ok so she's cheated on me again... long story short - the first was minor physical (kissing) the second was EA (texting on phone) this last one was a full blown PA

She said she wants to stop her behavior and see a councilor - which she's made an appointment for - but she's refusing to let me read her phone messages from her girlfriend who I might suspect knew and allowed it to happen

I'm looking for assurances that she was not involved and she won't give me that - citing her friend's personal privacy... which I would respect is she was not involved (which I really don'tknow)

gosh I'm torn about this - on one hand I know I cannot believe my wife after all this - on the other I know what I want to do is wrong too...

sigh - been a rough couple a days for me guys - I'm confused...

Im very sorry that you find yourself in this situation again. I think your wife's refusal to furnish those phone records is unrealistic of her, especially when she acknowledges that she needs help for her destructive behavior.

If your wife's friend is toxic and supported her affair, you have every right to know and set the boundary that she will maintain NC with this now ex-friend for life. I would make this a boundary of yours. It has nothing to do with her "friend's" privacy and everything to do with protecting your marriage from your wife and her toxic friend.

Not to sound too harsh, but your wife has cheated 3 times. She has a LOT of gall to think she can dictate ANY terms for recovery at this point.

I wish you the best of luck, and hopefully you will get some more responses soon.

fwiw - we have three kids that I love more than anything and I do still love my wife more than anything and want this to work as well - and the first two "affairs" were not long term nor was this one (one time physical interaction) and the first two didn't escalate to full blown PAs - I know that doesn't make them less hurtful (believe me)

I think she's being honest - but how can I find the faith to believe her?

Your level of faith will be dictated to great extent by her actions. Right now, she's doing nothing to reassure you, and is in fact still contributing to your anxiety. She is doing this because you are allowing her to.

There is not reason for her to have any privacy regarding her adultery. You need to know the whole truth about everything, and be able to verify whatever information you need going forward. That is how trust is rebuilt, and these are things truly repentant people do to earn trust back.

You need to begin to implement and enforce some boundaries. The fact that you are here defending your WW's serial adultery speaks to the heart of why it keeps happening.

Sorry you're here, you will find the help you are seeking here if you will hear it.

Geeks
Listen, I don't mean to come off harsh, but her "FRIENDS" personal privacy? Who gives a rodents behind about her "friends" personal privacy. And the LAST person on earth you wife should be concerned about is her "friend".

You wife should realize how darn lucky she is to do something so dispicable and still have a husband who wants to be with her. You love her and as always that LOVE makes everything else pale in comparison. Good luck man.

But what can I do? Anything I do results in a LB <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> doesn't it? But I feel a need to protect myself too.

I am sorry my friend but you judge a person by their actions and not by their words and her actions are speaking volumes. I think your wife is playing you for a complete fool. She is in no position to dictate terms to you.

I hope you have both been checked for STD's. In addition, who is this OM that she had sex with? If he is married or has a girlfriend it should be exposed to them. Did you catch her or did you wife confess? What were the circumstances? What reasons did she give for betraying you and your marriage? I get a feeling from what you have written that there is much more to this story.

Your wife's behavior indicates she is hiding something. After what she has done she is not being open. What have been the consequences to this behavior. No consequences to her actions equals no motivation to change. It seems that the previous non sexual affairs that there was no consequences to her. I am guessing she had sex with this guy because she knew you would do nothing and she could get away with it. It sounds like you are being a doormat for her behavior. I wish you luck.

I found out because (for some reason) I looked in the garbage can and found a work cell phone that she'd been using to contact him with (because she knows I monitor the numbers on her cell with the online reports) - the phone was locked and I would not give it back to her - she tried everything from - I'd get in trouble keeping her work phone to the only reason she had it was because a client needed to talk to her - I knew it was BS so I didn't give the phone back and I wrote a little program to spit out all the possible code combinations - and I basically started going through them one by one - she finally gave in and told me she'd been texting a guy - and I still didn't feel right about it and when I asked her if she'd slept with him - she hesitated long enough that I knew... After that, she came clean (as far as I know) and told me everything.

i know who the guy is and where he lives - did a background check and he's not married and I'm afraid to go see because if i do I'll end up killing the guy and I don't want to go to jail for this looser SOB

as far as consequences - no - I have not "punished" her per se - Every time I have threatened to leave, but I don't want to leave my kids and I just don't know what the right thing to do is - all of our fighting over this is taking it's toll on the kids and I just want to stop the pain for everyone involved - she really seems to be sorry and has an appointment with a councelor tomorrow night - after that I will probably go with her... she recognizes that she has a problem here and I think she really wants to fix herself.

she has given me permission to check her phone - but I also know that she's told her friend that I'm reading the messages - so I won't find anything there I'm sure

BUT - I did find out that you can recover deleted messages from a SIM card and I have a SIM card reader on the way - I don't know how far they go back - hopefully I can read her messages from Monday as that will tell me if she's being honest with me or not...

just an update - the recovery of deleted SMS messages was a bust... newer cell phones store the SMS on the phone I guess - so I recovered some messages but they were like a year old (when she had a different phone) and useless...