SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi everyone,

Been sitting with this for the last couple of weeks, and wasn’t gonna post it but I am not needing to go back to therapy and in my real life I can’t think of a single soul that I feel like bouncing this off of.

One of the rules of our reconciliation is no lying about anything. Truly our marriage has not been fraught with lies or anything like that outside of the affair activities. I consider my husband an honest person, he considers me one generally speaking.

So, as you know we have moved back from being on the road. We had sold most of our stuff prior but I had kept some keepsake boxes in one of our kids basement. We just picked those up and I had been going through them and came across one of my husbands journals from when he was traveling abroad early in our relationship.

I had read it before. When we first started dating, he had been off and on with someone else that was pretty much toying with his head. Well, when we got together she wanted to come back in and he had become confused. There wasn’t any lying about it, we had been very close a long time before becoming an actual couple and all this happened like a month into that exclusivity agreement. This journal though was a point of contention because it said hiking out is a great person who deserves a lot of happiness, but "ms. Tramp" is my soulmate. Yeah, spoiler alert we know she wasn’t.

Anyway, we broke up briefly, and within a week he changed his mind. I think he saw the truth and came back. At the time this hurt. Lot, but like I said we might have been dating like a month and I knew him well, I took him back. It was rocky though as you can imagine at first. I asked him if he slept with her while we were broken up and he said no.

Well, anyway, coming across this journal I decided to ask again. This time I got the answer "yes, once".

I don’t know why this ancient history bothers me so much, I mean at the time even I understood that he just thought he wanted her because of the head games. I have had no doubt over the years that had he really ended up with her it would not have worked.

BUT- one I never thought he had lied to me. 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.

So I asked him why he didn’t disclose back when we said that, he said he just didn’t remember. This is entirely feasible with what I know and understand about him, but on the other hand like that’s a pretty big lie to not have thought about that over the years at all especially in light of the infidelity.

So now, I don’t know how to proceed. Do I want a divorce over this? No. However do I also feel bound to my word? Yes. And if I let this go what message does it send to him?

Truth? I am bothered by it, yes. I am realizing I don’t have gas in the tank here so much that I wish I hadn’t even asked. This happened nearly 30 years ago, it wasn’t cheating, it was stupid.

But the lie. I consider it part of my integrity to keep contracts with myself. But for this to be the thing that takes everything down seemed heavy handed when you consider the much deeper shit we have already waded through. I already know he is more flawed than I once believed.

I am sort of mostly pissed that now this brings up more questions and confusion. I am torn on what makes sense versus living my values. I know I could be okay divorced but when push comes to shove I also know that isn’t what I want.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:38 PM, Thursday, October 10th]

That's absolutely a lie by omission. He wouldn't have forgotten something like that, especially if this girl had been toying with him for years.

Ice- Definitely my thought. It wasn’t years though, maybe they were off and on six months. He does have a bad memory, and he doesn’t dwell in the past. But I believe fundamentally that would be a hard thing to forget.

He didn’t really hold back when I asked him about it, but he does claim when we made that pact it didn’t enter his mind, and it was 30 years ago. I think I am so not wanting to follow through though I am likely to take any explanation and move on. But that too could be problematic.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:56 PM, Thursday, October 10th]

This is one of my nightmare what-ifs. I don't know which is best: let it go or talk about it. It might help to set a new boundary that if he remembers something in a way that turns previous statements into lies, he needs to bring it up quickly rather than wait for you to ask (and hope that you don't) - but the new boundary moves the standard by definition.

The event may have been 30 years ago, but you found out about the lie a few weeks ago.

IMO, he could have forgotten by rewriting the relationship's history in the past and realizing he had done so after you talked about it..

Breaking up is a significant penalty, IMO (may be projecting here - I'd have been devastated if W2b had broken up with me even temporarily). If you had known about the sex when it happened, how would you have responded to his attempt to get back together?

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:00 PM, Thursday, October 10th]

I'm wondering if the boundary for his "no more lies" commitment was confined to things that happened within the marriage. When did you question him about it? If you asked about her during affair recovery and he lied, that would be a big problem. If the only time you asked him was immediately after you got back together 30 years ago and you haven't asked since, that's a little different. It's still a lie, but it's a before lie. It happened in the before. ETA: I mean before A recovery, when things got super real.

I'm married to a guy with a very, shall we say, fluid memory. He's always worried that he's going to recall something differently and get himself in trouble, but he misremembers everything, everything, so I've learned to take things with a grain of salt. I mean, the guy sees a movie trailer on TV, then the next time he sees the commercial, he thinks he's already seen the movie. It's ridiculous the way his brain works. We all have fallible memories, but this guy is next level.

Also, you get to set your own rules, abide by your own rules, apply nuance to your own rules, and reevaluate them. You can even break them if you want to.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 4:14 PM, Thursday, October 10th]

I’ve always imagined there is at least one substantial omission my wife is holding on to — the finding out years later thing does make the memory foggy. That and I’m assuming she may have left out at least a few things from the A.

So, for me, when I chose to move forward and give this thing one more shot, I gave her the M equivalent of a political pardon. All crimes leading up to the now were forgiven in order to find room for today.

Once upon a time, my wife was the most honest person on the planet. To a fault. Well beyond perfect attendance for work, school or church, or all A’s, or amazing work as a parent, she always told the truth, spoke her mind and I did the same. Not a perfect couple ever, but we at least kept each other in the loop.

Her lies during and after the A were really the most shocking part for me.

And for her.

Being called a liar, which was the case at the time, landed harder during R than anything else.

So, my rambling is only to say, I understand.

A previously untold truth is troublesome, because it begs the question, "What else don’t I know?"

My aforementioned pardon though, that really does hold should my wife remember something else and finally tells me. I want her to know she can once again, tell me anything that’s in her head. The pardon, again, doesn’t apply to any new violations of our current boundaries.

In your case Hiking, I think you tell him what you told us. See what his reaction is.

None of us here needs a reason to walk away, if you don’t feel like you have the honesty today, in the now, that you require, no further explanation needed!

Sissoon

At that time, we would have gotten back together.

He had been honest with me every step of the way (or so so thought). Like I said there was no cheating, and I knew that she and her kid had slept over one of the nights that we were broken up.

He claims at the time (which this part is messy) that we all worked together that he felt that it was private, considering we had broken up especially since at the time we all worked for the same company (different campuses)

I sort of think it just didn’t stand out to him but no way of knowing.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:21 PM, Thursday, October 10th]

All crimes leading up to the now were forgiven in order to find room for today.2

I like that. Now only if I can practice it.

Hikingout, I think the advice from Oldwounds about sitting down and talking this out with him is good. Don't let him get away with the I don't remember line. He knew and he lied, but that was 30 yrs ago and you both have done a lot of work since then. I hope that you can have a deep and meaningful conversation soon and that good things come from it.

I'm wondering if the boundary for his "no more lies" commitment was confined to things that happened within the marriage. When did you question him about it? If you asked about her during affair recovery and he lied, that would be a big problem. If the only time you asked him was immediately after you got back together

No I Don’t think he was being technical about it. He just says that at the time of our pact it didn’t come to mind and hasn’t since. I think it’s plausible it wasn’t front of mind.

We had not discussed it until just then, not since it happened all those years ago. So not it wasn’t in a prior disclosure.

And old wounds I appreciate what you are saying here as well. I kind of feel like pardoning it. I don’t actually care about it a great deal.I forgot to mention we both took a poly after his dday and we both passed. The main question was "is this your only affair". There were other questions but that one was kind of the king pin.

I don’t care he slept with her, we were broken up, and he slept with her when they were dating. And it’s a little like you are saying maybe it’s not reasonable to try and remember any sort of lie in ab30 year relationship during moments we were in extreme duress.

I do not remotely feel like divorcing if I am honest. It seems over the top to me. So what I might do is see it a little like your pardon thing. I think what’s bothering me is what would bother any of us - the trust aspect. I don’t feel like this is another Dday, but it does undermine things to a certain extent.

He is saying all I would want him to say about it, and I don’t get any intuition that he isn’t being forthright. It seems like a rain shower compared to the hurricane that we have been through. I liked the black and white rule though and far less comfortable with grey as I once was.

But I guess he could have kept the lie in place, he didn’t disclose it at the time of our pact but he says me asking him reminded him.

[This message edited by hikingout at 5:06 PM, Thursday, October 10th]

Sorry, friend, sounds messy

May I ask, why did you ask him this question at this time? I know you were reminded by the journal, but what part of you needed this answer? I had my Retroactive Jealousy period, I get the draw of the past. I think I’m trying to understand just how big of a deal this is to you. Seems like if after 30 years that it still drew something out of you, it must have some pull.

This reminds me of the time my wife lied and quickly corrected it. I know we are talking about very different periods in our journeys, but still the correction of a past lie is a strong indicator of a person desiring to be honest in the present.

And how often do we say here that you will never know the whole story? It seems clear that he intentionally lied when he said it, not enough time had passed to talk about obscured memory. But regarding the "get everything on the table" moment before the pact: it seems very plausible that it just wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not like we all have a catalog of lies we’ve told in the past. It’s one of the dangers of lying, you forget them and risk contradicting yourself.

People are messy. I think it’s part of our nature. As much as I want honesty in any future partner, I don’t think a zero tolerance policy is feasible with humans. Maybe my expectation are too low, but I don’t think I could live up to it personally.

May I ask, why did you ask him this question at this time? I know you were reminded by the journal, but what part of you needed this answer? I had my Retroactive Jealousy period, I get the draw of the past. I think I’m trying to understand just how big of a deal this is to you. Seems like if after 30 years that it still drew something out of you, it must have some pull.

Because at the time I thought he wasn’t truthful. She spent the night, I knew that at the time. But he said they were taking their kids to a water park the next day and given the rules I knew with his kids and the fact she lived an hour away that seemed plausible. But also we broke up so he could continue exploring his relationship with her, and we all know two people who just got back together are likely to have sex. It didn’t make sense.

I don’t think I feel jealous about it. But when I flipped through i decided to ask again. Kinda wish I didn’t ask.

And how often do we say here that you will never know the whole story? It seems clear that he intentionally lied when he said it, not enough time had passed to talk about obscured memory. But regarding the "get everything on the table" moment before the pact: it seems very plausible that it just wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not like we all have a catalog of lies we’ve told in the past. It’s one of the dangers of lying, you forget them and risk contradicting yourself.
People are messy. I think it’s part of our nature. As much as I want honesty in any future partner, I don’t think a zero tolerance policy is feasible with humans. Maybe my expectation are too low, but I don’t think I could live up to it personally.

I think this is helpful. My inclination is to say it is what it is and move on. I was afraid if that would be rugsweeping and another thing for me to regret. And that pact means something to me.

Overall though I can’t see how it makes sense to divorce or really do much at all about it. I don’t think I need to send him back to therapy or go through all the rigors again. I think if it is a crossroads that requires all that I would probably rather divorce. I am all for working through run of the mill marital issues but I am done with betrayal. I have no use for it, no tolerance of it, etc. this is pretty borderline to that. I didn’t want to just brush it under the rug only to find myself as the fool at the end of the story. I know you guys get that.

Like Oldwounds and others, I am a member of the "found out many years later" club. This brings a whole other level of complexity to the situation and also one of the most haunting aspects IMO. "What is the truth of my life". I suspected my wife of cheating but she always denied and lied. On D-Day I learned that every time I thought she was cheating, she was. Also several other times I had no clue. I wanted the full story of my life. I wanted to know I wasn’t crazy, that I COULD trust my intuition and gut. I thought my wife was an honest person. I found out through multiple D-Days, trickle truth and minimization, her first instinct is to lie. Getting info out of her was like pulling teeth. She used "I don’t remember" and "I don’t know" to cover her lies. We finally got to the point of a full written disclosure and a polygraph. And I STILL am 100% convinced I don’t have the "full truth of my life" (because a few months after the poly she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and truly does not remember all aspects of her infidelities). I can’t control that. But I can demand "no more lies" going forward. Frankly, the fact she would lie now bothers me more than the cheating 20-40 years ago. If I can’t trust her, there is no relationship.

Hikingout, you are in a difficult space. I think you may have doubted you were told the truth 30 years ago and that prompted you to ask again. And you were right, dammit! So now what? You have answered many of your own questions. Is this a deal-breaker? Worth divorcing over? Can you trust him now?

I feel IH and others have hit on a couple of key aspects here. Is it reasonable for your husband to have disclosed this at the time you declared "no lies in our marriage". Absolutely! Is it also reasonable he "forgot" or didn’t? I think the answer to that is also "yes".

You yourself have said the specific question has never come up between the initial conversation many years ago (to which he lied) and now. IMO, had he come honest at the time of "get it all out on the table" it would have been very proactive of him to show his honesty and built up a TON of equity in your relationship. Does his reasoning sound reasonable? Yes, to an outsider. Is it believable? Only you can answer that. IMO the key thing here is less about he lied 30 years ago and didn’t proactively come clean (like IH remembering every lie from 30 years ago and bringing them out likely isn’t feasible…..although, THIS SHOULD have been a pretty significant one) but the fact that when you asked him directly, he answered honestly.

You have every right to be frustrated with him and share how this makes you feel. But do you really want to punish him for being honest when directly questioned? What message does that send (I should have kept on lying, she would never know and I could avoid all this grief)? Or do you explain to him how that made you feel, and he really should have come clean at the time (maybe use this as a "teaching moment" and see if there is anything else he doesn’t feel needed to be disclosed but maybe you DO) but that you REALLY appreciate him being honest now when directly confronted.

I wish my wife would be more proactive and offering , clear and truthful information. But at this point, I will definitely take truthfully answering any and every question I can come up with.

hikingout,

Sounds to me like the act was not the issue -- it was the lie. A lie to a direct question. Whether he later revealed it in an 'everything on the table' scenario can fall into an "I forgot.", an "I didn't think it was important." a straight omission or many other possibilities. The big one was when directly asked the response was a lie.

From Pittman (p 59)
In marriage, retributions are cheap compared with enmity and disrespect. In marriage, intimacy is developed through confessions, explanations, and soul searchings. But of course intimacy involves equality, and people who are telling lies are not seeking any aspect of intimacy, especially equality. Liars are hoping for an advantage, which will be produced by disorienting and distracting the other person. The liar is stepping outside the relationship.

While the sex itself may have been ok with you at the time -- the 30 year old lie throws the narrative you held and the facts of what you thought was into question. At this point most of us start the what else was omitted or outright lied about dance to that too much repeated tune. Only you can answer those questions and whether or not you are ok with it.

I think OldWounds is spot on.

In your case Hiking, I think you tell him what you told us. See what his reaction is.

I am all for working through run of the mill marital issues but I am done with betrayal. I have no use for it, no tolerance of it, etc. this is pretty borderline to that. I didn’t want to just brush it under the rug only to find myself as the fool at the end of the story.

I think maybe you say exactly that to him, and you ask that if anything pops up in his memory that's akin to this lie, the right thing to do is to bring it to your attention.

20 years later, and my H and I still talk about infidelity as memories are triggered. Infidelity is not a verboten topic. It's never light and easy, but it's always worth it. We both get to process things and do a check-in of sorts, and it's an opportunity for me to ask questions that might have been niggling at me in the back of my mind. Sometimes the details don't match my memory, and sometimes, rarely, there's new information. And sometimes that new information is stuff I already knew, but forgot about. Memory can be fallible.

Betrayal adjacent, perhaps 😏

Seems like this has been a thorn in your mind for a long time. Are there other thorns, or is this a one off? Seems like it would be valid to ask him why he lied about this. Worst case scenario is that he is fundamentally more dishonest than your mental model understands him to be. I think your job is to understand what this tells you about him. If it can be fit within what you know of him, then it seems like a thing to express your feelings about and move on. But if it fundamentally alters how you understand him, that is much bigger, and probably goes back to therapy and the trenches.

Thank you all for the thoughts so far. Little short on time and I want to go back and reread.

We have talked a lot about this over the last couple of weeks, he is aware of how I feel and he understands it. I basically posted this because I couldn’t come to a conclusion about resolving it. To me, that is a decision that I need to come to because at this point talking is now kind of beating a dead horse.

So thank you all for all the thoughts that will contribute to me gaining clarity in all this. I take my commitments to myself and to him very seriously and I worried if I just let it go that I would have this nagging feeling of breaking that commitment to myself or having him feel I should break that commitment we have to each other.

But I definitely can’t see IC or divorce really remedying any of it. It’s one of those things that will likely just have to fade out. I was mad as hell at first though, mostly because it out me in a position that I didn’t think I would be in again and then it’s on me to decide to act, and what it means.

Oh and JasonCH - yes I do feel it’s not about the idea they had sex, more about the lie.

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:48 PM, Thursday, October 10th]

Seems like this has been a thorn in your mind for a long time. Are there other thorns, or is this a one off?

Eh, I used to think about it now and again for the first few years after. I haven’t thought about it in a long time until I saw that little black and white composition notebook.

I think after infidelity, things like that can hit you differently than it would have before.

It was a betrayal at the time I just didn’t know it, but in the context of learning about it after such a long relationship not sure it’s the betrayal today it would have been back then. But in the other hand I always knew that was likely what happened.

It’s weird. Gonna take a little time for this one to fade out. But no, I do know now he is flawed in ways I didn’t know before this isn’t tipping that over:

So you've been curious about why he didn't tell you the truth during the "let's get all the ugliness out on the table" phase, but I'm more curious about his explanation of why he lied to you at the time. As you've pointed out, he broke up with you honestly when the door opened with his ex. He wasn't cheating. So why, when you asked about the sex, didn't he just tell you the truth? We could go down the path of "he didn't want to hurt me" or "he was afraid of losing me," which may in fact be true, but they're also pretty standard excuses for the wayward's decision to deny their partner agency in the service of their own self-interest. 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.

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. You've never used that as a reason to justify his behavior, but it's been evident that you felt it goes a long way towards explaining it. Now you've discovered that he told this lie years before you crossed the line, a lie you always suspected didn't add up. 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." And while it was a very long time ago, his failure to self-examine and recognize this choice in the aftermath of D-Day is a failure of the work. It implies someone who still sees his behavior as an outgrowth of extreme circumstance rather than as a decision reflecting his own inherent character flaws.

I'm not advocating for divorce here. I understand why, having gone through everything you have and coming to a calm and sunny spot, you might decide that what you have with him is worth an imperfect reconciliation (the perfect reconciliation is a myth anyway, as is the perfect partner or the perfect relationship.) Is it enough that you believe he will never betray you again, even if he's a bit too quick to give himself a pass for the past? Is it ok to look at him with less rose-colored glasses and to be hurt and pissed off that you didn't get the truth back in the day? I don't think that's a betrayal of self to feel that way. Actually, I think it would be good for both of you if you got grumpy enough to see him as lucky to have you stick around rather than the opposite. At least for a little while.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 9:23 PM, Thursday, October 10th]

Honesty and communication are top of the list for R. You need to ask him why his story has changed? Watch his reaction and decide from there how you proceed.

This is another Dday to deal with. I cannot tell you exactly how I would react to new information coming out years later because that has not happened with us. I would definitely trust my gut, and my very finely tuned bullshit-ometer when confronting.

I don’t think I feel jealous about it. But when I flipped through i decided to ask again. Kinda wish I didn’t ask.

Whatever you decide down the road, eventually I think you’ll be glad that you did, despite the unpleasantness of the answer.

I’m glad I got the answers I did, even when some revelations about the truth really tossed gasoline on a burning house at the time.

Every reveal of the truth, for me, is a step back into the light (although there are limits, be it when and what, etc).

At this point, I am good with the truth I did get back and whatever it is I don’t know, I assume the worst.

It seems like a rain shower compared to the hurricane that we have been through.

Yes, however, to continue your metaphor —- any additional rain can be damaging after a hurricane.

Your anger is righteous.

New information like this would dent any relationship. I hope your spouse understands it, shows some empathy and at least continues with the positive changes made after his A.

Life is uphill enough already, take your time to process it.