How important is it for you to go back and construct a timeline of events that led to D-Day?

I keep an excel spreadsheet of everything that comes to mind concerning myself and the facts that I know about my FWW's associations with the other man.

It just seems to help me clarify where my head was at, at the time, and where my wife was and tie it to times and places.

I know I can't change the past, but it sure seems to help me to get an understanding of atleast my mental state at those times.

I did the same thing. I also compared and merged it with OWH's so we could verify facts and uncover truths. It was critical for me because I had no idea what was truly happening. I was completely blindsided and everything that he told me was a lie. I needed to know how much, if any, of my marriage was real. I continued to add to it, documenting every stupid thing that he did. OWH has used it in court. So far I haven't needed to. But it's there just in case.

I didn't keep a spreadsheet, but I also worked out a timeline concerning my wife's relationship with her ex-boyfriend. My wife was very up-front about the relationship, but as time went on, I found little things she hadn't mentioned that confirmed the timeline I had. I don't think she was holding anything back, I just don't think she is as introspective as I am, and therefore things that I found significant may not have registered to her as important.

One example is this: about a year after we reconnected, we bought new furniture, and as we went through the old furniture, I found a poem she had clipped from a newspaper that described falling in love with the person who you'd been friends with forever. She had never mentioned the poem to me, but the date on the poem confirmed my theory that she had thought she was falling in love with him around April or May of 2003 - which was the date on the clipping. (I think she had probably forgotten all about the poem, as it was three years since she had clipped it out.)

Things like this helped me construct a timeline. With the timeline, I came to understand why she was vulnerable to compliments and attention from the exbf, and I understood why she felt she was falling for him. Understanding all that, I came to really appreciate how fortunate we both were that she did not go any farther than that - and I mean appreciate in the sense of total comprehension and understanding. Another way to put it is that understanding the timeline, understanding how lonely she was, understanding how her lack of boundaries led almost inevitably to her developing the feelings that she did... I am almost in awe of her for being able to put a stop to it when she did.

Anyway, the understanding I developed from my timeline helped me feel empathy for her, which in turn made it very easy to forgive her. No - that's not quite right. I forgave her early on when we reconnected, and the empathy came right from the start when I discovered how unhappy she was. But the timeline helped me to fully understand what happened and helped ease any resentment I felt, and more importantly, it helped ease the fear I felt, the fear that she might decide to leave after all.

RB,

Not sure how "important" it is/was to me, it was more of an obsession. I became a cell phone bill forensic scientist.

I plotted calls, time of day, length of call, other calls immediately before and after calls to OM, intervals between calls, then analyzed relationships between calls made that day and compared that set of data to the data represented by other dates/times she called OM, plotted them on a calendar, compared that to my journal that i was keeping to verify/disprove things she told me...

You know, perfectly "normal" behaviour...

It didn't "help" though, but it satisfied the obsession for awhile. I still do it, I can't help it. Makes me ill every time I do it, but I can't seem to cut it out. I hope time heals that...

What is kind of funny is that I relate my timeline to college football weekends last fall! In early October, my wife and I took a drive into N.E Iowa to see all the Fall colors... We had the football game going on the radio.

Into the first Saturdays of November, we watched a couple of games on the tube at her house.

After that, her affair started in earnest...

For the last football game of the season, she was in the bar with him watching the game on T.V.

A short time after that, she TOOK HIM to a local hockey game. The best that I can tell, that was when their PA began.

The wierd thing was, he WAS NOT a sports fan! She knew more about football than he did!

I think she was trying to turn him into me.

Ha! I did that too. Cingular had the ability to download my cell bill in Excel format for easy sorting. It worked great. Ran it next to a calendar and entered notes on what I could remember about those dates. Painful stuff.

I studied their patterns and times. You could see the evening "ping". One would call the other with a single ring to get the all clear and the other would call back one minute later for their 40-100 minute nighty-night call. Waywards are sooooo clever.

I was paying the cell phone bill for my FWW the whole time... I still am. The phone contact bears out the timeline for me.

I really think your wife wanted you all along, she just figured things would never get better and that you would never want to be any closer to her than you were.

CC,

I see that you are an INFP... I need to look into that a bit more... I know that I'm an introverted intuitive thinker... I'm not sure about the feeling part.

Edit: OK, I went to humanmetrics.com and I scored as an INFP! Interesting.

INFPs have problems in mating... they have a hard time finding someone. Also, many INFPs push people away, consciously or unconsciously. I did that with my wife. You did that with yours.

INFPs are also capable of loving another person more deeply and intensely than just about any other type, and once they give themselves completely, they are capable of staying that way for life.

I'm not that surprised you came out as an INFP. For me, what jumps out in your story is how detached and withdrawn YOU were in the first part of your marriage... and how quickly YOU reversed course when you found out what was going on. That is the part that reminds me most of my own sitch. And I'm almost thinking that is a quintessentially INFP story...

Just found out that my wife is an INFJ... could be a problem.

Wow... INFPs are very rare - only 1% of men are INFP.

The only type rarer than an INFP... is an INFJ. Only .5% of the population is INFJ!

That probably explains why we both have engineering jobs. (think Dilbert!)

I did the same but not in a spreadsheet. Used FWH's frequent flyer statements and hotel points to re-create his travel. Had to look at mine too to see when I was out of town and what other windows of opportunity there was for him. Helps to look back and fill in the blanks but it sucks at the same time.

Yes, it helps me to fill in the blanks... I think back to what I was doing on days when my FWW was with the OM. It helps to underscore my complacency at the time. It does suck.

On a slightly different topic... aren't older women wonderful??

LOL!

Yes, I agree, they are!

Where did you get the information about the percentages of the population which are each type?
I've only just discovered the personality types and its really interesting, I'm an INFJ married to an INTJ.