What is a tripod/my marriage made me do it affair like for a WS?

WS only

1 comment posted: Wednesday, December 13th, 2023

Wife had affair but I’m unable to get her to come clean.

Ok so I’m going to try to condense this as much as possible because there’s been a lot going on in my life and my marriage and it’s only in the last 6 months that I’ve come to appreciate how much of it I was largely unaware of.

So back at the beginning of spring last year I was coming out of my own dark time I’d been stuck in for roughly 6 years. Long story short I had a traumatic experience just prior to the birth of my daughter only I lived the experience for almost 6 months straight. The closet thing to a formal diagnosis I got from any professionals was severe ocd plus anxiety. A few family members have said after looking back on the entire thing that it seemed similar to cptsd . I suppose maybe whatever it was then doesn’t matter too much as far as why I’m here now.

At any rate starting early last spring after finding a great therapist a year prior I started coming to in the sense I was no longer largely stuck in my head simply trying to hold down my gov job and surviving day to day with mental illness. As I started coming to so to speak I stated kind of processing all the thing I remember that happened while I was sick. Meanwhile my wife’s wedding ring broke 2x in a very short time period. (3 times during our marriage) I also happen to find information about infidelity around this time and as I started learning about the signs I realized my wife’s behavior was being described almost to the T.

Sometime early in the process I remember something that occurred several months prior involving a few strange bumps my wife complained about where the sun don’t shine. It was at this point I started investigating and I won’t get too far into details because some of the things I did to get the information I got would probably be considered quite unethical. Anyway to further condense things down I was very alarmed to learn that my wife like hanging out at random houses around town for 2 to 3 hours at a time.usually after going shopping or to mail salon or getting hair done. I later determined at least 2 of these places were vrbos .

As I was discovering this I found some messages that she had exchanged with a family friend , a person I’ve known since high school and go figure also was my best man at our wedding. Needless to say the messages were very flirty and had been deleted days after I discovered them. At this point I dug further and I started putting together more memories I had of their interactions. As the days wore on I came to the conclusion my wife certainly had an affair and most likely with my best man. I can’t be certain how long the affair lasted but the hot message block that was wiped was 6 months worth. Other things I found and going by my own memory I concluded the affair lasted at least 6 month and could have even started prior to me getting sick by 6to 10 month.(so as long as 7 years)

During the time I did a secret paternity test which I’m pretty sure my wife found out about by going through my emails as someone logged in at a time that I wasn’t home and around the time this happened she started saying things like "you she’s your kid right?" At any rate the test indicated she was in fact my child. (Whew) Once the test came back i decided best to try to repair my marriage as it appeared the affair my wife had been having ended several months prior and I’d already noticed a change in her behavior indicating the affair was likely over.

Fast forward several months of us working on things and after a anniversary vacation trip she said the had not felt this good about our relationship since we got engaged which in her mind had been the pinnacle of our relationship. While I was rather elated to hear this I couldn’t help but feel that voice in my head saying but wait what about when we got married? But for some reason she didn’t think that was the best part of our relationship.

Up to this point I’d only expressed concern about her faithfulness once about 7 weeks prior to the trip and she gaslit the living shit outta me and at that stage in the process I was like a deer in headlights and totally botched the process and when I realized how in over my head i was I pretended she had convinced me that I was just crazy and to see my therapist. I’d convinced her to go with me to the therapist and wow did she seem very uncomfortable sitting there. I could totally see her storming out of that place screaming expletives and the entire thing ending very badly so as we dug into things I went with the narrative that my concerns were mostly driven by just the broken rings and lack of sleep.

At any rate things seemed to be going pretty good up until a few weeks after our trip. During all this time I’d been absorbing and analyzing everything my wife said trying to make sense of the new reality I’d found myself in. During the trip I remember her mentioning how if we ever broke up she could totally see herself reaching out for an occasional bootycall assuming I had not cheated on her. At this point I decided to ask her how being with someone else at that point might affect her opinion on engaging in that activity and her reply indicted she’d still be open to considering the idea. I considered this significant as when we first got together she would talk about how much she utterly hated cheaters and would never think of cheating.

Fast forward to a few weeks after the trip and things a going good, but it bothers me every time my wife tells me something I know is a lie in light of what I’ve learned. I actually want her to feel like she doesn’t have to keep lying to me and that I’ve essentially decided to forgive her for the transgressions that occurred while I was sick so one day I decided to compassionately confront her about what I’d learned over during the last few months.

So I compassionately confront my wife with my concerns after things seem to be going so much better and much to my surprise she goes totally and utterly ballistic gaslighting to the extreme and obviously lying and she was so hysterical during it all I was stuck like a deer in headlights again. I remember how during all this she did 4 of the 5 things people typically do when they are lying according to a LE video I watched about how to tell if someone was lying. The thing that blew me away the most was the sheer level of hostility she was conveying. I remember once when we were dating my sister took a crappy photo of my wife supposedly flirting with some random dude and when I confronted her about it she denied it was her but did so with grace compassion and empathy.

The other thing that shocked me during her outburst was she actually said I was only her husband and not her friend and that maybe she should just go out and if she "talks to someone she talks to someone." It seemed clear to me what was being insinuated here and given how great things had been only weeks ago I was too shocked and blown away to be able to articulate an appropriate reaction. At this point given this and other things she had been saying here and there it seemed as if the wife I knew when we got married was no more and now I have the same wife with a different set of values. I will say given what she has told me about some of the dreams she has had and things she has said it’s like she has the bad girl alt ego split ID thing going on in there.

So after the big blowup my wife did the total emotional withdrawal bit unless my daughter was present and this went on for several days. After which she claimed the reason for the blow up was mainly due to an answer I gave to one of the couples questions a day earlier but I really don’t buy that at all. At any rate thus far besides the occasional lie that crops up everything seems to be going pretty good. I can’t say I’ve noticed much that would lead me to suspect my wife is currently having an affair but I do wonder how much longer it will be before the next shoe drops.

One of the challenging and disheartening aspects of this ordeal is the utter lack of resources geared toward someone going through this while also dealing with mental illness. It seems like most of what I have found regarding mental illness and affairs is geared toward BS who has a WS that is mentally Ill but not the other way around. While I’m sure some people might not think it would make that much of a difference I can tell you that in my situation it does. I know this is harder not only for me as a result of what I went through but for my wife as well. I feel like this could be a factor preventing my wife from coming clean or at least admitting that it happened which would be huge for me given beyond that the only other 3 things I’d really want to know is why, the start date and what shit was said about me behind my back.

At this point I’ve learned more about relationships
In the last 6 months then I have during the rest of my entire life and then some. I can honestly say looking back at everything ignorance when it comes to relationships is not bliss ignorance is the highway to hell. In light of that I realize there were issues early on even when dating apparently being a knight in shining armor does not bode well for love and even up until a couple months ago that’s what my wife would describe me as when she remembers me from our dating years. If only I had known then I could have bailed easy.

Now I feel like I’m kinda stuck in this strange mildly intimidating new reality. Things look relatively good on the surface at the moment but I can’t help but feel like the status quo is not stable long term.

33 comments posted: Thursday, November 9th, 2023