SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I'm honestly so broken found out beginning of may about husbands affair and he repeatedly told me they did not have sex and was more of an emotional affair. I stupidly believed it and it's been tough but we seemed to be finally getting somewhere until I saw the AP in town this morning wearing his hat, I have never confronted her in person even though I've seen her multiple times and I flipped and said why the hell are you wearing his clothes! Anyway after a conversation with her she said he's messaged her recently and showed me the messages, they were just general messages that she showed me but said he's been in contact with her multiple times and asked her not to tell me anything and it turns out he had been to her house on multiple occasions and slept with her, I honestly feel like such a fool and now I'm back to square one and destroyed all over again. I don't know how the hell to deal with all this especially when I felt like we were getting close again. How can people do this to people it's honestly evil.

Is about protecting his ego, the ego who allowed him to become a cheater, at the price of your blood.

Trickle truths are not a remorse driven confession so you can see in full what the person at your side is capable of, and kept hidden for, you.

They are protecting the betrayal, their AP, their ego.

While you die inside.

This is a teller for you, eye opener hopefully:

He didn’t change, he is not reformed, he is ashamed, not remurseful.

You aren’t being love once again. You are being managed.

His ego and the external validation of his image, are worth more to him than you. And consider that the worth of that stuff is next to zero.

He can put you below that. Convinced you will never find out, and he can play you anytime.

I don’t like to say it like this, but you probably feel it, since unlike your wayward I do respect your intelligence and sensitivity as a human being.

Now the thing is on you.

I hope you put yourself first and accept who this person truly his, who he chose to still be, rather than hoping you can love him out of being a cheater.

Nobody can.

But you sure can reclaim yourself fully and like you deserve, sister.

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 12:43 PM, Tuesday, October 6th]

This is a 2nd d day for you, what information like this does is it sets you back to day 1 again. It rewrites everything you thought you knew about his affair, and now you have to go back to scratch and integrate this new info into a story you thought you completely understood. Or at least you were trying to understand.

I don't think the affair itself does as much damage to a relationship as it is the actions and words of the cheater after it's found out. Some will come clean right off the bat, but unfortunately those are the exception and not the norm. When we warn people that they likely don't have the whole story, it's not to hurt them or make things harder for them, it's to try and prepare them for future revelations like this. Or maybe press harder for the truth. Unfortunately there isn't anything anyone can say to prepare a person for discoveries like this, and no amount of pressing for the truth will extract it from a cheater determined to hide it.

Have you confronted your husband about this? If so, what did he say?

Thank you for your replies, yes you are both right and I honestly feel so stupid and I remember posting on this forum originally when I found out and getting annoyed as people kept saying he probably hasn't told me the whole truth and suprise suprise everyone was right and I feel like such a fool for even believing it. Yes I confronted him and he said he knew he admitted he slept with her at the time that we would be over for food and he didn't want that, it's all bullshit he was protecting himself and knew how bad he would look. It's more upsetting because I told him time and time again to be completely honest because I don't want to go through months and months of trying to repair this to then find out something else as it would destroy me all over again and he still chose to lie. I honestly don't know who he is anymore and I don't know how I'm going to move on especially as we have 2 young children. I'm completely broken.

Selenite, I’m so incredibly sorry, you did not deserve to find out that way.

Trickle truth is the work of a coward, I know it all too well. What is particularly painful for you is HE didn’t even have the decency to tell you himself, he let some fruit loop wearing his clothing, tell HIS wife of her reality.

There’s also another possibility, she could be lying. It’s no surprise that AP’s enjoy telling wonderful stories about their relationships with other people’s partners and they seem to enjoy going in for the kill, I’m confused as to why she showed you general messages when there should have been more appropriate ones to show you had they been sexual, she may be wanting to end your marriage.

I don’t know if you want to salvage your M but if so I’d recommend a polygraph, it will put a stop to trickle truth, a statement can be written by him with details and he can be asked if everything on his statement is true, if he’s hiding anything and if there’s anything else he has done within your marriage.

I’m nearly 2 years in to recovery and trickle truth can still be something very difficult to navigate, IMO it needs to be stopped immediately as it causes great damage.

Please take care of yourself, put yourself first, you have to right now.

Selenite, I got some trickle truth. I found out some info just a couple of days ago that changed my understanding about the early stages of our recovery. My wife was still in contact with her AP for longer than I'd realized. Not a lot longer, but longer than I had been led to believe.

What that does is raise so many more questions. "Well, I believed this one thing and I was wrong. What else is there that I don't know, or had been lied to about, waiting to come up and bite me again?

You're not foolish. You're not stupid. You were operating from, and doing the best you could with the information you had to work with at the time. That's not your fault. I know you didn't just accept what he told you right off the bat. You pressed him. You told him how important the truth was. He continued to lie. You're not a mind reader and you wanted to believe him. I know that position. I live it, too. Don't beat yourself up over this.

The question now is, what are you going to do with this information, and is this going to be a dealbreaker? People often think there are lines that once crossed there's no coming back, but actually experiencing it is a whole different thing. I was there. I was one of those "if she ever cheats, I'm out!" type of people. Well, she cheated, and I'm still here. I get it. You'll get no judgement from me or anyone else here.

Selenite,

Breaking no contact is pretty common but it’s very serious. It’s not just the TT and resetting your healing and all the rest, it’s that it could mean the A is not really over. How is he proving to you that the A is over? You can’t rely on AP’s word, obviously, because she may well want the A to continue.

You can’t control him, you can only control what you do. I think you should at a minimum, consult with an attorney, just to inform yourself as to what a D would look like. Not to make a decision, but to understand what it would be like if you go that route, and to understand what information etc. you would need to prepare a filing. Don’t be afraid to let your WH know you are doing that. Sounds like he needs a reality check.

I went back to my first post on your situation. At that time I had trepidation about posting, because there is a fine balance between giving hope and painting a black situation. I felt I might be pushing you away by voicing my concerns about his story.

I take no pleasure in having probably been correct that he was keeping something back…

I want to make a very tough suggestion…
Why doesn’t he move in with OW if she’s the bomb? If she’s so desirable, so wear-my-hat worthy, so willing to risk hurting you again level?

I don’t know where you are located, but I encourage you in the strongest possible way to spend maybe a couple of hours researching what divorce would really look like. What obligations would he have to meet, what expectations to have, what the process is like and so on.
Not suggesting you do this in order to file or that divorce is inevitable. If you can, then view this a bit like the safety-check pilots do before take-off. They aren’t done with the intention or even expectation of crashing, but simply a precaution to feel more secure in reaching their destination.
Once you realize that a POSSIBLE divorce is a brighter future than ongoing infidelity and abuse (because when he insists he had the affair because if your shortcomings it’s abuse…) you are in a position of power to expect change. That’s where you can go and tell him:

"Why don’t you just go and spend your nights with OW? We can figure out some temporary arrangements for the kids and visitation, and finalize it with a divorce that will handle our assets, debts, custody, support and all that.
It’s not what I want, but even less do I want to be constantly worried about you being with OW. It’s better for me to simply assume you are constantly thinking of her and wanting to be with her rather than worry about it.
If you want this marriage then it’s up to you to convince me that you do. Words only go so far. I will need to see actions and accountability. It’s totally up to you to decide what YOU want, but what is 100% clear is I refuse to share you and I refuse to remain in infidelity. Until you tell me in a very clear and vocal way that you want this marriage, and follow it through with consistent action I’m simply assuming you have chosen her. I refuse to sink to the level of competing with her.
Now – was that decisive and confident enough for you?

And then simply wait and see what his response might be. Only don’t wait too long. Demand and expect change, be that by starting the process of divorce, or starting a more realistic path to reconciliation.

The more I think about it, while the fact that he lied about sex is bad, really bad, I think him staying in contact with her is just as bad, if not worse.

I can intellectually understand why he lied about the sex. That's not to excuse it, but I understand it. Understanding g it not the same thing as excusing it. There's no reason whatsoever to maintain contact, tho. Not if he's truly remorseful and serious about wanting to fix this.

I think Bigger's suggestion is a good one and I like what he typed up for you. It's a good way to stop just reacting and take some of your agency back. To let him know you're not playing games. You're not putting up with his deception and this is very real. He needs slapped with some reality.

Selenite,

Not only is it TT but you had to hear it from the AP. That’s worse IMO. She may be lying or exaggerating, but she obviously has been in contact with him and brazenly is wearing his hat around town. So I tend to believe that there was MORE than he said for sure.

Time for you to stop driving R. He needs to dig deep and decide what he wants. And PROVE it to you via actions. Focus on the 180 and you and your kids. Focus on healing you. Are you in IC? Even online IC can help you stabilize. And this is another DDAY and puts you back to zero, so expect to feel the same, or worse.

I also 2nd what Bigger suggested. See a couple lawyers and get a clear picture of D, Knowledge is power and will reduce your fear of the unknown. So many of our decisions as BS are on fear of the unknown, so try to alleviate those as much as possible.

Hang in there friend, and do not beat yourself up. Most of us thought we had married the unicorn that was 100% truthful… and most of later realized we were married to run of the mill, everyday unoriginal cheaters. And they really do seem to all operate from the mythical "cheaters’ handbook".

Go back to basics— healthy eating, lots of water, exercise, sleep. The 180 can help give your brain a much needed break. Take care of yourself just like on the 1st DDAY.

Sending strength…

I’m going to reiterate what everyone else is telling you. They are all correct.
The harder you charge at him, the faster you’ll see what his real intentions are. Being in any form of limbo where you don’t even know which way is up is a mental and physical killer.

Thank you to everyone for taking the time to reply, I honestly just feel awful there is no pain like it. Yes I understand he lied about the sex as he knew I would be more likely to end things and he knew how bad it was but I'm just so angry about being back at this point again and this time I feel even worse. He wasn't originally in contact with her after it happened but she told me he owed her some money so she had contacted him to get the money back and he knew I had seen her around town and he was messaging her begging her not to tell me they had sex. He said he was just messaging her to keep on her good side so she wouldn't tell me, either way it's more lies and how he thought he could keep that up is beyond me. I did start working out my finances yesterday and thinking of ways I could pay for the house on my own as I wouldn't want my children to have to move out of their family home because of him. I really didn't want our marriage to be over but knowing he's had sex with her is something I don't think I can ever forgive.

Selenite, sister.

Forgiveness is letting go of feeling bothered by something pernicious that was done to you at some point in time.

There are ways to let go of it, all implying detachment from the negative emotions that have risen from the event.

Some ways are the simply getting over it, reassessing that the offense wasn’t after all driven by malicious intent, some are stop caring, and some others are forgiveness driven by the forgotten or irrelevancy.

If your child steals chocolate cookies 🍪 from your drawer when they aren’t allowed, you might get mad, but is easy to forgive when you see they feel guilty about making mom mad, and that they weren’t doing it maliciously to hurt you, they were just following unfulfilled cravings as an immature little person who is clueless and careless. And after all nothing that bad got hurt, they risk a tummy pain or a cavity, easy fix, brush your teeth and tell me next time you need sweets, we will work it out.

When the child is a teen and steals cookies, you most likely stopped caring, because they are developed enough to be able to make the call without harming themselves. You likely stopped caring and forgive it right out. Tops might annoy you if they ate it all and you are left with an empty box when you craved one.
You might have step up the thing on liquor by that age instead of cookies, cookies who cares? Inhebriating substances is a different story and risk for damage.

When the child is a grown up and leaves alone you aren’t really bothered by these little things anymore. Cookies are now forgotten and irrelevant. You may show affection and suggest to the now adult offspring to control their cookie cravings, but unless pathological is in the forgotten slot of your attachment.

And that’s the elegant simplicity of forgiveness. If it doesn’t hurt is forgiven, you have no attachment to the negative experience because it doesn’t hurt you anymore.

Is still not a positive thing by itself in isolation, but it is balanced out by a lot of other good feelings and a protection of both sides emotional connection and boundaries.

Now infidelity isn’t a cookie, it has a different recipe. The ingredients are not limited to selfishness and careless stupidity, people can have that kind of emotional sexual experiences in their youth with worthless people that they get filed later in the "we forget that mistake ever happened / we don’t talk about that" because it’s shameful, idiotic, something you regret doing but it only harmed yourself.

Is still shitty, but is a learning and growing experience teaching you that yes, I can be an idiot, I definitively cannot believe I allowed myself to steep that low, and although I cannot turn back time and prevent my past self to jump face first into a cow turd "for fun" I can grow up and fix my dysfunctional low self worth or whatever issue allowed me to indulge in that stuff with that person. So that it never happens again.

That’s only half of the recipe in infidelity, the gross and sordid, but that’s not the truly harmful one.
The other ingredient is the sexual and emotional abuse of your closest person.
What you suffered is and leave the kind of wounds that any other violation of you sexual, attachment and emotional boundaries does.

And the other necessary ingredient is malice. No matter how much the traitor might compartmentalize or rewrite the narrative to themselves, there is lies, deception, manipulation, intentionality, and effort to savor the thrill that the infidelity brings to their dopamine high.

Your body soul and emotions are the foundational fuel for the taste of the shit cookie being backed for your wayward and their affair partner.

That’s why you feel like you can’t ever forgive it.
Because you likely can’t detach from your wounded attachment, sexuality and emotions and their intentional abuser.

What they did took effort and intention, and they knew it all along, still choosing to do it.
No different from other sexual abuses, it changes the MO of implementation in a more deceitful and sneaky way rather than directly forcing the abuse on the victim, it does no change the damage to your system, that’s why the scars from this family of abuses share many similarities whether the violence was straight on physical or emotional, or more often a mix of both.

You can’t forgive and you can’t reconcile with a cheater.

You can let them go, remove them from your life forever, death by being forgotten, until they fade into irrelevance and it doesn’t hurt you anymore.

You can reconcile with the person who kills the cheater, and becomes someone completely different, someone who would cut their arm off before even imagining allowing themselves to do this kind of shit to another human person just for a dopamine thrill.

Someone who is deeply and intimately repulsed by the mere idea. A person wh embraces their best self, not their worst as the cheater does.

That person shares about nothing with the cheater but the horrors memory of what they did that time in the past, and they would probably bring that remorse into their grave.

You can meet again with such a person. You can find them where you both are at. Because if that person has truly healed is now a safe partner, maybe someone who knows the depths of hell because they journeyed through it, and might be even safer than a clueless one, for they know how you can allow yourself to slip into it. And they are repulsed by it.

If you healed yourself as well, then you might try to forgive this person, not as much for what they did, but as recognition that they aren’t the person who did you evil no more.

And that’s probably immensely hard and I have no idea how and if it is even possible to get there without compromising and reservations. I doubt the relationship between you and the reconciled cheater may ever return to full on trust and connection, that’s completely dependent on the bs healing. Can you truly fully heal from infidelity without removing the abuser from your life? I have no clue, I see that you can reconcile but there will always be "buts".

But it’s possible for sure to meet the new person where they are at, and have some fulfilling relationship with them.

I know we want to let go of the darkness that we never requested to begin with.
If that’s possible or not is unclear to me as of now.

But evidently it’s obvious you can shed enough light that the darkness and its awful stench is pushed in a tiny corner that is not as painful for you, at least as you live in the present.

Let the past go to hell. Heal yourself.

Don’t worry about the wayward, let go of expectations. If he truly wants to heal then he’ll be able to make you feel that. Not your desire of him to become good, but his energy of real change, they are different vibes you can feel.

If you feel that then maybe. Isn’t bad to reconcile with a now safe,partner.

But right now the guy ain’t one nor is seeming driven to become one.

So put yourself first sister.
You are worthy of love and self love.

He is worthless right now until he decide to become worthy. And that’s his call only.
But is no longer your problem.

One last thought that I think fits better separately:

A big question I thought about is whether as betrayed partner your wounds are leading or not towards reconciliation with the feeling of

The devil that you know is better than the unknown one

Because I know that betrayal wounds damage your trust towards others as well.
I feel a bs is often so deeply wounded and burned but the betrayal that they lose trust in humanity and might feel the push towards reconciling with their abuser because

"if they could do this to me, then the next partner also will probably be able to do it, and I don’t want to allow myself to love and be vulnerable to then go through this trauma again".

That is possibly a feeling many feel.

But it is not true.
Most people are not cheaters.

Many people are messed up from little or bigger traumas and unresolved issues, but most h rough life either addressing these flaws or finding coping mechanisms that are not destructive and abusive.

among the messed up people only a portion develops the abusive coping mechanism of manipulation, sexual emotional or physical violence, borderline personality disorders or full on narcissistic traits.

It is unclear if it is one in 3, one in 4, I don’t think we have any grounded number, but it also doesn’t matters.

The red flags 🚩 are obvious. Once you have experienced them you spot them very well, and this time you won’t allow yourself to ignore them.

So your odds of starting a new life are pretty good, to find a new and fulfilling partner who you can love and can love you back.

we need to restore your faith in humanity first, because it is liberating.
And if the wayward can change to restore our faith in them, then is not a matter of "the devil you know" anymore.

But you shouldn’t hang hoping on it.
The odds someone is changing from cheater to good partner are reversed, unless they have a genuine drive and seek help (then they are pretty good because this person is now owning it, not fawning it).

The devil you know is in fact a devil. And is not a reflection of the rest of the world, only if they’re inner misery.

Take this consideration for what is worth.