Unlurking to share my story

[SciDad]

Sandi2,

I apologize for the agonizingly slow reply, but I wanted to carefully consider your comments before I posted. Which is also why it's so ungodly long....

It grew considerably more complicated when she involved a third person in the M.

A further complication is that the OM was also a good friend of mine and spent lots of time with our kids. Seems like my W was using him as a Plan B remarriage (although I'm pretty sure he wants nothing to do with raising another family). He is now dead to me and I will not allow him into our house. He has no more contact with my kids.

The burden of proof is on her.  She is the one who should earn your trust, and until then, you need to be very cautious.  One of our vets use to say, "trust but verify".  He believed in gathering intell.  If you do, never tell her how you learn the truth that comes to light.  Not even after you reconcile.  

She was extremely transparent right after I revealed I knew something was up, although I never told her what I knew or how I knew it. I believe my phrasing for the confrontation was "I'm going to ask you some questions, some of which I already know the answers to. Now is your chance to tell the truth." I never showed her my evidence or how I got it. But she's smart enough to figure out one of my sources... For awhile she made a point of leaving her phone in front of me and walking away for hours. I didn't check because I didn't feel the need to and I would obsess over any little thing I found.

About a month later, my spidey sense went off again and she started acting suspiciously, so I checked her phone and she said something very inappropriate to OM. I confronted her again, asking how she was trying to work on our marriage while sending messages like that to OM. Maybe not my best move to show my cards, but the text I saw said how much she wanted to have sex with him (implying they hadn't yet) and that she was looking forward to the next day (she had secretly arranged to take the day off of work). She ended up going to work and I ended up losing a lot of faith I had in her honesty. She tried being upset that I had invaded her privacy, but I said that it would only be an invasion if she hadn't done anything wrong. By sending that text, she was the one at fault not her. That stopped the deflection and got us refocused on the real topic at hand

Has she shown remorse?  Has she earnestly apologized and asked for your forgiveness.....I mean humbly sought your forgiveness?  Or, was she more like, "I just want to pick up where we left off and put all this behind us".  Her attitude should tell you with that part. 

She has more remorse that she got caught and felt (maybe still feels - I'm not sure) that she did nothing wrong since she never had sex with him. But there are indications that there was plenty going on that was inappropriate (kissing/hugs/sexting). I'm not sure how to change this dynamic without it blowing up in my face. For now I'm focusing on my feelings and goals.

I really believe in a strong transparency plan.  If she is serious about working to same the M, then she will not protest about transparency.  It is as much, if not more, to help her as it is to get the trust back on track.  She should not expect you to simply trust her after she's betrayed you.  If she says, "Well, you'll just have to trust me", and she does nothing to help you trust her again........Let that be a red flag.  Like I said, her attitude will tell you more than her words. 

I agree, but am not sure how to approach this. The plan I'm working on is to tell her I'm feeling nervous again and am having trust issues (without trying to accuse her of anything), and ask for reassurance. At that point she will have the opportunity to alleviate my fears or not. But I think it's the only way I'll be able to trust her again, as much as I hate to admit it. I'll present a plan based on your guidelines. Honestly, I hope to not need to use it, but there a few good topics of conversations that can be had based on mundane findings (why are you still FB friends? Why didn't you uninstall that chat app?)

Is she still working with the OM?  If so, she needs to change jobs.  It is simply too risky, and I don't know of a case where the WW continued to work with her AP and reconcile fully with her H.  It is too difficult for her to do. 

She says she wants to switch jobs, but it's not clear to me if it's because she's distancing herself from OM or simply hates her job (she's not in the best work sitch right now). Unfortunately things have been moving very slowly on the job hunting front and the holidays don't help. One plan for this long weekend is to give her the time she says she needs to work on writing a resume/cover letter/etc. How far she gets and how invested she gets will show me how serious she is about getting another job.

I find it hard to accept that a woman suddenly ends a passionate affair, and with hardly the effort of batting her eyelashes, she's the doting wife again. A lot of women can play the role........so you have to decide if she's authentic in what you see in her.

I can tell she's struggling somewhat, but I'm not sure if it's the stain of continuing the affair or withdrawl. I tended not to think the latter because they have mutual friends and used to go out to lunch once a week. I don't know if they still are, and I've asked if we could have lunch once a week. She said yes, but hasn't really made any encouraging moves. I think I'll ask for lunch once next week.

Is the MC a solution-based counselor?  If not, you are wasting money and time.

Surprisingly, yes. It was not intentional on my part (although it should have been), but everything in our sessions has been solution-based. It's almost like he's applying DB/DR directly....

the reason I said they aren't the same, is b/c some WW's will agree to go to MC, or even say they will "try" to work on the MR......only to tell everyone later that she tried everything and it just didn't work.

This is my fear. She said she wants to work on the M to see if she can find feelings for me again. Red flag for me. especially since she told me that was stringing along the OM as a plan B because she "doesn't want to be a single mom."

Have you thought about telling her she needs to be tested for STD?

Ugghh.... I'm not sure I'm strong enough for that yet. Even if she's not lying about not having penetrating sex with the OM, there is still plenty of acts that can get you into trouble (Sorry - my medical side came out). The problem is that I know that would be a huge issue for her... For now I think I'll need to put it on a back burner while we work on everything else. My thought is that I could add that to the trust conversation, mainly because I see almost no scenario where we'll do anything that could get me into trouble. Hell, we don't even open our mouths when kissing yet....

On another note, I read one of your replies on another poster's thread. I was impressed, and thought it was great advice......especially for a newbie.

Thank you - that made my day! Even a broken clock is right twice a day....