Question. If you are trying to recover, move forward, how important is it to find out lies at exposure WH told? I KNOW that at expose the WH tries to hide or cover up things because he wants to make the A seem not as bad as it really was. I know they are NOT thinking clearly or rationally.

So, today 4 months later, I ask WH about details of the affair, that I have already ask him at D-Day - exposure. What if today he changes the answers on several. Now I have ask him OVER and OVER "IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU LIED ABOUT IN THE BEGINNING YOU'D LIKE TO TELL ME ABOUT NOW" He always says NO.

Now I can understand that he has already hurt me so bad and did not want to hurt me more - he says was the reason for lying. He says there is no need to go over old stuff, he says I'm just trying to ctach him in a lie. So, please help me amd I looking at this wrong. I'm thinking he's still hiding information, afraid of my reation.

And if you are trying to recover should I even be asking stuff I have already ask?

Ask him specific questions he has to answer. It will make it harder for him to withhold information.

1. What positions did you start out making love to her in
2. In the end, the last time you two had sex, what positions did you use.
3. How long were your sex sessions
4. Was she better in bed than me, specifically how?
5. Where did you make love the first time, second time, third time, fourth time, fifth time, sixth time, etc, etc.
6. Who brought up protection and what did you two use.
7. Did you see her take the pill?
8. Were you worried about pregnancy or STD's?
9. Where did you meet her
10. Where did you first kiss her?
11. Have you been to her home?
12. Have you been to our home?
13. Did you boink at either home?
14. Any BDSM?
15. Anal sex?
16. BJ'S?
17. Did you give her oral?
18. Did you like all the sex with her?
19. Did you have meals with her?
20. Where did you two eat?
21. How much $$ did you spend on meals?
22. Did you buy her anything?
23. What did you buy her?
24. How much did it cost?
25. Did she buy anything for you?
26. What did you do with it?
27. Did either of you buy underwear for each other?
28. Did you have a threesome?
29. When did you talk on the phone
30. Did you call her or she call you?
31. What did you talk about?
32. How often did you meet? 5 times a week?
33. How often did you two talk on the phone?

I would be asking him everything. If you ask if there is anythiing more he wants to tell you he will naturally say NO since there is nothing he WANTS to tell you period. You gotta be painfully direct and specific I think.

SQUEEZE all the information out of him.

It is very important.

RE: Recovery or not, he needs to earn back the trust of you and the family.

Recovery takes longer than any A to recover. You need to feel safe in your R and it is his responsibility to do so.

The questions be SK are good but you don't even have to work that hard.

Just give him the responsibility to make you feel safe. If his actions and words do not make you feel safe, then don't give him the status of a recovered spouse.

Once the BS has completed their plan A and implemented their own improvements then the majority of the changes reside with the Xws.

There is less for the BS t/d and more for the Xws to do.

Do you know your boundaries for your M & R?

Ask your Xws what his recovery plans are and how he is helping and will be helping YOU feel safe and recover.

JMHO,
L.

If you think/know he has lied, don't ask again until he is hooked up to a polygraph machine. Don't waste your breath or time on a known liar...make him PROVE he is telling the truth.

Try giving him "Joseph's Letter" to read. You can find it in the "Notable Posts" thread.

Print it out, and tell him that is why you ask the questions, and that is why you need the answers.

Tell him that continued lying will only result in the process of your pain being drawn out so long that it may never die - and that the result will be that he will be answering questions for the rest of his life, or the rest of the marriage, whichever ends first.

And one will end first - the marriage - because of his lies.


If his expectation is that lying will make you recover faster, he needs to figure out that he is

wrong

in every single sense of the matter.


Simply put.

SB

I can't tell u how awful it is to have a memory that remembers every answer, and to ask the same questions years later, only to get a different answer, because your WS forgot what they answered last time...

What comes next? Do you correct them? confront them?
I would get really upset, and do my best to hold it in until I would finally snap and blow up. (Not the MB way)

You are reminded that not only did your spouse lie back then, but that they are equally capable of it now.

I wish you the best, you deserve to know the truth.

We all do.

While I agree with the previous posters that your FWH needs to earn your trust and the onus is on him to protect you and make you feel safe, I don't think the above question is doing the two of you any good.
- He probably doesn't remember what lies he did tell you.
- If he does remember any, he may not see the significance of them.
- There is nothing more he'd like to tell you about.

Instead of asking such a broad open ended question, ask him specific questions and see if he is honest when he responds to them. That will give you a much better indication as to whether he understands the necessity of honesty during recovery and in a healthy marriage.

LL,

Turtlehead gave a very good suggestion. Don't expect much in return but asking him to explain himself instead of telling him allows his response to ring in his ears way after he has walked away. That w/b a good thing.

Take care,
Orchid

I have ask almost ALL of these questions. he says he will not answer questions with me regarding their having sex. He says he's just not going to do it.

He says that answering questions DOES NOTHING for either of us in the healing department. Now I'm a smart girl and I know he just doesn't want to talk about it anymore. He is no longer seeing her, it's over, it was stupid on his part. He says he cannot make it "go away".

And I did tell him that telling lies - or not volunteering more info when I ask something does not help my recovery as SB said.

I showed him Joseph's letter as suggested by several of you. He said I've already ask enough. "You know what people do in A's I don't have to spell it out for you."

Is there a time limit on asking questions? It's been almost 5 months now. The truth is I should have ask more in the very beginning and I was still in crying, hurt mode. Now I ask things that come up, trigger that bring up old conversations and old events.

I really need to stop asking and move on. How much more can I punish him? He's in a living Hell as it is. If I continue he will not be able to take it and my M will be over. He's tired of it and wants to leave if I continue with the questions.

LL,
How in the WORLD would he know what you needed?!!!!! He is NOT you. He has not experienced the pain that you have. He has not walked in your shoes...lucky for him. This is an LB. To tell your S what they need or how they feel (when they don't know) is disrespectful.

You are going to have to find your boundaries here. Bottom line for me was that my FWH answer my questions. If he couldn't do it or "go there" then he was not willing to do what it took to help me recover from his MONSTROUS mistake. And that would show a consistent selfishness that has no place in a healthy M.

Don't settle LL. You will find years down the road that the anger is still lingering because he would not give you what you needed. Resentment will build because he held back the "medicine" that could cure you. And he is holding it back to protect himself. He's keeping "secrets" of the A and there shouldn't be any secrets that he and OW share that you are not privy to. End of story.

Are you willing to R without knowing all the facts that you need? Are you willing to hold onto your M at any cost? 5 months is nothing as far as having questions... what's going to happen to your peace of mind, your M when those same unanswered questions linger for 5 more years?

The solution is for him to ANSWER THE QUESTIONS. Then you will be ABLE to move on.

There's no time limit on asking questions that you would like to be answered. It's been over three years since D-Day for me and just last night my FWW was answering some questions about her A (though I'll admit that it's been a long, long while since we've discussed it).

Don't let your H decide for you what level of disclosure you should be comfortable with.

This is JUST what I needed after a tough weekend. Thank You so much. And NO I am NOT willing to save my marriage at any costs. You are right he's trying to protect himself, not me. I will discuss this with him tonight.

I have been lurking here for over two years. The only reason I came here to start with was because I was curious how everyone else dealt with things. I haven't posted an introduction because I have never really wanted to be involved in the board that much because I prefer to deal with things in my own way. Although it may seem like this has nothing to do with this thread, I will get to it soon enough.

My WH had an EA/PA with a coworker in our jointly owned company. I am not sure of the exact length of time as I only had my suspicions confirmed about two years ago. Many of you are probaly asking why I don't know how long it went on. And that is what finally provoked me to write this evening.

Specifically Stella's post with all of the questions about positions, place etc. Maybe it is my age...and I don't mean prudishly not wanting to talk about those things as I am probably one of the most sexually open and appreciative women on the planet. But more the mere fact that anyone would be giving someone advice that will not serve any purpose in the end.

It concerns me that someone might actually ask these questions and think that it can help in the healing process. These are questions that have absolutely nothing to do with healing, but more to do with humiliating and dominating someone that you love.

Before I go any further I want to tell a little of my history with my situation. When I found about the A, I was not so much shocked that it had happened, but shocked that he had waited so long. I mean after all...we are well into our lives and marriage. If he was going to do it...why hadn't he done it in the early years? Trust me..I was even more shocked when I realized that he had very true feelings for this woman.

It is not that I am more accepting or understanding than anyone else on this board, but maybe because we have been married for so long and I know him so well that I know that he has a huge amount of love to give. It is one of the things that kept me from leaving him initially when I found out.

I have always been someone that goes my own way. I solve problems in my own way. I asked him if he wanted to leave me. He said no. I asked him if he didn't love me anymore. He said absolutely not..that he has and will always love me. I asked him why he did it. He said that we had been married for so long, that he had forgotten what it was like to feel new love again.

This took me a while to digest. It was hard and that would be about the time I started coming here. But....what I saw here was also hard to digest. This was..is a man....that I have a huge amount of respect and history with. To begin treating him like a child that needed to be disciplined was beyond my comprehension.

I guess maybe that is my point in all of this. Everyone is allowed to heal as they please. But I needed to have peace again in my marriage. At our age, I was not ready to start over again. Neither was he. All I needed was the reassurance that he wasn't going anywhere. That he was still with me. That he still loved me. It wasn't about the sex, or the positions or the places. I even think that I was flattered in a very weird sort of the way that there was someone that saw what I saw in him. That I had caught him and that I was going to keep him.

I know that the next question everyone would ask me would be whether he still sees her. Honestly I don't know. He comes home to me every night. We live our lives as normal. Actually none of that changed during the A. It was only a happenstance that I found out. We have always had a fabulous sex life..even in our late fifties and now early sixties. We are making and implementing all of the plans that we have always had.

What would I do if I found out about it again? Can't say. Anger is definitely out for me. I'm too old to waste my time on it.Who am I to say that it didn't make our marriage better? It certainly rejuvenated some behaviors in him that may have fallen by the wayside. It certainly made me step up my game quite a bit.Life is short. I love him and that is really the point in all of it. All of life I believe.

The point is, the WS does NOT get to dictate what the BS needs to heal.

IF the BS wants to know all that stuff that is THEIR RIGHT and only they have the right to decide that.

I thought Stella's list was great.

And if the WH will not give his wife what she determines sheneeds, the kerb is -------> that way.

I am sure every innocent cheated on spouse is different. What they need to know and which details they have to know are different too. All is for thier healing.

The list I wrote is what I WOULD WANT TO KNOW. And MORE. I would want to know IT ALL. But that is just me.

I would have NO RESPECT for my husband if he had the gall to be so heinous as to cheat on me. If I did not divorce him on the spot, I would have to know EVERY bit of TRUTH.

I would probably divorce him however since I dont know if I could trust him again even if I did know all.

In England, France, and some other countries I have heard they innocent spouse does not ask questions and cheating is more accepted. So mabye it depends on the country. In other countries they have plural marriages.

Not to be confrontational Stella...but if you are not a BS why are you here? Just curious...

When an Xws doesn't want to participate in the BS' recovery and makes frivolous comments like he is tired of answering questions, or make threats like he will leave.... you know it's NOT time to stop because just by his response and actions you are already not feeling safe.

When mine tried to do that, I had already done a plan B and I knew my personal and marital boundaries. So for me the threats of were met with NO fear. Instead I told him to go because I certainly didn't need a Xws in my home that didn't make me feel safe.

So I learned that my boundaries which were for my family's protection and benefit were more important than the Xws miserable excuses, threats and grumbling. In time he came around to the same POV and even to this day, if I have a need to ask, he lets me.

JMHO,
L.

Before you start / continue to ask question try to understand WHY you want to know the answers. Sometimes the answers hurt more than you expect and IMO the more knowledge you have the harder it will be for you to heal (again, this is just MO).

1. Do you really want to know what positions they had made love in? If / When you make love again you just might compare so why open that door.
4. Does that matter? Maybe you could ask, HOW can I be better in bed for you.
5. Do you want to know how many times? WHY?
6. GREAT QUESTION
10. - 24. Does that really matter?
25. Only ask this so that you can request he toss it.
26. - 33. Does any of that really matter?

Here is my point - He had an affair. Given that, you probably already know the answer to most of these questions so you should really consider why you want to know. Again, the specifics could only hurt you worse.

I think that you should ask question that will help BUILD your MARRIAGE.