My wife and I are recovering from an affair she had a few months ago. She is willing to answer questions I have about the OM and I trust she is being honest with me for the first time. However, I am having a tough time figuring out what information I need to know and what I should just leave alone. I only know the OM's first name and other than that nothing. She has told me about some of their activities but nothing too specific. My mind is always coming up with more ??'s and I dont know if those thoughts will dissolve with time or hinder our recovery or resurface in the future. I Need some advice from those who have gone through this.

Hello Jonmcl,

I never got any info from my X unless I found out about it myself, and then confronted him.
I think that was the most painful thing - that he refused to tell me the truth, that he kept twisting things and lying.
If your WW is willing to share things with you, I would suggest to only ask what you are willing to "get".
If you ever get too upset/angry with her, it's likely she'll not volunteer to tell you things truthfully again.

I got a lot more details than I would ever have wanted, as I found out about the A through a video of - yeah, you guessed it, "their activities", right there on our couch.

Still X would lie about the frequency.. about when it started.. etc etc.

Since he wouldn't tell, I kept snooping and found lots more in bank accounts, visa statements.. there had been more than just this OW.

Again.. I think the most important thing is that you feel that your WW will tell you what you ask.
Then maybe you don't have to ask anymore.

It was the very fact that things were being withheld from me that made me want to know EVERYTHING.

You should be prepared for the painful truth that A-sex most of the time is "great", because there is so much danger and forbidden things...
The adrenalin rush is high..
The brain produces all sorts of nice hormones that create a full-blown "crush".

It has little to do with reality, and OM hardly is a "knight", since he cared very little about having sex with a married woman.

But logic, common sense, decency and yes, real love, are all put on the back burner when the brain gets addicted to the pleasant feelings the A stirs.

Not unlike a drug addict, the affairees will sacrifice everything for the sake of the A..
Only to discover, when they "wake up" (de-tox), how much pain they have caused others.

Jon,

My post A discovery was much like Brown. I called them information confirmation sessions with the FWW. They came in a few different ways much like Brown's. This has caused much damage in my M as it stands today.

What I always say is you should know anything that will hinder your recovery if left unanswered. Remembering that everything you find out will play in your head like a movie. I didn't and still don't want to know the gory details. I did want everything else. Frequency etc.

For me it was about knowing what the damage was so we could deal with it accordingly. If I wanted to know something from my FWW and she answered it honestly we could deal with it and move on. Without that what happens is it becomes a game of I think, she knows. I don't think that is a healthy environment to try to recover.

Just be careful and make sure that you are not judgemental or mean. The informaiton will flow better if your FWW feels safe telling you.

“I only know the OM's first name and other than that nothing.”

Well, this is a darn good place to start, IMO. You need to know who the dirt bag is and where he lives. Minimum necessary data for verifying no-contact, don't you think? Also, you will be able to talk to his wife and get her help with no-contact for life.

Don’t tell your W you are contacting his BW until afterwards, though. She would warn OM right away.

Next, ask your wife about OM's family. This is like a litmus test of the deepness of the affair. How much did your WW actually know about him, his children, his BW, his in-laws…. It’s very revealing to her as much as to you.

The sex details can come later, if at all, after you digest who the guy really is. A year after I got all the steamy details I could handle I wished I had never asked.

This leaves out all the whys, the missing EN’s, the justifications, her anger and the rationalizations. You will have to wade though all this with her to get at the root causes. And you have to eventually get at the causes if she is to understand how to change and how to protect herself in the future.

One last thing. In amongst all your questions, ask some seemingly innocuous questions you can independently verify. It will help you accept her veracity in the rest.

Sometimes, writing them down and giving her time to think before answering is better than immediate face to face.

And you can be sure there will be more than one session. You and she should accept this up front.

With prayers,

Aphelion,
I agree with you that I want to verify no-contact between her and the OM. From all I can track, she has kept her word by not contacting him in the last 4 weeks since her promise. He has tried to text msg. her a few times but she has not responded (that I know of). I believe she is being honest with me that she is not talking to him underground because she told me that he called her office the other day and she was the one who answered. She told me that she deflected the call to someone else to handle. He was a mortgage and banking client of her's, thats how they met. She still stands by her word that they have not had sex, but has admitted to kissing him. There was never a full night unaccounted to for during their A, but she has said they only met face to face 5 times. Their A lasted for a little over a month. She says he is not married but I dont know that for sure. How important is it for me to know where he lives, works, does for a living? I know his phone # and that he is about 10 years older than her - shes 24 he's 33 (from what she has told me and her mom). My biggest fear is running into him and not knowing it. I dont want to be so naive as to think he doesnt know who I am or that he might be someone I know. I'm really confused about what to do. My wife seems to be coming out of the fog and I dont want to give her any reason to dout my motives. If she found out I was still snooping she would close up for sure.

A full night is not a prerequisite for having sex.


Again, this means nothing.


Either 1) he's not married, told your WW so and she told you what she believes to be the truth, 2) he's married, lied to your WW and she is passing on what she believes to be the truth, 3) he's married, told your WW, and she's lying to you to protect him, 4) she doesn't know if he's married or not.


Very! Find out what you can about him without your WW knowing about it. Is he married? You have one of his phone numbers, does he have others? What kind of car does he drive? Where does he live? Where does he work? What does he look like? What is his email address? Instant messenger handle?

How will you verify NC if you know nothing about the OM?

Any information your WW gives you about this guy is suspect. Check the 'snooping 101' thread. And don't let your WW know you're snooping!

If OM is still trying to contact her you need to let him know he's busted. That you know who he is and where he lives.

Even if he's not currently married, there may be a significant other, or two. Or there may be an ex.

You would not belive how important it was to my wifes' OM that he not be exposed to his ex. And they had been divorced for years. It bothered him more than exposure to his current wife (who was the OW in his first marriage). Go figure.

With prayers,

Ditto what bit says...

and when you go back to your memory banks you'll find that there are plenty of opportunities for sex. I am always leery of the "only kissed" because it eventually ends up "we only had sex xx times"...not because I know your W but because I have been around too long...

Now, sir, you need to know that your W is being truthful...and that starts with the "just kissed"...to EXACTLY who it is...your recovery will go nowhere until you feel as if she is being truthful....

You have every right to know exactly who, what and where they were or went. She needs to be radically honest with you. I will caution you to thread lightly and be careful what you wish for regarding any details about the emotional AND physical attachment. It will crush you further. However you deserve to know much more than you do right now. so snoop, dig deeper....

in my own case my XW, while trying to reconcile and recover lied to me repeatedly about stupid details...and all it did was bring into question EVERYTHING!!! In fact if the good folks of this board did not tell me to think long and hard about it I would have stopped the entire process because she lied about whether or not he was around for certain social events

"My wife seems to be coming out of the fog and I dont want to give her any reason to dout my motives. If she found out I was still snooping she would close up for sure."

So, explain your motives to her. You intend to recover your marriage. All of it.

That means you need to know certain things: who, what, when, where, how and why.

That's all there is to it.

No trust without truth.

i have to agree with all the others here on this. my DH told me the answer to every question that i asked. and when it came to sex i should have asked because i got detail. which was hurtful and now i feel if we were to reconcile would i be able to get out of my mind on what he had told me.
as far as the phone number check it out on www.whitepages.com
you do a reverse phone number search. you might get lucky and come up with a name. if it is a cell phone number you will not.
i wish the best of luck with this.
i hope you and wife can recover!

How did you discover the affair?

The things you should know is who was envolved and is it still continuing. If there were any plots to take assets, or even contemplating harm to you.

Who knows about the affair? This question is good for a couple of reasons, you don't want to be caught blindsided by someone asking, and you need to know which friends were supporting her acting out.

Some people want all the details of when, where, how, etc...you have to keep in mind whatever is told to you will become memories you won't forget easily. If you asked for locations, everytime you pass a location it will become a reminder. If you ask for sexual positions, then everytime you might engage in such you might be triggered to remember what she did with the other person.

The important question is why? This is something you both will need to work through. If she starts with all the reasons you caused it that rubbish. You want to hear her feelings and what affects her decisions, not accusations. If she says though she was lonely all the time and you realize you worked out of town all the time...hey that is place where the two of you can come together to solve a problem.