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Hey All, it been 3 years since I discovered my wife had an internet / phone emotional affair with a prick she met on a trip with her friends. 2 1/2 months long and going strong, phone records showed first contact in the morning and last contact at night with numerous calls / texts during the day. I believe they were starting to have phone sex based on long video calls and things she asked me to do while we began our reconciliation. You know stuff she never asked before like speak dirty to her on the phone while calling her "baby girl", grow a goatee (which that prick had). She even had a vibrator hidden in our downstairs family room where most the calls took place. Does that sound like phone sex to you?

Fast forward a year and things were definitely getting better, then I found the prick's facebook address on her internet history. She claimed she was just checking out of curiosity, there was no contact with him. She got off facebook shortly after that although she's on other platforms.

Now 3 years later, things are pretty good, but the hurt and raw emotions I sometimes feel are like when it just happened. No matter what, I can't get past the orchestrated deception and lies she told. That hurts as much as their interactions. And because of it I'll never be able to trust her fully again. Believe me I want to, but it's impossible, like a natural defense mechanism to keep my guard up at all times. Plus it doesn't help when random thoughts or memories pop into my mind regularly and still have nightmares. I can't shake it and feel like I'm on an island by myself.

She still goes on these friend trips and it's agonizing. All I think is, will she meet someone else? Will she decline men, hitting on her or asking her to dance (how she met the prick), will she get drunk and drop her guard, etc. I don't think she's up to anything now, I think she's done her best to reconcile but when I hear her talk about other affair victims, she'll say "they just need to move on" and the WS needs to "put it past her". That's the same crap she said when we started reconciling. She has no idea the long lasting hurt this has caused me. Honestly I can't believe I'm writing this 3 year later. If I told her it would cause a huge argument. What also haunts me is "if she did it once, she can do it again." Will this ever get easier?

Post Script / edit: Seems my description misled some. To be clear, my wife and I are getting along great, there are no signs or flags that makes me think she's up to something. In fact we're closer now than we have been for a long time. Becoming empty nesters can be challenging but we're loving it. The purpose of this post was merely to ask do the worries and bad memories ever go away. I'm sick of them impeding our progress.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 2:37 PM, Thursday, September 5th]

still hurting,

From what I read your WW had sex with the OM, it can happen very quickly.

The EA was a continuation of the ONS type affair.

She does not view the affair as wrong, she is still lying, minimizing and omitting and she knows it.

Do you have the identity of the OM expose him to his wife

Do you have kids DNA them

Get your WW to write out a timeline then a polygraph

Yea girls gone wild trips great way to roast you alive while you sit at home, watching the kids?

[This message edited by survrus at 1:40 AM, Saturday, August 31st]

Yes she can do it again.

There is neither remorse nor consequences for her

If I told her it would cause a huge argument.

That you just flat out said this with no qualifiers makes me believe that you have no idea how big of a problem this is. You describing your ongoing pain from her betrayal should never invoke her anger. It should indefinitely invoke empathy from her. This is a huge red flag. It strongly suggests you rugswept this thing. And that, my friend, never works.

What also haunts me is "if she did it once, she can do it again."

It absolutely could. Who is ever shocked if an alcoholic drinks again? Unless they are busting their ass in AA, it’s best to just assume they are getting their fix.

Will this ever get easier?

Not if you don’t confront it full on, with no thought to the anger and pouting it will generate in her. There are stories here of people 5, 7, 10+ years out still struggling with this stuff, and it seems to be because they try to "just let it go". That doesn’t work. It keeps you chained to a dead rotting corpse. You are going to have to courageously follow where your heart and mind lead you in understand the A, understanding yourself, and accepting that maybe marriage does not serve you (we call that letting go of the outcome around here). She may have destroyed the marriage beyond repair, affairs can absolutely do that. You need to heal yourself by digging into your pain, not suppressing these things but truly acknowledging and feeling them. And after you’ve done that, then you can look at the state of the M and whether you want it. And if you do that, you wife had better be sprinting to match and beat your efforts, because she sounds like she needs a ton of work to be worthy of R.

Are you positive she is not actually meeting up w the POSOM you mentioned? Because I hate to say it but I'd bet money that she is right now in a full blown physical affair, probably w the POSOM you mentioned. I'd bet even more money that she has had PIV sex outside of your marriage at least once.

Regular GNOs for your unregretful (nevermind remorse!) WW are a horrible idea. It's like an alcoholic hanging out at bars. Thing is, what your WW is really up to, is likely much worse than the GNOs she says she is doing. Your WW likely isn't in the frying pan, she is instead in the actual fire.

You should be queuing up some D attourneys or otherwise your WW will just keep walking all over you. The way you are going right now, this aint no way to be living your one life.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 2:51 AM, Saturday, August 31st]

And for Gods sakes get tested for STDs

What do you know about your WW past did she hook up alot, did she lie about her past.

You bring up some very good questions about your spouse. Unfortunately no one can answer your questions about her potential to cheat again.

I would say, however, based in your description of things, your wife has no remorse. And in my opinion no remorse is not a good sign.

Secondly her attitude of "get over it and move on" is a huge red flag 🚩 for me. If my H during any part of the last 11 years from his last affair EVER uttered those words or thoughts, we would not be able to Reconcile.

At 3 years out I was in your shoes. Not healed. Not fully happy. Looking for something to get me out of my state of "being stuck". I realized that at that point all of my healing was my responsibility and even though my H was doing everything right, I needed to do everything I could to heal.

I have to say that I understand your pain and why you are in the position you are in.

You have no or very little trust with your wife.

She’s not doing all she can to help you.

You cannot talk to her about how you are feeling.

Maybe you need to re-evaluate your decision to reconcile. Or on the other hand you need to figure out if you are happier with her or without her.

For me I will be happy no matter what. My life does not center around my H. I have my own friends and social life separate from him. If I learned one thing from his last/second affair — it was not to make him the focus of my life. I now come first.

And if she does not like it — too darn bad! I hope this helps you. If you really have no trust and she’s not interested in your feelings or belittles you for them, please re-evaluate your relationship and your decision to R.

You deserve better.

[This message edited by The1stWife at 9:07 AM, Saturday, August 31st]

Not here to give advice, but it's been eight years for me and I still have doubts and issues now and then. I doubt I'll ever fully trust my wife again. Whether it's right or wrong, good or bad, I think that is my reality.

You might be different.

stilhurting, Yes the betrayal memories come and go. They never go away fully for either people involved. Ever.

But it gets better provided you and your wife aim for the same outcome.

stilhurting, I just wrote this as a journal entry for today. It's about love and trust.

My wh passed away over 4 years ago and sometimes the pain of abuse and death is still so great. There is not one day that goes by where I don't relive everything that he did to me. Most days I can deal with it but some days, like today, it really gets to me, mainly because I am blown away with what I put up with.

I would never allow this to ever happen again... even if it means keep my walls up and never allowing another man in my life ever again. The pain my deceased wh caused to me with his infidelities and his drunkeness was unbearable.

Here is what I wrote:

I am struggling today with what he did to me. I still feel the deep soul pain of his emotional and psychological abuse. I trusted him to take care of me when we said I do at the alter, making all of the promises that he never intended to keep for me.

It's been over 4 long years since his death and yet sometimes I still hurt as deeply as if it were yesterday, still causing me this crushing, gut-wrenching pain. It's that bad.

I still can have some horrible down right bad, bad days where I can barely make it out of bed. I just want this nightmare to end and allow me to get back to my happy healthy self... but this time with him way in my past.

I feel like it was just yesterday that I was dealing with his infidelities, flirting with and staring at and smiling at other women, having affairs and hookups, getting drunk and being a jerk about it. Abandoning me and the kid's for days at a time for his girlfriends and alcohol, his true lusts in life.

I just want him gone from my memory. I want the memories to fade away. I want the memories of "us" gone. All of it. If I could, I would erase from my mind the memories of him and our past. In the end, he was not worth it to me, except for my kids and the money and health insurance he left behind. Everything else about him was a nightmare. He was truly evil.

Unfortunately, we can not separate the good and the bad in people. It's a package deal. Except I didn't know that the bad in him was so evil. I now hate saying that we had good times. Those good times never canceled out the bad in him.

I hate him, I really do. I feel because I stuck with him, my life feels destroyed to a point. My trust is gone for sure. I don't believe at this point anyway I could ever trust another man again. I would like to though but I fear that I would fall into the same trap as I did with him. And today I know I deserve so much more than what he offered to me. Red flags are everywhere for me today. My walls are definitely up. I pray that God has mercy on his and my soul.

It has taken me awhile to accept this but living and being with him was a living hell that I wish to never experience again.