Help

I have another post but I have question that is tearing me to pieces;

I have just discovered my wife has had an emotional affair (she will not call it an affair) that eventually led to a sexual act (but allegedly not full sex)

They met at the same nightclub she goes to with her girlfriends every 2 weeks over a 5 month period.

She says its over but still wants to be able to go out with her friends to the same place eventually.

Even though he will definitly be there she says she will have no contact with him.

He knew she is married and told her he is going through a divorce himself and is not ready for a commitment. She claims they decided early on never to exchange phone numbers.(can this be true?)

Should I be insisting that she can NEVER returns to this place (which is a shame because I liked her going there because it was well run and 'safe').

She will not like this as she has gone there for years.

She should NEVER have contact with him again.

Also, you may want to stick with one thread so your story stays together.

I'm sorry you're going through this.

She ended the right to go alone anymore to bars after performing what I interpret as a "Bill Clinton" on the OM at this bar. I still don't understand why we lessen the value of oral sex compared to intercourse. I kiss my wife on the mouth more than have intercourse with her!!! Its still sex if not even more intimate.

Hi Jet

I am a new BS. D Day 20 July.

I don't think she should go to the bar again. At least not in the near future. If she does keep going to the same bar you will never have any peace.

You will always be wondering what she is up to. It is going to take a long time to rebuild your trust.

Take care

kimleigh2

Jet,

Seems to me if you let her go there, you are saying to her that it is okay with you, that you trust her, and that what she did is fine.

Do you still trust her to go there, see him, and YOU KNOW that they will have contact?

Because they WILL.

Count on it.

Knowing that, do you still want her to go there?



The answer to your question is that your wife should not be having contact with him for the rest of her life.

EVER.

Because she is not currently in any position to protect your marriage from herself and her desire to commit adultery.

She does not have the tools in her arsenal to stop herself.

And if you are not there, she will not stop herself.



With the attitude that "it doesn't count" because she didn't go "all the way" with him, she will soon enough go all the way. And have a different justification for doing that.

She will tell you that she "loves you, but isn't in love with you" and that justifies a sexual affair.

She will tell you that you "don't meet her emotional needs" and that justifies a sexual affair.

She will rewrite your marital history and say that she's been unhappy for "years" and that justifies a sexual affair.

She will tell you "it just happened" and that justifies............

She will tell you so many stupid things you will not believe it.


In the end, she will go to bed with him, because she will feel entitled, and will justify it.

Right now, she's been caught. If you don't do the things needed to make this marriage more affair-proof, including NC with this OM, it is just a matter of time.

She is on the WW script. She is telling you things that they all say.

Don't listen to her - read here, and get "Surviving an Affair"

And read it as fast as you can

And ask her to sit with you AT HOME

And read it with you.


In the meantime, she doesn't go out with the girls to that bar.

And read up on Plan A. Start meeting her emotional needs.

Do the Emotional Needs Questionnaire on this website together if she will do it with you. If she won't, pretend you are her, do your best to answer the questions as she might, and start meeting her emotional needs the best you can according to the questionnaire.

Then, look at the General Questions forum, and maybe post over there for more advice.

Jet, neither one of you is Single anymore. Is "Forsaking ALL others" a part of your marriage vows to each other or are you "okay" with what is called an "open marriage" where fidelity is not expected and infidelity is "okay with me?"

Not only can she not go to that bar, she has proven that she cannot be trusted at ANY bar, even if she goes with friends. Staying home is the price she pays for crossing the line. She needs to do that so that she will not break her vows again, and for your sense of well-being. It doesn't sound like she has realized the enormity of her betrayal yet.

Thanks for the replies. I will keep to my original post and I hope you guys will keep helping me to talk this out in that place.
I have decided to try not to let her return to this place which is a shame because she will not like it and it will cause us to argue and also means that it just leaves the bars in town to visit with her girlfriends and then I will worry about her personal safety more than what shes up to.

Call me a mug but I really want to trust her. I want her to be happy but I do not want that to come through other men.

You are a mug.

BTW, my wife doesn't go out to bars with her girlfriends without me. She can find something else to do with her time that doesn't involved getting hit on by men.

Jet,


I completely agree. Frankly, I no longer think it is appropriate for married folk to hang around in bars with out their spouses. That is what you do when you are single.

All we BS would love to be able to trust our FWS, but trust is earned, it isn't a right. Your WW, betrayed your trust, IMHO, she doesn't give a hoot about earning it back, or she wouldn't even think about returning to the crime scene.

Have you tried to get her to go to MC. SHe needs to hear reality from someone other than you.

Who

Yes you are both right. The truth hurts but I became far too trusting after the other incidents when we were younger. I put them down to experience and learnt to trust her and all was well (as far as I knew) for 18 years until this.

I am amazed it didnt happen sooner. She would spend hours getting ready and there was always a regular pattern of distancing herself from me during the week leading up to going out. She would start silly arguments or try to put down our relationship. She was especially touchy just before she used to go out.

Looking back i do feel a mug. Years ago she used to come back from these places and we would make love. Some nights over the past year she would not even look at me.

But I just want the marriage to work, i adore her but the truth is I dont feel as a man, I am enough for her. She has always gravitated towards the big guys and this recent affair has confirmed this. She told me she felt safe with him, protected, and for a quiet, average guy like me I feel like I cannot compete. He is attractive to women, popular and confident. He seems to be everything i am not and wether or not it is all over between them, that still hurts like ******..

I am not a defeatist - I am a realist.

WHY IS SHE EVER GOING OUT TO BARS WITHOUT YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe a cultural difference here. I am from UK and here its common for women of all ages whether married or not to go to bars and clubs in 'all women' groups.

Husbands or boyfriends who do not allow this are generally regarded as insecure or possesive.

Thats my experience, maybe others from UK will back me up on this?

We do none the less expect our wives to behave appropriately although obviously this doesnt always happen.

Its not totally uncommon for all women holidays to happen though I learnt the hard way on this one when my wife and I were younger and would never allow her to go on one of these again!

Seems I cant trust her in bars either..

Do women in the States or Australia not also go out together to socialise away from thier husbands or boyfriends?

If not then you guys are obviously more sensible than us!

You CANNOT trust her. I know you want to trust her. You can't! You have to insist on no contact with the OM ever again and start working a bang up plan A. I ignored the signs for six months before I was willing to believe the unthinkable. Save yourself the time and drama.

I think I would find it too hard to trust her now anyway which is a shame and is just one of the consequences of what has happened.

This is especially so when she still refers to him by name, will not say a bad word against him and the only bit of this she seems to regret is the fact that it got sexual and in doing so spoilt a great 'friendship'.

To my mind she actually betrayed me three times;

The first was the close dance she had with him (when she always told me she never dances with men only her girlfriends)to try to get his attention and stop one of her friends getting him.

The second was the emotional affair which then developed in which they both admitted feelings and yet still allowed it to continue.

The third was the sexual contact.

Yet she still denies this was an affair!!! And its this denial that makes me realise more than anything else I certainly can't trust her going to the same place when OM is there and I probably will never trust her again anyway and this is sad because two people who are married should be able to trust each other or so we people in love would like to think.

The reality of human behaviour tells us differently

Jet - It is not a cultural difference. In the US, women go out to bars with female friends. I personally don't think it is a good idea, but that is the way it is.

HOWEVER, your wife went out with friends, and CHEATED on you. That is a whole different story. Two people who are married should trust each other. Your wife has proven that she is not trustworthy. You would be a FOOL to let her continue down this path.

My wife would never have done this before or after her affair.

Yes you guys are right. Where I went wrong was letting her have too much unchecked freedom for too many years.

Problem is now that changing this is not going to be easy and is only going to lead to resentment, arguments and more pressure on the marriage.

If she loves me as much as she says she does she should agree never to go back to the same club again and limit her time in bars with her female friends (they only go out twice a month anyway). We should be going out together more.

What I suspect will happen though is that nearer the time she is due to go back to the club (at the end of this month) she will start to protest and I will be called controlling, untrusting and unreasonable and this will be a 'love buster' for us. She will be pressured by her friend and there is probably still an emotional attachment to OM though she denies this of course.

You know, the more I write all this down the more bizare it all looks! How have I let this go on for so long? I feel such an idiot. On the face of it our relationship has serious issues.

I know what has happened. We have both concentrated on the task in hand (ie raising the family) and all the while not resolving the issues between us that have dogged us since we first met so many years ago.

There is hope but she must come to terms with her insecurities and ultimately be sure that I am the right one for her. Do I fullfill all of her needs. Am I able to give her the feeling of security that the OM gave her?

I will know by the end of this month.

So decide what your limits or boundaries are and then enforce them. She really should not go to the bar where she will see him. That would be a minimal boundary in my opinion. Seeing him from afar and knowing that she is not supposed to talk to him or etc. will really put her in that stupid fog state of affairdom.

How is plan A going?

You mention she likes the strong guy and feeling protected. You say you don't feel you are the strong type. What is strength? If you tell her you do not want her going to a bar where there is a guy that she had a half completed sex act with--isn't that strength? Aren't you protecting her by stating those kinds of boundaries?

Have you talked to this guy? Some on this forum recommend talking to the OP and telling them to stay away. Is that an option?

Do you and she go out together? She sounds like she likes the fantasy of going out and getting guys to go ga-ga over her. Too bad she does not see the reality of what that entails (pardon the tail pun.) If she plans to go out, what about renting a limo that night and having it show up at your door. Could she say no to that?--you and her going out?

When you feel her distancing herself from her, there is a good piece of advice on Orange Blossom's thread in infidelity, general questions. It is advice about increasing touch--the glance of a hand, reaching across and entering her personal space to retrieve objects, touching her leg or foot with yours. If you can, take a look at Orange Blossom's thread for that post. Maybe someone who is more savvy could link that post here. It was really good.

So, ensure no contact and Plan A.

Jet,

Unfortunately, we find ourselves in surprisingly similar circumstances. Mine started from an all girls vacation...yours started with a girls night out, with similar results.

To save my marriage and my own self respect, I insisted immediately on NC, and I sent an email from my wife's laptop to the OM the next morning and followed that up with a phone call with all three of us on the line at the same time. I told him that I had all of his info and the proof of the A, and that unless he agreed to complete, permanent NC, I would have a private investigator deliver everything to his wife, boss, sons, etc. and blow up his whole life like he had done mine. He was a jerk at first, but very soon started backpedalling and couldn't agree fast enough. It helped that my W got to hear what a POS he really was, and how easily it was for him to throw her away to save his own sorry [censored]. It has only been 2 weeks since that show down, but there has been complete NC and I expect it to continue. I also told my wife that if she slipped up and broke NC, that I would drop all of my evidence to her mother, brother, friends, etc. Think of it as compliance by mutually assurred destruction.

Also, I found out some additional info about the enabling friend and insisted on limiting their relationship. Surprisingly, this was harder than the NC with the OM, and was further complicated by her being a co-worker of my wife with legitimate necessary regular contact. Through our MC, we agreed on a policy of W not discussing anything pesonal about our relationship with the girlfriend co-worker. So far that is going well, but I would prefer even less contact with this woman.

My wife also knows that all girls vacations are a thing of the past, and its totally because of her breach of trust.

Simply stated, you must insist on NC IMMEDIATELY with the OM, and confirm it with the OM. I'm sure his wife's divorce attorney would love to see/hear your info/story. Look for your leverage and USE IT.

I would do something similar with the girl friend, and use her husband as your leverage against her.

Believe Me...your wife will go ballistic, but stay strong and don't cave in. Read my post in the "Oh God" thread from jdmelt to see how I've found my personal strength to continue down this difficult path. However, there is a silver lining here...your wife will likely be impressed by your new found STRENGTH of purpose and character.

Also, get into MC asap. She needs to hear that she screwed up from a disinterested 3rd party. You have to break clear of the fantasy fog the A is putting her in.

Good Luck to you, we share a common pain.