SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I can't tell you how akward it is to make small talk with the in-laws like nothing is going on, while my marriage feels like it has blown up.

Why bother walking on eggshells with the in-laws? Looking at your jfo post you exposed her 2013 affair to them. If she’s set on once again tossing grenades into the marriage no need for you to throw yourself on them.

I think a good point was made about not moving. You need to speak with a lawyer ASAP. I assume because your wife is in the service, snd you file for divorce, you will get primary custody, whether you move or stay.

Sounds like you've been put on notice that she believes she is currently in or soon to be in an open marriage.

I hope that's ok with you.

Because if not, then I would make your opinion on that crystal clear to her. As for the 2 year assignment, based upon her past history and this most recent development, she does not plan on staying monogamous. How are you going to police her from a 1000 miles away? And do you really want to try?

Either you keep her close and watch her like a hawk, let her do her thing 1000 miles away, enjoy the open marriage that you'll have, or just move on.

So I have a few observations and if they have been made, sorry! I didn’t read many of the responses yet.

First, I don’t like how casually you are talking about the idea of swinging. The fact you kept saying for laughs did not resonate with me at all. It may be because h and I dabbled in that early in our relationship before we were married.

I don’t find it believable that a relationship with infidelity in its history wouldn’t require more conversations than for shits and giggles type thing. And it’s a statement that monogamy is negotiable to both of you.

I also understand it’s different than polyamory. However your openness to non-monogamy may have opened a Pandora’s box within her that doesn’t read to me it’s as much out of the blue that you are describing.

That being said I think you need to just have an honest conversation that it’s monogamy or divorce and that the swinging is off the table right now.

Here is what I understand deeply to my core- cheating is caused by someone’s deep unhappiness. Many seem to think that’s a statement about a relationship but it’s not. We are all responsible for our own unhappiness.

Honestly she sees this idea as a Ray of light that will bring her happiness. She is chasing dopamine.

To her credit, she has grown enough to tell you up front that’s what she is wanting to do. This is better in my opinion than cheating.

However, I truly believe to be successfully married your goals, morals, and sensibilities must line up. And right now they do not.

If she agrees to monogamy, then she should get in IC and figure out if this can truly align with fulfillment. And to explore how she can change her life into something that makes her happy.

In the meantime maybe you should do the same. Being married to someone who possibly craves chaos over peace does not align with your happiness. It’s a big investment to move forward with no guaranteed outcome and that investment is getting pretty costly to you.

I personally read your post to be you are more of the accommodator on the relationship overall. From one accommodative to another, codependency might be a concept to be examined as to whether some traits and characteristics fit or not. You may need to examine your own boundaries with her. This may put you in a better place to end this version of your relationship.

[This message edited by hikingout at 11:02 PM, Thursday, April 21st]

The idea of open relationships after infidelity is a recipe for disaster for a M. You don't even know the details of the first A and now she drops this bomb on you, moreover she's already looking on that website and likely communicating with OMs, I also agree that the GNO could be a cover story to instead go and hook up. After this revelation and her upcoming deployment for two years, If I was in your shoes I would just file for D, but if you insist on giving R a try here's what I would suggest:

1) Exposure, you don't need to pretend everything is OK with the in-laws.
2) I would simply tell her that you will not accept the open M suggestion under any circumstances.
3) Tell her you don't want to become a swinger, again this is also a recipe for disaster under the circumstances. Don't tell her you know she's logging in the app, that way you can still monitor her activity there, if she continues then you know it's time to pull the plug.
4) Tell her you want a complete written timeline with all the details from the first A, subject to a polygraph, then have her read it out loud to you (could help with remorse).
5) Based on her new revelation and secret activities she could already be cheating on you yet again, get a VAR and a GPS in her car to monitor her at least for a couple of months.
6) Consult a D attorney to know your options.

If she refuses to accept your conditions "simply" file for D and move on, based on her revelation I would forget R and move straight to D. Keep posting frequently.

Several things immediately struck me after reading your post
1. Her initial A was never completely resolved because you never had full knowledge of what happened. As had been stated in other posts, how can you truly reconcile when you don't know all the facts.
2. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Why on earth would you play around with the thought of swinging or playing other such games, given the fact that you desire a monogamous relationship and your wife has already cheated on you previously? It is practically a poison pill for a monogamous marriage if you go that route. Your acquiescence to discussing the idea has only provided your wife with additional motivation to pursue an open marriage.
3. A two-year physical separation between the two of you will assuredly play into her plans for an open marriage.
4. What is up with the GNO? I would be quite suspicious.

What to do? I think Bigger's suggestion sounds about right. But if you still desire to stay married, I would follow the advice that you must be willing to blow it up in order to save it. Simply put, you must make it clear to your wife that you will only accept a monogamous relationship with her, that you will not agree to swing with other couples, and that you need the entire truth concerning her initial affair and any subsequent affairs or ONSs. In that regard, given her recent disclosure at the past counseling session, you insist that she sit for a polygraph exam in order to help you figure out exactly who she is and what she has done. If she balks, tell her you will be seeing a lawyer next week. She has until the divorce becomes final to change her mind and sit for the polygraph exam.

Her behavior is unacceptable. If she intends to pursue that lifestyle there is nothing you can do about it other than agree to it or divorce.

What effect would opening this request of hers up to her parents, now when they are with you, have on the dialogue? Could it potentially work in your favor?

Great responses from other members....

Question: How do you know she will be out with girlfriends tomorrow night?

You cannot trust her.

she explained the situation to you before she left for her new place.

you would never want to know if your wife hadn't said that.

I'm happy for you, Your wife woke you up from your monogamy dream.

Your wife has made her decision, it's your turn.

Tigers don’t change their stripes unfortunately…looks as though she has learned nothing over the years and you need to get away from her.

Get an attorney and file, seek to keep the kids with you and also be the custodial parent with decision making on their behalf. Basically be the stable, reliable, and trustworthy parent that your kids deserve and need.

If she wants to be with someone else outside the M, give that to her along with a solid boot to the arse out the door.

Oh man I'm so fuckin sorry.

I know how you feel tho. 5 weeks after dday1 my xwh told me during a wtaf discussion "I need to have meaningful romantic and sexual relationships with other women and you're just gonna have to get on board with that."

Spoiler alert, I did not 'get on board with that'.

It's my belief that once the poly card is down, it's over. It is nigh on to impossible for an open relationship to work with one monogamous and one non-monogamous partner, and that's even without a history of infidelity. When that history is there? I personally just can't see a BS ever being okay with an arrangement like that. I know for damn sure I couldn't.

If I can offer some advice (that I didn't take); really think about what you want here and then lay that out hard. I wasted 6 months with my cheater trying to find a way to be okay with an open relationship, when there is no world in which that would EVER fly with me. I didn't want to say even tho I knew it because then my marriage would be over. It ended anyways, as I knew it would, but not before causing me many more months of trauma that I would've preferred to skip.

Hang in there. Focus on YOU and what you want and need.

Respectfully, and I acknowledge this information your WW dropped on you after all these years is extremely painful, it sounds like she's at least trying to be honest about her thoughts/feelings to you.

She could have just waited for her new job post and decided to start dating other people unethically and then dropped the "I think I'm polyamorous" bomb.

If her new job/move is already set up, maybe you should start looking into legally separating and/or divorcing right now while you're still together.

So, polyamory doesn't fix things like lack of emotional intimacy, if that's what your wife claims. That's affair thinking, not ethical nonmonogamy thinking.

Ethical open relationships don't use others to prop theirs up- each relationship can stand on its own feet.

Your wife phrasing it the way she did? That sounds to me like an exit affair in the works.

So very sorry you are going through this again. Lots of good advice here. Wow, she really had you set up didn’t she. I can imagine you were blindsided. My guess is she had this planned for quite awhile, and using the MC as a buffer was the perfect opportunity. Looking from her perspective, she is leaving for a two year deployment and she doesn’t want to spend that time tied down to a monogamous M. She wants to get out and date and have fun. Thus her revelation in MC. It has nothing to do with a lack of emotional intimacy in your M in my opinion. It has nothing to do with you or anything you have done. She wants to be free to have sex with other men while deployed. Period.

So you can either accept her terms that she will essentially be in an open M, or you can D. Either way, she is going to go out and date other men going forward. You need to get strong emotionally and physically for you and your children. Take care of you. Get IC for you. Don’t engage with her. She made up her mind long ago. I think Biggers suggestion for your response is excellent. See an attorney. Be there for your children. Good luck.

[This message edited by fareast at 7:46 PM, April 21st (Thursday)]

Good morning everyone. Wow, thanks for the responses, I am sorry for dropping this story into the ether and then not answering, but I went to sleep as soon as I posted it, and then went straight to work at 6am.

I want you all to know that I intend to answer/quote specific responses, but will do it when I get home tonight and have some breathing space. Wife is off to the football tonight with her course members and so I'll be able to collect my thoughts.

Firstly, the thoretical. To answer the 'wtf would you ever consider swinging in light of what happened 9 years ago??', yeah I get it, but I'm pretty sexually open, as is my wife. Horses for courses and all that, and under AGREED and respected boundaries that are hinged on a combined and shared experience, this can be handled maturely. I truly felt after 9 years of R and our comfortableness in talking about sex that this could be 'slowly slowly' navigated. Caveat: It has all been voiced fantasy, nothing has ever been enacted. The concept of hunting down external dates/relationships has NEVER been on the table. She knows my boundaries on emotions.

Secondly, the practical. I am literally still shaking with anger/panic as I write this a day and a half later. I still haven't spoken to my wife, because I fear it will erupt into an ungodly tirade of profanity that would make a sailor blush in front of her conservative, and near elderly, parents. They leave tomorrow, so I can tough it out.

Someone mentioned that Esther P writer that she has been reading, and I did some digging - despite being quite a good therapist with a string of successes, she leans very heavy towards the validation of poly lifestyles as being an 'eventual potential godsend' for marriages rocked by affairs. Stuff that.

I truly feel played by this marriage counselling push, and if I was being realistic, it confirms fears that I thought were stupid paranoia birthed from 2013 thoughts in the aftermath of the affair last time: it appears that this almost urgency to get this in the open is purely to set the environment for some emotional gap year in the new job. Before all this happened, I voiced my mild concerns about resentment of her living in an apartment in a male-dominant work field in another city while I played Mr Mum with 3 kids amd a FT job back home, but was told it was something we could work through and I needn't worry. Yeah, sure. This new development isn't reassuring in that regard, even in the most supportive of environments.

As for trust at the moment, I am not worried about her going out this weekend; and trust me, I became Detective Poirot after the last A. There is nothing to suggest she's off to see anyone.

My biggest pissed-off factor at the moment is that she dumped this on me at a time when I can do nothing about it with her parents in the house, and it is exacerbated by general exhaustion post-COVID society, a ramp up in work, and getting a diagnosis of anxiety disorder yesterday and the drugs that go with that. I'm also incredibly pissed off that while her husband is obviously incandescent with anger/and is hurting, she's casually browsing this app looking at all the new possibilities that may await her. It's actually the thing that's pissing me off the most.

I won't be broken though, I know that much. This will be dealt with.

[This message edited by Hurthalo at 1:51 AM, Friday, April 22nd]

Hurthalo, I’m a big fan of keeping it simple and honest.

"I can only be in a relationship with a partner who shows she loves me and and is not in a relationship with anyone else. It is clear from your comments in MC that any talk of swinging has shown you are not capable of the necessary boundaries that would be required if we pursued such activities together.

I am not interested in us having separate romantic emotional and physical relationships on our own with others. If that is what you need to find your happiness then I think it’s best we go our separate ways and become simply coparents.

This breaks my heart but it is clear you are unsure of your feelings toward me so until you find you can live with me within these boundaries it’s best we discuss a future apart.

I’m willing to discuss but nothing will sway me from the requirement that we do not have separate relationships outside of the marriage. "

Don’t play games. State what you need and don’t steer away from it. Be clear and honest and consistent.

To answer the 'wtf would you ever consider swinging in light of what happened 9 years ago??', yeah I get it, but I'm pretty sexually open, as is my wife. Horses for courses and all that, and under AGREED and respected boundaries that are hinged on a combined and shared experience, this can be handled maturely.

If you're willing to go that far, what's stopping you from considering the open marriage request? I don't get it. I'm a monogamist, so my line in the sand is sex/romance with other partners. But if you aren't a monogamist, what's holding you back? Theoretically, you could both take a marriage sabbatical and see what happens after your fWW's tour.

Stevens, I love what you wrote except for the last 2 paragraphs because they invite argument and further discussion.

First and foremost, Halo isn't setting a boundary; this is a dealbreaker. Boundaries can sometimes be negotiable.

"It is clear you are unsure of your feelings toward me" will instantly prompt her to declare "You don't know how I feel! I love you! I am capable of fully loving more than one person blah blah..."

As for the last paragraph, she will hear nothing else except "I'm willing to discuss..." No, he is not willing to discuss. He is telling her that he's done.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 4:20 PM, Friday, April 22nd]

Hello hurt.

I hear ya and easily understand why you're angry. It makes sense.

Just a word of caution not to make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions.

Plan stuff out when you feel level-headed. Kiddos are depending on you.

Possible Thread Jack:

5 weeks after dday1 my xwh told me during a wtaf discussion "I need to have meaningful romantic and sexual relationships with other women and you're just gonna have to get on board with that."

Spoiler alert, I did not 'get on board with that'.

Ellie, you gave me a laugh, not for the first time. That is exactly what is meant by 'you can't change other people' - even though he got part of what he wanted - he has his freedom; he just doesn't have you waiting at home for him.

Hurthalo, You can't make her not act on her supposed polyamory. You can't make her stay faithful during her next assignment. You can't even maker her to not go to her GNO. Exposing her to her parents won't make them or her do what you want. If you tell her not to do these things, you'll just expose your own impotence, not as a man but as a human being who can't change another human being.

All you can do - and all you need to do - is to ask for what you want in your M and decide what you will do if your W doesn't give it to you.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:46 PM, Friday, April 22nd]