This is long and probably more cathartic than anything. I appreciate sincerely anyone who reads and responds to me privately or in a thread.

Jeff

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I've been married for 12 years, probably happily married by most standards. I feel like my wife and I love each other.

4.5 years ago, our son was born. When he was about 9 months old, he had a spell in the hospital that started 3 years of ******. He was fine after the hospital stay, but then my wife had several surgeries, BOTH of her parents died within 6 weeks of each other and needless to say, we lost each other.

She has diagnosed depression from before we were married and takes meds for it.

Unfortunately during the dark period, she decided to self-medicate with prescription sedatives like vicodin, percocet and phenergan.

I did not take it too well and we fought and argued like cats and dogs about it. Instead of being supported when she admitted that she thought she had a problem, I was initially supportive and then finally hostile. I didn't understand how to support her and wanted to 'will her' to health. That was one of the worst mistakes I made.

I have not been a good husband so I see now in retrospect that I should have been reading MB years ago. I was stupidly oblivious to everything on this site and sadly ignorant about meeting her needs and asking her to meet mine. So, I have definitely contributed to our marriage problem. She chose this path though and I'm not taking the bullet for that choice.

For about the last year, she has been focusing more on our marriage and my lack of contributions. Then we adopted a baby girl in June. She has been a blessing to us and our family and it seemed to snap my wife back to herself, as I had known and loved her.

During the past year, I had to travel more for work. Not crazy, travel but 8 four-day trips to New York within a 12 month period - so a trip about every 6-8 weeks. I live in Colorado. My wife initially did not like the trips because she was lonely. Over time, she seemed to cope better with it.

Unfortunately, in September things changed. She started taking better care of herself, etc. - the classic signs of an A. She told me that it was because she finally felt out of her depression. I was happy for her. This turned out to be a half-truth.

In particular, she became more sexually driven / adventurous. She would send text messages to me saying things that she never would say to me, like '****** me'.

In a healthy relationship, this type of sexual play would be fun. I took it to mean she was exploring things. She spent a lot of time on the 'net and clutched her cell phone like it was gold. All bad signs.

When I asked her about it, we would fight because she would tell me that 'she feels alive' and 'why won't I just join her'. Something inside of me would not just join it. It was too drastic of a change in a short period of time, about 3-5 weeks.

Of course, this things woke me right up and I started to get paranoid. She's always had a hard time lying to me - I have a sense when things aren't true between us. It's weird and drives us both crazy.

My first blunder was to erupt in anger over an insane cell phone bill that had 100s of text messages, late at night, all over the country.

I then started monitoring her phone. Unfortunately, I had not read MB yet and tipped my hat to her when I snooped sexually explicit text messages to other men. Now, I'm locked out of it and it's been a lot harder to gather the truth.

Side note: I cannot emphasize enough the advice to keep a journal. I write mine on-line using Google docs and it's been quite handy to correlate weird feelings and observations that turned out to be outright lies.

Needless to say, things seemed to progress for the worse. Strangely, our sex life has been more exciting. This was another bad sign - she bought and wore lingerie consistently for the first time ever in our marriage - she has had body confidence issues, despite her beauty.

I can go on with more reams of sordid details, but I will cut to the chase. After the cell lockout, I happened to grab it and quickly check for text messages when she left it unlocked.

These were the messages, which I copied into my truth journal:

12/9/07 7:45 PM you are a gift in my life
12/9/07 7:44 PM you make me happy

They were not sent to me. By now, I was [censored] a brick but played it cool. Later that night, I calmly talked to her about what she wants. She confessed to meeting and talking on-line with other men. She gave me reasons surrounding curiosity, exploring, etc. She vowed to stop immediately. I knew that she at a minimum was having an emotional affair. The OM is ironically in New York City.

I asked her if she wants a D and she said no. She cried and I felt like I reached her. I told her that I was sorry to not meet her needs and I really wanted to work to change and pay attention to her and our marriage.

I didn't ask for proof that she kept her vow, but she showed me that she deleted one on-line email account. I should have asked for more proof.

At this point [December 8, 2007], I decided to get His Needs / Her Needs and work on Plan A. I wasn't sure that she really ended things with the OM.

I took two weeks off from work [planned] over the holidays and we started to reconnect. There were a few weird things and I journaled them and of course she is still frequently lying.

She tried hard to placate my fears and we actively started working on the relationship. It didn't feel 100% genuine on her part. Maybe I was acting more out of fear of losing her than truly wanting to meet her needs. I tried not to push it and she started to see immediate changes and really warm up to me.

Things came to a head on December 31 when she melted down. I had been asking about her needs and so forth and she couldn't take it any more. One of our closets was emptied in anger by her. It ended with me asking again if she wants me to leave with the kids. She cried.

The next day, she suddenly had to go to New York the next week [she is there now]... I had a Bad Feeling [tm] since the OM lives in NY - I was able to research this based on his email address. I know more about him than he does...

Ironically, we had our first 'date night' this past Saturday night. We had a fun time and she said how great it made her feel. The next day, she said, 'I forgot how happy you can make me.' Ouch, that one hurt, but it was so true - I haven't tried to make her consistently happy [i.e., meet her needs] for years, if ever in our marriage.

So I think tonight really was our D-Day. The story she gave me to justify the NY trip has many factual holes. She seems to have gotten better at creating sufficiently plausible stories, but she misjudged my drive for the truth.

She claimed that she's on this trip to speak to the board of directors for her old company. She said that her old boss, the former CFO of this company called her and [because she was the general council / head attorney] she had a fudiciary duty to meet them.

I didn't believe any of this because in the real world this is not how things like this go down. My [censored] meter pegged. I was getting scared at the elaborate lie she was telling and several times over the last week, I tried to talk myself out of my nagging doubts.

I even confronted her two days ago about how coincidental it was to have to go to NYC right after the 'emotional' A with the OM who works in NYC. She gave me a lot of reasons why she agonized over telling me. She said she felt terrible that she 'had' to go to NYC after what happened with the OM [supposedly only on-line].

I will never forget her look when she told me that she was going on this trip. It was utter terror in her eyes and I knew she was lying. When she told me that she agonized over the trip, I asked her 'is that why you had such a terrible look on her face'? She lied and said, 'yes'.

What I realize now is that she's feeling guilty.

Unfortunately, nothing she told me made the nagging doubt go away permanently. Then last night when she emailed me her travel itinerary, I see that her hotel is three blocks away from the OM's office. Red Flag.

We talked tonight and she told me a great lie about what happened during the 'board of director's investigative meetings'. I asked about her old boss who she claimed was in NY to meet also with this company's board of directors. She said that she saw him today briefly and he was 'pissed' about the whole ordeal. The nagging doubts returned.

At this point, I had to act. I hung up the phone with her and immediately called her old boss at his home in Colorado.

He was not home, but called me back an hour later from his home in Colorado. He hasn't talked to my wife in over a year when he left the company [Jan, 2007]. I asked him if he knew about this board of directors investigation that my wife claimed that he was the one who called her last week to inform her of this investigation. He said, 'This is the first I have heard of it.' We made some small talk and I let him go. I wonder what he's thinking after hanging up. Luckily he is not a personal friend of my wife so there is no fear he would contact her to clue her in.

So her attempt to use her old boss as an alibi just failed miserably.

It is such an incredible relief to know that I am not paranoid and insane.

I wanted so badly to call her back in NYC and tell her that I know what's going on. Or send her a text message that says, 'I know what you did' or some other dramatic statement.

After reading a lot of threads here, I know that this is a bad idea. I need to confront her face-to-face and catch her when she's not ready for it.

She's not due back for two more days. Enough time for me to get SAA.

I want to confront her this weekend, on Sunday. I am leaving for one of my 4 day business trips back to NYC. I want to tell her why I know she lied and give her the week to think about what she wants. I will reiterate that I want us to remain married.

I'm not as mad as I thought I would be. I've been mad many times over the past 3 months so maybe my anger phase is over. I hope this doesn't mean we have no hope.

I read some of the threads of people who survived the A. Right now, that seems like moving to Mars has a better chance of happening. Please someone, tell me that it can happen.

Part of me deeply loves her and am sick that we let things go to such a bad place. I feel betrayed and of course, we have betrayed each other in the past, in various actions.

Part of me wants her to want a D because I'm humiliated. The perfectionist in me thinks, 'Oh I'll just find a new, more loving wife and take super-awesome care of her.' Luckily I have friends who recently had D's. It sounds like a lot of pain. One of my good friends said earlier this year, 'do not get a D, work through your issues'. She doesn't now about the A.

A D would be terrible for our two kids.

I don't know what she will do. I am committed to my Plan A. I wish that when I confront her that I will know it will end.

I'm scared to tell family and friends because I am utterly embarrassed. Our families are notoriously quiet on matters of the heart and so 'everything is fine' is the order of the day.

As I spent an hour writing this, I feel like an out of body experience. It's like, 'wow... this really happened to me.' What a terrible way to learn a lesson about caring for your wife and marriage.

I am so sad.

Can you get a PI to gather some evidence while she is in NYC before she comes home?

It is really too bad you allowed what was probably an EA escalate to a PA.

. I assume you are familiar with Plan A? Begin meeting all her needs and stop all lovebusters. At the same time you need to be doing whatever you can to end the A. I would suggest some keylogger software on her computer immediately, this would be very good to do now while she's gone.

You need to read about exposure. Make a list of all people that might be useful in ending the A. What do you know about OM? Is he married? What about your WW's parents? Friends? Family? Make a list. Many here advocate a scorched earth exposure, I don't necessarily think that's always the best way to go and it isn't what I did in my situation.

Lastly: this may be difficult for you, but you need to refrain from unprotected sex with you W until she has been tested for STD's. (a nasty STD is NOT worth it jc, please believe me)

You CAN get through this jc. Your marriage can and probably will survive. Its time to get real cool and calculating, sounds like you've already done many of the right things on your own.

I wish you the best!

Jccan,
I'm very sorry you find yourself with a need to post to THESE boards. Infidelity is a very traumatic experience. Its good that you are recognizing that there are things you did to contribute to a bad atmosphere in your marriage and are taking action to correct that. Its the first step to making a positive change in yourself whether your marriage survives this or not. I think you said it in your post, but please remember that while you are partially responsible for the condition of your marriage, your wife is 100% responsible for the decision to have an affair.

While its sad that the affair has progressed to a PA now, whats done is done, and I know how much of a relief it is to know the truth. Like Tyk mentioned, ABSOLUTELY install a keylogger on your computer before your wife gets home. You can set it up to email you the text and visual logs (I really like the All-in-one keylogger) covertly.

There will probably be a lot of communication between her and the OM while you are in NY, and hopefully the keylogger will capture some of that for you. If you have free time in NY, you can maybe even try to find out if this OM is married. You may as well expose to her while you are there.

But please keep posting here and reading what you can. If it gets slow here, you can post in the General Questions II forum here in the infidelity section. That forum generally has much higher traffic.

Lastly, the way you describe the terrified look in your wife's eyes, is similar to something I noticed. One day when I asked my wife about the 240 text messages on her phone bill, she had a deer in the headlights look. The day I confronted her with proof, she had one of the 180 degree turnarounds that seem so rare on these boards. I guess that look in her eyes really was terror that I would find out and leave her. Maybe that means your wife will have the same reaction when you confront her upon her return. I hope so!

Oh and become a Plan A expert!

Wow!!! I would not let her continue to have sex with the OM for another two more days and on top of that have daily conversations like everything is alright. The only person benefiting from that is the OM. I guess I don't understand why bursting her bubble is a bad idea?? Why allow this to continue? I would tell her to get on the next flight out immediately. And tell her that her old boss says hi from Colorado. You let her go knowing she was probably lying don't compound that missatke by allowing this affair to continue. Just my opinion.