Great posts AOTC. Thanks for stopping by.

Great post AOTC. Thank you for being much more tactful then others.

I respect your advice. Listen, if there was even the Slightest possibilty, I would get a paternity test, but there is 0 chance that my kids are not mine. Trust me on that one.

I guess where I'm at now is I'm just trying to make a happy environment for both of us to have some emotional recovery. As everyone knows, the 3-4 weeks after D-day are an incredibly tiring emotional roller-coaster. For our own sanity, right now we're deciding to get off the roller-coaster for a little bit. We're working on filling our love banks, meeting our emotional needs, and getting used to be a happy married couple again. It's actually been awesome. I mean, I still wake up at 4 a.m. because my mind wanders, but it's not as bad as it's been. It's just wonderful to live in happiness after living through hell for 3 weeks.

So, after we've had a chance to recover emotionally, I may be ready to get on the roller-coaster again. My only real concern is that she hasn't told me the full story about the first A. Even though it was 3 years ago, I still would like to know . I'm thinking about calling my old friend who she had it with, and ask him to tell me the full story so I can compare. I'm scared of what I'll find out, but like you guys say, it's impossible to fully recover without the full story.

In meeting with a therapist, I'm discovering the my whole idea of trust has totally been ruined. I mean, if I can't trust your wife, and I can't trust my best friend, and I can't trust a married mutual friend who goes to our church, the question is "Who the HELL can I really trust???". The only answer I can come up with is "nobody". That is a terrible truth to learn for someone who has always trusted people naturally.

SS32,

she hasn't told me the full story about the first A. Even though it was 3 years ago, I still would like to know

Do it now, my wifes "EA" was 20 years ago, and I still get inconsistent stories, I should have gathered up the pieces back then. I thought time would heal but it never did, do yourself a favor and dig into it.

NJ

I know exactly how you feel. By nature I'm one of the most optimistic people you'll ever meet. My wife has always accused me of being naive, assuming the best of everyone. She, on the other hand, tends to be suspicious of pretty much everyone. I joke with her that if we split the difference, we'll pretty much get it right.

That's why her A threw me so much. This woman has the best b.s. detector I've ever seen. How she didn't see through Pond Scum is something that will baffle me the rest of my days. I get the impression that she feels the same way.

It's taken her actions of the past 14 months for me to regain my trust. However, even now, I'm keeping an eye on things and will probably do so the rest of my days. The fact that I've had to do that is the most stressful thing of all. I'm still trying to comprehend the fact that the one person on all of this earth I trusted most basically stabbed me in the back.

Funny thing is, after my ONS 20 years ago, I ceased trusting myself for a very long time. Way-back, pre-MB, I instinctively put into place boundaries for myself. After two decades of maintaining them, they're almost instinctive, but I don't trust myself in certain situations -- so I make sure those situations never come up. Ever.

I think she's treating everything the same way. That's the only way you can react when you find out you can be so weak as to violate your marriage vows.

That being said, to paraphrase, one time is happenstance, twice is enemy action. To repeat a behavior that is so outrageous and hurtful is a really bad sign. If you're out to save your marriage, you have to make an initial assumption that she really didn't realize what she had done the first time, that by not fully addressing the situation when it first cropped up that she didn't internalize the seriousness of her actions.

The reason you have to assume that is that if that statement is not true, as we progress that Monopoly board called life, we're not talking Go To Jail -- it's Go To Divorce Attorney, Do Not Pass Go & Do Not Collect Your $200. In that case we're talking someone who's broken, and it takes more than a dab of Krazy Glue to fix someone like that.

She needs to be completely O&H with you about EVERYTHING. There is no way you can truly even contemplate R without having all your questions answered honestly and without evasion.

My FWW spent eight months spinning different tales of how her A started and how it was conducted. I just about lost my mind during all this time, wondering about what was true and what was a lie.

All that did was keep the whole thing in the forefront of my mind and drove me nuts thinking about different scenarios. I still have trouble with a couple of things, and we're actually in solid R based on her actions of the past six months.

And this is from someone who wanted to save her marriage!!!

For your own sanity, don't wait, don't hesitate, don't beat around the bush. Get all the facts laid out on both A's of hers immediately. You only think you're getting your feed under you emotionally. I told myself the same crap and didn't press her for the whole story -- I didn't want to upset her. All that did was keep me in torment for months.

The best thing you can do is just rip the bandage off all at once. Get her to vomit it all out in one sitting. It's like taking ipecac -- you can't begin to heal with poison still in your system. My wife even admitted it felt better when she wasn't trying to hide anything anymore.

I figured she was holding things back because she didn't want to hurt me. She said the bigger reason was it took her that long to admit to herself what kind of damage she had done with her actions.

You wonder about my screen name? That was my optimism speaking, just two months out from D-Day. It turned out NC hadn't even been established yet, and there I was posting on the "In Recovery" board. I had to shift gears and get on the "Surviving An Affair" board and begin a whole new thread and pretty much start from scratch.

Take it from someone who has been in your shoes. Get it all out there NOW. All you're doing is prolonging the agony. You can't even begin to process what's happened until you have all the facts. Waiting will only make it worse.

"I respect your advice. Listen, if there was even the Slightest possibilty, I would get a paternity test, but there is 0 chance that my kids are not mine. Trust me on that one."

Then prove us wrong, please! We have read here to long to ignore that no stone must be left unturned.

". Even though it was 3 years ago, I still would like to know . I'm thinking about calling my old friend who she had it with, and ask him to tell me the full story so I can compare."

Call him and exactly ask this. Don't let him get back to you. Any stalling can be seen as him contacting your WW to get their stories straight.

Yeah, I plan on calling him in the next day or so. Last night she told me everything that happened with him. We identified a trend in both occurances. Both times, she thought she could talk to these guys on the phone just as friends without them thinking anything about it. I told her that if a married woman was willing to talk to me over the phone for more than 2 minutes, the message I would get is that she would rather talk to me and spend time with me then with her husband, and that they must be having troubles in their marriage. (Is that accurate?) She was pretty nieve to that fact. So, in both cases this is why the guys eventually made moves on my W. She swears up and down though that she didn't have sex with the first friend. He tried to have sex with her and she said "no", told him off, and left. Of course, I will confirm this with him to see what he says.

On another topic.... since we're trying to practice Radical Honesty, I told her that before we got married, while we were in a long distance relationship, I dated another girl that lived in my city. I was in a very dark place in my life, and my morals were not very high. But, in my mind (at the time), if I wasn't married then anything goes, because once you ARE married then you are committed to your partner for life. She was hurt, as she should have been. But it's not even in the same REALM of what she did to me during our marriage. So, frankly, I didn't feel that bad about telling her.

Anyway, more to come later. Thank you all for those of you who are actually providing supportive comments! Those ones really help.

"But it's not even in the same REALM of what she did to me during our marriage. So, frankly, I didn't feel that bad about telling her."

Ah, the truth always comes out. You reap what you sow. You cheated. Then you try to justify your cheating.

It's tuff to wash the karma bus tire tracks off your shirt.

Oh, please. I'm not saying it was moral, but I hadn't taken vows in front of our whole family at that point. It's a whole different level. But, I do believe in Karma, and I certainly was not a saint before we got married, so maybe that's why I'm willing to stick with her through this.

Anyway, interesting turn of events happened this weekend. I confronted the first guy she had the A with 2 years ago, and I also confronted his girlfriend, who's the same girl he was dating at the time it happened. And, can anyone guess what he did???? Oh, of course, he denied the whole thing ever happened. He told his girlfriend that my wife is totally crazy and that she manifested her fantasies into her memory, or that she was so resentful of him that she made the stories up to break him and his girlfriend up. Anyway, as long as his girlfriend knows now that he's a filthy liar, I'm happy. If she choses to believe him instead of my wife, that's her problem. My wife has absolutely NO incentive to make up a story like that.

And, cheaters are liars, right?

So, things are improving. Making major breakthroughs in stuff about my wife's history that has made it possible for her to be unfaithful to me. She has been seriously jaded by men in the past, and it has lead to some very deep seeded feelings of non-acceptance, low self-confidence, compartmentalism, etc. I'm glad everything is finally coming out, because we're addressing the source and hopefully figuring out how to prevent anything from happening again in the future. Still looking for a councelor for myself, but there don't seem to be very many in the area who specialize in this stuff. I'll keep looking.

. . . . just as a side note. . . what are the chances my W is actually delusional and manifested her fantasies with my friend into actual memories? Is that even possible? She swears up and down it's true, but he swears up and down it's not! He even swore on his son's life that he was telling the truth. I tend to believe an OM will swear on almost anything to keep his secret though. hmmmm.....

So, I know it's only been a month since D day, but how do I know when I'm in recovery? When should I start posting in the Recovery forum?

Thanks for everyones advice. Even though some of it was hard to hear, it helped us out tremendously. I feel like we're in a very good place, and full recovery is very probable. Thank you for helping to save our marriage.

Alright, well it looks like I'll retire this thread since everyone seems to have lost interest. Maybe you'll see me in the Recovery forum sometime down the road.