SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Your feelings do matter. My situation is that he's cheating emotionally and sexually. It's not control if she was hiding it at first. I would feel the same way. Ask yourself how do you think she would feel if the shoe was on the other foot? I'm sorry you're going through this. The pain is real and you should follow your gut. I regret not following mine. Good Luck and I hope you figure out what's best for you.

You are the third person in your own marriage. Not only is she continuing to date Bozo, but I'm sure she is sharing your personal, marital, financial business with him. Nothing is sacred. You are a convenience. This "friendship" is not acceptable in your marriage.

You know what every professional has failed to address?

The addiction aspect of this affair. Yes that’s right - the addiction.

I saw this with my H’s affairs. One long term EA (before it was a word) and one EA turned Physical affair that had him convinced he should D me to be with the much younger OW.

My H admitted after the fact that he was blindsided by the "addiction" the affair gave him. He thought it was true love (which is just the infatuation stage of his affair).

Your wife is addicted to how Bozo makes her feel. And that is what is keeping her involved with him. She doesn’t see how she can dump him b/c then all those feelings of happiness and adoration will stop.

My H was a shy guy growing up. But as the women came out of the woodwork as he became successful, he thrived on the attention. The more women flirted with him, the bigger the ego boost. And then boom, that flirty behavior led to an affair.

Stop excising your wife’s behavior with excuses about her childhood. She’s lying and cheating. And she knows it.

Com1c, I am so sorry you are in this situation, and right around Christmas too, which adds a new layer of torment to the whole debacle.

I don’t think the knife can be withdrawn until she acknowledges that the knife and the wound exist, and she has to be the one to pull it out.

Well, in this instance you can take hold of that metaphorically lodged knife. She needs to go non-contact (NC) with said-AP post-haste. If there's one thing many of us who have gone through this particular hell know, is that at this point you 99.9% only know a fraction of what has gone on. Adults don't 'fall in love' and become protective of someone for whom the connection is purely emotional. Sadly, as per tradition, they've slept together. First things first, address your health. Get tested. It's a simple blood+urine test. Even telling your WW that you are doing this tells its own message: 'I don't believe you, and I am taking actions to protect myself going forward appropriately.'

In regards to talking about her childhood; you are going through what's known as the bargaining stage of grief. 'If only x didn't happen, she wouldn't have cheated.' Bollocks to that my friend! People with far worse backgrounds manage to not cheat. As hard as it is to hear, they cheat because they want to. Your WW willingly cheated on you, because she wanted to. As I told my exWW, 'I could have been 90s Brad Pitt with the bank account of Bill Gates...you still would have cheated.' She agreed. Embrace that incredulousness you feel at her audacity to do so, and harness it to protect and remove yourself from infidelity.

She's still in the fog, don't be her co-pilot.

As much as this sucks (and I know it does), try to have a great Christmas tomorrow. Don't mask your feelings, if you feel hurt, let yourself feel hurt and vice-versa.

So have you considered stopping by and joining them for coffee, introducing yourself to bozo while giving the wife a hug and kiss? Gage the reaction of both? How do you feel the wife would react.
As to her saying its a deal breaker to stop it, well my dad said you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Im not you of course and respect your feelings, but time to shake the wifes world up! She feels.she is controlling all this with you.

Is a purely emotional affair no big deal? If I think it is a big deal and she doesn’t, am I still justified in my objections or am I just being hyper-controlling?
(…)
I do think she honestly believes this is no big deal.

Hey Com1c, I’m sorry you are going through this. My husband had an EA that he minimized a lot for years. I wouldn’t so easily believe that your wife thinks it is no big deal. I requested a bump of the "Emotional Affairs" thread in the I Can Relate subforum. I think you might benefit from reading some stories there. They show how devastating EAs are, and what kind of behavior / minimizing you can expect from your wife. They might help you to open your eyes and realize that indeed it is a big deal.

the marriage counselor is of the opinion that, although she may have started down the road to infidelity, nothing physical happened.

Looks like this is true. Whoop-de-doo. (Should the be 'whoop-de-due to truly rhyme?) If the mc thinks you should therefore ignore her non-physical betrayal, my reco is to fire the MC. In fact, MC sees your M as the client that needs to be treated. Your M hasn't failed. Your W has broken your M, and your M can't be rebuilt unless your W accepts that. She doesn't. So IMO, MC is premature unless you find an MC who sees their work as getting your W to recognize that she is responsible for her A.

My reaction is that an EA is cheating and that I am the one who says what constitutes cheating on me. She gets to decide what is cheating on her.

Both of those statements are true, too. Whoop-de-doo-due.

If you genuinely accepted the 'friendship' as not a betrayal, OK. That's your choice. But you don't accept it. You see it as an A and as a betrayal (as do the folks here). You have a lot of very painful feelings, and you need to heal from that. You can heal with her, if she agrees it's an A and if she agrees to prevent future betrayals. You can heal without her. I don't see how you can heal and R unless you agree on what her friendship is.

My reco is to avoid any manipulation that corners your W. R is hard work, and it succeeds only if both partners choose it freely. If your W doesn't truly want it in her gut, I believe she will build up more and more resentment as time goes on, and you'll be unhappy.

What do you want? Do you want to spend the rest of your life together? The work you both have to do to R can build a really satisfying relationship. It's really nice to wake up in the morning next to the person you want to be close to, knowing they want to be close to you. That's open to you if you both want it enough to do the necessary work. But do you want that with your W? Do you think she'll do the necessary work?

Right now, she doesn't even acknowledge her A or how much it hurt you. She's not a good candidate for R right now.

At least that's what you describe.

Is a purely emotional affair no big deal? If I think it is a big deal and she doesn’t, am I still justified in my objections or am I just being hyper-controlling?

IMO, hell, yes, it's a big deal.

Justification isn't the issue at all. The issue is that you believe - as most of us here - do - that she has betrayed you, and you're in pain because you've been betrayed.

At some point you'll have to address the elephant in the room: is it worth staying with her if she doesn't change herself from betrayer to good partner?

Right now, IMO, you have to process your pain out of your body. That's going to be a lot easier if she accepts responsibility for her A.

*****

Bottom line: I think you're in touch with reality, and I urge you to ignore your W's and your MC's messed up views.

Just because the counselor "thinks" this is not a PA yet, doesn't prove anything, just look at your member number, we've seen it play out THOUSANDS of times here on SI and other forums. Order a VAR (Voice Activated Recorder) or two online and put it in her car under the seat with velcro, put the second one in the bedroom/bathroom.

OTOH you need to stop "reacting" to her moves and start being proactive, EXPOSE her A with family, close friends an OBS if any, blow this out of the water, stop waiting on her to "pull the knife" and do it yourself, again she's dating Bozo right in front of you, stop wasting your time and money in MC/IC, none of that is going to work while she's actively cheating on you.

Sir ball is in your court.

Continuing to askjng the status from the cheater is useless. They always lie or sanitize and it cause you frustration

Right now, she has less care for you compared to a stranger may have towards you otherwise she will be open to you fully. You should get that into your mind

Right now she has the best of both worlds, as they say take actions like you are going to end it to save the marriage.

Doing counseling while she continue to see him is useless and also empower her

What you do depend on you level of dependency - emotional, financial and other. If you depend on her you have to compromise taking it as your fate and resign to it and taking actions to make you a more independent person in the long run. Otherwise DO NOT compromise.

After all do not depend on anyone for your happiness and welfare. It always end in frustration.

What did you do with the BOSO. light some dumpster fires like telling his partner or letting him know you are on to him

She knows that her continued association with Bozo causes me immense pain, and she has apologized for causing that pain

huh her audacity. She thinks she can manipulate you as she wishes

[This message edited by goalong at 2:38 PM, Sunday, December 25th]

Tell me , do ýou now have access to her phone ?
How do you know she isn't still in contact with him ?

I got advice along the lines of, "the only reason you shouldn't be reading all of their communications is because you tragically lost your vision and your lawyer is reading them to you."

I think it's good advice.

[This message edited by This0is0Fine at 6:02 AM, Tuesday, December 27th]

Never mind. It turns out this has all been my fault. The other night, I told her that I just don’t feel like I’m important to her. She was really upset that I would say such a thing, and she said it was my problem, not hers. She scheduled a counseling appointment with our MC. According to the MC, it’s all in my head. My relationship with my mother left me so needy that nobody can fill the void in my life. And I chose the wrong career (a mind-numbing career that coincidentally paid for W’s college and graduate school at the cost of my own sense of self-worth). Gee, what could I have been thinking?

She flat out denied that she ever said that she would take Bozo over me. To be fair, she forgets things when she's drunk. The MC told me that when she said it in front of the MC, she was just saying that she wasn’t going to be bullied by me and that the other times never happened. She is entitled to have her friends and her privacy. She also denied that she was in an emotional affair with Bozo, despite having used exactly that term to describe the relationship in an early session with the MC. MC didn’t remember her using that phrase.

Apparently, she needs Bozo as a friend and really likes him. Her work is so overwhelming that sometimes she just needs to get away from it for a little while. She only sees him once a month or so and then only for coffee. The texts, the phone calls, the regular coffee breaks, the lunches, and the after-work drinks apparently are a figment of my imagination. She said she doesn’t want to have lunch with me because I smother her and talk about the same old things, which couldn’t possibly have anything to do with what she wants to talk about, only what I want to talk about.

I have no problem with her having friends, male or female. She has a bunch of them, and the only one I have ever had a serious problem with is Bozo. By the way, I saw a text of his recently that said he thinks about her all the time. She did not respond that she missed him too, but neither did she shut him down.

Bottom line, she will still be seeing him without me being able to see his texts. She is too busy to talk with me about it; I am a bully; and I have to see a new therapist from a list recommended by her therapist to deal with my issues about self-esteem so I can go back to work to earn money for her in some capacity.

The remaining open questions are probably my fault too, such as why she rejected me in bed for five years (she said menopause eradicated her interest in sex and made it too painful) and then all of a sudden her interest revived because sex had suddenly become interesting again and it wasn’t painful anymore (how did she discover that?) and why she deceived me about Bozo until he texted her while I was holding her phone. But I guess I will suddenly realize that I made all of that up too. :maniacal laugh:

I’m sorry your W is disrespecting you this way. You have to decide what you are willing to accept. You have told her this is an inappropriate relationship, but she doesn’t care. Your MC is a waste of time.

It’s time for a hard 180 while you decide what to do with a M that is on life support.

My friend, you have nothing to work with here. Please, please, PLEASE do not ever go back to this MC or to any counselor recommended by them. It’s bad enough that your WS treats you with complete selfish disregard, but with the MC, she has a team to undermine you and gaslight you.

Please free yourself. The situation you are in will continue to damage you horribly.

Time to file for D. Anything else is you rolling over and letting her shit in you while telling you it's just dark rain.

For more of the story, we are in therapy, both individual and joint. The counselors have all spoken with one another

What is your IC’s opinion of your marriage counselor? If it’s something short of don’t give that fraud another dollar maybe you should find another IC as well.

[This message edited by asc1226 at 1:56 AM, Thursday, January 5th]

Did you bring up that last text he sent her with the therapist? Are they in la la land?

Don't let a therapist run your marriage. I know you know this already. You can see a lawyer or you could look for an ifidelity experienced therapist and see what they say about this. But she has an external yahoo on her side so maybe she won't listen until you file.

Keep the friendship, frequent meetings and texts with another man honey. But you can't have that and me.

You have to say it unless there is another compromise you are ok with?

[This message edited by Trdd at 2:09 AM, Thursday, January 5th]

It sounds like you could hire a PI and get a lot of answers in just a few days.

Wow!!! I think you need to separate from her pronto.

Your mental health is more important than your lying cheating wife’s opinion and her therapist’s stupidity in not seeing the reality of the affair.

Sadly you have nothing to work with regarding repairing your marriage. You don’t need liars to validate anything. You know what you read and you know the truth.

I am so sorry for you. Read up on the 180. Now!