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Another thought, as my wife’s confession after years of denial is in doubt (claims to have stopped after making out with her coworker even though they were at a hotel) Ikve been on a quest to squeeze her for the truth. This delay in finding out makes it almost impossible. Witnesses of the night (people at the party) had 10 year old memories of the event, unreliable.. I could ask the AP but why would he be truthful? A polygraph then. An option, but ever since her confession, my wife has had work set backs, death of a fav pet etc. I can’t bring myself to strong arm her to an examiner. This late confession probably robbed me of the truth forever.. I might just have to believe that she gave herself fully to him and see if I can get over it, maybe.

Bittn, My spouse's kissing affair was 15 years ago and I thought the same. I might as well believe the worst. 9 months after DD I just couldn't stop rumination, it was blocking our forward movement so the poly was scheduled. WH wrote out everything he could remember and the polygraph questions were if there was anything withheld or lied about in the disclosure letter. He passed and although it was so super stressful, he said he is so glad he did it. It's the consequences of secrets and betrayal, a few hours of intense acute stress is the least they could do as BS's anguish for months and years.

I might just have to believe that she gave herself fully to him and see if I can get over it, maybe.

I suggest that all the time to new BS. You can't conclusively prove a negative (that she didn't) retroactively. TT means that doubt is deep seated in your mind. Polygraphs can help but even those are imperfect. I would believe that suggesting a Poly can be helpful to both of you. Yes it's going to be stressful to her. But if she has not gone all the way, having her story verified by the poly will give her and you something to build on in repairing your trust in her.

@LessThinking and @Grubbs, Yeah, I can’t make myself believe that she danced and ground on him, walked away hand in hand with him in front of her coworkers to go make out, stopped him in less than a minute and had him and drive the two of them back to the hotel where they went to their separate rooms. That’s her story. Admittedly she looks truthful when telling it, but I can’t buy it. A polygraph is they only thing that could convince me otherwise without getting the exact story from the OM or something..

Nothing new to add, just a short rant about how much I hate this shit sandwich.

After the dust has settled, one-year post-DDay, keeping this secret from me for 15 years, until I discovered it because you reached out to the old AP to say "Hi, remember when", is the deepest cut. This alone may be the deal breaker for me. I ruminate on this so much. The limbo is like hell on earth. I think when I saw that text I decided I wanted to divorce you. Now, it feels like I'm trying my darndest to undecide that because you are this new person.

End rant...thank you.

@lessthinking, the "new person" angle gets play with me as well. Sure, my wife betrayed me, publicly, with total disregard for how that humiliation would affect me and then lied about it. But... That was over 10 years ago. She does seem to be a different person. This is a bit of the catch 22 of finding out years later. I think my wife is still lying and minimizing. If she wasn't, I would prob move right on from in with this new version of her. She came closer this weekend. When I told her that I didn't believe that she stopped at making out, she didn't outright deny the sex (though she had many times before), instead asking me to move on because "we are all Fallible". That is a different response... For her to be new and separate from my betrayer, I need full truth. Hope you have full truth in your case

@Brittn
Have you come any closer to scheduling a polygraph, and is your wife tracking that that's a possibility?

@1994 I spoke with her about it this weekend! She doesn’t believe in them, says that she is worried that the results are B.S. It was my first real push for it. Not my last.

@1994 I spoke with her about it this weekend! She doesn’t believe in them, says that she is worried that the results are B.S. It was my first real push for it. Not my last.

It's good you're making headway. I know you want her to pass, but you should prepare yourself for parking lot confessions as you get closer. She'll probably keep resisting and come with 1,000 reasons why it's a bad idea, but at least you'll get closer to the truth...whether she passes or not.
Stay strong.

Brittn,

Unfortunately, I understand your predicament all too well. I got loads of lies and wanted to do a poly. Then, I told her if that didn’t provide the results I wanted, we would try hypnosis. We would have had to travel for that as there are not many reliable sources, but it scared the begesus out of her. She tried to challenge me as to why I would put her through such humiliation but that was quickly tamped down.

I am not suggesting what I did was right, wrong, or indifferent, but it did give me the peace of mind knowing that she had been full of shit for years with multiple lies about multiple events. At first, I didn’t tell her I wanted to do a poly. I just wrote a list of about 20 questions that had simple true/false or yes/no questions. I told her I wanted her to write her answers down on that sheet of paper. She skipped a few that she didn’t want to answer. I made sure to scan that sheet so I had a digital copy. Then on another day, I handed her the same list of questions on a new piece of paper. This time I told her I would forgive the lies and omissions the first time she answered if she understood what happens next.

I told her that she will answer all the questions. We will only have one question for the poly. It will be if she was truthful about everything on that list of questions. If she declined to answer, it was time to D. If the poly said she was lying, it was time to D. If the poly cam back clean, it was on to hypnosis. It scared me too because I knew it was worth it and there was no turning back. She answered all the questions and most of them were a different answer than the first time, and unfortunately many are what I expected. I am not sure that the answers I saw were any less damaging than what D would have been. It crushed my soul. But I needed something to prove to myself that I wasn't going crazy and that some of my assumptions were correct. The collateral damage was so much truth that helped me know that other things over the years were lies too.

So, there is a way to get some truth without the poly. But, the longer you wait, the more fuzzy it will become for everyone, including you. The other side is that you need to be doubly sure that you really want to know because once you do, you can’t un-ring that bell.

Good luck with whatever you decide. More than truth, I wish you peace.