Hey all, first of all I want to say thanks for this forum. Finding it has been a breath of fresh air and has provided great information and consolation in the fact of knowing other men and women are going through what I am currently going through. Thanks in advance for all replies and time spent reading this.
My story begins on June 9. This was a day my wife, 2 kids and I(ages 2 and 5) were supposed to leave to take a family trip to the mountains along with my parents and sister's family. All good, right?
I talk to her at lunch and discuss logistics of when we are leaving, packing, etc... She sends me a picture of them celebrating her sales leader for the month at work, all that jazz.
I get home, go to the master bedroom and our bags are sitting there packed. I can immediately sense something is wrong from my wife's demeanor. Cue the 'stomach wrenching feeling'. I definitely can't recall what was exactly said that day as it's a blur by now, but she basically said she couldn't go on the trip. She didn't want to pretend in front of my family. She was tired of trying. "It shouldn't be this hard", etc...
I know it's cliche but i was pretty flabbergasted. I, like most people, thought we had a decent marriage. I'm not going to sit here and say it was great as we had our struggles. But there was definitely no incident in the previous couple of weeks like any sort of argument that would have triggered this. She just sounds emotionally drained(now that i read about WWs, the traits are similar) I don't do anything like beg, ask her about the kids, etc...I really am just mostly shocked and if i recall i pretty much hear her out on a few things and leave the room to be with the kids and try my best to keep it together. She takes a nap, then wakes up at 9pm to head to her sister's house.
****
Now, a little back ground. Rewind to 3 nights before, i giver her oral and we have great sex. This was preceded by us reading a big we got from our marriage retreat together and going over the sex chapter. She was turned on by it.
Next night she has a bit of a breakdown and says she is losing her faith. She joined christianity prior to us getting married 7 years ago and our lack of a "spiritual" connection has always been something she's brought up. Over the years we've tried reading books together. I've always supported her journey, have attended church with her on a semi regular basis; but am not quite where she is on the belief scale. She mentions the only thing keeping her trying in the marriage was her faith and without her faith she doesn't know if she can do it(red flag anyone...boy i should have saw this coming right then and there).
I console her and offer to pray with her. We finish the night with a BJ and anal sex. That sounds crass but I just want to give an idea of our relationship directly leading up to D Day.
***
Now, that marriage book i mentioned. It's christian based and it talked heavily about the role sex plays in a marriage and what's expected of wife and husband.
My wife has had a rough childhood, to say the least. Her mom had her at 14, and had 5 kids by the age of 23. Lots of men came in and out. Terrible things were done to my wife, and she's had **** bfs. Her dad treated her like ****. The whole 9 yards. She and I have been to counseling to discuss her past, and how to best navigate those waters in our relationship.
I think the book may have been a part of the trigger that set her off.
***
Now, back to d-day. Some of the other things she said, and has said before in counseling, is that she would be totally good with never having sex again. She sometimes feel asexual. She's tired of feeling the pressure to have sex, and that it wasn't me, but just being in a marriage brought her constant anxiety about it. I could go on but i think you get the gist of it. It is hard to explain if you haven't been with a victim of sexual abuse.
***
Well, she sleeps at her sister's for a few nights and i really don't contact her much. Intuition told me just to leave her alone as much as possible if i wanted any chance at salvaging this. She ends up getting a airbnb a few days later and informs me she is living there for the remainder of June.
Now, I am sure i ****ed up here as I probably should have just said no but I don't think i had much ground to stand on as we have joint accounts and she brings in an income. So i considered the cost of airbnb coming out of her income.
Anyway, fast forward a little bit and I'm a week into the guilt trip. Playing back everything in my head, "what did i do wrong? what can i do going forward" You all know it. The kind of reflection that drives you crazy. Well, maybe a week or week and a half later, she comes over to spend time with the kids(i have been keeping them all this time) and I notice her ring is off. So, as an emotional mess I can't keep it in and ask her what's up with that? She basically says that she doesn't know what she wants and she needs to work on herself. I don't remember her exact words. (Again, here is where i should have just said alright we are done now and silo'd her). We then go into the room and talk more(again, i shouldn't have done this but i was desperately seeking clarity). I still at this point never once asked her to come back, or say things like "what about the kids, me, etc" so I can at least cling to that, ha! But i do go into my spiel about how being alone gives so much time to reflect on things and look at the relationshp from an outsider's perspective. How I probably didn't love her the way she wanted to be loved (me thinking that providing everything for the family was good enough, possibly didn't help out enough with the kids, all that jazz) Basically a little bit of honesty and truth but quite possibly coming off as a sap. I just thought honesty at that point was the way to go, but I now know that just looks like it was all my fault for my wife getting to this point; which i know is not the truth.
But I didn't. I don't think i had discovered this forum yet but it was around this time where i found a thread where someone outlined like 35 steps on what to do. Maybe the 180 method, i'm not sure. I really liked it. I was already doing a few things, but made sure to add some more to my arsenal.
A few days go by and we don't talk much. She comes over to see the kids and she comes to talk in the room and talks about how "thanks for everything you said the other night; it's not all true. You did everything you needed, etc" Basically telling me not to beat myself up over it. "But", she says(there's always a but!)..."when i think about us and you in the future, I envision you with the kids and someone that loves you, and I don't feel anything. No jealousy, anger, etc"(code red anyone??) At this point i should have just saw the writing on the wall, but i was dumb, and stubborn, and just asked her one last thing: if she could consider going on a retreat for sexual trauma victims. I had it in my head that she dipping back into a worse mental state and that her past was to blame. (this still may be partially the case, that is up for debate).
Also at some point during the "talk" that night she says she's just tired of having to answer to anyone, doesn't want to feel obligated to have sex, wants to be able to do what she wants with her money(we had argued about how much she should donate to charity recently). Lots of different things all pointing back to basically wanting to not be tied down to anyone or have any sort of marital/family obligation. She talks about how she's jealous of my cousin who has his kid 7 & 7(the week off).
She ultimately agrees to go on the retreat and asks if we could wait until she returns before she makes a decision about us. It's so early on in the process i basically say OK. I mean at that point what else am I going to do?
***
There's about a 2.5 week period before the retreat ends so not much happens. I am still living with the kids, trying hard to focus on them. Taking them on outings, keeping them occupied outside, etc. We don't talk much outside of about the kids. At one point we text a bit and i basically just tell her I am good with wahtever the outcome of this retreat is, and to not go into it with expectations. She is very thankful and tells me she hopes it changes the way she feels about us, because that's what she wants.
***
Fast forward to end of the retreat(she texted me several messages and pictures, had a 30 minute convo about one of her sessions). Myself and the kids pick her up at the airport and she seems in good spirits. She recommends we take the kids to lunch so we do that.
We get home, put the kids down for a nap and she hands me a card she wrote the day before with an excerpt from the note being "I have also gained what i wanted here - peace and clarity. Whatever I do in love is the right decision for me. I love you. I hope you can see me"
So, at this point I really just want clarity on the situation so we go talk in the room and she basically says her feelings have not changed. The counselors there asked her what her idea of happiness was in 6 months and she says "to see my husband with someone that loves him unconditionally" and to be coparenting. Says she wants to be able to eat what she wants, do what she wants(uhhh, what? I never once told her she couldn't do these things, I was also the one who recommended she get out of the house and taking care of the kids, and pursue a real estate career. Which she did and has been great at itthis year)
But i knew not to try and argue and question tat reasoning with logic. I basically just told her I never did any of that, and she stated it wasn't me, just being in a marriage made her feel that way and that she didn't think she was cut out for the traditional marriage lifestyle.Felt invisible, etc "just a mom and wife"...
Anyway, at that point I get the message loud and clear. Now here's where it gets fun
*
Later that day I log into my cell phone plan to add some data. Both of our lines are on the plan, and i see the "data usage" link. I figure "why not, let me check". I keep seeing a number pop up, with some extremely long call times(2-5 hours. Yes, 300 minutes for one call). These calls go back several weeks, including while on her retreat. Ultimately i go back and and see the first time his number shows up is 2 days before D day.
Now, Some may call me naive, and sure I am; but just for full disclosure and honesty I never once considered the the possibility of another man in the picture. Again, this will probably come off as extremely naive as I'm sure most guys feel this way until it happens to them, but she held herself with high integrity, christian values, and absolutely despised cheaters. You guys are all probably laughing at me now, as you probably saw it coming from a mile away while reading all of that text, but what can i say. If i thought my spouse had that bone in her body i would not have married her. But, I'm just being real here. Opening myself up and being truthful.
I do some digging and the guy is a person she works with at the brokerage. I do more digging and his social media presence is very slim which is odd considering he's a RE agent and 32yo. I also find he has a long term GF that works in the same hometown I'm from. I have no idea if it's physical yet. It probably is if I'm being honest, but i have no proof. All i know is it would be hard to be physical at night as they are on the phone for hours just about every night, and she knows i know where she is so if i ever got a wild hair i could easily check in. Definitely possibly some day time stuff going on.
So, that's where we are. I am here a week later. I haven't told her anything. I haven't told the GF anything. Just my parents know(my dad's inital hunch at the very beginning was another man, i said it was the bottom of my list of concerns. Dad knows best...)
I did slip up and tell her Mom i know this past Saturday. I know how horrendously stupid that was. Like, seriously ****ing stupid. Her mom and i had been talking because my wife had cut her and all her aunts off from communication so her Mom would call me to check on the kids. I just held it in for a week and had to get it off my chest and she was within reach. She promised she wouldn't say anything. We'll see.
I've bascially kept it status quo with the wife for the past week. Minimal talking. She offered to take the kids this past weekend. It was so last minute I had no time to get any kind of decent VAR. I bought one from best buy but it was garbage and i didn't have a great place to conceal it. So, i set up my laptop in the room to use the Mic to listen to her call. However that was a fail because there is a time limit on the Windows voice recorder app. Also, when i returned Sunday my laptop was closed, lol. She never mentioned it so I wonder if she was tipped off? That was so clumsy of me. It was just a last ditched rush job to catch something on tape.
*
So, where do we go from here? When do I approach her about the long phone calls? Do i keep it on the down low until i can gain more info? She has told me several times "she doesn't want anything". I discussed selling the house and splitting the equity. "I don't want to take anything from you, this is all my fault" Of course that can change on the drop of a dime so I'm thinking i need to get some more solid evidence of promiscuity before tipping her off that i know(or before her mom says anything) When do I tell the other gf?
I have a consultation with my lawyer tomorrow. She is supposed to be a great advocate for father's rights. Anxious to see how it goes and what she's going to recommend. My thoughts for not confronting the wife about it now is i just want to keep her in her current good spirits of "i don't want anything" rather than rocking teh boat confronting her about this OM. Thoughts? Candid honesty is welcome! But really, just thanks for reading all this mess. It's cathartic to write it all out and get it off my chest.
My story begins on June 9. This was a day my wife, 2 kids and I(ages 2 and 5) were supposed to leave to take a family trip to the mountains along with my parents and sister's family. All good, right?
I talk to her at lunch and discuss logistics of when we are leaving, packing, etc... She sends me a picture of them celebrating her sales leader for the month at work, all that jazz.
I get home, go to the master bedroom and our bags are sitting there packed. I can immediately sense something is wrong from my wife's demeanor. Cue the 'stomach wrenching feeling'. I definitely can't recall what was exactly said that day as it's a blur by now, but she basically said she couldn't go on the trip. She didn't want to pretend in front of my family. She was tired of trying. "It shouldn't be this hard", etc...
I know it's cliche but i was pretty flabbergasted. I, like most people, thought we had a decent marriage. I'm not going to sit here and say it was great as we had our struggles. But there was definitely no incident in the previous couple of weeks like any sort of argument that would have triggered this. She just sounds emotionally drained(now that i read about WWs, the traits are similar) I don't do anything like beg, ask her about the kids, etc...I really am just mostly shocked and if i recall i pretty much hear her out on a few things and leave the room to be with the kids and try my best to keep it together. She takes a nap, then wakes up at 9pm to head to her sister's house.
****
Now, a little back ground. Rewind to 3 nights before, i giver her oral and we have great sex. This was preceded by us reading a big we got from our marriage retreat together and going over the sex chapter. She was turned on by it.
Next night she has a bit of a breakdown and says she is losing her faith. She joined christianity prior to us getting married 7 years ago and our lack of a "spiritual" connection has always been something she's brought up. Over the years we've tried reading books together. I've always supported her journey, have attended church with her on a semi regular basis; but am not quite where she is on the belief scale. She mentions the only thing keeping her trying in the marriage was her faith and without her faith she doesn't know if she can do it(red flag anyone...boy i should have saw this coming right then and there).
I console her and offer to pray with her. We finish the night with a BJ and anal sex. That sounds crass but I just want to give an idea of our relationship directly leading up to D Day.
***
Now, that marriage book i mentioned. It's christian based and it talked heavily about the role sex plays in a marriage and what's expected of wife and husband.
My wife has had a rough childhood, to say the least. Her mom had her at 14, and had 5 kids by the age of 23. Lots of men came in and out. Terrible things were done to my wife, and she's had **** bfs. Her dad treated her like ****. The whole 9 yards. She and I have been to counseling to discuss her past, and how to best navigate those waters in our relationship.
I think the book may have been a part of the trigger that set her off.
***
Now, back to d-day. Some of the other things she said, and has said before in counseling, is that she would be totally good with never having sex again. She sometimes feel asexual. She's tired of feeling the pressure to have sex, and that it wasn't me, but just being in a marriage brought her constant anxiety about it. I could go on but i think you get the gist of it. It is hard to explain if you haven't been with a victim of sexual abuse.
***
Well, she sleeps at her sister's for a few nights and i really don't contact her much. Intuition told me just to leave her alone as much as possible if i wanted any chance at salvaging this. She ends up getting a airbnb a few days later and informs me she is living there for the remainder of June.
Now, I am sure i ****ed up here as I probably should have just said no but I don't think i had much ground to stand on as we have joint accounts and she brings in an income. So i considered the cost of airbnb coming out of her income.
Anyway, fast forward a little bit and I'm a week into the guilt trip. Playing back everything in my head, "what did i do wrong? what can i do going forward" You all know it. The kind of reflection that drives you crazy. Well, maybe a week or week and a half later, she comes over to spend time with the kids(i have been keeping them all this time) and I notice her ring is off. So, as an emotional mess I can't keep it in and ask her what's up with that? She basically says that she doesn't know what she wants and she needs to work on herself. I don't remember her exact words. (Again, here is where i should have just said alright we are done now and silo'd her). We then go into the room and talk more(again, i shouldn't have done this but i was desperately seeking clarity). I still at this point never once asked her to come back, or say things like "what about the kids, me, etc" so I can at least cling to that, ha! But i do go into my spiel about how being alone gives so much time to reflect on things and look at the relationshp from an outsider's perspective. How I probably didn't love her the way she wanted to be loved (me thinking that providing everything for the family was good enough, possibly didn't help out enough with the kids, all that jazz) Basically a little bit of honesty and truth but quite possibly coming off as a sap. I just thought honesty at that point was the way to go, but I now know that just looks like it was all my fault for my wife getting to this point; which i know is not the truth.
But I didn't. I don't think i had discovered this forum yet but it was around this time where i found a thread where someone outlined like 35 steps on what to do. Maybe the 180 method, i'm not sure. I really liked it. I was already doing a few things, but made sure to add some more to my arsenal.
A few days go by and we don't talk much. She comes over to see the kids and she comes to talk in the room and talks about how "thanks for everything you said the other night; it's not all true. You did everything you needed, etc" Basically telling me not to beat myself up over it. "But", she says(there's always a but!)..."when i think about us and you in the future, I envision you with the kids and someone that loves you, and I don't feel anything. No jealousy, anger, etc"(code red anyone??) At this point i should have just saw the writing on the wall, but i was dumb, and stubborn, and just asked her one last thing: if she could consider going on a retreat for sexual trauma victims. I had it in my head that she dipping back into a worse mental state and that her past was to blame. (this still may be partially the case, that is up for debate).
Also at some point during the "talk" that night she says she's just tired of having to answer to anyone, doesn't want to feel obligated to have sex, wants to be able to do what she wants with her money(we had argued about how much she should donate to charity recently). Lots of different things all pointing back to basically wanting to not be tied down to anyone or have any sort of marital/family obligation. She talks about how she's jealous of my cousin who has his kid 7 & 7(the week off).
She ultimately agrees to go on the retreat and asks if we could wait until she returns before she makes a decision about us. It's so early on in the process i basically say OK. I mean at that point what else am I going to do?
***
There's about a 2.5 week period before the retreat ends so not much happens. I am still living with the kids, trying hard to focus on them. Taking them on outings, keeping them occupied outside, etc. We don't talk much outside of about the kids. At one point we text a bit and i basically just tell her I am good with wahtever the outcome of this retreat is, and to not go into it with expectations. She is very thankful and tells me she hopes it changes the way she feels about us, because that's what she wants.
***
Fast forward to end of the retreat(she texted me several messages and pictures, had a 30 minute convo about one of her sessions). Myself and the kids pick her up at the airport and she seems in good spirits. She recommends we take the kids to lunch so we do that.
We get home, put the kids down for a nap and she hands me a card she wrote the day before with an excerpt from the note being "I have also gained what i wanted here - peace and clarity. Whatever I do in love is the right decision for me. I love you. I hope you can see me"
So, at this point I really just want clarity on the situation so we go talk in the room and she basically says her feelings have not changed. The counselors there asked her what her idea of happiness was in 6 months and she says "to see my husband with someone that loves him unconditionally" and to be coparenting. Says she wants to be able to eat what she wants, do what she wants(uhhh, what? I never once told her she couldn't do these things, I was also the one who recommended she get out of the house and taking care of the kids, and pursue a real estate career. Which she did and has been great at itthis year)
But i knew not to try and argue and question tat reasoning with logic. I basically just told her I never did any of that, and she stated it wasn't me, just being in a marriage made her feel that way and that she didn't think she was cut out for the traditional marriage lifestyle.Felt invisible, etc "just a mom and wife"...
Anyway, at that point I get the message loud and clear. Now here's where it gets fun
*
Later that day I log into my cell phone plan to add some data. Both of our lines are on the plan, and i see the "data usage" link. I figure "why not, let me check". I keep seeing a number pop up, with some extremely long call times(2-5 hours. Yes, 300 minutes for one call). These calls go back several weeks, including while on her retreat. Ultimately i go back and and see the first time his number shows up is 2 days before D day.
Now, Some may call me naive, and sure I am; but just for full disclosure and honesty I never once considered the the possibility of another man in the picture. Again, this will probably come off as extremely naive as I'm sure most guys feel this way until it happens to them, but she held herself with high integrity, christian values, and absolutely despised cheaters. You guys are all probably laughing at me now, as you probably saw it coming from a mile away while reading all of that text, but what can i say. If i thought my spouse had that bone in her body i would not have married her. But, I'm just being real here. Opening myself up and being truthful.
I do some digging and the guy is a person she works with at the brokerage. I do more digging and his social media presence is very slim which is odd considering he's a RE agent and 32yo. I also find he has a long term GF that works in the same hometown I'm from. I have no idea if it's physical yet. It probably is if I'm being honest, but i have no proof. All i know is it would be hard to be physical at night as they are on the phone for hours just about every night, and she knows i know where she is so if i ever got a wild hair i could easily check in. Definitely possibly some day time stuff going on.
So, that's where we are. I am here a week later. I haven't told her anything. I haven't told the GF anything. Just my parents know(my dad's inital hunch at the very beginning was another man, i said it was the bottom of my list of concerns. Dad knows best...)
I did slip up and tell her Mom i know this past Saturday. I know how horrendously stupid that was. Like, seriously ****ing stupid. Her mom and i had been talking because my wife had cut her and all her aunts off from communication so her Mom would call me to check on the kids. I just held it in for a week and had to get it off my chest and she was within reach. She promised she wouldn't say anything. We'll see.
I've bascially kept it status quo with the wife for the past week. Minimal talking. She offered to take the kids this past weekend. It was so last minute I had no time to get any kind of decent VAR. I bought one from best buy but it was garbage and i didn't have a great place to conceal it. So, i set up my laptop in the room to use the Mic to listen to her call. However that was a fail because there is a time limit on the Windows voice recorder app. Also, when i returned Sunday my laptop was closed, lol. She never mentioned it so I wonder if she was tipped off? That was so clumsy of me. It was just a last ditched rush job to catch something on tape.
*
So, where do we go from here? When do I approach her about the long phone calls? Do i keep it on the down low until i can gain more info? She has told me several times "she doesn't want anything". I discussed selling the house and splitting the equity. "I don't want to take anything from you, this is all my fault" Of course that can change on the drop of a dime so I'm thinking i need to get some more solid evidence of promiscuity before tipping her off that i know(or before her mom says anything) When do I tell the other gf?
I have a consultation with my lawyer tomorrow. She is supposed to be a great advocate for father's rights. Anxious to see how it goes and what she's going to recommend. My thoughts for not confronting the wife about it now is i just want to keep her in her current good spirits of "i don't want anything" rather than rocking teh boat confronting her about this OM. Thoughts? Candid honesty is welcome! But really, just thanks for reading all this mess. It's cathartic to write it all out and get it off my chest.