SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

You will get great advice on this forum. Pls listen to it. Suspend all thoughts of "it’s different with us". Because it’s not.

I have been going through a similar situation. Not as bad as yours. But a betrayal is a betrayal so it feels just as bad. Read all the case studies. They are all here. They will give you the framework for how to deal with this. And listen to the wonderful advice you will receive. Your first instinct is to ignore it. Because you won’t like it. Don’t.

I am sorry you are here.

Your wife is sulking like a kid that has been denied candy. She most likely is mourning that she has been caught rather than feeling remorse for hurting you. Pull the rug and wake her from the pity party.

At this point focus on yourself. Lawyer up and find out what divorce looks like. Then let her know this is the path you are taking. Lay down the rules for what a reconciliation will look like and do not waver.

I hope you realize that none of this is your fault. It’s very telling about her that within six months of working she has indulged in an affair of this magnitude.

Eat well and take it one day at a time. I hope you have a good therapist to help you navigate the grief. Take care.

You really need to do a firm 180 with her. The healing library and sticky threads in this forum others have mentioned will tell you how. She is lost in the fog of her fantasy and affair and has not really accepted the impact of what she has done. It's still all about her and there is little doubt that she is mentally, at the least, still in the A.

The 180 will help her realize the marriage is at stake and it will help you get out of infidelity. You have taken some very good actions but you still have one foot in the pick me dance space and the 180 will help you change that. The pick me dance is not helpful for getting out of infidelity but it is hoe many people react when confronted with the trauma of betrayal.

You've received a lot of advice.

I would like to highlight the best advice now.

You'll receive more advice. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Leafeilds

Gets upset when you ask for boundaries. Says you are controlling. Nope - she is not ready to start reconciliation - at all!! Don't even try. Best bet is to move out for awhile - she is deep in it.....nothing will get through to her unless she sees loss -in fact I bet she is still in contact with AP.

My WH (STBXH) also had an affair with a coworker. I found a suspicious picture, which he lied about, then a month later he admitted to the affair. I immediately had him leave and we now have a separation agreement. I'm still fairly new to this but I have observed something, I am in a better place mentally and emotionally 2 months out than most of the folks I see on SI trying to reconcile after 2 months. That doesn't mean R isn't worthwhile or that my path is easy, but I've read so many stories of people years into R finally deciding to D, even with very remorseful WS.

One mental exercise I did that pushed me towards D was I imagined my life a few years out if I stayed or left. In the image where I stayed, I realized I would spend years, if not the rest of my life, constantly wondering when the other shoe would drop and living in absolute fear. In the other, I realized I might be alone, but at least I wouldn't be constantly scared.

Brother you need to see an attorney ASAP.
Her refusal to leave her job is pretty telling what her mindset is.
She isn't all in, not yet, and may not ever be there, but if you continue to not firmly enforce boundaries you will just continue to hurt yourself and cause pain and drag this thing out.

You need to know your rights, and her responsibilities if she doesn't pull her head out of her ass.

You also need to understand that while this is painful, and fresh that it is very very traumatic. She is attempting to minimize this and rugsweep it "just get over it already". So she needs to understand that you aren't going to allow that, and the boundaries are firm. A common phrase here is, you have to be willing to lose your marriage to save it.

After she had told me that she would end the affair and go the therapy, I approached her with my absolute minimum requirements regarding to our relationship going forward.
They were like, NC with the AP only business, absolute honesty, transparency and focus on family and us (not work or party), go to therapy now and talk about finance matters.
First off she was upset by the fact that I even dare to tell her any requirements. (!) Seems like it frustrates her that I tell her any of my boundaries.

You're going to be hearing a lot about boundaries the more you dig into the mechanics of infidelity and recovery. What the WS typically hears is a set of diktats which sound controlling and arbitrary to her. Here's the thing though, boundaries are really about what YOU can live with, the kind of treatment you're willing to tolerate from someone who claims they want you to be their life partner. It's easy to slip into a parental role with a WS though because their behavior is emotionally stunted and childish, and the last thing you want to do is to set up the parenting dynamic with a grown ass adult who ought to know better, right? They're already acting like some juvenile delinquent and treating you like you're the marriage police.

What helped me was to take my list and turn it into Boundary Statements. Instead of "you will hand over the password to your phone", it's more like, "I will not tolerate a secretive mate who feels the need to lock his phone so I can't see what's on it". I'm an open book. I figure "privacy" is for the potty, not to keep my spouse in the dark about what's going on in my life or what my viewpoints are. I want a partner who is like-minded in that, not one who thinks sneaking around behind my back is an option. The results are the same in terms of him writing down his passwords in a book we share, but now he can see that it's not an arbitrary order designed to control him. It's what I need and want in order to continue to be married to him.

Boundary Statements can help you check your work and see what issues are really boundaries and which are points of contention that you're not really willing to enforce. Your true boundaries are going to be surrounding issues which make the marriage intolerable for you. If you can't imagine living with you WW a year or five from now with her locking her phone like a teenager hiding her diary from her dad, it's a real boundary which will be enforced by dissolving the marriage.

It's up to her if she's willing to agree to your boundaries. If keeping her password or continuing to work with the AP are more important to her than her marriage to you or her intact family, that's a good thing to know, isn't it? Whether or not you've given voice to your boundary, it's there just the same. Eventually, no matter how much you might want to save your family dynamic, you will stop loving this person if she continues to hurt you. You can't help it. Our boundaries are about what we can really tolerate, and if she continues to exceed your tolerance, the love evaporates little by little.

In the beginning, just after dday, we often feel like we've never loved our WS more. It's a natural reaction to the trauma of loss, and even with the WS standing right in front of us we feel loss. We end up grieving very much like we'd experienced a death, so The Five Stages become significant: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. In contemplation of our boundaries, it's tempting to make deals. Think of that as "the Bargaining Stage" of the Kubler-Ross model. But you can't barter your boundaries away, not even if you want to. They exist, and when you try to ignore them or get around them, you're taking on damage which will eventually catch up to you.

I had always thought that a cheating mate was my boundary. On dday, I told him in no uncertain terms that I was going to divorce him. He gave me a hangdog look, agreed it was for the best, and slunk off to go text the OW. Within a week though, it was him asking ME for more time. Of course, he messed that up within a month trying some bizarre kind of "let her down gently" tactic, but at that point he had about thirty seconds to decide if he was all in or all out. He ghosted the OW, threw himself into healing, and we moved on from there. But this is the weird thing about boundaries, sometimes our tolerance is greater than what we initially believed and no one was more surprise than me that I was open to R at all. Being open to R isn't achieving it though.

Achieving R requires us to eventually be content with owning our choice. Not today, not tomorrow, but someday. Early on, maybe we see the potential for R, but in order for it to become worth our while, we need to know that our WS is remorseful, that they're willing to change the inner flaws in their character which allowed them to choose perfidy, and we need to be reasonable assured that our boundaries won't be abused.

Anyway, long post made shorter... having boundaries is not "controlling". Boundaries are about YOU and about what you can live with. When you think of them in those terms, it's so much easier to see what you actually need to go forward.

Sorry that I didn't ask before, but is her AP married? If so, please tell the OBS (other betrayed spouse) so they have the information necessary to make an informed decision on their life choices.

I'm sorry that she said she'll go when she can find the time. That would chill me to the bone because it shows that she's not willing to change to be a safe partner.

If they were doing things with company equipment (phone, computer) and on company time, then HR could eventually be involved.

Welcome to this club nobody wants to be in but is probably the very best club to be in if you need to be here!

I am going to offer you some general advice, and some of it might sound counterproductive or even damaging. In all honesty it’s not – it’s all based on creating the BEST conditions possible to save your marriage (if that’s what you want) or at the very least for you to get out of infidelity.
Let me rephrase that: It’s actually not focused on saving your marriage NOR ending it. It’s based on getting YOU out of infidelity, and chances are your wife will follow you on that path – IF that’s what you want.

Let me start by stating that the only thing truly unique about your situation is that it’s your wife and your life. Accepting that her actions, your reactions etc. are "typical" also means that the advice offered here based on countless comparable cases will apply to your situation. For example: We will suggest you tell the other man’s wife (OMW), and you will probably think that’s counterproductive. Our collective experience though shows us that in 8-9 out of 10 instances this leads the OM to focus on saving his marriage and therefore more likely to end the affair. Our collective experience also tells us that if you do nothing then probably half the time the affair will start again.

Then there is the end-result. Many think it’s making the affair end.
No.
The end-result should be that you don’t live in infidelity. There is a difference. Your wife could stop seeing OM, but pine for him or think with positivity to the affair-period. You don’t want that – you want that IF you remain married, she is there because she wants you.

To get that result where it’s clear if you or she want the marriage there are IMHO only two paths: You can reconcile or you can divorce.
There is a third path that I actually think too many people take, and that’s learning to live with the infidelity without ever really addressing it. That’s what your wife is trying to do now. She’s hoping that she can carry on life with you without ever having to make changes. She’s expecting you to be happy with her going to the next company party, office party or whatever despite OM being there. Even if they are no longer actively having an affair.

To divorce only one party needs to want divorce. To reconcile, both need to commit and want it. Right now, your wife doesn’t want to reconcile – she wants to live with inactive infidelity. To sweep the issues under the rug and hope they disappear. At best maybe find some reason as to why you or the marriage made her do this.
PLEASE avoid that result. Please work towards a place where either the marriage works through the infidelity, or the marriage ends. R or D.

I think this is important.
I think it’s important for you to realize that in so many ways your marriage as you knew it is over, and your next steps can determine how your marriage will be moving on.

With that long foreword:
This is like dealing with a fire. If your home was blazing, you wouldn’t be trying to fix things before you are 100% certain the flames are out. Right now, the affair might not be openly burning, but the embers are still there. There are actions you can take to increase your odds of the affair being over, but they undeniably come at an emotional cost. Just like dousing a fire with water might impact your flooring.

You should let the OMW know.
I mention common experience. Here on SI, I venture that in 8/10 instances letting the other spouse know helps cement the end of the affair. It makes the OMW aware, and she can then apply pressure on her husband to toe the line. Or not. Worst-case scenario is that it makes her leave him and he then pursues your wife. If that’s the case, and your wife choses him… well… better to know now than 2-3 years from now. When you tell the OMW you do so kindly, with no warning to OM or WW. She doesn’t have to believe; you don’t have to prove anything. Just tell her.

Your wife and OM working at the same place won’t work. Even if she is 100% honest about the affair being over. At the very least it will fill you with insecurity and worries. If your wife is going back to the work-environment after a long break, then relocating to another job shouldn’t be an issue.

What is their work relationship? Is he a supervisor or in a supervisor role? I ask because of the cost of their type of affair. Would HR be interested to know company expenses are being misused? Most companies have strict rules about fraternization – especially if a supervisor or manager has an affair with a subordinate. This could impact OM heavily.

Don’t think for a moment that others at the job didn’t know… They probably didn’t condone it, but even when the WS thinks they were so secretive then usually others have picked up on the "coincidences" of WW and OM leaving in separate cars for separate "appointments" and all that.

Be very aware of what you might be trying to save.
If it’s simply a relationship with your wife… don’t bother… It has to be a MARRIAGE with your wife.
With that in mind – what would be the absolute worst outcome from this?
If you are thinking that you divorce… think again…
IMHO the absolute worst outcome would be that 2-3 months from now you again discover your wife is scouting out "storage space" with a coworker. The worst outcome IMHO would be to think you are reconciling, when in fact she’s still cheating. In infidelity.

I think if you accept that this is the worst scenario it can give you the power and strength to take the actions needed to prevent it. Well… minimize it at least because IF your wife wants to cheat, she can and will.

With this in mind contemplate telling your wife something along these lines:

W

ife. I love you and have always envisioned us spending our lives together. However, I have realized that there is something worse than losing you and that maybe I already lost you when you decided to have an affair. What is worse is SHARING you. At the very best that’s what you are offering me now – that I share you with OM. You might not be seeing him as-is, but your mind is still there.
I don’t share my wife.
I would prefer you not being my wife to sharing you.
Therefore, I am giving you full acceptance that you go be with OM. I don’t want to force you to remain married to me, nor do I want to be married if you aren’t committed to US.
You can date him, be with him, move in with him, talk about him with your friends… whatever. But not as my wife.

You always had the option to do this right – to have talked to me and even divorced before deciding to have an affair, but you didn’t. I will be brave enough to do it for us.

I am initiating the steps to end our marriage. It’s a process and is both emotional and practical/legal steps. I’m starting the emotional detachment, the expectations of marriage and all that and will move on to the legal and practical as I gain strength to do so. There are laws and processes that will ensure the practical and legal process will be fair to both of us.

If you want this marriage and if you want to be my wife, you need to let me know in a very clear and unequivocal way. You would also have to show me with definite actions that you want this marriage. Without both (words and actions) I am simply assuming you have chosen your infidelity over us.

That’s it. No more discussion. The ball is now in her court and if she wants the marriage, she will be working her tail off to convince you otherwise.
You can control your pace – no need to file tomorrow or move out next weekend or whatever. You have stated your case and you can now evaluate her response and what she’s willing to do to save the marriage.

ChamomileTea gave some good advice about boundaries. Hard ultimatums are difficult because if you use them you need to be willing to stand by the consequences.
I talk about actions.
One action I suggest is that she quit her job.
You could say "If we are to remain married you have to quit your job."
Or…
You could say "You remain in proximity to the OM makes me wonder about the sincerity of your commitment to the marriage. His ongoing presence hurts me, and it impacts my belief that this will work. You are not convincing me that you are committed to us."

Other actions you should require:
A total honest timeline to the detail YOU need. Some need extreme details, other need an overview. It’s totally YOUR call.
Total transparency. You have access to her media, her schedule and so on. With time she can regain trust, but blind trust is gone forever.
She needs therapy.
With time – like maybe 2-4 months from now – you two go to MC.

I’m sorry she has done this to you and her family. She is deep in the fog and doesn’t think she has done anything that bad. It’s time for 180 and consequences to come crashing down on her.

I will tell you from personal experience it’s easy to try to soften the blow for her, it’s a bad plan, you cannot nice her back. She needs to feel and deal with every consequence SHE created. It’s easy for us to blame ourselves for the family fall out. This is 100% her fault, she betrayed the family not you.

Another thing to watch for is who is she on the phone with when she comes home? My WW had a couple others waiting in the wings. She may have ended it with one, but still has her feelers out for another.

I’m sorry you are going through this, stick around and keep posting, there is a lot of hard earned experience here.

Well, I think she is playing you and you let it happen.

She cannot keep working there
And someone needs to tell Ap's wife

But from what I read, she absolutley does not respect you or even likes you in any way.
I think she feels inprisoned with you and is trying to navigate the situation.

You need to be more firm with her other people would have left a looong time ago

good luck

So sorry brother for your situation.

Lest stop trying to nice her around to you, she presently has little respect for you and the family. Being nice will push her away.

I am unsure if you have had the full STD and STI checks but if not get them and get her to do the same as some can be transmitted by saliva.

Legal advice is a must regardless what you want to do. You must know your rights and her responsibilities.

If they are still in the one office well they can be having lunch dates or hooking up in various locations. She needs to leave.

Every one has an opinion about informing the other BS. I fall in the tell her column. She has a right to know her health has been put at risk.

Well you need you time. Try to get out and exercise even if it is a daily trip to the park to run with the children.
Eat healthy and drink water. Now is not the time to hit the booze or other stuff.

Don’t engage with WW, start the grey rock now! Talk only about the children. She has stop caring and is controlling the fallout; so you take charge.
Be carful about telling HR as if YOU decide to D you may have to pay more in alimony. Can you go full custody if she has to work full time to pay for her own love shack? If they are talking they are hooking up.

One day at a time.

[This message edited by Buffer at 11:19 PM, Wednesday, March 29th]

please don't go anywhere as a family. That is deflection. She will be fake or trying to nice you back but is she rally done with him ? No

Understand first the root cause of the infidelity, lawyer up for now and have her come clean. I don't get these people who cheat when they have a young family.

She comes clean, no family vacation, don't let her get away with this. Schedule a polygraph and continue to collect evidence.

It should be in your hands if you want to save this or end it. It is not in her hands.

180 TRDD. Do it now. It will help you and shock her back into reality

you said you know for a fact that she cheated on you multiple times.

So my question is why do you stay in this relationship ?

I'm so sorry you are here. Reading your story you sound like a very involved father who went the extra mile in caring for your home and daughters to support your wife in trying to help her find a fulfilling life. That's admirable, and you deserve much better than the betrayal you've received in return from her. But if nothing else, it sounds as if your daughters are lucky to have you as a lighthouse and anchor while this storm rages. And it's important to remember that you're going to be the only one who can be for a good while, because as Tanner mentioned, your WW sounds very deeply in the fog right now. Not to excuse a single bit of the infidelity, but it may help to do some research on limmerance and how exactly it affects brain chemistry. It sounds like your wife really and truly is not thinking like her rational self right now, so you have to be aware that you are, in fact, living with a body snatcher of some sort. Again, it excuses nothing. Her lack of boundaries led her into the place where she could get here, but now she is here. And she'll lie, she'll deceive, and she'll act so out of character that your mind will be completely blown. Eventually the chemical cocktail in her brain does wear off. From what I've best been able to find it can last anywhere from 3-48 months (huge variance, I know), with somewhere around 24 months being the most common. Things like the hard 180, telling the other man's wife and putting light on the affair, and many of the other solid advice that's been given can work to possibly shorten the length of the "fog". But it also might not. Nothing about this is rational. In the fog, my WW sincerely believed and discussed with AP that she was going to have her tubes untied and start a new family with AP. A man she had known for only a few months. She was fully convinced that he was leaving his wife, and she would leave me, and she would reverse her tubal ligation and have children with him and our four kids would be cool with all this and they would be one big, happy blended family. That's just an example of things the "fog" will cause a wayward to believe. Your WW almost certainly believes a lot of nonsense right now, and will act in irrational and completely out of character ways on the basis of the things she sincerely believes to be true.

I do want to echo what Bigger and Olderandhappier said that should be reinforced. Your situation is very unlikely to be unique. Your marriage and WW are extremely unlikely to be the exception to the truths you'll hear from others. I made the mistake of believing my WW was the exception and a lot of the advice I was hearing was untrue because other people just didn't know us. I've had three DDays now and well over a year of hell. Sure, a couple of areas I did disagree with the advice and knowing the ins and outs of my marriage I was able to disagree and time has proven that I accurately discerned the reality around me. But those are the exceptions in my story. Everyone was right. Cheaters lie, universally. And they're convincing. And I was a fool to believe some of the lies that I believed. Who knows if D or R is your path out of infidelity? Surely even you don't know that yet. There's no rush to make decisions. It's okay to just collect data for a while as long as your emotional and mental a physical well-being are being protected to a level that you can endure (the 180 helps with that). But as a guy who's been through three DDays thinking I was in honest reconcilliation each time, I'm truly think there's wisdom in believing that your WW will follow many of the exact same patterns as you'll hear described here. She's very likely not different. The love between you is not stronger and more protecting than the people who's opinions you'll read (like I foolishly believed), and you need to expect the unexpected as best you can.

Sending love and support my brother. You will survive this, but it sucks. I don't know if your marriage will or not, I don't even know if my own will. But somehow, someway, hour by hour, minute by minute if that's what it takes, we will survive this. Feel free to post as often as you need to. There's lots of listening, empathetic ears here to support you.

Update:

You might say the past does not matter, and I should leave her NOW, but I’m deeply sorry about the potential death of 15yrs marriage and trying everything to desperately save it.

But I also read your comments and advises so I’m a bit more realistic now.

Talked to lawyer about my options and also how my life would be like without her.

BTW regarding to emotions: I might still not able to accept the fact, that our world has been destroyed / murdered by her affair. Still trying to convince her to consider what is at stake, think of the kids, their souls, their world….. TBH without success and I’m alone in this fight.

From today, I will apply the soft 180, to emotionally disconnect a bit and regain my life.

I’d like to share with you one of dialogues just to see her mindset better.

When I asked her if she feels any moral problems with the fact that the AP has a family with a wife and little kids on the other side , there is a mother just like her… she furiously left the room in the middle of the conversation and told me ‘I will continue this conversation if you please stop offending me!’. I told her I did not think I offended her just by asking a moral question and wanted to know what she feels about this. She did not say a word. Just looked into to air and replied nothing…. The entire ‘conversation’ was like this.. one-sided, just like my attempt to convince her or save the marriage.

What I see is the so called affair fog that has totally changed her way of thinking and the ability to choose between what is wrong and what is right. Or simply she does not care, because she thinks she is entitled for everything and selfish now? So if the AP said it was ok to cheat on his family with kids, then she is also ok with that morally?

For me it was very problematic and shocking and I realised that I might not want to stay with a person who does not feel any compassion or empathy for the other family. I realised her moral 'standards' (as of now) were just not acceptable for me. This is big revelation for me.

At the end, I told her that I will not share my wife with anybody else (great tip thank you!) so she has to make a choice. I also told her to leave her job if she truly wants to commit to R. She did not say a word. To be precise she did not say more than 2-3 sentences in the entire 20 minutes ‘conversation’.

[This message edited by madmax76 at 6:27 AM, Thursday, March 30th]

Ouch! So sorry, MadMax. It took my XWH about 3 months to get out of the affair fog. He still didn't do the work, so we are D. I can't tell you how hard I tried to keep the family together but just couldn't.

This is a tough road and I think a 180 will help you. Of course, you have the right to say, "Oh, hell no!" This is assuming your wedding vows included the "forsaking all others" phrase.

Hang in there.

Gently now...

just like my attempt to convince her or save the marriage

You cannot convince/control another person. The only person you can convince/control is yourself. The more you 'fight' to regain your WW, the more she will 'fight'/resent your attempts to convince her otherwise.

So, focus on yourself, and don't try and analyze what your WW is thinking/feeling. It will be an exercise in futility, and you will waste precious time/energy (which you could be using to focus on you and your children). Your priority now is to yourself and by extension, your children. Your current priority is NOT trying to figure out your WWs mind.

By focusing on yourself and your kids, you will ultimately be bettering the life you will have. If your WW wants to be included in that life, then she will have to change direction (on her own volition). If she does not want to change, there is nothing you can do but to continue on building a better life for YOU and your children.

Right now she has her AP m, snd her husband is desperately fighting for her, so she’s as happy as a clam - desired by two men.

What you’re not realizing is that your actions are actually working towards opposite ends of your goals. The more you try to negotiate, the more understanding you provide, the more soft touch in the 180 that you pursue, ,the more desperation you show, the more your WW will be convinced that she can continue with her A with no worries about D, outing to friends snd family, keeping her family intact, etc.

You’re giving her everything she needs and want right now to not only stay in her A, but also double down on it - zero consequences. Your desperation makes you look weaker in her eyes, snd she is feeding off of that. Your desperation provides oxygen to her cheating.

Go the hard 180 snd give her an ultimatum. Tell her you’ve already consulted an attorney. At this time you need to proceed forward on your own to protect you snd your children from her selfish acts. Do not go on vacation!

You must start to wrap your head around the fact that her A may lead to divorce. Once you can comprehend this fact from a logical sense, you can start making better decisions that do not enable her A.