SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Do any of you know you will never trust again or stop checking to make sure the affair hasn’t started up again?

I know I will never trust anyone fully again I also know that even though I love my FWH I will never stop checking up behind him.

I’m sure it’s not healthy but if I’m completely honest with myself I know this to be the absolute truth.

He’s been clean as far as me checking and yes I know you can’t be completely sure -but it offers a false sense of security.

He asks me if any of the work he’s doing even matters to me if he can never be new in my eyes.
He’s not asking me to hurry up so it’s not a toxic wayward response—- it’s actually a good question.

I want to believe in renewal and that he could be a changed man—- but if he could do the things he did before I can’t put anything past him - you are forever different in my eyes.

He asks me if any of the work he’s doing even matters to me if he can never be new in my eyes.

Like others have said here in the past, it's like breaking your favorite plate. You can glue it back together and make it functional and look almost new again, but the cracks will always be there. They're there forever. But that's okay, it can still be your favorite plate. New just isn't possible.

And really, a new relationship isn't the real goal of the work. Being a safe partner is the goal. Safety means authenticity. And authenticity means recognizing that cracks are just part of the fabric of your relationship, but they don't have to be the focus forever.

With time and a good track record, you'll probably eventually check less often. Trusting, but verifying is appropriate for now.

Yeah this aspect takes time to work through. Trust, but verify works for awhile. The problem is that the checking works for a little while, but it puts the responsibilty of his fidelity on you and it keeps you in a place or pain. You feel insecure so you check and find nothing. You feel better for awhile, but those feelings xome back. Rinse and repeat.

Look I 100% get why checking on our spouses is what we need to do. It is a process that needs to move to your H being 100% in charge of his own fidelity.

I spent some time in IC working on this and it really helped me. I still check sometimes, but let's be honest . . . It is exhausting and draining to be the fidelity police. In the long run it prevents you from moving to a place of peace and contentment.

Again,I am not saying you shouldn't check on your WH. It is normal, but it also refreshes that deep pain prevents you from healing.

If after 3 years it has not changed maybe it really is a deal breaker for you or your WH has not done enough to earn some trust back. It should be his responsibility to keep him faithful. No amount of checking is going to prevent him from cheating if he really wants to do so. I know that point scares a lot of folks here, but it is the truth.

I finally settled on that my W is responsible for her own fidelity. IC was a huge help. She knows any type of A, inapropriate friendship or future abuse means that we get a D. I would be 100% certain that my W did not deserve to be married to me. It would be sad, but I know I will be ok regardless. That has taken me a long time to work through. It puts you in a stronger position in the M too.

Yes it feels safer to have proof of fidelity, but it only proves one point. You don't trust your H and what you've done hasn't been working for you anymore. Time to find a new way.

This crap takes time, hard work(on both sides) and honesty with yourselves and each other.

Has your H done work to figure out why he betrayed you? Has he done any individual therapy? If he acts the same as he did before his A, no wonder you don't trust him enough to let go of checking.

None of this goes away with the passage of time. It is the work you do during that time that helps everyone heal. Both of you need to do your part. Likely it involves counseling individually as the next logical step. If you have both been going to IC you have to ask if the counselors you are seeing you are helping at all. Plenty of other resources out there.

Not trusting your spouse is miserable. I don't blindly trust anyone anymore. My naiveté left the building on Dday. Better, worse, etc. I really don't know. That being said it is the only life I am going to have and I don't really have a chance to change the past.

Best of luck in your journey:)

Numb and dumb I don’t understand how me checking is making me responsible for my husbands fidelity? Can you help me understand that?

My husband has been doing the work. But I know that I will never trust him to be faithful again. Can’t that also be true? What does me checking have to do with him remaining faithful?

I literally check because the deception and the got one over on me is what hurts me most- like I was asleep and let my inner child get hurt.

I agree with n&d and sacredsoul33. I'm writing to add:

1) IMO, the problem is that no one is 100% trustworthy. Anyone can disappoint someone else. The problem is placing 100% trust on our partners.

2) One can't trust oneself 100%, either, but we're all we've got. IMO, my W might betray me again; I might betray her. I believe neither of us will betray ourselves or each other, but it seems possible. Part of what keeps me going is that I know I can heal even if life hurts.

I think learning to trust oneself is a key to healing.

I don’t check up on my H. If he’s excessively texting anyone he knows I can look at the phone bill and see it.

If he’s using an app that I cannot see, I would notice if he’s doing it excessively because if the time spent doing it. If he’s doing it out if the house, I hope she’s worth it.

Because he knows the next time there is no conversation. We go straight to D.

More importantly I think that with the changes he has made and the understanding of what he did, he is less likely to cheat.

I’m not his mother or his caretaker. And if I found out he was being disrespectful to me, then it’s time to call it a day and end the marriage.

I don’t worry about it or think about it. I have an exit strategy in place and a home I can afford on my own (part of my exit strategy lol).

I have no stress or anxiety as a result of his prior affairs. Fortunately we moved past it.

I have to say first that I wouldn’t recommend what I have done but I feel like there is some benefit to you getting to hear others be completely honest about their behavior. You may hear what I do and think "wow, I’m glad I’m not checking that much" or "I don’t want to turn into that person" so you put some more effort into reforming your behavior.

I check a lot. It is partly part of my personality. I like data, computers and gadgets and I take a certain amount of maladaptive pride in being three steps ahead. Even with that he was able to keep many important details secret.

I caught him having taken his secretary on our boat when I was away on a trip. It was at our club where our kids and my parents were hanging out and I had evidence of him asking a bunch of other people go on the boat too. So it was a massive red flag but not a knockout punch.

I got a voice activated recorder (VAR) pen and managed to capture several conversations with the OW, even after they were being physical and I am so grateful to have these. There were three of them that were fairly long and they were very bland and completely platonic. What have you done today, what are your kids up to, etc. I have more intimate conversation with the Starbucks barista I see each morning. It just did not speak to any real romance and they were held in what he thought was complete privacy. So this sort of reinforced for me that I like to have the information. If he told me that the A had been a friend with benefits situation-no lovey dovey-I wouldn’t believe him but this tracking I did helped me see it as true.

Since that time — for the last 7.5 years— I have done location tracking, with frequent calls to ensure the phone wasn’t left behind somewhere, drive bys, office drop ins. Unbeknownst to him his iPad has also been recovering his location and timestamping how many minutes he spends in any one place this whole time. I developed strong friendships with many of his colleagues and that has allowed me to monitor any abnormal activity. The AT&T app has been my friend and allowed me to confront him about a female colleague I felt he was talking to too much. I am on the fence about whether it really was inappropriate because it was a time when all 20 partners were having hour long nightly phone calls. She is the only female partner and the calls with her were shorter so it was more of a situation of being happy that he accepted me being uncomfortable as a reason to not speak to her on the phone at all anymore. If he has to work late he leaves his phone on FaceTime to me the whole time so I don’t need to worry.

Looking back it was over the top. But it turned out he had hidden the whole time that what I thought was an inappropriate friendship with his secretary was actually a full on physical affair of several months duration. So every conversation we had during the 7 years of supposed recovery he was actually lying the whole time. So maybe some part of me sensed this and that is why I could not fully trust.

A year ago he came clean and gave a verbal download reveal of every physical hookup, every secret meeting and all the specific ways he actually deceived me. I would never have found this stuff out so I have more trust now. But even though I really don’t feel he would cheat again I am loathe to put myself into a situation that is anxiety provoking/triggering. So he is at a conference in the Midwest this week. I don’t think at all he would cheat. But I know that every night away would be triggering. I don’t want to experience that so I have gone on the trip with him. It is a waste of my time.

My therapist has worked on two things with me (1) trusting myself that I would leave if I found out he did something truly inappropriate, (2) Believing that even without checking I would eventually get a spidy sense something was off or he would slip and I would find out. In other words, my checking might help me find out sooner, but it really is a waste because I would find out eventually anyway.

I am working on these two things. It is a slow process.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend doing what I’ve been doing but lying on SI seems as stupid as lying to my own therapist. So this is just an FYI.

No matter how you choose to handle it I hope you don’t blame yourself. I don’t really know how much a spouse can do to help. Every possible means of monitoring him has been voluntary on his part and he goes to great lengths to FaceTime me anytime he is somewhere he thinks I might worry about. He almost never complains about my surveillance of his phone etc. Maybe that is guilt on his part, I’m not sure.

[This message edited by Stillconfused2022 at 10:06 PM, Sunday, October 1st]

Everybody is different. At three years from dday, I was still angry and still checking up on my H. It was not all consuming but I would verify things to help me feel better. I didn't and don't see that as taking responsibility for his fidelity. It was to reassure myself and try to avoid living a lie. If he was going to cheat and lie, there was nothing I could do to stop him. I just wanted to have information to make decisions about my life and my health. I didn't want to commit to R and all the work involved while being deceived once again.

I do remember feeling like I was never going to let go of the need and desire to check and verify but slowly over time as he changed and worked on himself he earned my trust. I will never trust him or anyone like I once did but I also rarely check up on him. Once in a while if something triggers me I will. I don't dwell on it or spend lots of time doing it and I don't worry about it either. That is a consequence of what he did to me and to us.

Do what feels right for you and what helps you move through this mess.

Well why do you verify? You gain something from doing it or else you would stop, right?

If you were like me at three years out I realized that no amount of checking is going to prevent another A. Maybe of I catch it before it became another Dday. . .

For me I was trying to police my wife to ensure she remained faithful. Sadly, it made me feel worse and a lot of the time the relief I felt was short lived. Maybe a day or two at best.

I did not want my M or life to revolve around a parent child dynamic. Where I checked and then asked her about such and such. I felt worse and my W clearly wasn't happy to have it pointed out to her how little I trusted her despite years of her doing the work and me finding nothing. Again this after we were both doing the work. I think the checking on our WS is more than warranted for some time after Dday. However it can't be that way forever. KWIM?

It gave me the illusion of control of the situation. If I just checked, watched and basically policed my W actions then it would gauarantee her fidelity. My point here is that it is her job to live up to commiments to me and the M if she wanted R. The problem with policing your H is that it does not require him to do his own work on being authentic and trustworthy. He adopts what your version look like. He has to own his decision to R with you in a way that he recogizes as his decision not yours.

All I am saying is that illusion of control and working past that was key for me. My wife needed boundaries. She also needed ro figure out why she did what she did. I can be a supporting player, but my wife had to do that work in therapy. It felt unfair, but I had work to do too.

BTW if even my M did not survive the work I did was not wasted. I did it for me and I have benefitted from that tremendously. Those around me have benefitted as well.

I am happy with who I am and everything else was just extra.

[This message edited by numb&dumb at 8:01 PM, Thursday, September 28th]

I think I was spared an element of this because I never had WS lied to my face as we were long distance at the time. He was away and I didn't ask where he was because I trusted he would be not doing anything bad so I never experienced him looking me in the eye and lying.

Also, after DDay, the AP was probably certifiably deranged so if he had contact with her of any kind within an hour they would both tell me. So I'd get a message from him saying "I just ran into her at work and she tried to corner me to talk about the A and I told her we couldn't speak and left with her crying" and then I'd get a message from her saying "He spoke to me at work". She was basically trying to wrangle him into speaking to her, then would tell me because she wanted me out of the picture. She actually only made me trust him more as it was so obvious she was a liar.

He has lied by omission to me a couple of times, and it was SO OBVIOUS I knew instantly and he caved in seconds. He's a terrible liar. So I have a lot of empathy for people who were lied to, to their face. It must make it very hard to know what is true and in your shoes, hell yes I would check and keep checking until I felt I didn't need to.

What I do think though is that a large part of this is hypervigilance for trauma. I check AP all the time on socials. I do it instantly if I feel anxiety. So it's not about trust or the A, it's a trauma response. You might feel that way too?

Do any of you know you will never trust again or stop checking to make sure the affair hasn’t started up again?

I will never trust in the same way.

I don't go checking after the affair at all at the moment. If I had any reason to believe differently I would check.

I know I will never trust anyone fully again I also know that even though I love my FWH I will never stop checking up behind him.

The main reason I don't check is my wife has done a really good job with "transference of vigilance" and whenever she does something that could mildly be interpreted as somehow being on the slippery slope she checks with me multiple times making sure I'm OK with whatever it is until she is really sure that there is nothing for her or me to worry about. (E.g. things as little as her going to a happy hour after work).

I’m sure it’s not healthy but if I’m completely honest with myself I know this to be the absolute truth.

He’s been clean as far as me checking and yes I know you can’t be completely sure -but it offers a false sense of security.

Checking on what they are saying, and seeing they match up rebuilds trust. Eventually I didn't feel the need to always check to make sure they matched.

He asks me if any of the work he’s doing even matters to me if he can never be new in my eyes.
He’s not asking me to hurry up so it’s not a toxic wayward response—- it’s actually a good question.

I took absolution off the table early on for my wife. I will never see her the same as I did before the A and she has to be ok with that. She is, and so am I.

I want to believe in renewal and that he could be a changed man—- but if he could do the things he did before I can’t put anything past him - you are forever different in my eyes.

He can be changed. He can earn forgiveness. But there is no time machine. The dynamic is such that the onus of providing that extra reassurance is on him. It's on him becuase he's the one that cheated and lied. And that onus will not ever completely go away.

My answers are similar to what ThisIsFine wrote. My "need"/compulsion to "check" has decreased markedly over time, but I don't know if it'll ever be distinguished entirely. I would not hestitate to check if something FELT off.

He asks me if any of the work he’s doing even matters to me if he can never be new in my eyes.
He’s not asking me to hurry up so it’s not a toxic wayward response—- it’s actually a good question.

New? Probably not. But the way I looked at it is that every time I checked and found nothing, it built back a TINY bit of trust. Bit by bit by bit over time - with diminishing returns (like most things). If my trust was a container of sand (or sparkles... that's a more fun picture to imagine), and the affair smashed it, the building back of trust felt more obvious at first. I could grab it by the handful. Now that the majority of the sparkles are back in the container, the trust building is a little less obvious. It's a lot harder to pickup the tiny little remnants that I know are still scattered elsewhere, and I certainly come across them less often. Every once in a while I will find one though and his honesty, transparency and consistency, allow me to pick it up (without the same initial drama) and place it safely back in the container.

Maybe if he's able to reframe it as productive rather than a negative reminder of what isn't whole, he might feel better about it?

He asks me if any of the work he’s doing even matters to me if he can never be new in my eyes. He’s not asking me to hurry up so it’s not a toxic wayward response—- it’s actually a good question..

He actually IS probably trying to hurry you up.

The answer: When it matters to him, it can matter to you - and he’ll be done asking that question.

When a WS’s work in reconciliation is for the sole purpose of being a better person - regardless of the outcome for the marriage, that’s the only way it’ll be successful.
Their ‘work’ never ends… that doesn’t mean it has to be a painful process forever - it can become positive and affirming.

Numb&Dumb
I disagree with the only reason he’s faithful
Is because I’m checking. That’s not what I see.

In fact I’m monitoring him in ways he’s unaware which is my favorite way.

I am not doing this to trick him into being faithful-
I’m doing it to make sure I am not lied to.

I'm just two years after Dday, so for now, my trust level is pretty low and I still check on my WH frequently. Not every day, because he has been quite good at transparency and the transfer of vigilance, but I still check and if we stay together, I reserve the right to check anytime I feel like it. Not to prevent another affair, I am painfully aware that if he wants to cheat again, he will and there is nothing I can do to prevent it. I check, because I need to know what is happening in my life and by checking, the probability of catching him, if he is cheating, goes up. If he has not really changed, if he is still the same POS and is only whiteknuckling his way out of the doghouse, then I want to know about it sooner rather than later. I don't think he is, I actually believe I have seen a real change in him, but I have been proven wrong about him in the past and I could be wrong now. And since I have no desire to throw away another 9 years on a POS, I check and will check anytime anything seems wrong. And he knows it and had to accept it if he wants to reconcile. It sucks, for both of us, but it is how it is. And no, he will probably never be new and pure to me again, but like in kintsugi art, I think there can be beauty in repaired broken things as well.

[This message edited by ZetaCephei at 8:38 AM, Friday, September 29th]

I’m doing it to make sure I am not lied to.

So you should do it. I understand that it lowers your anxiety, and that's normal. But you also have to admit to yourself that you are lying to yourself. You can never "make sure I am not lied to." It's impossible to be 100% certain of anyone else's behavior. Control is an illusion. We live in an unpredictable world where we can only control our own behaviors, actions, and reactions.

Checking on him is not giving you the feeling and peace you desire and need. Neither is the work he is doing. Is it possible that this is because you need to do your own work to feel strong and capable inside, no matter what life brings your way?

It seems to me that part of your recovery may need to be reducing the anxiety you feel knowing that you can't control him or what he does. Because that's the only part you do have control over--reducing your anxiety. This is an excellent goal for IC visits and is done by targeting your fears and working through each one.

Part of my recovery has been to reduce my resentment of the fact that I cannot control my H or the obstacles I have faced. I believed, prior to this, that I could design the life I wanted. And it made me angry when my life broke, as if this had all been done "to me" despite my best efforts to have a certain type of life. I couldn't shake my anger. But again, regardless of the truth of his actions, the bitterness I carried around in refusing to accept the unpredictability of life was harming me and my inner peace. So I addressed it and feel much better now. I had to heal myself.

You should work on this feeling that your inner child was attacked, as you said, and the vigilance you subscribe to in "making sure" it never happens again. There is no making sure, as Sisoon said. The vigilance will not bring peace as you continually wait and worry about bad news. There is only one way, learning to self-soothe and calm your inner child, learning that YOU can take care of YOU no matter what the world throws at you. Learning to quiet the anxiety inside helps you to not focus on the other shoe dropping. That is what we can control in life, our inner strength and self-confidence. And it is enough to find peace inside if you build it up. It really is.

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 8:47 AM, Friday, September 29th]

He asks me if any of the work he’s doing even matters to me if he can never be new in my eyes.

Why does it bother him you check and why is he asking this? Is he taking your checks personally?

I don’t check anymore except when the checking has become part of our day to day life, for example when he’s in the office and at the end of the day I want to check if he left yet and how far he’s from home on our tracking app. The app will always be part of our lives but now it’s part of our family, it’s used by my daughter too so we can ALL track each other, not link to the affair as much.

I don’t check phones, emails, Google history, messages etc, however on some occasions when WH’s phone buzzes I may ask "who’s that" and he usually hands me over the phone to see (sometimes I take it sometimes I don’t). Not in a passive aggressive way but in a "I don’t know, you have a look" way. I do the same with mine. Our marriage is based on transparency (to be fair it always was, we never had hidden passwords and accounts, I just didn’t check what he was up to), there shouldn’t be any messages that we feel the need to hide. If I do feel at any point that something isn’t right I’ll of course thoroughly check as I did last time when I went into investigation mode.

In my case I’m fully aware that he can cheat with all of this is place (trackers and transparency) as my WH went underground post dday 1 and we DID have trackers and obsessive checks in place, that didn’t stop him going for walks with AP (left his phone behind in the office), nor did it stop them emailing and deleting emails. I found nothing till 4 months later when he actually confessed to it.

So now I refuse to be the marriage police, it isn’t my role to prevent him from cheating it is his responsibility to remain faithful knowing that there will not be a repeat of last time.

Tracking and checking does absolutely nothing and I’m not telling you this to throw you into spiralling but in the hope that if you accept that, you start looking at other ways to feel safe.

First your WH should literally move mountains to show you that he is deserving of some trust back. As an example, it’s been 6 years and my WH still has not missed a call from me. Not because I demanded it but because it was his resolution once dday 2 happened and he decided what kind of man he wanted to be.

But… regardless of WH and his work, I understood that my safety and trust is now within me. I trust myself. I am the only person I should trust 100%.

I’m not going to claim that should my WH cheat again, I’d be all relaxed and it would have no impact. However I’d be so much more prepared and I would definitely walk. We are now in our marriage because we want to be here, not because we need to be here. Once I realised my value, once I became aware of my powers and reminded myself what I’m capable of, divorce doesn’t scare me as it used to.

I don’t know about you, but in my case I felt really devalued as well every time I checked. I’m not a jealous person and checking his texts/phone/emails made me feel degraded, like the only reason why a man would remain faithful to me was because I prevented him from having the opportunity to cheat nor because I deserved a faithful, loyal man. I felt horribly insecure each time, I refuse to go back there.

While I hate to feel this intense need to look through and check- it does not make me feel bad.

We had a DDay2 as well which is why I’m hyper vigilant in surveillance methods he’s unaware of.

It doesn’t feel great.
Yes I know I will not stop anything as I’m not doing it to stop anything I’m doing it to feel like nothing is being hidden from me. I do it so I feel like I know what’s going on in my life.

I know I will leave if he cheats again. He knows it.

I told him he’s gonna have to be a big boy and just tell me if he wants someone else no cowardly hiding.

So now I refuse to be the marriage police, it isn’t my role to prevent him from cheating it is his responsibility to remain faithful knowing that there will not be a repeat of last time.

Tracking and checking does absolutely nothing and I’m not telling you this to throw you into spiralling but in the hope that if you accept that, you start looking at other ways to feel safe.

Luna speaks volumes in these two sentences.
Until I understood this concept, I was the only one doing anything to 'repair' my marriage(s).. and everything I did was counter-productive.
I really found that incessantly checking to see if they're hiding something gets you no peace, because if (at best) you find nothing, you simply end up feeling that your WS must just be concealing something very well. It makes you feel frantic and out of control. On top of that, how low of a standard is for a WS when all they have to do is to not appear to be doing something wrong.

Instead, I'm looking for the presence of conscious effort and real self awareness this time around. Investment.

Right now, I feel somewhat safe, because she's specifically doing things to BECOME a safe partner.
I know all of the things that I have always done to be a safe partner - and this time around, THAT is my standard for her. If I stop seeing investment on her part, then I'll worry.

I do see the effort a lot in fact—- I just don’t think I’ll ever buy it.