lol...now that's funny.


**EDIT**

Let's stop this bickering and get back on topic! Please keep your posts productive and helpful to Andrew.

I'm glad that you have taken some hope from the advice that Steve has given you, and I hope you and your WW can follow the plan that you have developed. It is a very hard thing to do though...I must admit. My W and I also have a plan, but I have fallen off the tracks right now. W is still working her plan, and she is carrying the weight right now. Hopefully your WW will see the light and start carrying some weight of her own.

It's seems like you and I have one thing in common in that we will be okay, regardless of how it all ends up...good for you.

Just for the record, I don't care what anyone posts to me. Anyone is free to post their own thoughts on this thread and I won't seek to censor or "ignore" them. I made the comment about Steve not suggesting divorce, because I have heard it before and I understand exactly where that advice comes from. To my personality type, it makes sense in a lot of situations. Personally, I would have been gone from this marriage if my wife hadn't reacted like she did on D-day. If she had tried to keep the affair going or walked out on me, I would have said good riddance. But she didn't.

My only gripe with her behavior since d-day is the fact that she finds it so difficult to talk about what happened. We have made a bit of progress here, but Im sure there is more to be uncovered. Steve heard my story and came to the conclusion that she currently doesn't have hope that I will be able to forgive her and she is just waiting for me to leave. Thats an awful way to live, especially when she is deployed 10000 miles away in crummy conditions and a hellish work schedule. Steve and I decided that we should ignore what I need right now in order to support her out there and give her hope. The time will eventually come for her to let all the details out, but its not now.

So please, keep the advice coming in whatever form you wish to give it. I don't think its possible for anyone on this board to offend me.

You state the above, but you also have 2 ddays listed in your sig. Doesn't add up.

You don't have to be embarressed(sp) about giving your WW a 3rd chance, because essentially that is what I'm doing too...given my 2 ddays as well.

My wife ended the affair immediately upon me finding out, emailed NC letter on her own, told her parents on her own, and deleted her accounts on the networking site that she used. Not to mention getting violently ill and vomiting repeatedly for days.

If she had responded by trying to keep OM in her life in some way, or by trying to continue the affair, it would be over. Even now, if I find out that she has been secretly talking to him, we are done. But I have detected no further contact of any sort in 15 months. The second d-day was her finally admitting the truth about the PA, that I already basically knew. I don't grant that the same importance as trying to continue the affair. I don't like the fact that she took so long to admit it, but I can understand her motivations to hide it. After all, every WS tries to hide it.

Sorry andrew, but a WW who is hiding facts about the affair is still in the affair. Do you think that maybe you might be trying to rationalize the fact that you had a second dday, by downplaying the importance of her continued lying?

The exact same thing happened to me, my friend...so don't think that I'm picking on you. I also said that I would not go through a second dday without going plan D, whether that dday was more lies, more truths, more contact, etc...but, I'm still in recovery.

I wouldn't say I downplay the importance of her lying, but I do see a difference between lying to enable continuation of the affair, and lying to avoid admitting she slept with him. Both are unacceptable in the long run, and need to be dealt with, but the second case is not a dealbreaker for me so long as she DOES come completely clean before I lose my patience. Fully owning their mistakes is hard for some people and it takes them longer than it takes others to come around.


Don't worry, I don't think you are picking on me. I'll certainly agree that the continued lies about the affair dig the hole deeper and ultimately give the WS more work to do in recovering the BS's trust. Maybe I should change my sig since its not really a d-day. She just finally admitted something that I already knew had happened during the affair. Could be seen as a d-day. Could be seen as a small measure of progress.

Maybe I'm just too much of a new BS, but your second dday just strikes a deep chord with me, as it is so eerily similar to mine. But, I also had the pleasure of finding out that contact was still going on as well. I guess with my experience in the dday 2 scenario I can't help but think that you may be a little foggy about what actually went down, and that your WW is getting a little too much credit from yourself.

But, like I said, maybe it's just my own experiences clouding me.

I, of course, have a fear that contact is still going on, but I have nothing tangible to base that fear on. I could be a little foggy. I don't really have a good idea of the ebb and flow of the affair. I know a lot of macro details, but not necessarily how they fit into the timeline. Steve advised me to stop seeking those details until she gets back to the states.

And you are right, I do perhaps give her more credit than she would deserve if I were able to look at the situation completely objectively. I don't think she is the same woman that had the affair though, so I try to cut her some slack. I think right now that she is just scared of the consequences that she thinks total honesty will bring. Its gotta end sometime, but I'll follow Steve's plan for now and see what kind of success it brings.

That's cool. I wish you well in your recovery. I would just hate to see you in the same spot as me (a guy who said "one more dday, and I'm out"...but still in it).

I think that if you aren't completely sure about the ebb and flow of the affair, or the timeline,, then you shouldn't discount that she may have had continued contact between dday 1 and 2. I just hope that you are prepared...that's all I'm saying.

I forget (maybe I'm just to lazy to read your story again)...did you contact OM?

OM received a NC letter (well, email) after I confronted my wife. I never contacted him directly, because I didn't want to instigate more contact right after we had sent the NC letter. I did not expose to his chain of command because any repercussions would fall back on my wife too, and since she ended the affair, hurting him would have been counterproductive.

If I find out that they have still been talking, full exposure will be swift and extremely malicious.

Edit: And thank you for your words of warning. Until I get the whole story from her, I can't discount any possibility of contact. I hate waiting like this, but I can't really trust her responses to my questions anyways, so its just as good to wait till December when she returns. I wish I had gotten us onboard with Steve Harley in the beginning. We could have had this handled before she left, I think.

If you find out that there was more contact between ddays, is your next step plan D? Given the fact that you expected to find out that it was a PA, and didn't go straight to plan D at dday 2, and you are now saying that contact will be the straw that breaks the camels back...does continued contact past dday 1 mean that plan D will be in order?

Yes. I think plan D would be in order if the A didn't stop on D-day 1.

So, you would consider a phone call or two to be a heavier burden in recovery than sex?

Introvert, I think we are focusing on different things here. The sex happened during the affair and by being willing to reconcile, I am offering forgiveness for what happened during the affair...contingent upon her complete honesty, of course.

If she had continued the affair or contact past d-day in spite of the reaction she had to my confrontation and the way she threw herself back into the marriage, that would show a level of duplicity that I probably couldn't get over.

But, in reality, I have a hard time making blanket statements about "If she does this, then Plan D". It would depend on what happened, but I would be heavily biased against forgiveness at that point. Stranger things have happened though.

andrew3

Be prepared that even though WW's want to recover. They tend to sometimes slip up and contact the OM. Remember the WW is an affair addict. Addicts crave a fix until they go through withdrawal from the OM.

So do not write anything into stone at this point.

andrew are you in the service?

I was in a similar boat, but the situation was reversed. My ex cheated on me while I was deployed, telling other men that she was divorced and wasn't.

It was gut wrenching.

I think SH gave you good advice. Wait for her to come home. Hold her and tell her you will forgive her and that nothing she says will make you walk away, but that keeping things in and keeping them back are killing you and you will walk away if there is no full disclosure.

The truth keeps you there. Hiding things will not.

Don't do it the day she steps off the plane.

Wait a little bit.

Sorry you're going through this. Did she cheat while deployed?

You are right, TR. Nothing is set in stone, and if she confessed some additional contact to me after d-day #1, Plan D would be a poor reward for that honesty. I'd have to base my decision off of where we were at the time. My resentment quotient (RQ) was high yesterday.

Pomdbd3,
I am no longer in the service. The affair occured a year before she deployed. We had a good year together before her deployment as far as being husband and wife, but we just didn't discuss the affair. Everytime I would bring it up, she would just sort of retreat into herself.

I certainly wouldn't welcome her back with this discussion. I would have to wait until after New Years and try to get her to talk to Steve and then let him lead her into her side of recovery.

And yes, it is torturous. Every day, I have to make a decision to repress what I need again in order to Plan A from a distance, to support her. Its even worse, because she sounds really depressed lately. I don't know if "we" are the cause of that or if its also related to her work schedule and some other health concerns.