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Comments
I had more information than you to go on because I didn't see it until they exchanged a few emails. There was absolutely nothing there that would indicate she had any intention of starting things up again. She convinced herself it was innocent.
This was also, like you, after our marriage had a complete overhaul and everything was rocking.
It ate me up for two years. Try not to let it do that to you. And really, she probably doesn't have more of an answer.
Like you, I don't think my wife has more of an answer for why she accepted the friend request. For the most part, I don't get the feeling that it was a conscious decision to get me to mate guard. But again, my wife is quite smart. In her heart of hearts, she had to know I was going to react in some way to the friend request. So, on some level, something had to be percolating on a conscious level as well.
One Hour Call 12-Week Guided MAP
"The turnaround is tremendous. And I'm lifting weights, eating better, and tackling projects. I have all this great energy without a vampire sucking my life force.
He's a lot stronger standing on his own two feet, as well." - Scarlet
Many of us come to MMSL after the affair, having completely fucked up the ending. I haven't seen anyone else that faced that reality AFTER they MAPped.
Put back on course via a 'One Hour Call' with Athol. Seriously worth 10 times the cost, but don't tell him that....
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Victor Frankl
As a former wayward spouse (it's weird to type those words now - it seems like another lifetime), I can understand what goes through thewayward's mind.
I can tell you that, even though I have no desire for my ex affair partner, I admit that I search occasionally. Why? Well it's not to fantasize about her or rekindle anything. I suppose I am hoping to find evidence that she's moved away, remarried, or something like that. I could care less about her happiness, so it's not like I'm looking for evidence that she has a good life or anything. I think it would be nice if I didn't always have to worry about bumping into her in town. Perhaps your wife was looking to find some closure on his end, even if she already had closure herself in her own mind. Just a thought. It still doesn't justify what she did - just maybe explains it a little.
It was also done in the best way possible. The_Dude couldn't have set that Phase Four up any better.
What remains now is the clean up. Resentment will rear its ugly head if it hasn't already.
Put back on course via a 'One Hour Call' with Athol. Seriously worth 10 times the cost, but don't tell him that....
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Victor Frankl
A quick question....the friend that knew about the affair (the one your wife wrote to in Facebook), is that person still a part of your lives? Did she try to prevent your wife from having the affair?
I learned from the facebook communications with my wife that this woman also had an affair in the past. In addition, my wife was recently told by another co-worker that this woman has again had an affair. She has also reportedly told her husband that she wants an open marriage.
As you recall, Rob had contacted my wife in 2013 and we arrived at the no contact order between my wife and Rob. This woman told my wife, at that time, that it was unfair that I was telling my wife who she could and could not have as friends. This woman is clearly no friend to my marriage.
I have since told my wife what I believe to be the truth: This woman has a horrible marriage and in 2013, when my marriage was significantly improving, this woman was seeking to damage my marriage to have a 'partner in crime.' I have made it very clear that there is zero chance we will be socializing with this woman, either individually or as married couples. My wife, not surprisingly, completely agrees with me.
This has been my experience too. As time passes the pain/ anger becomes less intense. Hang in there because it really does get better. Thanks for sharing @fredless ;
I debated whether to start a new thread or update this one. I originally created this thread in 08/15, so it’s been about three months. It’s been about a year since I completely discovered the depth of my wife’s affair and about seven months since The Facebook Incident.
I think this update may be interesting to others. But honestly, I really have no one to discuss all of this with and it feels good to let it out to people who have a similar relationship philosophy/understanding.
Here’s the thing: when I’m with my wife, I’m generally happy. We truly enjoy each other and we connect on various levels. She’s smart, she has a similar sense of humor, we enjoy similar interests, and sex is good. However, when I’m alone, or when I wake up in the middle of the night, my mind starts working overtime. One of my quirks is that I work hard to know why…to figure things out. I think about things. This serves me well in certain aspects of my life, but not so much in thinking about my wife’s affair. And when your wife had had an affair with another man that has lasted years, there’s a lot to think about. And those thoughts many times led me to really dark places.
It was really clear that my wife really had no insight into the damage she had done. Here’s an example—we were driving to meet some friends and I’m not sure what we were discussing. Somehow, it led to her telling me that Rob (her affair partner) was getting married. Before I could think I asked her how could she know that. She told me that her ex-friend/co-worker told her she saw Rob at a local dept. store filling out a wedding registry. I became angry that my wife would even bring him up. And, of course, I made a point of doing a complete search through my wife’s phone, our phone records, and her email to see if there had been any contact (although logically I knew there wasn’t).
I had not yet read Athol’s blog post about trust, but it is eerily accurate.
http://atholkay.com/active-trust-vs-pasive-trust-and-post-affair-marriage-recovery/
Without initially realizing it, I was withdrawing. Even though we continued to go out on date nights, have regular sex, I sext and do drivebys…I caught myself withdrawing and to a degree, becoming consumed by these dark thoughts. On a Saturday night out, we were discussing my son’s love life and I commented with a smirk how lucky he is to have someone like me mentoring him. I then said more seriously that I wish I had had someone to teach me about relationships when I was his age. And then it came out: “I sure as hell wouldn’t have ever let you bring Rob into the house.” She said something about not going there and I cut her off and said, “You don’t know how dark my thoughts become.” She said that wasn’t true and I replied, “You don’t know because you don’t want to know.” She then said I shouldn’t say that and I replied, “I say it because it’s true.” And then I told her we need to change the subject.
The following Sunday afternoon, I realized what I was withdrawing. I turned to my wife, told her to get dressed, and said we were just going out to have a cup of coffee and spend some time together. We had a great time. We’ve done this the last few Sundays now. The problem was still the time I was alone. When I came across Athol’s blog post referenced above and I read it, I decided to send it to my wife.
Along with the post I sent this message: I know you think I read too much, but it helps me. I also know you like to avoid the past. All that being said, I came across this blog entry. It hit home and I think it’s worth reading.
She responded with: I read it late Friday afternoon. It puts things in a different perspective for me. I am not avoiding the past, I would talk about things any time you wanted to. It just seems an awkward thing to bring up if we are moving forward. And I hope that we are moving forward. I hope that you are not forcing yourself to stay. I will continue to do everything that you have asked me to do. It is not a problem as you are the most important person to me and I want to see you happy. I love you so much. This is much harder to respond to than I expected. The piece hit very close to home, but I hope that I handle things better in the future as a result.
I felt encouraged when I read this.
Since my wife said that she would talk about things any time I wanted, I sat her down on the Sunday after she wrote this. I told her that I needed to ask her a couple of questions. My wife is fully aware of how I think about things and try to understand why something is why something happened. I have many questions but as I told my wife, there are three reasons I’m not going to ask all of them.
1. I don’t trust her to be honest with me. She knows I caught her trying to minimize truths or lying (not to mention cheating on me).
2. I told her as she looks back, she is going to rationalize behavior/rewrite history to protect herself. So while she may not be lying to a question, she also will not be telling me the truth.
3. I told her it was probably for the best that I didn’t know some of the details of the affair.
I told her that I had a question and that I believe I knew the answer but I wanted a truthful answer from her. How come you didn’t divorce me and marry Rob?
She told me there were two reasons—she didn’t want to disappoint people and she didn’t want to hurt our children. When pressed, it was clear that she didn’t want to disappoint her parents with her behavior and interestingly, she didn’t want to disappoint my brother. I was surprised because I pointed out that she would have never seen him again. All the same, she asserted that he figured into the equation.
I also bluntly said to her that while disappointing her parents/family was clearly a primary issue, potentially hurting our children was a distant second in her overall concerns. I said that if she were seriously concerned about not hurting our children, there was no way she would have encouraged Rob’s friendship with them or otherwise involved him in their lives. She would have kept her affair outside of our family.
My wife also told me that she was unsure if she would be able to be able to make it financially. She was making quite a bit less than she earns now and Rob’s salary was less than half of her salary. When Rob finally accepted that my wife wouldn’t end her marriage, that’s when he started to distance himself and date.
My second question requires a bit of background. My second son was born in 1999. However, we had an unplanned third pregnancy happen in the beginning of 2002. My wife and I were not always careful with contraception and it was easily possible that we had an ‘oops.’ Sadly, she miscarried near the end of her first trimester. As I looked back, Rob had been coming to our house about once per week beginning around the Summer of 2001. The question is obvious.
I took some time providing a misdirecting history/build up to this question and then out of nowhere asked her, “And what did Rob say when you told him you were pregnant?” My wife told me that she said that he was sad because it meant we would likely not be spending as much time together. She appeared truthful and matter of fact and did not seem to see at all what I was implying. I then directly asked, “Was it Rob’s baby?” She said, “No.” I asked her how she could be sure and she said that it was not possible at that point as the relationship had not progressed that far. She went on to say that she never invited Rob to our home for anything aside from providing him care for his injury. They developed a friendship and eventually she started “venting” to him about our relationship. She now knows how wrong this was. As an aside, my wife appeared honest. As much as I can, I believe her about this.
We talked more and at some point, not sure how it came up, I said that I guess it was lucky that I didn’t find out about her affair in 2007 or we’d be divorced. But I also said that there are times I wished I found out. I told her that for more than half of our marriage, another man got her best and I got the leftovers. She didn’t see how this was possible. I pointed out to her, from her own writings, that her relationship with Rob lasted seven years. I then pointed out, again from her own writings, that she pined for him for four years after the affair ended. Her pining began to stop in 2011 when I got serious about my own self-improvement (Thank you, Athol).
During this discussion I had to tell her about an incident that really bothered me. This was after I had discovered the full depth of her affair, but prior to The Facebook Incident. My wife, my son and I were out to dinner. We were discussing my son and his girlfriend. Up until this point, my son had dated many girls, typically having several plates going at once. The subject of cheating came up and my wife said to my son, before you would ever cheat on your girlfriend, you must talk to her first and break up with her. Her saying these words caught me by complete surprise. It turns out I was actually looking at her with my mouth dropped open. My wife looked at me and said, “What? You think he shouldn’t break up with her first?” I regained my composure, looked her in the eye and said that I completely agree with her. I said, “Before anyone ever cheats, they should most certainly break up with their partner.” In our present discussion, I told my wife if she had really meant what she said, I would have had 10 years of my life back [another dark thought].
We again talked about how my beliefs and actions set the stage for her affair and I take responsibility for that. I again told her that her entering into the affair was her choice and I blame her for that behavior. She agreed.
I think our discussion was helpful. It let me communicate some of what was going on for me. It came out that she was aware that I sometimes experience dark times where I’m withdrawing and she knew I had been having significant problems sleeping. I still don’t believe that she has a good understanding of the damage she has done but I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s generally not possible. I know she regrets her behavior. My wife is trying hard—I can see that. I’m trying hard as well.Yes. However when I was young and unaware, I never saw a lack of mate guarding as a failure on the part of my boyfriend, in the sense of him being weak, or not Alpha enough. I assumed he knew what he was doing, and that the lack of mate guarding meant that he didn't see me as attractive enough to entice other men. It made me more inclined to push boundaries because I thought I needed to demonstrate that I was attractive to other men. So stupid! I never saw my pushing those boundaries as being disrespectful to my boyfriend, I had tons of respect for him. I didn't believe that my actions had much potential to cause him pain or affect him negatively, because I saw lack of possessiveness as lack of investment. To me his lack of mate-guarding meant that he didn't value me much, and it made me doubt my own value. In retrospect I can see that it was all blue pill driven though and he didn't want to come across as jealous, possessive or "controlling".
I wanted very much to be a possession, and a lack of possessiveness was very much equated in my mind with a lack of love. I really tried for a while to buy into the idea that "healthy" people aren't jealous or possessive, and that "real" love is neither of those things, but my deepest feelings and instincts couldn't really get on board with that.
@fredless I am pretty sure that your wife feels much more loved now than she did when you were more trusting. When we see things as having very high value, we just don't sit back and trust they won't be stolen.
Excellent work putting all of this together and taking control of your Captainhood!
Thank you for sharing your story.
INFP or possibly INTP
There is no question that my wife feels more loved now. As I noted, as I became overly beta, and my attractiveness dropped, our sex life tanked. This led to me slowly emotionally checking out. This, along with my naive level of trust, created a fertile ground for my wife's affair.
And I completely agree with this statement:
When we see things as having very high value, we just don't sit back and trust they won't be stolen.
Appropriate mate guarding is necessary in every LTR/marriage.
I'm just so surprised she would bring him up at all. That was a boneheaded move on her part.