SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

[This message edited by Bastet at 1:07 AM, Monday, April 8th]

The bolded parts are about the only part of your wife's admissions I would believe as possibly true.

1. Very few women make it to adulthood without some guy flirting with them.

2. Sex is sex, but waywards always minimize. If she is admitting to oral right off the bat, likely went further.

3.

She never told me because she knew it would devastate me and she didn't want me to leave her

4. She would have said it wouldn't happen before it did. Yet it did. An self-aware wayward knows they can't promise any more than any other addict can swear they will never use.

5. Regret is a nebulous thing. Most waywards regret, but mostly because of the effects not the act.

6. cheating isn't love. Guilt and anxiety of what they can lose will cause the same doubling down.

7. except never having cheated.

8. Not likely to have been just a week. Did she quit at the end of the week?

When did becoming part of the inner circle happen with the coworker in relationship to their fling?

How did AP's wife find out and how long has she known?

Does what the other wife and AP's story line up with what your wife has said?

Does the other wife believe it?

[This message edited by grubs at 7:28 PM, Friday, April 5th]

With the exception of #1, she's telling you everything all freshly caught ws say.

Welcom to SI sorry you had to find us. I would like to point you to the healing library on the main page. Also read the topics pinned at the top of this forum.

What you are feeling is the trauma that comes with infidelity, you are likely in shock at this time and its hard to wrap your head around all of it. None of this is your fault or a failure on your part, it's 100% on her. Your W has prepared for this moment and has a head start on you. Everything she is a typical response, full of minimizing, blame shifting and rug sweeping. You need to get a timeline from her, she needs to give you the Who What when where and how.

I would also suggest IC (Individual Counseling) for each of you. If you can get an infidelity betrayal trauma specialist, that would be very helpful. A betrayal trauma specialist would do, too.

She should also get How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair by Linda MacDonald. It's just over 100 pages and is a good starting point. Not Just Friends by Dr. Shirley Glass is more in-depth, but also a great resource.

She liked the attention and the flirting because she had never gotten that from a male before

That's a good start, but it's barely scratching the surface. Why did she let things go so far as to end up in a PA (physical affair)? She should have shut that down and not gone further. She needs to work on her whys and to become a safe partner.

Please practice self-care at this time. Infidelity is the worst pain imaginable. If you have problems with sleeping, anxiety or depression, please see your doctor for meds. They can be helpful in the short-term, meaning you won't necessarily be on them for the rest of your life.

Recognize that it takes 2-5 years to heal from infidelity, so this is more like a marathon than a sprint. Your emotions will be all over the place. We call it the emotional roller coaster. A lot of what you're feeling is normal, given the abnormal situation.

Sorry you had to find us.

Sorry you find yourself here with us.

You will receive a lot of good advice, some will apply to your situation, some will not. Take what you need, leave what you don't.

One thing that applies in all of our situations is that her cheating has nothing to do with you, or the marriage, it is all her. That is hard to wrap your brain around.

Another that applies: Regret does not equal remorse. Remorseful people don't rely on someone else to out their affair and change their behavior. My FWS regretted her affair, but it took her over 9 years to reach remorse and even longer to build lasting behavior changes.

Yes, unfortunately, there seems to be a cheaters handbook. We all got to experience it; cheat, deny, lie, minimize, blame transfer, rewrite marital history, gaslight, and so on. Be cautious about what you believe right now.

2. It was oral sex only

Circling back to this. Oral sex is sex. Oral can be more intimate than PIV sex. Its all about one partner pleasing another without direct return. With a gay couple PIV doesn't happen so I don't understand the differentiation. Seems like pure minimization.

Wow, reading the original post was like reading the jacket on a waywards greatest bullshit list album. She pretty much hit every one.

OP,you are new to this and no one prepared you forcthis. It's even harder as you seem lijexa genuinely decent human being, which puts you atca disadvantage. Since you are good, you project those very characteristics onto those around you, assuming they are decent human beings as well, because, hey, why wouldnt they be?. Your WW may very well be a decent human being who made a single, very bad choice. We don't see many of those around here. What we generally see are waywards who minimize, blameshift, deny, rewrite, stonewall, etc. You may even be inclined to think that your situation is special, that your WW is somehow different from the 85,000+ waywards that we have heard about. I get it. All any of us wanted was for the pain to stop and normal to return.

This is an amazing and totally shitty place to very. It is filled with kind people who genuinely want to help. We are all at different stages in our journeys and bring different strengths and weaknesses to the game. Be open minded. Listen and digest the advice. If something rubs you the wrong way, lean into that and ask why. And most of all, give yourself grace. This is a lo g journey, and how you feel today is not how you will feel 6 mo ths, a year, five years from now.

8. They never texted/talked outside of work. And it all happened within a week, AT WORK.

Sure. This guy must be superman because that's literally zero to 100, especially if they did it at work, so something is chiming false here.

It's not clear to whom the oral sex was given, if to him, then it's an incredibly dominant display to get a same sex partner to perform that act, AT work after just a week of flirting.

For her, surely an incredibly intimate thing to allow a man to do..again, AT work.

What's more likely? For two people to perform this act on each other, again at work, they would most likely have to be extremely comfortable with each other but also taking the risk together, at work.

More likely the flirting was much longer over a period of time and there were much more hook ups for them to be comfortable enough to do it at work.

Most likely she said oral only because if she had said full sex would have most likely had you questioning if she was missing that enough to risk her marriage.

[This message edited by Tren0R201 at 10:35 PM, Sunday, April 7th]