SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Thank you so much,

Especially Bigger for writing that boilerplate that really vibes with my feelings at this point. I haven't told her anything about the end of the year yet. I had only started the 180 process as of September 1st. I think at this point, I will wait till September 15th then tell her that I am fully moving back to the house because I cannot continue to spend money on ABNB apartments. Then I will basically tell her similar to what Bigger put together that I am moving on and getting ready to file. I will not give her any dates and any due dates.

At this point I want her to know that I am serious and I will take steps in trying to find a good mediation firm, collect financial paperwork and start the process. If she wants to reconcile she can tell me and we can start or she can do whatever the hell she wants. I need to detach.

I think given the circumstances that is the best path for you.

As I stated earlier in a prior post, I was in your shoes with my H planning to D me and him sitting on the fence not knowing what he wanted and the subsequent false R while he continued to cheat - all of it ugly!

The day I stood up to him and said those words — I am D you! — was the day he realized he made some serious mistakes and things got real for him.

It took him more than a year to convince me not to D him b/c by then the damage was done. But I saw noticeable changes and that is what kept me from going through with the D.

From my experience and perspective, I never found any peace until I started to realize that my XW did not have my interests in any of her decisions and to treat her accordingly.

Remember you did not make her have an affair, she did that all on her own.

[This message edited by hardyfool at 11:41 PM, Tuesday, September 5th]

Trial separation so she can freely call her AP is nuts.

This should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago.

Takes two serious adults to reconcile, not one umm and ahhh and telling you she cannot stop calling her lover. Time is the most expensive commodity on earth.

Why are you wasting it?

[This message edited by Tren0R201 at 2:18 PM, Thursday, September 7th]

Welp

Do NOT read my suggestion as some form of emotional chicken or an ultimatum.
It’s an ACTION PLAN. It has a definite conclusion, and that conclusion is to get out of infidelity.
That destination has two paths leading to it: R and D and for some part of the journey they are combined, then run parallel but at some point they go completely different ways to the same goal.
YOU can control your speed, but you need to keep moving. Heck… you could even backtrack once or twice, but if you regularly backtrack you soon realize you aren’t making progress.

I have used this story before to describe how your mentality needs to be set:

Imagine you had a rare disease that prevents you from flying or driving and can only be treated in anther city after a six-hour train-ride. You are told the treatment will start on the 20th of this month. You let your wife know that you are going for treatment (getting out of infidelity). You go online and reserve a ticket on the train. You ask her if she will come with you and despite her refusal OR lack of response you even reserve one ticket for her.
On the 19th you pack a suitcase and ask her again if she’s coming with you. Again – if she says no or no answer you might pack a small bag for her.
On the 20th you ask her to drive you to the station. On the ride you ask if she will come with you.
At the counter you pay for both reserved tickets. You hand her one and tell her she can come if she wants to. Maybe even hand her the bag you packed.
On the platform you again let her know she can come.
Once in the train you call her through the window she can still make it on board.

Then the train sets off… with you in it headed towards healing, and her standing on the platform.

So you aren’t waiting for the 15th and then making some speech and then waiting for the 1st of January.
From NOW until your train leaves the station you start your work. And you make 100% certain that tomorrow you have made some progress from where you are today.

I second Bigger's finest of fine advice - and as someone who played the pick me dance, did an in-house separation (which eventually did roll into the hard 180), and who lived through false-R for a year while my WH sat on the fence allegedly trying to choose between me and his AP but really doing nothing and wallowing in his own misery (once the shine wore off the A and it became "work" to maintain it and me) but still fucking both of us while deciding nothing, waiting to make a move towards getting out of infidelity is just shackling yourself to the misery for a few more days or weeks or months or years - depending on how long it takes you to decide to proceed.

My situation was similar to the 1st wife's in that my WH also was thinking of leaving me - planning it in his mind only and "sitting on the fence not knowing what he wanted and the subsequent false R while he continued to cheat" and that nothing happened until I too decided to leave, actually bought a house, and packed to move (we terminated our marriage while I was still in house separation due to COVID but it did not have the same impact as it has for others as I was still physically there with him). When it was 100% clear I was leaving was about the time "he realized he made some serious mistakes and things got real for him."

My situation differs from the 1st wife's in that 3 years later, WH has not yet convinced me to come back permanently because the damage has been done and as I like my life now.

All that being said, the key similarity is that my WH did not really decide to work on himself UNTIL it was 100% CLEAR things were not going to stay the same.

I wish it weren't like that - but for many of us in the BS camp, it is exactly like that. The good news, as Bigger so perfectly pointed out, is that the minute you take control and make an affirmative decision to get OUT of infidelity, you will be moving towards an infidelity-free life. And honestly, the thought of sharing my WH always made my stomach turn...so stopping that as fast as possible will make you feel better much quicker than self-imposed limbo. Ask me how I know.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 11:08 PM, Thursday, September 7th]

Well put Bigger
Well time to D, move in and stop supporting her. Cut off her phone etc.
She wants to talk to POS; she can get her own phone. Also she can start paying all her bills and 50% of the mortgage and utilities.
Of course once D is completed she can’t take the children interstate to meet POS or to move there.
One day at a time.

Update on my situation. I told her that I cannot tolerate sharing her with someone else therefore I will start the work on ending our marriage. She wasn't surprised at all. She said okay. She said she will work with me to try mediation first.

I told her I no longer want to do nesting either and stop spending money on ABNB apartments. Therefore I will take one of the rooms until divorce is final and I need to know where I stand financially. She didn't like the idea but reluctantly accepted it.

She also told me many stories about how she wanted to end things before but never had the courage etc. I told her if we were reconciling we could be discussing all of our past marriage issues and work on trying to resolve them. There is no point anymore.

This is where things are now.

[This message edited by Welp at 10:28 PM, Saturday, September 16th]

Thanks for the update, Welp. Infidelity sucks. It's hard to try to R when the WS isn't doing the work.

I’m so sorry that your wife has thrown in the towel and is not willing to put in the time and energy to change things to move towards true Reconciliation.

She just gave up and quit. You, the marriage, all of it.

But please don’t take this personally b/c it’s quite possible she’s a coward who would rather run away and take what she thinks is the "easy road". She can justify her choice to cheat and tell herself (and anyone else) a pack of lies. But it’s easy b/c she doesn’t have to go to therapy or face her demons or try to figure out why she cheated.

She could also be very selfish person who believes she had every "reason" to cheat and therefore it’s justified.

She could be delusional in thinking she has a future with the OM and she’s going to sail off into the sunset living happily ever after. And of course we all know the odds on that being the case.

But whatever her reasons are, I think you are better off knowing the truth so you can stop wasting your time and energy on something that was not going to work. I’d rather live in reality — no matter painful it may be.

Read up on the hard 180. And re-read Bigger’s excellent info.

Well, while I know it not what you wanted to know, but at least now you know. You are out of limbo now.

It does get better, now you protect yourself and your kids both emotionally and financially. Remember she isn't the person you remember or loved, she is something quite different now.

I've been told many times how much of a future there is for me, and it is true for me and true for you.

I am sorry - I know how this hurts and feels like a ton of bricks have been piled on you. It is rejection, no matter how you want to frame it - and rejection like this is awful. You are allowed, entitled, and it is totally normal to feel depressed, sad, low. I so wish I could make that better for you - if I could, I would. I also know this seems like small consolation but if your WS has truly been a coward for awhile and has wanted to leave but hasn't and really means what they say now - then you are being given a huge tool - finally - to enable you to move on with your life and the gift of no more bullshit. You will be able to move on, but will have to negotiate IHC for awhile (IDK how long divorce takes in your jurisdiction).

All that being said, you may want to rethink your moving back in together plans - or at bare minimum you may want to rethink who is the one who should have to move out.

My WH at one point after d-day 3, said he was done and didn't want to deal with me anymore - that we were "over" and he wanted to move on. We were in IHC at that point, and it lasted about 3 weeks before he changed his mind and said he did not want me to go etc. This happened over and over and over again through at least a year of the almost 2 years of IHC we had. It was MISERABLE, painful, heartbreaking, self-esteem leveling.....the list goes on. It was HARD and in hindsight, had my WH really been done as in really had 100% decided he did not want to participate in our relationship anymore, and not being "done" in the moment because I was no longer the happy person I was before, or that it was too hard to face the absolute carnage that resulted from his A, the kindest and bravest thing he could have done was to let me GO. As it turns out, my WH's A was not an "exit affair" in that he had not really, when push came to shove, decided he was done with us and took a shitty path to let me know, so he waffled back and forth for over a year - which also was excruciating. The best I could do in the moment was believe him when he said he was through. The fact that he kept changing his mind made me believe him less and less about everything, as even his resolve to end "us" wasn't reliable.

I don't know what your WS is thinking, nor did I experience a true exit affair, so I am not well qualified to tell you what to look for to determine if that desire to exit is real or not, as I was convinced my WH meant it every time he said it for a long time. But...

*********I am telling you this NOT to get your hopes up that your WS will "want you back" or that I know for sure what will happen. I do not. I am telling you this because IHC is an emotional roller coaster of epic proportion, that it was incredibly hard for me, and that getting it over with ASAP is probably in your best interest. If there is a way to come up with some sort of financial split which allows one of you to move out, I would recommend that highly. I did IHC for 10 months thinking I was moving away at the end of it purely for financial reasons, which was hard enough, then my job relocation got kicked back by a year due to COVID so I did almost 2 years of IHC or some modified form of it. There were times it was straight up miserable. A LOT of times. For at least 6 months I would say MOST times were extremely hard on me to the point that it's hard for me to recall a lot of how I actually felt then because I have forgotten it or at least somehow mentally numbed it to where it's fairly easy to talk about when I know it was far from easy.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 11:40 PM, Monday, September 18th]

Thank you so much for all the support everyone. This is incredibly hard. Also not knowing where will I stand financially at the end of this is very scary. I doubt I will be able to afford another house with way interest rates and housing prices are in California. We will probably end up selling our locked in super low interest home. Divide everything 50/50 and live in miserable dirty old apartments with kids. Since we are co-parenting we need live closer to each other as well.

Thinking about all of this gives me anxiety at this point. She seems to be fully content with all of this.

I'm 5+ years out and trust me,it gets better,but only if you do the hard work of healing and resist the urge to define yourself in terms of your trauma. You may have been victimized, but you are not a victim. It is something that happened to you, but it is not you. It took me a long time to get to this point, but it is sooooo worth it.

We will probably end up selling our locked in super low interest home. Divide everything 50/50 and live in miserable dirty old apartments with kids. Since we are co-parenting we need live closer to each other as well.

Thinking about all of this gives me anxiety at this point. She seems to be fully content with all of this

She appears content because she has been planning this outcome for some time, thus she has worked out something in her head that gives her comfort. You are on the underhand are processing this just over the last few days perhaps weeks.

If I were to hazard a guess, she either plans to move closer to the high school loser or have him move to her, perhaps even attempt to buy you out of the house.

It seems always that a WW has a plan, its almost never a good plan, and certainly never an honorable plan. However she is no longer your concern, you and the kids are all the only people that matter now for you.

I’m so sorry that it’s gotten to this point, Welp. As so many of us know, looking at the person that you’ve spent a huge chunk of your life believing is your best and most loyal friend and realizing that you are looking at a complete stranger—and one you wouldn’t want to know at all—is the mindfuck of all time. It is so hard to get your equilibrium back.

AS others have said, you will survive and even thrive after this, but there is the crisis point of divorcing and supporting your kids through the time ahead.

As a fellow Californian, I’m going to say something that others can likely relate to: do whatever it takes not to sell the house. I hope that we all live long enough to see prices here level off, but depending on where you live, if you sell and when you bought, there is zero chance that you’ll be able to get back into anything decent in the foreseeable future, especially given your interest rate. The rental market is so awful that you might end up paying close to your mortgage for something that is not even close to as ideal as your home. It might seem impossible, but is there something else that you can offer her in order to keep the house? Can you at all appeal to a desire to give the kids a stable home and eventual inheritance? Is there anyone that would be willing to co-sign or help with the costs to keep you there?

If you can work out a way to stay in the house, you could always rent a room out to cover the mortgage after the dust settles. Again, depending on where you live, you can rent to an international student if you’re near a university or college here. I’m sure there may be other ways. Remember: the first few years of a mortgage always feel overwhelming, but over time, the financial pressure eases. You’re going to go through a rough patch after the D on several fronts, for sure, but it doesn’t last forever.

I know I don’t know your financial situation, so I’ll just end with that: if there is ANY way you can stay in your house after the D, it might make sense to bargain with other things. . . Or use any leverage you have about them not wanting the real story out there. If there’s a way to weather the early storm, you’ll be so much better off if you don’t have to give up the house and the low interest rate.

Anyway, my two cents for the alarm bells that went off in my head about selling a house and moving to a rental in the current housing crunch in Cali.

This is sucks so bad, I know. I’m hoping that you come through without too much more added trauma now that you’ve seen who she is, and she’s ready to go. It may not seem like it, but she’s given you a gift with that. You can move forward knowing that you did your best and she’s the one who threw it away. You’re the only one that can walk away with his head held high.

Hang in there, Welp. Better days ahead.

Contrary to others I’m going to congratulate you on the recent developments…

I know that everyone expressing how sorry they are do so with good intentions and I’m not ignoring the value of their sympathy. But… reality is what reality is. For me your wife’s reactions reflect that she has no commitment to the marriage but lacked the guts to pull the trigger.
It’s like suicide-by-cop, where someone acts in outrageous ways to get someone else – a cop – to shoot them because they don’t have the courage to jump off a bridge.

The result might not be what you hoped for, but it is a result, and it can and will bring you to a conclusion. If this is her mindset and there isn’t an indication it will change then it’s immensely better for you to be moving out of infidelity.

Since I like using comparisons: It’s like you have had a toothache for months but a fear of dentistry has kept you away from the cure. Now you have gathered the courage to book an appointment and are in the seat. After an hour and maybe some more pain you fix the problem and start healing.

I want to make a couple of practical suggestions:
Be realistic about divorce. This is actually quite rare early on. We have this vision of everything being 50/50, but that does not mean you get the FO and she the RD on the vehicle. It’s more based on an equitable – a fair – division of debts and assets rather than an equal split of everything.
Like the 8 -set tableware in your house? Its not like you get 4 plates and she get’s 4, but rather that it might be valued at 100 bucks and one gets the equivalent of 50 in some other asset.

Do not try to do this alone. Try to do the divorce as cheaply, simply and amicably as possible, but do it THOROUGHLY.
A professional (like an attorney) will have the correct process and wording to ensure that the credit-card that the two of you took out 8 years ago and is in her purse is either paid up and closed OR totally moved to her name – debt and all. You do NOT want a visit from a collection agency 2-3 years from now due to old debt that you two agreed she should pay. The agreement between you two might ensure you could sue her, but only after paying the debt.
If you can then try to use a mediator. However, even if I were to use one, I would always want my own attorney to go over all suggestions before I signed. At the very least I would question the mediator on all aspects and take notes so that all bases are covered. The only dumb questions are the ones not asked.

Amicable divorce is like a boxing match in that it simply puts rules on how, when and why you apply pain to the opponent. Doesn’t change the fact you two need to exchange punches. Be selective of the fights you want to take and be prepared to take some punches. There is no way you will get everything you want, but that does not mean you have to give away everything you should get.
Focus on real value rather than sentimental or "moral" value: If she want the better vehicle let her have it in lieu of more equity in the house.

Amicable and fair does not equate to you two having to be friends and behaving as one big happy family. It means that you focus on what’s best for you and the kids, and she focuses on what’s best for her and the kids and you reach an agreement. Once that is in place you can hopefully attend the same PTA meetings, recitals and medical appointments but it does not mean you visit on Sundays to clean the gutters and mow the lawn for her.

Remember that your kids are their present age now, but won’t be after a couple of years. In a few years the need to live close together and all that will diminish. Basically – don’t make decisions that define your future solely on your present.