While I was gone, our daughter just happened to be on a retreat with her husband and his company, at a resort about an hour and a half from our home, not far from where her old boyfriend lives, and has his business. Further, my wife had offered my daughter to take her son (our grandson) down to the resort for the weekend, as the last part of the retreat was to be family oriented. Thinking about this before I left on my fishing trip I felt this was the "perfect storm" IF my wife had more feelings for the "old flame" than she would admit to me (she had told me, though, that he had made her feel very good about herself, and she liked it). Honestly, she would NEVER hurt my feelings. But after what happened at and after the reunion, I knew there was something more there. I did something I've never done before. I got a GPS vehicle car tracker and put it in a pocket of her rear door.
While on my fishing trip she would text me daily of her love for me, how much she missed me and sleeping with me. I responded likewise. Upon my return, she had on a VERY low cut, slinky silk dress, was super loving, and we made love like bandits that evening.

The next day I checked her phone log, and, much to my dismay, found that on the Monday I had left on my fishing trip, she had sent him 2 text. On Wednesday he text her back, they text back and forth several times that day, followed by a 44 minute call. On Friday (the day before she was to take our grandson to the resort)wife receives a text from boyfriend late morning, then she called him and they talked for 22 minutes. On Saturday, when she took grandson down, she text boyfriend at 3:49, about time she would have been headed home, and then boyfriend calls her a few minutes later and they talk for 4 minutes. All of these messages and calls have been deleted from her cell phone.

Get to the point.

No one is going to read your novel about all the superfluous facts.

Is your wife having an affair?

Do you know who the POSOM is?

Just start with that info.

LTL

With this info, I retrieved the GPS tracker from her car, and fortunately or unfortunately, it had worked very well. It shows her leaving the resort, pulling over for 3 minutes when he called, and then, about 15 minutes up the road, pulling off the interstate and heading straight for his place of business. She is there for 43 minutes. (also, this is a Saturday afternoon, when his business is closed. I confirmed that by going down and driving past last Saturday afternoon. Locked up tight!). She then leaves and drives over an hour home.
Do I think there was any hanky panky? No. But what had they talked about? I did get some iphone recovery software that showed some of the deleted messages, which were basically "nice to see you", and "are you OK?" and "call me if you can". But the one she sent him the day I left was her telling him she was coming down that Saturday to drop her grandson off and could stop by on the way home. Here again, she reached out to him!
My delima is, I love this woman, always have, know she loves me and don't want her to think I was spying on her, or the lengths I went to to get this information. But why does she think she needs to hide this? If she needs closure to their old relationship, I understand, but this hiding it, and contact with him without me knowing is killing me. It has been almost 3 weeks since that Saturday and no more contact between them. What do I do to get her to open up to me?

HELP!!!

She is definitely having an affair and she has probably taken the affair further underground, knowing that you have access to her phone.
She may have purchased an affair phone.

I suggest you hire a Private Investigator and get the evidence needed to expose their affair.

SIR. What a very frustrating read. It took 10 posts for you to get to the point.

And you ask why she is hiding this? Because she is having an AFFAIR. People do this when they have affairs. People who want "closure" close the door, they don't open it. Your wife and her boyfriend have opened the door.

Now, you have a couple of paths to take, one will be a disaster and the other will save your marriage. You can ignore this and sweep it under the rug and the affair will get more and more entrenched until she leaves for the OM. That is where she is headed NOW.

But you can stop all this RIGHT NOW before it is too late. Go to her and tell her you have been watching her EVERY MOVE and know that she had a secret rendezvous with the OM on XX-XX-XXXX for 45 minutes at his shop and then cite some of her texts. Throw out just enough to let her understand you know it all.

DEMAND that she end her affair TODAY by sending that piece of crap a no contact letter and ask her to go through a marriage recovery program with you.

Regardless of her response, you need to follow up with an exposure of her affair. Expose the affair to the OM's girlfriend, your children, your family members. AND the OM's son. Once you do that I would call up that POS and tell him he is to NEVER EVER contact your wife again.

You are at a very critical juncture in your marriage right now and unless you take this approach you can look forward to an increasingly entrenched love affair between your wife and this POS. Exposure ruins affairs and that is the step you should take.

This.

You have taken decisive action already with the GPS tracker (nice job) and tracing down the texts. Next, you need to show more of that kind of assertiveness by confronting the POSOM and your wife. Don't delay as the affair will entrench.

Do everything ML has told you to do, and then ask your wife to read Surviving an Affair with you.

Also, do not trust anything your wife says right now. She is in the fog of an affair and she will lie to cover it up. That is why you need to keep snooping, and you need to put a VAR in her car and in your home so you can know what she is doing when you are away.

I would also recommend you show her this video: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi6806_inf.html

Thanks for pointing that out, Justthe3ofus. I was remiss in giving him praise for the EXCELLENT job of snooping. You did a great job, HM72!