SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Early on in my romantic and sexual life, in my teens till my 20s, I experienced a longterm relationship with a serial cheater. My first experience with betrayal was the discovery of an online diary written by my then girlfriend describing sexual encounters with others. I was overcome with the pain we are all familiar. My body rejected the discovery, I was disgusted, ran to the bathroom, vomiting. I was on a rechargeable phone with her at the time. She found it hilarious, just dessert for me invading her privacy.

I did not, and still do not, possess the self respect I needed to extract myself. I stayed in that doomed relationship as a person doomed to things I could not accept. For one thing, I was a fresh high school drop out, now almost completely without peers except for her. It was clear that she was test driving and interviewing countless prospective replacements for me while using me for emotional and sexual validation in the meantime. I was treated to fun discussions about the characteristics she wanted in a mate. If only she could have my face, his body, so an so’s confidence, my devotion, asshole’s skill with his tongue, that dude over theres prospects. I conceded every boundary I thought I had. I persisted that way for 8 years in total.

Isolated from peers and without support at home, drowning in self pity and intrusive thoughts about what she was doing with others while I had eyes only for her, I was simultaneously a horny teenage boy. The environment I was in stretched out thresholds and parameters that should never have been touched, and I found my pain and arousal confusingly entangled.

A painful, loathsome, disgusting yearning. An awful secret wish. Something I couldnt find support for.

I got that way because I was abused and didnt free myself. To my young self, I couldnt live without her, I couldnt change her nature. But what if I could have friends? What if I could have love? What if I could have sex with my girl, she could have sex with other people, we could eat food and play video games and have cool conversations and we could all be in agreement that it was just some big lovefest where I wasnt discarded and none of it was cruel? All I had to do is be down with it right? Could all my pain and misery just be put away like that?

The fantasy never met reality. That relationship was not salvageable. No adaptation of myself to her behavior could have changed it. Other ways to betray me were conceived of and implemented.

When my generation became college aged, It became possible for me to de isolate myself socially. I built a group of not very good friends of my own. Bought a car, got fit. Started to feel the love fade. Started to see other females as a possibility. Eventually embraced the idea that monogamy wasnt feasible. The cheating girl I thought I was going to end up with forever was just a friend, for however long that was worthwhile to keep. I had misunderstood relationships, she had not, and I was eager to see new experiences in the light of that understanding.

But the parasite, the scar, the fetish of seeing my woman in a sexual context with other men outside of a betrayal nibbled at the edge of my brain.

Eventually, I met Ww. She was(is) timid and squeaky, tall, lean, and very pretty. She was aggressively interested in me, wanted as much of me, and all of it she could get, out of the gate. I saw a reflection of her intentions in a younger, pre betrayal me. I wanted her, and I wanted to protect her from my experience. I could not do with seeing her harmed in the ways I was. She was jealous and insecure. I cut off other women. I believed in love again. I really didnt see it coming.

Long before the cheating, before the marriage,

When I shared my fetish with Ww, she was disturbed. Wanted nothing to do with it. We were supposed to be each others sexual one and only, she wanted only me, supposedly. I still had the itch, but I was happy about that.

I found out about the extent of her cheating this year a decade after the events supposedly ended. We’ve been in therapy. She passed a polygraph on her timeline. We arent rugsweeping.

One of my hurdles to healing is the realization that she rejected my olive branch to the urges and desires she pretended not to have, preferring to have the appearance of monogamy, but secretly making it one sided. Our relationship was happy, we had great sex, we had goals. She was insecure about other women, angrily accusing me of noticing females in grocery isles and such, which I do not do, while she secretly conducted affairs and sexual arrangements with customers and coworkers for at least a 9 month long period of time.

She knew about my little problem, knew I was willing to accommodate her, knew she didnt have to make it a betrayal. But chose to. I cant grok that.

She only considered leaning into it once when I became suspicious and angry about her and her coworkers. They seemingly made a stupid plan to create a situation where a threesome might occur with her, me and her primary Ap. To get the affair out of the closet; hide the cake eating by possibly blaming me for things getting out of hand. To get out of trouble by getting out in front of it, using my stupid fantasy. They tried to create a situation where the Ap had nowhere to stay that evening, and she offered our home as a solution. I shot them down, sensing deception.

At the time I lacked critical information to see it for what it is. But now, with context, I know it means that
1. They discussed my suspicions
2. They asked each other what they should do
3. She shared my fetish
4. They discussed a workaround involving it
5. Scripted the scenario
6. Put on the play in front of me to see if Id eat the bait.

Thats alot of consecutive things that piss me off.
I asked Ww if thats how the planning side shook out. "Probably not", she said. Do you remember it happening? "Not really, but I believe you", she said. "I remember sitting at the table in the bar that night." Who really knows.

In therapy, our therapist asked me to build a list of my needs. She noted I wasnt giving my Ww anything she could do to help me with my pain, just ranting about events in the timeline. Its a fair criticism.

I mentioned this issue in my homework assignment. Ww comes up empty handed on how to make me feel better. Let me know she would Never, never, never be interested, will not ever do it. Suits me. By my recognizance of what has happened, we arent eligible. Its dead. But Im bitter about it, because I still have the problem and she cant think of anything to say to help. The things she did are germane to the reasons I developed this disfunction.

She produced for and trusted the Ap with a nude she made. Never did that for me. When we were driving home from family, we had a sexual and flirtatious conversation. It was ruined when I suggested she take and send me a dirty picture. She acted like I would use it as evidence against her in a divorce, and refused.

A few days later, i suggested we go and sneak into the place where she and her Ap screwed around and bang it out so I could make it mine. Refusal. Too risky, trespassing, etc. Fine, I guess, thats reasonable, but she risked us and her job to do that with him.

Im learning shitloads of things about the things Im upset about, and am finding my ability to accept them, her willingness to do anything to make me feel better about them unsatisfactory.

Its getting hard for me to live with the things I have learned about who I am to her. I feel I was chosen for my safety, devotion, and utility as a partner. Since she cheated, that feels repugnant.

I never got better from the longterm scars from my previous betrayal. Im losing hope I will recover in any meaningful way from this one, too. Doesnt leave me much room to like sex, people, or myself. Id do anything to unfuck my self respect. Id do anything to unshare what happened to me with my wife.

I cant tell you how hard this was to write.

I can relate to this to a certain degree.

My husband and I started our relationship more as friends with benefits, it allowed certain fantasies okay to speak about. And eventually, we experimented with swinging.

But this led to a lot of HB and eventually our relationship evolved and we were talking marriage. At that time, I told him I no longer wanted to be with other people. We lived a monogamous marriage for two decades following and I didn’t regret that decision. I wasn’t secretly wanting anyone else, not even in the slightest.

When the affair happened it happened deep down because I was escaping pain. I needed someone to make me feel magical, lapping up false validation like it could save me. Spoiler alert, it did not. It made things infinitely worse and for a much longer time had I just decided to go to therapy and figure myself out.

But I knew then I could have gone to my husband and told him that I wanted to go back to bringing people in. But that isn’t really what I wanted, I wanted validation that could not happen in that scenario. It wasn’t about the sex to me it was pretending to be someone I was not. When you are doing an open relationship or swinging, typically that’s more reality based. There are rules and it’s less about emotional stuff and more about sexual variety. I didn’t crave sexual variety.

I think your wife needs to be responsible for what she has done, but she is not responsible for the way you arrived to her. You have work to do on your healing there. And that may inform the work you can do (or can’t do) and help give you clarity about whether this is a relationship you want to repair and how some of that work can be done.

I shared my personal story with you because perhaps it may help know what questions to ask or how to bridge an understanding as to why she didn’t come to you for inclusion. The other thing that is hard is has she grown at all in those ten years? Or is this a dormant issue that is just waiting to reappear when things get hard for her?

5BD....how are you? The pain is real. Allow yourself to grieve.

Its been a very bad time. I am grieving.

On new years eve, Ww and I went back through her text stream with me from 2014, the acknowledged period of infidelity. We learned some hard shit. Our reconstruction of the timeline was totally wrong, we found. The lions share of events in the timeline happened in may, when she and her primary AP got cocky, comfortable, and sloppy. One event that was correctly placed to the day and was particularly egregious stayed, and everything else is up in the air. There is a huge amount of the calendar where the affair was going on that I am totally blind to, including the beginning and end.

17 days after the night club incident, I found out she was treated for fever, itching, and discharge. The other female involved in that incident suffered a miscarriage a day before she was treated. Two men were present for that incident, her primary Ap and a male coworker. Allegedly, all that occurred was she was fingered by the female and male coworker in the backseat of the car on a ride back to the shared housing of the two males. Upon arrival she was supposedly thrown out of the house with nothing further happening, sexually speaking.

Shes sticking to the story that in this nearly year long period, she only got fingered, by four people, one of them for money.

Because of that, and a large amount of additional information I found including an anomalous condom of a brand and type i never used or possessed in her dresser drawer with an expiration date placing its useful life in the middle of the times when infidelity occurred, I began to doubt the veracity of her passed polygraph.

The polygrapher is currently being burned in the community by a wayward because of this review;

"I’ll be honest. As a woman, I initially liked (polygraphers name) because she’s a "woman’s woman." Let me explain. My boyfriend and I went to her for a lie detector test, and I passed every single question—even though I knew I was lying. That’s why I felt comfortable going to her. I hoped she might understand the position I was in and, in a way, help me lie. Now, I can’t say for sure that Jane intentionally helped me lie; maybe she just doesn’t know what she’s doing. Either way, this is what happened.

At first, I thought I had dodged a bullet. The test made me look good and saved my relationship temporarily. But my boyfriend wasn’t having it. He saw right through the test and knew it was bogus. Honestly, I knew it too, but I didn’t want to admit it because it worked in my favor.

A few days later, my boyfriend decided to dig deeper and reached out to some people on his own. Eventually, the truth came out, and I had to admit to the things I was guilty of. Now, I’m trying to repair my relationship, but the damage has already been done.

Looking back, even though I was relieved at first that (polygraphers name)’s test seemed to "help" me, it actually backfired and made things much worse. I should have just been honest from the beginning. I would have saved myself a lot of money, stress, and emotional damage. (Polygrapher’s name)’s test, whether due to her lack of expertise or otherwise, gave me false confidence in my lies, which only made the fallout even harder in the end."

Other people in the community have now had similar stories and gripes as mine. I was already doubting because of new information, this clinches it for me. I wasted my time on it.

We have been seeing a new counselor. Shes good. I have too much to say, and WW has almost nothing to say, so Ive fallen into the trap of eating our sessions up with my thoughts.

Thanks for caring, woodthrush. I appreciate you. Hope you are well.

@5bluedrops

Its getting hard for me to live with the things I have learned about who I am to her. I feel I was chosen for my safety, devotion, and utility as a partner. Since she cheated, that feels repugnant.

I also struggle with this to some degree.

My wife has never sexted me in 22 years of marriage. But exchanged weeks of messages with another man, then lied about it to me.

It now makes trusting her a daily challenge. I find myself questioning our entire relationship, including what she actually thinks of me, what my real value to her is.

I also have thoughts of seeing her with other men. But she’s disgusted by even the mention of it.

@hikingout Your explanation of wanting the validation versus the reality feels like the right one for my situation.

But it feels like it should be so simple, and yet it’s so very complicated. Past trauma, the loss of trust, inconsistency, it all clouds my ability to feel safe.

But it feels like it should be so simple, and yet it’s so very complicated. Past trauma, the loss of trust, inconsistency, it all clouds my ability to feel safe.

You shouldn’t feel safe or secure, that would be burying your head in the sand. It’s going to be a big process to get adjusted to your new normal, and a bigger one for your wife to show you enough consistency, consideration, and commitment for feelings of security return. This is why we talk around here about finding that security within yourself, it’s the only logical place to have it. That doesn’t have anything to do with the outcome of the marriage, it’s finding a way to be in control of your life and future. A relationship is icing on the cake.

Edited to add: it IS complicated. Understanding something doesn’t excuse it. There is a lot of damage here, and it is going to take more time than you can fathom yet to repair it.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:42 PM, Friday, January 17th]

The polygrapher is currently being burned in the community by a wayward because of this review;

It’s time for another polygraph, this time from a reputable examiner. If your wife is truly remorseful, she shouldn’t have any problem with this, given what’s now known about this corrupt examiner who administered the previous exam.

...or ... forget about another poly, because you know your WS continues to lie to you.

My reco is not to do a poly unless a lie will cause you to end the relationship AND a pass will result in building a good deal of trust.

Gently, the problem looks like it's more your self-respect than whatever your partner is doing or has done. The solution is to build your self-respect - and make no mistake, you are a lot stronger and a lot better than you think you are, unless you're a narcissist. Really - you're loving, lovable, capable, and enough.

You're loving, lovable, capable, and enough.