# Asking questions about the affair



## dingerdad (Nov 23, 2011)

I seem to be constantly making a mess of this. Questions will pop in my head about my fWW EA and I never bring them up at the right time or the right way. I think these questions need to be asked and talked about but it never ends well. My wife is great about listening and answering the questions. She understands that we can't rug sweep. I just always seem to take the conversation further than I intended when I ask the question (at the worst times). She try's to be strong at first but the longer the conversation goes the more her guilt sets in and she begins crying and saying how sorry she is. I end up feeling terrible because I hate to see her like this and because we've talked about the affair. This isn't good when we're Christmas shopping. Do I need to ask these questions about every little thing? How should I bring them up? How can I do it without making her feel so guilty because I really have forgiven her?
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## blueskies30 (Jan 27, 2010)

I'm having the same problems. I don't know how to keep these questions from coming up and I'm having such a hard time not comparing myself to her. I feel my self esteem slipping away. 

I'm going to be getting myself on a mood stabilizer and an anxeity medicine. I keep having anxeity attacks all day long ever siince he told me. I wish I did not know at all. It happened during our seperation, so I do wish he had not told me and that she did not contact him through his FB wall for me to see another woman missed him. Thats how I started to get the trickle truth


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

I agree that it's good to be able to ask all your questions. Your wife is wise is allowing for it and answering your questions. This was the only way I was able to get beyond my H's affairs.

The most important thing about this is that you have to make it safe for her to open up. You cannot use it to punish her, to express anger, etc. I know it's hard.. there were times when I got very angry at what my husband told me. But I tried to keep that at a minimum and even appologized about it later.

What you might want to do is to limit the amount of time dedicated to these dicussions. Say ask 3-4 questions and stop. Or only talk about it for 10-15 minutes. Then stop. Pick it up later. This might keep it form becoming long conversations or question/answer sessions that go on and on until you both break down.

My husband put up with my questions, over and over again until even I got tired of it. I started to bore even myself. At that point I stopped asking and have never really spoken about it again. I was done. I knew what I needed to know. And most importantly the affairs became a shared experience... odd but necessary.

how long have you known about the affair?


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## dingerdad (Nov 23, 2011)

I've known for a since Nov 11. My wife has done all and more try and make this right and help us get through this. No contact letter, no contact, switching job duties so she won't see
him, full transperancy, reading/learning/ etc. . I never get angry and I always ask very calm. She has commented that I keep asking the same questions over and over. Making it safe for her makes a lot of sense for me. I don't want her always wondering when I will pop a question to her.
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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

dingerdad, It's hard, I know it is. It does sound like your wife does care for you and she is doing what she needs to.

Have you both looked at the books "His Needs, Her Needs", "Love Busters" by Dr. Harely? My husband and I used them to help us through the process and to further affair proof our marriage.


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## dingerdad (Nov 23, 2011)

We both spend a lot of time reading online. I go here a lot
and we both spend a lot of time on the marriage builders website. I have found some good podcasts that we listen to together and discuss also. We are researching MC in our area and will start in the new year. We are in kinda in a research and early recovery stage. I am not quite ready to dive into the issues that caused the marriage breakdown. I would like a few months of proved no contact first. From what we've read she needs this time to go through a withdrawal stage so we'll take it slow. We are being very open with our feelings so it's not like we are putting our marriage on the back burner, we're just not pushing it.
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## crossbar (Aug 25, 2011)

Your questions for the wife. They happen! Nothing you can do about it , except maybe wait for a more opportune time. The thing is, she caused this; not you. She doesn't understand the level of pain, the level of humiliation she's caused you. This is all part of the process and COMPLETELY NORMAL!!!! 

If you don't ask the questions, your mind plays very cruel tricks on you. Without asking questions, your mind starts filling in the blanks (mind movies) and those images are pretty hard to shake.


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## jnj express (Mar 28, 2011)

It goes with the territory, and she has to deal with it.

Just make sure you keep your cool, as you have been, and never get abusive.

Hopefully you will find less of a need to grill her

How bad WAS her EA, did she completely give her heart to him, did she demonize you.

What cracks in YOUR mge., caused her to turn to another man---or was there other reasons, for her EA.

What do you know about him???? I E---WHY did this all come about in the 1st place?????


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## TRy (Sep 14, 2011)

dingerdad said:


> I seem to be constantly making a mess of this. Questions will pop in my head about my fWW EA and I never bring them up at the right time or the right way. I think these questions need to be asked and talked about but it never ends well. My wife is great about listening and answering the questions. She understands that we can't rug sweep. I just always seem to take the conversation further than I intended when I ask the question (at the worst times). She try's to be strong at first but the longer the conversation goes the more her guilt sets in and she begins crying and saying how sorry she is. I end up feeling terrible because I hate to see her like this and because we've talked about the affair. This isn't good when we're Christmas shopping. Do I need to ask these questions about every little thing? How should I bring them up? How can I do it without making her feel so guilty because I really have forgiven her?


First, since you have only know for one month you are not at fault for asking her these questions at any time. For you to even be asking how you can ask these questions without making “her feel so guilty” because you “really have forgiven her” is big time rug sweeping so early after discovery.

Second, stop calling it an EA when you know that it was both and EA and a PA. In a 07:29am post by you dated 12-12-2011, in a thread titled “Phones passwords, Email, Facebook etc?” you stated the following:


dingerdad said:


> Short form is my wife had a 10 month mostly EA with a man she met through work. I say mostly because they met a few times and had sex on one occasion.


You need to ask more questions no matter how much your wife cries so that you can get at the full truth. It is unlikely that you know everything at this early stage because in your prior posts it appears that she has only admitted to what you could prove and no more. It is also unlikely that they had sex only one time since you know that they met “a few times”. Another thing is that it is also possible that the affair may restart or may not be over since her work still allows them contact.

Stop letting her guilt trip you into rug sweeping this. Ask your questions and find out the full and total truth and do not forgive so easy or so fast. Based on the way you are currently handling this, you are making it way too tempting for her to continue the affair or to cheat again in the future. Sorry I know that you want the pain to go away ASAP and to have it go back to the way that it was before, but that is not going to happen. Rug sweeping rarely works out.


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## TRy (Sep 14, 2011)

Double post


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## Tover26 (Oct 29, 2011)

The further away you get, the easier it'll become. I'm trying to bottomline my questions and save them. It's hard but I'm getting better at it. I find that I already know the answers and 9 out of 10 times, I'm asking to see if she answers or says something new or even contradictory to prior answers. If I already know the answer, it's getting easier to let it be. My questions of "When this, did that?" have changed to statements like, "So, everytime I took the kids camping or bike riding, you were sexting with him." If she doesn't answer, I make the statement more extreme just to see where she'll actually fight back... after all she keeps saying that she's fighting for the marriage. I haven't seen it. Last night I vowed to not bring it up unless she did and then this morning I found a 10 min video she'd been splicing together for him. In the past, I'd have asked a 1000 questions. This time I just asked to her to come over, pointed to the video and said, "You want me to delete this or do you want to keep it for yourself?"

It's all bleak and despair and it's worse around holidays.


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## X-unknown (Oct 14, 2011)

I'm about where you are in this process. Who ever said you have to make it safe for her to tell you seems (to me) to be right on. We've tried to talk 1:1 about this and it turns really dark really fast and thats not what either of us want. For now we decided a couple of things that "might" be of value. *But I'm NO expert and this is just 2 cents from another slob in the same situation. 

We talk about the hard stuff in couples therapy and do the reading etc at home. I think we will be able to get to the 1:1 stuff at some point but right now its a real rope walk.

The second thing is that you may need some help to stay rational and healthy. This can (I think) make you truly sick. And physical and mental health takes a huge beating. If you have symptoms of depression, anxiety or whatever I think getting that under control will only help you make sense of this and make good (rational) decisions for you (and probably her)

Consider some kind of solo therapy. Other then online stuff who can you talk to? I've decided that bringing any friends or family into this (now) would add a lot of stress that I don't need. *Been there once and learned my lesson. Friends and family are well meaning but they talk to other people and then you have everyone take a side and endless "This is what you need to do!" stuff. Which btw is a good way to end this because I think anything you hear from a professional is way better then listening to someone on the internet.

Good luck and try not to let this eat you up.


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## dingerdad (Nov 23, 2011)

You are right TRy. It was an EA/PA. I feel I have gotten the full truth about the affair because I have talked to the OM Briefly and to the OMW. I have also seen texts/emails that validate what everyone is saying. Your right though I cannot be 100% certain of this. Asking questions, even repetitive ones help find inconsistantsys with the story. I have no suspicions at this
point. I asked for the full truth before she moved back in and I think she laid it all out. I have to disagree with you on the rug sweeping. I don't think we are rug sweeping at all. I have forgiven her because I believe love and forgiveness are given. Trust on the other hand is earned and I have told her this many times. She knows that at this point I have doubts of everything she says and that she is at at big zero on the trust scale. She is accepting all conditions I set and has said she will slowly built back my faith in her. We both know it's going to take along time and it's very early in the recovery.
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## X-unknown (Oct 14, 2011)

My therapist agrees with you. Its not love thats the problem. Its lack of trust. If you didn't love her you would say don't let the door hit you in the ass when you leave and telling her to lawyer up. The problem with this is a relationship needs trust and I think its difficult to regain any of that without a lot of work on her part and time to heal from this nightmare.


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## lordmayhem (Feb 7, 2011)

dingerdad said:


> You are right TRy. It was an EA/PA. I feel I have gotten the full truth about the affair because I have talked to the OM Briefly and to the OMW. I have also seen texts/emails that validate what everyone is saying. Your right though I cannot be 100% certain of this. Asking questions, even repetitive ones help find inconsistantsys with the story. I have no suspicions at this
> point. I asked for the full truth before she moved back in and I think she laid it all out. I have to disagree with you on the rug sweeping. I don't think we are rug sweeping at all. I have forgiven her because I believe love and forgiveness are given. Trust on the other hand is earned and I have told her this many times. She knows that at this point I have doubts of everything she says and that she is at at big zero on the trust scale. She is accepting all conditions I set and has said she will slowly built back my faith in her. We both know it's going to take along time and it's very early in the recovery.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_












Because trust has been shattered, she must earn it back by being remorseful and transparent, and give you full disclosure, this is her part of the heavy lifting she has to do. For your part, you should be monitoring her via the ways we've described here, to ensure she has gone NC and she is true to her word. What this does is it helps rebuild trust. 

As the days and months go by and you continue to check up on her and you continue to find nothing, trust slowly starts to come back little by little. As you continue to find nothing when you check up on her and her actions are truly remorseful, you start to find that you check up on her less and less and you begin to feel safe and start to trust again. As time progresses, you might even forgt to check up on her.


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## Wanabeelee (Sep 6, 2011)

A few things that may be working for us. 

1) Pick a time in the day to ask your questions that there is not distractions. (not to late or early as you both will need time to process after and dont want to do it when sleepy)

2) keep a couple notebook. Write a question and leave it for her. She will answer in writing. When you have the same question again (and you will) you have the answer in black and white. (I find I still ask the same questions some times but it was because my wife was TT ing me)

3) Agree that if a question is to hard or upseting that it can be tabled till MC and brought up there.

4) Allow for time outs. If ether of you are getting to emotional or hurt, take a 30 min break and just hold one another.


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## Dexter Morgan (Dec 8, 2011)

dingerdad said:


> How can I do it without making her feel so guilty because I really have forgiven her?


If you feel the need to keep asking question, then you haven't fully forgiven her. Don't get me wrong, I understand. I think people keep things bottled up and keep asking question, but think they have forgiven, when they really haven't.

And honestly, you shouldn't feel bad if her guilt gets to her. She obviously has exiled to, so far, to a life of reliving what she did to you. So why should she get to have an ok time of things?

No, not suggesting that you should intentionally try to make her feel bad. But you have this burden, and she should understand that she is the one that gave it to you.


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