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I think there was a misunderstanding, she has left. She doe not care I am on.

I need to take back some of the things I said in my last post then I was on a rant and a roll there

ETA: Just so we are clear, I bashed your WW for not wanting you to post here and for telling you that, and THAT is the ONE AND ONLY THING I am taking back. EVERYTHING ELSE stays, including the rocks I threw at the Reconciliation Industrial Complex and the people around you telling you to just get over it even in a roundabout way.

I agree 100% with gr8ful.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 11:55 AM, Tuesday, July 7th]

Maybe detaching and observing is the only sane thing I can do right now. Not because I do not care, but because caring has had me carrying too much of this. Her work has to be hers. My healing has to be mine.

Yes.
I know it’s hard because you can love.

But you must leave emotionally for her to realize she misses you.

I am assuming she loves you here (in her broken and twisted way) but I got that feel. Undisputed you loved her and you are likely still in part, and in part attached to your bleeding past attachment(the torn feelings is from this).

And this line clues me about the puzzle

I think there was a misunderstanding, she has left. She doe not care I am on.

She is avoidant isn’t she?

If my hunch is right detachment is the only way she will feel the abyss her issues are causing, the only hope she will finally abandon her shadow comfort zone and jump out and through the gap.

I know it’s hard for you and even harder for her to become brave all of a sudden.

She might get there eventually, but you might be long gone.

Mind this is the hunch I got from you and your wife since the start, I said nothing for you were in chaos.

I feel you are getting clarity, forgive me if I threw it harsh right now, I sense you wish time could turn back and life rewritten (I used to as well), I would thumb you up if you find yourself again (you + her).

Now is not there, not yet at least.

What I feel is you will find peace, I see and recognize your path, and while you are still climbing barefoot on swords tips I know how distant you are from the soft grass summit, so I am confident you are getting there.

Hey I stopped for a while to fucking stomp the sword tips! you are climbing with determination , at some point there’s a leap and it’s over.

No pain and peace

And how exactly do you know this about OP’s wife? Why the instinct to characterize her as a victim? From my perspective, she DID trick OP in a diabolical way. Inviting her AP to her own wedding? If that’s not diabolical, I don’t know what is.

I said it was my experience, I did not claim it was gemmy’s wife’s experience. And I do not feel I described a victim. I described myself.

I think you could describe ANY WS’s behavior as diabolical. Including my own past behavior.

It is a great irony to me that my story is such a wet blanket to reconciliation.

As I think you know, those of us who followed you on your path are very sorry you didn't get what you wanted. That is definitely something to mourn.

At the same time, remember that the SI is here to help people survive and thrive. I don't know if you think you've reached that level, but you're on your way at the very least.

When you share your experience, you give readers insight int the wide variation of outcomes and the process of reaching those outcomes. You give every reader insight into how their Ms might play out. And readers need to see testimony that R takes 2. No matter how much a single partner wants R, it takes work by both partners - each needs to do the work they need to do.

I think you do a service to every reader when you share.

*****

Some here say "you can reconcile from anything if the both of you simply want to". That’s a massive oversimplification imo.

I think it's more a misquote/misunderstanding than an over-simplification, a misquote that I believe has been confronted in the past.

I believe the message is: you can reconcile from anything if the both of you do the work you need to do.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:04 PM, Tuesday, July 7th]

Gemmy,

A lot of our upbringing tells us to forgive and to make allowances for other people. One could say we're raised to be co-dependent. Of course, we get a lot of counter-programming, too. And so much of our upbringing leads us to use the most inappropriate approach....

The fact that you're noticing this stuff is a big win for you. Since you know that your programming is leading you hither and yon, you can overcome your programming. It's a step toward (re)claiming your power.

You're going through a very painful and challenging time. The fact that you're asking painful questions is very much in your favor, as awful as you feel. I'm watching the Tour de France as I write, and I can see these guys go to their limits climbing mountains in 98F temperatures. In a sense, that's what you're doing. You can't yet see the end to the suffering, but it's coming. You really are on your way to thriving, whether you R or D.

As I think you know, those of us who followed you on your path are very sorry you didn't get what you wanted. That is definitely something to mourn.

At the same time, remember that the SI is here to help people survive and thrive. I don't know if you think you've reached that level, but you're on your way at the very least.

When you share your experience, you give readers insight int the wide variation of outcomes and the process of reaching those outcomes. You give every reader insight into how their Ms might play out. And readers need to see testimony that R takes 2. No matter how much a single partner wants R, it takes work by both partners - each needs to do the work they need to do.

I think you do a service to every reader when you share.

Agree.

I would not say you are a R wet blanket. I think you have had an experience a lot of people have had when trying to reconcile.

I had a different experience and both are valid to look at, post about because it helps folks sort.

I keep being accused (not by you ink) of saying my experience is everyone else’s. That is false. I post my experience someone know what that looks like too. I think it resonates with readers who see it and it doesn’t where it doesn’t. I expect every single infidelity experience and aftermath all have their own nuances. Having a variety of insights into someone’s personal experience is helpful. I trust a bs to be able to sort. I trust they have reasons why they want to to try and reconcile or divorce. It’s a big decision that has a lot of personal nuance.

I would just encourage not to make a decision either way too soon and to focus on the recovery of oneself first. Everything else is just spinning your wheels because the ups and downs are so intense that focusing on what is needed for self regulation is self care.

I trust a bs to be able to sort.

I suppose this is the key idea. Writing my own story just feels like killing hope like spraying weeds.

Gemmy, I hope for the best for you. If you find it in your heart that you want to rebuild with your wife, then by God I hope that happens in a healthy, thriving way.

However, if she doesn’t throw her full self into it, one of two things will happen:

1) the relationship will end. You will give up, probably thru sheer exhaustion. From my own experience and watching others, this can take years and the pain level is comparable to what you are feeling now, with some calm periods.

2) the relationship will continue in a zombie state, not entirely dead, but nothing that resembles living. You emotionally detach to spare yourself the pain, and if she’s severely avoidant she will prefer it that way. You’ll find a roommate stasis point and your kids will grow up internalizing that is what marriage is like. She won’t have dealt with her own shit, and as a serial offender is extremely high risk to do it again. I learned to fear this outcome most, which eventually for me forced option one when my ex wouldn’t step up.

No worries Wont. I understood what you meant, and I appreciate the correction.

She is not upset I am here. She knows I post, she knows I read. At this point, I think she knows this place has probably kept me more regulated than almost anything else.

Back to your point, yes I think avoidant is a fair word. I do not know if it explains everything, and I am careful with that because I am tired of explanations turning into cushions. I am tired of brokenness, avoidance, shame, validation, fear, trauma, all of it being used to soften what was done. But yes, she avoided truth. She avoided conflict. She avoided shame. She avoided consequences. She avoided the full reality of what she was doing, and then after DDay, she avoided the full truth until I had to drag it out piece by piece. I am sure I still have not gotten it all but the bare minimal version.

That is one of the hardest parts for me. I am not just looking at the affairs anymore. I am looking at the machinery inside her that allowed them to exist, and then allowed the lies to keep going after my world had already been blown apart.

I guess I am a lot worse off than I have been admitting to myself. I keep telling myself I am detached, that I am observing, that I am getting clarity, but the truth is I am still standing in the wreckage wondering if there is more buried under it. I gave her until the end of this week for a full, no-lie, no-omission, no-technicality disclosure. Not another curated version. Not another "I did not think that counted." Not another confession that has to be corrected three months later. Full truth. All of it. Or we are finished. I know I can never believe it fully but I will have to put it to rest eventually.

And what really shook me is that I had to define cheating for her. Her definition seems to be penetrative sex. So I had to spell it out like I was writing a contract for someone who had already found every loophole. Kissing is cheating. Oral is cheating. Hands are cheating. Sexting is cheating. Secret emotional intimacy is cheating. Hiding a man in your phone under a fake name is cheating. Telling another man you love him is cheating. Sharing parts of yourself that belong inside the marriage is cheating. Anything sexual, romantic, emotionally intimate, secretive, or intentionally hidden because you know it would destroy your spouse if they saw it it's cheating. But just the fact she hid it all let's me know deep down she knew it, just wouldn't allow herself to admit it.

And when I said that, her face dropped.

That look I know so well now. So I am pretty sure there is more. Maybe not more men, but probably. Maybe not another whole affair. But more moments. More acts. More "it did not count because it was not sex." More little technicalities filed away in whatever part of her mind allowed her to live beside me while betraying me. And honestly, I do not know how much more of that my mind can take.

I do not think she is a victim in this, I think she is damaged. I think she is ashamed. I think she is probably looking at herself in ways she avoided her whole life. But she still did this. She still brought one affair partner to our wedding. She still texted the other one while telling me about the first one. She still let me build a life on a lie. Whatever brokenness exists in her does not erase the brutality of what she chose, and I need the totallity of it to inform a proper decision.

So yes, detachment is probably the only sane thing I have right now. Not as punishment. Not as a tactic to make her miss me, though that would be nice to see. I am not trying to play games with her fear of loss. I just cannot keep holding both ends of this marriage anymore. I cannot keep being the betrayed husband, the investigator, the emotional stabilizer, the consequence manager, the truth extractor, and somehow also the soft landing for her shame. That has been killing me.

Sisoon, I think you are right that noticing this is a step toward reclaiming power. It just does not feel powerful yet. It feels like grief. It feels like watching the part of me that would have forgiven almost anything finally realize that forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. It feels like learning that love does not automatically mean staying, and that is a miserable damn thing to learn after 19 years.

Hikingout, I agree too. I think I am what reconciliation can look like when the betrayed spouse wants it badly, maybe even desperately, but the damage is so deep and the truth comes too slowly. Maybe people can reconcile from anything if both people do the work. Maybe that is true. But the word "both" is doing a hell of a lot of work in that sentence.

That is where I am stuck. She is changing. I can see that. But some days all I can see is that she is fighting like hell to become the person I thought I already had. I do not know how to celebrate someone finally reaching the floor I was standing on the whole time.

I cannot forgive what I do not know. I cannot reconcile with a version of events that keeps changing. And I cannot keep standing for a marriage if I am the only one standing in the full truth of it. This is by far and away the hardest thing I have ever dealt with in my life and I know this is just the beginning.

Well, since you’ve now found out that she’s still unwilling to tell you everything and will hide as much as she believes she can get away with, whatever timeline disclosure she gives you won’t be worth a shit without the timeline polygraph.
I know it’s not foolproof, but it’s the best tool you have available.
Really, once they see the destruction they have caused, and still continue to withhold and lie, I wouldn’t be able to see any work towards change as anything but performative.

Is not a tactic, if someone ever tries it as a tactic it will fail because is manipulation and not real detachement.

It’s for you, reclamation of agency, reclamation of value, worth, respect.

That avoidant a are generally drawn to that, it’s part of their dysfunctional issues, a side effect not a desirable healing.

Is still dysfunctional.

Caveat, keeping your space is generally universally attractive for most people crave attention and value it more when is withdrawn and not given out freely.

That’s not pathological, it’s dysfunctional in magnitude in avoidants.

Just that.

Do it for you.

I will elaborate how if you wish

Hi Gemmy, I rarely comment outside "wayward side", but I read about your struggles with trickle truth.

I am the WS. DDay was end of Oct last year, and I trickled truth until 14 April 2026. 5 months and a half of trickling the truth.

It was madness and so much pain for my BS. I genuinely thought I could start "the work" without giving all the details of my past behaviour. What gave me the final push to go all out were 2 posts in particular, here on SI.

One was from Daddydom I think (someone bumped that thread) and it stated something along the lines that recovery can’t begin until it’s all out. And I genuinely wanted us to recover and R (still want).

The other one was "keeping secrets" and it mentioned how keeping secrets equate to manage a person and not love.

I understand that she has left SI, but there is support here for waywards, and only reading some threads can be a huge help.

The only other thing I can say is that now (3 months from when it was all out) I really wish I didn’t drag things for so long. Because it is true that things can start moving only when it’s really all out.

Sorry if I perhaps went a bit "off-topic" with my comment, I hope I have not been triggering / insensitive.

I cannot forgive what I do not know. I cannot reconcile with a version of events that keeps changing. And I cannot keep standing for a marriage if I am the only one standing in the full truth of it.

This is the big problem with the lies to me. She has not "only become what she should have always been" as baseline behavior in a marriage if she willingly and knowingly is continuing to lie. There's no reason for a polygraph if she doesn't want to be truthful.

Some here say "you can reconcile from anything if the both of you simply want to". That’s a massive oversimplification imo.

I think it's more a misquote/misunderstanding than an over-simplification, a misquote that I believe has been confronted in the past.

I believe the message is: you can reconcile from anything if the both of you do the work you need to do.

Understood that it's a misquote or misunderstanding, sisoon. Even so, I think it's an oversimplification. Marriages are fluid, and people and their values and situations are fluid. You and your WS can want reconciliation and do the work, and still later one of you can decide your values or desires have changed and you no longer want it. There's a BS who doesn't come here often anymore, waitedwaytoolong, and I think of his reconciliation that way. Sadly, he has expressed a sense of his own failure with the outcome. I disagree with that.

And what really shook me is that I had to define cheating for her. .... But just the fact she hid it all let's me know deep down she knew it, just wouldn't allow herself to admit it.

And when I said that, her face dropped.

Wow, that sounds like quite a mismatch of values, no? That's hard to imagine overcoming and truly resolving in a way that you will have the same understanding of infidelity and values around it going forward.

Yes, you need a full disclosure. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Or at least as close as a forgetful, self deceiving human can give. It will never be perfect, but it needs to be a useful model of history. Her trying to weasel out on technicalities is disturbing.

I regard the betrayed’s understanding of the A history to be like a house of cards. It is second hand information given by a forgetful, motivated liar. It is shaky, and it takes a long time to build up, but it can serve to allow the mind to find peace, stop ruminating and searching for threats. It should be built with the most reliable information possible, which would be her timeline that she stands behind, possibly with a poly. My recommendation is if she comes in with more lies after that and knocks the house down, just walk away. It’s too painful and risky to proceed.

I have told her this is it. I am done waiting for her.

Gemmy, brother.

There will probably always be more to learn.

Your situation spans considerable years. Your wife compartmentalized her ass off. Mine did too. In fact, She hardly knows whats true and bullshit about what she did or didnt do, how she felt about it, cant/wont face it, same thing, little difference.

I think many years of doing this to themselves becomes an impossibly wide body of water for some waywards to ford.

I needed to know it all. I needed to understand the whole of it to process. I worked forwards, backwards, upside down, covered every hour and minute of times I knew things happened, comparing against what she would say until I was nearly dead.

There was always more. Always something hidden, something she didnt think about to tell me, something she convinced herself didnt qualify as needing disclosed. Usually deeply upsetting and traumatizing things.

To know it all, youd have to be a time traveling invisible dude.

You can lose yourself in this.

A point comes where you understand enough to understand what you are dealing with. And you are already there, as I was. Knowing everything wont remove you from your agony.
Or undo any of it. Its real. It happened.

And the point where she becomes the person who wants you to have the whole picture surely would have come already, and probably isnt coming. Shes looking at your pain, and isnt there. You know this. You are mourning.

Maybe she will get there, I dont know, noone does. Dont count on it and dont wait for it to start dealing with your need for healing.

Everyone here tried so hard to get through to me about this. But I still felt I needed to know, so I kept looking under rocks till I was ready to stop.

I wished a thousand times, so much, that I was the kind of person who didnt need the whole picture.

Its not the story of the shit she did anymore, Gemmy. Its your story, and you get to choose everyday who you are in it. Do it your way. Get your answers if you want. Say fuck it and file if you want. Stay if you think that will be better for you. Screw what anyone here tells you to do instead of the things your heartsong takes you to. On your timeframe.

You are enough and your recognizance is correct.

I know you’re right logically. I know, in the bigger picture, it probably doesn’t change anything. The facts are the facts. What happened happened.

But I don’t think that’s what I’m actually searching for anymore.

I’m searching for her willingness to be completely open and honest without me having to drag it out of her. I’m searching for the moment where she finally chooses my need for truth over her own need for comfort. Where protecting me matters more than protecting herself. Where I don’t have to investigate, corner, question, or define every obvious thing just to get a fraction of the truth.

Because that is what I am so desperate for. Not another polished apology. Not another disclosure I have to pick apart. Just one time where my pain matters more than her fear.

Because deep down, I think I am looking for some tiny light in all of this. Something, anything, that makes the last nineteen years mean something other than me being a fool in my own life. I am looking for one piece of proof that I mattered enough to her, not just myself. That our marriage mattered enough. That our children, our home, our memories, our entire life together were not just things she was willing to gamble with and then hide behind lies. I am looking for anything that tells me there was something real under all of this wreckage, because the alternative is so brutally painful I can barely look at it, even though it is staring me in the eyes.

I also want to believe that she is genuinely changing, or at the least trying. I want to see her understanding the level of devastation she has caused and want to protect me from a miniscule amount of it at least.

I so know exactly what you mean.

For all my effort to reframe myself to what I can control, THIS person,

It makes little difference to my desire to have had the kind of connection in the aftermath denied that you describe. It is so hard.

I worry about you both because the Reconciliation-Industrial Complex that is pulling you in and maybe pulling you under, is very strong.

My hope is that you cut the the cord from your ball-n-chain, that you are free from the evil shrew-lady, and that you get freedom.

I guess I'm supposed to say here that I mean this metaphorically, that I am also allowing that your WWs become a paragon of integrity and virtue and so in that way no more evil shrew-lady. Yeah that's what they told me I got to say.

Both of your WWs want you to stay--out of their own selfishness, as likely they know staying married is their bulwark against their scarlet letters--and they care a lot less about what it does to YOU. I know this is harsh but it does need to be said, as I want better for you both.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 9:50 PM, Tuesday, July 7th]