SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi, I'm looking for perspectives from people who have been in a similar situation, particularly where the betrayed spouse initially wanted reconciliation but the unfaithful spouse wasn't sure whether they wanted the marriage.

I'm a man in my mid-40s, married for 12 years, together about 16, with three children. D-Day was a few weeks ago, and it came as an enormous shock which has devastated me.

My wife had an emotional/sexual affair with someone we knew. From what I currently understand, the relationship developed emotionally in the early Summer and became physical around August. It wasn't a years-long affair. The explicitly romantic/physical part seems to have been relatively short, they had sex a few times and kissed a few times. My wife said she had, and still does have, feelings for him.

There's quite a lot of context to what happened before the affair, and I'm trying hard not to minimise my own part in the deterioration of our marriage. My wife had been very unhappy for some time. We had become disconnected, there wasn't much affection or fun, we argued, and she felt criticised and controlled by me at times. She also felt overwhelmed by the mental load of our three children and the household and that I wasn't listening when she was telling me she needed more help.

Looking back, there were things I badly failed to hear. Earlier this year she was very explicit about how overwhelmed and unhappy she was, and I didn't respond in the way I wish I had. I can understand why she's now angry that it has taken the possibility of losing my marriage for me to make significant changes.

I'm in individual therapy as well as couples therapy and I'm trying to work seriously on my own behaviour rather than simply saying I'll change. I'm also very conscious that a few weeks of behaving differently during a crisis doesn't prove lasting change. However, the part I'm struggling enormously with is her explanation of the affair.

She says that by the time the affair became physical, the marriage was effectively "over" for her in her head. She had emotionally checked out and believed we no longer really had a relationship. From my perspective, however, I had absolutely not been told that our marriage was over. We hadn't separated, hadn't agreed that either of us could see other people, were still living together as husband and wife and parenting our children together, and we'd even had sex relatively shortly before the affair began. So I experience what happened as straightforward infidelity and a profound betrayal. She seems to struggle with that framing because in her mind she'd already concluded the marriage was finished. She acknowledges she didn't communicate this to me in any shape or form, but still does not view what she did as cheating.

She has acknowledged that what she did was the wrong choice and that we should have officially separated before she became involved with someone else. But I don't yet feel she fully understands or accepts the betrayal from my perspective. She can become quite defensive when we discuss it.

At the same time, she isn't currently saying that she definitely wants to leave. She has ended things with the AP and says she isn't going to see, speak to or message him. She has said she needs him out of the picture so that she can work out what she actually wants. She is continuing couples therapy with me.
She has also said things along the lines of being "getting to the point where I'm thinking, okay, let's try," but that when I pressure her for answers or keep asking where her head is, she feels overwhelmed and backs away.

She still has feelings for the AP and seems to be grieving the loss of that relationship which is extremely difficult for me to witness. At the same time she is very angry and resentful towards me about the state of our marriage before the affair and understandably doesn't yet trust that the changes she's seeing in me will last. So we're in a strange situation where I'm the betrayed spouse but I'm currently the one who is certain that I want to attempt reconciliation, while my wife is the one deciding whether she wants to. Emotionally, that feels completely backwards.

Part of me thinks: You had the affair. Why am I auditioning for my own marriage while you decide whether I'm worth staying with? Another part of me understands that she'd emotionally disengaged from the marriage before I discovered the affair and that I can't force her to suddenly want the marriage just because D-Day has happened.

Our couples therapist has encouraged me to stop pushing for certainty and give my wife some genuine space. I'm trying to do that now — no asking about the AP unless something new actually happens, no repeatedly asking whether she's decided, no monitoring, and no trying to persuade her to reconcile.
That's incredibly difficult because uncertainty is probably the thing I'm struggling with most. My brain constantly wants information and reassurance. I'm also conscious that repeated questioning is making things worse rather than making me safer.

I have a few questions for people who've actually lived through something similar:

If you were the BS who wanted reconciliation while your WS was unsure, how did you handle that period? How long did you tolerate the uncertainty before you needed a decision? Did giving the WS space actually help them move towards reconciliation, or did it simply prolong limbo?

For anyone whose WS initially justified/minimised the affair by saying "the marriage was already over in my head" or something similar — did that mindset ever change? Did they eventually come to understand the affair as a betrayal independently of whatever was wrong with the marriage beforehand?

If you successfully reconciled, did genuine remorse/accountability come immediately, or did it develop later once the WS had got out of defensiveness/shame/affair fog?

How much information about the affair did you ultimately need? I'm not interested in graphic sexual details, but I feel I need a reasonably coherent timeline and understanding of what happened, when feelings developed, when boundaries were crossed, and whether there's anything significant I still don't know. At the moment my wife feels she's answered enough questions and gets overwhelmed by them. Did you park those questions temporarily and return to them later?

Finally, how did you know the difference between giving your WS reasonable time to make a huge decision and accepting an unfair situation in which you were effectively auditioning while they decided whether to choose you?

I'm aware people may tell me I'm crazy for wanting reconciliation at all. Maybe I am. But we've had 16 years together, three children and a huge amount of shared life. Despite everything that's happened, I love my wife and I don't want to end the marriage without finding out whether we could build something very different from the relationship we'd allowed it to become.

At the same time, I'm beginning to understand that reconciliation can't ultimately consist of me changing while she evaluates me. If we do decide to try, I need it eventually to become two people actively rebuilding — me taking responsibility for the ways I hurt her before the affair, and her taking responsibility for the affair and helping me recover from the betrayal.

I'm only a few weeks out from D-Day, so I also recognise that I'm probably trying to get answers to things that simply can't be answered yet.

I'd particularly appreciate hearing from people who were actually in this BS wants R / WS is ambivalent situation — including people for whom it ultimately worked and people who eventually decided they'd waited long enough.

Thanks for reading, and if any of this resonates I would be so grateful for any perspectives, insights or shared experiences.

She says that by the time the affair became physical, the marriage was effectively "over" for her in her head.

This quote is but one of an infinite stream of bullshit you will hear from a cheater to justify their cheating.

Let me call it out.

If you check out from a relationship A) you leave B) you fuck around.

Doing first B then A is cheating.

Did she tell you and leave you before the guy or conveniently ignored it until you found out?

Now, pack her stuff, show her the door and tell her to go follow her feelings, because you will be following yours and you will not live in infidelity.

She checked out, so you are doing her a favor right?

Then watch her squirm, because is bullshit.

Friend, you can’t never reconcile with a cheater, that is impossible.

You will be dancing the pick me dance and allow her to abuse you more, destroy what little of your self worth and love you have left for her stupid dopamine validation.

Reconciliation can only happen with a person who is so disgusted by how they allowed themselves to cheat that they will vomit at the mere idea of infidelity.

Your wife is not even ashamed, she probably see you dancing the dance and she is reveling in her power over you.

Will manipulate you.
Will abuse you sexually and emotionally over and over.
You will die inside from it.

Read about the hard 180 set ironclad boundaries and treat her how she deserves.

A pitiful disgusting pig rolling in the mud with other worthless pigs.
Unworthy of anything else than detached interaction about house chores, kids and the direction to get the fuck out of your life forever.

Unless she is ready to crawl over broken glass for forgiveness, she doesn’t deserve anything more.

First of all, I’m sorry this happened to you. And full disclosure, I did not experience an ambivalent wayward (I was left), so I can’t opine from direct experience. But your situation is common enough.

No one here will tell you you’re crazy for wanting to reconcile, that’s most of the people on this site. But as you point out, you can’t reconcile by yourself.

As BFTS wrote, what she did is cheating. You cannot have a private divorce in your own head. You can, and should, own your part in the breakdown of the marriage, but no one is exonerated from cheating because they were unhappy first. She doesn’t want to view it as cheating because she doesn’t want to admit that she is a cheater. No one likes to be the villain in their own story. It’s preferable in her own mind that you be to blame for being a bad husband.

One thing people talk about here is whether someone is a "good candidate" for reconciliation. Part of that is binary - the wayward has to want to reconcile! But beyond that, people look for remorse. This is the pinned post on the Reconciliation forum, and it discusses it clearly. https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/topics/586809/beyond-regret-and-remorse/

She has no remorse. She’s not even really sorry about it. She thinks it was justified and even OK, and gets angry and defensive when you try to discuss it. You have nothing to work with in that case.

I have strong concerns that the A is not over. She says she ended it, but have you seen any proof? Many BPs have been in couples counseling with a wayward who claimed to have ended things but secretly didn’t. So - are you sure it’s over?

ETA: if AP is married, you should inform his wife.

[This message edited by Letmebefrank at 5:48 PM, Wednesday, October 7th]

I have quite a bit to say as our experiences do have some similarities. I don't have a lot of time on my hands right at the moment though, but plan to revisit this thread here in a little while.

I just want to say that no matter what happened or what shape your marriage was in before the affair, her decisions are not your fault. You are not to blame for the choices that she made. I just want you to know that first and foremost. I will be back with a much more fleshed out reply here in probably a couple of hours.

I don't see how you can force your W into R - in any case forced R seems doomed to faliure - so you DO have to give her time.

The question is: what do you do with the time? IMO, your best bet is to work on yourself. Do you really want to R with someone who doesn't actively want to R? I agree with your logic, but does it apply to your specific sitch?

Your W said she checked out, so why didn't she tell you? Why didn't she file for D? Why did she cheat? And why do you take any responsibility for her failure as a human being?

How much does fear play into your desire to R? I just don't see how fear can help much, so if fear of the unknown or of of something else is a big part of your desire to R, my strong rco is hold off choosing R. Don't choose R unless you think it's the best way to have a good life. Don't choose D unless you think it's the best way to have a good life, too.

You're still in shock. People in shock don't do their best thinking or feeling. Consider your options before make decisions.

MC really helped me, starting on d-day, but our MC put up with no crap from my W (or me, for that matter, but I was pretty straight and solid). I got zero blame for the A.

You can wait for your W to decide what she wants. You can decide when you want her decision. My reco is to take the space you need and require a decision when you know what you want ... after you're through the shock.

*****

If you decide you want R, decide on your requirements for R, too. Lay them out for your W. If she agrees to meet them, great. If she objects to one or 2 and negotiates substitutes that do for you what you need done, great. If she doesn't agree, great.

The thing is: the 1st 2 sitches mean R can start. The 3rd means R can't start.

The people who do well after d-day, are the ones who figure out what they want and use their power to get as close as they can to what they want.

You heal you.
Your W heals her.
Together, if you both are willing to do the work (and do it), you heal your relationship.

My wife had an emotional/sexual affair with someone we knew. From what I currently understand, the relationship developed emotionally in the early Summer and became physical around August. It wasn't a years-long affair. The explicitly romantic/physical part seems to have been relatively short, they had sex a few times and kissed a few times. My wife said she had, and still does have, feelings for him.

This is one similarity, only my wife got involved with a co worker who I didn't know. It was a whirlwind. They'd worked together for some years, but in March of 2025 he suddenly developed an interest in her. He contacted her over Facebook messenger and started smothering her with compliments. Within about 4 weeks they had booked a motel room and it turned physical. There were 3 trysts over a 2 week period. The whole thing took place over about 6 weeks before I found out what was going on. My story is in my profile if you want to check it out. I had a pretty brutal d day. What I consider a hostile discovery. It was ugly. I did want to reconcile pretty much right off the bat, tho.

There's quite a lot of context to what happened before the affair, and I'm trying hard not to minimise my own part in the deterioration of our marriage. My wife had been very unhappy for some time. We had become disconnected, there wasn't much affection or fun, we argued, and she felt criticised and controlled by me at times. She also felt overwhelmed by the mental load of our three children and the household and that I wasn't listening when she was telling me she needed more help.

We had been married for almost 27 years when she had her affair and it came out of nowhere for me. There were issues in our marriage and we had grown apart. I was definitely a contributor to our issues, no doubt, but her choice to have an affair was hers and hers alone. I didn't force her into someone else's arms. She made a unilateral decision to open up our marriage and didn't give me a choice at all.

Looking back, there were things I badly failed to hear. Earlier this year she was very explicit about how overwhelmed and unhappy she was, and I didn't respond in the way I wish I had. I can understand why she's now angry that it has taken the possibility of losing my marriage for me to make significant changes.

I hear you and feel you here. I really do, but like I said above, what she did with her dissatisfaction was far beyond the pale. There are many, many ways to deal with marital issues that don't involve cheating. All kinds of marriages have all kinds of problems but not everyone cheats to solve them. It's the most destructive thing you can do in a relationship.

I'm in individual therapy as well as couples therapy and I'm trying to work seriously on my own behaviour rather than simply saying I'll change. I'm also very conscious that a few weeks of behaving differently during a crisis doesn't prove lasting change. However, the part I'm struggling enormously with is her explanation of the affair.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with improving yourself, but the goal should be self improvement, not just saving your marriage. If you helping yourself improves your marriage that would be a very welcome side effect. Your goal, however, should be to focus on yourself right now.

She says that by the time the affair became physical, the marriage was effectively "over" for her in her head. She had emotionally checked out and believed we no longer really had a relationship. From my perspective, however, I had absolutely not been told that our marriage was over. We hadn't separated, hadn't agreed that either of us could see other people, were still living together as husband and wife and parenting our children together, and we'd even had sex relatively shortly before the affair began. So I experience what happened as straightforward infidelity and a profound betrayal. She seems to struggle with that framing because in her mind she'd already concluded the marriage was finished. She acknowledges she didn't communicate this to me in any shape or form, but still does not view what she did as cheating.

This is where more similarities come in. I actually talked to my wife about this and she confirmed that yes, our marriage was pretty much over in her mind. Tho somehow in her twisted wayward logic she didn't consider divorce an option. We had been living like roommates for years and our sex life was nonexistent. Like you, however, I was not informed that our marriage was over in her mind and she made the unilateral decision to "open up" our marriage with her co worker without informing me or voicing her dissatisfaction. She could have tried talking to me or even asked for a separation.

Once certain lines were crossed tho, she did know and consider what she was doing as cheating. I'd question your wife's interpretation of this. If she didn't consider it cheating, then why did she hide it?

She has acknowledged that what she did was the wrong choice and that we should have officially separated before she became involved with someone else. But I don't yet feel she fully understands or accepts the betrayal from my perspective. She can become quite defensive when we discuss it.

This can be a challenge for some wayward spouses, and you can't explain or talk them into it. If it happens, this is something she needs to arrive at on her own.

At the same time, she isn't currently saying that she definitely wants to leave. She has ended things with the AP and says she isn't going to see, speak to or message him. She has said she needs him out of the picture so that she can work out what she actually wants. She is continuing couples therapy with me.

She has also said things along the lines of being "getting to the point where I'm thinking, okay, let's try," but that when I pressure her for answers or keep asking where her head is, she feels overwhelmed and backs away.

This is where we diverge. My wife never seriously considered leaving or getting out of the marriage. She did try to continue maintaining a relationship with her AP, tho, and she would back away from or become very defensive about it. She would even defend her AP when I would say anything negative about him. Which killed me. I put up with about a month of that before I reached the end of my rope and started calling divorce lawyers right in front of her.

She still has feelings for the AP and seems to be grieving the loss of that relationship which is extremely difficult for me to witness. At the same time she is very angry and resentful towards me about the state of our marriage before the affair and understandably doesn't yet trust that the changes she's seeing in me will last. So we're in a strange situation where I'm the betrayed spouse but I'm currently the one who is certain that I want to attempt reconciliation, while my wife is the one deciding whether she wants to. Emotionally, that feels completely backwards.

My wife also continued to harbor feelings for her AP, but kept them hidden and downplayed them. It took me getting into her messages a month later to find out just how deeply she'd gotten into it. I was devastated. It was also the beginning of me deciding that I wanted out of infidelity, no matter the cost.

I have a few questions for people who've actually lived through something similar:

If you were the BS who wanted reconciliation while your WS was unsure, how did you handle that period? How long did you tolerate the uncertainty before you needed a decision? Did giving the WS space actually help them move towards reconciliation, or did it simply prolong limbo?

I tolerated it for about a month and did my fair share of "pick me" dancing to try and win her back. That was before I discovered this site and learned that the pick me dance almost never works. What I ended up doing was telling her if she wanted him, then she could have him. I let her know that she "won." She could have her boyfriend, but not while remaining married to me. That's when I started calling divorce lawyers and set up consultations right in front of her. She watched me set a few of them up, then when I started looking up real estate agents she lost it. She became hysterical and begged me not to go through with it. That was when things really started to change and she did a complete 180. She suddenly wanted to do anything it would take to save the marriage. It was a huge turning point. I don't think she believed I would really do it.

For anyone whose WS initially justified/minimised the affair by saying "the marriage was already over in my head" or something similar — did that mindset ever change? Did they eventually come to understand the affair as a betrayal independently of whatever was wrong with the marriage beforehand?

Yes. When I made those phone calls and she realized I was serious her mindset changed pretty drastically. She began to realize just how much damage she'd done, tho it took her a little while to take full accountability and stop trying to blameshift.

If you successfully reconciled, did genuine remorse/accountability come immediately, or did it develop later once the WS had got out of defensiveness/shame/affair fog?

My wife's affair was 18 months ago, so to say were "reconciled" is a bit early, but we are reconciling now. Things are much better between us. Better than they ever have been. Communication and intimacy are off the charts now. It didn't take long for her to begin showing true remorse after I made those phone calls. She dropped her AP like a hot potato, blocked him on everything, put in for a location transfer at work and rolled her sleeves up and began the arduous task of convincing me that there was a something worth repairing.

When I made those calls it completely changed the entire dynamic. It switched from me trying to win her back to her trying to win me back.

How much information about the affair did you ultimately need? I'm not interested in graphic sexual details, but I feel I need a reasonably coherent timeline and understanding of what happened, when feelings developed, when boundaries were crossed, and whether there's anything significant I still don't know. At the moment my wife feels she's answered enough questions and gets overwhelmed by them. Did you park those questions temporarily and return to them later?

This is difficult to answer because ultimately I don't know if you can ever get enough information. I found myself constantly looking for that one piece of information that would make everything click and make sense. The "thing" I could point to sand say "Ah-ha! There it is! Now I can fix it!"

I don't know if that thing exists. It took a while, but I did end up getting a pretty complete timeline, the types of conversations they had, what they did, how many times, where, and her thought process at the time. I did not want or ask for graphic or explicit details of what they did. I think there is such a thing as too much information. I don't need any more fuel for the mental images and mind movies than I already have. Once you hear it, you can't unhear it. Be careful of the details you ask for. I know enough. I know what, why, where, when, and how and that's enough for me.

Finally, how did you know the difference between giving your WS reasonable time to make a huge decision and accepting an unfair situation in which you were effectively auditioning while they decided whether to choose you?

Like I said, I lasted for about a month before I couldn't take it anymore. It's different for everyone. I had just decided that living in infidelity and uncertainty was worse than divorce. I didn’t want divorce, but the alternative was worse. I was resigned, I meant it, and she knew it.

I'm aware people may tell me I'm crazy for wanting reconciliation at all. Maybe I am. But we've had 16 years together, three children and a huge amount of shared life. Despite everything that's happened, I love my wife and I don't want to end the marriage without finding out whether we could build something very different from the relationship we'd allowed it to become.

No, you're not crazy. This is common. 16 years is a long time and you still love your wife. Like I said, I had 27 with my wife and a very brutal d day. I did not want a divorce. I wanted to fix it.

What you don't want to do is get into a mindset that you'll "stay married no matter the cost." You have to decide what you want out of the relationship and determine if she's capable of helping you get there. Living in limbo is misery.

At the same time, I'm beginning to understand that reconciliation can't ultimately consist of me changing while she evaluates me. If we do decide to try, I need it eventually to become two people actively rebuilding — me taking responsibility for the ways I hurt her before the affair, and her taking responsibility for the affair and helping me recover from the betrayal.

This is correct. You can't save the marriage by yourself. She has to be on board. It just won't work otherwise.

This isn't about you taking responsibility for your wrongs right now. Those things should be addressed, yes, but right now the most egregious wound is the infidelity. Consider you and your wife in triage right now. You're laying on a gurney bleeding out from a gunshot wound and she has a broken toe. Her broken toe can be tended to once you're stabilized.

Betrayal trauma is real trauma. It can take 2 to 5 years to recover from it. Some people say it's worse than the death of a loved one, and that's been my experience. Whatever was happening in your marriage before is dwarfed by the wound your wife has inflicted on you. If she won't or can't recognize that it's going to be a really rough ride.

I'm only a few weeks out from D-Day, so I also recognise that I'm probably trying to get answers to things that simply can't be answered yet.

I'd particularly appreciate hearing from people who were actually in this BS wants R / WS is ambivalent situation — including people for whom it ultimately worked and people who eventually decided they'd waited long enough.

Thanks for reading, and if any of this resonates I would be so grateful for any perspectives, insights or shared experiences.

This is still very fresh for you. At a couple of weeks I didn't know up from down or what was real or not. It's so very shocking and it takes longer than anyone wants to recover from it.

No one can predict how your wife is going to react or handle this. I shared my experience with you to show you one possibility. If you do what I did there's no guarantee your wife will have the same reaction mine did. My wife discovered she absolutely did not want a divorce, but up until I took steps toward it she was running the show. When I made those calls everything changed. I know that until I took my agency back it was looking pretty bad.

I was resigned and prepared to go through with it, tho, and she knew it. I would not recommend going that route unless and until you're serious about it and want out of limbo and uncertainty. You do not want to use it as a bluff or a manipulation tactic. Only do it if you mean it and divorce is the least bad option. Note that I worded it that way because there isn't really a "good" option here. Only you can decide where your threshold is. I ended up choosing what I saw as the lesser of 2 evils after a month of what I felt was emotional and psychological torture amd couldn't take it anymore.

I'm sorry you've found yourself here, man. This is a club that no one asks to join, but there's a good groupmof folks here who understand what you're going through amd we know how bad it hurts. For most of us this is the worst experience of our lives. I know it is for mine, and I've been around for over 5 decades.

Hang in there, keep posting. Ask questions or just use us to vent to if you need it. We're here for you.

[This message edited by Pogre at 11:12 PM, Wednesday, October 7th]

What your wife has done is set fire to a house that she was unhappy living in. She could've moved out of the house (separated/filed for divorce/moved out to temporarily to send you a message), but she didn't.

Now you're talking about making repairs to the house. But the repairs to the house can't be made because it's still on fire.

The reality is this: if you're going to have any chance of reconciling, then putting out the fire from the affair is going to need to take precedence over addressing your pre-affair issues. Your wife isn't going to like that one bit.

At this stage, I think you both need to take some time to figure out what you actually want. Just because your wife hasn't officially asked for or filed for divorce doesn't mean that she wants to reconcile. Staying married and reconciling are 2 different things. Maybe she doesn't want to leave right now because she doesn't want to be the bad guy. Maybe she's not ready to be a single mother and upend her life as she knows it. Maybe things wouldn't work out with the other man and so she's waiting until something better comes along.

I will tell you that the absolute worse thing that you could do is beg and plead for your wife to work things out with you and essentially reward her for her betrayal. She doesn't get to simultaneously justify her affair by saying that your marriage was over for all practical purposes except on paper while expecting you to jump through hoops to win her back.

I am so sorry you find yourself in this trauma. Your wife had many other options then to cheat, leave you with life long scars. Your WW blaming you is consistent with everyone’s experiences here. It doesn’t matter if you had a good past few years or crapy ones, the WS will always blame their partner because cheating creates a moral disconnect and the way the justify their actions is to make you the problem. I did find myself in a similar situation and this was my experience.

If you were the BS who wanted reconciliation while your WS was unsure, how did you handle that period? How long did you tolerate the uncertainty before you needed a decision? Did giving the WS space actually help them move towards reconciliation, or did it simply prolong limbo?

After about 4 weeks of WH begging for forgiveness following DDay I decided I would attempt reconciliation, but only if I could see drastic change. I read things in this forum and other websites about how common it was for a WS to cheat again and I was scared out of my mind that would happen again. So I sent him a list of things I would require for reconciliation, basic things like access to accounts and transparency and then he things shifted and he started to question whether he wanted reconciliation anymore. Basically he wanted to ease coming back to the marriage having done none or minimal work. I did the 180 as everyone refers to, and he kept me in limbo for weeks, providing some paswords and not others. One week saying he wanted to try and the other week saying he didnt. I became stronger and took a stance that i/our family was not an option. and during this time i kept a diary of all of his behaviours to remind me of what reality was. Because WS will gaslight the hell out of you. During this time, he tried multiple times to blame me for his choices. And when you’re in the shock of betrayal, you may blame yourself. But as the days went past, I started to push back. I knew I gave that marriage everything. I knew he had so many other options but to put me through this. Don’t accept her shifting blame. She won’t like it because rather than being the victim, she becomes the problem. But its the truth. Some WS may wake up and start to make changes to become safe partners and see their personal issues that led them to betray their family. Others, like mine, are lost causes, they cannot take accountability and responsibility. They cannot see the pain caused. And that lack of character will affect all other parts of your life even if you stay together. It will make the relationship unbearable. So after about 3 months of back and forth, him refusing to do things I asked and me standing my ground, i found out he was still in contact with AP. Because that was the easiest option and an escape again. She does not know him like i did, she did not require any change from him. From March 2026 until now i have maintained no contact with WH and he still has shown no change. He has even tried multiple times to tell me he wants this marriage. But im no longer falling for it. I have realised He wants access to me or to know i still care. The first time he said he would do x y z,it lasted about a week and i felt like an idiot for breaking no contact and having even some small hope of change. So more recently when he has tried that by leaving me voicemails, i didn’t believe it. When he saw my mum, she told him to stop making promises and go and do the things he said he would. Do you think he did them? No. Because its all bullshit. For a very long time, you will miss her, and everything you had or thought you had together. But you have to stay strong and know that with time, that illusion will fade and you will see more of who she really is. I am about 10 months from DDay, and its still hard some days. But I know as much as I wish my story was different, this is reality and its not a life I want or for my child.

Have you actually informed that contact has been cut. Is the loser married?

Slow down. What you think you want is what you feel. Just notice it, but it’s not information or resolve at this stage.

I’d rec a search of YouTube for "what to do if your spouse cheats by Jordan Peterson". You or others may have opinions about him based off the news, but I promise this video will help you start to frame your thinking a bit. His response is both direct and compassionate, something men in this situation need.

My advice, grain of salt / get what you pay for…
Do not accept bullshit explanations and stop worrying about managing your wife’s emotions (if she is even your wife still per her imagined separation). Focus on becoming a better man for your kids & you. Find out if she is capable of getting unstuck from her cheater brain on her own & wants to catch you on the journey. This will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but you are up for the challenge!

Thank you all for your perspectives. I think the main thing I am taking from them, is that I need to focus on what I can control, which is my own behaviour and actions.

This is a good take, and interesting, as up until now I have definitely been really struggling with how to tolerate this period of uncertainty without making my wife regulate it for me. I've been looking to her for reassurance, and asking lots of questions, which hasn't really been helpful.

She's not currently in a position to offer me any reassurance, as currently she hasn't committed to any form of reconciliation and trying. She just keeps saying she wants space. Space from the AP. Emotional space from me - we are currently living and parenting together in the same house - so it can't be physical. But she doesn't want me asking questions about the affair (she won't even really recognise that word) pressure to be defining our relationship, what we're doing, when she's going to make a decision etc.

Every time I do ask a question which I feel is legitimate, and at the moment she will only accept this in our weekly couples therapy, it turns into another question, and then the cumulative effect ends up overwhelming for her, and pushes her further away from me.

"What was the last time you spoke/saw XXXXX?"
"What did you say / he say?"
"He said he was sorry? Sorry for what? Sorry it's over, sorry it started?"

There's no end to it, and whilst she isn't actively reconciling, I'm not sure how productive it is trying to get some of the detail and answers that I need.

Also coming back to my original point, and maybe what I'm reading into what you are all saying, I think I need to rein in the "pick me dance". Focus on myself, what I can learn, how I can evolve and change and be better. Not necessarily for the marriage, because I can't control if that will be a thing going forward. But because they're the right things to do regardless. I need to take responsibility for the things that are mine, and the things that I can control.

What my wife does and takes responsibility for is up to her ultimately.

I've been trying to press her to acknowledge the affair and betrayal for what it is. But even if I catch her on this in a logical argument, I'm not sure that's going to help me. What I really want is for her to recognise it for herself. Feel genuine remorse, and start the process of trying to make me feel safe and secure again. If that's what she chooses to do. But again, that's in her remit, not mine. However painful that is...

Sorry you are here. It seems you are getting it. Improve for yourself not to impress her. Do not do the pick me dance. But notice you are conceding control to her. She betrayed you. But she gets to decide when you deserve answers? Really? She has you waiting in limbo?

Here is what my experience has shown me. Cheating is always about the cheater. Your WW cheated because she is broken. She has the capacity to rationalize her cheating when there is absolutely no justification for cheating, ever. People cheat in all types of marriages, happy, unhappy, because they are bored, because they are stressed, and every other bullshit reason under the sun. You decide whether you want to continue being married to an unremorseful cheater who blames you because she can’t take responsibility for her horrible decisions. Be firm. Set your boundaries for continuing in the M. Always value yourself..

Sorry you find yourself here. Marital treason is brutally painful.

Youve been given great straight talk by folks who have lived similar nightmares, i dont know much but I can tell you this:

• Marital dysfunction and marital treason are stand alone issues. One does not in any way excuse the other. Its like someone said, the symptom (dissatisfaction in the marriage) has been treated (affair), the patient (marriage) did not survive.

• "Pick me dances" in all of their forms never, ever, work. Not ever.

• Attempting to reconcile with the remorseless traitor-spouse is a soul- killing endeavor. As a young Husband and Father, I tried lopsidedly to "save the marriage" for far, far too long. Most exhausting years of my life.

• I wish to God I had had a resource like SI and, if so, had listened. People have to work through the detritus of marital treason at their own pace, but many come here, get great input, but are not ready to recieve that info. Their heads are still spinning and are completely disoriented. Take time to read here, process the information given and enact what youare able to. Again, if I had the resource and could have enacted the above, it would have accelerated my journey to ultimate healing.

Enact the 180 to carve out a safer space for yourself. Take time to process. Stop trying to engage with your apparently remorseless "spouse".

Gently, its always a terrible shock to find that your betrothed is an unsafe partner and, thus, not (or is no longer) marriage material.

I wish you well.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 2:04 PM, Thursday, October 8th]

Here’s the article on the 180 https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/documents/library/articles/discovery/understanding-the-180/

Read the FAQs, which is an embedded link.

Her unwillingness to answer your questions is illuminating. I maintain my suspicion that the affair is not over. It doesn’t even sound like she claims it is, just that she’s got it on "pause" while she figures out what she wants.

Well, you can figure out what you want too. And I suggest that what you want is to be out of infidelity. And since her affair isn’t definitively over, you are stuck in infidelity.

Cancel couples therapy. If she’s not going to talk about her affair, then the only thing to discuss there is all the ways you contributed to a bad marriage. To hell with that.

You didn’t say, so I want to ask again: is the AP married?

Hi Letmebefrank: I don't know much about the AP. He starting working for us around March/April of this year, but as my wife was at home she dealt with it all. I never had much to do with him, just saw him a couple of times.

She says he is divorced, and has kids. I don't know if he is currently in a relationship.

From what she has said, she started asking him about divorce, custody of kids etc. I think this was with a view to where her mind was going with us. But as I think I've said previously, I was completely in the dark on this. She came to me once explaining that she was struggling with the division of labour at home, and I was dismissive at the time. But that was it. There was no other attempt, and certainly no discussions with me about her unhappiness in the marriage, that she was heading in this direction, that we were separated, free to see other people or anything at all of the sort.

She claims that before they had sex, she had decided the marriage was over. Again, without telling me. She said in therapy that to her an affair is when two people are communicating, getting on, and then one person goes behind the other's back. And what she did doesn't fall in this category. Crazy huh.

I have been trying to establish better timelines. When were boundaries crossed? When did she start discussing our marriage and her issues with it, with this guy? When did the behaviour and relationship between them change from guy working at the house, to confidant and emotional support person? But she just doesn't want to go there with any of it, and gets defensive.

She says she has messaged him a week ago to say it's over, and promised me a week ago that if there was any contact between them she would tell me. Obviously this is difficult for me to believe, partly due to the way the affair was revealed. I've put the details in my story profile thing, but essentially I feel like the trust has been shattered particularly because:

A: I asked her 6 weeks ago if she was seeing anyone else, as I had suspicions. I had never asked her this before. She denied it.
B: She didn't come forward after this, through any sense of guilt.
C: When I discovered the affair on her laptop, messages between them, I called her to confront her and she continued to deny it.
D: Since D Day, there has been trickle truth of several other physical interactions - kisses etc - between them that she didn't initially tell me about during confrontation or in our initial couples therapy when I was trying to get the facts.
E: We have always shared our phone locations with each other. About 10 days ago, she had an unexpected "appointment" that wasn't in our shared calendar where everything usually goes. When I asked what it was, she said it was the beautician. During the time of the appointment, her phone dropped out of location for an hour and a half. I went into the place I thought she'd been after and asked if she'd been there. They said no. No money left our account. When I confronted her and said I didn't believe she'd been to the beautician and she'd seen him. She denied it saying she used a separate account, she'd turned her phone off not to be disturbed and went to a different place. And now she said I'm controlling and monitoring her, so she's turned location sharing off her phone now.

In a way, It's helped me, as I was unhealthily tracking her a lot. And now I can't. And anyway, she's at home on her own three days a week when I'm working at the office, so she's got plenty of opportunity to continue the affair if she wants to. I can't control that.

It's possible the beautician story is true. I want to believe her. But this whole thing has just blown a massive hole in everything I thought I believed in. And so I'm questioning everything.

She's not currently in a position to offer me any reassurance, as currently she hasn't committed to any form of reconciliation and trying. She just keeps saying she wants space. Space from the AP. Emotional space from me - we are currently living and parenting together in the same house - so it can't be physical. But she doesn't want me asking questions about the affair (she won't even really recognise that word) pressure to be defining our relationship, what we're doing, when she's going to make a decision etc.

I believe you can find this in Chapter 2 paragraph 5 of the "Cheater's Handbook" .

Honestly...there is no "Cheater's Handbook"...but most cheaters have similar patterns and it seems sometimes like there MUST be a handbook or something because things like this are very common.

There is no "Betrayed's Handbook" either...mostly because each of us heal at different times and in different circumstances. You have been given some GREAT advice . You have also been able to discern most of it...which is very cool given the turmoil you are currently in.

For ME...I have been married twice and cheated on twice. I did the STUPID pick-me-dance so well that my 1st H decided to stay and work on our M. Only...about 2 years later I caught him with another adultery co-conspirator. Needless to say that M ended in divorce!

With my 2nd M...as soon as my H confessed to his A...I immediately told him the M was over. I was NOT going to do that dance anymore! Seeing me tell him that...with NO emotion at all...SHOCKED him. He told me later that he thought I would be devastated and that there would be crying and maybe some screaming...but he never expected me to act like that. When I walked out of the room he said that his heart SANK. That affair bubble POPPED right then and there!! Needless to say...we started talking about reconciliation...and are very HAPPILY in R now !

There is a saying on here...you have to be willing to LOSE the marriage in order to SAVE it. Most probably...your wife is still in that "affair fog"...like my 2nd H was when he told me about meeting someone while working alone overseas. That fog went away QUICKLY when he realized he had lost me. My H had been home for two days and barely touched me all that time. But when I went into our bedroom after his confession...he said he didn't know what to do...all he knew was that he wanted to be next to me...so he followed me into our bedroom and asked if he could lay down with me . After a while I told him he needed to go and message the adultery co-conspirator so that they could start deciding what to do for their future because we didn't have a future anymore. He reluctantly got up and did message her...but while he was by himself in the living room he started thinking about what he was losing. He told himself that IF I gave him another chance he would do whatever it took for me to stay. At the same time I was thinking about what it would take IF I wanted to R. I came up with a few ultimatums...went in the living room and told him what it would take for me to consider R...and my H has not only done ever one of the ultimatums...he has surpassed them ! If I had known that he was already planning on doing anything I said...I may have come up with more ultimatums !!

I didn't know about SI at the time...but this place has been a Godsend . You will be given LOTS of advice because we are ALL here to HELP . Some of the advice given may not be what will help YOU to HEAL...and that is just fine. Like it is often said on here...take what advice you NEED...and leave the rest .

I am sure that you have seen the Serenity Prayer used in AA.

"God, grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference."

There is so much wisdom in that short prayer.

The thing that has drawn me to the Stoic philosophy in recent years is perhapes the main premise in practicing Stoicism... you can only control yourself and your actions... you cannot control control anyone else and what they do or say.

So, you need to be working on yourself and try to ignore what others are doing. If I had known and practiced this over the decades I have lived, I would have saved myself a lot of stress and anxiety.

In one of the reponses to your post someone mentioned the Hard 180. I am in total agreement, especially while she is sitting on the fence. The purpose of the Hard 180 is not to punish, nor is it to try to "win" her back. The purpose is for you to put that space between you that she wants, so that you can then see more clearly and breathe easier.

This is from the Healing Library on this website in the FAQ for Betrayed Spouses. It is the answer to Question #11.

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/documents/library/faq/bs/

One thing you will notice about the 33 points is that at all times you maintain a cheerful countenance around her. Don't tell her or show her how much you are hurting because she really doesn't give a damn. She is a selfish individual, otherwise I doubt she would have cheated on you.

I would be willing to bet if you do practice the Hard 180 that you would begin to see her in a new light.

Good luck.

Oh Mertonman, I’m sorry. I now have read your story in your profile. I guess he’s like the handyman or something?

She claims that before they had sex, she had decided the marriage was over. Again, without telling me. She said in therapy that to her an affair is when two people are communicating, getting on, and then one person goes behind the other's back. And what she did doesn't fall in this category. Crazy huh.

Not crazy at all. Just a load of self-serving bullshit. That’s a very convenient definition of cheating! It’s also shared by no one.

What appears to have happened is just an affair. She may legitimately been unhappy with the state of the marriage, but it was still a marriage. Like I said earlier, there’s no concept for having a private divorce in her mind that makes it not cheating. It is. I mean, she told you one time that she didn’t like the division of labor? That’s definitely not telling you that she considered herself single, and even if it were, that doesn’t constitute a divorce.

She saw the handyman, thought he was attractive and wanted to hook up with him. That’s what happened.

That beautician thing 10 days ago is an obvious like. She was with him, you’d be a fool to assume otherwise.

Depending on the laws of your jurisdiction (and you need to check with a lawyer) you could install cameras in your house or voice-activated recorders (VARs) if you want to catch her. But to repeat myself, all of her behavior is of a person who is still involved in an A, and I think you need to act as if she is.

When someone is in an affair and won’t stop, there’s very little you can do. She will only stop, if at all, when she wants to. On this site, the advice is generally to deliver Bigger’s "Sandwich Speech". Essentially, it’s to "let her go" and to expose her A to all relevant stakeholders (her parents, your parents, etc.)

Here’s a recent explanation in some detail about what the Sandwich Speech is. https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/topics/667020/trying-to-keep-calm-understanding-and-be-kind-but-im-so-hurt/?ap=201

Hello, mertonman. Welcome to the greatest club that no one ever wanted to join. I'm sorry you've had to find us here.

You've already received some great advice and guidance. I highly suggest that you read this thread again.

For most people the betrayal of infidelity is a profound shock and a severe emotional and psychological trauma. It took me about ten months just to recover from the shock and years to heal from the trauma. Even the most well adjusted, strongest and most confident men and women will be brought low by the experience. It is truly devastating to the mind, body and spirit. Know that you are not alone in this regard, that the shock and trauma are perfectly normal and natural.

I believe that infidelity is self-destructive. We, the betrayed, are collateral damage. Nothing you ever did or didn't do, nothing you ever said or didn't say, would have made any difference at all. Your WW chose infidelity because of her own issues, her inability to cope with them, with life and all of its stressors. Those issues were there before you ever met her - issues that have been tripping her up for most of her life (FOO shit). None of this is your fault. You are not to blame. Not even a little. Her affair is 100% on her and her alone.

If she is willing and able to own and fix her shit, reconciliation might be possible. As hikingout, one of our most esteemed veteran members recently wrote

No one has ever reconciled with the person who cheated on them. They reconcile with someone who has grown.

I would highly encourage you to forget about reconciliation until you know that your WW is a good candidate. And I'll be perfect blunt here. The odds of successful reconciliation are very low. Most betrayed spouses are willing to take the risk for plenty of good reasons. Preserving the family, especially with young children, is the most common. Shared history, love, finances, dreams of the future, etc., are all, IMHO, good reasons to offer a WS the GIFT of reconciliation.

However, no matter how much you want to reconcile, you cannot do it alone. You cannot force, cajole or otherwise encourage your WW to do the tremendously hard work required. And know that the bulk of the work falls squarely on the shoulders of the wayward spouse.

There is a saying on here...you have to be willing to LOSE the marriage in order to SAVE it.

W2BHA is absolutely correct. I cannot say with any certainly that her approach will work out for you. However, I can assure you that nothing will change in your marriage if you're not willing to walk away. Plenty of wayward spouses will quickly extricate themselves from cranial-rectal inversion the moment they realize that their BS is filing for divorce. It may happen for your WW. Or, she may agree. Either way, you get yourself out of infidelity!

Keep on posting and reading here, man. This community saved me in ways that are difficult to express.

Mertonman, upon reading your original post I had a picture in my head of a highly dysfunctional, possibly doomed marriage. But after reading some more of your replies and your profile story what I see is yes, here's a marriage that had some legitimate serious issues propagated by both sides that allowed mutual resentment to build, but not the types of issues that scream "this marriage is doomed!"

Those problems are not the type that can't be worked out. And they certainly can't be solved with an affair!

Your wife doesn't get to secretly declare your relationship over in her mind, not share it with you, then retroactively rewrite an agreement that's explicit in a marriage! Then turn around and redefine what is in very common language, known as an affair! She's completely deluding herself if she really believes that.

I agree with frank about shelving marriage counseling for now. It's fairly common advice on these forums to not seek marriage counseling so soon after an affair. A good marriage counselor well versed in infidelity and betrayal trauma can help, but many of them focus more on rug sweeping the issue and building a brand new, sparkly happy marriage no matter what. Even if it includes explicitly or implicitly blaming the betrayed spouse for the choices of the cheating spouse. Some follow the "unmet needs" model, which is legitimate for many problems couples face, but it's the wrong model for dealing with infidelity. If she isn't going to even acknowledge what she did as an affair, I don't see it as being productive.

Individual counseling for yourself. Preferably betrayal trauma or trauma informed therapist, and if possible, individual therapy for her to help her sort why she thought an affair was a good idea.

The marriage didn't cheat. Your wife did. She made the choices necessary to conduct an affair when she had many, many other choices and pathways available to confront or solve her dissatisfaction.

To be fair, we can't know with certainty what went on with the beautician appointment, but I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money she wasn't getting beautified. I suspect the affair is still ongoing. Based on the evidence thus far, it's not out of character or the realm of possibility that she's still lying to you.

Oftentimes what's discovered is only the tip of the iceberg. I know that's probably not what you want to hear right now, but you should brace yourself for more possible revelations and trickle truth.

I know one thing, she knows what she did was wrong. She hid it. She lied about it when confronted. She's being really defensive about it. I think she's lying to herself by trying to redefine what any normal person would absolutely consider an affair because she doesn't want to be the bad guy in her own story.