SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I found out 5 weeks ago that my W of 34 years had had an affair. I had suspected for quite a while. Her behavior was quite irratic: very hot and cold; a sudden desire for much more adventurous sex; seeminlgly inconsequential things on my part resulting in an explosion; wanting to move to a different province; and so on. I found out definitively a week before DDay (Oct 04). She had had an online affair for over a year. She says this started as an emotional affair and then it turned into sexting. We spent 2.5 months on a cruise and in Florida, finishing in Feb 2022. At this time something very odd happened. I had made what I though was a joke on the cruise. I said something to the effect of "you better not have an affair or I'll..." Now, she had made this joke many times over our marriage with the threat of having various parts of my manhood being cut off, and other things, and I took those for what they were: a joke. But this threat came up repeatedly as something horrible I had done. I was quite angry about it but eventually I apologised for making her feel threateneded. Keep in mind that while all of this was happening she was sexting with the AP. I suspect this was the "casus belli" she needed to take the affair to the next level.

The week we returned I had to go on a business trip immediately. She called the AP over to our house, ostensibly to do work on our oven (the AP was a heating/cooling technician), and they had sex in front of the fireplace. My WW's claim is that this was the first time (no way to know). Afterwards she went to Quebec and found a house for us to move to. I found out later that she really wanted to escape the A and this would put distance between herself and him. At the time it was couched as "moving to a new province would be a new adventure". Per my WW she did not meet with him again until the week we moved (late June 2022) when my WW went over to his place for goodbye sex. She then met him at a hotel mid-July when we were back in the area, ostensibly because he was sad and really needed to be with her one more time.

Our relationship was admittedly rocky; I had trust issues and these occassionally manifested in anger and irrational behavior on my part. I sometimes searched her emails and texts until she blocked my access (about 2 years ago). I never once touched her in anger and rarely ever raised my voice. But there was no question I acted badly sometimes due to my trust issues.

She claims she has broken contact with him. She has deleted all of the texts so I really cannot say what went on or how long it went on for, or whether there were more than three times that it was physical. I know that she was mortified at what she had done and felt enormous guilt. I also know she desperately wants me to forgive her. And the reality is I want to forgive her and make our M work.

The challenging part for me now is that she feels my boundary expectations are controlling. She recently embraced a so-called male "friend" for minutes, her arms around him, his hands on her butt. Then they had a long kiss before breaking off. She said that my being upset by this was an attempt to be controlling, and that nothing really happened. She tried to minimize this by saying it was no different than with another couple who we said good-bye to; but that was a quick embrace and a peck for a kiss.

We started couples therapy back in early July. It has helped us to communicate a lot more openly about what activates us. I am also considering individual counseling. I believe if the M is to work she needs to learn to set her own boundaries the same way I do for myself.

Anyway, like all of you this is not the club I had hoped to be a member of, but I see from the posts that it is a very supportive group, so thank you for your patience in letting me get this out there.

[This message edited by Prisoner06 at 11:10 AM, Monday, November 7th]

The embrace and kiss with another guy proved your wife has boundary issues.

You are not irrational or controlling but just trying to find out what is really going on in your own life with a spouse who is shady.

Please get some counseling for yourself. It will help you figure out how you want to live your life going forward. You can Separate or Divorce or Reconcile.

Whatever you choose please make sure you will be happy and putting yourself first.

She recently embraced a so-called male "friend" for minutes, her arms around him, his hands on her butt. Then they had a long kiss before breaking off. She said that my being upset by this was an attempt to be controlling

No--not controlling.

Minimally, she wants to get the rush from another guy's attention and doesn't like being called out on it.

If she truly believes this behavior was okay, your relationship isn't safe. Her boundaries with other men are broken.

Sorry you are here.

Wanting R is fine but she does not sound like a good candidate. Not yet. She just had a year long affair, is supposedly sorry about it, but then has an embrace with another guy for "minutes" with his hands on her ass and they also kiss?!? Are you kidding me? And you not liking that is "controlling"?

Her attitude is complete bullshit, friend. You need to get your anger up a notch or two. Find your strength. Look at the concept of the 180 here in the healing library and in the sticky threads in this forum. Stand up for yourself, take care of yourself and tell your WW that you will not share her and that includes letting another male friend grope and kiss her. That isn't controlling, that's sanity.

I probably would have been stunned if some guy did that with my wife in front of me. But if I wasn't too stunned, I would likely have hit him. Or at the least shoved him up against the wall and threatened him. I say this not to be some macho guy but to say... it's alright to be angry. And protective. It's a normal response. Your wife and this "friend" are the outliers here.

Buy the book Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass and read it. Have your WW read it. She needs a dose of reality.

And from your own observations, I think you know that her affair was more serious than she is letting on. Goodbye sex and reconnecting sex and having to move to get away from him? Sounds like you only know the tip of the iceberg there.

Please stand up for youself and your needs. Find an IC who can help you do this.

Disclaimer. I did not R but chose to D. Take what i have to say as just one opinion among many.

It sounds like you are pushing to rugsweep. I get it. You want your old life back.you want the pain to end. Most all of us went through that phase. The reality is, you can't. Your version of your old life was a mental construct. You are going to have to begin peeling back the layers and reexamine your history to try and understand it in a more realistic way. It will be tough, but at least it wil be authentic. Looking back, I now have an unvarnished, or at least less varnished version of history. It turns out that my EXWW has always been a rather shit wife. I just never saw it.

You probably have trust issues because your subconscious was screaming at you and you rationalized those feelings away. She threatened you because she was projecting her own character flaws onto you. My EXWW did the same thing. She was and is a shit human being and assumes others are as well. When she encounters people of high moral character, she accuses them of thinking they are so good. Juvenile really. She says you have boundary issue because it's really all about her.

Don't confuse your WW'S Guilt with actual remorse. I know that it can be hard to tell, especially to a BS who would feel awful if the roles were reversed. Most likely, she feels bad for herself. Her mask has slipped and now people (you) see her for who she is. The rea reason she wanted to move probably has more to do with a fresh audience for her and less about what she sold you. It will take a long time and a lot of work on her part (not yours) for genuine remorse to show up, if it ever does. After any years,my EXWW still cannot show genuine remorse. It will always be about her.

The stats on R are not promising. The reality is that about 70% of M end at the 5 year mark, about the time it takes for the BS to heal and realize the A was always a deal-breaker. Of those that survive, I'm guessing only a fraction and what you might call "good" with the A remaing a perminant mark in the background. I gave my WW 6 months to pull her head out of her ass and fix what she broke. She didn't. She was just not capable of doing the work and settled on not cheating anymore, thinking that was enough.when she told me that she could not be there for me until I was in a better place, because I made her feel too guilty, I dumped her. And I never looked back.

The A recovery industry will try and sell you on R, and your M can be stronger than ever. I bellied up to that bar and looked for everything that could give me hope. Problem was, I was the only one doing the work. Myvrecomendation is to read Cheating in a Nutshell. It is an anecdotal book about the effects of infidelity on the BS.

One last thing. This may not be her first rodeo. Just the first time she got caught. As well, don't assume you have the truth. Cheaters lie, like a lot. Take care of yourself.

I hate to say it but clearly your wife has no concerns that you'll pull the trigger on your marriage or any fear that you'll hold her accountable.
You can be almost guaranteed this wasn't her first, nor her last, if you not liking her hugging a 'friend" for minutes, his hand on her ass and a long kiss is considered controlling. Quite honestly thats someone that is flat out telling you she isn't afraid of anything you'll do.

The reason you have acted irrational and angry in the past is because she was doing some thing that made you uncomfortable. I’m guessing that the cheating is just part of her overall self-centered personality. Please read the book GAMES PEOPLE PLAY. It is an old one but it is still on target about how these people become experts at manipulation and gaslighting. Your subconscious knew something was going on throughout your marriage but you did not know what. She probably was not cheating the whole time but she was manipulating you the whole time. I’m not sure where you want to go with this but over the whole course of your marriage there were times when your irrational behavior did not seem to have any basis and yet there was something going on with her which drove you to it.

Hi,

Sorry to find you here. This is my first response in this forum.
As stated by others here, your W doesn't look like a good candidate for R. Don't blame yourself, your desire to control are natural, and if she was as shameful and remorseful as she says she is, she would understand that.

Our relationship was admittedly rocky

That's no excuse for a treason.

She recently embraced a so-called male "friend" for minutes, her arms around him, his hands on her butt. Then they had a long kiss before breaking off.

How long can you let her humiliate you ? She knows it's hard for you, she knows it's inappropriate, she just doesn't respect or care about you. You don't need couples counseling, SHE needs to work on herself first !

Have you read the tactical primer here ? If not, I really think you should... https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/topics/235051/tactical-primer/

Take care

Where to begin…
Let’s start with one thing most of us take as fact regarding infidelity:
It doesn’t just "happen". It’s a decision. Your wife DECIDED at some point to have an affair. I’m not suggesting she woke up one day and started searching for an affair partner, but at some point, she either initiated or encouraged the OM to the next level. Heck… if she didn’t then this would be rape.
This is a very important factor – the decision. If we allow ourselves to think this just "happens" there isn’t really any hope in this not "happening" again.

Second: It’s always due to issues in THEM. Your marriage, your behavior, the location… nah… They might give reason to demand change, to divorce… but NEVER to cheat.

Guess what? When you moved province, she took herself along too… The problem is still there… She needs to do some serious work to understand why she allowed herself this long-term affair, and that work should never include phrases like "Prisoner06 did not do this or that so I had to…".

I’m one of those that think reconciliation is often possible after infidelity. But it requires total truth and total commitment.

If I simply apply logic, then it’s extremely unlikely that this fire-place thing was the first time they had sex.
I hate assumptions and encourage you to find indicators proving me wrong – or supporting what I’m going to say:
Many confuse emotional affairs and sexual affairs. A sexual affair does not start the moment two nude people touch each other or with penis-in-vagina or whatever. It starts when the acts of one are done with the intent of sexually exciting both or the other. It becomes sexual when they start sexting.

At what point would a woman of her age start sexting? It’s not in our generation per se. It’s not as if we do it after 2-3 convos about the weather. It happens when there is a certain feeling of security and intimacy. What gave her those feelings? Personally (and this is one of those assumptions I hate so much!) I would think the safety comes after some intimacy. Be that fondling, intense inuendo or full-out sex.
I also feel that there is a certain brazenness and confidence in having him in the home. Generally it shows a certain level of feeling safe.

I also think that if a woman is having a sexting-only, online-only affair they would realize that distance isn’t the issue. Relocating to another province doesn’t make sense if this is sexting and phoning only. The distance is to get physical distance. Why if the physical intimacy was so limited?

I am not making these assumptions to make things worse for you. On the contrary. Either your wife is telling the truth or not. If she isn’t then her lies don’t make a new truth. Truth is what it is. Its better to have it all in the open and work from there.

Remember – you don’t have to prove anything. This isn’t a court of law. It’s on her onus to prove that what she says is true. You state there is no way to know the truth… well… yest there are ways:

She can NOW open up to all the methods used to text, message and communicate. Give you access to all media. Either you or you get a tech-savy guy to dig up logs, profiles and such.
Get call logs and message logs.
Go over cards and statements. Why a withdrawal in THAT ATM far from where you usually go? Why a withdrawal in an ATM in the hotel-lobby.
Request a poly. Tell her that one possible question (at the moment) will be "Was the time you had sex with OM that you told me about the first time you two had physical sex" and make it clear that if she fails that question you will see it as her not being a candidate for reconciling. Make it clear that if she tells you NOW that they met 39 times or had sex in her car or whatever it will definitely hurt, and maybe even erode whatever will you might have to reconcile, but learning later that shes withholding information will DEFINITELY end any reconciliation attempts.

Bigger absolutely nailed it.
Read that reply twice if need be, I doubt you'll get a better hit on the nail head than that.

You can't control your another person. If your W wants to embrace and kiss another person for minutes on end, she is free to do it. If she wants to consider her A to be over and then have goodbye sex and poor-boy-is-so-down sex, she can do it.

You CAN control your response. You can dump her now; you can tell her if she does something again, you'll dump her; you can wait and see. But no matter what you do, I urge you to make a mindful decision and to look at your motives. Know why you chose what you chose. And if you don't like your reasons, change yourself ... a good IC can help.

Your W chose to cheat. She chose to move far from her ap in the mistaken belief her ap was the cause of her A. She's choosing to see you as controlling.

To become a good candidate for R, she needs to take responsibility for her actions, and she needs to commit to changing herself from betrayer to good partner. ICs help a person treat themself. Your M didn't fail. Your W did. She most probably will need the help of a good IC - not an MC - to make that change. MCs treat the M.

Forgiveness needs a definition. What does it mean for you?

For me, one day 3.5-4 years after d-day, I realized I no longer had any desire for my W to be punished for her A. I took that as forgiveness. I also realized I trusted her as much as any of us should trust someone else. Both trust and forgiveness came to me because my W did 1000s of trust-building actions.

Forgiveness comes after a lot of work, IMO. You and your W want it now? That is another thing that I recommend you consider - it's another indication she doesn't want to do the necessary work, and it may be an indication that you may want to sweep this under a rug.

Trust me on this: you can R without forgiving.

Life can get better for you, but it takes work. It takes work to face and process the fear, grief, anger, and shame that come with being betrayed. The thing is, the work pays off. It allows you to open yourself up to joy again. As I say, a good IC can help.

Life can get better for your W, too, if she changes from cheater to good partner. She's still fighting that.

You can't rebuild your M unless both of you heal yourselves. The thing is, though, that you're both human beings, and we can figure out how to heal.

*****

** Posting as a member **

The stats on R are not promising.

Cite your sources, please.

Here are some stats with citations:

1) A majority of men and women reported that they stayed married after infidelity in Peggy Vaughan's surveys - page 140, Help for Therapists (and Their Clients), PDF version which is apparently available from Amazon and perhaps other sites.

2) Shirley Glass reports, in NOT "Just Friends", that only 20% of the couples she treated split after starting out with both members stating the wanted R. I conclude from that number that 80% stayed together.

Neither author makes any claims about the quality of the Ms, and both authors know enough statistics to know that their numbers cannot be expected to reflect what happens in the whole population of people who experienced infidelity in their Ms.

Further, stats are about probabilities, at best. I looked hard for probabilities 11 years ago, without success. In the end, I had to go with my gut -

I wanted R;
My W wanted R;
My W was doing the right things;
I knew some people succeeded at R;
I thought we'd succeed.

Besides, probabilities simply do not apply to individual cases.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:23 PM, Monday, November 7th]

She claims she has broken contact with him. She has deleted all of the texts so I really cannot say what went on or how long it went on for, or whether there were more than three times that it was physical. I know that she was mortified at what she had done and felt enormous guilt. I also know she desperately wants me to forgive her. And the reality is I want to forgive her and make our M work.

You can´t tell for sure if that is the reality. Cheaters lie - A LOT. Hope for the best. Expect the worse.

The challenging part for me now is that she feels my boundary expectations are controlling. She recently embraced a so-called male "friend" for minutes, her arms around him, his hands on her butt. Then they had a long kiss before breaking off. She said that my being upset by this was an attempt to be controlling, and that nothing really happened. She tried to minimize this by saying it was no different than with another couple who we said good-bye to; but that was a quick embrace and a peck for a kiss.

Don´t take this the wrong way but it seems to me she sees you as some kind of a pushover partner - easily pushed around on the ideas she wants to implement. It happens alot to a lot of GOOD people. Being willingly a nice person is many times the missing ingredient for cheaters to act upon their own disfunctional character. She putting responsability on you for her actions his taken from the cheaters behaviour handbook. You implementing bondaries to make you safe into the M are nothing short of expected. She basically wants freedom to eat the cake (her boyfriend), while having the cake (you) for himself/for confort.

You should not rush to R - even if it may be possible.

You first need to access the truth of the facts. At least the better version of it you can get.

Require her:

- Written timeline of the events - so she can´t spin other diferent information down the road when something new hits the fan.

- Access to all of her electronics with no ifs and/or buts. If she is not remorseful she will bitch on this a lot (going by what she said above about your boundarie implementation she will do just that).

- STD testing for you both.

- No contact with AP.

- No intimacy/sex until you know the reality in which you have been put into (they usually lovebomb the W/H after Dday - so as to try and pass the idea of wanting to be with the W/M and that they are so very sorry (not) for what they did. Don´t fall for that.

She is probably not telling all there is to know. Cheaters lie. A LOT.

I said something to the effect of "you better not have an affair or I'll..." Now, she had made this joke many times over our marriage with the threat of having various parts of my manhood being cut off, and other things, and I took those for what they were: a joke. But this threat came up repeatedly as something horrible I had done. I was quite angry about it but eventually I apologised for making her feel threateneded. Keep in mind that while all of this was happening she was sexting with the AP. I suspect this was the "casus belli" she needed to take the affair to the next level.

They have their own way into gaslighting us. Putting us second guessing. Spinning the script on us as if something we have done is responsible for the shitshow lack of boundaries they show.

And they do compartimentalize. They can manage that "double life" with no problems or guilt feelings whatsoever. You can´t count on her to be bothered to care about your feelings on those moments. She is living in fricking fantasy loney land with her AP at the moment. She is loving every single second of the rush she feels doing so. It is like a drug/adiction. She can´t get enough of it.

Don´t fall for those games.

Distance yourself enough to be able to WATCH her ACTIONS, not her words. Only actions prove a point. Words (specially coming from cheaters) mean jack skit.

Stand your ground. Know you did nothing wrong. Know there is nothing you can do to change her ways if she does not want to change them. Know that, regardless of the above, you are in control of YOUR life and you have the option to get rid of infidelity one way or the other.

Don´t rugsweep. You will regret it down the line.

All the best for you.

[This message edited by justanotherperson at 12:01 AM, Tuesday, November 8th]

She recently embraced a so-called male "friend" for minutes, her arms around him, his hands on her butt. Then they had a long kiss before breaking off.

Aw HELL no. Even if my WH wasn't a cheating POS, this sort of activity would have resulted in someone having their nose caved into the back of their head. That is shockingly disrespectful.

I would not recommend that you rug sweep this. Whether your M was rocky or not your WW decided to cheat, then make out with another man. That has nothing to do with the status of your M. It has to do with the inescapable fact that your WW has zero boundaries and wants to cheat, plain and simple.

I would not recommend that you R with your WW right now. She needs to write a timeline about the A snd verify that with a poly. You need to set very firm boundaries NOW with her. If she balks then institute the 180 immediately.

She also must immediately start IC. MC is a waste while she is still cheating, desiring to cheat, making out with other men, having zero boundaries, snd not expressing a hint of remorse. Stop going to MC. Do not confuse remorse with an apology and/or guilt.

Your WW is fully expecting you to accept her A, her terrible behavior, rug sweep, and get over it. You need to be firm, and angry. You need to be ready to walk away from this M if need be. If your WW doesn’t understand this, then she will happily continue with her current behavior.

Mark my words, if you do not take firm action snd stand up for yourself, you will be posting here in a year or two that she cheated again multiple times snd that you’re contemplating D.

Mark my words, if you do not take firm action snd stand up for yourself, you will be posting here in a year or two that she cheated again

This is exactly what happened to me. My H’s first 4 year EA was completely swept under the rug.

It made it easier for him to start his second affair. The one where he planned to D me for the much younger OW.

I was much smarter the second time around.

Sisson

As for citing my study, I think we did this thing awhile back when i posted the numbers. I'm too tired to dig up my old citation, but new research has indicated that after about the 5 year mark post Dday, 70% of relationships don't survive. Thumos also piped in and corroborated.

Most infidelity studies aren't truly longitudinal. The point is, infidelity is deeply traumatizing and difficult to survive.

Justsomeguy : I've read quite the opposite... "Extensive research conducted by the American Psychological Association found that 53% of couples who experienced infidelity in their marriage were divorced within 5 years, even with therapy."
This leaves 47% of couples that stay together, doesn't it ?

Prisoner06

I always fear that when we get posters like you we lose them because of the seeming harshness of what we share. If you are still reading, I want to get this message across to you:

There are very few absolutes in human behavior and interactions and infidelity, but there are plenty of patterns and expected behaviors. Like your WW claim about when the sex started…
Nobody here can say she’s lying and be 100% certain that THEY know the truth. However, I have been here for quite some time, and we probably have 3-10 new betrayed spouses share here each week. That makes a lot of threads that I read or taken part in. Probably in the hundreds if not thousands… and I have a hard time recalling more than 5 where the WS was fully truthful on d-day.
This is IMHO a key issue: If we could do a full statistical survey on stories here, we might find out that the odds of a betrayed spouse getting the pertinent truths at d-day are something like 1%. That’s just a guess on my part, but I am certain it would never be more than 5%.

This goes on for other factors too and it allows us a "feeling" of being able to call out odds for certain actions. Like we "know" that the odds of a repeat affair if this one is rugswept is around 50%, that if exposed the odds of OM dropping his AP is 9/10 and so on and so on. We also know that about 90% of WS minimize and/or trickle-truth, and we know that trickle-truth probably finally wrecks more marriages than the actual infidelity.

This is why we question that you have the truth. That is why we doubt.
You could be in that Unicorn group of 1-5%, but we at least encourage you to question that – to confirm you have that unique horn from your forehead.

The truth is so important… So important.
Its not to wallow in pain. The level of detail you need is individual based (although I think whatever you can imagine tends to be worse than reality). Whether they met 15 or 16 times isn’t necessarily make-or-break. But in order to recover you need to know what you are recovering from. You need to know when it started, how they communicated, how it progressed, where they met and so on and so on. You need this both to know what you are dealing with and to help you establish the affair is over.
Oh… I forgot… in our experience probably 2 out of 3 affairs aren’t "over" on d-day. They tend to go into comatose or underground, but will resurface in a month or so. That is – if you don’t take certain rather firm and definite action.

This site is proof that many people survive infidelity. Those that do generally do so using one of two paths. They either reconcile or they divorce. I am totally fine with either. To reconcile you both need to want to reconcile, to divorce it’s enough that one doesn’t want to reconcile. Both are emotionally hard.
This site has plenty of evidence that many chose a third option. That is where they neither reconcile or divorce, but find some way to cohabit with this humongous pink elephant stinking up their marriage. Some of us call it inactive infidelity or rug-sweeping. It’s often hidden behind all sorts of justifications, but IMHO it’s the worst possible outcome from the situation.

This site is living proof that reconciliation of a relationship from infidelity is possible.
This site is also proof that divorce is a great option to get out of infidelity.
This site was founded by a couple that dealt with infidelity in their marriage and did so successfully. The admins and mods and guides are a mixed bunch of betrayed husbands and wives; some came here as betrayed and some as the wayward spouse; some who reconciled, some that divorced.

On this forum – the JFO forum – you will only hear from BS. WS are requested to stay off this forum due to the sensitive and bare emotions people are experiencing. That bunch will be a mix of people that have either divorced or reconciled or are going through the process of deciding. There will also be a number of those that chose the third option – the one I don’t recommend.

I personally ended my infidelity-impacted relationship. I was engaged so technically it was easy, although emotionally hard. For me – at that time in that relationship – it was the correct thing to do. For others then maybe reconciling makes more sense. It’s totally your call, but base it on the truth rather than pure emotions or assumptions.

Finally – just in case you are still reading here – This is not a court of law. You don’t have to prove anything. If anything, it’s up to her to prove you wrong. You are allowed to make assumptions, but preferably deductions that she then needs to verify or disprove.

There can be a fine line between assumptions and deductions. Like if she insists that this one time at the fire-place was the first time they had sex then I have already deducted that due to their long-time sexting, her age (or actually that she is in a group where sexting wasn’t really a thing), my before mentioned experience with trickle-truth, minimization and retaining the truth, her need to move… that this isn’t true.
You are allowed to believe that. If you reach the same deduction based on what you know you are allowed to believe that your deduction or assumption is the truth. Definitely be open to her being able to prove you wrong, but never forget its HER role to convince you, not yours to get the truth.

Sorry for the thread-jack...

** Posting as a member **

The point is, infidelity is deeply traumatizing and difficult to survive.

But you brought in statistics, and statistics provide no reliable help in dealing with the trauma. Statistics are probably s distraction from dealing with the trauma.

First and foremost, statistics do not apply to individual cases. If one says to themself, 'I'd like to ___, but I'm going to do ___ because the statistics say ___,' one is doing themself a disservice.

WRT infidelity, even if 90% of people find one way out of infidelity, there are still a LOT of people who find other ways.

*****

...American Psychological Association found that 53% of couples who experienced infidelity....

Did you look at the source for that conclusion? The conclusion is based on 134 couples who sought therapy. Not random. Too small to support generalizations.

I do argue against the proposition that a majority of couples in which one partner cheats end up divorced.

That does NOT mean I think a majority do not D. It means that I don't know. Further, it means that no one knows the true statistics on infidelity outcomes.

The studies I've seen are based on self-reported outcomes from non-randomly-selected subjects. The academic studies, at least the ones I've seen, simply do not support generalizing from the studies to the general population, usually because the sample sizes are simply too small.

My reco is to take all statistics with many grains of salt. Look closely at the caveats for each number, and if there are none, just treat that number as junk science.

And remember: no matter what is said by and statistics you may find, your healing depends on your making the right choices for you in your specific situation.

Prisoner06, I'm very sorry you've been betrayed. I know it's unfair that you been hit by this, and it's unfair that you are now forced to do work that should be unnecessary, but if you do the work you need to dao, you can heal, survive, and thrive.

It's up to you. You have a number of free choices. In one sense that's a giant burden. In another sense, however, it means the power to heal is within you, even though you may not realize it yet. You're stronger than you think you are.

Yes, one can feel like a prisoner in the aftermath of betrayal. In reality, however, you are free, even if you don't want to be.

She recently embraced a so-called male "friend" for minutes, her arms around him, his hands on her butt.

What?

Then they had a long kiss before breaking off.

WHAT??

I also know she desperately wants me to forgive her.

She wants you to forgive and forget so she can continue believing she is a good person and maintain her lifestyle.

I know that she was mortified at what she had done and felt enormous guilt. I also know she desperately wants me to forgive her.

This contradicts this:

She said that my being upset by this was an attempt to be controlling, She tried to minimize this.

These are not the actions and words of someone who is "mortified" and feels "enormous guilt" This is wholly untrue given your description of her hugging and kissing a man and happily let him grope her in front of you.

I understand, this hurts, and you want the pain to end, and you want it to just go back to how it was before you caught her, and don't want your life to be overshadowed by her adultery anymore and you want to believe your wife is a good person who made a mistake and is truly sorry. But it wasn't a mistake. She made conscious deliberate choices to deceive you, and while she may feel regret over being caught, the guilt and remorse isn't there.

Now, she had made this joke many times over our marriage with the threat of having various parts of my manhood being cut off, and other things, and I took those for what they were: a joke.

Pure projection which also means, and I hate to point this out, but this may not have been her first affair. I'm really sorry for what you're going through.