I discovered my husbands infidelity through his cell phone bill. Once I confronted him and he admitted he was seeing this "girl' just for sex he still refuses to tell me who she is. He has moved out of our home and we see each other and date for now. We are seeing our 7th therapist and finally one who recognizes he is classic bipolar. Right now he and I are at a stand off because he continues to tell only half truths and refuses to tell me who this 'girl' is and that it isn't important. Is it important and do I have the right to know who she is? This is not the first affair in our 20 year marriage but the last one was never dealt with just sort of swept under the carpet. If we are going to make this marriage work and keep out family together which he says is important to him, I need total honesty and no more secrets. Is this reasonable or am I just stuck wanting to know?

Absolutely, you have a right to know who she is. Without question. If he's actually interested in fixing the marriage, your WH has an obligation to you to move heaven and earth to do so. Anything he keeps from you is a secret, and in a marriage there should be no secrets.

Initially, after D-Day, when we were nominally working on the marriage, TBXW refused to tell me who the OMs were. She insisted that it wasn't important. However, I guessed one of them from the way she described the nature of their little tryst (I think she was surprised that I guessed). The second one she kind of had to tell me, because some of my friends knew and she knew it would get to me eventually. The third was beacuse I pointed out that I already knew the other two, so she may as well just tell me.

Needless to say I wasn't able to trust much of anything she said anyway. But her refusal to tell me their names was like a red flag, waving in my face, that she still had secrets.

Don't let him get away with that. Tell him that he has to tell you the name, or you're leaving.

You have a right to an honest answer to any question you ask. You may want to consider how much you actually want to know, though. Click on the link in my signature line for more info on how to recover. You will find the links on therapists interesting, if nothing else.

Hi,

You certainly have the right to ask for this information. If he doesn’t want to tell you, there really isn’t much you can do though is there? You can demand, pout, cry, threaten, reason, leave, divorce, etc. but really it is up to him. He holds the card here.

Did he tell you the identity of his other affair partner? Is he usually secretive? I would want to know too. What if it was with someone that you consider a friend? Wouldn’t in be lovely to have her and her husband over for a barbeque?

If you need total honesty then tell him that. If he still doesn’t wish to provide the answers that you seek then you know he isn’t going to give you the total honesty that you desire.

<small>[ June 23, 2004, 09:36 AM: Message edited by: Comfortably Numb ]</small>

I discovered my H's A via the cell phone bill also. Before I confronted him, I did my own research (I research for a living, so I know EVERYTHING about the OW).

When I confronted H, he was so worried about losing us that he told me everything (a few false starts, which I confronted, now all the lies are gone). He HAS to be honest with you. The only way to get on the path to recovery is to have 100% honesty. But, be careful of the questions you ask. I learned a lot of stuff that I could really do without (makes the mental images even worse).

The way I see it, if he's still being secretive, he isn't ready to give up his second life.

I'm there for you.

Michelle

Thanks to all of you who have responded. BH still has not given OW identity to me. I have been thinking and told him via text messaging that if he expects me to trust him he will also have to trust me. I am not sure what he thinks I will do with the info, but I have no intent to harass OW. I just feel the need to know and not be in the dark so to speak. I think he is afraid I will tell other people to which I was guilty of doing in his first A however that OW called me when she got mad at him.
BH is still in an apartment but wants to eventually come home and I would love for him to but...this time we have to work through all of this and not sweep it under the rug and hope it goes away which is basically what happened after the first A. It may have seemed to go away for him but it has never left my thoughts. The one good thing is he has finally been diagnosed bipolar and I have suspected that for years as well.
To Michelle...I also did some investigating, even had the help of a PI to get a name but that is all I have so I don't know how to get any more info on her since it was her cell phone as well.
My BH is a sales rep for a pharmacuetical company so he travels a lot which gave him plenty of opportunity to cheat.
Thank you all for your thoughts.