How to handle need for NC or other distance from inappropriate other-gender friendships (het relationship)
Hi! BW here.
FULL-ON D-Day was just over a month ago, got-the-ball-rolling D-Day was almost 2 months ago. So... it's early for me. I'm trying not too hard to lean into reconciliation, still trying to keep a fully-open mind.
That said, WH's big issue-- a common one-- is a desperate need for validation and a lack of boundaries.
His "real" affairs were:
1) In the 90s, he confessed days after, we half-a-- reconciled (well, *I* put in a lot of work, he never was all-in... obviously)
2) An EA/OA in 2004-2005, I discovered in October, 2 months ago -- he was still in touch with her through this year (2022), though "as a friend"-- mostly ignoring her attempts to reignite through the years.
3) A different PA in 2004-2005, he confessed in November, a month ago-- he was periodically in touch "as a friend"
(I say "as a friend" not because he was making explicit or romantic overtures-- from his end they were almost exclusively genuinely "friend"-level-- but because he was a delusional idiot with no boundaries-- there's an even deeper reason for this I won't get into now. Oh, what the heck-- along with #3, he finally confessed something I'd never REALLY suspected-- he'd lied about how he'd lost his virginity, well before we were dating. In fact, he lost his virginity to a married woman-- one he'd stayed "friends" with more or less to present day, and who was in our wedding-- SO YOU SEE THE ISSUE.)
However, at the time I discovered #2 a couple of months ago, I also discovered hundreds of absolutely ridiculously boundary-stomping, barely-toeing-the-A-line, sexually-explicit ("as a joke"-- but never clearly joking) group messages (and some private) with a mostly-female group of "friends" from 2009-2010.
Shortly thereafter, I did some more digging and found only mildy-to-moderately less egregious types of text-based boundary stomping, sexual/romantic winky/jokey/not really conversations with several of his female friends-- yes, he has many female friends. These occurred variously between 2010 and ~present (2022) in some cases. Sigh. Not with all of his friends, and we're exploring why/why not. (Mostly those women have better boundaries! He's only as strong as the other person's boundaries.)
In any event, most of these conversations and relationships lost most or all of their innuendo over time, especially after 2018. Though he was still living many lies with me, burying his past, gaslighting me, not fully-empathizing with me... he did do some important-- but non-therapy, so not sufficient!-- work in his personal life starting around 2018. I do think that lessened his desperate need for validation somewhat.
He started IC a couple of months ago, just before I discovered #2 and all of this egregious "inappropriate" behavior. Even before the discoveries and confessions, I was pushing on old unresolved issues-- like A #1, for example. So the IC he's seeing-- that's great.
However.
I find I cannot deal with knowing how bad, bad, bad his boundaries are. It pains me, because in most... all? cases, these women have been kind to me, and I liked them and they liked me!!! And I had encouraged him to form more friendships with women.... ugh, I didn't know he was like this because I overempathize with him and I am not like this with my male friends!
But... I don't want to compromise myself, especially not right now. I'm tired of doubting my instincts and subjugating my needs to his-- OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING HE GASLIT ME INTO DOING FOR MORE THAN 25 YEARS AHEM.
I don't LIKE this, but I think I need to set boundaries around his communication with, at the very least, some of these women. Two of them he f---ed up with right after the final (??) D-Day last month. He realized how creepy he'd been and decided to apologize to them via text (and he did tell them he had cheated on me "16-17 years ago" and we were separated). Of course that only garnered him "Oh, I still love you, I never thought anything of it, I hope you two stay together, I just love JellyPineappleFlavor" 
(but they are being sincere). Both I and our MC kinda reamed him out, so he "got" it... maybe mostly.
But I'm like... what? Trying to figure out what feels safest for me right now. Even if it's not forever. I think there are a handful of women he really just needs to be NC with, frankly. Bare minimum, just to start. It's too triggering for me. Maybe that should be my litmus test? How triggering it would be to know he chatted with them?
So does he just...
Stop contacting them?
Block them?
Not block them, but share any messages he gets from them and also not respond?
Tell them that he's going NC?
Also tell them why?
None of the above?
I can sit on these questions for myself, but I guess any additional clarity anyone can provide, especially if they've been in the same situation, would be dearly appreciated. Thanks so much.
6 comments posted: Tuesday, December 13th, 2022
Q: What are the chances I figured everything out, all on my own? A: Statistically zero.
Hi, there. First post. I’ve written about 2/3 of a long form essay telling my story (and this is super long itself!), but I tabled that because I need to just.. start asking questions and getting support.
Shortest version for the purposes of this post is that WH and I (BW) got together when I was extremely young and he was much older, but still young. We’ve been together more than 25 years and are in our 40s/50s. A year into our exclusive relationship, he had what was essentially a ONS with lots of added horribleness, and I "forgave" him near-instantly, mainly because I was in shock and didn’t want to lose him. For the record, too, regarding this DD#1, he confessed (in a weaselly way, but still with intent to confess) within days of cheating. I wouldn’t have guessed and may never have found out otherwise. Now, we did talk about it and work on it SOME— shortly after it happened and again some years later, and it has never been a verboten topic. But it was also never fully resolved. Plus, as I stated to him in recent years, and he agrees, it was a huge mistake for me not to have broken up with him at that time, even if we might have gotten back together in a better place. I basically taught him he couldn’t do anything to make me stop loving him/clinging to him/supporting him. It was absolutely terrible for my self-esteem, even though through the years, I made slow and eventually steady progress on that front.
Recently I’ve come to realize how much damage was done to me and our relationship by my so-called forgiveness— and by not fully dealing with all the ramifications. WH and I had lots of fairly productive discussions over the past month+ about this and other issues, in which he has been impressively non-defensive about 95% of the time.
But then… I thought, could he have cheated again? Sometime in these many years? I had been thinking of other cheating-like things he did over the years— nothing very recent, but at least within the past ~12. Gambling money away, lying to me about job-hunting when he was unemployed, etc. These seemed to be semi-isolated events, and we’d been to MC since then. (A short course, not the best therapist, but a bit helpful.)
Anyway! I am "not a jealous person" but I am trying to trust my intuition more and thought I’d make a quick list of people my gut said he COULD have cheated with. Four people/occasions popped up pretty quickly, at least one surprising me, that it even popped into my mind. But next to two of the four I wrote, in parentheses, something like: "ehhhhh I don’t think so."
I asked him and he said no to all of them, and to any other possible infidelity, ever. I very specifically phrased the question as "Did you ever cheat again, in any way that you might consider it a betrayal had I done it to you?" So as not to only mean some very narrow idea of, IDK, PIV intercourse. He seemed to sincerely answer, "No." I think I asked a follow-up question about one of the two my gut felt most strongly about, who was a cam girl I had thought he was "friends" with years ago (I know, I know!) And he confessed to having seen a little more of her show, one time, than he had ever told me before. (Believe it or not, that was the one that had surprised me by popping into my head!)
Friends, he was absolutely and very consciously lying. It was TT.
A couple of days later, while reading SI, I went into his computer. I have the PW for normal spousal reasons, like it was the only computer we had brought on a recent trip and I needed to use it to check in to flights and so on.
What I found in his Messenger chats and the emails he never deleted was (to make a long story slightly less long), an online/EA with the cam girl from 17 years ago. And with continued communication— maybe 10-20% inappropriate but less egregious than in the start— more or less through present day. This was by far the worst I found.
But also, with the other most suspicious person/group on my "suspects list"— there was not OBVIOUSLY an affair-affair, but extremely graphic "jokes" with just the thinnest possible veneer of joking, made in Messenger group chats and elsewhere. About 12-13 years ago. Absolutely a betrayal, absolutely he would have been horrified and rightly hurt and angry had I done this to him, though perhaps we could say that this stopped short of an affair per se. Imagine saying all the sexual things you were going to do to a person you also very obviously had a crush on, but couching it in "everyone knows we’re just joking." From the various messages and emails I’ve found it’s possible, perhaps even more likely than not, that it never progressed further than that. But at this point for me, anything’s possible. And definitely, absolutely a betrayal.
I confronted him, he told me many more details about the "cam girl" that were pretty bad, and seemed genuinely shocked at how he had recast the conversations with the second person/group and had remembered them as much milder. Because of this, and especially the TT, I am currently separated from him just to clear my head at a minimum. He’s started IC and gone a couple of times, seems to be doing a lot of right things (NC with the cam girl), giving me all the space I need, we’re seeing a MC also, next week, etc… There’s a lot more, but…
To get to the title question!
I am naturally feeling like my world is upside down, that I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me, etc. And both that 1) I should not have been doubting my intuition all these years— it’s spot-on!!, and 2) who knows what’s true anymore— anything could be true!
I’ve only been away from him for a handful of days so far, but it recently occurred to me that— no kidding!— there is NO WAY I know everything now. At absolute minimum, there are 1) known unknowns, like the specific, literal content of every "love letter" he wrote the cam girl, though I get the gist— romantic and sexual fantasies, plus 2) some minor but illuminating or more hurtful additional details about one or more of these incidents. But that’s just the bare minimum, the stuff I’m basically 100% sure exists that I don’t yet know.
But with a significant degree of likelihood, say 70-80% (or maybe 99%), there must be more than even that. Either major details about these incidents— like he actually slept with the main "joking" person of ~13 years ago, or he sent money to the cam girl— both of which he denies. Or even whole additional incidents.
So I once again started brainstorming other possible opportunities, times, places or people*, really trying to broaden my mind, since I’m "not a jealous person" (sigh). But suddenly, it struck me. I thought again of my very first list of 4 suspects, 2 of whom I’d mostly dismissed, and the other 2 of whom I was right-on about.
And I asked myself this question:
What are the chances that the ONLY TWO PEOPLE I genuinely had a gut feeling about and discovered evidence "against" were also THE ONLY TWO PEOPLE he betrayed me with**?
Like, wow, I may be a genius, but that’s awfully coincidental. It’s true my intuition is strong, because all these years, I didn’t really suspect cheating with either of these people/groups, but they still popped up quickly in a gut-feeling brainstorm. So yes, my gut is awesome in that way— if I have a feeling, I’m probably right. Specifically, I actually had a feeling, and was proven right in those two cases.
But just because when I DID have a suspicion, he turned out to have had an affair of some sort, doesn’t not mean that he couldn’t also have had an affair with someone I DON’T particularly suspect!
I mean, WHAT ARE THE CHANCES? What are the chances that I got these two right AND there were no others?
My answer is in the title, right? Statistically zero. Like it’s theoretically possible, but if true, wow, what a laser-beamer I am. I suspect ONLY the real betrayals and ALL of the real betrayals? Hm.
Among other possibilities— because there have been dozens of possibilities over the decades— I revisited one of the "other two" from my initial list of four. One that had popped into my brain, but I had mostly dismissed pretty quickly— a ~gut inclusion, but also a gut dismissal, I think.
But I came back to it because I had been thinking of other things WH’s betrayals had in common with each other, plus some things common across his relationships with people he’s close to, and factors in common among people he’d been with before our relationship… And this one person from my original list of four just checks alllllll the boxes. I still don’t have a gut suspicion about her… yet she did make my top four brainstorm, so maybe there’s a gut suspicion there somewhere. But when I made a list of points in favor of some sort of affair and points against, there was a long, smart and highly-specific list of reasons in the "he did it" column and only maybe two items in the "he didn’t" column. One is "not his type" (LMAO, pretty weak) and the other is "I don’t have any sort of smoking gun" (of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence— but I did search her name when I was looking into old emails and messages, and there was nothing suspicious— not that those couldn’t have been deleted).
Thanks for letting me get all that out, and thanks for any support.
If you have a similar story to share, please do! Basically if you knew you didn’t have ALL the information, and then came to find out there wasn’t much more, or there was a LOT more… I’m all ears. I mean, I guess that’s everyone, ugh. But any insights on how to process this are appreciated. Thanks again. This blows.
*I know this may not be entirely healthy, but man, it’s so early in this, I am looking for a small base of control, I think, even though I know I will be blindsided again— at least when we meet for MC next week.
**Besides the initial incident more than 25 years ago.
16 comments posted: Monday, October 31st, 2022
