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There's a spectrum of things a wayward could do from EA to a multiyear 2nd family thing. IMO How much further your wayward went between what's she disclosed and the likely extent isn't likely to be very far apart on that spectrum. I mean once you get into putting another person's genitals into your body how much worse does it get by being a different orifice? Or completion vs stopped in the middle make much difference over starting it in the first place. I'd guess you have a pretty good handle on how far your wayward transgressed on that spectrum roughly and if that's good enough for you that's all that matters.

My thinking is that whether the act between them was completed or not, the intent was there. She has proven herself to be a disloyal, unfaithful, and disrespectful wife.

Again, I really hope that things work out well for you and your health. Good luck.

There is certainly no denying this. She liked what she felt from the first makeout enough to hide it and wait for the chance to do it again, see how far she was willing to go. She overthinks everything. EVERYthing. So she made these decisions fully conscious of what she was risking. She had a big scale in her mind - on one side was me, our relationship, and our family. On the other was a crush, a few minutes of excitement, and the high of feeling desired. She made her choice not once, but multiple times. I'm not blind to this or defending her.

I interrogated my W day after day for months. I asked the same questions repeatedly. I sought essentially the same info with questions I posed from varying points of view in varying ways. I kept looking for inconsistencies and found none. Eventually (maybe 60-90 days) I decided I had the truth. I didn't have everything, because that's impossible, but I decided that my W was not hiding anything and that there were no deal killers hiding in unasked questions.

BTW, at about a year out, I thought I heard some major, deal-killing TT, but W pointed to the TL and showed me where it had been documented. The fact just struck me differently in 2012 than it did in 2011.

So I recommend that you keep asking questions, comparing answers, and tracking down inconsistencies.

I'm not implying that your W is lying; in fact, from what you say, she's come clean. As Bigger wrote, it's critical that you decide/realize you have the truth.

Yes this is where we are right now, and will be for a long time. Thankfully the timeline is short. I know the exact start and end date with proof, I know every interaction. So filling in most of the gaps feels doable. But I doubt I will run out of questions anytime soon.

Another question I meant to ask. I know most of these things would probably need a professional to know for sure, but thoughts are appreciated.

While she is beyond remorseful, disgusted with herself, desperate to reconcile, and has at no point blamed me in any way - she is still describing it as a "fog" which I know is a very common description, and saying walls went up around every other part of her life except enjoying the attention she was getting and feeling attractive and excited when all she had felt for weeks beforehand was exhausted and useless.

Obviously this, in my mind, is NOT owning up to it. She is on the surface taking responsibility, but also trying to analyze herself, and make herself feel better for her conscious choices. But to me it just sounds like bullshit excuses. I know she legitimately believes this to be the case and is not lying with intent, but is there ANY validity to that? Or is she just in denial and protecting herself by not letting herself admit the extent of what she did?

She keeps bringing up the fact that the first encounter happened the day after a very difficult neurology appointment and disability test (shes not disabled, its just something MS patients have to do once in a while) and this was her first time with that test, and she was terrified beforehand and feeling very down. She was in the middle of a couple week long rough patch where she was having to take afternoon naps most days, and she started an SSRI anti depressant a couple months ago.

I am trying to communicate that I do not think these things are relevant. I know she was feeling like shit, I know she was vulnerable, I know she did not enter that day planning to seduce the guy or be seduced. BUT to me none of that has ANYTHING at all to do with the point. She DID do it. In our house, surrounded by reminders of her family. Not once, but twice. Her "fog" seems like such a cop out to me, but it's a term I have seen a lot. Thoughts?

While she is beyond remorseful

There’s no way that you can possibly know this at this early juncture.

What you’re witnessing now could be the initial signs of Remorse but, is most likely Regret.

Evidence of Remorse is demonstrated through sustained, devoted, and relatively consistent actions over time. Regret is more temporary, and much less patient. Regret can come on impressively strong, at the start, in sprinter fashion, but doesn’t have the endurance, the stamina to survive the marathon journey of reconciliation and usually burns itself out after several months.

Remorse is steady, consistent, lovingly patient, determined and devoted. Remorse camps out at the ICU bedside until the bitter end.

It’s initially very difficult to tell the two, Regret vs Remorse, apart soon after D-Day, but as the months go by it will become progressively clear.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 11:02 PM, Tuesday, August 30th]

I think those health issues are relevant; they set the context for her to step on the slippery slope with him. They contributed to her breaking her boundaries or letting down her guard. HOWEVER,they are not an excuse or a reason for her betrayal. They helped get her to the slope but she elected to stay there. To encourage a second visit. To act on temptation.

What she has to figure out is what is inside her that made her respond in that way? To stay on the slope and willingly go down it. I don't think anyone has a good answer for that without doing some serious digging.

As far as the fog, I think she got that word from reading and it probably describes her experience. Swept up in a dopamine rush. Not thinking, not reasoning. Overwhelmed by a feeling and blind to the consequences. But the fog is not a reason nor an excuse. It is a description.

2X4 coming. To me, you sound like a solid, loyal, husband snd man. Lessor men might leave their wives after an MS diagnosis, assuming that their life/sex life will become seriously impacted.

You obviously are in your the opposite camp. You gave your loyalty, love, and support to your wife, who’s diagnosis has an inescapable and completely determinable outcome.

And how were you repaid? She’s going to have many worse days after seeing her doctors over the coming years. So she starts to think- Hmmm - my time with all of my faculties is very limited with my disease. My time on earth is not going to be as long as healthy people. So, let me live my life, go on a spree of self exploration, have sex with a whole bunch of men.

Does this sound conceivable to you? I’m not saying leave her, but I’m also not saying you need to stay married to her as well. However, if you R you may be signing up for some serious cheating down the line. When people stare deteriorating health and mortality in the face (a la the cliche male mid life crisis), infidelity can rear it’s ugly head.

Thus, you may never be able to rest and let down your guard with your WW. Just think about whether this is how you want to live moving forward. You can’t accept your WWs pleas that this will never happen again. Statistically, as a cheater she’s three times more likely to cheat again then a non cheater. Add the MS, the reason she gave you for cheating in the first place, and stand by…

Rethinking changes the memory. It brings insight into her current thinking and even entrenched patterns of thinking. It has its limitations, however, as a means of getting closer to the truth of what she was thinking and feeling at the time of the affair.

When the reconstructed version meets a fact (or the remnant of a memory) which does not gel, the way she deals with that inconsistency is important.

Think of old fashioned psychodynamic therapy. The therapist is not an interrogator. Secondary to the content of what is said, the therapist is looking at transference and counter-transference, and seeing what that might say about the person’s history and relationship patterns more generally. For example, when dealing with males in an apparent position of social authority, does the person tend to default to a dynamic which has less to do with the therapist and more to do with her father. If so, that is worth exploring in therapy sessions so she becomes aware of it and can build up some checks and strategies to address skewed thinking and responses.

This affair was short. Your wife needs to look at what it was about her that didn’t put a stop to things after flirtation turned to something else.

Here, they talk about Wayward mindset and behaviour.

Buddhists talk about the noble eightfold path, including right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditative awareness.

Offers may differ, but medical issues and unusual stressors aside, I am not sure there was time for ‘affair fog’ to come out of nowhere. She may have been preparing herself for some time, building up resentments, nurturing a sense of entitlement, that kind of thing.

[This message edited by straightup at 12:23 AM, Wednesday, August 31st]

PFB84

What you describe is familiar and believable.
We might be basing our views on our experience but no one on this site can claim that no WW has been truthful or remorseful or whatever from the start. What we can do is say that in our experience it’s highly likely or unlikely something happens. But there are few if any absolutes and what you share could be correct.

So maybe your wife has shared the truth. Maybe.

The ONLY ONE that needs to be convinced is YOU.
Not us.

I do want to warn about the different types of information you have and can get.
You have factual information. That can be call-logs, messages, agendas and such. Things that you have some way of corroborating took place or happened.
You have relative information. That is the recollections of your wife, what she remembers doing, what she says he did, what she says happened, what you remember happened and so on. Its relative because its relative to your memory.
There is a reason police do their best to avoid building cases purely on witness testimony. Her experience as she remembers it can change and that new memory becomes the truth. She’s not lying, she simply believes that something is true.

For example: If she claims she was wearing the white dress but you recall she was wearing a blue dress that day then the "truth" is based on what you remember and who can convince the other. If however you find the white dress hanging all clean and unused in the closet, while her blue dress is in laundry or at the cleaners… that is factual information that would support your claim she was in the blue.

Keep this in mind. The more time passes the less "true" her story will be, even if she believes she’s telling the truth.

There's an essay in The Healing Library that discusses "the fog."

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/documents/library/articles/discovery/the-fog/

Do a little research on cognitive dissonance. People can, and will, talk themselves into all sorts of crazy shit.

I think if you offer more details of what actually transpired you will receive more customised advice from experienced members here.

It drove me crazy trying to analyze the genesis of my WS’s affair, what lead up to it, what was going through her head, what actually happened, why?

So I began focusing more on her behaviors after the affair, after D-Day. This was something I could directly observe, live in person, in living color. What lead up to her affair became less important than her efforts to reconcile, care for me and fix herself.

How your WS conducts herself now and through reconciliation will tell you everything, objectively, you need to know. More objectively than trying to analyze past events through "The Fog" lens of a wayward in a attempt to predict your success in R.

How your WS conducts herself now and through reconciliation will tell you everything, objectively, you need to know. More objectively than trying to analyze past events through "The Fog" lens of a wayward in a attempt to predict your success in R.

I can feel her regret, fear of losing me, self loathing, and love in everything she does.

But its still fresh for me. I keep having thoughts like "She cant just get away with it" and she cant just get to use a rewind button to go back to how things were. I dont want to punish her for punishment sake, but at the same time i do. If that makes sense. But I also have no desire right now to leave her or my kids. So i dont know what to do. We are both starting therapy soon, me for trauma her for her issues.

Relates note, any input on "hysterical bonding"?

The fog your WW describes is real, but it is not. Depending on who you ask.

To commit adultery, an individual must cross a deep moral chasm. To cross that chasm, the individual must invest time and effort into building a bridge: securing ropes on both ends, etc. Lots of individual choices and actions go into crossing that chasm. In each case, each choice and act is about, at the very least, finding out what it feels like to take the first (or second or third) step towards at least creating the opportunity to get to the other side.

The process itself becomes consuming, and with each step, the idea of at least testing out the other side of the chasm becomes the driving motivator. Build a bridge. Cross it. Build a bridge. Cross it. Build a bridge. Cross it. Cheaters are fully aware of the risk they are taking with each step -- destroying their marriage. What we see, though, is that, in the mind of many cheaters, the completion of each step without being caught creates a sort of thrill, a private universe of adventure leading to the potential of reaching an exotic alternative place that seems intriguing, enticing, thrilling.

Keep in mind that there is usually a specific human AP involved, waiting on the other side. There is an active thread here where a WW decided first to cheat, set up the mechanism to do so, and then later methodically selected an AP, but that is unusual. In most cases, one catalyst for the cheating is an AP on the other side filling the WW's ears with saccharine statements and sycophantic actions, a sleazy horn dog who senses an opportunity for some NSA married pussy or oral and who has found the button to push to get the WW's attention. Usually, it involves a WW who has some degree of self-loathing or self-dislike, and the AP offers an escape from that. To that end, your WW's MS is not a typical detail, but the fact that she felt as if her life were weighted with a sense of self loathing, and that the AP and his dick was an escape, that's the oldest story in the book. Utterly cliche. Exactly the mechanism for a giant percentage of cheating, especially cheating wives.

I do think this becomes a feedback loop within the mind of many cheaters, leading them to later describe this as "the fog". Maybe by the time a strange penis enters an orifice, there have been so many choices and decisions and compromises and rationalizations that it actually does feel like a fog of sorts, a twisted alternative reality that the WW creates for herself to justify what is fundamentally unjustifiable.

That's a long way of saying that the fog is real, but it's made of bullshit. More specifically, it's a fog of bullshit of the WW's own creation, that she has surrounded her mind with.

I keep having thoughts like "She cant just get away with it" and she cant just get to use a rewind button to go back to how things were. I dont want to punish her for punishment sake, but at the same time i do. If that makes sense.

This wild vacillation of thought is normal for a BH at your stage. It is so normal it has a name: The Roller Coaster. It is normal for the roller coaster of wildly vacillating emotion to continue for at least 6 months, maybe a year or longer. You have to give yourself time to go through it.

There is a technique discussed in The Healing Library called The 180. This is not a punishment for your WW. Rather, it is a mental device, akin to meditation, that is designed to create psychological space for the BH so that you can eventually find your truth. Because that is the ultimate goal here: you finding your personal truth. Ultimately, you cannot change what your WW did, and you cannot control the outcome in terms of the impact on your marriage. You can only control you.

By the way, it's pretty normal for the roller coaster to settle eventually, leaving you primarily with a burning sense of anger. It's important that you don't bottle it up. Let it out. Rage and scream and do whatever your anger drives you to do, short (of course) of actual abuse. The anger is due to the slow realization of your reality: your WW cheated sexually with another man, and nothing you can do will change that. We men are fixers. Our instinct is to fix things. But there is no fixing this. It is what it is.

But I also have no desire right now to leave her or my kids. So i dont know what to do.

This is normal. I would point out, just for discussion, that divorcing her would not be leaving your kids. You would quite likely have at least shared custody, and possibly even more. There are millions of kids who grow up with divorced parents who do just fine in life. In some ways, these kids get the best of all worlds. A half-time parent, in my observation, spends his time away from the kids recharging his batteries: working out, socializing/dating, catching up at work. Then, when the kids are at his place, he devotes himself to them. Same with the wife's side. So their lives tend to be filled with a lot of parental attention, most of it quite positive.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 12:39 PM, Wednesday, August 31st]

There is a technique discussed in The Healing Library called The 180. This is not a punishment for your WW. Rather, it is a mental device, akin to meditation, that is designed to create psychological space for the BH so that you can eventually find your truth. Because that is the ultimate goal here: you finding your personal truth. Ultimately, you cannot change what your WW did, and you cannot control the outcome in terms of the impact on your marriage. You can only control you.

I did read the 180, but wasn't sure if mine was the right scenario for it? I interpreted it as something to use if there was a question about your spouse's state after the affair, if they were not grasping what they were risking losing, not sure if they are committed, etc. That part does not apply to me, but I can certainly see the value in the technique regardless, and it is certainly my intention once I'm ready to focus more on myself and avoid slipping into the same routines we had before.

If I had to guess your wife regrets her choices, but remorse, true remorse takes time to settle in. It took mine the better part of a year to rectify her thinking in the choices she made.

Look she overthinks everything. She over thought the choices she made too. All the justifications and mental gymnastics need to be processed and looked at in reality. IC is a good resource, but it takes time.

Your wife had an A because she wanted to. That is the answer now, but as she digs into it in IC the reality of the consequences of her choices will be clear.

You want your pound of flesh. We all did. The natural consequence of cheating on your spouse is a divorce. Anything less that that is up to you. I know this doesn't seem important right now, but you hold a tremendous amount of power in your M right now.

So what do you do with that? Well right now your wife is compliant, but that usually breeds resentment.

Sure you can extract your pound of flesh through emotional weapons, but you need to think about why you want to do that and if it will get you what you want.

I will tell you that no matter what you do or say your wife will punish herself a million times more regardless if you stay m'd or not.

FWIW my wife told me that my anger was easier to deal with that those times that I showed her grace. Any kindness I managed to extend to her while hurting so badly made her feel like the lowest of the low. My anger was expected. My kindess was not.

Being shown grace, mercy and kindess when you know you don't deserve it is was way worse than any verbal tirade.

I think if you offer more details of what actually transpired you will receive more customised advice from experienced members here.

Sure. A summarized timeline. Not sure if this is too much detail, not enough, whatever.

8/4 - AC installation had finished, but was having issues. He had to come out to investigate. I knew it was planned. Prior to this they were friendly, but it had been professional and they had not been alone or anything. It takes a while and they get to talking about music, movies, etc so at this point it's basically turning into a first date. As he's finishing up and getting ready to leave, he asks if he can kiss her. She says "no" but makes it clear it really means "yes". They make out for a while "like high school kids" is how she describes it. She feels a high after for the next 2 days. Feels good about herself, attractive, excited, aroused.

8/5 - He texts her asking if she had enjoyed it enough to continue on her own after he left, like he had. She says yes. They talk about how much they both liked it and how weird it is.

8/7 - 8/15 - Sporadic texts, all about the AC. There were continued problems with the temperature not getting low enough so they were texting about possible fixes and when he could send an electrician out to fix it. I was aware they were messaging, and encouraged it because they air was not working like it should. Though of course I didn't know what had happened prior.

8/17 - He texts to tell her he has been thinking about her, and is very attracted to her. She says she is attracted to him too. He asks if she would like it to get more physical. She says that in another life, yes, but they couldn't because it would not just be a harmless physical fling. And that they both claim to be in happy relationships, so they can't do this. He agrees.

8/18 - He gives the final total and asks when he should pick up the check. (not mail it of course, since they both know they want to see each other) They decide tomorrow.

8/19 - He shows up in the morning after the kids are at camp. They don't waste time pretending like he's really there for the check, they make out for a while. She separates to make sure she doesn't have any pressing work emails, tells him to stay downstairs and not follow her. She goes back, they get back to it. Clothes still on but their hands in each others pants. He asks her to go down on him. She starts and the shock of that act, a different dick, etc is what finally feels like line crossing to her. (I keep reminding him she DID have sex with him. She insists and remains absolutely convinced that she would not have ever considered intercourse. I tell her to be fucking realistic and look how far she went. She was SECONDS away from it, she did everything except that. So what is the difference? Why does that make you feel better?) After a few seconds she stops, has a breakdown, says what are we doing, we can't do this. He does not pressure or anything, just apologizes and leaves while she is shaking on the floor. She texts him a couple hours later to say they aren't doing this anymore and not to contact her. She has a panic attack, is in the bathroom the rest of the day. I didnt notice anything when I got home until that night. I usually stay up until around 11 and she usually is asleep by 9:30 or so. But when I came to bed the light in the room was still on which absolutely never happens, and she was wide awake and did not seem to be feeling well. In hindsight now I know she was just sitting there trying to figure out how and what to tell me. We talked briefly about the weekend, and went to bed.

8/20 - I woke up and she was standing next to the bed, clearly had not slept. She closes the door and hands me the note. I felt the dread before I even looked at the first word. It says something along the lines of "A couple weeks ago ****** kissed me, and I kissed him back. Then yesterday when he came to get the check, it happened again. Only this time it went further. No, not sex but too far and with inappropriate hands." along with typical apology stuff. I didn't speak at all, laid there in shock for about 2 hours, then left the house. I drove aimlessly for a while, parked somewhere and just tried to process what was happening. She told me she was taking the kids back to school shopping. I went home while she was gone and packed a bag and was gone for the day. She begged me to come home and talk and I came home later that night when the kids were in bed.

The rest I have documented on here as I've filled in the details, gathered data and info, etc. We have talked about it every day, its been hard to keep the house from falling apart and keep the kids fed. We've had lots of tears, lots of sex, lots of not knowing how to act around each other. She wants to be permanently attached to me and always comforting me and answering my questions, but at the same time is always worried I want space. Usually I don't and for some reason would rather be closer to her than farther away, despite all the anger.

If I had to guess your wife regrets her choices, but remorse, true remorse takes time to settle in. It took mine the better part of a year to rectify her thinking in the choices she made.

Look she overthinks everything. She over thought the choices she made too. All the justifications and mental gymnastics need to be processed and looked at in reality. IC is a good resource, but it takes time.

Your wife had an A because she wanted to. That is the answer now, but as she digs into it in IC the reality of the consequences of her choices will be clear.

You want your pound of flesh. We all did. The natural consequence of cheating on your spouse is a divorce. Anything less that that is up to you. I know this doesn't seem important right now, but you hold a tremendous amount of power in your M right now.

So what do you do with that? Well right now your wife is compliant, but that usually breeds resentment.

Sure you can extract your pound of flesh through emotional weapons, but you need to think about why you want to do that and if it will get you what you want.

I will tell you that no matter what you do or say your wife will punish herself a million times more regardless if you stay m'd or not.

FWIW my wife told me that my anger was easier to deal with that those times that I showed her grace. Any kindness I managed to extend to her while hurting so badly made her feel like the lowest of the low. My anger was expected. My kindess was not.

Being shown grace, mercy and kindess when you know you don't deserve it is was way worse than any verbal tirade.

Just wanted to say thank you for this post, it is very meaningful.

I tell her to be fucking realistic and look how far she went. She was SECONDS away from it, she did everything except that. So what is the difference? Why does that make you feel better?

As I said above, nobody wants to be the villain in her own personal narrative. If she becomes a villain, the natural human tendency is to split hairs to figure out ways to lighten the load, to feel like less of a villain. That's pretty normal. "But ocifer, I was only driving 82, not 85, and I only had 4 beers, not 5." We've all done that. "Dad, I just cracked one window."

Me personally, I think there are "degrees" of cheating and concomitant degrees of trauma suffered by the BH. I know others here disagree with me and take the stance that cheating is cheating, period. I do think that the measure of the degrees of cheating and its trauma is personal and subjective to the individual BH, but I would hazard that for many of us, it would be worse if you had video of your WW having sex with the AP and making jokes about the tiny size of your dick compared to the AP's, or some other humiliating stuff, as compared to a WW who stumbled a couple of steps into a full-on sexual affair but then balked in a moment of self-realization and stopped herself.

I think the biggest thing she needs to figure out is, as they say, her "why". The AP is obviously a bullshit artist who hits on married housewives. Why would she fall for such a line of crap? What need did she have (probably deeply suppressed) that was awakened by this, and why was she unable to communicate that need to you prior to cheating? Clearly there's a kink in her hose in terms of running her emotional connections through the marriage.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 4:21 PM, Wednesday, August 31st]

What she has admitted to doing is enough for some people to choose D. At the same time, her voluntarily confessing and ending it so quickly points to a successful R being more likely if you should choose to offer it to her. It's too early to know one way or the other and much work needs to be done but if you want R, your odds appear better than most cases.

I am glad you will both be in IC soon, that's a good move. Has she gotten an STD test?

Your timeline pretty much confirms that this guy has a playbook for this shit. That does not excuse your wife but he is a predator. Any way to get the karma bus to him is a good thing, as he has almost certainly done this to other marriages and will do it again. I might have one more conversation with the owner of the business and tell him that my wife has a serious illness and your pos employee preyed upon her. Step by step. We know that she made her own choices in the affair but the owner doesn't need to be told that, just that he employs a sexual predator and his business reputation is at risk.