Hello. This is my first post on the board but I have reviewing the various posts and articles on this site for the past few weeks. It has helped me to understand a lot about marriage and infidelity but in piecemeal format in regards to my situation. Sorry for the long post.
My wife, of ten years, just told me on January 1st about past infidelities. She has had 4 one-night stands over the past four years. One was a single encounter, another was an encounter with the same man one month apart and the last one was a threesome with one of her friends. These occurred four years ago, three years ago, and four months ago respectively. She came forward with this news three weeks after I had found her in the apartment laundry room with a male friend, in the dark and behind a locked door. I only went looking for her because her friend had dropped them off at the apartment 20 minutes earlier and my wife had asked her to call to make sure she made it to the apartment okay. They were all out at a xmas party and were all drinking and intoxicated. But I received the call and after waiting some more time, 10 minutes, they had not come in yet so I went looking because I thought something might have happened.
Well I challenged her on that situation and she denied anything had happened but I didn’t know if I could believe her because when I found them it took them sometime to open the door and I swear I heard zippers being done up. My wife was having her womanly time of the month and I spied a used tampon on the floor which she denied was hers. I didn’t know if it was hers or not but it just added to my mistrust of her. I believed that she had been unfaithful to me and it hurt. It took me a couple of weeks of reading on the subject to start to understand the pain that I was feeling and going through. It also woke me up to problems and issues that I had that would push my wife to infidelity. So I started to work on those issues while my wife continued to state that nothing happened and she would never do something like that because she loved me and wouldn’t want to jeopardize that. Also, since we have an 11 year old boy, she wouldn’t do that to him because since the time we met I had told her that if she ever was unfaithful, I would leave. But I see know what I was trying to say was that honest and faithfulness are most important to me and betraying that in the most extreme way would hurt me so much that all that I could do is leave.
We started to see a marriage counselors and I was willing to try and fix and heal our marriage because all I had was a suspicion of the one night stand and she constantly reassured me that nothing happened and that she would never do anything like that to me or our marriage.
So fast forward to January 1st. I had learned a lot about myself through this website and others and how I was not meeting the emotional needs of my wife. So with one counseling session under our belt and me being able to understand what my wife has been seeking, I was able to look back on our relationship and see how my actions or, more precisely, lack of affection hurt my wife and the length of time. It was in decreasing amounts for the last five years.
But the one things that bothered me was that my wife wanted me to open up my feeling and talk about them with her which I started to do, but she still stayed closed up about herself. I started to gently push her to open up to me and she started with little bits of information here and there. But I always felt that she was hiding something from me. So I continued to push her to share with me and it was on January 1st that she told me about the affairs. Talk about a huge hit, that news literally took my breath away. I asked her about them and she told me but was angry that I asked for so many details. The one that hurt the most was her first affair since I had suspected something and asked her about it at the time and in a non confrontational way and she denied it then. Here she wanted me to notice her emotional needs and I suspected something, but she didn’t want to talk about with me so instead of letting me know and working on it then, she lied to me and had three more affairs before she told me.
So this brings me to today. Having went through all the pain and hurt when I thought something happened, listening to her say it wasn’t so, and that she would never do so, that she loved me and always wanted to be with me, to have her know admit it did happen and multiple times, I don’t know what to thinks or do. Over the past weeks before the news, I came to realize that I love my wife and want to be with her, so I was willing to try and heal our marriage but know, I look the situation and think I could forgive her in time but I don’t think I could ever trust her again. And I mean trust her enough that when she is not with me I will always be wondering if she is having another one-night stand. She said every time it happened she felt nothing and was upset that she hurt me and was unfaithful, but how can you say that after doing it multiple times and not telling the one you supposedly love and care for. I haven’t decided to do anything yet other than take it one day at a time but I feel the trust from the years of betrayal cannot be healed and I may end up leaving the women that I love.
Help I need some perspective on the situation and on what to do.

BH 32
WW 32
DS 11

Welcome to marriagebuilders. It is a great place to be under the circumstances.

Multiple affairs is a big red flag. I am also rather suspicious of the laundry room scenario. That doesn't sound innocent at all to me.

But I'm wondering why she would be honest about the others and not admit to this one, unless she is trying to protect her laundry room partner.

Does she have any mental health or FOO issues?

Or an alcohol addiction?

I believe your right Believer. Due to the length of the post I left out some items. I do think she is trying to protect her laundry room partner. He had just moved to the city a couple of months ago and has little in the way of friends and his family doesn't want anything to do with him. He was kicked out of his sisters place and was staying at a local shelter for a couple of nights when my wife suggested that she would like to help him but left the final decision up to me. Being a caring person, I figured it would be okay for him to stay with us until he found a place of his own to live. This was over four weeks ago. In a large city (750,000 pop), it doesn't take that long to find a place. So when all this happened between me and my wife, the laundry room male stayed because my wife couldn't bring herself tom kick him out to the street and I wanted to believe and trust my wife so much I let her make the decision whether he stayed or left. And she chose to let him stay, know from me telling her that it made me uncomfortable that he was still here and very scared for her to be alone with him for even a minute.
On the other point, her father was an alcoholic and her brother commited suicide due to schizophrenia. She has a history of depression and when I had met her she was about a year out of an abusive relationship with her former ex boyfriend.

I hope he is not still living with you?

Ya until this friday

I am amazed. Zippers being done up in the laundry room means there was genital contact of some kind. Even if you believe they were just hugging, rubbing up against each other, and swapping spit in there, it was adultery and you’re a hopeless optimist if you think they didn’t get a good deal more than that accomplished in more than a half hour. Think about it. What could youhave gotten done with a willing woman in that time?

Has your wife been checked for STDs? Have you? One night stands, and this is what this was--never doubt it--are seldom done with the highest class of partners. This man, whose own family will not have anything to do with him, can hardly be trusted to not have a witches brew of STDs swirling through his system. Please, please get checked immediately.

You catch him with your wife, you know darn well what he and she did, and you let him stay? Unbelievable! You’re must be the most understanding man in history...

Well, let’s get down to brass tacks. Your wife, no matter what you have done or not done in the marriage has committed adultery 5 times that you know of, counting the laundry room. Excuse me for not believing she’s told you the truth about only having done it the number of times she claims she has. Cheaters lie. It’s part of the territory. Even if she has come totally clean, the best you can say is every so often this woman takes timeouts from the marriage to have sex with someone else. Once is a catastrophe, twice is damned near unforgivable, and three times describes a pattern of behavior. Your wife has five adulteries.

All right. Is that enough perspective? No. Here's some more.

Pardner, you have a rough time ahead of you. MB is here to promote marriages, but you’ve got one heck of a decision to make and the only criteria I could make it on is how hard she works on rebuilding your trust and love…starting right now.

But…by my count, she’s already twice indicated she does not respect you as her husband and doesn’t care about your love and trust in just the last few days. She’s placed laundry room boy ahead of your interests twice. First, the night in the laundry and second, when you expressed your reluctance for him to stay around and she disregarded your feelings. Again...unbelievable!

You make your choice. If you decide to work on your marriage I’ll cheer you on as best I can. If you do want to keep the marriage afloat, you’ll need to get her into IC and MC, I guess. That would seem to be your only chance. Frankly, sir, things look awfully bleak to me. Good luck in whatever you decide.

Thanks Longhorn for the your perspective on my situation. It helped me with my thinking, that "i'm not crazy for thinking of this this way or that way". But I'm still in la-la land with this. When my wife told me of the first affair, it hurt and I did alot of soul searching on what to do. What I came up with was that I still loved my wife very much. As painful as it would be to leave, I would have done it if the hurt and pain of the thought of living my life without her didn't hurt more. But now with the revelation of the other affairs, I'm just numb.
We have our next counselling session today and this is what I am going to be bringing up. Also, I haven't spoken about this to anyone other than my wife and now the therapist. I feel I need to talk to other people about this, should I do so.

Alberta,

You need to kick Laundry Boy out today. Please have your wife and your self check for STDs.

Your wife is a big time Liar and User. You need to realize that you cannot rely on your WW's words. She has no respect and concern for you. Your situation does not bode well, as your WW has cheated on you 5 TIMES and is continually LYING to you to this day, but we'll help you if you want. You just need to be realistic of whom you are dealing with: a Reckless Pathological Liar and Deceiver.

Longhorn,

You truly are the new "Velvet Hammer".

Great post!

Of course you can talk to others about it, but be warned, they are NOT going to understand and their opinion of you is probably going to be lowered considerably....I know this from experience. Even my own family thinks I'm a nut-bar for even wanting to still be with my husband. (I'm not including exposure in this...although it doesn't really sound like there are very many people to expose TO in this case)

People here will understand, and will help you....but I've learned the hard way not to go around talking to other people about it, as their reaction is always "Kick them to the curb" and "You're stupid for staying" and "How could you possibly still love them?"

It is a noble thing to try to save one's marriage, regardless of the opinions of others who think they have your best interest at heart, but it is completely up to you, and know that NO ONE here will judge you if you decide it's something that you cannot do.

You can start with the book "Surviving an Affair" if you wish to at least explore all the avenues you could take. It's a really good book, and you'd be amazed at how similar most of our stories and our Wayward Spouses are, it's like they follow some kind of handbook...it's uncanny.

I wish you the best, and just know that whatever you decide this is an excellent resource that I and countless others have found as an invaluable source of knowledge and support.

Good luck and God Bless,

-Caren

Ok another thing some /std's do not show up for 4 months. Tell your dr about your W's actvities. Please he will ck you -read the site stating affairs and STD's please.

bumped it up for you author is ladysheep

She's a serial cheater, Alberta. The MC has got to be informed, at a minimum.

Are her ONS's with coworkers? Are these "friends" she had a threesome with from work...and are they also your friends?

The ONS's were a person she still works with and the other are friends of people she works with and have worked with.