WS is constantly lying to me

Hi all

Looking for opinions, thoughts and advice.

My partner and I have been together for 15+ years. We have a little boy and I’ve always felt the luckiest person with perfect little family.

This came crashing down around 4 months ago when I discovered my partner had been having an affair with a coworker. I did have my suspicions around 4 months prior to this and asked if anything was going on and was told "of course not" "it’s all in your head" "don’t be ridiculous" etc. I believed her and then around 4 months later discovered messages on her computer which confirmed my previous suspicions.

I confronted her. She initially denied it before eventually coming clean to an affair over the previous 7 months. It started as an emotional affair but developed to physical shortly before I had initially asked her about my suspicions. She said she wanted to be with me and that she wouldn’t talk to the AP and make attempts to cut interaction at work.

Since then we have been working through it. We’ve had the roller coaster ride of emotions and set backs which have been predominantly because of her continued lies to me. She initially told me they were only physical on two occasions. This then gradually increased as she revealed more. She originally said they only ever met up at work or the hotel they’d be physical, but this then increased to shopping days and play dates with my boy and the APs son (AP is also married). She originally said it was just emotion for her but then said she was falling in love with him. I’ve continually said how the books, podcasts etc. say that full transparency and honesty is the way to build trust but she doesn’t seem to be understanding this. She feels it’s just hurting me more despite me saying that it’s so much more hurtful when it gets revealed at a later date.

Fast forward to present day and I’ve felt we have been moving forward. I’ve began to think less and less about him and her and focus on our future. She’s been attending therapy, as have I, and she wrote a letter to him on the advice of the therapist to put closure to the affair but she said it was one she just burned as part of the therapy. She’s been saying how it was all a fantasy and how this is what she wants and how she was in the affair fog.

However, yesterday I asked the question of "have you really not had any contact with him since I found out" and it was met with a very long silence. She then said that she did email him shortly after I found out to say she wanted to focus on her family and to set out the days she would be working in the office so that he could avoid that. The frustrating part is that this seems like a really positive reassuring step that she could have involved me in and told me about and I wouldn’t have been worried. It got worse though. I then asked if there was anything else and she then said she did in fact send him the closure letter but didn’t ask for any response from him. She then admitted to messaging him at the start of the New Year because she felt she never had closure on the affair and had a load of unanswered questions. Apparently he didn’t want to engage in the conversation or answer her questions. We argued, I asked why she couldn’t talk to me and kept running to him for answers. Two hours later she admitted to messaging him once a week since the New Year. She then admitted to messaging him daily the past week. The questions she’d been wanting him to answer to give "closure" were things like "do you still think about us", "do you wish we met at a different time in our lives", "do you crave my attention as much as I crave yours", "tell me it was real for you too and I’m not crazy." Notwithstanding the questions she’s now asking, the continued lies just feels like death by a thousand cuts.

This has all just completely set me back in any recovery and I don’t see how I can ever trust her again. To me it’s clear she’s still in love with him and doesn’t want to be with me at all. How can she restart the affair but say she wants to be with me and it’s not about him. How can she want to know the answer to these questions and not say she doesn’t want to be with him. She’s now saying she was being selfish and just wanted to know she didn’t mess up our family for the sake of nothing but I can’t understand why she would go through the destructive action of reaching out to him and not just live with that unknown and instead focus on us and our future. I have so many unanswerable questions that I have to push through every day "why did she do this", "how could she do this to our son", "am I second choice" yet I’m willing to fight for us. She clearly isn’t.

I think it’s at the end of the road for us now which devastates me because of the heart break of losing my world and impact on my poor boy. Help.

44 comments posted: Sunday, January 26th, 2025