My Story (2)

[Sunflyer]

Sunflower,

I read your posts and truly feel for you. Four years ago my WW had a one night stand in a hotel and I discovered evidence on her tablet. She lied about it till I showed her the evidence and then insisted she was "separated" when she live with me and our children.

She told me "I've been told it's not cheating if you say you're separated."

I am sure my W feels the same. To her, the marriage was dead long ago. Aside from issues of integrity or morality, the potential problem that stems from this is legal. We do not have a signed separation agreement in place yet. Unless I am mistaken, that agreement can have a clause in it that states something like, "We mutually agree that both parties can pursue relationships with others from this date forward."

Without that, I could theoretically use her affair against her in matters of custody, etc. Of course, this would mean a protracted and expensive court battle that I frankly cannot afford, and wouldn't be good for our children.

It's up to you if you expose the affair or keep quietly doing detective work. Your wife is already out the door in a manner of speaking. Only a miracle can stop this.

If she has had a physical affair already, you may see personality changes. In my WW it was extreme as if something had taken over her. This is what is called "affair fog" - they will spend money recklessly and make foolish decisions. My ex wife later told me she didn't remember much of what happened during this time.

I cannot control her, only myself. She has completely changed her values and view of our marriage over five months, rewriting history and making everything appear to be my fault, which is common.
Her mother is apparently advising her on the men she is meeting...yes, my MIL is actually encouraging her to take up a relationship with another man while we are still married.

I don't see a point in exposing it right now, but that time may come soon. Personally, I think she is aware that I know. She spends a lot of time on the phone with the OM, clearly documented in the last phone bill. She seems to have decreased the amount of time she spends on the phone with her mother while she is home, which is where I overheard the conversation between them that proved that her mother knows about it and is encouraging it.

I suspect she has difficulty finding places to meet him. If the ID I got when searching his phone number is correct, he lives about 35 miles away. She could turn off the tracking on her phone while she is with him, or place the phone elsewhere so it shows a false location, but then she would not be notified if an emergency occurred or one of our kids needed help.

Every WW is different, but my WW was so flippant she didn't even make a budget for her living expenses after separation. They will agree to some rather bad terms because all they want to do is get out of the marriage and feed their affair addiction.

This does not mean that you hide financial resources or deliberately give her less. It means you keep as much as you can, that you worked for.

I did mediation with my wife and I filed for divorce immediately to protect myself, my house (I bought her out) and my kids (of which I have primary custody). Since she moved straight in with OM I did not have to pay alimony despite being married for well over 10 years. Child support was shared expenses and I kept all my retirement plans.

Budgeting has always been my department in the marriage. She has never budgeted. I have always kept our heads above water financially. Letting one's mind run wild doesn't help, but personally I think she is after a very rich guy; the client list at the firm where she works is full of them. The OM has virtually no internet presence--I don't see place of employment, web pages, or social media accounts anywhere. And where he lives is super expensive. My guess: he's independently wealthy or retired. She sees him as her ticket out because her finances won't be ideal without me. She'll lose beneficiary status on my pension and the healthcare for life she could have had.

Most likely outcome if I had to guess: house goes to her (she wants it, her parents have the money to buy me out and I do not have the money for same), joint custody, hopefully no alimony (we both make six figure salaries that don't have a huge discrepancy), and I will owe child support and a chunk of my pension (which might be a chunk of zero since I don't know now if I'll be able to retire while paying her plus rent).

I wish you all the best.

Thank you. I do know one thing: regardless of outcome, I will have to forgive her, because otherwise I am holding anger and frustration that I do not need for the rest of my life, and which will only harm me. I am not betting on reconciliation, and I am in something of a state of flux as to whether I'd want it if I had the opportunity for it. I have been with no one else for 26 years. She was my first and only choice of partner for all that time. I think I deserve to be viewed the same by someone else, not just as a fallback if her other relationships collapse.

If we did somehow patch it all up, though, I would have to agree with myself that this incident is dead and buried. There's another poster on here whose marriage came back from an affair, and her husband dredged it up years later as a justification for leaving her, causing more anguish and hurt. I couldn't break promises like that.