unresolved issues with my wife's infidelity ...

[joekurtz]

Back in 2002, just about a year & a half into our marriage, I discovered a letter that my wife Vicki had written to our next door neighbor. An individual by the name of Phil, whom I'd suspected was "sweet on" my wife from the day we'd moved into that neighborhood a couple of years earlier.

 

She seemed to enjoy his company & attention as well whenever their paths would cross outside, but I didn't feel threatened by it initially because she was pregnant with our baby when we moved in, then our daughter was born a few months later, followed by our marriage in early 2001. So, the fact that this guy was smitten with her, just didn't seem like anything for me to worry about.

 

Hell, Vicki's beautiful & if I were in his place, I'd have likely been smitten with her as well. Besides that, Phil had his own woman whom he lived with next door along with their three kids. So, I wasn't concerned.

 

That is until the summer of 2002 when I was out of work & doing the "stay at home dad" thing, as well as being laid up with a blown out knee. That was when I began to notice a really big increase in the amount of time it would take for my wife to come up to our place after she arrived home from work. I mean, she'd pull into the driveway & then not make it into our apartment until, like, 20 minutes later. Then 30 minutes later. Then sometimes an hour later ...

 

When I'd ask her what was taking so long, she'd tell me that she got caught up in talking to the neighbors. Which, it didn't take me long to figure out, meant that she was talking to Phil. Which, in turn, began to make me very jealous.

 

To which, she'd assure me that there was no reason for me to be jealous because Phil & her were "just friends". But, despite these reassurances I still felt that there was something more going on between them than she admitted to. It was a "gut feeling" that I tried very hard to ignore, but which would never quite go away.

 

Around this same period of time, Vicki also took to doing a LOT more laundry than she'd ever done before. Which was convenient in that, in order to do laundry there, she had to leave our second story apartment & go outside to access the basement. Where she began to spend quite a bit of her time. With Phil, I'm sure.

 

So, over the course of the latter part of that summer & into the autumn, I began to feel more & more alienated from my wife. Which worried me endlessly, because I'd never loved anyone else in my lifetime even remotely as much as I loved her & the thought of her cheating on me & our marriage ending as a result of it just gutted me.

 

I even wrote her a long letter regarding my concerns about these things & again, she assured me that nothing inappropriate was going on between Phil & her. And, this time anyhow, she was pretty persuasive about calming my fears. I actually relaxed a bit & stopped obsessing about them.

 

That is, until I was leaving the house one afternoon & had to fetch our house keys from her purse before I did. That's when I found the letter. The letter that I've never quite ever gotten over.

 

Had it been a letter from him to her, I probably wouldn't have been as affected by it as I was. But, it was a letter written by her TO him, one that, for whatever reasons, she hadn't gotten 'round to getting to him.

'twas a rather simple thing really, just a one page thing apologizing for her having been unable to leave work for a meeting they had planned & arranged. He was supposed to pick her up at her workplace parking lot for some undisclosed reason, but she failed to meet him & was unable to reach him on the phone afterward to explain why. She seemed to be pretty worried that this was going to upset him, but she re-assured him that all was good between the two of them & signed off by telling him how much she "needed him".

 

 

To be continued ...

[joekurtz]

Though we stayed together for two years afterward & I've endured a long, seemingly endless three plus year separation from Vicki since finding the letter, I've never gotten a bit of closure regarding it. Which continues to hurt me, because I've always seen it as the catalyst behind so many of the things that I allowed to happen subsequently. Things that led to our separation & to where we are today.

 

When I confronted her with the letter back in October of '02, she denied that it confirmed what I feared all along about her & Phil. She insisted that despite what the letter said in her own hand, that she wasn't having an affair with him & never had been.

 

Which I wanted to believe SO badly, but the explanations she gave me regarding why she wrote it & what it said, were so implausible, I couldn't think anything BUT the worst. And when I went next door to get his story, he wasn't home.

 

Which, in retrospect was likely a very good thing, because I was in such a rage at the time, that I may have done something serious enough to him to get myself thrown in jail for a very long time. Which, I know, a lot of men say here, but I'm being serious as a heart attack about. Had a confrontation occurred, I believe I may have injured him badly, if not killed him.

 

Back to my wife's explanations though, or more accurately, her lack of one. At least a believable one.

 

She told me it was a joke of some sort. A "mock up" letter that she wrote with her workmates for some reason or another. And when I told her, flat out, that that made no sense whatsoever, she stuck to it. She begged me not to leave her & to forgive her, but she never gave me a better explanation for it.

 

I wanted to go to marriage counseling over it, but she didn't want to, then when we finally went two years later, we never made it far enough into the sessions to broach the subject because, just three sessions into the process we split up. Or, more accurately, she left me.

 

I held onto that letter for quite a while, but as a gesture of how much I wanted us to eventually get back together & how much I wanted to let go of the negatives of our past, I gave Vicki back the letter so that she could destroy it. Unfortunately, it was a gesture that she didn't take to heart, 'cause here we are, three & a half years on. Still separated. With her on her third post-separation relationship & me still wondering what the hell's going on ...

[T L]

So sorry for what you have experienced.

 

I too am dealing with issues over my X's infidelity, at first it was the shock of the relationship being over, one that I tried to hang on to, but now the fog is lifting and I have started to see it for what it really was, its the betrayal that is hurting me the most.

 

Im trying not to dwell on it too much, I cant change the past, but thats not to say it doesnt really hurt and it has tainted my memories of the relationship.

 

I hope we achieve some peace soon enough.

[Nightwolf_58]

I feel for you too. I just found out today that my wife cheated on me not just twice, but three times in the last year. Great day, and I was just starting to feel a little better about the pending divorce. Eventually all those feelings of betrayel and the "how could she do that to me" will go away, and you will have learned some valuable lessons for the future.

[sumdude]

'cause here we are, three & a half years on. Still separated. With her on her third post-separation relationship & me still wondering what the hell's going on ...

 

joe... you know what's going on you just don't know details and facts. All you need to know is that she's not capable of sustaining a faithful, monogamous long term relationship.

 

You didn't know ... you didn't cause it... nothing you probably could have done about any of it. It's her weakness.

 

I understand about the needing to know.. but you don't really need to know because it will only eat you up inside and obsessing becomes self destrutive. I fight those same urges because I still don't know much of anything factual about what my ex really did. I only know that she moved an hour away, a few names and only what she's told me... which I have some reason to doubt.

 

What is ... just IS. You have got to find your way to acceptance, find some way to put some sort of smile on your face, chest out, chin up and say "I'm better than this."

 

keep strong..

[Curmudgeon]

You know what's going on. Your "wife" is having affairs while you're separated just as she had affairs while you were together, or at least one that you can be sure of.

 

It's not going to get any better. What you obviously don't know is why you haven't terminated the marriage long before this. Three+ years? How long do you intend to leave your life on hold?

 

Look, I'm sorry you've had to go through this but enough is enough. After about a year, every year thereafter has been a self-inflicted wound. Please tell me you don't still want her back.

[joekurtz]

You know what's going on. Your "wife" is having affairs while you're separated just as she had affairs while you were together, or at least one that you can be sure of.

 

It's not going to get any better. What you obviously don't know is why you haven't terminated the marriage long before this. Three+ years? How long do you intend to leave your life on hold?

 

Look, I'm sorry you've had to go through this but enough is enough. After about a year, every year thereafter has been a self-inflicted wound. Please tell me you don't still want her back.

 

 

Of course I do. As mad as it may seem, I'm still very much in love with her.

 

In many ways, I'm convinced we're "soul mates". And, in a lot of ways, she's still very good to me. Just not in the ways that I REALLY want her to be. And, there's still the "little matter" of her apparently being incapable of being faithful to me.

 

My feelings for her & the way I've lived my life since our separation have cost me friends, the respect of family members & my self esteem. But again, here we are three plus years later & I'm stuck in the same inert state I was in the day she left.

 

Believe me, I know that it's a self destructive state I'm in. I've known it all along. Yet still, I do my best to ignore the time that passes by & I keep convincing myself that someday she'll "come around" ...

 

And, believe me, she doesn't make it easy on me. To this day, she still tells me that she loves me & she's never even spoken of a divorce. And, God knows, she's not staying married to me for any sort of financial benefit.

 

Even if I wanted to do the right thing by myself & get on with my life by forgetting about her as much as possible, I can't because we have children. So I can't go No Contact with her. Yeah, I know, people deal with that issue every day & still manage to get on with their lives. So, you're right. Much of what I suffer now IS self inflicted.