So it took me two months, but I finally sat down and told him I needed to talk. He groaned.
I talked about my needing to know their start and their end with my counselor. All three I have tried agreed it was a ‘normal’ thing to want know. All the hows and when’s and why’s of the start, and the end, because their finality of the relationship really does have to be over for us to try and move forward.
So I set a timer- per our previous counselor.
He agreed, very reluctantly.
I told him, “I’m struggling through a couple of things.” I go on to tell him that as time has gone by, emotions have cleared and settled a bit. I tell him I know he’s not a talker and that talking about these things makes him upset.
I don’t put in there how upset I am.
I tell him I need some clarification. I tell him that I know we have talked about these things before, but now that fog has cleared a bit with time, I would like to talk again.
He nods.
I explain, quickly, because I know I will lose him if I ramble on. “The reason I think I’m stuck on these couple of points is because when I’ve asked before, you’ve answered. But since some of what you said does not make sense, I’ve asked again. Every time the answer is different. Toni has even addressed both of these points without me asking her at all, and it’s different than your version. So let’s get this out, tell the truth, help me through. It’s you I will believe.”
He nods.
I throw one more pre-talk sentence in there, I truly do have to get this all in there before we talk, and fast. “After this talk, I will have no choice but to take you at your word and that’s that. I either believe and process, or I don’t.”
I can hear some of you yelling at me that I’m catering to him and babying him… believe me, I’m playing the game as best as I can. I know what I need and I am doing what I think will work.
I tell him it’s their start… and their finish.
(I think it’s when he did her Floors)
Me: When did you do her floors? You have records from your first job in 1995. But I can’t find their folder at all.
“I trashed it.” Why? “I didn’t want you to find it and get upset.” That makes no sense to me. It’s a job record. “It’s what I did.”
You told me she contacted you on Facebook about the floors. But after her husband passed in January, I saw a message from her thanking you for going to funeral. But there were no previous messages about the floor job. Why erase and delete the floor messages?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
(I breathe deep here. Ok. Ok. I can see by his expression he is somewhat confused by what I’m saying to him, so I go on)
I found pictures of her back deck on your iPad from October 2014. You said you were planning some kind of an addition with her husband.
“Yes. I walked around with him and took those pictures after the floors were done. So it was 10/2014 that I did their floors.”
(Her husband passed away 1/2015, just two months after the floor job. My husband and Toni hooked up 9/2015)
You told me that you went to her in September because you knew she liked you. How did you know that? Did something happen during the floor installation?
“No. I’ve known her since we were 10. I knew she had a crush on me a long time ago.”
So nothing happened during floors. “No.”
(I don’t know yet if I believe, but I have to take his word and stop making up my own scenario of their affair)
So almost exactly a year later, you show up unannounced out of nowhere at her job, take her to lunch.
“Yes.”
Why? Why her? What made you show up like that?
“I became interested in her from following her on Facebook. I knew her from when we were younger, I knew her first husband. I was just interested. I knew she liked me.”
(I sit with this a bit. We talk a bit more about their start. The 15 minute timer goes off. We both look at it, and I ask if we can go on a bit more. We are doing good, emotions are all in check on both sides. He nods. Says, “5 more minutes.”)
What hurts is that you pursued her. You went out of your way to go to her.
He nods. Says, “I get that.”
I go into the second part… their end.
We go past the extra 5 minutes by about 20 minutes. Emotions start to go high, I start to lose it, I say something that sets him off and he starts throwing shit. He throws his iPad to the right of him. Picks up his phone, throws that against the left wall. Then picks up a water bottle and throws that.
Not at me… but still. He’s so hypocritical. I’ve done my fair share of throwing stuff in the past and his reaction is to not talk to me for a day or two. But yet he can do it.
I got in my car and left.
I broke my own rules.. the timer. If I had stuck to the timer rule, we may have been able to go again another night.
But we never talk, it just sits inside of me festering. There’s no other word for it. It’s poison. No matter what I do, how hard I work out, how much I journal or meditate… it’s still there. So we were doing good when the original timer went off… I didn’t want to stop.
I’ve been trying to write about their “end” for almost two years. I’ll try to do pt. 2 tomorrow.
This was Sunday night. It’s Thursday now. Monday morning after that fight, he was all apologetic and loving.
The only time that ever happens after a fight is when he knows he was wrong. 28 years together… I know him.
I want SO BAD to ask him what it was about her Facebook that got him so interested that he almost threw his family away. But not sure how to ask. Because right now? We are good. But yes… I do want to know.
..I think…
Yes. Yes I do.
God… we are doing none of this right. I hate this roller coaster ride.
My friend will ask me, “what difference does it make now? It’s two years later, why worry about their start or their end now?”
I don’t know. But it does matter. It matters to me. It’s not been my choice that this disclosure crap has gone on this long. It’s been his choice to stick his head up his ass and spend all this time deflecting and turning everything on to me.
What am I fighting for? I don’t know right now. Maybe I will tomorrow.
Walking the Journey 
I totally get it. The devil is in the details they say. I found that the omissions or things that didn’t make sense where what gnawed at me the most. The information he readily disclosed and facts that either made sense or I had already known/verified were not pursued much further by me. But when he wouldn’t tell me where they went, and lied about actually having sex, I would not be able to leave it alone. I knew he slept with her. I didn’t need to know all the details, but I wanted the truth. I wanted to know where they went in case it was a place I go, or my friends go to.
I would guess that had your husband come clean and answered your questions, you would be able to process and move on. You need to be satisfied with the answers and information you are seeking. It may hurt, but at least it will make sense. I know your husband has been slow to be forthcoming, but it does seem you are slowly making progress… xoxo Dolly
We have definitely had a few successful talks. I try to point them out to him. Maybe I should write about the successes, because I only seem to come here when I am pissed.
I try to show him, “See? You disclosed everything about that New Year’s Eve! You even told me what you were feeling! Now I sit here in front of you not really remembering anything about it. I’ve processed and moved on.”
It does make me wonder why some things that happened he struggles with and we are still dealing with. Maybe because he’s got too many lies wrapped up in those times that he doesn’t know what the truth is anymore.
you definitely should write about the successes as well. not only for us nosy followers but for your benefit as well! xo
I have decided it is so easy to sit in the driver’s seat, make many decisions that affect me and our family and then look back in hindsight and ask “why do all of these details matter?”. They matter because we were living a life together, or so I thought. A parallel universe was in existence right under my nose and I missed it. Shame on me. So I have a lot of puzzle pieces I am trying to put together. New pieces come to mind every day/week/month. Doesn’t make sense. Might seem strange to you who lived it. But I was on the outside and am not just trying to catch up. So if all my questions annoy you… well welcome to the crazy party I live in..
I often beat the crap out of myself for feeling guilty asking him questions.
I shouldn’t. Bottom line, I have the right to know.
I like that description… a parallel universe… it’s exactly what it was.
It’s trying to realign reality with what you thought was reality. You need to be able to mentally rearrange things. To make sense. To try to know in future when things are not as they seem. All really normal.
Exactly!!!!
My experience – questions left unanswered or when answers still don’t ring true will not fade over time. They will fester, make you question the truth in everything he tells you ever after, will stand in the way of ever rebuilding trust, and make forgiveness hard to give.
I think absolute honesty is needed tho I know many go through what you are.
I don’t understand why they are willing to tell some details but get angry, upset, etc over others.
I’ve never received any disclosure and I can tell you it leads to anger, resentment, apathy.
Thank you for this… I sometimes feel crazy and alone in these feelings. He makes me feel like I’m nuts for wanting to know.
But that is the absolute truth! It makes me question everything he says and does now.
I can’t imagine the hell of no disclosure at all 😞
Not sure if you followed my blog or not, but I found out about my husband’s affair eaxactly two years ago today. Although I tried very hard, in my own way, to get him see sense, bring him back to the family that he was risking of losing, the hurt was too much in the end. I am similar to you in the way that I wanted to know everything and tortured myself over the details.
The problem with that is the more you want to find out the more they lie. It becomes a matter of control. I honestly don’t see anything good will come out of it. You have to let go of the idea of closure.
I have very good friends across the road. Only a few months before my discovery, in January 2016, he found out about his wife’s affair with a work colleague. Through the other guy’s wife! This had been going on for two years. Anyway, he was absolutely beside himself for a few weeks but insisted his wife was going nowhere, went to an amazing counselor for 3 months and after about 1 year he started smiling again. When I asked him how he feels after all the dust settled, this was basically what he said; “She never really apologized in the way I wanted her to, I never had any answers to a lot of questions about the affair, I never really got a thank you from her in the end for saving the family, but at the end of the day my family is my life and I can’t let an affair destroy this”
Now, I don’t know if it’s the difference between men and women, but you kind of have to have that resilience and indifference to be able to move on completely. I couldn’t do it myself. Hope you can. If you truly believe that he loves you and wants to stay with you, then try to let go and create your own closure.
Thank you for the comment 😊
I know… I do. My healing is on me. I have to realize I may never get what I think I need, and I need to figure out if I can go forward with that knowledge.
I have been standing with one foot in leaving and one foot in staying for a too long.
Hi, I understand why you are trying to find out, because you think it has been going on much longer now, you have had time to think and for the spin doctor we all have in our heads to whisper to you ‘but what if’. I will say over and over again that I believe part of our pain is the fact that we were ‘made a fool of.’ and that hits our ego and our pride. I get that, pride was my deadly sin!
I have inserted below an excerpt from my book, the journal entry that I wrote 11 years ago (nearly) in which you can see that I felt just like you, after it are my reflections now. The journal entry is blunt (bless my husband for letting me write this book!) but I know it will help others and I hope it helps you to listen to what the lady above said. You have to make up your own mind and for me to think the worse, be empowered, think to yourself ‘fuck it! This is what I think and I am going to make my decision based on: what I think and will leave you (meaning hubby) out of the equation. This then makes you in control of your own life, and that may mean you stay, it might mean you leave, but you cannot allow it to continue to drive you insane.
“Sunday 7th October
Hormones! I swore that this time I would not let them get the better of me; and I haven’t’ as much but they have had a helping hand.
On Tuesday it came out that Rich did get a hard on with ‘Her’. That he did stick his cock insider ‘Her’ and then he lost his erection. So in my mind that is defined as full sex! Something that Rich swore he had not done. Something that I have based everything we have done (since the 9th of July when he told me he could not keep an erection) on. Another lie!!
I just read back over some of my journal; read how many times I believed Rich, how I know when he is lying to me; but I obviously don’t! As he lied to me quite often and I don’t see it.
So now I am back, right back as far as Rich and I am concerned. (me on my own because I am still much stronger as an individual.) I wonder whether Rich can aver face the truth; can ever stop lying because he thinks that makes things easier. From Rich’s point of view I understand why the counsellor told him that I don’t need to know everything, because Rich had told her that he was so afraid of losing me, and was afraid that if I knew everything then he would lose me.
But from my point of view it was the worst piece of advice she could have given him! It makes me wonder what it is that he is hiding from me that would make me walk away – when everything that has happened so far hasn’t!
What is it that is going to come and bite me on the arse in the future, like Tuesday’s revelation did? I am so afraid of that, so afraid that I will work hard to build us up again, only to find that that it has all been based on a lie – again! Yes, my pride, my self-esteem come into it. But that is all part of the person that I am.
I know that we cannot have what we had before, and it obviously wasn’t as good as I thought it was, or I would not be where I am now, so I don’t want that.
But I do want to try; but to do that it must ALL be based on honesty and the truth. If Rich wants to keep me, as he says he does, then he must be honest. If one more lie comes up he will harden my heart more than he realises. Because of this these are the things that I imagine he is lying about:
• How many times they had sex. He has already lied about this:
1. Ten times
2. Five times (which he actually counted on his fingers one night!)
3. Now a handful – he is not sure how many.
Why not he counted them on his fingers remember?!
• How many times he met her in Essex; really, how long the relationship had been going on for.
• Whether they had sex in our bed – Is that why Rich wants to get rid of the mattress?
• Whether he did ring and text her for the whole eight months, because Rich was adamant that they were not texting each other until the March before he left.
Basically what is it that I don’t need to know about?
I do want us to work, I think that for us to break up would be a waste and incredibly sad; a catastrophic for Rich.
But if Rich really loves me, as he says he does, he must be honest with me now. Let this new relationship be built on the truth; lying is no good, hiding things is no good. In Shakespeare’s words “The truth will out.”
The other thing is when Rich does not comfort me when I am upset. I have written in this journal so many times how I need him to do that, and he doesn’t. I need to know that when it comes to the crunch Rich will not let me down again – and this is a good start.
I think that it would be best for Rich to read this entry and then my emotions not being visible should make it easier.
Mois
Reflections today – 11 years later …….
After reading this entry I had to give myself a couple of days to think about my reflection, because I thought that some people reading this would be thinking “Oh my God it is never going to get better, because she has gone back to square one!” Because it certainly looks that way .But whilst at that moment in time I had gone backwards I did not stay there for long.
For me the most important thing about this entry is that I hope it can help those of you reading this book who are going through what we went through. People who may be finding themselves taking three steps forward only to find the next day that they have taken twenty steps back, I believe that this entry can help those people, you, understand that this is what happens. It happens to everyone; and I can categorically say to you that you can get through it, don’t give up, you can get there in the end, things will get better, because I am, we are, here, living proof that it can if you allow it to.
People who have not been through this do not understand the immense pain of a broken heart, a broken life. They say things such as “You should be moving on by now.” Or “You need to start to get over it.” Get over what? Your life is no longer the life as you knew it, you are starting again, wherever you are in this sad soap opera, and you are grieving for what you have lost.
So don’t beat yourself up when you end up back at base camp, it is only a temporary visit and you will go back to where you were, you will have moved on, my mad journal shows you, I had.
The other important thing from this entry is for those who are trying to make it work; because you need to consider what you want your new relationship (and yes it is new) to be based on. Yes it does need to be based on the truth, and I used to say to Rich that if I ever found out that he had lied to me about how long it had been going on for; or how long they had been making a fool of me, then, irrespective of what we had or where we had got to in our relationship, irrespective of how good it may be, I would leave because it would all have been based on a bed of lies. I probably said this for about the first five years after we had got back together.
But now?
Now I know, as I have said before, that I have to make my mind up about what I believe to have been the truth and go with that, because I will never know the truth; and it doesn’t matter what Rich says I will never fully believe him. ‘She’ could come back out from under a stone and say that they had flown to the moon and back on a fucking unicorn I won’t know!!
If I hadn’t made up my mind to go with what I believe to be the truth (the worst) then anyone could have raised their ugly heads in the future and tell me something that could rock my world, our world, because I had chosen to believe something; and ironically even then I would not know if what they were telling me were the truth. I picked the worst scenario, faced my fears head on because I knew if I chose an easier version of events then it was not a safe option, it was flawed and open to someone coming along and destroying it all over again by making me consider the worst after being told it, by destroying whatever little candyfloss story I had told myself. So I went with the cold hard crappy worst case scenario after this episode in us getting back together and by doing that, I was able to get to where I am today.
Can you see where I am going with this? Our future could only be built on what we started to build after we got back together, and whatever happened in the past was irrelevant because anything we had was going to be hinged on our actions in this new relationship we were trying to forge.
I now know why the counsellor told Rich I did not need to know everything, because I didn’t. As the old proverb says “What you don’t know can’t hurt you”; but at that time my bruised ego did not agree with her. The counsellor was right. You don’t need to know everything, and if you think you do I would ask you what you are going to do with the information if you had it? And how do you know it is true? ……..
Copyright ‘I don’t think I can do this’ Moisy Swindell
Moisy
Hi WTJ- long time reader first time commenter. Nice to meet you. I keep a low profile, but I’ve been on the journey you’re walking for about awhile now- (9 years past d day this summer). I had to work through so many of the questions you mention in your post above. I felt the same level of frustration about all the unknowns. But I noticed something in the quote below from your post that made a difference for me and that actually helped me to get my him to be a little more transparent-
“I want SO BAD to ask him what it was about her Facebook that got him so interested that he almost threw his family away. But not sure how to ask. Because right now? We are good. But yes… I do want to know.”
And that’s getting him to focus on the parts of his life were so whatever…(bad, unfulfilling, stuck, boring….whatever it was) that he thought her Facebook page was interesting enough to make him want to jeopardize all that he stood to lose if he went down the road. Cause at the end of the day- it’s got nothing to do with her and everything to do with him- and what he felt about himself and who he really is….and how his actions reflect those perceptions….
For me, it was harder to get him to look at that, but at the end of the day, it’s not her….it’s him.
Don’t know if that’ll help you at all. It helped us. It was hard- cause we both had to reconcile our visions of who we thought we were, with who we really were, but it really did help pin down who wanted to be moving forward.
Good luck, I wish you all the best and hope the road smoothes out for you soon. Safe travels!
Hi Waikiki! Thank you for the comment.
That’s been the hardest part with us. He loses it when the focus turns to him. It’s good if the focus is on me, and my part of the marriage falling apart.
I honestly feel that’s one of the things I’ve needed from day 1, for him to look at himself.
Thanks again 😊. 9 years? This does get better, right?
Walking, I hear you. I’ve had some of those same frustrating conversations with my husband. In advance of going to a weekend intensive next month, I was reading through the Beyond Affairs site. It’s not for everyone, but I found something on there that helped me. Maybe it will help you explain to your husband why you ask the questions you do. I edited it slightly (on the site it is from a husband to his wife) and printed it. I asked my husband to read it before we started our last discussion. It seemed to have an impact as he was more forthcoming. Here is the key part:
“You were there. There is no detail left out from your point of view. Like a puzzle, you have all the pieces and you are able to reconstruct them and be able to understand the whole picture, the whole message, or the whole meaning. You know exactly what that picture is and what it means to you and if it can affect your life and whether or not it continues to stir your feelings. You have the pieces, the tools, and the knowledge. You can move through your life with 100% of the picture you compiled. If you have any doubts, then at least you’re carrying all the information in your mind and you can use it to derive conclusions or answers to your doubts or questions. You carry all the “STUFF” to figure out OUR reality. There isn’t really any information, or pieces to the puzzle, that you don’t have.
“Now let’s enter my reality. Let’s both agree that this affects our lives equally. The outcome no matter what it is will affect us both. Our future and our present circumstances are every bit as important to me as they are to you. So, why then is it okay for me to be left in the dark? Do I not deserve to know as much about the events that nearly destroyed our relationship as you do? Just like you, I am also able to discern the meaning of certain particulars and innuendoes of those events and just like you, I deserve to be given the opportunity to understand what has brought our relationship down. To assume that I can move forward and accept everything at face value is unrealistic and unless we stop thinking unrealistically I doubt our lives will ever “feel” complete or healed. You have given me a puzzle. It is a 1000 piece puzzle and 300 random pieces are missing. You expect me to assemble the puzzle without the benefit of looking at the picture on the box. You expect me to be able to discern what I am looking at and to appreciate it in the same context as you. You want me to be as comfortable with what I see in the picture as you are. When I ask if there was a tree in such and such area of the picture you tell me don’t worry about it, it’s not important. When I ask whether there were any animals in my puzzle you say, I don’t know. When I ask if there was a lake in that big empty spot in my puzzle you say, I can’t remember. Then later when I’m expected to “understand” the picture in the puzzle you fail to understand my disorientation and confusion. You expect me to feel the same way about the picture as you do, but you deny me the same view as you. When I express this problem you get frustrated with me for not understanding it, for not seeing it the way you see it. You wonder why I can’t just accept whatever you chose to describe to me about the picture and then feel the same way you feel about it.
“So, you want me to be okay with everything. You think you deserve to know and I deserve to wonder. You may honestly feel that the whole picture, everything that happened, is insignificant because in your heart you know it was a mistake and wish it never happened. But how can I know that? Faith? Because you told me so? Would you have faith if the tables were turned? Don’t you understand that I want to believe you completely? But how can I? I can never know what is truly in your mind and heart. I can only observe your actions and use what information I have acquired to slowly, over time, rebuild my faith in your feelings and integrity. I truly wish it were easier.”
After reading that, I think a light bulb went off for my husband. It’s not that talking with him suddenly became easy, but I think it shed some light on why I needed answers to my questions. For me, these lines hit home: “You expect me to feel the same way about the picture as you do, but you deny me the same view as you. When I express this problem you get frustrated with me for not understanding it, for not seeing it the way you see it. You wonder why I can’t just accept whatever you chose to describe to me about the picture and then feel the same way you feel about it.” Exactly.
Exactly. Yes, yes yes. We had a conversation about exactly this today, they just don’t understand. Copied and pasted.
Thank you so much for this. This is exactly what I’m feeling and need.
I struggle sometimes with the flood of emotions and thoughts to put something into words like this… so I’m in tears right now, lol. Thank you again for this.
I hope it is helpful to you. Even if it is unpersuasive to your husband, perhaps it offers you some assurance that your feelings on his disclosures (or lack thereof) are reasonable. You are not alone.
❤️
I can relate to you from the anger he has when answering, to the treating him like a baby and preparing him gently for a discussion.
Why does your H get so angry? Has be been able to articulate it?
It’s frustrating. No, he can’t articulate it.