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You have a right to be upset, but the fact that it was 30 some years ago, and my guess is you were different people back then, and he was upfront about the relationship with her, and that this considering what you both put each other through, falls under the category of a misdemeanor.

He certainly should have been upfront, and my answer would be different if he had continued the relationship and hid from you, but this happened while you were broken up, and he stupidly lied as to not place the relationship under any more jeopardy than it was from his waffling.

I think a stern warning is warranted that if there is anything else, it better come out now is in order.

Hey, if you can survive that long in a motor coach together, you can get through this

It changes "this is a person who wouldn't have lied to me if I hadn't crushed him first" into "this is a person who would, and has, lied to me solely because it was in his interest to do so."

Extremely well said.

The other is we said throw down anything here and now that the other doesn’t know before we said okay after this no more lies, we both feel it would be grounds for divorce.

I know you guys have bad history, but I would give the benefit of the doubt.

This lie was not on the front of his mind when asked about the throw down. I'm not saying he has a bunch of other stuff too (he might). I'm saying when you are asked "is there anything else you want to tell me?" and you try to brainstorm, you'll only come up with stuff you feel bad about right now. It's hard to compress 40 years of stuff you haven't told someone and spit it all out. When you dug back to the particular event, he immediately told you the truth. He could have lied again (for consistency in lying...) and you wouldn't have noticed (I'm guessing).

I'm also mildly surprised you would set something so black and white post madhatter situation.

I often talk about the "loss of something integrity adjacent" because before I got cheated on, I always said I would divorce a cheater, but I didn't. I would say the lying is sufficient for you to D, if you want, but you aren't required to go through D because he did something that is sufficient grounds for D based on your agreements.

Are you being weak or flexible? Are you acting from fear or strength?

That's what matters when making this decision.

Bsr-

He didn't tell you because if he had told you, it might have affected his ability to get what he wanted. And then, having gotten it, he decided it didn't matter and let himself off the hook.

His reasons included this. Also, he felt at the time it wasn’t my business what happened when we were not together. We all worked together and essentially I think he was still protecting her, and himself and avoiding any drama at work, so he hasn’t sugar coated it.

Oh, he has gotten my grumpy over the last couple of weeks. And honestly, he didn’t have an easy pass for R either. I made him live in the camper for a while in the beginning . And, I couldn’t bear to have sex with him for a long time after that whole incident with the porn and putting the tablet on his stomach. I came close to the divorce button several times in year two, which was our first year in the road.

He has definitely been the more selfish one of the two of us our whole marriage, so you aren’t off base. But I do think he has changed in numerous ways. As you are aware, I consider my affair to have been an exit affair because I was done back then with him. While I should have asked for a divorce like I have said a million times here, I am just stating it because it sounds a bit like you may see my good nature, and that is real, but I don’t think I am as forgiving as maybe you might think?

I have just tried to remain humble in many ways knowing not having some of that would swing me from a doormat to a hypocrite, as I am sure you can imagine that’s a funny line to walk at times. But I am not home saying "oh poor you, let me make this easier for you" because that girl has been gone a long time now.

I do appreciate your ever present protective nature though, it’s amazing the true hearts you find in an anonymous forum.

[This message edited by hikingout at 12:06 AM, Friday, October 11th]

This lie was not on the front of his mind when asked about the throw down. I'm not saying he has a bunch of other stuff too (he might). I'm saying when you are asked "is there anything else you want to tell me?" and you try to brainstorm, you'll only come up with stuff you feel bad about right now. It's hard to compress 40 years of stuff you haven't told someone and spit it all out. When you dug back to the particular event, he immediately told you the truth. He could have lied again (for consistency in lying...) and you wouldn't have noticed (I'm guessing).

Hikingout,

Similar to a point I was trying to make in my earlier post. One thing I have discovered since D-Day is my wife never ruminated on her lies nor was eaten up with guilt by them. She told them, they served their purpose and she moved on from them. Whether your husband lied to protect the privacy of the OW (cough, cough) due to the work situation or because he feared you would not reconcile if he disclosed he had sex with her (or any other reason), the lie did its job, appeared to be accepted by you and he moved on. Although it "ate at you" for a few years, it didn’t for him. So him not remembering or not thinking to bring it up after 30 years makes a lot of sense IMO.

Also, when asked about "why being this up now" you also say you haven’t really thought about it in years until reading his journals triggered you. It sounds REALLY similar to his response.

I’m not trying to give him a pass by any means. Finding out you were lied to 30 years ago has to be very upsetting. Based on this and his subsequent affair and associated lying, your husband obviously wasn’t who you thought he was. All of us BS are faced with that epiphany. In that vein, this shouldn’t be TOO surprising. Especially since you say you always sort of suspected they slept together.

Yes, he should have disclosed at the time of "lay it all on the line" but it sounds very reasonable he truly forgot or didn’t think to. If I were him, I would ask you "if this has bothered you all these years, why didn’t you ask me about it when we were making our pact? I would have told you the truth if you had"? Your answer would have been VERY similar to his. So on one hand you can say he "lied by omission" on the other hand, you never asked and gave him the opportunity to come clean. And we’ll never know if he would have told the truth then (but I hope you have an idea).

At the end of the day, the first and only time he was asked since he lied 30 years ago he came clean. That shows who he is today. As painful as this discovery is on one hand, THAT should give you some solace that all the work has not been for naught.

Every single BS had to "go against our morals" to even attempt R. Cheating was always a deal breaker for me. Yet here I remain….

Duplicate Post

[This message edited by ImaChump at 12:14 AM, Friday, October 11th]

Damn, BSR, your whole post was spot on.

I was trying to articulate something earlier about how we latch onto our beliefs, sometimes to our own detriment. I was having a hard time nailing it down so I backspaced over it and went on about my day. It's related to this:

For the last several years, you've been hanging your hat on the belief that your WH only cheated on you because you cheated on him first.

I think we humans like to categorize things, and we need to know WHY something bad happened to us so that we can try to ensure that it doesn't happen again. We create a narrative, and we believe what we're saying. And we might have had good reason to believe it when we first came up with it, but over time, something happens and we realize that we placed too much stock in it. We hold onto it. It became our truth, except it's not exactly the truth.

I did this before DDay, thinking "he'd never cheat on me" which is why I wasn't able to "see" the red flags until I was looking at them through my retrospectascope™.

I did this after DDay, examining him from all angles, figuring out his brain and why he did what he did. Categorizing him as safe once again.

I'm guilty of believing that my H really understood something the same way that I did, that it was a monumental piece of the puzzle for both of us, a key part of healing, only to have a discussion months or years later and he doesn't remember it and/or has a different opinion now. All this time, I was going through life thinking that we were on the same page.

Lord, this is so fuzzy and keeps trying to flit away. I can't quite articulate it. Maybe something close to this: The "truth" changes with time, growth, and perspective, and that can be incredibly jarring. A realization like this is an opportunity to keep on growing, keep on talking and learning about each other, and go even deeper with our understanding of how we relate to each other and how we protect ourselves.

I'm like you: I am done with betrayal, and my nonsense tolerance level decreases with each passing year. I will run off and live in a cottage in the woods with my crone girlfriends before I put up with any more stupid bullshit.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 12:21 AM, Friday, October 11th]

I'm also mildly surprised you would set something so black and white post madhatter situation.

Hmm not sure I understand this.

After a madhatters situation it’s like you almost go into this last ditch effort to put out the dumpster fire. Like it feels for a long time like what’s the point?

One of the things I worked on greatly after my affair was both integrity and understanding what my true value system was and why. So to live those values I actually don’t think it’s all that harsh to ask for no lying. I don’t feel lying is a necessary thing to do.

I often talk about the "loss of something integrity adjacent" because before I got cheated on, I always said I would divorce a cheater, but I didn't. I would say the lying is sufficient for you to D, if you want, but you aren't required to go through D because he did something that is sufficient grounds for D based on your agreements.

I agree with this to an extent. But where does that really stop? I don’t want a relationship where anyone has to lie about anything to keep it. I would rather be alone before I allowed that.

However, I do think it’s plausible he didn’t think about it. Like I said he hadn’t cheated, and I didn’t ask him but one time when we got back together if they had sex. Honestly, I don’t think it would have changed my mind because he hadn’t cheated. But I do think at the age I was and what I can remember about who I was, likely the reason I asked him back then was to feed my own insecurities.

It probably sounds awful that we broke up back then over another women, but it really wasn’t like that. Prior to being exclusive we were friends with benefits and we used to talk about people we were dating. We stopped being friends with benefits shortly prior to this because I was getting ready to go on a second or third date with someone I was interested in. That ended up not working out, we resumed our arrangement. But I was fully aware of how he felt about her when we decided to try and date each other for real. We were not at an I love you point or any of those things.

Are you being weak or flexible? Are you acting from fear or strength

?

I think you are right..this is what I need to ask myself. Because in one way it feels like I would be executing a loophole in divorcing over this and it makes no sense if that isn’t even what I really want.

But there is this other side of maybe it’s not what I wanted, but I may need to see from it something that I am ignoring because it goes against my hopes. That is the side that finally made me post something . I needed more people to weigh in to see what would resonate.

In some ways when people are saying the more lenient things I may be latching into those things because it’s a relief that I am not going to have to do something hard.

Ugh. I hate this. Had there not been cheating I don’t think I would be looking at any of this the same way.

I think we humans like to categorize things, and we need to know WHY something bad happened to us so that we can try to ensure that it doesn't happen again. We create a narrative, and we believe what we're saying. And we might have had good reason to believe it when we first came up with it, but over time, something happens and we realize that we placed too much stock in it. We hold onto it. It became our truth, except it's not exactly the truth.

Yes. Sadly. Yes.

I have just tried to remain humble in many ways knowing not having some of that would swing me from a doormat to a hypocrite, as I am sure you can imagine that’s a funny line to walk at times.

As a fellow mad hatter, I don't have to imagine!

Sometimes I wonder if I'm harder on your H because he and I are more aligned in madhatterdom than you and I. We're the MHs who were betrayed first, cheated longest, compartmentalized, and did not see our affairs as exit strategies. I may be protective in part because when I see myself in your spouse, I see my own husband in you.

Imachumo-

I suspect you are right about a lot of what you said. Honestly if I didn’t think that it was plausible that it wasn’t top of mind, there wouldn’t be a discussion.

I think it’s like some of the others suggested- this gives me a lot of fat to chew on who I believe he is, reconciling that with facts, and so forth.

I still don’t think I am filing something tomorrow or anything. I am disappointed and pissed in many ways, but some of it is just so ducking triggering. We get to a good place, we make a pact that I believed in, we even recently had a little ceremony in our back yard where yet again I am given a ring that I wanted to believe in.

I need to give this all some
Room to marinate. But I am glad I finally told someone.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm harder on your H because he and I are more aligned in madhatterdom than you and I. We're the MHs who were betrayed first, cheated longest, compartmentalized, and did not see our affairs as exit strategies. I may be protective in part because when I see myself in your spouse, I see my own husband in you.

Aw, I can see that. For sure. I do appreciate you coming out of lurking to help a sister out.

I can understand a memory being foggy after 30 years. But you first asked him at the time it happened, and he lied to you.

There's nothing wrong with his memory because 30 years later he answered yes, not "I can't remember".

He was honest with you in the here and now, I think that's more important than what was said during a break 30 years ago.

He was honest with you in the here and now, I think that's more important than what was said during a break 30 years ago.

I can agree with that.

However, after we did our polys we said okay let’s discuss any lies that have not been cleared up and then let’s be done with betrayal.

I think it’s plausible he didn’t think of it. I obviously didn’t think of it or I would have used that as an opportunity to ask. It was a long time ago.

The problem is it’s plausible he did think about it and decided to keep it brushed under the rug. And that’s the part I don’t know what to do with.

But you are right in many ways, I asked him, he knew I wasn’t gonna like the answer, and he still told me the truth. There would be no way for me to even fact check it other than to contact the lady and ask her which he knows I would not be likely to do.

Sigh.

think it’s plausible he didn’t think of it. I obviously didn’t think of it or I would have used that as an opportunity to ask. It was a long time ago.

The problem is it’s plausible he did think about it and decided to keep it brushed under the rug. And that’s the part I don’t know what to do with.

If it was the second of these two options I would think he wouldn't have admitted it? Why admit it now if he had remembered then. To me that seems a need to be completely honest?

If it was the second of these two options I would think he wouldn't have admitted it? Why admit it now if he had remembered then. To me that seems a need to be completely honest?

My feeling is it’s a different tier of lying. It’s a lot easier to justify an omission rather than someone asking you a question and bald face lying to them.

For example- my affair required no forming words into lying for the most part. It happened 1000 miles away in a place I was supposed to be for work. I didn’t have to come up with excuses or lies to cover up where I have been. Lying by omission is easier in some ways.

Had he outright asked me to my face I would have either told the truth or lied very badly that he would have sensed it, dug, and I would have folded.

Odds are I will never know the answer to my question for sure. But you are right, he didn’t hesitate to answer.

I had previously believed until two weeks ago that he had never lied to me other than the affair. And as bsr said for the most part I thought it was an aberration because he couldn’t cope with my affair.

His pet peeve is lying- our kids would all tell you that it’s the only thing that ever makes him mad. He always made that clear to all of us. I had been tempted a few times to tippy toe around something, to lie by omission. But I didn’t do it because I respected his stance and I knew that was the one thing he wouldn’t tolerate.

We have both made such a mess, that it’s almost I question my own judgement of him and the situation. Like do I just like to believe my marriage is one thing because I am an optimistic/positive person, but in reality am I just an idiot with a paint brush making the picture look the way I want it to?

Again, I don’t think I would be as bothered if he hadn’t managed to conduct an 18 month affair, in my house, with our employee without me having even an inkling something was wrong. As bsr said he Is a great compartmentalizer, and so it calls a lot into question regardless of him being honest when I asked.

[This message edited by hikingout at 5:16 AM, Friday, October 11th]

The problem is it’s plausible he did think about it and decided to keep it brushed under the rug. And that’s the part I don’t know what to do with.

That’s a big ol’ assumption, and you’re probably not inclined to trust his denial of it. The best practice is to accept that it’s not knowable rather than making up stories about it and stewing on it. Tough, I know.

We have both made such a mess, that it’s almost I question my own judgement of him and the situation. Like do I just like to believe my marriage is one thing because I am an optimistic/positive person, but in reality am I just an idiot with a paint brush making the picture look the way I want it to?

THIS is what I was trying to convey in my earlier post. I have slowly realized over many years that I often projected my values and thoughts and feelings onto his actions. When questioned, he’ll often surprise me by having an altogether different motivation or feeling than what I assumed.

Yikes this is such deep stuff. First off hiking it out I have profound respect for the work you do to help the betrayed and get unfaithfuls out of their bullshit.

My marriage ended because of lies. You can read my story in my profile. For me infidelity was also a deal breaker but I offered 1 second chance. That was it for me. I say all that to say that I've made the same internal pact with myself- never accept any lies in a relationship again. I just ended a great relationship with a lady for some major lies of omission. I told that would be the case and these weren't lies that occurred in our relationship but major lies about her past. When I confronted her directly she lied again - that was enough for me.

However I think your situation is a bit different and for me it's lies that are deceptive or manipulative that are game changers. You husband wasn't hiding the journal and when you asked a direct question, you got a direct honest answer. This may sound critical but you and your husband have both shown that your capable of the game changing lies. In no way am I sticking up for your husband but even as a betrayed I can rationally say it doesn't seem like your husband was trying to not be an honest broker.

Your personal pact and radically honesty agreement with him cannot create perfection or restore that blind trust you once had. I could be wrong but reading your words gives me the sense, that your "new deal" in a way was new grounds to create that blind trust we all yearn for if we are being honest with ourselves.

It seems that you two have found a way to truly reconcile through this trauma - most of us don't. My views on marriage and love have changed. Love creates the marriage - honesty, loyalty, forgiveness, selflessness, and continously growing together (most importantly growing together) feeds it's lifeforce.

I am not advocating to rug sweep any lies, but perfection is also an unattainable standard regardless of whatever internal pact and new deal we have made. If he is empathetic about the situation and remorseful then it's probably safe to say he didn't think of this when yall put together the new deal agreement. It doesn't excuse it, but it more likely means it was a mistake and a growth opportunity for you two.

Just my 2 cents

[This message edited by Fit43 at 3:36 PM, Friday, October 11th]

We have both made such a mess, that it’s almost I question my own judgement of him and the situation. Like do I just like to believe my marriage is one thing because I am an optimistic/positive person, but in reality am I just an idiot with a paint brush making the picture look the way I want it to?

I do think you try to project motivations on him that make you feel better about his actions and your willingness to accept them. As a wayward, this is easier and possibly even necessary to do because we have to live in humility. I think this also comes naturally for you because your relationship started in a power imbalance, with you being younger and anxious to please and him being older and wanting to mentor. The resentments that led to your affair were grounded in being angry, exhausted, and unheard but not knowing how to take your power back. When you were ready to leave the marriage, you chose to do something that would get you fired rather standing up to quit. Once you realized what a bad choice that was, re-entering the subordinate role was familiar territory for you. I'm not saying you were happy to be there, but there is a certain clarity and almost relief in a black and white situation where one person is right and the other is wrong. You didn't have to wonder if you should be standing up for yourself. Short of abuse, complaining about pre-infidelity problems in the marriage is off the table for a WS.

Because of this, I think the BW mantle has always sat uneasily on your shoulders. I get that you were righteously pissed, and I'm not implying that you just let him get away with his affair. He definitely had to spend some time in the hot seat. But still, IMO, you feel more comfortable self-identifying as a WW, as if an affair of a few weeks where you confessed and reformed is much worse than a years-long affair in your home, with an employee, who was the wife of another employee who respected and supported him in the aftermath of D-Day. He made you a BW, and his friend an OBS, while collecting the benefits (including not only the moral high ground, but also the legal and financial advantage of a post-nup) of a BH. He insisted he wouldn't tolerate one more lie from you while lying to you daily for years. I think deep down, you know that's extreme behavior even for a compartmentalizer. You made sense of it by interpreting his hypocrisy as a trauma response, because if that's really just who he is, you feel it demands a re-evaluation from you of something foundational about yourself and your willingness to overlook it.

I think it's good that you're asking yourself these questions. I don't necessarily think it's the end of the road to see him as inherently flawed rather than a victim of circumstance. We established long ago that he couldn't have cheated if the tools weren't sitting there inside him, waiting for the trigger to pick them up. You're similar in so many ways, with resentment having smoothed the path to entitlement, with insecurities that led you to self-soothing and subterfuge instead of walking out on the high road. He is more hypocritical than you knew, more hypocritical than you. Does that mean you have to make a pact with yourself to leave him if he only manages a patchy version of the work? If you see him with absolute clarity, will you lose your respect for and attraction to him? Or do his good qualities and the life you've built together outweigh that disillusionment? These are the questions that every BS has to ask themselves. That world is far grayer than the world of the WS.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 11:38 AM, Friday, October 11th]