I am a male BS; D-day was almost four ago. I haven’t talked to anyone about this yet except my WS wife, but I am very interested in getting other perspectives on our particular situation. We would like to avoid talking to family and friends for obvious reasons. I haven’t seen a therapist yet, but may at some time. I am especially interested in getting feedback on a couple of questions I have regarding some things that are happening now.
We have been married almost 17 years with two children, a 13-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl. We are good parents are provide a good home. Our primary concern throughout this whole situation was the effect this situation has on the kids. So far, we believe we have avoided having them suspect anything, but who really knows, kids can pick up more than we think they do.
Our situation is somewhat typical, in that we had some great times in the beginning, then slowly drifted apart, not meeting each other’s needs. I will admit that I am more guilty of that than her, she has told me numerous times in the past that I don’t talk to her enough, I am too much of a hurry to initiate sex without satisfying her emotional needs first, don’t do enough with the kids, etc. She is 100% right on these things. She has had more experience with relationships than I have, and has shown a higher level of maturity of dealing with our relationship than I have. Later on my frustration led to me being short with her, saying unpleasant things, reacting harshly when a suggestion was made or help was requested. She has said after awhile she felt very alone and unloved. I take responsibility for these actions, and I am already working on learning and improving myself and have resolved to change my life for the better as a result of it. She says she is pleased with the way I have changed so far.
About 7 years ago we moved back to her hometown, a few years after that she started a correspondence and then visits with a male friend from her past. He had started the contact my emailing people, including my wife, from his past out of curiosity with what happened to them. I didn’t think much of it at the time, although I did read a few emails from that time to her from him where he made statements wondering what their lives would be liked if their relationship at the time had progressed further, etc. I found out after D-day that they had been lovers before I met my wife, so it’s an old flame situation. I realize now that was an initial danger sign. My wife started going on scuba trips overseas a few years ago, I supported and encouraged this as she has a great interest in the outdoors and enjoys the activity. I just assumed she was going by herself. Last fall I happened to be using her computer when I noticed she was logged onto an email account I didn’t recognize. Being curious, I looked at it briefly, but not enough to read any messages. I guess at the time I wanted to respect her privacy, but looking back I realize this was another danger sign, a much larger one. We also stopped making love about two years ago, when I asked her about it she said she just wasn’t interested, which I found odd. The final piece of evidence that occurred the week before D-day was that a postcard came in the mail from the hotel she stayed at during her last scuba trip. Her name and the name of the male friend was on it. I remembered about the secret email account and decided to do some snooping. I bought and installed a monitoring program on her computer, and within a few days had her email password. The next time she was out of the house, I logged onto her secret email account and discovered that she had been seeing him intimately for at least 2 years (I later found out that the affair has been going on for 3 years). Reading the emails about their scuba trips together, and especially the sexually graphic emails to each other where they relived their experience was very painful to me, as I’m sure some of you can attest to.
I came very close to a panic, as some of the emails referred to the OP being a step dad to my kids, others talked about how much retirement money they each had to contribute to a possible future life together, another talked about letting me go so I can discover happiness somewhere else. Other emails talked glowingly about some of their sexual encounters in our house, including sleeping together and having sex in the bed I shared with my wife. Of everything that has happened, this is particularly upsetting to me, as I feel it shows an incredible lack of respect for me the BS from the WS and OP. I will add some of these non-scuba trip encounters happened when I was on scout camping trips with my kids, sleeping in a tent in freezing weather while my wife was making love to someone else in my own bed.
I feel like an idiot, looking back there were many clues to what was going on, my trusting nature and beliefs about my wife prevented me from recognizing those clues for what they were.
I confronted my wife with my discovery; she didn’t try to deny it. Her consistent response since then has been that my treatment of her, my making her feel unloved, not meeting her emotional needs left her open to the affair. She also says she could tell by my actions and body language that I wasn’t happy in the relationship, and she is right, I wasn’t. She wonders if she is “right for me”, and maybe she can’t meet my needs based on how I have treated her. She says she didn’t go looking for this, but the OP happened to be there at the same time during a similar time in his life (he apparently has also drifted away from his wife over the years), and so they gradually got more emotionally involved, and of course from there to being physically involved also.
She says she and the OP stopped this relationship several times during the affair out of fear of being discovered and out of concern the hurt it would cause each BS. In fact at the time I discovered it, they had actually decided to stop in the near future, and my wife was considering approaching me about repairing my relationship. My wife and I have discussed this for many hours since D-day, our conversations have been calm, frank and honest, I feel that is a good sign. She is a little skeptical on my ability to change, and based on my past history of being reluctant to change I don’t blame her. However, she has agreed to work with me on improving our relationship, although it’s much less of a total commitment at this point.
I still love my wife, and want to learn from this and reconcile and rebuild our relationship. We both agree this is a huge wake-up call and our last chance to make things better. I have read several books that have been very helpful to me in understanding how these things happen and what each party is feeling and going through, two were “After the Affair”, and “NOT Just Friends”. I highly recommend Not Just Friends as the one excellent book to read on the subject of affairs. I have asked my wife to read the book and she has almost completed it.
This understandably devastates me, and I realize it will take a long time for the repair and healing process. I am mentally prepared for this and am motivated to do what it takes to rebuild things with my wife. Three things (among many of course) are bothering me, which I wanted to get more perspective on from others who post here that have been through this.
The first concerns continuing contact between my wife and the OP. Before reading the books I asked her to stop having sex with the OP, she reluctantly agreed to this, again mentioning that this was something they had decided to do anyway. When I also asked her to stop all contact with the OP out of concern of the relationship restarting and having her emotional energy still being expended towards him and not me, she expressed reluctance. She said things like “I really enjoy talking to him”, “He has become a great friend”, and “he really enjoy scuba diving with me”. I let it go at the time, but after reading the books mentioned above I now realize this is something that has to happen if the reconciliation has any change of success. My current dilemma is this: Her next scuba trip with him is coming up in a couple of weeks. I have reluctantly given my agreement for her to go with him on this trip with the understanding that they not be intimate, she has discussed this with the OP and they both have agreed to this. I said they must act during this remaining phase of their relationship as platonic friends only, again they have both agreed to this. But I wondering if I am being too trusting at this early stage, I’m sure the temptation for them to repeat what happened in the past will be strong (they may be sharing a hotel room during part of the trip, my wife says they can look into getting a room with double beds). I told her any actions beyond the platonic stage would probably eliminate any chance for reconciliation. She says my attitude about this makes her feel like she is being “tested”, I told her that I am looking for her to show a sign of faith that she is still interested in our relationship.
My next concern is how I should handle the stopping of all contact with the OP. I have told her that everything I read strongly recommends permanently stopping all contact with the OP. I have also told her that I agree with this. After several discussions about this and reading the Not Just Friends book, she has agreed to this. When I told her I would like to witness the final phone call; she said my request showed immaturity. She wants to have one final meeting with him after their trip to say their final goodbyes, she says that she would feel much better about ending things to do it this way, and if she is allowed to do it this way she would be more open to reconciliation.
I am trying to work with her and negotiate an ending to the affair that’s acceptable to both of us. I would obviously want her to end things immediately, but I realize she is going through withdrawal so it would be helpful to her to end this affair somewhat on her terms.
Another item related to the ending of this affair concerns a request from the OP asking me not to contact his wife. I agreed to this, but I told my wife to tell him that he should do the right thing and tell her. However, I am now thinking about using this as a safeguard to prevent him from contacting my wife again, I am thinking of telling him that if he ever contacts my wife again, I will tell his wife what happened.
The final area that concerns me at this time is twofold; it concerns her attitudes towards this situation. The first thing that is bothering me is that she has shown almost no remorse for the hurt she has caused me. When I ask her about this, she mentions that she cried to the OP about this issue at different times in the past. The other thing that is bothering me is that she doesn’t seem to be making a lot of effort on her part to reconcile. She is open to my suggestions, is always available to talk to me, and says she is willing to give out relationship another try. But her current attitude makes it clear most of the effort needs to come from me at this point. She says she has drifted away from me over the last several years due to my treatment of her and therefore doesn’t have much to give me at the point, and there is just only so much she is ready to do now. And she is concerned about being “right for me” as I mentioned previously. However, this contrasts with what I read about reconciliation is that the WS should expend most of the effort in healing the hurt and working to improve the relationship. In our case, she has done almost nothing to heal my hurt, and she is waiting to see how sincere I am about changing before she commits herself further. What does this mean? Will her attitude change down the road? I realize it’s only been four weeks and most of her emotional energy is still devoted towards the OP and A and she is dealing with withdrawal.
I am aware of the “180”, I have used this briefly to get her to agree to NC. I am concerned about using this on a long-term basis as it may sever what little connection we have now.
I apologize for this post being so long, but this is obviously a complicated subject. The forums and articles on this website have been very helpful to me, so I though I would post my story to get some feedback.
Any insights you can give me from some one that has “been there and done that” would be greatly appreciated. I will monitor this post to see your responses, and would be glad to answer any questions or clarify anything if that helps you provide guidance for me.
Thank you.