I'm not really sure where to begin, or how much info to put out but will give this a shot.

Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I went out for dinner at my suggestion. It was kind of out of the blue, and I was actually surprised she was willing to go after a long day. Anyway, we had a nice dinner, talked and had a drink. When they asked if we wanted a 2nd round, my wife said yes. After it was delivered, she reached into her purse and slid a one page letter across the table to me.

In it, she laid out how we are both unhappy. We don't share the same interests or opinions and that this has been going on for too long. She said we both deserve better, and ended the letter with "We should..." Well, I was stunned reading it, but at the same time was not shocked because we have gone through difficulties throughout our marriage. The last 5 years have been really difficult, and I will explain that in a bit.

We talked a lot that night, and I told her my thoughts on what has gone wrong. I will say right off the bat, we have fallen into a sexless marriage that has gone on for 4 years now. She will say it was not a mutual thing, but I believe she started to seriously withdraw from me after I broke up a EA that was on its way to a PA, if not already there. When I say withdraw, I mean making her self open and available to me emotionally. The situation was not rug swept, but there was no real work done by her to help fix the issues either. Initially she said she wanted to work on the marriage, but I overheard her talking to her best friend on the phone, and she said that she really did not want to. With that info, I sat her down the next night and told her I knew her heart was not in this, and that she wanted a divorce. She had zero emotion and just said yes.

We have been together for 35 years, married 33 in a couple of months. We were H.S. sweethearts who married very young and had a child.
Six years into the marriage, she had a miscarriage which really hit both of us hard. When she was ready, we tried again and had our 2nd child. During the 2 years between miscarriage and the second child, she started keeping a diary, which was ultimately what lead me to finding out about what I will now write.

She was questioning herself, her life, our marriage, everything. She would talk about how lazy I was and how she had though about having an affair, but could never really do it. Later on there was another entry where she talked about meeting a guy when out with friends, and she could have really gone for him if she was free. She was obviously thinking pretty hard about this.

About 2 years after our 2nd child was born everything just went off the rails. She worked at a college and had single student aged friends there. She started going out with them and it was like she became a different person. Once she crossed that line, she went on a string of about 6 guys over a seven month period, doing things to various degrees up through intercourse. Some were co-workers, others were friends from the college or just people she met at a party. Again, this all came from her diary, her words. She was torn about what to do but was afraid to leave the marriage. It was around that time I got the "I love you but am not in love with you" talk too.

When I found the diary I absolutely lost it... was destroyed. Of course I handled it all wrong, begging and pleading for her to forgive me for letting her down. Took half the blame, the whole thing. She was back and forth on whether we could work it out, but ultimately decided we would stay together. I had such low self esteem and no idea how these things should be handled, so I was just grateful to not lose my family and moved forward.

Things seemed better and we ended up having a 3rd child later on. Life was pretty good, we had our spats like normal married people but things seemed solid. The only thing is I never was able to rebuild trust fully. She only ever admitted to what I knew and confronted her on, so I always had my suspicion there could be more. Basically, I had to accept there likely was and move on with that.

We moved to a new town 8 years ago and it was a total shakeup for our family, but a decision we made together and were excited about. Again, at first it was great and there were lots of new adventures to be had. I ended up in a job where I was working by 5am so needless to say, we were rarely able to go to bed at the same time. She would sit up on the computer in another room while I slept.

I started to notice some familiar patterns again, but could not prove anything, so I just kept my eyes open. One of the things I noticed in the browser history was her checking out a particular guy's Facebook profile a lot, looking at his pictures. I recognized his name and knew he was a client of the company she worked for. Eventually, I logged into her account and did some looking at her Instant Messages. I found snippets of conversations with pieces missing, so she had been deleting them. Ended up logging in as her on a 2nd machine when she thought I was in bed and caught more of the conversations, which were going in a bad direction.

I week later we had a serious talk, and I asked her if there was someone else. She denied it at first, but then realized I knew and admitted it. Said it was nothing physical, just infatuation on her part. Sad thing is she had been the one pursuing him and I am not sure how high his interest was. She admitted she had gone as far as to say she was considering an affair, but it was only to see how he would react.

Well, I was furious and again heartbroken. Right back where I had been 16 years earlier. This time I handled it better by forcing her to end it, with me watching the IM conversation the whole time. I also told her that any future incidents like this would be the deal breaker for me. She seemed much more remorseful, but to this day I am not sure if it was because she hurt me, or if he was because she felt bad giving up her new interest.

We got things back on track and I felt like we were much closer than we had been in years. Slowly though, we started going longer and longer without sex. She was pre-menopausal so lots of hot flashes, sweating, odd periods, etc. I felt like I just needed to be patient and we would find a way to make things work, but that did not happen. She started being more distant with me over time, and a bit more cutting with some of her remarks. The affection that I told her I needed was more forced, or just absent. Eventually we just fell into the rut we exist in today.

I certainly did my part by not being more aggressive about working on what I obviously knew were growing big issues. Part of me just felt it was the menopause, and if we could get past it, we still had a chance to have a very happy marriage. I tried many times to get past her defensive walls, and also told her what I needed to feel loved. Nothing changed. Now, she has decided that we are beyond help and should divorce. Of course, she sites the no sex as the big issue, yet she made herself absolutely unapproachable to me for years. I love her dearly, in spite of the fact she has been basically cold toward me, or put up a forced front that everything is ok when we both knew it was not.

The hard part is that she works in an office of women who are either divorced, unhappy or to the extreme, serial cheaters. They take a company trip every year to places like Las Vegas, Cancun or the Virgin Islands without the men. I know several of those women have been less than honorable on those trips, but have no way of know if my wife has also done anything.


I asked her point blank if there was anyone else in the picture motivating this decision, and she swears there is not now and has not been. I am still in the position where I will never know for sure, and while I do not want to lose my wife, part of me wonders if this can be fixed and if I can ever truly feel secure in the marriage. There is also the dark side of me that wonders if that is a lie, and this move is to avoid hurting me or exposing something she is ashamed of. Despite not having my needs met, I have never betrayed her in any way. I protect my marriage by not letting myself get into situations where I could be tempted, and have no desire now to end things. Just do not know how to move forward, or if I should even be trying.

Hi Northwood, I am sorry for the position you find yourself in. How many affairs do you think your wife has had over the years? I would wager is at least 5. The problem in your marriage stems from the fact that your wife has been searching for action the entire time. She has been a renter in your marriage, she hung around but was always looking for something better. She has a lifestyle that certainly provides the neccessary secret second life to conduct affairs. Your instincts have been telling you for a long time that she could not be trusted and they were correct.

Marriage Builders can fix many marriage problems but it cannot overcome a spouse who is actually on the hunt for affairs. You could have met her needs 100% but she would still have affairs as long as she was out looking. I bet if you spied on her for a while you would find what you have found many times before, a pattern of searching - and finding - MEN. She is very likely having another affair and has something lined up. She doesn't do this because of you, she does it because of her. She feels entitled to have affairs.

If I were you, I would hire a PI if you can afford it and get good legal counsel. If she is in an affair, which she probably is, it will be easier to negotiate a good divorce settlement. I am sorry to be so discouraging, but you cannot change someone who is actively seeking affairs. Your future would be more of the same if you managed to persuade her to stay.

You are married to a serial cheater my friend. She gets an adrenalin rush out of the hunt. This is very different from the standard affair which happens more or less by accident. She is an affair addict. They get faster and sneakier over time and do not much care about who their victim is.

Your life, if you decide to stay married, will require you to be with her 24 hours a day 7 days a week. You will never be able to spend time apart again. That will mean both of you giving up your jobs. Even when you are together you will need to have complete access to her phone and computer and monitor both. How do you feel about that?

Several of us on this forum have been married to serial cheaters. We know how you must feel. But the good news is that there is another life out there. As Mel says, this will be a good moment to negotiate a great divorce settlement while she is in the throes of the latest adrenalin rush,

I have considered the serial cheater potential, or that there may be someone else in the picture now or recently, but I just don't know... When there have been instances in the past, she was extremely careless in covering her tracks. Almost like she wanted to get caught. The instances of multiple men occurred about 25 years ago, and the forming EA was closer to 6 years now. While the earlier instances caused immense damage to our marriage, I was ultimately able to get past it and we did have many happy years where the marriage felt solid. She still had some boundary issues that I had to bring up at times regarding flirting or attention seeking that she knew hurt me. When I caught the EA ramping up, at least I had enough of a spine to break it up fast, and put my food down on what I would not accept from a spouse.


I feel like while she was remorseful and knew how much that situation hurt me. She also felt that our improved dynamic afterward meant that we had fixed the problem, so she did nothing to address her need for attention or validation. All that really happened is by blowing the lid off things, I had forced her into some radical honesty which we both needed. There were long conversations, crying and emotional support both ways which all helped in the short term. Basically we were meeting each other's emotional needs and being open for once. Had we been able to see that those were components of our relationship that we had neglected, and kept doing them in a mindful way, maybe things would not have spiraled down again like this.


So on to today...
We did not see much of each other this past week. She stayed with a friend on Monday thru Wed, then went back to our old hometown on Friday for the weekend to see her father for his birthday. She stayed with a friend there who just happens to be the maid of honor from our wedding, and I am sure did not get any advice from her to work on our marriage. That gal is unhappy in her marriage, and very toxic.

Anyway, we did not talk all weekend other than a txt from me regarding something I needed to pick up for the house, and her letting me know when she was leaving for home (4.5 hour trip). Things were civil when she got home, so we made some dinner and were able to talk a bit. Since the whole thing blew up she really had not given me any insight into what was going on in her head so this was interesting.

Basically, she feels like we are beyond the point of fixing anything. She thinks we have gone in two different directions over the years, have hurt each other and that we just do not know how to give each other what we need to be happy. She said she does not really even know who she is, what she likes or enjoys. That is something I have heard over the years, and always encouraged her to do things like take classes, pick up hobbies she enjoyed when she was younger, etc. I have tried to find things we could do together that she liked, but ultimately they were never HER ideas or hobbies.

She was also pretty adamant that I actually want a divorce, but have not come to grips with it. She gave examples of some things I have said in the past, but really out of context. I tried to explain where some of that came from, but she has it set in her mind that I really want a divorce even more than she does. I denied that, but she is head strong on it and argued it in depth, which says to me she needs an out and I will have to be her fall guy. She is completely shut down to me emotionally too. We did clear the air on some past issues she brought up, but I really doubt it makes any difference in her mind.

We talked about how our sex life went dead, and I was honest about my side of things. I let her know I do not want it to be that way, but there are things I need from her to feel loved, and accepted which I have not gotten in years too. Recent attempts by me to get close to her have been rejected, but all she remembers is the times she says she tried and failed. I want that back, but am now afraid that anything we do would just be her going through the motions and afterword be used as another excuse why we are done. With no openness from her, or actual feelings for me, sex would be a chore she would distain.

The conversation ended with us in a limbo but not completely cold to each other. I basically told her she may have given up on the marriage, but I have not. That I do love her, and am willing work on my side if she will do the same. We need fundamental changes that will take time, and I am willing to do my part to see if we can salvage this. If not, at least we did not throw away all those years on a whim.

We slept in the same bed for the first time since this blew up, and I told her I loved her before she fell asleep. This morning she was again very sullen and had few words to say to me, just the cursory stuff about the pets being fed and asking which car she should take to work. On her way out the doors she just said goodbye, and again I told her that I love her. It feels like we are right back to where we were before we talked last night.

Read Serial Cheaters and listen to the radio clips.

NW, just know that none of this addresses the real issue, that a) she has poor boundaries and b) is out looking for action. This problem was never fixed because she doesn't' want to fix it. You think that meeting needs would have prevented this and I am telling you it would NEVER prevented this from happening. As long as your wife out looking for action, nothing you do could over come that.

I know of NO program that can fix that. You can't "fix" a person against her will. The MB does not have a solution for someone who is out seeking action.

The truth is that she is having another affair. And will have many more. This is your future. I am sorry.

Great info folks... Thank You!

I never wanted to define my wife as a serial cheater, but by pure definition it is true.

Where I struggle is that the 1st instance of this was 25 years ago. We were young, I was a really poor husband and was not holding up my end of the bargain. I know that does not make it my fault, but I understand to a degree where she felt lost and was vulnerable. Still, from everything I read in her diary back then she was the one who was in hot pursuit. She even had a statement in there questioning whether she really just wanted to be free. She also admitted that she could be very dangerous to herself if that was the case.

There was nothing more until 5 years ago, so a 20 year gap where I really do not think anything happened.

The deal 5 years ago again was an instance where we were going through some struggles, and someone showed her attention. Again though, she was the one that pursued it, so there is a pattern for sure.

As for now, I can not say one way or the other if something is or was going on behind my back. Those yearly trips with the girls from her work were always a concern, but she was no different after returning, and there were no signs of something. Remember, I am pretty high alert all of the time so I think I would have spotted something, but you never know.

My guess right now is she has either just hit the wall, has a temptation out there she is considering acting on, or has already done so and is ashamed to tell me.
It is possible this is completely unrelated to anything involving anyone else, and exactly what she says it is. If that was the case, then I would like to try to save our marriage. I am just not sure how to proceed when it could be any of those things. I don't want to kill a marriage that could well be just going through a bad spot, and not a case of infidelity happening again.

So hire a PI and quietly prepare to file for divorce by putting important papers somewhere safe and interviewing lawyers. If there is nothing going on the PI will give her a clean bill of health. You missed a great opportunity when she went to 'stay with a friend' last week. Do you have access to her phone?

But do not share your suspicions with her or ask her any questions. She will simply take this further underground.

I suspect a lot has gone on for years that you don't know about. Most spouses don't know the signs and naturally don't want to see them. Just the fact that she went on trips without you is a huge red flag. I don't know many spouses who would put up with their spouse behaving like a single person.

I mean this kindly, but there is a lot of guessing on your part because you have no idea what is really going on for years. You are the least objective person on this thread. That is why you find yourself in this situation. She has likely had multiple affairs and was bound to end up leaving you. This is usually the outcome of marriages where there has been serial cheating. The serial cheater eventually finds someone that motivates them to leave their spouse.

I would strongly recommend you get legal protection NOW because with her lifestyle, she could wipe you out completely. You have an advantage right now in that she is anxious to get out of the marriage.

I am aware that I am not the most objective person in here. Given our past though, I have always kept my guard up for anything that would indicate something might be happening. When I caught the EA starting 5 years ago, it was at best a few weeks along. I also want to touch on a few things for clarity...

The company she works for takes a trip every year that is fully paid for by the company. Basically a bonus for them. Maybe I gave the impression they are "girls night out" type of trips, which is not the case. I do have an issue with the co-workers though because I consider several to be very much not friendly toward marriage.

No option for a PI here. This is a very small town, far from the nearest city of any size. She does not use the computer at home, just her phone. It is password protected, but she has not guarded it from me and has had me check incoming messages when she was out of the room, giving me her password to do so. Of course that does not mean she isn't deleting messages, but at least she does not seem worried about me catching something random. I also looked for any 3rd part messaging apps and checked the call history while I was in there.

Her spending 2 nights at a married friends house was MY idea, not hers. I requested it just to have some space to regain my composure before dealing with the situation further. She is at home now.

In that case, you can go install some spyware tonight, right?


But that could be a tactic to throw you off her path. An experienced serial cheater could easily think of that. What she does when she thinks you are not looking is what counts.

Why not slip some spyware on her phone tonight?

Women don't just leave their marriages unless they have someone else lined up.

Who is this guy and does he live in your town? Does she ever see him?

My serial cheating ex never locked his phone either. He just had a second phone. They get very, very good at this.

If you cannot hire a PI, you need to put spyware on her phone that gives you a screen shot of every keystroke. Also install a voice activated recorder where she is likely to chat. A GPS in her car hidden under a front seat would be good too.

Sorry I have been away from posting for a few days.

I needed to take some time to start things into motion that improve my situation, whether she decides to stay or go.

I had a very good sit down with a counselor on Tuesday. My wife was unwilling to go, which is what I expected. Regardless, he was able to help me get some clarity on the whole situation, and gave me some insight into where she may be coming from. Without her there to answer for herself, it was pure speculation but there were some questions regarding her youth and things during the marriage I was able to answer objectively. While I am not hopeless, I realized I basically have to move forward accepting that it only takes one person to end a marriage I can not will her into working on it, play the nostalgia card or guilt her. Even if it worked, it would not be an equal and rewarding marriage.

Instead, I am going to work on the issues that I know I bring to the table. Stay or go, there are things I need to fix in myself going forward so that will be my focus. She has lightened up a bit the last few days, but that may well be because I have backed off on talking about this stuff, and she feels I am slowly coming to acceptance of things ending.


As far as spying on her to find out if there is another person in the picture, I am pretty much past that idea. I have been down that road twice, and in a lot of ways it was the same kind of hurt as ultimately finding out. I think at this point if there is someone, then she will stay resolute and not have a change of heart. The one thing I will give her credit for is not wanting me to go through that pain again. She also knows that it is a deal breaker for me and would probably state other reasons with her being at fault, spare herself the shame and leave the marriage with me being unaware of the true reasons. If that is the result, then so be it because I can't change her behavior or decisions.

We have had a few interesting discussions, but I am not sure they are even material to the whole story at this point. One interesting thing though was her saying she was not dead set on divorce until I said the word. She said that it is me who really wants it, and has for some time. I have just not been able to admit that to myself. Wow!

Welcome back!

Yes you do, starting with securing all the precious documents and locking her out of your savings accounts. She can clean you out.

Text book stuff. All waywards do that. For some reason they never want to pull the trigger, they want the other person to do it. It is a guilt thing. But when I did exactly that, naming and shaming the most recent Fat Slag, for some reason XH decided that he did not want his On The Side sprayed across the world. I wonder why.

You have an opportunity here to maybe save your marriage if you want but more importantly to tell the world, and most especially your own children, what happened. They have seen how their mother behaved and your acceptance. They have learnt that this is 'normal' and are likely to take that same behaviour into their own lives as adults. Once you have the goods on the latest OM, you will be able to tell them the facts, calmly and honestly. That will be life changing for them as well as for you. You owe this to them.

Interesting aspect regarding our boys...

First, they are all adults, with the oldest being 33 and the youngest 22.
My understanding now is that, over the past year she had talked to them at times about the difficulties we were having, probably was laying a heavy dose of fault on me. When this all broke, she called and talked to each of them about the situation, and what was likely going to happen. I had no problem with that since she was the one saying everything was over.

What shocked me though was she told them about everything she had done in the past. We had sheltered them from that since we were trying to rebuild the marriage, they were young and one of them had not even been conceived yet when the first incidents happened. If nothing else, I have to give her credit for coming clean and taking some of the weight of holding that information off of my shoulders. I am still not sure why now she decided to do that because it paint's her in a pretty terrible light, and not so much me.

I am really waking up to the enormity of our entire history and have done a lot of soul searching, trying to come to grips with the part I have played in things going to hell. I am not taking the blame for the choices she made, those were absolutely hers. Still, it is pretty clear to me now that I so undervalued myself that I let her get away with pushing my boundaries to the point where they were meaningless to her. Hell, to me for that matter. In the end it was straight fear she would leave me if I held my ground, and instead she is probably leaving because I did not.

I told her once if she was interested in someone else, at least do the honorable thing and divorce me before getting involved. That could be exactly what she is doing.

What is going on is that she has already found someone new and leaving you for him. She will quietly leave and then as the divorce proceeds she will introduce him as the new guy. Women don't leave unless they have someone new lined up. And cheaters don't do the honorable thing and get divorced before they get involved with someone else. Because they otherwise have no reason to leave.


She reached out to them, not because she is being honorable, but so she could spin the story. And that is exactly what she did. In the absence of FACTS, she is free to spin the story.

My suggestion remains the same: spy on her and find out what is going on. Get yourself GOOD legal representation while you can.

But don't take my word for it!! Do your own investigation!!

First and foremost - the navel-gazing musings of a wayward wife who is looking to exit a marriage are not great things to record. It's like taking advice on sobriety from a drunk.

Add to that, never pay a counselor for advice that you could get for free from some Huffington post article, and would be worth every penny.

She resigned to being "the monster" here because she's just looking to get out and get on with what is likely a deeply entrenched affair.

But, you know, it's what YOU want. You want to be free of her (and her constant affairs).

There definitely isn't much to save here now - and even if there was, with her behavioral history, you'd be talking about needing a fully integrated and transparent life between the two of you; you would have to fill every moment of each others' day with absolutely no gaps for her to be out hunting for another cucumber.

You've put up a long, sloppy fight, my friend. Get the evidence, and find rest.