Hello fellow victims. I have not logged on in about 6 months but I find that I need a combination of venting and help.

Short version is in June 08 I caught wife in a "friendship" with a former neighbor. Text messaging, phone calls, maybe more, etc. On D-Day I got the standard fog babble, unloved, been too long, I want a divorce. I know I was missing all EN's for years, bad nusband, bad father...no disputing this. Corrected myself, Plan A, MC, divorce off, working on R. I was here on MB and am very thinkful for the support. Our R was going super strong. We spend countless hours together. Movies, cards, spooning, shopping....the works. I am always asking her about her needs, if I am meeting them. She has a sparkle in her eye I have never seen before. She is constantly telling me how much she loves me and she looks so happy.

Now the bad part: Facebook. Wife took a college class. She is 40. Mostly younger kids have Facebook accounts so she created one and they all post things there. I think Facebook is a total waste of time but I created one so I can keep an eye on what she it posting and what others are posting, etc.

A guy I went to high school with invited me and my wife to his friends list. His wife invited my wife to her friends list too. Prior to this, he and I chat once a year. We are not what I would call close friends. My wife e-mailed him hello and he responded. Well, they have just kept on going back and forth using Facebook's email and using Yahoo email addresses. My "friend" has been less that kind what talking about me in his emails to my wife. He is very two faced. He also made reference to my not treating her right. She told him this years ago. I really do not deny that fact. My wife has, never once, bad mouthed me back. Every time he says something bad, she ignores it in her response. This is good but I would reather see her say she is being treated good and is happy. That has not happened either. I may post the exact content of the emails later but it really is not that important right now.

Now I need to go back to October. We were in R and she got a text message from OM #1. She clicked on her phone, looked at it, deleted it and didn't say a word. The next day I checked the bill online. I did not now the number but I saw a single text message in each month of July, August and September. Then in October there was a weekly message. October WAS to be our first court date. It was always a single incoming message and my wife never replied. I asked her and she admitted it was OM #1 sending a "Hello, hope all is well" message to her. I was livid that she kept this from me. We called OM and told him to knock it off. I explained the importance of her being open and honest about EVERYTHING. I though she understood. He has not messaged since.

In December another issue came up with a $200 credit card charge that she hid from me. I never pay the bill and never look at the bill but for some reason, this time I did. I asked her what it was and she said I was not suppose to see that. What it was for is irrelevant. It is the fact that it is something she kept from me. I was literally shaking at the table during lunch as we were discussing it. I left for work and a couple hours later she messages me "are we ok?" I thought she understood about being open after the original D-Day and the text messaging issue.

Back to the current issue...She has not said a word to me about the email and Facebook exchanges she has been having. It has been going on for 2 - 3 weeks right now. On Friday I found that she had used Mapquest to get directions from our house to OM #2's work. She was going to a mall in that direction. I think OM #2 was off work on Friday so I cannot say that she went there. I have to watch for messages in the next week looking for anything that might say "it was good to see you" or anything like that.

About my wife: she is naive. She thinks that all people are nice. She is a kind, giving person. She does not realize that men can be pigs and will do or say anything necessary to get into a woman pants. I have been over this with her 1000 times. Having been monitoring things, there has been nothing physical at this point.

I am looking for some opinions on what to do now. When D-Day occurred in June, I confronted her right away. That was a mistake. Now I have the opportunity to let this play out and monitor it many different ways. Do I confront her now or let it continue?

I can say if I let it continue and it looks bad, I will be taking OM #2 down hard! Exposure is an understatement. His wife, his HR department (messaging/emails during working hours). I will mail a letter and clips of emails and messages to the top 6 corporate officials at his work. He will lose a 6 figure job.

I am more interested in getting my wife to understand the damage she is doing to me by doing stuff like this behind my back. Any thoughts on how?

I have not been to the shrink/MC since November but I will be calling him Monday morning.

Thanks for reading and I wish I could say it is good to be back here.

sorry to hear what you are going through. But it sounds like you have a plan in place. You have to present her with incontrovertible proof. But its what you do after that. You need to be readying yourself. You need to figure out what your line in the sand is. And how you can enforce boundaries, if you want to continue R.

In a nutshell, what I can see is that you and WW have agreed that it is your responsibility to prevent her from having an(other) A. Personally I feel that is her responsibility. I lived like you are living for a very long time. I came to the conclusion it wasn't the kind of life I wanted. I therefore decided that if I had no other choice but to live that way, I wanted a divorce.

I decided not to live that way. FWW knew my boundaries very clearly. She has done her level best to protect my feelings most times but not always.

Admittedly you are not very far along in the process. It takes time.

Ask yourself whether you are personally happy. Ask how you can change yourself to try to get happy. Your constant checking has to be putting a lot of strain on an already stressful situation.

If WW is worth it (i.e. you still love her), then work through this. If not, there is another option. I think it will be 3-5 years before you can really "put all this behind you" - if there is such a thing.

You won't be able to keep up your current lifestyle for that long.

Clearly there is still a trust issue with WW. If you trust OMW possibly you can work out ways to find out exactly what is going on.

Continue using voice recorders at home and in her car.

Hey CJ, I remember seeing you around. Sorry you feel the need to come back because you feel stuck.

When you and your wife discussed the importance of O&H, did you outline exactly what that and transparency meant? It would be easy to sit here and say "well, maybe she's thinking this" or "maybe that", but that's a waste of time. My FWH was kind of like your WW - if I didn't define EXACTLY what I meant about something, that left a little wiggle room for him to say "oh, well I didn't know." What I did was explain to him EXACTLY what my expectations were - no communicating with women over text/email/phone for anything other than strictly business, etc. Then I told him "I'm done messing around with this. I've told you what my needs and expectations are, and if you can't or aren't willing to fulfill them, then we need to go our separate ways. I'm not going to spend the next 20, 30 years trying to twist your arm."

That wasn't an ultimatum - I was letting him know that I was serious about making our marriage work, and I wanted him to be too, because if he wasn't going to be, then I was going to move on with my life. You have to make your boundaries VERY clear and stick to them. So you could go over this without letting your wife know what information you have, if you wanted. You could just say something like "I just wanted us to go over O&H and transparency again to make sure we're on the same page, since this was an issue in the past." Let her know it isn't just about giving you passwords so you can find out stuff on your own, but it's about her TELLING you what's going on without being "caught."

Another prime example - I have FB and MS. One time I got a message from a guy I didn't know on MS. It was pretty innocent - "hope you're feeling better since your status says you're sick." My MS page VERY clearly says I'm married and has a picture of both of us, so I was a little freaked out about this person trying to contact me. I immediately showed it to my FWH, told him I had no idea who this person was, that I didn't and wouldn't write him back, and then deleted it in front of him. Mind you - I am the one who got betrayed - but it's this kind of openness your WW needs to have with you as well.

Actually, I think the exact content of those discussions might be important.

CJ,
Learn from what BrokenS has written. It is a good example of how a spouse in recovery protects their marriage. It sounds like your WW is not fully committed to R and needs to learn how to protect the M. Is she punishing you for the past or is she going to step up and let you guys move forward? If she needs support, let her come here, she shouldn't be going to OM, period!!

GG

Apparently you are mistaken and don't know your WW AT ALL.

She has no marital boundaries AND NEITHER DO YOU!!! By that I mean ... she will not protect herself from OM (plural) and you will excuse and justify her failures.

Weak BH's rarely do well with recovering from their WW's infidelity and you appear to be no different.

You have set the RECOVERY BAR way too low and are reaping the expected results of that inaction.

Look deeply within yourself and determine "IF" you have the testicular fortitude to stand up to your WW.

Cjim

Your WW is a serial cheater. Contact the Harley's. WW needs IC.

How many years married? Any children?

Your wife is a serial cheater. Is there a history of A's before the one you found in June 2008?

I was going to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday to confront. However, after breaking down into tears and not being able to sleep, my mental health could not take that.

I typed her a letter laying everything out. How I knew I missed EN's for years, how I was hurt by her not telling me about those incoming text messages in October, about the credit card charge and so on. I then went into her friendship with OM 2. I was in tears. She read it and assured me there was nothing going on. I told her that I did not think it was a physical or sexual thing but I am devastated because she was carrying this on behind my back! This woman cannot get it through her thick head that I would not object to her having a coffee with a common friend, it is her hiding it from me, especially after what already happened with OM 1.

During this discussion, something really hit hard. I said something like "you left the house to drive half way across the state to meet him". Her reply was that she did not leave the house intending to meet him. Since she was going that way shopping, she gave him a call. I confirmed this by saying "you had no plan to meet him when you left here" and she said no. I said "Then why the F___ did you mapquest directions from OUR HOUSE to HIS WORK ADDRESS right before your left??" HAHAHA, busted. The look on her face was priceless. I Yelled that's it, we're through, I can't be with a liar! and I went to leave. She started following me around the house, hugging me, saying she was sorry, I was right and so on. edit: She also has a GPS in her car that keeps history. She was smart enough to use mapquest and not put it in her GPS for me to find in the history.

So, as of now, I have a call into the shrink. I have no freaking idea how I can ever trust this woman. She is NOT a whore, she is not a bar pig looking for sex. She did not and had no intention of banging OM 2. I have been watching everything. It is all about HONESTY and TRUST and right now, that is gone.

I love her very much and really want my M to work out. But right now, I cannot imagine ever trusting her. We always told the kids to tell the truth about everything. If they lie about the little things, how will we know if we can trust them when the big things come up. Same with this. If I cannot trust her to tell me about a credit card charge, what happens if she started having emotional feelings for another man?


Not exactly and my wife will twist things. If I say "Did you blow him?", in her twisted mind she would think "No, I performed oral sex" and she would answer no and justify it as the truth.


I think parts of your post are right on. When I learned of first OM and she asked for divorce because she was unhappy, I blamed myself. I did a lot of reading and learned about EN's and I had not met hers at all. I was admittedly a bad father and a bad husband. I was so crushed that I was such a bad father and husband, I focused on myself and becoming that perfect spouse and parent to save my marriage. I changed. I understand what I was doing wrong. But, as things were getting back to normal, it started hitting me that we never really addressed what SHE did. She never acknowledged wrong doing. In fact, during fights in the first days, she said I'd do it again.

I think I may have been too weak in being the punching bag and allowing all the blame to be place on me.


I cannot convey every aspect of my wife in a few paragraphs on some message board in cyberspace. I have been with her for 20 years so for someone to paint her with such a broad brush after reading one of my postings is not accurate. She is NOT a serial cheater. In fact, despite my original thoughts with OM 1, I can't say with certainty that she ever has sex with OM 1 and I know she did not with OM 2. Now if you say she is a serial LIAR, I might agree.

My wife is a giving, caring, kind person. She is like her grandmother was and I really wish her grandmother was still alive to help us through this. As an example. I was waiting for a check from an insurance company for about $15K. I wanted to buy a new vehicle and found a good deal however the check was not coming to me for 12 weeks. My wife called her grandmother and asked if Jim could borrow $15K for a few months. Grandmother said ok, I'll send it out today. She went to the bank, got a bank check and next day mailed it to me. She never asked what it was for and didn't ask about when she'd be repaid. She was just a kind person who would give anything to us without reservation. My mother would have grilled me about what is it for, what kind of car, do you really need that, when will I get my money back and so on.

My wife sincerely wanted to help this friend of ours who is struggling in his marriage and just sit down for coffee. The content of their e-mails and chat were always about family life and the kids and work. Nothing more was going on. I know most of the people on this board have spouses that were involved in long time, deep affairs. This is not our situation.

But what she (and you) need to understand, is it is NEVER appropriate for people of the opposite sex to confide in each other - ESPECIALLY after a spouse has an A. For her to put herself in that position is putting herself in danger of another A. It's nice that she's so kind-hearted, but her first responsibility is to you/the marriage. If she didn't feel she was doing anything wrong, and it was as innocent as you say - why didn't she tell you about it? Why did she lie and say "I wasn't planning on meeting him when I left the house"? People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing.

The truth is, you cant. There is no way you can ever trust this woman. You *might* be able to trust who she might become though. If she owns her own stuff. IF she gets help.



Jim, how do you know this? Because she said so? Your W is a proven liar. Even if she had no intention of doing him THAT day, she certainly had every intention of starting something up. If she hadnt, she would have no need to keep things secret from you. You would have known all about her little road trip to OM2. His W would also have known. The fact that it was secret means exactly what you fear.

Im not sure why you have such a high opinion of your W. She is NOT innocent. She is NOT being manipulated by these "evil" OM. I understand that you believe this about her because you have to. Im sure she is very good at making you believe that.

Your W deliberately lied to you. She went out of her way to get directions to the OM's in a way she didnt THINK you would find out. She lied about her intentions and then was shocked when you confronted her with her lie ( mapquest )

She went through all this trouble to just "stop by and say HI" to another man? After she has ALREADY had an affair?

Im sorry, Jim. This is not the behavior of a "naive" woman. It doesnt sound like the OM has to put forth much effort to "act like a pig" and "get in her pants" at all.

IOW, it was a farce of a recovery, and your W is still in "wayward-mode".

You can't change her - she needs to do that on her own. If I was in your shoes, I'd likely be having a serious talk now with her about personal boundaries, and what you intend to do if your boundaries are exceeded again.

BTW - your story about the grandmother is interesting. My MIL is the same way. Guess what - I don't trust her. I would WANT someone to ask the necessary questions before blindly turning money over.

Jim
Reread the posts here - you're not getting it. You have to step up if you want to save your M. Your WW has demonstrated repeatedly with her actions (not words) that she has no interest in protecting the marriage - if she did - she wouldn't be hiding things from you. Give more weight to what she does, not what she says.

GG

Jim,

I find it interesting that you quoted my entire post in your reply EXCEPT for the above portion.

FWIW, I considered this single sentence the MOST important thing you should be analyzing about yourself, and your omission is probably MOST telling about your personality and why you find yourself in this position of dealing with a 2nd OM.

I'm sorry you are here AGAIN, but until you are willing to stop avoiding conflict with your WW, you will remain miserable or wind up divorced, which may not be a bad option considering the lack of effort by your WW.

Jim,
Harley's article on "Radical Honesty"

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3900_honesty.html

What are your boundaries CJ? The continued deception is obviously taking it's toll on you. When is enough, enough? For me, after living through the hell of FWH's A this past year, I have a very, very low tolerance for any bs now, adultery related or not. If WW is still so thoughtless or wants to play dumb when caught, I'd dump her.

Yup. Ditto.