I signed up for a sex chat forum a few years ago, and to make a long story short my wife found out over a year ago. We have chosen to work on our marriage and we are going to MC.

I have agreed to delete my account at the site, and I have answered most but not all of my wife's questions about my activities while participating there. Depending on the day she may or may not believe she has the full truth from me. I fully believe if I give her the full truth she will leave and never look back and I do not want that.

Is it possible for us to fully reconcile and have a good marriage if I keep a few things secret to protect her? One of these is quite dramatic.

No, you will not recover. She needs to know the full truth of what has gone on in your secret second life.

Is it "protecting" someone by allowing them to believe a lie about who their spouse really is and what their spouse actually did behind their back?

You're looking to protect yourself, not her. If you wanted her to be protected, you would let her know the truth and let her make her choice.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5060_qa.html

Where has your dishonesty and secret second life led your marriage? Into the ditch, that's where....

That's her decision to make, though. It's wrong for you to deny it to her. Doesn't she deserve to have all the facts?

We would never support you in doing something wrong like concealing a dramatic and unsettling truth from your wife.

Believe it or not, we have seen couples recover from a lot of dramatic and painful events including serial infidelity. But that's by following the plan here, and that starts with radical honesty.

In the past she has suspected I didn't only have chats with random women, but she has asked if had ongoing relationships with any of them. I have always told her I did not, but the truth is I had (and still feel) an emotional connection to one woman. I have not chatted with her since June, but I will admit to longing for her. If I tell my wife this it will break her heart and I know she will leave me and our children will suffer through a divorce. How can that level of honesty be good for anyone?

I have left my cyber life behind me and I will not go back. Why can we not rebuild from here and let the past be? She does not need to know about the other woman or how long the emotional affair lasted. It would be cruel to tell her. What am I missing?

I don't see why you don't think it's cruel for YOU to decide what she does and does not need to know. It's like you're the parent and she's the child. Yuck.

It has been good for all the people here who have tried the Marriage Builders plan and found that it worked!

When I told my wife about my porn usage that had occurred years before early in our marriage, she and I thought we would never recover. But we did! Today we are happier than ever!

Your wife needs to know about the other woman so she can know what the significance is if she ever sees contact between you and the OW. She absolutely has to be able to know who she is.

I suggest you write two letters.

Write one to your wife confessing the relationship.

Write another to the OW (don't send it) telling her what you did with her was a horribly cruel thing to do to your wife and children and that you must never have any contact with her ever again.

Give BOTH letters to your wife at the same time and let her send the second letter to the OW.

Amy, I want you to know that out of respect and love for my wife and children, I have come to realize that I must never see or talk with you again. My relationship with you was a cruel indulgence that Lee did not deserve. While I cannot repay Lee for the pain I have caused her, I will do my best to become the husband she has been missing. I care a great deal for my family and I would not want to do anything to risk their happiness. I will not make any further contact with you and I do not want you to make any contact with me. Please respect my decision to end our relationship.

Sincerely,
Kevin

And it would have been A LOT better if he had told me the truth years ago rather than letting me believe a lie for so long. Years of lies hurt worse than the original betrayal.

I did what I was suppose to do. I left the other woman whom I care deeply for. I have broken her heart, so why break the heart of another even more innocent woman?

We have worked to rebuild our marriage for a long, long time and this will destroy it. She will leave, I know she will leave. I has one professional tell me sometimes too much truth is cruel, and it is better to leave things in the past if they are not a continuing issue.

And that is a very good point that Prisca made.

The longer you keep this a secret from your BW, the more you just add insult to injury. And the more angry and hurt she will be.

It is in the best interest of your BW and your M to reveal the truth to her ASAP.

This is all just rationalizations to do what is EASIER and in YOUR best interest. Not the best interest of your wife or your M.

You have betrayed spouses here telling you they would prefer to know the truth. Do you, the wayward spouse, think you know better than we do which is more cruel?

I don't think I'm getting my question clear. How does it hurt my wife or our marriage if I do not tell her and she never finds out? How can it hinder our reconciliation if she never knows?

To have a good marriage, she has to be married to a man who cares to her and wouldn't do cruel things like that to her.

Take heed.

An affair is an addiction. As an addict, you need help to protect against another relapse. That is why exposing your addiction (the affair) is the best possible way to guarantee your wife's security.

It WILL hurt your wife and your marriage. You already said, "Depending on the day she may or may not believe she has the full truth from me." Don't you think her feeling that way is hurting her and your marriage?

I'm speaking from experience. I found out about my husband's affair 4 1/2 years AFTER the fact. During that time, he tried to restart the affair - because he was addicted, as you are. TRUST me - the additional years of lies did hurt our marriage. It is very difficult to find out how many years of my life were a lie. And it hurt my husband too - he has said that the guilt was eating him up inside. He also thought I would leave if I found out. I would've thought so too. The truth is that your wife MAY leave you, or she may not, but she deserves the FULL truth. Do the right thing. You can't build a happy marriage on lies.

I KNEW something was wrong. I just thought there was something wrong with ME - why else would it be that my own husband didn't love me anymore? Because THAT is how I felt.

Do you want your wife to feel that way?

We have told you, over and over again and it's all in the basic concepts and in the coping with infidelity articles on the site.

You can't build a recovery based on lies and you can't build a happy marriage without a commitment to being open and honest. Your BW can't protect herself if she doesn't know the truth about what you have been doing behind her back.

It seems to me that you just don't want to hear it because you are more interested in protecting yourself and/or your OW than your W.

Here's Dr. Harley's article that answers your question:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3405_dishonesty.html

Because the truth will always out. You have not made her aware of this OW. You have nothing stopping you from going back to her in a time of weakness. If you tell your wife you can heal from it and be stronger for it. It won't eat at you like it has been doing for so long. You're here asking this question because of guilt. Guilt is a good thing for you to feel. It let's you know you're doing something wrong. The only way is to tell her the truth and let her decide. Don't wait for her to ask or to pry it out. Step up and be a man and tell her the truth for her sake, your sake, and that of your marriage. Radical honesty. She will thank you for it in the end.

There will always be an elephant in the room. A foggy air of dishonesty.

And she will find out, the truth always comes out. No matter how fast the lie, the truth out runs in the end.

There are plenty of betrayed spouses on here, who find out of an affair years later. They are more likely to end up divorced, as the injury of years of betrayal and dishonesty is what kills the marriage.

Your choice, rebuild your marriage on the quicksand of lies by omission, or find the hard ground of the truth. And hitting the ground may hurt initially, but there is a solid foundation for the future.

Jurist,

What got you into this mess? Having a secret second life, and lying to your W, just spill everything all at once make your sincere apologies and hope for the best.

Do you want to carry this weight around for the rest of your life? There is a good chance your BW is waiting for you to come clean and knows already from your body language.

You also need to make your confession to the betrayed husband of the woman you had this affair with they were your victims as well.

God Bless
Gamma

So, by not telling your wife, you can protect the love you have for the OW, and thus protect your affair. No recovered WS would still "care deeply for" the OW unless they were still in the fog. Your affair is ongoing. You really haven't ended it. It will end when it is exposed. Start by telling your wife.

It's just the Right Thing to do.

She already doesn't believe you according to what you stated, at least part of the time and her gut suspicion will remain vigilant until she can find out the truth.

True intimacy is unavailable to you and your W until her gut instinct can be put at ease.

Put it all on the line, answering everything she wants to know and then follow up by offering and scheduling a polygraph test to assure her for her peace of mind.

let me ask you this way...

What does it say about YOUR conscience and character that you could live with KNOWING you are keeping truth from her?

A person of conscience who has TRULY turned away from their waywardness would not be ABLE to keep things secret, IMO.

If your doctor did surgery on you to remove a tumor, would you want him to leave part of it in because you might be upset if you saw how big the tumor was? If the bank made an error in the amount of 50,000 dollar, would you want the whole 50,000 dollars back or just 35,000?

The whole truth is the only truth.

In other words, you are lying to her for your own selfish gain. You are knowingly tricking her into staying with you. That is manipulate and cruel.

The solution to infidelity is honesty, not more lies. Don't cruelly deny your wife the right to make decisions about her own life. She is not your PET.

It hurts your wife to lie to her about her own life. It also means you are UNREPENTANT and therefore DANGEROUS to her. You are an unrepentant adulterer and a liar. How is that safe for her? She cannot protect herself FROM YOU if she doesn't know everything.

A person who is unrepentant will do it again whenever it is convenient. But if she knows everything you did, she can better protect herself from you. OR she may decide to dump you. That is her right - a right you have cruelly denied her for SELFISH GAIN.

I have to agree with all the others. It is the RIGHT THING TO DO to confess completely and let your wife decide what to do with the information. Ultimately you will feel better that you did the right thing, and a weight will be lifted off your heart. You won't be able to continue to live a lie indefinitely anyway - it will eat at you. If you confess though while telling her you are profoundly sorry, you realize what you did was horribly wrong and you are begging for her forgiveness, she may very well give you another chance and you will have a chance to one day have a great marriage again.

You've rebuilt nothing but a facade.

You "deeply care for" another woman and you lie to your wife daily. You treat her like a child, deciding what she should and should not know, and view her as undeserving and/or incapable of handling the truth about her life.

If she leaves? It is her choice, just as it was your choice to lead a secret life.

Oh, and she WILL find out. Truth floats. I found out about my husband's first affair, conducted in 1987, in 2010.

He, like you, NEVER intended to tell me.

Man up.

BV

As I told my husband just yesterday - If you still long for the OW and tell me, we can face it and find a way to deal with it...if you still long for her and hide it we cannot deal with it and it is much more likely to destroy us in the end.

Is it the lies, the hidden longing, the words that do not match the feelings? I don't know, but I know that it is destructive in the end. Also, it is morally wrong to deny your spouse the right to make a choice about her own life based on the truth.

She has no way to find out. It was all online, therefore we know none of the same people. Nobody saw us together, because we were never together. In this situation there is no common thread to tie us together, therefore my wife will never know if I never tell her. If she doesn't know she will never be hurt. Why do people believe she and I cannot have an intimate bond if I keep this from her?

Because secrets are never good. What if she found out? How would she react? I would rather be told then to find out. Its your life but trust me you cannot hide things forever and your wife is not dumb sooner or later she will find out. When she does its not going to be pretty.

She will find out. Maybe not this time, but as an unrepentant cheater, you will do it again. You need EPs in place that she agrees to.

And, Buddy, there is no such thing as an "intimate" bond based on anything but 100% openness and honesty. The fact that you even question this is shameful.

Of course, it is within the realm of possibility that she will never find out. However, your marriage probably would not last even if that were the case. Dr. Harley explains that there is a very narrow path to recovery after infidelity (including internet infidelity). If you deviate from that path, your marriage probably won't make it. Refusing to become completely transparent with your wife is a huge deviation which would likely end up wrecking your marriage, regardless of whether she discovers this.

You shouldn't tell her because you are afraid she will find out; you should tell her because you love her enough to show her the extent of her injuries so she can start to heal; you should tell her because you love her enough to protect her by enabling her to hold you accountable; you should tell her because you love her enough to want her to make decisions about her own life based on the truth. The question isn't whether you can get away with it; the question is whether you love her enough to stop trying to get away with it. Do you love her that much?

You can't have an intimate bond with someone you are deceiving. What kind of a person TRICKS and manipulates another person into staying married to him? An unrepentant liar and cheater, that's who. Your wife might choose not to stay married to such a person.

You have denied her the right to make her own decisions about her own life. That is sick and cruel.

Anyway, there is nothing we can do to help you if your goal is to deceive your wife. You are wasting valuable board time.

What if she would choose NOT to stay married to an unrepentant liar and cheater? How will she make that decision to leave if you don't tell her?

Jurist,

You are right, in a sense, she can never PROVE anything, unless she is good with computer forensics, and the data has not been overwritten. The OW could also confesses to her BH who then contacts your BW.

So you can just join the legions of people in marriages which never healed from infidelity. Infidelity doesn't end most marriages it just wounds them and they remain broken until death or divorce.

This also reminds me of the saying "that the only person who knows you are wearing a fake rolex watch is YOU".

God Bless
Gamma

There is a verse in the Bible that says, "he who covers his sin will never prosper". You are covering it up because you are too much of a selfish coward to tell the truth.

Your mother would be ashamed.

My mother is dead.

So when are you going to do the right thing?

Please do the right thing. A fresh start can begin today. Even if your wife decides to divorce, you can still recover personally and start living a life you (and your children and your remaining living relatives and friends ) can be proud of.

You are so sure your wife will never find out....does she have access to a computer ?

Because your story is out here for everyone to read and it wouldn't take a genius to figure out it was HER husband she was reading about. And HER life that is being wrecked. All it would take is her doing a little research on how to improve her marriage, etc and up pops "Marriage Builders".

Good luck to you Sir.

There were 2 in your affair. Who says at some point the other is not going to babble to somebody? Gossip likes to travel.

I'm not sure why you guys are wasting your valuable time here. It is obvious that jurist is not going to man up and tell his wife how horrible of a husband he is. He would prefer to live a lie.

Honestly, jurist, it doesn't matter whether or not your wife can live with a deceitful and unrepentant man. But, how can you live with yourself? That's very sad to me.

I think maybe you might feel like people are not seeing your point. I do see your point. If she could NEVER find out, do you let her not know. Maybe.

You need to consider that people here in your wife's position are telling you that you should express the truth and nothing but the truth.

We understand his point perfectly. There is no "maybe" about it. To think this is OK is just like thinking affairs are OK, as long as you don't get caught.

Jurist is seeking a pat on the back for his deception and he isn't getting it. The only point is that a relationship built on lies will fail. Happens all the time and for some reason Jurist believes he is extremely special and can get away with it. Good luck on your immature charade, I feel for your family. I am 100% sure this instance is just the tip of the iceberg.

Then she's ashamed right now.

Paging MelodyLane: did you include this counselor in your head count of recent posts about idiot counselors?

So, your 'counselor' advised you to lie and live a live of deception. And you're good with that because it's convenient for YOU. It would be hard for you to have to be a stand-up guy and admit that you cruelly betrayed your vows to your loving wife. I can see where the counselor's advice would be terribly attractive to you.You probably fell all over yourself, thanking him for his (fatally flawed) thinking, whipped out your checkbook to pay him for this worthless moment of "official license to lie" and high-tailed it out of there.

Let's look at this and see where it might go, shall we?....
So, you go to bed every night with your wife. She hugs you goodnight every night. Sometimes you make love before you go to sleep, and it's always good and comforting. You know you're one lucky son-of-a-gun that she doesn't know anything about your secret life, because she might leave you if she knew. And then you would lose all the comforts of your marriage, you poor thing,you.

Meanwhile, your wife is laboring under the delusion that you have been honest with her. Sure, sometimes she wonders....but she always comes back to the 'truth' you have given her. She's hoping to God you're telling the truth, because she doesn't know what she and the kids would do if you were lying.

That's where you are right now, and I would call that an emotional stalemate. Not the best place to be in a marriage. But there you are. And that's working for you, in a lying, deceptive sort of way...until...

The OW you are crushing on decides to get a conscience. When will that happen? I don't know. No one else does, either. It might happen when she decides to come clean with her OWN husband. Maybe they'll find their way here and realize that your wife needs to know the truth of her reality. It might happen when she becomes angry after realizing that you played her. It might happen when she 'gets religion' or joins AA and needs to make things right with people she has wronged. Your wife will be at the top of her list. Maybe you lied to her and told her that you were single. Or widowed. Or divorced. Your now-repentent OW will find the truth of your marital status by a quick check on intelius.com - or most other search engines.

Maybe she doesn't know your real name, or your last name. Doesn't matter. A little diligent searching will turn you up easily. Believe me, because I know. After my H's affair, I learned search tricks that would blow you away. I know things about my H's OW and their entire extended family that SHE might not even know. Between that and the software I use in my job, I can tell you things about people that would stun them.

She might have the same software. You don't know. You have no control over what she, or her husband if she has one, might do. So, face it, Jurist: you THINK you've got this controlled. You DON'T.

You are attempting to sweep this under the rug and are naively assuming that it will happen because YOU WANT IT TO. So, for the REST OF YOUR LIFE you are looking at the spector of someone else suddenly exposing this to your wife.

You are hoping for the best while you are here, trying to plead your case with people who aren't going to allow you to pull crap over on us. And I think you know that. I almost get the impression that you WANT us to force you to confess to your wife, after we've negated every argument you have. I think you know that, if you can get past the people on Marriage Builders, you're good.

Sorry, Jurist. Your plan is not sustainable. It's not going to play in Peoria, and it's not going to play here. You have an axe swinging back and forth over your head, and will have as long as you are lying. And you're so busy trying to cover your [censored] so you can keep your comfy life that you don't even see it. Pity. More important: your wife has an axe swinging over her head. AND SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW IT.

So, right now YOUR way is a hazard for you, your wife, and your marriage. Do you really want to keep debating the merits of hiding your betrayal from your wife, based on the very simple knowledge I have just given you?

Please listen to this.
Radio Clip on Keeping Past Lies a Secret