First a quick summary.
In the end of Mar 07, my wife of 7 months told me she thought we were incompatible. She told me we didn't have enough in common and she didn't think she was the woman I thought I was marrying. Now I see this as the attempt it was to get me to consider leaving, so she wouldn't have to.
Without the benefit of this site, I plan A'd to an extent. I took her on a trip she wanted to go on, I got into her hobbies to reduce independent behavior. Our married life had some stress associated with it after we let a friend stay with us while he found a place to live. That was right after we got married, and he was with us for nearly 2 months. In a retrospective analysis, my LBs were mainly limited to independent behavior. I always loved her, complimented her, and supported her. We just didn't spend enough UA time together.
Starting in the beginning of April, I was very suspicious about an affair, but tried to defend her behavior to myself, even though I kept looking. It was about 3 weeks until I could no longer deny the affair. I confronted her on a Sunday afternoon, told her she had to leave and that I was filing for divorce and moving back to my birth state to be closer to family. She broke down crying and begging for another chance. She sent him a NC "email", and informed her parents of the EA and the limited PA that she had confessed to.

Fast forward 15 months. I never believed her story of the limited PA, and I have continually tried to get her to open up and talk to me about the details. She has always resisted, not because I think the affair is still going on, but because she is having a hard time dealing with her guilt. She has admitted that she doesn't think she has a right to have any of her needs met by me now and this is her "cross to bear" so to speak. I have tried to explain the importance of discussing the details and always been very careful about how I say things to her in order to help her feel safe in talking to me. No angry outbursts, as little LBing as possible, no name calling, or using the A as leverage. I'm just firm in what I need from her, and will continue until I get it.

Well, she finally met my boundary of honesty about the extent of the PA. She admitted to me this morning that the 2 kisses were in fact 2 separate instances of her sleeping with him. Once in a motel where they "went to talk", and once at his house. While I basically always knew that this was most likely what had occured, its different hearing the admission. While I couldn't lie to myself in believing that it was just 2 kisses, I guess I always just hoped that maybe she had managed to keep that last bastion of sanctity and exclusivity in our marriage intact. Nope.

None of it comes as a surprise. I feel empty. Just totally spent. I know I'm thoroughly #$%$#'ed right now. Not mentally really, I've always been stable and levelheaded. I just know that both of my options suck at this point. I can stay and try and work through this, or I can leave the marriage, knowing that there is basically no way in hell I will trust another woman for a long, long time. What does it mean, when you just don't care what happens?

Got room in the club of full EA/PA for another?

do not let one person kill your ability to trust another. I have been betrayed...a lot. But i am still willing to put myself out there for the right person.

I hate to say this to you...but do not believe for a minute that you have gotten the entire truth from your wife as of yet. For people that hold on to lies...they will let the truth out in little bits...never giving more than they feel they need.

Have you ever considered a polygraph exam which will assure you that you have all the historical truth you need to make a decision about your life? This way, you don't have to waste any more years waiting for her to come clean. It will all be accomplished in a few hours and then you can decide what you want to do.

(((andrew)))) sorry to read your post of another d-day.

Re the polygraph...Even if you don't feel you would follow through with one, your wife's reaction to the suggestion will probably give you a good idea if she is finally giving you the full truth.

Hang in there.

A3

No reason to make any decisions at this time. For you said your head is totally messed up.

"I have continually tried to get her to open up and talk to me about the details. She has always resisted, not because I think the affair is still going on, but because she is having a hard time dealing with her guilt. She has admitted that she doesn't think she has a right to have any of her needs met by me now and this is her "cross to bear" so to speak. I have tried to explain the importance of discussing the details and always been very careful about how I say things to her in order to help her feel safe in talking to me."

You have accomplished what you asked for. Think of it this way: you were told what you already knew what really happened without proof. So things have not changed. What you suspected was just confirmed.

This admission of what happened will allow your WW to realease a lot of guilt an be able to be receptive to you filling her needs.

This event can help the both of you move forward. For as you can see how hard it has been for you dragging her forward with you because of the secrets/baggage from the affair that she has not been able to let go.

Best to react calm. It's what got WW secure enough to open up and tell you about the PA. There is a chance that there maybe more to tell. If you go off the handle it may cause WW to again feel not safe enough to reveal any more.

You both can move forward from this.

I would have agreed with this statement, but not anymore. I now realize that the mind of an adulterous wife is so messed up (my WW's anyway) that they will actually convince themselves of their very own lies...why? I don't know.

My WW was 2 hours away from a polygraph to prove to my how many sexual encounters there were between her and OM. Since she was 2 hours away and willing to do it, I called it off thinking that she must be telling the truth (why else would she take the afternoon off from work, spend $600.00, just to get caught lying?). Then, I found out on dday #2 that she was lying all along, and would have actually have been so screwed in the head that she would have taken the test when she knew she was lying.

So, don't count out a poly if your W is saying that she'll take it. If people who are lying always said "no" to taking a poly, then poly's wouldn't even exist...there'd be no one to catch lying. Wish I would have gone through with it.

A polygraph should be taken by every WS IMHO. It would save a BS months and years of dealing with lies and multiple d-days. Liars lie and nobody lies more and better than a WS.

That's the truth, medc.

The mental cruelty I have endured since the end of February has taken it's toll in every possible way...mentally, physically, emotionaly, spiritually, etc...

All because of lying.

I hope others go the way of a poly to get it over with quick, instead of the slow, agonizing, tortorous way my WW did/is? doing it.

It may be too late for that medc. It took me awhile to know that I wanted to get married. Not because I was ever undecided about my feelings for her, but because I did not exactly have a functional model of marriage in my parents. They fought all the time and ended up divorced. I was very hesitant to go into marriage, despite how much she was pushing for it. Then to have her turn around 7 months later and sleep with another guy. Its like all my worst fears about people in general came true. That the only person looking out for me, is me. The only person I can trust is me.


I know you will disagree with me here, but I don't think that is the case with my wife. I think that now that she has finally admitted this, that it will open her up to finally meet my expectations for honesty and openness. There is literally nothing else for her to hide. This was the keystone, so to speak.


Yes, I have considered it. My wife and I have been apart for 4.5 months now, with another 4.5 months to go in her deployment. The next time I will see her will be near Christmas. We communicate by email every day and by phone every other day or so. We'll see how the next few weeks play out.

I felt the same way. I was wrong. Most others here have also felt this way. They too were wrong.

I am assuming you have no kids and are obviously young. Why continue with this mess if she cheated 7 months into your marriage?

Thanks for the kind words TR. I agree that this was nothing more than confirmation of something I already knew but didn't have proof of. I still recognize though, that the reality of it has yet to sink in. My wife is overseas right now and has been so for 4.5 months. Regardless of having suspected a full blown PA, Im sure my reaction would have been much different if she was here, and we had recently had SF. I think I have disassociated the words with the act just because its been 4.5 months since I last enjoyed the act. Even though she will return 4.5 months from now, if we are still together working on this, I'm sure I will feel like she just told me when it comes time for that first round of SF.

To clarify one thing though, she does not block me from meeting her ENs. Actually, since the first D-day, we have been much better about meeting each other's needs. Before she left, we spent all of our time outside of work together and we began to focus solely on each other. Im sure she held this secret so long because she didn't want to ruin it. But the truth always comes out. No, she doesn't block me from meeting ENs. She just doesn't believe she has any right to ask or expect me to meet her needs. She feels undeserving of that. This all came up because I mentioned in MC one time that I recognized the possibility that she would not voice her concerns about the marriage because she felt she had to atone for her mistake. It seems those fears were grounded.

I agree that now that she has admitted this, she will be able to let go of alot of the guilt and shame that she has been carrying and we can finally start having the discussions that both of us need to heal.

Wow A3. This statement really hits home for me. Not because of the lack of a functional model of marriage (my parents are like the Cleavers), but the resentment you show for getting married partly because of pressure from WW, then for her to stab you in the back so soon after...same deal as me, A3.


"It may be too late for that medc. It took me awhile to know that I wanted to get married. Not because I was ever undecided about my feelings for her, but because I did not exactly have a functional model of marriage in my parents. They fought all the time and ended up divorced. I was very hesitant to go into marriage, despite how much she was pushing for it. Then to have her turn around 7 months later and sleep with another guy. Its like all my worst fears about people in general came true. That the only person looking out for me, is me. The only person I can trust is me."


The resentment for me is real as well. My WW was gracious enought to wait 14 months into the marriage before spreading 'em for another man, though....not that it matters.

You are correct, Medc. I am 29 and we have no kids. I have read all the advice that says to file for divorce and move on. I can certainly understand where that advice comes from. There simply isn't a positive history to draw on, which would make recovery just a little easier.

I originally decided to give her a second chance because of the person I wanted to be. I didn't want to judge someone based on one act. We had been together for 3.5 years when the A happened and it was an aberration of character. She seemed to be genuinely remorseful and not understand how she let herself do it, so I decided to give her a chance to prove herself. I have detected no further contact and she accounted for all of her time before she left. Naive? Possible. But I don't do this with my head in the sand. I just know that I have to go through this healing process either way.

I wouldn't say I resent her for pushing to get married. She didn't force me to do anything. She made her desire to get married known, but she wasn't the type to give ultimatums or deadlines. She would mention it every few months, but it would never turn into an argument. Maybe it was the wrong choice of words to say she was pushing hard. She just made it clear that she wanted to get married, and I felt I was ready for it about 1-1.5 years later and then we were engaged.

Yup, sounds like my experience, except that my FWW and I weren't M'd at the time she first cheated on me. And, I felt the same way as you likely feel now (e.g. "give her another chance", "we've spent so much time together", "she seems truly remorseful"), etc.

Get what brought me to MB 13 years afterwards?

In terms of effect, her first A was a grenade, her last an A-Bomb. Particularly as I KNEW she was quite capable and prepared to cheat on me, yet I chose to invest my life with her anyway.

See, it's a character issue, a boundary issue, with your WS, and that's something only they, not you, can change. I don't think showing remorse towards you and meeting your ENs addresses those two things.

I could have easily walked away the first time, and there are times that I wish that I did. However, two children, joint property and lots of years invested in our M make it a lot more difficult to walk away this time, and both of us know this.

So, be very careful about what you choose for your future and why.

Actually, one thing Im wondering now is if she will simply shut down on me. A few weeks ago, when I was again stressing how imperative it was that we talk about everything until we felt there was nothing further to learn from it, she made the comment that she didn't think I would stick around if we did.
I made the comment back asking if she wanted a marriage in which she thought I was only there because I didn't know the truth. I think that maybe that was what finally got through to her. That night I started sending her questions and she started answering them.

But if she feels that nothing can save the marriage now, there is really nothing I can do about that. If she decides that I will never forgive her, she may not see the need to invest anything further. It may be over whether I want try and work through this or not.

One reason that I am staying calm and being open to work through this, is that I will not leave her while she is deployed. She was married once before this to a real piece of work. He waited until she deployed and then ran off with his high school sweetheart, taking everything she owned and destroying her financial stability. Regardless if she is the one who stepped out on me in this marriage, I will not be the second person to do that to her. So I have 4.5 months before she comes back and that time can be best spent working to heal both of us from this infidelity.

andrew3,

I am something of a newbie here so I have limited my posts to my own thread since I feel pretty incapable of giving advice, only getting it, but something in your post hit me and it was relevent to my situation and maybe to yours.

At first my WW denied, denied, denied. Then when faced with incontrovertible evidence she told me she and OM did it only twice and "it was fast, she felt guilty, her top never even came off etc."

I believed her because I really wanted to.

I had about a 2 hour conversation with one of my dad's best friends and a good friend of mine since childhood. He was a "family practice" attorney in my hometown for 35 years and has a degree in psychology as well and taught the practice of psychology in family law matters at a local university for a few years.

When I told him WW admitted to the affair and she told me it only happened twice, he kind of sighed and told me what that usually meant as he had seen it literally thousands of times.

He said, "if they say it happened once and once only and they are genuinely sorry about it, there's a pretty decent chance you are getting the truth. BUT, if they say it happened twice or three times, in my experience, it has nearly always been the case that it was going on for significantly longer and happened quite a bit more. They usually admit to twice, but not more because that way they can acknowledge that indeed it was more than once, but they don't have to admit the true extent of their relationship, sexual and otherwise, with the OP."

I subsequently found out he was way right. With my WW she was leaving the kids during the week on schoolnights to go bang the OM and then going home to feed them, farming the kids out to friends so she could spend the weekend with him etc.

I hope this is not your situation, but I think it might be wise to prepare yourself for this.

I can say that this is exactly what my WW said when I was 100% sure a PA was occurring...."one time thing, OM lasted 3-4 minutes, top didn't come off, condom was used, didn't orgasm, etc..."

All lies.

Truth was (found out 2 months after dday #1)...double digits (possibly), orgasmic sex (with my W that means 3-4 minutes would never cut it), fully naked and loving it, multiple positions, no condom , etc...

I think it's pretty safe to say that all WW's do this trickle truth stuff....whether it's the fact that they are scared of your reaction, embarrassed by their actions or just "foggy" is the question.

SWW,
I have been following your thread and think you have handled your situation pretty admirably. Some people are wise beyond their post count and I think you are one of them.


I hear you on this. But for me, Im not sure it matters so much. If the sex was that bad, she wouldn't have gone to his house for round 2 even. So I don't see much of a point in asking the details regarding climax, positions, his size, etc...

Unfortunately, we have to communicate via email right now, so I sent her some follow up questions regarding whether it was protected, but it really can't get any more disrespectful of an act than it was. I do care about the things like the timing though because her and I were still active in this department during the A. On D-day #1, when she admitted to the kisses, one of them was on a day that she got mad at me because she wanted SF that night and I had gone out with a friend for a beer (this is very rare for me). Well, if "kiss" really meant sex, then that means she had sex with him and then came back expecting SF with me that night. Thats just repulsive.


I can believe this. She recently told me that they didn't start talking as acquaintances until Nov 06, and that it was Feb 07 before she realized he was trying to become more than friends. But the simple truth is that I really have no idea when it started. If it started much earlier than that, it will have started before we were married. I will certainly incorporate that bit of psychology into our future discussions. I am prepared for her to admit that it was more than twice.

I think in my wife's case it falls into all 3 categories. I thought about fogginess when she said "once in a hotel we went to in order to talk". I would have laughed if the situation isn't so tragic. My first thought was "how cliche", but my second thought was some worry about whether she actually thinks she went there to talk rather than it being a premeditated decision to commit adultery.

Two people having an affair don't go to a seedy hotel somewhere to talk, and its absurd to think otherwise. If she actually thinks that way, maybe she is still deeper into justifications than I thought. I thought she was beyond the justification stage.

She went there to have sex. I'm sure the only talking was pillowtalk after the fact. Sorry for being so harsh, but it's true.