LoveFantasy Posted October 18, 2009 Posted October 18, 2009 My H had an online EA with his lost love (LL). Last November, after a number of attempts at reconnecting with her, they finally made contact. Within a few days, he was deep into it and declaring his undying love for her. Anyway... at my request, he provided me with all of their exchange of emails. He even put them in chronological order for me. I had access to them before but it was hard to decipher the order on some of them. Now it's all in one document. For those of you who had access to this trail of emails... if you read them all, would you do it all over again? Did it help? Did it make things worse? Any feedback would be much appreciated.
bentnotbroken Posted October 18, 2009 Posted October 18, 2009 I would read every stinking, disgusting, painful word. It helped me to understand the person I thought I was married to....was a whole lot worse. I needed to know the person I married was a character in a play where I was cast as the wife to be treated like nothing more than the leading lady in his drama. Our kids were extras, that when they became more trouble than he deemed them to be worth, he treated them just as badly. I needed to know the type of woman he found attractive and that told me his low character requirement. I am glad I read every word. It made it so much easier to find me again, love me for the first time and move into the life God always wanted me to have.
allhopelost Posted October 18, 2009 Posted October 18, 2009 Yes, I would read it all. Not for the dirty details, but to look for clues into the reasons for the indiscretions. Our significant others tend to reflect what we as their life partners project...and sometimes we see ourselves differently from their perspective.
Author LoveFantasy Posted October 18, 2009 Author Posted October 18, 2009 I would read every stinking, disgusting, painful word. It helped me to understand the person I thought I was married to....was a whole lot worse. I needed to know the person I married was a character in a play where I was cast as the wife to be treated like nothing more than the leading lady in his drama. Our kids were extras, that when they became more trouble than he deemed them to be worth, he treated them just as badly. I needed to know the type of woman he found attractive and that told me his low character requirement. I am glad I read every word. It made it so much easier to find me again, love me for the first time and move into the life God always wanted me to have. I have no doubt I knew and still know the man I married. In our 24 years together prior his affair (22 of them married and 4 kids), he loved me, he showered me with attention and affection and he supported me in all my endeavours. So many wished for a husband like him. Still I always knew that she was there in the back of his mind. Does that make me 2nd best? What he wrote to her is that he became the man and husband he did because of her... because that is who he should have been for her. Reading that made me feel like I was his practice wife... D-Day was 18/06/2009 and NC was 21/06/2009. We're now in R. Still. I have a gazillion thoughts running through my mind and I don't know where to start to sort them all out. I'm just rambling on now so I will end it here. As it stands, even though he chose me, I believe he did so because I was the sure thing while she was talking about working things out with her husband. I'm afraid that reading all their emails will turn what's left of my heart to dust.
eyeswide Posted October 19, 2009 Posted October 19, 2009 It's such an interesting question, LF. All I can share is my own experience. I am the keeper of the correspondence now between my H and his AP. I have read it all -- in chronological order -- for the very reason you are thinking of doing it: to see how this happened. Unfortunately, the answers do not all seem to be there. I've gotten more from just talking to my husband about it. And while some might say "but you're getting his spin on it, how he wants to massage it for you" I say, that's true, but it's okay. What we are living now is our new emotional truth. It doesn't mean that all the bad stuff didn't happen but we are redefining who we are everyday. The problem with reading those letters for me is, each time I read them (and I did go back to them a few times) those letters became the current, emotional truth. I'd be right back in the pain and the shock of d-day wondering "how can you truly love me when you were saying all of this to her?" Then I would go to my husband with that baggage in my heart again and he would feel despair over the wedge that was there again between us. So that's the argument for not returning there more than once. Do I wish I'd never read them? I'm sorry I don't have a clear answer for you. It's possible that I might have obsessed over the unknown rather than the known. I can tell you this much -- there is no correspondence between me and my xAP (I cheated first) and my H seems a lot less obsessed with the details of my affair than I have been with his. Not sure it's scientific, but I can help wonder if the lack of information available to him has actually helped him.
ArtAsylumBoy Posted October 29, 2009 Posted October 29, 2009 I've got kind of a love/hate relationship with the idea of reading correspondence between my wife and her affair partner. Of course I regret reading it, but the curiosity would've killed me for years had I left it alone... It was something I had to do on my own. My wife never willingly gave up any information about her affair with her employee because "He was such a good friend when she needed one..." puke... The guy was a white trash redneck waiter at the restaurant she was a manager of, who saw that she was having trouble in her marriage and took advantage of her. All of his friends know him as a piece of garbage. None of his co-workers have anything nice to say about him but my wife was the one person in the world stupid enough to fall for his talk. But I digress, that's for another post... My aunt happens to be an attorney who was willing to pull some strings to get me not only call and text logs for the past few months from my wife's cell phone, but also the actual content of a lot of those text messages. The frustrating part is how terrible she made me look while I was at home raising our kids by myself so she could whore it up with her staff. She doesn't know I read their little love notes. She only thinks I have the regular phone records. The insulting part is when I ask her questions I already know the answer to and she can still look me in the eye while I'm holding our one year old daughter and lie straight to my face. Am I happy with what I learned about her true character? No. Would I read it again if I could go back to before I read it? Absolutely. I'd rather know what I'm dealing with.
NoIDidn't Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 I regret not reading all of the texts when I had the chance. Once I got to the one that was undeniable proof, I confronted him. The emails? No, I regret reading them either. They were just corny. Both of them sounded like ditzy teens who were living in LaLaLand. It hurt to read them, but at the same time, I just couldn't take them seriously. The few messages that he sent to his personal account were of him and her trying to complete each other's sentences to see how "in tune" they were with each other. I hope my candor isn't off putting. I knew my H better than he knew himself at that point. We were having the best time as a couple, but I knew he wasn't ready to make any real plunge for his EA partner. He barely knew her, and he's not the type to do anything that rash with a veritable stranger.
Author LoveFantasy Posted October 30, 2009 Author Posted October 30, 2009 The insulting part is when I ask her questions I already know the answer to and she can still look me in the eye while I'm holding our one year old daughter and lie straight to my face. Am I happy with what I learned about her true character? No. Would I read it again if I could go back to before I read it? Absolutely. I'd rather know what I'm dealing with. As much as it hurts to read their exchange of emails, I did and I do. I only read a bit at a time because it kills me a bit more each time. Even though he knows I have all the emails, he still lies but at least I know when he's lying and when he isn't. However, each time he's lied, any step forward we took in our reconciliation, we go back double. I figured out that he's as much, if not more, lying to himself rather than to me... he doesn't want to admit to himself that he wasn't as much of a good honest gentleman as he thought he was if he could lie to me and hurt me so blatantly.
Author LoveFantasy Posted October 30, 2009 Author Posted October 30, 2009 I hope my candor isn't off putting. I knew my H better than he knew himself at that point. We were having the best time as a couple, but I knew he wasn't ready to make any real plunge for his EA partner. He barely knew her, and he's not the type to do anything that rash with a veritable stranger. We were having the best time as a couple as well. We always had a good marriage but in the last few years, we had a stronger love and renewed romance and passion. He thinks he knew his EA partner... she was his first everything and he's always been in love with her. I believe that had she returned his love completely, I would have been put out with trash... no matter how good our marriage was. The proof... those emails/chats where he talks about "their" married life together, "their" blended families... oh.., and let's not forget how he wished me dead because that is the only way they could be together. That's the man who said he loved me. I've been calm for about a week now and he's trying to prove to me that he loves me but sometimes when I think too much...
NoIDidn't Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 Oops. Big time typo changed the meaning of what I was saying. It was supposed to be "weren't". We were NOT having the best time as a couple. I was thinking about leaving him. Practically almost started an EA of my own. But had decided just the week before discovery to commit to figuring out how to get us back on track. Sorry for the confusion.
Spark1111 Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 I am a head on confronter, in the sense that I hate pink elephants in the room. Reading, and re-reading helped it hurt .....less for me. My imagination is ten times worse then the smarmy neediness of their affair. It helped me see the pure fantasy and delusional thinking it took to sustain the affair. For me, almost laughable. Felt like I was back in high school, or junior high school again. I have been in love, and I never called or texted anyone 9 times a day. Well, not since the seventh grade.
bentnotbroken Posted October 30, 2009 Posted October 30, 2009 I am a head on confronter, in the sense that I hate pink elephants in the room. Reading, and re-reading helped it hurt .....less for me. My imagination is ten times worse then the smarmy neediness of their affair. It helped me see the pure fantasy and delusional thinking it took to sustain the affair. For me, almost laughable. Felt like I was back in high school, or junior high school again. I have been in love, and I never called or texted anyone 9 times a day. Well, not since the seventh grade. Me too. I need to confront my demons in order to conquer them. My imagination is legendary. My thoughts of all the things that ow may or may not have said were eased by reading and understanding the mindset of someone like her. And understanding the lack of anything respectable in Mr. Messy.
Author LoveFantasy Posted October 30, 2009 Author Posted October 30, 2009 It helped me see the pure fantasy and delusional thinking it took to sustain the affair. For me, almost laughable. Felt like I was back in high school, or junior high school again. When I first posted the thread, I was in one of those dark times. I had already read many of the emails over the last 2-3 months and everytime, another part of me died. I still can't take reading more than a couple of the first emails they exchanged in the first month of their rekindling (she was his lost love from 30+ years ago). It hurts too much because the expression of my WS's feelings for her is like taking a knife and twisting it again and again... But you're right, as they move forward in their relationship, I could see his delusion in that he wanted so much for her to love him, he didn't who she is or see her responses for what they were. Of course, that doesn't make me feel any better. But yeah, I rather face things straight on instead of just hiding. I just hope that when all is said and done, I'm still standing.
DNU1 Posted November 2, 2009 Posted November 2, 2009 Back at DDay I would have read them all, no question about it. I wanted to know it all. I just got bits and pieces of her correspondence with one OM. It was pretty easy to put the pieces together and figure out what happened. Today, almost 6 months after handing her divorce papers, I don't want to know any more. For the sake of my kiddos I don't want to know any more details about her affairs. I just want to move forward with this divorce and remember the good times we shared as a family. I want to hold on to those memories to help lessen the impact on our children. She will always be the mother of my children.
1Angel Posted November 2, 2009 Posted November 2, 2009 DNU1 very mature response and it's obvious you've done quite a bit of growing from it.
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