SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Definitely an EA. Which is still a devastating event. My wife's A was an EA (that I confirmed she tried to take physical but was rebuffed by AP). You may be able to do text message recovery software, though these days it's not super reliable with text deletion being more comprehensive in newer versions of android. She should be begging you to hook her phone up to this type of software to prove it's true. Just google "SMS recovery software android" and you might get lucky to have one of them work.

Full written timeline.

Polygraph.

Since your wife confides in others/her women's group, I would also strongly recommend a VAR in her car. I was able to get a recording of sufficient veracity that I didn't feel the need for the polygraph anymore.

It all sounds very suspicious, particularly as the stories keep changing, so your disbelief is natural, and some would argue warranted. It is quite possible to recover the deleted texts on her phone. There is software that can be downloaded to do the job, or you can take the phone to a computer repair person or private investigator and ask them to search the phone and recover any deleted data.

A detailed timeline and a polygraph may provide further insight. With polygraphs, there is a phenomenon called a "parking lot confession", where the person taking the test suddenly opens up and reveals a lot more in the parking lot outside the place where they will be taking the test. This helps to dispel lies, half-truths, and what is called 'trickle truth', but you need to consider how you will handle potential new information that may surface.

Is your wife aware of how you feel? If not, it may be time to change your stance, and let her know you do not believe her, and that you require more honesty from her. There is no point to pretend you are fine when you are not. At some point, the dam will burst. Why put yourself through that? If her actions have made living in that town intolerable for you, ask her what she is going to do to fix it, given that she caused this situation. Stop carrying her burden for her. It is her job to save the marriage, not yours.

[This message edited by M1965 at 8:58 PM, Friday, March 29th]

What you write is what you have imagined in your mind, ask your wife real questions and demand the answers.

It is easy to say om guilty, people who are not looking for a relationship do not have a relationship

Does every woman/man in that town/building have to warm the beds of the managers?

Your wife wasn't raped, she wanted to be with him, she was a willing participant!!

You offered your wife to quit her job, but she chose to stay until the affair became unbearable.

Don't manipulate yourselves, if you want r you both need to be honest/brave, (enough to listen/tell the truth)

I also recommend you to ask your wife if she has had relationships with other people, you can also offer a lie detector test.

The next day she said she had to be 100% honest with me and that after the office incident, she took a drive alone with him in his police truck into the mountains because a coworker suggested he take her up there

Notice the deflection onto someone else.

she only went because she didn’t want the others in the office to think anything if she refused to be alone with the chief of police, but she also shared that she didn’t want to be seen on the cameras getting into the chief of police truck so they suggested she drive down the road so she could get in his truck outside of camera shot.

That camera work is a clear sign of trade craft. If you're not doing anything wrong, why go to such levels to avoid detection? This is the action of a guilty conscience. It's also chilling how much your wife knows about how to sneak around.

Later I found she had sent him multiple text messages immediately following the truck drive up into the mountains, but she deleted them all.

Do NOT believe her that those messages were about opening a bar. For claiming that she's 100% honest, every sentence you typed had lies. I do hope that you get real facts about her actions. I wonder if it's too late for a deep dive into her phone? I'm sorry for your situation, TIF.

Your wife almost surely had some kind of sex with that guy. Christian or atheist, lovesick kids hug and kiss, amorous adults have sex.

Maybe and maybe not. We are not crystal ball readers. Especially as (if) this was their first drive together actual intercourse may or may not have happened. Most of us find its not the sex - it's the lie - that kills a relationship. I will agree her story sounds super-fishy. As someone else pointed out - people told her to go for this drive but then she purposefully went out of video-view to go on the drive?!?!? My response would be "you must really think I'm dumb" or better yet, "I don't know why you are inclined to insult my intelligence right now with such an outlandish story." But again, I think you know all of this already.

Ultimately I'm sorry you are here. It should not be the province of this board to tell you things as fact. Amorous adults usually have sex eventually. Whether yours did or not is unknown and it's not really the issue.

The issue is how you are going to proceed. I will echo the chorus in that rug sweeping, as delightfully easy as it may seem in the present, is anything but in the future. Ask me how I know. You need to put yourself first - put yourself in the best position you can to do whatever you eventually decide. If your mantra needs to be hope for the best but prepare for the worst then adopt it - what would you need to do in order to prepare for the worst (which is likely divorce in this situation)? Think about that and DO it - not because you are going to divorce, but because you don't know what you will do right now and taking some control over your life helps just about everyone in this situation, at least a little. You will be okay - as crazy as it seems.

she may be trying to protect me and the family

No, unfortunately, she's trying to actually hide the entire story from you. I could be wrong, but as the other posters have stated, this whole story doesn't really pass the sniff test.

As another poster also mentioned, your problem is not him, your problem is her. This close to everything you may not feel that way, but she's the one who got into his car, she's the one that waited until they were not able to be visualized on video, she knew exactly what she was doing, and she knew exactly what this was likely going to mean.

My wife was no different, she hung back and waited until everybody else left the shop, she waited until the man who would be her AP locked up, they waited until the parking lot was empty except for their cars. She knew exactly what she was doing, what was going to happen.

I won't tell you to forget about him, that will never happen. But, remember, she did this to your marriage, he is just the tool that she selected, if it wasn't him it would have been someone else. He's not special, just someone who was around and willing.

Most of what a WS says after discovery is a flood of lies, rationalization, blame transferring, gaslighting, and rewriting the marriage.