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I am at a loss now...3 months of fighting to fix her mistake but now ready to give up

38K views 107 replies 40 participants last post by  ConanHub 
#1 ·
I apologize in advance for the long post but I feel all the details are needed. This is all incredibly hard for me and I just cant seem to get past this. Excuse my language as well....the names are made up for the sake of clarity in reading this post.

I need help.

Married my wife exactly 3 years ago, she has two kids that I love as my own. Things were always great in the bedroom and other than normal life issues with work, money ect….we get along well.. This last year has been rougher than most and we did drift apart a little but I never expected her to cheat on me. As I uncovered more and more details things just get more and more confusing and hurtful.

So last September my wife went to NY to visit her sick mother. While she was there she told me she had lunch with an old friend and I thought nothing of it. She was supposed to be there just one week but on the Saturday she was to fly back home, she was taken to the ER for a panic attack but turns out she suffered a mild heart attack. She was treated and released a few days later and I booked her a 1st class direct flight back home. During her stay in the hospital I was on stand by ready to drive the 21 hour trip to pick her up myself but she told me to sit tight and wait for the clearance to fly from the docs. She came home a few days later and was very distant and quiet. She DID tell me she wanted to reconnect with me but other than that we never got a chance to really talk. I figured between seeing her sick mother, her own recent health issue she needed the recovery time. Over the next couple of weeks I noticed she was texting and taking phone calls allot more than usual. She told me it was one of her old girlfriends from NY.

A few weeks later in mid October, we get into a huge fight and she storms out the house in the middle of cooking dinner. I tried calling her to ask where she was going and she refused to tell me and hung up. Since we all have Iphones I looked up her GPS location and she turned her location sharing off. This raised my red flag so I logged into our cell phone provider website to see if she called a friend or something and that’s when I saw that she called a local number the moment she backed out the garage. I also saw she was talking and texting to TWO different phone numbers over the past month or so. Long conversations till 2am on work nights while I was traveling for busniness and tons of texts through out the day.

I knew something was up. I Goggled this local number and within seconds I found out this guys name and facebook profile. (lets call him sam) . I called her back asking who the f*#k is this guy and she told me just an old friend she used to work with and was catching up over the past couple of weeks because he’s moving out of state soon. When she got home at 1:30am that night I questioned her. She told me she called him because she was so upset over our fight but she never met with him. She said she went to go sit by the beach alone to think. One thing I did notice before she left the house but did not really pick up on at the time was that she grabbed something out of her dresser, went to the bathroom and then left the house. Turned out she had grabbed a fresh pair of panties. I accused of her seeing this guy, and she invited me to “check her body” for signs of sex but I was so mad I didn’t even want to touch her. Now that I think about it, I never once even accused her of f#*king anyone but she was the one who offered me to check her body for signs of sex.


I asked her about the other phone number and she told me it was just the old friend she had lunch with while in NY (lets call him paul) and they were simply reconnecting. He was married with two kids of his own. I knew she was not being entirely honest with me about ether one of these two men so I moved myself out my own house the next day and went to stay with my family. We fought like cats and dogs for the next week. She was completely adamant that she was doing NOTHING wrong. Accusing ME of abandoning her and this was my plan all along. That I wanted to find a reason to accuse her of wrongdoing so I had a reason to divorce. She kept saying how she was doing nothing more than talking to two old friends who she’s known for 20 years and neither one of them would ever do anything to harm our marriage.

After a few weeks of more fighting and her denying that she was doing ANYTHING wrong, we sit down one night and I ask to look in her phone and I discover she was actually sexting paul. The old “girlfriend” she was talking to was actually pauls number programmed her phone under a woman’s name. She of course deleted nearly all of the 2500 plus messages but I eventually found some very BAD nude photos on her phone she thought she deleted. She tried to deny sending the photos but I knew she was lying since the timestamps of when the naked photos were taken match up EXACTLY to what the phone records show a picture message was sent. She tried to tell me that this guy paul always had a crush on her and he was the one initiating the flirting/sexting and she only sent him a half shot of her ass to appease him. While we are actually having this conversation and her phone is in my hand he’s still texting her and sending flirty messages. I dial his number from her phone and when he answered thinking it was her, I let him have it and told him to stay the f*#k away from my wife and I even threated him I was so furious. She tried to downplay the whole thing and said the attention made her feel sexy but pauls advances were making her too uncomfortable and she was “breaking it off with him” She blames me for not paying enough attention to her over the past year but agrees to break off all contact with him at this point and she blocks his number.

I knew she was still lying and hiding the whole truth so back to good old Google and in a few hours I find this guy, and his wife on Facebook. I message Pauls wife and tell her what I know at this point. She tells me Paul is a habitual cheater and liar and she’s not surprised. A few days later pauls wife emails me back…says she found my wifes dirty selfies hidden in some email account he had and she forwarded them back to me. I confront my wife with this proof and she breaks down crying saying it was all a mistake, she just needed the attention and is sorry.

A few days later I discover an email written by her to paul just 10 days after she returned from NY asking him to look at flights for him to purchase and how she would have the extra cash to cover the hotel and rental car. She of course denies this and tries to dismiss it as simply “pillow talk” and they were toying with the idea but it would have never happened.

Despite thinking it was just “sexting” and a few bad photos, despite seeing this email about potential flights back to NY and a hotel she would pay for, I decided to save my marriage and reconcile with her. During one very emotional night, she admits to me that paul was more than just an old friend. He was actually an old boyfriend she dated for about 6 months 20 years ago and the very same man she cheated on her fiancé at the time and got caught in bed with. I was shocked. Not only was this more than just a friend, but also this is a man she had cheated with years ago. She also admitted to me that he did in fact purchase plane tickets for her to go to NY but she was well on the way to breaking off the affair before I found out. I believed her.

I still did not move back home at this point but we began to talk, go on “dates” and we even started sexting each other. The makeup sex we had was amazing and at her suggestion, she even let me do a little fifty shades of gray thing with her one night as a form of “punishment”. I truly believe she was sorry for what she did and wanted to fix it all. Things were on their way to rebuilding our relationship and we were even discovering a new kinky sexual side to each other along with a deeper emotional attachment.

Till one day in early December, I receive a message from pauls wife again. She tells me she was looking thru her own phone records and text messages and recalls one night back in September when my wife was in NY, paul never came home till 4:30 am. I look at her phone records again and sure enough, on that date, he was the last person she called at 10:30pm and the first person she texted at 5am the next morning. The call pattern that night was short, one or two min calls…the kind of calls you make to someone to say “hey im here now..where are you?” kinda call. This was the last night she was originally supposed to be in NY and the next morning is when she had her heart attack.

Once again, angry and furious, I confronted my wife and asked to her explain…She of course denies it all and says she only had lunch with him and since that was supposed to be the last night she was in NY, she was with her mother very late till 1:30 am. She even said she would prove to me that she was not with him….hours later she sends me a screen shot of a text from a very angry paul saying that they only had lunch and he was working and if I need to see his time slips to ask him. She later admits to me that she called paul and asked him to fabricate that text to show me.

After doing some more data mining and looking at phone logs and GPS data….I uncover more lies The GPS data showed she was not at the hospital like she said but was actually driving to a local beach at 10:30pm . She FINAILLY admits to me that yes she did indeed see paul that night, met him at around 10:30 and did not get back home till after 3:30 am. She said she spent they night on the beach simply talking but the night did end in a long passionate kiss. She swears it was nothing more.

I also discover that BEFORE I even had a clue anything was going on, she was researching a new place to live. I asked her about that very first night we had the fight and if she lied about meeting that guy sam and she said she did meet him but nothing happened as he was just a friend supporting her and they just talked.

I read some old texts from sam to my wife and was heartbroken to see how she threw me under the bus saying those things like how this was ‘my plan’ all along and of course this guy is just nodding his head to agree with her. She was not even being honest with him about what she was doing with paul…she was making herself out to be the victim.

At this point pauls wife and I are sharing as much info as we can because we both are searching for the truth. My wife says shes committed to regaining my trust so she agrees to give me all her passwords and lets her text messages be forwarded to my iPad. A day or two later I see a long angry text from paul pop up on my ipad to my wife saying how he’s not lying to protect her anymore and he asks her if I know about how he went down on her in the hospital while she was recovering from her heart attack, If I know about the guy she used to work with that she met that night and f#@ked him because he was moving away, if I know about how she asked him to make a fake text about his overnight shift to make me think they didn’t have sex. He says to her how even after 20 years she still lies about everything ect…….

I already knew the truth about the fake text she asked him to send her. She DID tell me that while she was recovering in the hospital paul came to visit her while she was sleeping and she woke up feeling his hand under the sheets and his head in her lap but she claims she pushed him away. I already have my thoughts about that first night she stormed out the house and called that guy sam. I knew all along she was lying about seeing sam that night and she finally admitted it and found it ironic paul mentions how if I knew she “f@#ked him”???

I finally have enough and text paul myself directly and say “if you have something to say to me. call me directly!!” He does the next day. I could tell by his tone he’s scared of me and the stuff he says is just to disarm my anger. He tells me “you don’t know your wife like I do, I’ve known her for 20 years and she just lies about everything, when she got to NY she searched for me and wanted to have lunch and I have a letter she gave me to prove it” He tells me he will send it to me. I didn’t believe him at first but two days later, my phone starts ringing with texts of photos of this letter my wife wrote to him and gave him before she left NY. It was in her handwriting and based on the grammar and style, I knew it was authentic.

What I read in the letter was truly heartbreaking and goes against the entire narrative she’s been saying for the past 2 months. She admits in the letter how when she arrived in NY she broadcast on her Facebook page how she’s back in NY and was hoping paul would contact her. How it was not an “accident” they met for lunch and how she’s got the same feelings for him she did 20 years ago. How she’s always loved him and she know he loves her, how she’s lived her past 20 years “safe and secure” but with people who don’t truly know her. She wrote how no one has ever touched her soul like he does. How she’s jumped on this train now and does not want to get off and cant say goodbye to him again. She also mentioned how “I let myself go with you last night”.

Knowing how sexual my wife is and now knowing what kind of guy paul is I’m sure “letting go” was much more than just a passionate kiss.

So now here we are at this point and she of course can’t deny writing that letter but she says it was just the overflow of emotions she felt that night and was not thinking clearly when she wrote it. She knows paul would never leave his wife and kids for her and the fact they live thousands of miles apart now nothing could ever come of this affair. She admits to me that IF she would have taken those tickets and fly to NY they would have had sex. She even said if she had spent another week in NY they probably would have had sex. She says the distance they had was a safety net. She says she knows now how much I truly love her after showing her how hard I’ve been fighting to save this marriage. She’s sorry and remorseful now for letting herself get caught up with him again. She does not want to let me go and says she willing to do anything to prove she loves me and eventually regain my trust.

My problem now is I can’t believe a word of it anymore. If they did NOT have sex that night she was in NY how could she be so eager to make plans to see him again? To continue the sexting and send some very dirty photos? To actually go so far as to search out a new place to live even before I had a clue anything was going on?

Like I mentioned earlier, before I had any proof she was adamant she did nothing wrong and was fighting me, bad mouthing me to all her friends that I abandoned her. Claiming, “I never cheated on you and never would” It was only after I found proof she turned her tone around and now is sorry.

Was she trying to make me jealous? Did she really get caught up in this emotional thing and was so weak and let this guy back into her life like she says? Or does she really love him after all these years and living the past 20 year as a lie to herself and me?

I told her at this point it does not matter to me if she had sex with paul that night in NY (which I believe in my gut she did!!). It does not even matter to me if she even had sex with sam (which I don’t think so but anything is possible at this point)

What matters to me is how she tried to cover her lies over and over and after now seeing her love letter to him the whole thing goes so much deeper than a simple momentary lack of judgment and some racy photos.

I still love her. If she were honest with me from the start I would have found a way to forgive her and move on. To learn the whole truth of HOW, the WHY and what probably REALLY happened is too much and I’m just lost now what to do. The thoughts and images in my mind keep playing over and over, I've been so depressed and not eating...my work is suffering. I know in my logical mind I should be getting a lawyer and filing for divorce but in my heart I can't give up and I hate it.

Reading that letter she wrote to him, learning how she was already looking to move out before I found out about her affair changed everything for me. But she won't let me give up..she swears she knows how much I love her and she loves me and swears she's sorry and remorseful for her mistake.

Thoughts? ideas? concerns? Someone want to slap me across the face to wake the f up and walk away from this??
 
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#7 ·
She has agreed to that..Not sure I believe it it but its worth a shot.

Does she have a job? She likes the financial security you provide.
She does but does not make nearly enough to continue living the way we do now...
Three years married? I've had food in my fridge longer than that.
3 years...6 total? Short term I know. Remind me never to have leftovers at your place :)
Well this is the problem right here.
What do you mean??
Saving the marriage and reconciling was never your decision to make.
What do YOU mean? is this not my choice to fix it or walk away??
Sadly your wife is not just a liar but also a serial cheater.......right now you can't believe anything she says...so what you need is first and foremost the truth, to get that you should tell her that she needs to take a polygraph...you need to ask her if she has had sex out side your marriage and how many... start there...with fact in hand then make a decision but with all her liars you can't make heads or tail...but i woudl also sit her down and write everything down...and i mean everything...Sam...paul....anyone else
I don't know if id go so far as to say a serial cheater but yes...shes done this in the past with the same guy. I honestly believe in my heart she's never done anything like this before, at least not with me, but at this point everything I thought I knew was wrong. Ive asked her those exact questions and she swears she never did anything like this before..my radar says to believe her too. Never saw any signs before of her cheating and I tend to have a pretty good sense of awareness. I knew the moment she got back from NY something was up when I saw how frequent she was texting and taking calls..I just didn't think it was to this extent.
 
#5 ·
Sadly your wife is not just a liar but also a serial cheater.......right now you can't believe anything she says...so what you need is first and foremost the truth, to get that you should tell her that she needs to take a polygraph...you need to ask her if she has had sex out side your marriage and how many... start there...with fact in hand then make a decision but with all her liars you can't make heads or tail...but i woudl also sit her down and write everything down...and i mean everything...Sam...paul....anyone else
 
#13 ·
We are both 44. I don't have have any kids of my own no. Both the kids are hers from long before...a teen girl and a teen boy

Me, 5 my whole life...was with one random girl as my first when I was only 15 then married my H.S. Sweetheart, divorced her when i was 30, dated a few other women in between her and my current wife.

Her? Counting what she's told me about her past relationships, Id guess 6 or 7?

Why does that matter?
 
#12 ·
"Ive asked her those exact questions and she swears she never did anything like this before..my radar says to believe her too. Never saw any signs before of her cheating and I tend to have a pretty good sense of awareness. I knew the moment she got back from NY something was up when I saw how frequent she was texting and taking calls..I just didn't think it was to this extent."

No Towel...in your original statement you say you can't trust her and now you say you believe her...i understand you want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but i woudl suggest to you she has provided nothing but doubt...like the adage says "you can't be half pregnant" ...also have asked her to be tested for STD and yourself ? i still you can use the polygraph as tool to ask her to lay out the entire timeline....all you have is bits and pieces...you need her to write everything down and i mean everything and then compare it too the fact you and the OM wife uncovered. right now you should not trust her to even tell you if its day or night...that comes with with time and with heavy lifting on her end.
 
#15 ·
Perhaps I misspoke. What I meant to say was "I believed her" as in past tense. Before I discovered about the night they shared in NY and read the letter she wrote.. I believed her that it was just sexting and a few photos and the plans to fly to NY again was just an idea.

I did mention the idea of taking an STD test and she blew a gasket. I found out today in fact the other wife herself just went for tests. Perhaps I should look into it as well.

Ive written everything down in a timeline myself from my point of view....In fact..this original post was like 10 pages long...decided to spare the other users here all those details and cut it in half.

HER problem is she's got a very bad sense of timelines. In fact...thats how I caught her in some of the lies...She told me she had her lunch early in the week when in fact it was the last friday she was there according to the texts and GPS records. She tried to prove to me she was still at the hospital that night by showing me a text from her family member she was staying with but did not realize the timestamp was 2:45 am proving she was already lying about where she was that night....She showed me the email about her inquiry into a new apartment saying how she thought we were over after I moved out but the date of that email was 4 days before I discovered a single thing so that proves she was already thinking of it before we even had our first fight.

Do polygraphs really work?? How does one go about that?
 
#14 ·
NoTowels,

I'm sorry this happened to you, while we all want to believe the best about people we sometimes have to swallow some unfortunate reality.

Your best bet is a polygraph for your WW, have her first write out a detailed timeline of everything that happened, the polygraph will then determine if what she wrote was correct. Make her write it out not tell you what happened.

There is a chance that this OM was the reason her marriage to the kids father ended, I can't say for sure, but her exH may have been driven to abuse or a mental breakdown by her cheating on him. After the fact your WW rewrote history to make her the victim. Please speak with her exH it may be an eye opener for you.

You also need to track down the work, family, church, facebook, linkedin and friends of OM and then send out a massive exposure message, don't threaten or warn just gather your evidence make a nice PDF file and send it.

Tamat
 
#16 ·
Well she was never married to the kids father...but there IS a sordid history with him and this guy paul. After she got caught cheating on her finance with paul 20 years ago...they both moved down south together and lived for about 6 months. he was not pulling his weight, lazy or whatever so she asked him to leave..he refused so she employed the help of a co-worker of hers at the time to help physically kick paul out the house. years later this co worker would father two kids for her.

this sounds like some crazy soap opera I know....but can't make this stuff up.

I never thought about talking to him but might be a good idea. He lives in another state but they still speak on a basis he's still the kids dad and thats all. Im just not sure how receptive he would be talking about her behind her back to me about anything.
 
#19 ·
Towels,

Polygraphs often work when the cheating spouse offers up more details on the way to the test or in the parking lot.

I encouraged you to talk with whomever you can find because it does not sound like your WW made a mistake but it's more like her entire life has been a lie.

Does she also lie about financial stuff?

Advise the OMW to get a polygraph for her H, look up some people who do it in her area.

I suspect your WW has been in "love" with OM even while she was with the father of her children.

Tamat
 
#24 ·
Tamat, I'm going to look into polygraph services in my area. As far as the other wife and husband she tells me she's leaving him for good now..shes had enough of his cheating ways and if it were not for me bringing her proof she would have never known.
 
#21 ·
From reading your story, what jumps out at me is that you are not now, nor have you ever been, her first choice. She wants her ex, BADLY! You should consider talking to her "abusive" ex husband and see what his side of thee story is. You have already seen that she lied about you to get her way. It may be that she cheated on her ex then labelled him as abusive to make her look better. We see that happen here a lot.

I'm generally pro R, but in your case the cards are stacked against you. With a short term marriage, D is often the safe choice. If she cheated, perhaps with two people, at 3 years, what will she do at 10 or 20?

Sadly, I really think you are just a security blanket for her and a fill in dad for her kids. It's a tough call, but I think I would get some legal advice then D.
 
#25 ·
The more I think about the more it makes sense I need to talk to the kids father but like I said..i don't know how responsive he would be to talking to me. I met the man once but other wise never had any connection to him. As far as the security blanket..of course I've thought that myself. They never really had a dad in their life and I have been more of a father to them in just the 6 years we have been together and I care for them as they are my own since I never had kids of my own.
 
#31 ·
He doesn't sound like he has the courage to take that kind of advice. When your wife tells you to man up, that's as bad as it gets. He's still looking for reasons to "make this marriage work" even though she's a serial lying, serial cheating wh0re. She has him wrapped around her little pinky finger.
 
#27 ·
Serial cheats never change my friend. I'm sorry. I know you love her but she is fvcked up. For her to be a halfway decent wife for you, she would need years of intensive counseling to get to the core of her issues, and the whole time she will be at risk for more cheating. And she would have to want to change.

Why should she? She's got good old dependable nice guy you holding down the Homefront while she goes out and feeds her need for external validation with other sex partners.

Cut your losses and move on.
 
#28 ·
Polygraph for her?

Yes, she is poly. Poly-amorous.

For you, polygraph should be spelled polygrift. She is poly and a grifter.

You are wasting your time and our time. She is trash. A terrible mother.

She will change her behavior [just short of]..... when her heart really stops and certainly when they start shoveling dirt in her grave.

Not a minute short of that.

Get a new wife.
 
#29 ·
Her ex said it. She was a liar 20 years ago and she's still a liar. She cheated on her fiance, moved in with her AP, and I'd bet money she was already cheating with her co-worker turned Baby Daddy when she kicked the ex-fiance out. She didn't have some kind of mental break, she has an established pattern of this kind of behavior.

It's a real long story, byt my first marriage was a total sham. My exH screwed anything that would stand still long enough, lied like a rug, and was almost always the victim. Mostly, he was a victim of his own foolishness, but I digress. I also had affairs, but at least I was open and honest about it, yeesh. The marriage was ended by me 6 years and 2 babies in. Wanna know where we are now?

I remarried and am deeply in love with my husband. I have never been unfaithful to him. We just celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary and our 17th anniversary as a couple. I was a situational cheater.

My ex? He bounced around woman to woman for a while, got remarried, and the only difference in his behavior is location and name of the wife he's beating and cheating on. He is a chronic liar and a serial cheater, full stop.

Your wife is NOT a situational cheater. She is a serial cheater. Her pattern seems to be to lie and cheat, leave the sap she's lying and cheating on, then blame him and make him out to be the bad guy. She's been doing this for 20 years. She isn't going to change now.

Were I you, I'd expose her confirmed cheating to everyone, file for divorce, and go on with my life.

PS- She married you and not the any of the others because she's older and doesn't know how long she can keep reeling them in. She's going to try to keep you because she's not getting any younger and her health isn't so hot anymore, which lessens her value on the dating market. Things she should have thought about before cheating on you twice.
 
#35 ·
You appear to be looking for excuses to stay in this.

Deplorable situation you're in. The problem is you are keeping yourself there.

You don't need a lie detector test. You know deep down what the truth is why waste the time and money?

You can't let go so you'll wander in this wilderness or you won't. It doesn't appear you can be helped much.

I hope you find your way but it doesn't seem like you really want to.

Good luck, you're going to need it.
 
#48 ·
So sorry all this happened to you. But you are lucky to be seeing her for what she is, only 3 years into the marriage.

She will fail any polygraph miserably. Her whole life is a cardhouse of lies. There is so much more about everything that she's never told you. You can spend the rest of your life chipping away at those lies, hoping you've finally got to the bottom of it, but in all honesty you'll never know.

You can find a decent loving woman and you'll eventually get over your wife. It takes time, but it's worth it.
 
#50 · (Edited)
Career woman here and 37 years married (first marriage for the both of us). Neither husband and I have cheated. Neither one of us will tolerate disrespect nor infidelity. We know the consequences of our actions, should one of us decide to betray the other.

You are only three years into the marriage and she has already cheated with the same man, Paul, that she has on and off affairs with. Paul is the love of her life and continues to pull her into his life. You will not win in this game. You need to see an attorney ASAP and be done with this drama. See a psychologist to set your mind in the right track.

Sorry to see you in this situation.
 
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