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The timeline is basically done and I have read what there is. It isn’t anything new but can’t finalize it till get one additional piece of information. This is one thing I wanted the "expertise" of folks here on. So there is one date which occurs in the "worst month" when cheating went on. It is tied to a meeting. This is 8 years ago so frankly all the timing of everything is very muddy. But this bar they went to (god, I feel so stupid being so detailed, I realize no one else seems to get detailed—I’m just like a detail person). Anyway, this bar they went to…they got there and he refused to order b/c it was weird for them to see each other out of office and he was nervous and kind of no longer wanted to be doing this, especially not at this bar from her college years when he’s there in a suit. He says I’m done with this after like 5 min and leaves. So, without all the detail this date was a shift, from wanting to be ALL IN (doing whatever she wanted) to starting to want to get out.

He goes straight from the bar to a board meeting. To get the date of the board meeting he has to ask his current CEO. Should I have him ask her? He is totally game to do it, despite the fact that he is in senior management and it could probably affect her opinion of him (though honestly she already knows about all this junk b/c she was there when it happened and EVERYONE knew. It’s no big secret). But, it is a reminder. I’m not sure I would want an important senior colleague to be reminded of my worst act. But, she has been very kind over the last 8 years. There was a push for all the spouses to invest in the company and I refused unless I could have confirmation the AP would never be allowed back, and this CEO did give me that. And when they tried to assign him a new secretary that I was uncomfortable with she helped us find a compromise. (I know it’s a mess right?). Anyway, I do want this date. I want the timeline to mean something, but should I let him email the CEO? It could also be viewed as a boundary crossing, so maybe thats bad?

Friend, I respect you and enjoy reading everything you say. You have the right to pursue what you believe will bring you peace. I have not pursued that level of detail, haven’t been interested, and I think I’ve been healing without it. That is all I have to add to this, my own understanding of my own experience.

I think for some people there is a valid need to capture the meaning of the affair and receive the truth in far more intricate detail than a simple time line is able to convey. I too am one.of those people. If I could know what songs were playing on WW's car radio as she drove to work and see her AP, I would absorb that information eagerly, also what was she thinking as she smelled the pommade in his hair, what mundane conversations did they share, what affectionate terms of endearment did they use for each other, what did they say about me, what did she share about our domestic life and marital habits? Was WW ever reluctant to have a x with him, or was she voluptuous and eager as she shed her nurses uniform and slide in next to AP in the On Call room bed reserved for Residents and Interns? Most of this I will never know, as it all happened over a several year span, fifty years ago and WW's memory is unable to recall at that precise targeted level of detail. Filling in the gaps on my own is a risky and fruitless endeavor. It is all so frustrating, so I am.left with only the single option of believing her diminished story line or cut bait. But since I decided to remain soon after D day, my choice has been.made and I accept the outcome.

But since I decided to remain soon after D day, my choice has been.made and I accept the outcome.

This, this, I have to say I object to, for myself. I have decided to try from early on, but not to the point of accepting anything and everything. I think it’s important to identify some check points of what we want and at least try to hold to them if they don’t materialize in an R attempt.

I’m not sure why you need this exact date. Your CH has done more than so many cheaters — he did the timeline. He probably answered a thousand questions. He probably undertook a Herculean effort to make amends.

But embarrassing him many years later at his job is not something I would ever do to my H. IMO (and I know this won’t be the popular opinion here at SI) I think there are boundaries that at this point should be respected.

Embarrassing your H at his job is one of them. If the roles were reversed and its many years later and you were R, would you want your H asking your employer about a date that appears to be arbitrary? Wouldn’t you be embarrassed by that?

I hope you can see from a Reconciliation position that this is damaging. Whether you realize it or not, I hope this doesn’t cause resentment or frustration from your H.

I do not think this is a good idea. I’m sorry to say it, but I think this is something you should accept that the date is somewhere around X date.

I feel so stupid being so detailed, I realize no one else seems to get detailed—I’m just like a detail person

*raises hand* I am a stupid details person too. As a fellow bone-digger, let me ask you this:

What will having the exact date do for you?

InHulk: Perhaps I didn't articulate it well, as what I mean is that despite my desire for a more complete understanding of the dynamic of WW's affair in its several iterations, as her AP came into her life, left, then returned, I made the decision to stay and accordlngly, I accept that I will.never fully know what transpired in the way I would like to know.
I find however, that having a fuller account of any transgression helps me defuse some of the pain potential, make it more mundane and less mysterious because when you see something in an altered light, complete with warts and all, with every bit of bizarre and idiosyncratic behavior exposed the magic tends to evaporate both for the BS and the WS.
For the longest time my WW thought she had been in love with this married doctor who paid her attention, validated her nursing skills and pimped her with tenderness after she began flirting with him, but on examining what really happened she now realizes that he was using her as a sexual plaything. It took a long time before WW was able to confront the reality of the destruction she had caused in entering into this Faustian bargain of a transactional relationship.I don't think we would have arrived at this mutual understanding of her affair without my patient but persistent search for fuller more ample details.

Is the date of the board meeting not written in his calendar? Can he get a fix on the date from emails or minutes? Can he get the info from a fellow board member?

I doubt the CEO as forgotten about your W's A. If he can't figure the date out himself, I don't see significant fallout from his asking.

My reco is to ask yourself why you need the precise date, though. You've got a general idea, right? Do you want the precise date because you sense that he's holding something back, because you want to shame him by making him ask the CEO, or what?

You may want the info because you like dotted 'i's and crossed 't's, but IMO it's worth checking your reasons.

I hope never to make a bs question themselves but I wonder if you keep moving the goal posts. People who cheat do not care about anything else while engaged in it. If she was more invested than he you already know as much as you will ever know. If he was more invested than her you already know as much as you will ever know. Try to look at what realistic outcome this particular answer will bring.

Details keep trains running on time but they can stop a train from ever leaving the station. You have a timeline. Unless there is total recall on both your parts you will never get every detail. This seems to be a sense of loss of control which makes me think you might be operating from a boatload of anxiety. If that is the case you can try exercises such as hiking, hobbies such as painting, buying/rescuing a dog and more. If nothing seems to help you might need to see your dr about something to help. This stress is not good for your overall health.

I think for something 8 years ago, having the month is pretty good. I'll second the question of why the exact date matters? Was there something that happened to you around the same timeframe that you would now see in a different light? That's usually why I want to know exact timing.

My WH's affair is much more recent (2020-2022), but he is terrible with dates. The best I could get out of him has been relative times (did it happen before or after X event?). He never put his AP meetups in his calendar. He might've had stuff in their message exchanges, but he deleted all of that months before he got around to making a real timeline. He had an EA back in 2014 and the only reason I know the timing is because they were on a work trip together and I'd written about it in my journal. He couldn't even recall the exact year.

My Google calendar still shows meetings from 8 years ago as well as my corporate Outlook. I realize some people set theirs to delete meetings after a while to open up space. Like Sisoon mentioned, from a Board meeting there should be notes or emails that were saved. Even a corporate Intranet may have a record of those. Or another Board member or one of the Administrative Assistants or an Analyst who created data for the meeting may have the date. Also these meetings are generally on a cadence. Could you extrapolate a date from when the Board Meeting was in the same month this year? Going to the CEO seems kind of extreme…

Also, like others have said, what is the importance of the exact date? Are you trying to recreate what you were doing on a specific day you know he acted out? It appears your WH has given a pretty complete accounting of his actions this particular day. Having the month and an approximate date seems like it should be good enough. My WW struggles with the YEAR some of her acting out was let alone the month or day. I would be happy if she would/could declare her longest LTA was 5-7 months (like she "thinks") or 18-24 months as the "evidence" indicates…..

At any rate, here’s hoping you find answers to give you solace.

Most companies keep a fairly static quarterly board schedule — and all of the ones I knew were always first or second week of the month and then each company setting a preference of which 1-3 days (depending on the company) the board meets, and they usual keep to that, always starts on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Unless his company constantly changes those weeks/days, he should be able to give a very close estimation of the day.

I needed as many actual day and dates as I could get.

Our reality is not our reality until we get to put the puzzle back together with what REALLY happened.

At least, those specifics helped me.

Thank you Oldwounds: I guess I too am trying to piece together what my reality was, and now has become, by aligning details with my WW's in affair perception of her reality. The minutiae often by accident, lead to bigger pieces of the puzzle and although the picture will.inevitably have missing pieces, I feel I better understand the " meaning" of her affair because of this joint effort. My wife has shown by her new openness that she is fully.in, although it did take A modified 180 a few.months ago, to propel her into " getting it".
So my advice is, if you think you need specific dates, places and times for your own healing, don't hold back in seeking the truth. I made the mistake of swallowing my pain and misery too long.

Thank you everyone for the feedback. Ink thanks for leaving it up to me :) you must be a great dad. 1st wife- thanks for pointing out he’s done a lot, not sure anyone’s said that before. It helped me start to lay off him a bit already, even tonight!

SSee, C2here, Sissoon, Nothanks, ImaChump and OldWounds: I feel like there was consensus! Wow

The date is gone from all of our emails/texts et cetera because I had the brilliant idea a year ago to delete everything. So virtually everything is gone from that entire year, it was 4 months after he confessed that the whole thing 7 years earlier had been physical and I was distraught.

It seems like most folks are suggesting I might need to think about why I need this date. On some level I don’t. I was just lied to for so long. We were having active conversations all those 7 years about the incident with the secretary, which had gotten very messy. Everyone believed there had been an affair but I believed his version of events. So he was concocting a lot of nonsense that whole time.

I think maybe I don’t need that date. I’m just sad that this happened. I want something to "fix it" and sometimes it seems like maybe one more piece of information might do the trick. I know it’s not true deep down. The whole thing altered my perception of reality, as I guess it does for everyone. Sometimes I even wish he just hadn’t told me. I am running scared from the idea that I might be one of those people for whom it’s a dealbreaker. But, I really want to be with him. He has done everything I’ve asked and more and we have a lot of fun together, love our kids, great sex, he wants to spend all of his non-work time together. I should be happy. Why can’t I let it go. This horrible "found out years later" thing is such a mindf#$%. I should be 8 year out, I should be really healed, he’s never so much as sent an overly friendly text to a female since this thing. But instead it feels much more like 1.5 years out and turns out my seemingly shy soft-spoken husband actually makes out on office desks. I can’t wrap my head around it.

Anyway, thank you so very much for the input. I think I don’t want him to ask for the date. I wanted to know when he started to turn down her attempts to get him out of the office, finally started to push back. It sounds like she wanted to make it more romantic, less seedy. But whether that happened one week earlier or 2 weeks later, I suppose doesn’t mean much.

(Vocation, I am very sorry for what you’ve been through. Having spent most of my young life working in hospitals the dynamic nurse/resident is only too familiar. It is an aspect of my husband’ cheating and his current work environment. Everyone thinks it’s all fun and games while you are the one getting hurt. Hope you keep healing.)

[This message edited by Stillconfused2022 at 12:39 AM, Tuesday, December 12th]

I too became a compulsive details digger. I dug into affair scenes voraciously looking for…

I don’t know exactly. It was as if I was sadistically running my tongue repetitively over an oral lesion. There was something almost addictive with each new discovery, an adrenaline rush with the pain of each new discovery.

And when I began to run out of new affair detail discoveries, I just searched harder, trying to find a new vein to mine. And when my WS was all tapped out, nothing left to give, I then turned to other betrayed spouse’s affair details in affair forums, living vicariously through them.

This is a symptom of PTSD. It’s a form of pain shopping. On your D-Day, I will venture to guess that your adrenal glands probably pumped out more adrenaline than you have ever experienced, and they did that for a longer period of time than you have ever experienced. Adrenaline is EXTREMELY addictive. Adrenaline and Dopamine are two of the most addictive psychoactive substances the body creates, and your body wants more. It’s interesting how we both avoid and are attracted to triggers. We hate trickle truth, but actively seek it.

This, coupled with a pragmatic need to know, exactly, what was, and is, going through your WS’s head prior to, during, and after the affair, so that you can make an informed and confident decision on how to proceed, how much to invest, risk and sacrifice, and make the biggest decision and gamble of your life, with so much at stake, will, absolutely, have you obsessing over details.

The compulsive desire to know and the pragmatic need to know compound easily to the point of obsession.

This will eventually run its course, but a WS can only tolerate so much.

Even if you were a fly on the wall, throughout the entire affair, you would still not know what was going on in his head. Only time honored actions can give an indication of his sincerity which is frustrating because that is in retrospect and with sunk cost.

Reconciliation is a leap of faith. Is it more of a leap than any other new beginning with a relatively little known new partner? IDK.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 4:29 AM, Tuesday, December 12th]

Hey Stillconfused2022-

This line jumped out at me from your last post:

I should be happy. Why can’t I let it go. This horrible "found out years later" thing is such a mindf#$%. I should be 8 year out, I should be really healed...

As a card holding member of the "For Those That Found Out Years Later" group, let me toss out a friendly reminder -- the chance to heal clock starts the moment we discover the infidelity. Whether someone found out the same day or like me, 18-years down the road, the pain is the same, sometimes unique to the length of time our reality is lost to us.

Our brains are not great with time, just a big pile of memories jumbled around in there and not very linear (as songs, smells, triggers often remind us and we get pulled back in time fairly often).

Be kind to you and the pace of your very individual healing schedule.

You'll let go when you feel safer and stronger, however long that takes.

Until then, your brain is dutifully protecting you, trying to be as sure as possible you don't ever experience similar levels of pain.

Reality Blows: Thank you for your reply. It is very validating to hear that someone went through something similar, even as you say that this process was ill-advised and not beneficial overall. I can see that. I guess it is almost like a WS doing something they know is deeply unhealthy but feeling unable to take the necessary steps to move in a healthier direction. I have most definitely been pain shopping. The detail about his bar visit is just one tiny piece of it. I have been trolling for information about similar affairs, as if that is going to give me insight about his actual affair. Actually, we usually call it cheating-not an affair. Kind of a tomato tomaato sort of thing.

But he’s getting tired. He said last night that I had promised him that we would have some "future time" (which I think is talks about the future) as proposed by our marriage counselor. He said this after a talk about the details. At the end of this talk he said I should try to not make the infidelity smaller or bigger than what it was. I kind of wanted to pop him in the nose, because the truth hurts. Right now the details are about me trying to make the facts of his infidelity ever so slightly better than what they were. He wont play the game and it annoys me. I have been soooo slow to accept the basic facts of what he did. Last night I was practically begging him to say that he was kind of mean to her during their day to day office interactions. He refused to take the bait, insisting he is always nice to everyone and he was most definitely nice to her. Again wanted to pop him in the nose.

Yeah, so I need to accept. Thank you for your solid advice. I really did need to hear it from a bunch of people who I respect for at a minimum having survived this awful experience. It’s hard for me to take ANY advice from him. He’s the bad guy right? But coming from the other folks on SI I can start to internalize it a little bit.

OldWounds: thank you too. Yes, you know only too well that finding out 1.5 years ago most definitely FEELS like I am 1.5 years out. It feels fresh and raw. Less so than last christmas (I could barely complete xmas wrapping). But, nonetheless all this stuff feels still very real and threatening, whereas my husband sees it as ancient history. He’s not mean about it, but its just there, between us, that sense that we are in a very different place.

even as you say that this process was ill-advised and not beneficial overall.

Oh, it has its benefits, as nature, evolution do not want you to repeat this trauma, this relative near-miss, ever again. Your mind, body perceives this as a near-miss fatal event and forces you to hyper-analyze it and never forget about it, as rug swept, forgotten history tends to repeat itself. Your mind perceives this event, your wayward husband as an existing danger you must fight or take flight from. Reconciling with a clear and present danger is counterintuitive, not a natural primal instinct, but a higher order of thinking that goes against our ape brain that’s usually running in the background, but with trauma runs more in the foreground.

Obsession with detail can also serve as a higher order of thinking benefit that compels you to do your due diligence, to leave no stone unturned, and to understand, as best as possible, the depths and breadth of the betrayal you are considering to reconcile and potentially forgive, the risk vs gain and your potential for success.

The trick is to use, with concerted control, our higher and lower orders of thinking to affect our desired outcome.

If your WS appears to be remorseful and is meeting your reconciliatory needs, then you need to willfully take control of that primal lower order of thinking to avoid counterproductive obsession and let the higher order lead the way.

Also, the mind seems to heal itself through a process of persevering rumination, repetitive mind movies that seem to run to mental exhaustion and should progressively become less intrusive over time. If not, good PTSD therapy can help with this. Infidelity PTSD is no joke.

So, what you’re experiencing is common, even normal, a normal response to an extraordinary event, and serves essential and evolved purposes, with good control.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 8:10 AM, Wednesday, December 13th]

RealityBlows, your responses here are so good and are really speaking to me. Thank you.

In the early days, I'd interrogate my H in nightly sessions. I posted 17K+ times on SI in two years. ( ) I still creep on the OW. I still run reports on her every so often. Unfortunately, I still have to see her every so often at company parties and I get all spun up every time.

I saved every shred of evidence in a private Google blog. When I was on SI in the early days, I saved all my PMs, all my important posts. I saved the one email I found between them. I saved accounts of what he told me. I saved everything. And then I'd go back and look through it every once in a while, all the way up until about five years ago when I decided that it was time to delete it as a gift to myself and to my H. Sometimes I miss it.

You're right: It's PTSD.

Stillconfused, with time, you'll remember the gist, but you'll forget lots of the details - the things that you think are imperative now. I found some journals on my old SI screen name and was very surprised to see that many of the things I would have sworn were gospel truth were not how I remember them.

I think we probably need to focus more on the trauma and less on the details. XO

I posted 17K+ times on SI in two years.

Oh man, I thought my pace was something. Gangster, indeed.

StillConfused, if I may ask, why is disclosure still happening at this late of a date? I know that sounds like an odd question coming from me, but my story has certainly been an odd one (I think anyway) and my wife been less open book than you seem to imply your husband is. A year and a half is a long time, I hope for you that you can move into a more peaceful phase of your life.